Okay Geek Farm
PS3 Review: Final Fantasy XIII
Ricardo Trejo
It's been over 20 years since the first Final Fantasy was released, and back then it was meant to be Squaresoft's final game in a last ditch effort to prevent bankruptcy. Luckily for them the series became a gold mine, and so here we are in 2010 playing the 13th installment of Final Fantasy. So, how does it compare to its predecessors, everyone is asking. I think that's an unfair question. XIII is its own game, as all the others in the series were and are. The only thing that usually gets changed or modified in each Final Fantasy is the level up system and the manner of battle, but aside from that everything stays the same. In XIII, however, a couple core changes have gotten the series' fanbase all up in arms. I don't mind the changes and am happy to see that Square is ballsy enough to risk experimenting with their primary gil maker.
Story
Traditional Final Fantasy banter; Humans live in a sphere-like world in the sky called Cocoon, while other humans live on the planet itself, which is called Pulse. Both sides hate and fear each other, mostly due to the ancient race known as the Fal'cie, who are somewhat deities to these people, engaging in a never-ending war between the two sides. The main plot of XIII is about the struggle between the L'cie - humans chosen by their respected Fal'cie (Cocoon or Pulse) to do their part in the war. You could think of it as involuntarily being selected by a draft to join the army. Each L'cie is granted magical powers and a task, or a "focus" in this case, in which they must accomplish to either get rewarded or punished. If a L'cie is successful in fulfilling their focus then they are granted eternal life in the shape of a crystal, should they fail however, well then they turn into mindless creatures called Cie'th.
The main chunk of the game is "Fal'cie this and L'cie that", but you do get a break from that every once in a while when the sub-plots of each of the main characters are considered.
Gameplay
I'm going to come and out say that I didn't have a problem with any of the complains most people talked about in early reviews. Stuff like: no overworld map, no airships, hence a linear game with a mini-map to tell you where to go, too many save points, no full control over the game until more than half way through, and being able to only control one person.
Again, I found no problem with any of this personally. Though I wasn't all too keen about being thrown into the world where I had absolutely no idea what was going on. And I will admit that during my first hour in I wasn't having all that much fun. I mean how can you when you're supposed to be eying your enemy, your health, your partners' health, selecting attacks, and also trying your hardest to keep that Stagger bar from moving in the wrong direction? Oh, and all those numbers flying around don't help. Not to mention the camera that has no option of being stationed overhead! That aside however, I found FFXIII's gameplay captivating in a way that I've never experienced before in an RPG.
First of all, it's back to the ATB system - active time battles, which, for those who unfamiliar with it, means that you are not given infinite timed turns to select your moves. Instead, you have a bar that fills up over a small amount of time and are then given chance to perform your selected attacks. Most of the Final Fantasy's had ATB systems but this time it's been modified to make the battles even more fast paced. This is accomplished by turning that single time bar into multiple bars, which depending on the attack chosen, can either be used completely or partially used - and when you're thinking with strategy, you can do multiple attacks in one turn.
Let me explain: Lightning has 4 bars, and her move "attack" costs one bar, or point, which translates into an opportunity to pull off 4 instances of "Attack" during her one turn. Or for instance let's say you are Vanille and you need to revive a fallen partner. "Raise" costs 3 points and "Cure" costs only one, so you could revive and heal in one turn, taking the work out of using two full turns to get your returning player up to fighting strength. Though, having to figure all this out in a limited amount of time in the middle of battle can be pretty demanding, so Squenix decided to limit your control to only single player when in battle. The rest of your party acts on its own and will do accordingly to which "role" they've been assigned as. These roles are just another word for jobs since that's essentially what they are, though they don't have any of the classic job titles, like White Mage or Warrior, that really made it easy to figure out what you were doing in previous FF installments. Now someone who uses magic is called a Ravager, and a Warrior is a Commando, which makes me wonder they bothered with these name changes.
Since you can only control one person throughout a battle you may be asking, when's the strategy come into play? Well, that's where the Paradigm System fills in the gap. You can make Paradigms, or custom teams with variations of who'll be doing what during anytime in a fight.
For example: You go into a fight and you'd like to buff up your team and debuff the enemy right out of the gate, all while chipping away at their health. Well, if you have one character as a Synergist, another as a Saboteur, and another as a Commando, you could do precisely that. But once you've gotten all the buffs you want you really would have no need for your team mates to be a Synergist and Saboteur anymore, so this is where you'd change the Paradigm to another variation. From a list of customizable sets you can choose which roles you'd like your team to fill anytime during a fight. So become medics and sentinels when it's time to heal, but when you want to go all out become a set of ravagers and commandos. Up until 30 hours into the game only certain characters can be certain roles, but once you've reached that point all is now fair game, provided you have enough Crystarium Points to advance to the needed job and attack.
That being said, let's move onto leveling up. Anyone play Final Fantasy X and remember the sphere grid? Well, the Crystarium is like that, and yet nothing like that at all. All the moves and stats are learned in a linear fashion. There's no diverting from the proper course. The only options you do have is whether you'd like to add points to one job or another, or if you'd like to take a small detour in a path to get some extra stat upgrades or learn a new attack. I really enjoy this type of leveling up since you can see what's coming up, and just how far you are from attaining a needed skill.
The changes made to gameplay don't end there, for better or for worse. As mentioned above, there's no overworld - similar to the style of Final Fantasy 12, however in this game there aren't many optional areas to visit, since well, there aren't any. The game moves from locale to locale all as part of the plot, and each stage is for lack of better wording, a single straight path. For me again, this was no problem as I knew I could just backtrack to grind up my Crystarium Points, but there are some players out there who need to know that there's a world outside the invisible walls. There's also an item upgrading system that leads to the Ultimate Weapons in this game, done in the same manner the final weapons in Kingdom Hearts were forged.
Audio/ Visuals
Absolutely stunning, both in the music and graphics departments. It's funny to think that the graphics we saw FF8's FMVs in are similar to what we are playing as today. It's remarkable. Hands down the best Final Fantasy to date. Though the world itself isn't as endearing as let's say my favorite in the series, Final Fantasy X, since let's face it, this world of Cocoon and Pulse are nowhere near as original or magical as Spira. But fortunately for the game itself, the characters are the spectacle and focal point of this particular Final Fantasy. The characters' in game models are stunning, their walks, their clothes, and their facial expressions - especially the work done to redo the lip flaps in the localized versions was something that really impressed me. The voice actors did a great job filling out their roles, and any dislikes you have with them may not be from the voice, but rather from the lines being said or the character types in general. I mean, most of the stuff in the game is over the top J-Drama; things that people would never say or do in real life situations, but would do if they were placed in a Japanese anime cartoon or in a Japanese video game. This is no fault of the voice actors themselves, but rather the script given them. And so because of that I have to say that the English talent, I felt, did an amazing job with what they had to work with. Hope, despite what many people have said on forums and message boards, is my favorite character since his voice, done by Vincent Martella, age 17, just fit him so dead on; fluid and natural, his voice never felt forced or over acted.
If you're a die hard Final Fantasy fan then you may realize that the usual prelude, otherwise known as the Crystal theme, is missing and was replaced by an original tune. I know that this may be a bit different but I thought it really set the stage for what Square was trying to say; that this game was going to be different.
The score reminded me a lot of Final Fantasy X, as it should have since it was done by its co-composer, Masashi Hamauzu, who did extremely well with the project handed to him. There were a couple of generic themes here and there but c'mon, not much of Cocoon was all that original in itself. But songs like Sazh's jazz theme were something special, and not to mention that insanely epic battle theme - which I've yet to get tired of even after playing 40 plus hours with the game.
Final Thoughts
As a fan of the Final Fantasy franchise going all the way back to the original Final Fantasy on the NES, I welcome this new addition, and find it nothing short of a great experience. The gripes many reviewers and fans had with this game were all selfish wants that didn't really change the actual essence of the game, but rather were alterations that needed to be made sooner or later if the the game was to appeal to gamers outside of the hardcore RPG realm.
Sure, the game is much more linear than any of its relatives but the game is still enjoyable. The fighting is as good, and even exceeds the norms found in Final Fantasy games. The characters kept me engaged in the, otherwise, non-coherent plot, and even when they were a little on the dull side the fast paced combat system always had me entertained. Boss fights were done on an epic scale, as some battles could last forever, and others, well... there were some where I was forced to devise a way to finish the guy as fast as I possibly could.
Yes, staples of the series were changed, but that's how you find innovation, and that's how you find what works and doesn't work. We already are getting word that Final Fantasy Versus XIII will have an overworld map with an airship, which was welcomed news to fans the world over. But it's because of the fanboy tears that Square now realizes that you can't take something like that out now, but if they hadn't tried they we would've never known what the possibilities could hold.
On the negative side of things, the game thinks quite highly of itself. This specific iteration hasn't evolved much from its parents but somehow feels like it should be given that praise. If fancy CG scenes and a faster combat system make up for all the places where it is lacking, well then I'm not buying it. It took literally about half a decade for this game to come out, and it feels like this was only a third of the scale it should've been. I really enjoyed the "core" game, but all the extras: the exploration, the optional boss fights, the item quests, what happened to those? But all in all, the game is a neatly wrapped package of beginning, middle, and end, even if the beginning is over half of the game and is more hand holding tutorials than "game". I still enjoyed myself, mostly by tuning out all the people who told me to stay away from this title - even though I knew they were secretly playing it behind my backs and even picked it up at a midnight launch.
It doesn't come close to being the perfect Final Fantasy, but what it does do right it does it phenomenally well. Don't pass this one up; give it a shot and don't judge until you're at least 10 to 15 hours in.
