[Categories: playstation3, Review, xbox360]
[Tags: Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy 13, Final Fantasy XIII]
Box Art
It had been 3 years since our last Final Fantasy adventure, and the first on this generation of consoles. It seems Square Enix has really split the difference amongst its fan base with it’s “linearity”, I have some problems with this game that far outweigh that one… Does this entry live up to it’s pedigree?
Starting at the top, Since Final Fantasy 2(US)/4(JP), its clear that the focus of Final Fantasy games was going to be epic story telling that gives the sense of us vs. the world, where an unlikely group of adventurers come together as the only ones who can save the world from some terrible villain, and if that is what you’ve signed up for in Final Fantasy XIII, most of that is here. In traditional Final Fantasy fashion, they’ve created this huge world, and all the lore and history to make it feel authentic, and give you some understanding towards the characters nature, and motivations. For better or for worse,each of the characters have a story to tell as to how they’ve got into this situation, generally by way of flashback cut scenes, and they are believable for the most part. I’m not sure if it was clever or lazy, but the writers chose to send the characters on a crusade (in the most traditional sense of the word), where they are given a focus (mission), by a Fal’cie (a god-like being), but the lore explains that the end goal of a focus is not exactly clear. So as a player, you understand why the characters need to complete their focus, but you don’t know exactly what the end goal is… I wasn’t a big fan of this approach since, it really didn’t motivate me to carry on. The other problem I had with the story is the absence of a real Kefka/Sephiroth type villain, which traditionally would be my primary motivator, “I need to kill this guy, he’s bad news”… The story was interesting enough to keep my attention and keep me pushing through, but it didn’t nearly give me the motivation that I’m used to getting through Final Fantasy games.
Graphically this game is stunning, there were a couple moments where the game would come back from cutscene and it would take me a minute to realize that I’m in control again. The environments for the most part are beautiful (save the token industrial warehouse area), and it almost masks the fact that you are mostly progressing through a series of corridors, but they are styled in such away that it gives you the impression that you are in a much larger area, so at least it doesn’t feel claustrophobic. This is what has been fueling a lot of the criticism about the game thus far, linearity, but apart from being able to fly around in your airship randomly in earlier Final Fantasy games, it is still a linear experience, you know exactly where you need to go next, and if you’re somewhere that you’re not supposed to be the enemies over power you anyway. So while FF13 is linear, the only difference to me is that they make no effort to hide that fact by distracting you with random exploring. Although this does mean that the exploration aspect in general is missing, you will often find branching corridors that lead to treasure and what not, so you do get a little bit of that sort of thing but its not all that rewarding. As to be expected with the series, the cutscenes are second to none, and are some of the best (if not the best) in the series, action packed, clean, and satisfying.
The voice acting was good for the most part, I appreciate the extra time square took syncing the lips for the english soundtrack. The music was pretty good, but I take offense to someone deciding that it was ok to put lyrics to the Chocobo song… that was awful, or lyrics at all for that mater. There were definitely parts where they beautiful score matched the environments and tone of the game perfectly that you couldn’t help but get wrapped up in it. The good definitely outweighed the bad here…
As per the usual, Square has chosen to innovate with the the combat system. The first thing long time players of the series will notice is that you no longer have a mana bar. The only resource in the game you really need to manage is time, via the ever present, “Active Time Battle” (ATB) system. You only have direct control over your current party leader (a designation that you can only choose when you’re about halfway through the game). For the first part of the game, where you are unable to choose who control basically serves as an introduction to each of the classes, Commando, Ravager, Sentinel, Medic, Synergist and Saboteur, in the end each player will have the ability to learn each class, but generally speaking each has some combination of 3 to choose from. The player also has the ability to “shift paradigms”. A paradigm in FF13 is basically a set of class selections, out of combat you are able to configure a “paradigm deck” with up to 6 combinations of classes for the 3 characters in your “Battle Team”, so all of the strategy in this game comes from setting up your paradigm deck to be effective against the enemies you’re fighting.
Tri-disaster paradigm (RAVx3) in action
The objective of combat is generally to get your opponents “chain meter” to the appropriate level to force the enemy to “stagger”, at which time your damage increases by a percentage based on the level of the chain meter, up to 999% damage. The chain meter is somewhat interesting on its own, since different classes have different impacts on how the meter behaves. For example, when a Commando hits your opponent, the meter doesn’t increase much, but decreases at a much slower rate than usual. Ravagers on the other hand, increase the meter a lot, but it decreases quickly. So for example if you’re using a paradigm that uses a Commando and 2 Ravagers (the paradigm is actually called “Relentless Assult”), you have 2 of your characters quickly increasing the chain meter, and since you are using a commando, it decreases slowly, and is likely the best way to get an opponents meter to the stagger point. To illustrate how paradigm shifts become strategic, in the early going where you only have 2 members in your Team, you would only have 1 commando, and 1 ravager, and as such, would take a while for the meter to reach the stagger point, to combat this, you would use paradigm shifts to switch back and forth between a 2 Ravager team, and a Rav/Com team, so that the meter still decreases slowly while still boosting the meter a fair amount. One annoying part is that you automatically lose if your party leader dies, later on there are some baddies that can and will one-shot the leader, in those situations it’s best to have a Sentinel in the group so they can taunt, and absorb those blows. Throwing the Synergist and Saboteur into the mix to make sure you are buffed, and your opponent is debuffed in long fights especially, you can see how there is a lot to be aware of through the course of a fight. So much so that 99% of the time, you don’t have time to be selecting what attacks to use even on your party leader. There is an “auto-(attack/hinder/heal etc..)” button that basically selects what would likely be best for the current scenario. Therein lies my complaint with the combat system, I wish I had some control over the AI here, this includes the auto button and all party members, I think if they used a gambit system like they did in Final Fantasy 12, where you’d have some control over the logic I would have had more fun with it, and I wouldn’t have to wait for everyone to be topped off before a res gets thrown.
All that said, the combat system was OK, the action was a little faster paced than I would have liked, and it as a result I next to never did anything other than use “auto” which meant pretty much spamming “X” the whole way through.
In order to learn summons (Eidolons in this title) you need to stand off against them, they have their own meter of stuff they like to see in combat, and in order to win these battles, you need to do that thing to build up the meter, while racing against a doom counter (instant death if expired), these serve as short breaks in the story, and some frustrating battles while you figure out just what you need to do to top off those meters. Once learned, the summons were pretty useless, the only one I ever saw was Odin, and I only ever really used it was because they returned your party to life with full health.
There were a few welcome changes from the traditional Final Fantasy formula, gone is healing after every battle, your party is automatically healed to full and cured of all status ailments (including KO) out of combat. Towns are also gone, no more wandering around talking to everyone in the town just in case one of them is a secret member of your party, and no more run from one side of town to the other to visit the various shops, this is all handled via a “shops menu” at every save spot. It may not be logical really, but I welcomed the change. You also don’t need to upgrade all your gear every time you get to a new village. I think in my game, I had maybe 5 or 6 weapons for each player by the end of the game. To replace this, they introduced a crafting type system. You use the spoils of battle to grant experience points to your weapon and accessories, after so much xp, your weapon levels up, and after so many levels, you can use a catalyst item to change it to a new weapon which you can level up some more. I can say through the course of my game, I used this very minimally… and you really shouldn’t feel obligated to use it. It seems like a more or less wasted feature unless you’re big into grinding.
A look at Vanille's Medic tree in Crystarium
Another staple in the franchise is character development. No more gaining “levels” for your characters, in this edition you use the “Crystarium System”. You basically earn “CP” in every battle, whether or not the character is in the active party or not. You use the CP to move from node to node in the specified class tree to gain stat improvements like +strength, +magic or +hp, or abilities. There isn’t a whole lot of options on the way and CP is easy enough to come by that its no trouble to max out the 3 base classes for each character as you progress through the story (well, not really max out since the last level doesn’t unlock until you’ve beaten the last boss). There isn’t a ton of choice here apart from simply picking which to level first. Another example of Square making you think that it’s not linear when it really is…
In any case, I had a great time with this game despite some minor shortcomings, it’s definitely a solid addition to the franchise that many long time fans will appreciate and enjoy. I’m already looking forward to finishing the mission side quests, and trophy hunting when I can find some more time (or whenever the girl friend lets me have the TV back after kicking her out of the living room for 2 weeks while I got through it, whichever comes first).
