I’ve been playing video games since 1979, and have been a game journalist for 10 years. I like to think of myself as a gourmand of games — willing to try anything from sprawling sim worlds to blood-choked twitch shooters to surrealist Japanese rhythm games.

Yet I’ve still never touched a Final Fantasy title. Oh, I knew they were out there — almost two dozen of them. I had friends who originally got obsessed almost 20 years ago on the NES, chattering endlessly about the way-kewl combat system and the epic plot line. By the mid-’90s, Final Fantasy had moved into its seventh game and was renowned for having the most fleshed-out, Shakespearean characters of any game — teams of wandering fighters who’d quarrel as they roamed around on errant quests. Square Enix, the producers, had managed a remarkable feat: They effortlessly blended deep storytelling with complex, chesslike strategy.

“It’s the future of gaming, man,” my friends would tell me. Why in hell would I not play?

Because Final Fantasy ran into the problem that eventually besets every successful series: It develops a hermetically sealed culture that seems impenetrable to newbies.

Consider, for starters, the fan base. Gamer culture is already insular, but Final Fantasy fans were so wild-eyed and devout that they seemed like a monastic order living inside craggy caves on an unnamed planet. They’d hang out in clusters, painstakingly dissecting snippets of character dialogue, musing on the subtle distinctions of green magic versus the black stuff, bitching about how recurring characters like Bahamut — Bahamut? — had been reskinned for the latest version.

Eventually, it became terrifying for any self-respecting gamer to admit that you hadn’t played a Final Fantasy game. In the novel Changing Places, there’s a scene in which several English professors take turns confessing the most prominent work of literature that they’ve somehow, embarrassingly, never read. The winner was a guy who’d never read Hamlet.

That’s how I felt. By 2001, when Final Fantasy X dropped — ten? How many of these damned games were they going to make, for pete’s sake? — My virginity was such a terrifying social liability that I’d begun to hide it. I’d awkwardly change the topic, or head to the gaming store and illicitly thumb through a Final Fantasy game guide — which had grown as huge and thick as an LSAT preparation workbook — in an attempt to fake familiarity. It was like looking at porn to figure out how sex works.

But this wasn’t just about social condemnation. I genuinely feared that I wouldn’t “get it.” Playing Final Fantasy at this late date, I figured, would be like starting to watch Buffy in the fourth season, or picking up the sixth Harry Potter book for your first read. The characters and plots would be too obtuse, too layered and onanistic.

Granted, the Final Fantasy games aren’t like novels or TV shows. Each one has distinct, separate plots and mostly separate characters. It’s more the particulars of the combat, or even the emotional timbre of the quests, that forms the games’ culture.

Part of the joy of watching a game series unfold is seeing how the creators gradually evolve their core ideas about play. With each new title, they slightly tweak the type of magic you can use, the power of the monsters, or how the “airships” travel.

Indeed, following a bunch of sequels is a crucial way that gamers learn to appreciate the art of game design. We don’t just enjoy and scrutinize a single game. We compare it to similar predecessors, like wine freaks musing over whether the soil at their favorite French vineyard was better in 1997 or 1998. Comparing a string of sequels is part of being intellectually fluent in the dynamics of play. Should a battle be winnable using only magic, with no swordplay? Are the side quests necessary to make your character more powerful, or are they just window dressing? These are the debates Final Fantasy fans were having — and I couldn’t join in.

So this year, when Final Fantasy XII came out, I decided to take the plunge and buy a copy.

And you know what? I’m having a blast. I’m barely one-third of the way through the game, but already I can see what the fans have been ululating about for years: the operatic characters, the oddball humor, the spoon-bending difficulty of finessing your team’s powers to precisely match a boss’ attack style.

And truthfully, I’m kicking myself that I waited this long. I shouldn’t have allowed myself to be intimidated by the culture of sequels. When it comes to first-timers, Square Enix is quite, uh, gentle: Final Fantasy XII scales up slowly, allowing newbies to gradually figure out what’s going on, before throwing you into the really crazy stuff.

Yet it’s also true that I’m missing out on the bigger picture: how this game fits into the storied tradition of Final Fantasy play. Apparently the combat system in this latest edition is radically different from previous titles, and long-term veterans are locked in a ferocious debate about whether it makes the game more or less playable. That’s the sort of conversation I’d love to be having right now, but can’t.

Unless, of course, I go back … and play all the original titles I’ve missed. Let’s see: If I bought all 13 games in the main series, and planned for 40 hours to play each one, then it’d take me about two months of solid, dawn-‘til-dusk gaming.

It almost seems worth it.