Hironobu Sakaguchi's vast new role-playing game lives up to
expectations: the man who created the Final Fantasy franchise has hooked up with Microsoft to create a traditional fantasy RPG for the Xbox, perhaps the first heavyweight attempt for the platform, and the result is a beautifully detailed, richly plotted adventure.

Players take charge of Kaim, a wandering immortal warrior, who's spent the past 1000 years as a hired sword. Blighted by amnesia, haunted by half-remembered fragments of his past, he is a rarity in Japanese role-playing games, a psychologically complex, certified bad-ass who seems to care less about storming the castle and saving the princess than about finding some place to hide from his demons.