Final Fantasy XIII

Title: Final Fantasy XIII
Platform Played On: Xbox 360
Release Date: March 9, 2010
Date Played: May - November 2010
Time Played: 60 hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 3/5


Opinion:
Oh Square Enix, what are you doing with the Final Fantasy franchise? Where are you taking it? What are you trying to accomplish. Were the questions I kept asking myself while playing the latest installment of the quarter century old franchise.  I'll give FF13 two things, one... it is pretty... two, it has an interesting story, in my opinion one of the best stories in all of Final Fantasies.

As per usual, FF13 is radically different from its predecessors. There are no random battles, and instead you can see your enemies and avoid them, although you never do, because you need to grind that experience.  The combat system as a whole is completely different, instead of having specific characters be specific classes, anyone can be any class.  There are sort of skill trees that you upgrade in order to make them better at one skill or another. By the end of the game you end up maxing out a couple of the trees for each character.  This is a good change, since you can focus the characters you like the most and always use them, switching their classes on the fly in order to suit the situation. One of the other combat changes is that now you always start the battles with maxed stats, no longer do you have to worry about using HP potions before battle. The combat itself is not so much about the moves you pick or weapons, it is all about switching classes on the fly. Typically combat consists of starting out with fighter types, hammering at the enemy, then when low on health switch to tank/healer classes, heal up and go back to fighter types.  This makes every battle seem the same, and gets boring after a while, especially since it is the strategy you end up using on all the bosses.

Did I mention that there is no overworld map? Thats right! The whole game takes place in one super, super long corridor. I am not kidding either. See the image on the right (click to zoom), the boss is at the top, you start at the bottom. Cant say that its a very interesting level layout.

FF13 Map
(click to zoom)

Summons... let me tell you about the summons, the actual process of summoning is great, it looks awesome, and the summons themselves are fairly powerful. But the game's mechanics are such that you can summon one every few hours of gameplay, and each character has their own summon, so if you are like me and stick with the 3 characters you like the most through most of the game, at best you will get to see only 3 summons. Terrible design decision. I would go out of my way to use under-powered characters just so that I can see their summon. So most of the summons I either never saw, or only saw once in the whole 60+hour game.

One of the worst explained things in FF13 is the item upgrade system. I am not even going to attempt to explain it, but it is so poorly done that I did not understand it until I looked up a F.A.Q. online about 25 hours into the game.  And even when you have it figured out, it seems like each item has to be upgraded at least a dozen times to actually seem like it made a difference. Square Enix could have come up with a better system. The game does not get shy about throwing a million different names at you that sound very similar to each other, and then proceeds to act like you've been using names such as Lcie and iCie your whole life.

It took me about half a year to play this 3 disc game form the beginning to end.  FF13's story comes in waves, there is a lot of filler that could have been cut to make the game flow better.  As I said initially it is a gorgeous game, the graphics are top notch and cinematics are enjoyable to watch.  It was the graphics and the anticipation of the next "double-U. Teee. eFFF" moment (in a good way) in the story that kept me coming back to FF13.

The game features 13 chapters, by the time I got to chapter 11, I could not wait until the game would end, by that point it got so monotonous that I wanted to hammer it out, see the ending to the ridiculous story and put it back in its case. Dont get me wrong, I enjoyed FF13, and I am very glad I played it, but I dont see myself ever playing it again.. while there are games like FF6 and FF7 that I totally see myself coming back to in the future. In my opinion SquareEnix did not do as good of a job as they could have, they focused on the pretty, and not so much on the world and the mechanics.

I would definitely recommend FF13 to anyone who has liked the previous games in the series.  Once you get into the story, hours can pass in what seemed like an instant.