Game: Final Fantasy XIII
Publisher: Square Enix
Platform: PS3/XBox 360 (our review platform)
Price: $59.99
Pros: Beautiful scenery and characters; battle system is zen-like in practice
Cons: Melodrama gets a bit thick; no way to create your own story
Verdict: Rent first, to make sure you like the mechanics and themes, then Buy It.
Review copy provided by publisher
I’ve found Serah, encouraged Hope and gotten him home, chased a small yellow baby chocobo around a strangely boring amusement park, and helped Snow become more of a grown up. I’ve helped Lightning find her heart, Fang her lost partner, and Vanille, well, move around in a bouncy fashion. And I’m still playing this game. Anyone who said they finished Final Fantasy XIII in a week is either lying or does this for a living. I, however, do not do this for a living. My save file says 28 hours, but I’m pretty sure six of them were me accidentally leaving the Xbox 360 on for about that long. I’m engaged in finishing this game, mainly because I think it does some wonderful things connecting the thematic and story elements to the gameplay itself, as suggested by Simon Ferrari in his amazingly intelligent analysis of the game. I really want to get these characters to Pulse, to see how they react to the more wide-open spaces and much less linear (he says) levels. I really want to stop grinding up each hill only to find a big bad boss at the top that requires either a great deal of time or recourse to an online walkthrough.
Let me get this off my chest – There is no way I am going to finish this game before this review is stale news. NO WAY. Look, I know all you gamer types can sit on the couch all day and night and just play these things, but I have a day job, a family, three websites to oversee, and a disco band. Seriously, is 22 hours not enough to know whether I like this game enough to recommend it to you? If not, please go elsewhere where the reviewer probably hasn’t actually played through the full game but won’t tell you anyway.
See, I don’t typically put twenty hours into a game, in fact, this game has many things I don’t like about it. I don’t like the endless running from battle to battle, watching a cutscene, and rushing off to the next. I don’t like the overly melodramatic dialogue, or the overly sexualized female character, Vanille. I don’t enjoy having to spend ten to fifteen minutes on a boss, only to die and have to resort to an online walkthrough to figure out the secret to that boss’s success. So why am I still playing this game?
First up, it’s drop-dead sexy gorgeous. The developers have created a new universe full of bright colors, neon particle effects and all sorts of eye-candy – much more than I could ever describe. The end result, from my perspective, is a world that looks and feels real enough to ignore the fact that characters have hair that never musses in any strong wind and defies gravity at all sorts of angles, that giant yellow birds exist that will carry you like a horse, and that one teenage boy can carry around so much unexpressed angst. This is a game for the high definition systems out there, looking better than pretty much any game I’ve played. The environments are varied enough that I can actually find my way around in them, and if you knew me at all you would realize that must be some fairly specific praise. I get lost in the real world often, having a poor sense of direction and if a game has too-similar level design, I’m hopeless without a map.
The storyline is unfathomable to me when relayed in the cutscenes. I rely on the summary text when loading my save game to let me know just what, exactly, is going on. The Final Fantasy universes have always been full of strangeness that I tend to attribute to their Japanese origins, and as such, I like them very much. I just don’t grok them very easily. The Final Fantasy XIII universe involves two different planets, Pulse and Cocoon, the latter being the starting setting, a “benevolent” totalitarian government ruled by virtue of force and the bizarre-to-me fal’Cie, which is sort of a god that you can see. Cocoon citizens are told that Pulse is bad, and is out to invade them. Some citizens are drafted into service to these fal’Cie, turning them into l’Cie, a kind of soldier with a bizarre, un-specified purpose, called a focus. If these l’Cie don’t fulfill their focus, they are turned into shambling monsters; if they DO, they’re turned into crystals. Sounds like a crappy deal to me. There are fal’Cie on both Pulse and Cocoon, and when a l’Cie is drafted, they have to act like a l’Cie for some reason. Maybe a tradition of hierarchical relationships in Japanese culture is the reason this kind of storyline exists, but as a western gamer, I really didn’t buy it.
However, the part of the game I’ve played forces you to watch what the characters do to deal with their motivations, not my own. This fits in well with the idea of Cocoon: thematically, the characters and world they live on are very controlled, and reacting to events, rather than initiating or rebelling against them. The linear gameplay (little battles, bigger battles, huge boss battle) fits right in with the linear storyline. It plays like a movie with a cool battle system. Unfortunately, if you don’t like the movie, you can’t change it, as you can in many more western RPGs. This is the game and story the developers have created for you. Like it, and it’s a joy. Dislike it, and it’s a chore. I’ve bounced back and forth between these two opinions over the time I’ve spent on Cocoon. There are times when I look forward to the cutscenes to find out what’s going to happen next. There are other times when the melodrama and dialogue is too cloying, too teen-angsty, to really keep me interested. I find myself relating mostly to Lightning and Sazh, who seem to be a little older. Sazh even has a young son who he’s going to find/protect/turn himself in for. That resonates for me, an older gamer who has two children of his own. On the other hand, Vanille grates on every nerve I have, and Hope is just a giant emo mess. Younger anime fans will eat it up, however, I’m sure.
The battle system is where this game really shines. Controlling one main character alone or in a group of two or three is a joy, especially once you get past the learning levels. Tutorials are integrated into the early battles, and spread evenly across a couple of hours of gameplay, giving players a chance to integrate the lessons learned as they go. This is a nice change. As the story progresses, the battles increase in size and difficulty, adding new enemy types and mixed groups of enemies. Strategic battling is key, and the game encourages a much higher level of that in this game than any other I’ve played before. You can micromanage your character’s individual actions, but the game encourages the use of Auto-Battle, in which the game AI chooses the different chained battle actions for you. Your role is to then focus more on the team itself, choosing among several “paradigms,” which are basically sets of actions in the categories that relate to healer/magic user/soldier/buff, de-buff. Choose the right paradigm and you’ll be able to “stagger” any enemy, which allows damage to proceed at a much faster pace. In addition, many enemies have unknown weaknesses, that you need to cast “Libra” on. Libra gives you information about the enemy, what they’re weak to (fire or water or lightning spells, for instance), or what will heal them (some enemies heal when hit with a fire spell). Finding this information out early is key, as the AI will choose your attack spells and strategies – within the set of actions available to your class – based on that information.
It’s devastatingly complex and interdependent set of variables that get managed more and more successfully as the game wears on. This can lead to a certain zen state in which I find myself: switching paradigms and all the affected class and available actions is strangely soothing, taking me to a place of no-mind that is highly satisfying and relaxing. The grind is a great place to be. Just maybe not 22 hours worth. This is the problem with any game that takes its cue from movies. Movies work at about 1.5 - 3 hours, and the entire language of film is built up around that time frame. There’s no way to keep my attention for much longer without some more compelling content, perhaps, a la Uncharted 2.
Should you get this game? I would. It’s given me far more to think about and enjoy than a mere $60. I’d be hard-pressed to find any other entertainment that lasts for as long as this one has for that price. Think of it as eleven movies, and you’ll know what I’m saying. And I’m not even finished with the game. I still want to get to Pulse. Honest.
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