Final Fantasy XIII Review
no towns. no MP. no experience points. in fact, characters only have 3 overall stats: health, strength and magic. that's it!
i was shocked at first, but once i was locked in battle with a freakish cybernetic demigod, stats was the furthest thing from my mind.
JRPGS usually follow a template: start in a town, travel through a dungeon to the next town and repeat until you reach the final boss. FFXIII completely tosses that formula aside.
most of the game is completely linear. you often have no choice but to travel down what's basically a tube, encountering enemies and cut scenes in a very controlled manner. but what you lose in control is more than made up for by what you gain in every other aspect.
square enix has taken a genre it knows inside and out and trimmed away all the fat,leaving a lean, streamlined and highly focused experience. your task is to follow along, and develop skills in battle to carry the characters through their story.
hard core traditionalists may find this unsettling, but that's missing the point. FFXIII has finally embraced the true nature of the series, which has always been about a set narrative with characters you can only control in as much as you shape their abilities or pick what armor they wear and what weapon they wield.
here the game flow takes precedence, leaving behind our outdated notions of what a JRPG should be. once you let those expectations go, it's impossible not to marvel at what FFXIII accomplishes.
the story begins on a moonlike satellite called cocoon, which as it's name suggests, is sealed from the outside world. it is small and isolated, but very technologically advanced. all this comes at a price though. god like beings known as fal'cie are using the sanctum, a human puppet government, to weild ultimate power over everyone.
below cocoon lies pulse, a mysterious planet the cocoons citizens are forbidden to visit. while no one has ever seen it, pulse is a living hell, with hostile climate and predatory monsters. society lives in constant fear of a pulse invasion, and if anyone even remotely comes into contact with any pulse influence, they're ruthlessly and permanently taken to the world they fear most. that is if they're not gunned down by the sanctum first.
the main character lightning is sanctum soldier until the first pulse contamination scare occurs. she defects when she learns that her younger sister serah is among those about to be purged. as she fights to save her sister, her path becomes entwined with others who share a similar fate, sazh, a father who desperately wants to save his son whom the sanctum has taken hostage, and snow, serah's husband to be and self proclaimed hero and general hot shot. and then there's vanille...but i won't go there (LOL).
anything i can say about the story other than this will just be one spoiler after another. just know that the characters are fully believable and i felt fully invested in each one of lightning's crew.
the active time battle system returns here with some major updates. unlike slow, purely turn based systems where time isn't a factor, the ATB system forces you to think quickly. since all movents from allies and enemies is based on an action guage that refills constantly, the object is to have your moves queued up and ready to unleash as soon as the gauge fills.
you directly control only the team leader while giving general orders to the other two active party members through the paradigm system. during battle a paradigm is always in place that assigns a specific role to each ally. each of the six roles can perform one type of action--commandos and ravagers can only attack, medics can only heal and synergists and saboteurs can only cast status effects and sentinels only defend. paradigms are chosen from a customizable deck on the fly by hitting L1 during battle. you are coordinating the whole team as you decide what paradigm to employ as battle conditions change.
similar to FFX's sphere grid, each character has a crystarium for each paradigm role, and you can specialize each in specific roles as you see fit. with six playable characters to customize as you like, the possibilities for developing paradigm strategies are vast.
the game is visually stunning. it is definitely the best looking game i have ever seen. but the graohics only represent the topmost layer of what this game offers. every last detail is thoroughly polished. whether you agree with the design choices or the lack of exploration during a big part of the game, everything is deliberately and carefully considered. you may feel like you're traveling through a tube most of the time, but it is the most awesom tube ever!
Final Fantasy XIII Feature
- Newest installment of Final Fantasy features futuristic civilization illuminated by the Light of the Crystal
- Features the latest in cutting-edge technology
- Provides tangible, intuitive controls
- Delivers seamless transitions between real-time gameplay and stunning in-game cinematics
- Developed by Square Enix
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