Review: Final Fantasy XIII

Well, my first posting with 8DAG and it’s already on a game that has been out for a while.  Better late then never, right?  Let’s start this review by saying I AM A FINAL FANTASY FANBOY. On top of owning almost all of the Final Fantasy games, I also waited in line for 8 hours to make sure I got the special edition strategy guide for most of them as well.  This newest installment took the game franchise to new and different places.

When you first start the game you are treated to some jaw dropping cut scenes, of course we  have all seen games that have amazing cut scenes, then quality drops when  you enter actual game play.  Not FFXIII, the game stays amazingly beautiful through out the entire game.  Everything from world exploration (if you can call it that) to the battles are highly detailed.  This fact pales in comparison to the amazing story.  Down side to this moving tale is that for the longest time you have no clue what is going on.

The game starts with talks of pulse l’Cie and Fal’Cie then a few hours later explain what those things are.  The player is thrown in to the Battle of Hanging Edge. While pretty and awe inspiring you have little knowledge of why this “purge” is taking place and why the characters are doing what they are doing.  My suggestion is to keep with it, once a few important flashbacks fill in the missing info you start to look at the story in a new way and it’s hard to pull yourself away from it.

Exploration of the world of FFXI is sadly almost nonexistent.  This game is very linear, the areas seem to be one set path through the different environments. If the path forks, one path is the right way and the other is a dead end with a treasure chest.  It’s not until chapter 11 (out of 13 chapters) where this changes, so you are looking at a good 25-30 hours of linear-ness (wait.. that a word???) Game developers claim that they made the game linear like this in order to be able to focus more on the character development… yeah, I don’t buy it.

Now let’s get to the meat and potatoes of any good RPG, the battling and leveling grinding… except…. there is no leveling grinding.  Actually there is no leveling till roughly 3-4 hours in.  Lets jump past the first four hours and start talking when you do start leveling.  Once you become l’Cie you can access to what appears to be a 3d version of Final Fantasy 10′s sphere grid called the Crystarium… once again it’s pretty.  Each character gets access to certain roles, commando, medic, sentinel etc.

While eventually every character gains access to all the different “Paradigms” not all the abilities of each paradigm is readily available to them.  Thus each character has strengths and weakness and those should be taken into consideration in your party.  After each battle you get experience points which can be used to advance your way along the Crystarium in your chosen roll.  Ready for the down side to this system?  You can only advance to certain levels of the Crystarium until certain points in the story are reached.  So no level grinding. Well, you can to a certain extent max out the current stage but it’s really not needed.

Battling is one thing that hasn’t changed too much, and what changes they did make are welcome additions.  Unlike the most recently installment of Final Fantasy 12 where all combat took place on the world map, FFXIII’s once again brings you into a battle screen once you come in contact with an enemy.  Do you remember the good old days when turns where determined by Active Time Bars?  Well the active time bars are back, and this time you get several of them for each character.   As the battle progressive you slowly fill up your segments of the ATB and you can input a string of commands (each ability taken up a certain number of bars) and then you can either wait till the ATB is full or you can launch the sequence early and skip the abilities that aren’t assigned to a full ATB.  You only control one character in battle, which is fine. Eventually battle gets complicated enough with one character let alone controlling a party of three.

But have no fear, the ally A.I. Is actually pretty impressive.  Depending on what roll is given to them they will attack, defend, and use magic in a logical order.  There behavior is based on what you know about the enemy.  You fight the same enemy a few times and you realize it uses strong magic attacks your ally will cast shell before it casts protect.  You realize it’s weak against water, your ally starts casting only water attacks.  Now you could skip the whole 2-3 battle thing and just use your new best friend, the ability called Libra.

Now repeat after me, “Libra is my friend and I shall use it often.”  For those of you new to the series Libra scans the enemy and gives you info like weaknesses, strengths and HP. Nice thing is you only have to use Libra once for the enemies and the info is saved for up coming battles.  This all starts out pretty easy but once you progress in the game and your chooses of abilities become wider the strategy and timing of your actions become important.  If all this battling and entering commands become to overwhelming for for you have no fear we also have the auto battle command your character automatically selects what it thinks to be the best abilities based off of knowledge of the enemy (just like the ally A.I.) and puts them in the ATB, all you have to do is select the enemy and let your character go.  WARNING: using the auto battle button turns the game into something akin to a Dynasty Warriors button mashing experience.

As far as weapons and items, your stores are located at the save points.  All of your weapons can be upgraded via a pretty confusing upgrade system accessed later in the game.  So far in the game I haven’t purchased any items, weapons, or armor (found everything I needed on the map) and as far as upgrading I would recommend looking up a FAQ for it and wait till later in the game to even mess with it.

Closing comments on FFXIII: Like I said time and time again, the game is beautiful!!!  The story is amazing if not a little confusing at first, characters are dynamic and nicely flushed out through out the story.  Battles are pretty fun once you get a nice array of abilities to choose from and the controls are pretty user friendly.  These amazing aspects of the game easily out shine the games downfalls of no exploration (I don’t even think I talked to my first NPC till 8 hours in the game… then my second 17 hours in) as well as no level grinding, which ehh I can easily do with out.  This game is a worthy addition to any gamers library, yet breaks too many of the unwritten RPG rules to get higher then a 8 out of 10.