Despite a power outage last night that cut my game time short last night I feel like I’ve been enlightened as to what Square-Exix is doing (either intentionally or otherwise) with Final Fantasy 13… They’re pulling some David Copperfield-esque illusions and misdirection. At least to this point.

As I mentioned, the environments are very linear, and narrow, essentially corridors… but they are designed in such a way that you feel like you are in this large beautiful world…

Same applies for character development, the crystalium system is also linear, sure, you get a branch every here and there, but its not really customization, you end up getting all the nodes anyway… the only choice you have is in which order you get them. In the case of the early parts of the game where you are given select members, their roles are indirectly forced on you so its easy to discern the priorities.

The paradigm system is pretty relentless… it’s hard to explain, I simply hit auto-battle all the time… but I’ve been shifting paradigms so frequently that I simply don’t have time to be dealing with specific commands anyway… the expertise seems to come from knowing when to shift, when to trigger your attacks before the ATB is full, watching health meters, buffs and debuffs, and knowing when to wait for enemies to get into position for an area of effect attack. It’s elegant, unique, interesting and fun.

The story is picking up, but I still haven’t seen the end goal yet, all and all, I’m still having a good time.