Final Fantasy XIII Review
[Today's article comes from our favorite guest contributor John Johanas, or as he's known around these parts, 'the situation.' All hate mail should be forwarded to him, care of Japan]
After only a brief time playing it, I could tell that Final Fantasy XIII will definitely be passionately argued about. How could a game with such budget and hysterical hype live up to the games that came before it? Luckily, it seems as though the production team didn’t seem to concern itself over all of that.
What will shine through (if you can get past somewhat cliché Japanese RPG concepts) is that this game is unique in its own respect, and game play wise, is vastly improved from anything we have seen in the series before.
I’ll skim over the obvious and get to the interesting parts.
More than the sum of its parts?
The Graphics are amazing. Character movements and environments are the finest around bar none and CG almost seems unnecessary. An unbelievable amount of polish gives us a game that will definitely set the standard for a while.
The music is so good that you won’t miss Uematsu or the historic victory theme by the end of the first hour.
Black Friday deals are just as irresistable for evil robots; quick, to the mall!
Gameplay wise, this game has the most intense battle system (and quite possibly the best) so far. The action is fairly similar to the free-flowing battles of FFX-2, but I like to compare it more to a puzzle then just hacking the attack button. This time, characters have their own “job classes” called optimas, of which can be switched around on the fly between preset combinations. Magic and skills rarely cross-class and throughout most of the games, the skills between characters are so varied that everyone has their own purpose.
A big gripe some people might have is that the player is only in control of the lead character while the computer AI handles the other two characters. Actually, this is for the best since sometime action gets too hectic for even one player let alone three. Plus, the AI is likely better than you are, handing out buffs and health when they are needed. I suppose you can think of them as gambits from FFXII but without you having to set them up.
George Lucas had some Star Wars clones lying around that Square Enix rented to save money on development
The game has a pseudo-autocombat option for yourself as well in which the computer selects for you the most suitable commands. I would presume this is actually a necessity since combat is so fast that one has to be on edge most of the time, switching between optimas on the fly to go back and forth between healing, attacking, buffing, and defending. Of course you can still command your main character manually if you so desire. This is where the puzzling aspect comes in. While it may be possible to plow your way through enemies only attacking, you won’t be doing it fast. The game ranks each battle on your speed and if you don’t perform up to snuff, your loot will shrink. The fun is figuring out what the quickest way to tackle any fight and who is the best for the job.
With no MP system and your health refilled after every battle, encounters exist in a very temporary environment which gives even more the feel of a ‘give it all you’ve got’ experience.
The game steals the sphere grid from Final Fantasy X and renames it the Chrystallium. It works in the same way but each job class has it’s own series of crystal webs on which to spend points to gain stats and skills. Just like FFX, leveling seems less important since battles continually net upgrades to your characters.
If you look at these aspects, Square-Enix took the best features of previous games and amalgamated them into an amazingly solid system. It’s deep enough that post-game fights will warrant a lot of planning and strategy to win, but easy enough that you don’t have to be fluent in it to finish the story.
Little known fact: This character is not named Snow for his chilly demeanor but rather because he's a snowman who murdered some guy and is wearing his skin like a suit
A controversial new game structure: the giant tube
The biggest issue in the game will no doubt stem from the linearity aspect. Bottom line: a majority of the game is an absolute straight line. The first real ‘dungeon’ where you can potentially go in two directions is potentially only the final one. There is the large area of Gran Pulse roughly three fourths through the game that allows players to tackle some optional missions, but they are actually discouraged. Standard places like revisit-able towns and NPCs with which to speak are nonexistent, and while dialogue exists it is not a focus.
For someone who is still sitting around waiting for their Final Fantasy VII remake, this will obviously be a huge issue and potentially a gamebreaker. For me, I found it great, and it was particularly because of the positives produced from it.
The best part about the linearity is the story. The game starts out somewhere near the middle of the story and subsequently fleshes itself out through flashbacks. Proceed a little further with the story and players are shown more dialogue between characters. This leads to a better opportunity for character development. Without time to goof around, you won’t get lost in ‘what am I supposed to be doing here’ and instead are constantly on the way to your goal.
This is Shiva, one of your summons. She can turn into a motorcycle, which you can then ride into battle. Hey, don't ask me
Paths constantly diverge between characters, and the beginning of the game forces you to use preset groups in order to train you to experiment with everyone. This does double duty story wise of making everyone interact with each other. If you get confused with all the wacky terms thrown around, don’t fret. The game has an internal encyclopedia to detail all aspects of the story and its players.
I might as well say it; the characters are pretty good this time around. While most Final Fantasy games have an overly emotional and whiny protagonist, this iteration takes itself a little more seriously. Lightning is cold, fighter Snow is overly cocky, Sazh is the realist and so on. Even 14-year-old Hope who is already being labeled as the whiny baby is not that bad and winds up having the best one liner in the game along with a hefty summon. Whatever you don’t like about the characters when you first see them winds up changing by the end once they grow, which is a pretty remarkable feat. Overall, they are all likable and well acted (at least in Japanese) so there isn’t much to hate there.
How much you like this game will boil down to how much you like the story. It’s nothing new in terms of rogue group against overall bad dude/world devastation, but at least the presentation is interesting. No major twists or random final bosses come from nowhere (I’m looking at you FFIX), although things start to get convoluted towards the end. It winds up being just as you expected and somehow over fairly quickly despite the storyline taking about 40 hours or so to complete (although the entire sequence of the game takes place over the course of a matter of days). I attribute its brief feel to the fact that the game prohibits you from grinding or doing side quests. When everything is so streamlined the story comes to focus and that’s what it should be all about anyway. Don’t worry about missing anything, either. You can’t even do everything (trophies) until after you finish the game and have seen the ending.
This gentleman has a Chocobo that lives in his afro. They have a symbiotic relationship where the Chocobo subsists off food that falls into his hair, and in return provides valuable grooming services
East vs. West
The fact that Square-Enix has limited the player’s freedom in order to tell the story this time around is exactly the opposite of its predecessor and is a decision that works well in the context of the game. It is a love it or hate it style, though and as I said before, I expect much polarizing Internet rage from this one.
Players must realize that this isn’t a Western RPG, it is the representative Japanese RPG that will probably not change your mind about how the Japanese make their games. If you take this as it is, though, it’s a fantastically well-crafted product that is fun and exciting to play. Square has gone in a brave new direction that succeeds at differentiating this game form the others in an expansive series.
