Since Final Fantasy first premiered on the Nintendo consoles, I figured I would review the new game
“FFXIII is best JRPG released in at least 5 years.”As the tagline states, I believe this game easily surpasses any other JRPG of this generation. It manages to do something engrossing and unique while avoiding many of the pitfalls that nearly other JRPG of this generation has fallen into. I’ll try to give a brief idea of what you should expect if you pick this up and discuss the wedge points which will make you love or hate this game in particular.
Graphics: 9/10
Square is known for making incredibly beautiful, stable graphics with rich art design, and FFXII is no deviation from that tradition. This game offers a variety of colorful environments and truly amazing FMV sequences that are top notch. You find a more technically impressive RPG experience no matter how hard you look.
However, it’s best to keep in mind that the game does run at a higher resolution on the PS3. It is noticeable if you have a large HDTV, so if you have the option and the proper setup, I’d suggest snagging a PS3 to have a graphically superior experience.
Sound: 9/10
I’d heard some reviewers claim that the musical score isn’t as impressive as in previous entries, and I couldn’t agree less. I find the battle music especially impressive, and the sound effects aren’t bad either. The voice acting is excellently done for most characters, but Vanille’s voice does great a tad. I can’t say Snow’s performance is perfect all of the time either.
Battle System: 10/10
One thing that I think a lot of reviewers failed to mention is that the positioning of your opponents is relevant in the same way that it was in Chrono Trigger. This isn’t just an ATB battle system souped up so that the action is more real time; you have to take into account the position of your enemies in order to judge your area-of-effect combat moves and utilize your ATB gauge to the fullest. You only control the main character directly, but you give general roles to each party member, and I can’t imagine how insane it would be if you tried to control more than one at a time (one is often challenging enough).
Some reviewers also suggested that using the auto-battle command is the best way to go about it, but in doing that you’re missing out on so much effectiveness. The ability to execute commands early, take enemy positioning into account, and develop more in-depth strategies is entirely lost if you focus on the auto-battle command. After the game opens up a bit once unlock paradigm shifts, the battles are fast-paced, beautiful, and incredibly challenging.
The paradigm system allows for on the fly job-switching so that you can dynamically adapt your strategies and give your AI partners a general role to fulfill (though it also changes the party leader which you are controlling). This paves the way for deep, challenging fights where strategy is king.
Gone are random encounters, replaced by a familiar system where you try and get initiative in battle by engaging your enemy before being sighted. There’s items called shrouds which help you obtain the advantage on the field, similar to the way that some games allow you to set traps. These features aren’t new, but they’re well-done for FFXIII.
Upgrading/Customization: 8.5/10
The bad news is that there’s only two slots for you to equip your characters, weapons and bangles. The good news is there’s a fair degree of involvement in those particular slots, including leveling up your weapons and refining them by various means. Compared to FFX and FFVIII however, the game’s equipment system is handled amazingly; in both of those installments things were vastly oversimplified and revolved entirely around upgrading via component collection.
As far as progressing the characters themselves go, the new system is like the Sphere Grid with a little bit of the license board thrown in. You unlock stat upgrades, abilities, and auto-abilities (think passive traits) by spending points earned in battles to try between nodes. Each character has a different path to traverse for upgrades for each of their paradigm roles (think jobs), where abilities learned can only be used by that paradigm but stats affect the character in all roles. It’s an amazing system which gives you a great degree of freedom and choice in character progression.
Story: 9/10
It isn’t Shakespeare, but it’s a vast improvement on the storyline offered by the previous installment. Where FFXII focused largely on an over-arching plot, FFXIII is focused on a more personal level, though the personal struggles of the characters do eventually become part of a larger saga.
This is one area where FFXIII finally breaks the precedence of cheesy, uninspired dialogue with plenty of philosophical, unbelievably trite lines set by JRPGs of this generation. There are a few times where you’ll be wincing at the stupid things characters say and do, but the game often recognizes that and realizes that the characters in question are behaving foolishly (and will often punish them for it).
Sazh and Lightning are the most sober, realistic, and mature characters to breach the genre in a long time. They serve as a perfect counter-balance to the cliches of Snow and Vanille, and keep the plot grounded in believability and decent writing where Infinite Undiscovery, Star Ocean IV, and other JRPGs of this generation fell off the cliff of shoddy-dialogue and into the abyss of storyline apathy.
Exploration/Freedom/Pacing: 6.5/10
I’ve heard people claim that this game is nothing more than running from one battle or cutscene to the other, that’s really not the case, but they have distilled out a lot of traditional features that fans truly enjoyed.
Sidequests don’t open up until much later in the game, though there are a lot of them. There’s not a lot of backtracking, but this could be considered both good and bad. Towns are no longer places to relax, they still serve a purpose in the storyline and are impressive, but shopping is done from save points.
It isn’t until later in the story when exploration elements even begin to crop up, because you travel through packed corridors for the first disc or two of the game. The same can be said of the game’s progression system: for the first 1-2 hours you haven’t even unlocked the ability to have your characters progress. It takes awhile for all of the features to open up to you, this is undeniably the biggest problem with the game.
Final Score: 9/10
This really is the best JRPG to come out in forever, but I cannot emphasize enough that it’s very Japanese. Western RPGs focus on open world exploration, non-linearity, and freedom of choice. But where Final Fantasy XIII shines, is in the creation of a character-centric completely linear plot, a challenging combat experience, and graphical immersion.
Much like FFX, FFXIII creates the feeling that you’re coming along for the journey with a team of six individuals with an extraordinary fate. In some ways you’re just a spectator along for the ride, but if the trip is worth taking (and it is), sometimes you don’t mind stepping back and taking in the grandeur around you.
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