Well, after a few days of getting some solid time in on Final Fantasy XIII (outside of work and begging for Big Screen time hah), here’s my first thoughts on this game.
Lets start with the story. So far the story has kept my attention very well. I found myself at first really fighting to understand each of the factions and what they are doing. However, it cleared itself up aside my fear. It’s looking like it’s covering 4 groups. The citizens of Cocoon who live in utopia, the people of other villages, the Sanctum who ‘protects’ Cocoon, and the fal’Cei who provide to humans.
At some point the fal’Cei of a town called Pulse, goes against human kind, and begins marking humans to serve them. Fulfilling a ‘focus’ and becoming a crystal, or fail and become a mutant. You and your fellow heroes join in the story trying to stop the Sanctum from ‘purging’ citizens. Quickly however discovering alternate plans to save someone from the Pulse fal’Cei.
Overall, so far the story is keeping me interested, however at points it becomes redundant.
The characters are great. I love the personality and story behind each one so far. Many tragic and many interesting. Lightning is just plain awesome on the battle field, while being torn to her soldier like mind when facing relationships. Snow is a gun-ho resistance leader who keep on a tough face to help others around him. Vanille is a cute over cheerful character who may have a dark past. Hope is a lost child who loses everything and tries to hide from it with fighting. Sazh is the ‘down-to-earth’ person with a funny personality.
The Graphics are amazing. It doesn’t seem at any point that they cut the graphics short. Every landscape is beautiful, spell casts are vibrant, and the overall animation is stunning.
Now on to the important stuff. Where all this is put together and presented, because let’s face it, this is a game not a movie.
The gameplay and battles are fast pace. At no point are you bored finding something to hit. However this comes at a price. I figured the path running and combat sequences were just part of the opening battle. After several hours and many zones later, I found that to be a repeated thing. So I begin to question if this is the game in it’s entirety. Running down narrow path after narrow path after narrow path constantly. It’s gone from a promising action packed game to a linear repetitive action game. Like an old school Contra in 3-D.
The battles were very well done. The transition from initiating a battle was quick. No loading issues. The battles themselves are fast pace but still contain commands to keep the Final Fantasy feel. The bosses were interesting and involving. You can’t just mash them to death, but you also can’t remain defensive. So you juggle to keep alive while dealing a chaining damage.
First attribute that makes the battle interesting is Paradigms. You can essentially create battle modes such as “relentless assault” or “war and peace.” As well as each character has roles they can fill. These include things like healing, fighting, protecting, casting, debuffing, and buffing. Depending on how you set it up, each battle mode you select assigns your characters to specific roles. Example being, if I select Relentless assault, everyone will go on offensive with one person commanding chains. If I select War and Peace, one person will heal while other attacks.
On top of that, you have to chain and stagger enemies by focusing attention on them. More damage you chain on the enemy, the more damage multipliers are added on them. At a point, you’ll reach a stagger point which will stun the enemy or slow them down. All of this coupled together makes for a very interesting and fast pace combat system.
Character progress is a bit dry. I noted that there is no levels. Instead all you do to progress your character is a grid system called the Crystarium. Here’s a bit of a double edged blade. First off you’re capped on how far you can progress your Crystarium. Beating certain parts of the game unlocks further progression. Essentially this capping prevents you from overpowering or out leveling enemies. Which is cool in respect that you can never make the game easier, but only harder.
Now, why is this bad? You essentially have no control to “progress” your characters. It makes you think you are, but in fact you’re always filling out your Crystarium each time you’re allowed to raise it. Thus, I wonder, what’s the point? Why not just fill that info in automatically? It’s not like you can customize or push forward. You’re always being directed and controlled to a linear path.
Well, there you have it. A beautiful game with linear running down a narrow path, awesome battle fights, great characters and story, terrible customization, and.. oh ya.. did I mention narrow linear running down of repetitive paths? Jokes aside, I am enjoying it. The story and character builds are very interesting. The gorgeous graphics and animation keep me going.
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