Nintendo Okie

Final Fantasy XIII is a part of the Final Fantasy Franchise. Final Fantasy is a series of fantasy games with a steam punk style to them. Each new title, which means every new numbered title, has its own characters, storyline, and universe. The franchise has pumped out some insanely good games which include: Final Fantasy I, Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VII, and Final Fantasy X. These are generally considered the best of the series with VII being the unchallenged winner of best Final Fantasy game ever. Some people even consider it the best game ever. I tell you this because Final Fantasy XIII (which we will reference by saying XIII from now on) is meant to mirror VII because the character types are being reused. The main character of XIII, Lightning, is supposed to be a remake of the main character from VII, Cloud (I know, I know). It seemed that Square Enix was trying to make a comeback with the games with XIII by making it as cool as VII.

What You Need To Know
Anyway, XIII is about six different people who eventually collect into a group through unfortunate events and circumstances. This group is trying to fight to survive the onslaught from the government of the time because said government is trying to kill them for being branded as L’cie. L’cie, people who have been branded by the godlike Fal’Cie, have been sent on a mission for the Fal’Cie who branded them. This group of heroes is branded by a Fal’Cie from the lower world, Pulse. Pulse is supposed to be hell on earth and the citizens of Cocoon, which is the world on which the game takes place and is also a miniature floating planet. Once this group has been branded, the chase is on because the government and citizens of Cocoon fear that they have been sent on a mission to destroy the floating world.

Graphics Are Incredible
The graphics on this game are fantastic. On either the PS3 or the 360, the graphic detail will always shine. The environments are gorgeous and the characters are all beautiful. The graphics in this game really bring the ideas of Final Fantasy to life by successfully illustrating every detail that the designers had in mind. The creativity of the designers really shines when put under scrutiny. Every little detail has been looked at and displayed in a stimulating way. Not necessarily logical, but stimulating. The summoned monsters in this game are as awesome as they have always been but have been given new beauty in this new generation game. Basically, if you are looking for a really pretty game, look into this one.

Storyline
Now, you’ve been introduced to a bit of the storyline above, but a lot of that was just setting up the game for you. Most Final Fantasy games have a pretty long and complicated storyline; this game is no exception. You start out with a few of the characters you will eventually end up with, and you get fed what their beliefs are on the world and what is happening. As the game progresses, events change the characters’ view of the world and they come closer to discovering the truth about Pulse and Cocoon and the Fal’Cie. Some of the main characters have been in the thick of past events and some of your party members even turn on each other in a violent fashion at times. I don’t want to reveal too much of what happens because it really is something that you need to play yourself. I found the story to be very intriguing and I enjoyed playing through it.

Leveling Up/Character Development
The leveling up system in this game is pretty neat. You get crystarium points (which are basically experience points) and have a few different options when spending them. Each character has access to different classes, and you spend your crystarium points (CP) on the different classes. As you spend the CP in the different classes, you get basic stuff like HP up and MP up, but based on the class you also learn techniques and can gain item slots for wearing equipment.

The characters develop pretty well I thought. They went from mean lady on a mission (Lighting), man obsessed with being a hero (Snow), funny old man (Sazh), whiny little kid (Hope), and random giggly girl (Vanille), to actual character archetypes and actually are involved with shaping the storyline. They don’t travel somewhere in the game because the writers wanted them to, they do it because the want to. They have motivations and expectations that become known later on, and they develop relationships with each other instead of just being people who just happen to travel together.

Summons
Eidolons are what the summoned creatures are called in this installment of Final Fantasy. They are really powerful creatures that can deal a mountain of damage in a short amount of time. One of the neat things about them is they work with your character for a short time and then your character mounts the summoned (they transform into vehicles).  You can unleash a host of incredibly powerful moves that can only be accessed through your Eidolons. The Eidolons are limited though. There are only six in the game. That’s enough for one character to have one. And each character has a designated Eidolon. As you’ll learn in the Battle System section below you only control the party leader. This means that you can only have one Eidolon per battle and you can’t use Eidolons that don’t belong to the party leader. So, if you want to try out that super powerful looking Eidolon, you have to use the super low HP character which always dies first. Problem? Yup.

Battle System
I’m giving the battle system a +/-0 as an overall score. I’ve got some reasoning behind this so calm down before you wonder why it isn’t good or bad. Now, the battle system for this game is like the battle system for almost every other Final Fantasy game. You can only attack on your turn. That’s how it has always been but XIII puts a slight spin on it. You can only attack when your attack bar gauge is filled. Then you can attack. It’s not terribly different but it is slightly more realistic. Also, in this game paradigms are introduced. Paradigm basically means class. So you’ve got Commando, Ravager, Sentinel, Medic, Saboteur, and Synergist. Each one has different abilities as I talked about in leveling up. You can customize your paradigm set up before you go into battle. With three different characters in each battle you can have three different or similar paradigms at once. You can have about nine different customization slots for each battle.              This paragraph equals +.

So that would give it a good score. But, on the other hand, you can’t really control the character unless you are intimately familiar with all of the skills and are incredibly fast. You have two options when attacking: you can either, (a) choose auto battle and hope the computer does what you want, or (b) scroll down a long list of skills and find the option you want in a timely fashion. In other games you can pause and set up each character to do what you want when you want. Here you have to get to the skill for only one character and quickly otherwise you will waste time in the battle. Another annoying thing about the battle system is that you can only control one party member. This is called your party leader. You control this character and nobody else. If the party leader dies, the entire party loses. This sucks, especially if you are using a character with super low HP.  This paragraph equals -.

So, -1 and +1. Hence my -/+ 0 rating.

Annoying Characters
Earlier I said that the character development went pretty well. And it did, don’t get me wrong, but before everyone develops properly almost every character got close to annoying the gaming out of me. One pretends she has no feelings and is mean to everyone. One character whines about his mom dying and how he has to get revenge on one of the party members, but gets scared every time he has a chance to do something. And the worst offender of being annoying is Snow. He’s the big, blonde, buff bro (see what I did there?). He might possibly be worse than a Rick Roll. Every five minutes, and a lot of the time even less, he feels compelled to tell everyone how much of a hero he is, how people need heroes, and how he is going to fulfill peoples’ need to have a hero by being the hero. See what I’m getting at? I almost turned the game off because of his pointless exclamations. “These people need heroes,” “Your hero’s coming baby!” Snow, you may be a great fighter and have a ridiculous amount of HP, but I usually want nothing more than to Avada Kedavra you.

Poor Adventuring
In Final Fantasy XIII you have a chance to adventure freely once you get to a certain point in the game. This is extremely helpful because it helps you train up before you go and fight big baddies. All of these missions, though, are hits. Every time you accept a mission, your goal is to kill something. You can’t do anything interesting. Just kill enemies. You complete quests for something you want to do anyway. But that’s good right? Not really. Because that is all you ever do in the game. Nothing interesting happens besides killing will happen outside of the cinematic. You can’t converse with NPCs except in designated areas which are few and far between. You can’t get a quest to assassinate an evil person, or clear a dungeon, or even deliver a message to someone. It’s not even possible to get lost in this game unless you are in the big quest area. And you must have some skill to get lost there. Believe me.

Shopping is another thing that irks me about this game but it’s not important enough to have its own section. Usually in Final Fantasy and every other role-playing game ever, you have to buy your supplies and spells in a town at a shop. In this game you can’t even do that. You can buy items at every save point in the game. And there are tons of save points. It makes me feel like it makes the game a bit too easy since you can always shop and upgrade your items just about whenever you want. It makes the experience a little less real, too.

Conclusion
So, after playing Final Fantasy XIII I had to come to a decision as to whether I liked it or not. This was an easy decision at first, I definitely liked it. But then I went to replay it, and I found myself really struggling to play through everything. I started to notice that the only reason I liked it at first was because the storyline was fantastic and the graphics totally rocked. I do like the summoning monsters and the leveling up system, but the elements that really make a game for an RPG guy like me is the amount of adventuring and role-playing I can do. Final Fantasy XIII really limits my ability to do those things. XIII is a good game to play for the story and the super awesome Eidolons, but there aren’t really any other qualities that make it a really good RPG.

Final Score: 

Played through storyline in full
Total Hours played: 60
PS3 copy purchased at retail
360 copy borrowed from friend