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Final Fantasy XIII: another signpost in the history of final fantasy series

Final Fantasy has continued for such a long time.  Thanks to it’s ability to keep the players coming back for great storyline and storytelling, impressive graphics, involving battle systems, oddly addictive mini-games, and for those of you who are perfectionists and enjoy obtaining all items and weapons, etc., games such as Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy X provide hundreds of hours of fun.  While Final Fantasy XIII did manage to keep my attention for the full 50 hours of story driven game play, it was on a slippery slope and the post-game ‘fun’ seemed more like a grueling chore.

Let’s start with the general feel you get when you have immersed yourself in Final Fantasy XIII. It is a nontraditional installment to the series as the only thing it has in common with the other games is maybe a few names here and there. There are of course chocobos, but that really is it.

The storyline of Final Fantasy XIII is not really similar to any of the previous games that I can think of, however it does seem a lot like a mix of VII, VIII, and maybe even X. This is not really such a good thing though, because a lot of the time you will probably find that you have absolutely no clue why the characters are going where they are going. To find out what the heck is going on it is possible to view all the events so far in a data log, but to be honest if I have to keep looking over something to understand the storyline I lose interest pretty quickly. However that is only if you care about the little details like I do for whatever reason. The parts of the story you need to understand are mostly pretty simple. To sum up; if you liked previous Final Fantasy games for the game play and the storyline did not bother you too much, then don’t let this one put you off the game as a whole. If however you love Final Fantasy for the storyline that always make sense towards the end (and I know a lot of you do), or prefer the traditional storyline that flow well, then you probably will dislike this aspect of the game.

The game play itself, well, all you need to do is play the first hour of this game and you know what the game play is going to be like. It is at first a seemingly complicated game, however that really is just an illusion due to the outstanding graphics and epic feel that the game brings. As everyone probably already knows a major criticism of Final Fantasy XIII is that it is too linear. Personally I do not see this as a problem but just a warning to those who hate linear RPGs: this game is one of them!

What I think is revolutionary about Final Fantasy XIII is the battle system. It is unlike any turn-based battle system you have ever seen. It is much more involving than previous battle systems and it keeps you thinking on your toes. Some things you should know about battles are: there is almost always a need for a ‘Paradigm Shift’ which allows your party to switch roles e.g. switching from a Medic(healing) to a Commando(attacking). There is the option (out of battle) to set up several different paradigms to best suit the situation, e.g. if an enemy is dealing too much physical damage to the leading party member you can simply put a Sentinel in to the mix and they can draw attacks towards themselves. There is an ATB gauge that fills reasonably quickly and the amount of segments in it can be increased. Each segment that gets filled can be used for a command or in the case of certain commands more than one segment will be used. The battle system is brilliant and does not take too many battles to get used to. In fact the overall learning curve for this game is about ten minutes, although the game seems to walk you through even the simplest of things pretty much until the end of the game.

The graphics in Final Fantasy XIII, as I mentioned earlier are spectacular. The in-game graphics are maybe not the best I have ever seen, but the ones in the FMV sequences are. The music is nothing special to me but some say it’s good. I don’t think it’s bad or anything but there were no stand-out tunes like in Final Fantasy X.

To fully understand whether Final Fantasy XIII is worthy of the title, you have to play it for at least 30 hours so that you can get in to it. This being said, for some people, the game is too linear to even enjoy a little bit. There are almost no traditional Final Fantasy elements such as towns or moogles or mini-games. The only real side-quest is a series of missions that can be started about halfway through the game and aren’t very fulfilling as most of them offer lousy rewards that you already have. The only other thing left to say is about weapon upgrading. If you want to 100% this game like me then good luck, it takes a long time and a lot of repetitive fights. If you only want to complete the game and then never play it again, there is absolutely no need to equip any new weapons or accessories.

As a Final Fantasy Fan, one thing that makes me unsatisfied in this game is the linear story line. It is sad that It does not adopt the important points of game play from the other Final Fantasy games. I hope the next installment of the series will answer to that. Overall, it is a good game and gives a new feel in RPG gaming that every final fantasy game delivers.

 

 

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Tags: Final fantasy, game, graphics, player, RPG
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