Final Fantasy XIII, I waited to do this review because I felt that I could project bias if I reviewed it straight after release, so 6 months later. Here I am. And I'm glad I waited. It got all of the OMG NEW FF DJASHDJSAHDASSD out of my system. That said. FFXIV has just come out...
FFXIII is one of “those” games, which have an amazing production value, are beautiful and of course bearing the “Final Fantasy” name makes it have a lot to live up to in terms of fanbase and quality of previous work.
FFXIII Is a game that holds your hand for around 20 hours, then throws you into a dual carriageway, forcing you to become frogger and master dodging cars, to put it simply.
The gameplay in FFXIII is fantastic, I will say this outright, no other Final Fantasy has kept me on my toes as much as this. The battle system is known as the Paradigm System. And what this lets you do is to switch the “Class” of your party collectively.
Basically, in the old FF's, you could assign a class to your party, in the later FF's, you could change the class and kind of “evolve”. Then, even later. The classes were preassigned to the character. And now it's all newfangled and very hard to explain. So, you have several classes. “Ravager” Which builds the chain gauge up, making your damage go higher. To stabilize the gauge, you use a “commando” which attacks and maintains the gauge. But does higher physical damage. Next up is Medic... which can heal your status ailments and heal you. Pretty self explanatory. After that is Sentinel. Which can divert the enemy attention to the Sentinel, and make sure the enemy attacks that, putting less pressure on the other 2 characters. The other 2 classes, Synergist and Saboteur Buff you and debuff the enemy respectively.
The way you do this is by assigning each character a class, then this makes your “paradigm” or Strategy. You can have upto 5 Paradigms for each battle. And have to prepare them before battle.
My gripe with this was, that whenever I switched up my party, I lost all the paradigms which I had previously (which makes sense) But I wish I could have saved a Paradigm list or something that saves me the hassle of sorting out my paradigms every time I change something.
The way actual battles work is to queue up your attacks and each attack takes up an ATB segment, sometimes you have multi segment attacks, others are singular segment. This works nicely, but there is also an auto attack button, which does all that for you, it's not recommended to do in the later parts of the game and I agree with it, you will need to make those decisions and tailor your strategies.
The thing is, it doesn't actually get that hard until about 5 hours into the game, before that you could just mash the auto attack to win. For me that's wayyy too long for an RPG game to get started. For me, one and a half hours or so in Persona4 was enough. And that's just unlocking the battle system capabilities.
The overworld is freaking beautiful, the graphics are literally 10 out of 10, I was absolutely stunned by the fact that they could pull something this amazing out, there are various settings you go through in FFXIII, and I didn't find a single ugly looking setting, seriously. It's breathtaking. The lighting and set peices are phenomenal. By far one of the best looking games this generation, right next to Uncharted 2 and Red Dead Redemption. Except for the fingers of the characters, they look like chips.
The FMV's in the game are absolutely stunning in 1080p although they are only there at the starts/ends of chapters, they look just. Fantastic.
Sound design in FFXIII is different to previous ones, Nobuo Uematsu did not do this score, and I regard him to be a staple of the FF series as much as chocobo's. So I was skeptical on the score of FFXIII before going in... but boy how wrong I was. The score for Final Fantasy XIII is as amazing as the graphics are, while not as catchy as it's predecessors, still holds up on it's own, with a varying range of audio genre's and depth to the music.
The addition of Leona Lewis' “My hands” to the ending wasn't all that bad, I feel it fit quite well personally.
The plot in FFXIII is frustratingly predictable, for me, the story just limited it's scope and the way things and features could have been added, the scenario didn't allow for certain opportunities such as towns! A major part of any FF game, I hope this gets rectified in FFXIII Versus.
I was amazingly disappointed with it, considering that FFVI possibly has the best story in any Videogame. And that the FF name should be synonymous with the words “Good” and “story”
The Characters are extremely bland and whiny, each one has their own plot “arc” per se. Most of them are generally unlikeable and most forgettable. With the exception of Sazh, who (in my eyes) Was a character I related to most, and one I genuinely cared for. Even if he was there for comedic relief.
Snow on the other hand... I made a TubeDub that pretty much sums it up, I'm sorry that I can't embed this though. Snow's character is overly confident and generally a big meathead asshole who thinks he's a hero. But with the best of intentions, of course.
The level design in FFXIII is Linear, and has been called out on this a lot. It's a very famous criticism of this game, but I feel that the scenario of the game MADE it linear. The people are on the run for god's sake, you cant expect them to walk into a freaking town. But I called the story out for limiting the game like that. So FFXIII doesn't really open up until you get to chapter 11, where you are let off of your leash and you can do whatever you want in this vast space. But there is a Huuuge difficulty spike. I had to grind to get out of it, which in my eyes is never good, as the game should level you accordingly to the difficulty of the game, it's understandable however if you avoid every battle to come your way though, there are 2 noticeable difficulty spikes, and they both detriment to the experience and the overall feel of the game.
Final Fantasy XIII only truly opens up until around 20 hours in, that's when the game “really” gets going. And that's inexcuseable. But therein, the game is extremely enjoyable if you take away the plot or don't take it seriously. This game has both very good and bad points to it. My advice to anyone that wants to play this is that; you should play it if you are willing to brush over the mediocre story and the mainly linear maps. The gameplay in itself is fantastic and the graphics are the best in the business. While Final Fantasy XIII does not live up to the "Final Fantasy" name, but is a good game in its own right.
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