This week not only marks my first time visiting New York City since being a child, but my initiation into “What We’re NOT Playing,” as well.

Being hundreds of miles away from my apartment is a bit of a hurdle to my game playing, but that didn’t stop Jason Cipriano and I from discussing what I wouldn’t have been playing even if I had been home.

Mostly, we discussed why the latest Hironobu Sakaguchi epic, “Lost Odyssey,” isn’t appealing to us because of the time sink involved in actually finishing it.

JasonCipriano: "Lost Odyssey" is probably the biggest name being released this week, why pass on that?
PatrickKlepek: Two reasons. One, it's an RPG and I'm already playing through "Kingdom Hearts 2." I don't know how I found the time to play 70 hours of "Final Fantasy VII" when I was in high school, but never again. Two, everything I've read says it involves lots of reading. Reading is for books, not games
JasonCipriano: Yeah. You'd think on four discs they would encourage them to have less text
PatrickKlepek: Is it four? Jeez. At that point, I don't even know where I'd put the box. I live in San Francisco, for crying out loud! Maybe I'll play the demo. I'm curiously interested in Hironobu Sakaguchi's work, I just don't have the time

Readers, do you find that to be a problem, too? Would you like to play an RPG, but can’t justify the $60 price tag knowing that you’ll never actually finish the adventure? Is the need for a new "Final Fantasy" that important to you?

Oh, and for once, Multiplayer doesn’t bring up "Endless Ocean." Read on for more.

[Photo Credit: 20th Century Fox]

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Back when I was playing "Final Fantasy X" and not completely loving it, it did not occur to me that one way the developers could have made the game better would have been to include text-based short stories that I could read on my TV.

That's what has been done with "Lost Odyssey," an Xbox 360 role-playing game overseen by "Final Fantasy" creator Hironobu Sakaguchi set to go on sale in North America on February 12.

I received a preview build of the game's first disc, of four, last Wednesday. (Readers of this blog's What We're NOT Playing series, this was the secret game mentioned in the most recent entry).

I clocked a paltry two hours and 10 minutes in the game this weekend. I know that is paltry because this game looks, walks, and quacks like a "Final Fantasy," and therefore must be dozens of hours long.

I'll get to the reading thing in a moment, but first, here is how it met many of my "Final Fantasy" expectations:

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