Final Fantasy XIII

Platform: Xbox 360
Time Spent: 55 hours
Still Playing

I have an up and down relationship with Final Fantasy XIII. I absolutely hated the first few hours of the game. The story is thrown at you with no exposition, the combat system involves hitting A over and over again, and the menu was a confusing mess filled with options that I knew nothing about, and couldn't even access if I tried. And the characters were about as one dimensional and cliched as a casting call for Jersey Shore.

But I slogged through until about the 6 hour mark, and I realized that I was starting to enjoy the game. The story started to make sense, the game progressed to a point where the battle system became far more than just smashing a single button repeatedly, and the characters became surprisingly deep and likable. Then, after roughly 30 hours, everything changed again.


Instead of focusing on the story and characters, the game forces you through generic uninspired landscape after generic uninspired landscape. The story slows down to a crawl, and character development is non-existent. The final three chapters of the game are completely different from the first 30 hours of the game, and nearly as long if you spend any time working on the "optional" side quests available starting in Chapter 11. Optional is in quotation marks, because you actually have to finish some of them in order to advance the main storyline. Many of these side quests are meant to be finished after you beat the final boss, but unless something changes I just don't see myself sticking around to finish them. I'm literally forcing myself to finish this game, just because I've already invested this much time into the story that I want to see its conclusion.

Besides the issues I have with the pacing, there are only two other issues I have with the game. You can upgrade your weapons and accessories using components earned by winning battles. The game gives you the basics in how this system works, but doesn't do a good enough job to make you understand the system. I've heard that the rules for upgrading weapons and accessories are clearly explained in the strategy guide, but I chose not to use one for this game, and it doesn't seem like it's completely necessary, unless you want to aim for the achievement that requires you to upgrade everything to its max potential.

My other complaint is with the datalogs. Basically, the game relies too heavily on datalogs to present the story. Without reading them, the story is never fully presented. I'll dive into this with more detail in another post once I finish the game.

I know that sounds like the game is crap, but for nearly 25 hours I was really enjoying the game. This Final Fantasy is significantly different from its predecessors, and it's almost all in a good way. Wide open areas filled with cities and local NPC's are gone. For all but one of the 13 chapters you are essentially running through hallways fighting bad guys. This might seem like a bad thing, but it forces the game to focus on the characters in your party. The result is some impress character development, and characters that rise beyond their initial stereotypes.

The game suffers from not having a "save anywhere" feature, which really should be mandatory for modern games, but it does makes up for this by a noticable increase in save points. In this game most save points are about 15 minutes apart at the most. You also are not punished for losing a battle. If your leader dies, you get dumped back out to the map with the option to try the battle again, or avoid the bad guy and do something else. Really, this small feature is a godsend, and allows you to take on stronger opponents early in the game with the only thing you can possibly lose being your spare time.

The battle system has also been revamped from previous Final Fantasy games. Gambits from Final Fantasy XII are gone, as is the turn based system made famous by the earlier entries into this series. Where previous Final Fantasy games had players choosing what actions they want their characters to take, in XIII you instead choose what type of job you want your characters to be. This is done using the "Paradigm System". There are 6 different jobs, or roles, you can assign each character. The catch is you can only have one job assigned to a character at any given time. So instead of the player being forced to directly input each of his characters actions, the player sits back and juggles which roles he wants his characters to be. This sounds boring on paper, but in practice it works.

The other huge improvement this game has made is there is almost no need to grind for levels in this game if you just want to play through the main game. Instead of a traditional leveling system, you level up your characters in the Crystarium. You have to play past certain points in the game in order to unlock different levels of the Crystarium, which means that it is entirely possible to essentially max out your characters before those higher levels are unlocked. I did this easily throughout the game, and spent only 10 minutes or so running back and forth through a hallway because there was a difficult boss battle ahead that I had already failed once or twice. The only reason you'll really have to grind through the game is going to be if you want to get some of the achievements, which involve maxing out your characters and fully upgrading all weapons and accessories. Since the last level in the Crystarium is not unlocked until after you beat the final boss, only those obsessed with the game would ever have to do this.

Hardcore fans of the series will find this game easy, boring, and light on all the aspects that typically pull them in to other JRPG games. However, fans new to the genre can easily pick up this game and play from beginning to end. The story is engaging, and is strong enough to overcome the many missteps the rest of the game takes in the end stages of the game. For roughly 55-65 hours worth of gameplay, it's well worth the price of admission even though it's not perfect.