And finally it’s released! We’ve been seeing stuff about this game for 4 years now, and it’s probably been in development for a lot longer. So it’s definitely something to finally be playing the game.

Before it came out, I was not really hyped for it, since I knew it would take a long time to come out. But when the American release date was revealed, and that the game was released in Japan (so I could actually see peoples’ impressions on the game), I was hyped. There were strangely tons of complaints about the game, probably more than the average FF game gets, but none of those seemed like anything nearly big enough to be game-breakers, and just sounded like nitpicking, so I was still hyped.

So let’s see if those various complaints were actually detrimental to the game, or if people just like whining for no good reason. READ ON !!
In a slight change of pace, this game will have 2 sections: the actual review, and me talking about what I think of the various complaints the game has been getting… as well as a few complaints of my own. So check it out!

(NOTE: no, I’m not a Final Fantasy fanboy… if I was I would have finished more than 2 games in the series)
(OTHER NOTE: I will NEVER write a review this long again, I promise…)

Developer: Square Enix
Publisher: Square Enix
Date of Release: March 9th 2010
Platforms: Playstation 3, Xbox 360 (PS3 version reviewed)

Genre: Japanese RPG
Players: 1
Rated T for Teen

The Review

Graphics
If there’s one thing no one should complain about in this game, it’s the graphics. Everything looks great. The dark caves, the sprawling city-scapes, the fields with mountains everywhere around, the machinery, the technology… Everything had tons of work put into, with near-perfect attention to detail. Not only is the graphic quality great, but the visual style is really well done. Everything they show on screen is well done enough to look believable. Some weird ship flying around that’s nothing like we have in the real world? You can look at it and kinda understand, using video game logic, how it can manage to fly. The characters are also pretty well done, each being fun and unique to look at. Each character has lots of personality and is easily recognizable from anyone else in all of Final Fantasy. Their animations are really good and natural as well. The only thing actually wrong with them is their fingers, they look kinda weird when seen close-up, but that rarely happens so it’s not a problem.

The monster design is not too bad. A lot of the monsters/enemies are new to the series, but they look fairly good. There’s also a lot of returning enemies. Tonberry and Cactuar look as wacky as ever, feeling completely out of place compared to every other enemy in the game. Flans and Bombs are back, but they look completely different, with only a few aspects making you think “yeah, those are definitely bombs/flans”.

The animations are generally very nicely done as well. The cinematic are just great, not only in regards to animation, but also because there’s so much going on, and the graphics take a huge increase in quality. Final Fantasy, or any other game for that matter, has ever looked as good as the cinematics in FFXIII. The cinematography is like that of big name action films, with great camera angles, fast-moving action, and nothing really feeling out of place.

Just looking at the game you instantly know why it took so long to make(aside from the whole “porting to the 360″ thing).

Sounds and music
The Final Fantasy series is, amongst other things, very well known for always having great soundtracks, and some of the most memorable music in the industry.

In that regards, I feel FFXIII doesn’t have lots of really memorable tracks. But that’s not to say the music isn’t awesome… because it is.  Though there are a few bad tracks, like one of the two Chocobo songs (it has lyrics, and sounds lame), or the one that sounds like elevator music in the Yaschas Massif on Gran Pulse, overall it really has a very good soundtrack. Most of the tunes sound very Final Fantasy-ish. If the intense action in some scenes doesn’t get your heart pounding, the music during those scenes definitely will.

But I think the “problem” here is that the composer isn’t Nobuo Uematsu, whose music has become synonymous to Final Fantasy, and some of the best music in the gaming industry. Instead it’s Masashi Hamauzu, who made some(not all) of the music in FFX and Dirge of Cerberus. So the music doesn’t have exactly the same feel as the average FF music. Bu I feel he did a pretty good job at making the music here.

The rest of the sound is pretty nice as well. Swords, magic, the weird technology everywhere around the game’s world, everything sounds great. The voice acting is actually pretty good in english, with only a few minor problems, like Vanille sometimes having an accent, and other times not having one… The rest though is very nice and the voice actors certainly made a lot of effort to deliver most of the lines properly and make them believable.

Story
I won’t go too much in detail since I don’t want to spoil too much.

The story takes place partly in a place called Cocoon. It’s basically a floating mini-planet, that floats above Gran Pulse. Pulse is considered by the people of Cocoon as an evil place, due to government propaganda. In both those places live semi-mechanical creatures named Fal’Cie, who have special powers to help or destroy mankind. Fal’Cie from Pulse are considered evil, and Fal’Cie from Cocoon are considered to be good guys. Fal’Cie occasionally turn people in L’Cie, who are given a “Focus”, which is basically an objective to do. They are given special powers to be able to complete their task. If they fail at doing the objective after some time, they become Cie’th (basically zombie-like monsters), and, if they accomplish the Focus, they are given “Eternal Life” as a crystal.

You play as a rag-tag band of people all completely unrelated originally, but brought together by unpredictable circumstances. The game begins during a “Purge”. A Pulse Fal’Cie was discovered in a town, and since anything from Pulse is considered evil in Cocoon, the people of the town need to be deported by the government. It ends up becoming an all-out war. In the madness, 5 of the 6 “main characters” (Lightning, Snow, Hope, Vanille and Sazh) meet up in the ship containing the Pulse Fal’Cie. After fighting the Fal’Cie, the group are turned into L’Cie by said Pulse Fal’Cie. Their task? Seemingly the destruction of Cocoon, though they seem to think otherwise because of what Serah (Snow’s girlfriend as well as Lightning’s sister) told them before becoming a crystal herself. From here on out the characters try to find what to do: Will they fulfil their Focus? Will they even find out what it is? Will they say screw their Focus and protect Cocoon? Yeah, that’s where I’ll stop with the story.

The game features a very Final Fantasy-esque story. Lots of the set pieces are there: small group of people joining toghether against a common evil, twists and turns at every step, including some that were quite unexpected, giant propaganda-spreading corrupt governments, giant magical creatures with plans to take over the world in weird ways… No matter how you look at it, this is what a Final Fantasy story should be like. The pacing is great, despite there being a few kinda slow parts, it does flow very well. As you progress, you see some of the characters’ back-stories unfold, or flashbacks to previous events, giving you a better look at the story’s larger picture.

The characters are very well done, but I feel that they’re a bit lacking in some aspects. There’s constantly character development going on, the dialogues are mostly fun to listen too (though this IS Final Fantasy, so expect a ton of cheesy lines), the characters have distinct personalities… But by the end of the game it feels like all the characters become very similar personality-wise… but maybe that’s just me. And also I’d like Sazh to be more interesting, it kinda sucks that he’s pretty much just comic relief (minus that one serious scene he has).

Not my favorite FF story, but it’s definitely up there.

Gameplay

Battling
Easily the most important aspect in any RPG. If the fighting system isn’t interesting, the rest of the game isn’t either, no matter how great the presentation is, or how masterful the story is. If the actual “gameplay” part of the game isn’t fun, the game itself isn’t good. And in that aspect Final Fantasy 13 doesn’t disappoint… or at least it didn’t disappoint me, I could kinda understand why some people wouldn’t like the new fighting system.

Basics
The basic fighting system is relatively simple. After meeting an enemy or group of enemies on the map, you go to a seperate fighting screen like most previous FF games. Here, you control one of 3 characters in your active party, the one which is selected as the party leader. If you have any more than 3 characters with you, they go in “reserve”. In battle you get access to 5 commands: “Auto-battle”(changes name depending on role), Ability, Technique and Item. As battle goes on, your character’s ATB bar goes up, filling up segments. Each attack/spell/whatever you use takes up one segment of your ATB bar. Some take more, up to 5 (you start with 2 ATB bars, but you get more as you get stronger). Each “turn”, you can fill up your ATB queue before the ATB is actually full, choose a target, and your character will execute the commands as soon as the ATB bar fully fills up. If you want your character to take action ealier, use the Triangle button to execute as many ATB segments as you have loaded, which stops the ATB bar’s loading. If you want to stop your character’s moves while they’re doing them, press Circle. This preserves your unused ATB segments and let’s you choose different moves. Also, on the battlefield, your characters and the enemies move around wherever they want. You have no control on that, but if enemies are close enough you can use Area of Effect attacks that hit multiple enemies at once (same goes for them).

So for the commands. Auto-battle fills up you ATB queue automatically. An AI tries to decide what would be the best thing to do in your current situation, and you get to choose the target. The AI doesn’t always do the right thing though, so if you don’t want to do what the AI chose, go to the Abilities menu. Here, you will see what abilities your character has in it’s current role, and you can line them up in the ATB queue, and then choose a target. Techniques use none of the ATB segments, but instead use the TP bar that’s below your party leader’s HP. The TP bar goes up to 5, and each technique(such as Summon, Quake and Libra) uses between 1 and 3 TP. Finally, items also don’t use any ATB bar, just a bit of your time to actually use them, as well as the item in question. You have antidotes, potions, phoenix downs, and a few others that heal status ailments.

While you’re busy controlling your character, the AI is controlling your partners (or partner, depending on how far you are in the game). The AI makes your partners act differently depending on their role, and the current situation on the battlefield. Having one (or zero) Commando in your party will make every member attack the same target. Multiple Commandos will attack different targets. Medics have different priorities: first they heal the leader, then they heal each other if the leader is good enough, then they revive a dead partner, and then they do Esuna. So learning the various quirks of each role definitely helps, especially in the tougher battles in the game.

Each time an enemy is hit, a bar goes up for it. If the bar reaches the monster’s stagger point, he “staggers”. That boosts your damage, and gives you access to a few special moves if you have them. When you hit a staggered enemy, the chain bonus goes up. The higher it goes, the more damage you do. Doing your best to stagger enemies is the basic idea to beat them as fast as possible, but that becomes a lot harder as you meet stronger enemies, where staggering them isn’t an option anymore.

After a battle, you get CP, possibly drops (the higher your rating, the more chance you have of getting a rare drop), and your characters are fully healed. That might seem stupid, but I find that here it’s a good thing, since it made it possible for Square Enix to make the fights harder. No need to manage HP and MP anymore, just make sure you fight properly.

Overall the fighting is relatively simple, but it definitely requires strategy against the tougher enemies. I don’t just mean using paradigm shifts at the right time either, I also mean things like having the proper equipment for each battle, exploiting enemy weaknesses, and other stuff. You won’t make it through to the end just by mashing the Auto-battle button all game long.

Paradigm Shift
The big change here is the Paradigm Shift system. You can set 6 of what are call “Paradigms”. In each Paradigm, you set each party member to one Role: Commando(physical attacker), Ravager (Black Mage), Medic, Saboteur (Enemy Debuffer), Synergist (Party Buffer) and Sentinel (Tank). During battle, you can press L1 to choose which paradigm to change to, to change your strategy to fit various situations. 6 different paradigms kinda limits what you can do, so you have to set them appropriately to be able to react to any distuation. The paradigm you choose changes the roles of your whole party, which changes not only what you can do, but how the partner AI acts as well. Fully mastering the Paradigm Shift is basically required to advance through the game. As you advance through the game, you’ll need to react faster and faster to what’s happening to always use the right paradigm. Also, each Role has different passive functions. For example, each Commando on the field boosts all damage, and each Ravager boosts the chain bonus for the stagger meter. So knowing which Role to use at what time is really useful.

Summons
The final element here is Summons (also called Eidolons). Each character has access to one of them, and you can only use the summon your party leader has. They require 3 TP to summon. When you get a summon out, only the party leader and Summon remain on the battlefield. As you and your summon hit enemies, your “Gestalt” meter rises. Your summon can only be up for a limited time, represented by his SP bar, which goes down not only with time, but when he gets attacked. During summons, the summon will always heal you when you get hurt. And if you die, you get fully healed but the summon will leave the field.

Whenever you want (but preferably when the Gestalt meter is full), you can press the Square button to enter Gestalt mode. Here the summon will go in a transformers-like cutscene, where he’ll change from it’s more humanoid form to a vehicle or animal form… Let’s just say it look pretty ridiculous seeing the Shiva Sisters transforming into a motorcycle the first time… So in Gestalt mode, you can execute various attacks just by pressing X (the game will choose automatically), or X and a direction on the Left Analog Stick. When you have no points left to do attacks, press Triangle to execute the Eidolon’s final attack, which usually deals a good chunk of damage. After that’s done, you go back to your normal party. Everyone will be fully healed, and the enemies will have their stagger meter back down to 0.

The problem with the summons is that they’re weak. They don’t power up through the game, and your actual characters will become much stronger than they are in no time. Late in the game they basically act as a panic button you’d use to fully heal your party if you’re in trouble, and just a little bit of extra damage. Not terribly useful, other than against a few enemies (USE VANILLE’S SUMMON AGAINST TONBERRY!).

Leveling
The other important element in any RPG is the leveling. Not as important as the battle system, or the story, but still, the leveling is always important in some way.

Crystarium
Here you level up using the Crystarium. Using Crystogen Points you win from battle, you go in things similar to the Sphere Grid in Final Fantasy 10, and pour points into the next node in the grid to get stat boosts. Each character has 6 “grids”, one for each Role. At the beginning of the game though your characters only get 3 grids, for their 3 “best” Roles, and the other Roles can only be obtained for each of them much later in the game.

The nodes in the Crystarium can be one of 6 things: HP boosts, Strength boost, Magic boost, extra ATB bars (each character has 2 in total), extra accessory slots, abilities (either normal abilities, auto-abilities or techniques) and Role Levels. Most of those are self-explanatory. Role levels not only say “Hey, you’re now a level 2 Commando!”, but also boost the passive bonus the Role gives in battle. All the stat nodes are permanent, no matter which Role your character is currently using. So if you get +5 strength in the Commando tree, you will still have that +5 strength every other Role.

I guess the only complaint one might have here is that lack of customization, since each grid is almost completely linear (with short branches here and there). But that’s not much of a problem really.

Also, until you beat the game’s final boss, you always have part of the Crystarium locked from you (you open more and more as you fight bosses), so you can never really be “overleveled” compared to enemies where you’re at.

Equipment
After you get a certain item, you can go to save points and upgrade your weapons and accessories. Using items dropped by enemies, or found in treasure chests and shops, you can put them in equipment. That gives said piece of equipment experience points. At certain numbers of EXP, the item levels up, becoming stronger. When it’s maxed out (the item’s level will be shown as a star instead of a number), you can use a transformation catalyst component, which will make the item evolve to it’s next form, and it can continue being leveled up from there, until you reach the item’s final form.

For weapons, there’s a quirk. Each weapon’s second form requires a Trapezohedron catalyst, which is dropped by incredibly powerful enemies (or sold in a shop for 2 million Gil), to become its third form. Each weapon type’s third form has the same name. For example, all of Fang’s weapons become Kain’s Lance. But each “Kain’s Lance” will be different depending on which weapons was used to make it. For example, a Dragoon’s Lance will become a Kain’s Lance with a LOT of attack power, but no magic boost whatsoever, while a Kain’s Lance made from a Bladed Lance will have less attack power, but will have some magic power as well (and both will have different passive effects as well).

In addition to upgrading, you can Dismantle equipment. This destroys the item, but gives you new items in return. For example, a Doctor’s Code (which is entirely useless in battle) becomes 1 Aegisol and 1 Fortisol, which is massively useful. Some items will also give different stuff if you max them out before dismantling them.

The equipment boosting is really where there’s some customization, since you can equip your characters with weapons and accessories (up to 3 of them) that fit what YOU want them to be. Very nice stuff.

Outside of battling/leveling
There’s not TOO much to say here. You will walk tons, through corridor-like areas (until Chapter 11). You see enemies before fighting them, so if you want you can try to avoid them (though some are placed in a way that they become unavoidable). There’s gonna be occasional forks in the path, mostly leading to treasures or enemies, and eventually side-quests. Every 5 to 10 minutes you get to a Save Point. There you can Save (of course), Shop (where else would you shop? Can’t really have L’Cie casually shopping in normal stores, right?), and Upgrade your equipment. The shops get new inventory from time to time, and you get access to more shops as you progress through the game(some are gotten from side-quests, others against some bosses).

If there’s one thing I’d complain about here, it’s that a lot of the “corridors” are long and empty, when they could have been made a lot shorter… a lot of them are just padding really. And there’s pretty much no puzzle-solving to get to the next area, just walking and fighting.

Side-quests
The game features 64 side-quests. All of them have the same sort of goal: find an enemy and kill it. You get access to those missions as you get to Chapter 11. Talking to Cie’th stones will tell you that Cie’th’s original Focus, and you’ll go to complete it. Those missions are where you’ll fight the game’s most powerful enemies, and also where you’ll find some of the best equipment. As you do quests, you’ll open up more, and open up new areas as well. That’s probably the best part of the entire game, and Chapter 11 is also the best place to grind if you’re into that sort of thing.

Addressing to the complains

Rather than being welcomed with cheer and happiness by Final Fantasy fans, Final Fantasy XIII was greeted with millions of complaints, ending up being one of the least liked Final Fantasy games out there, other than 12 and 2 (the Japanese version). So I’ll address to those complaints here and give my point of view on them. And basically explain why most of the complaints suck… Though there are a few that are indeed big problems.

Linearity
This complaint is definitely the one that you’ll hear the most, and it’s also pretty stupid. I mean… hasn’t anyone ever played any other Final Fantasy game? They’re all completely linear, with some side-quests along the way… just like in this one! The only difference is that here you don’t get a world map… something that 10, 10-2 and 12 lacked too… so why is it such a big problem here? Yeah, every area is pretty much a corridor with occasional branches, but the game is basically a series of “dungeons” (though chapter 11 onwards changes that up a bit, where there’s actually exploration and such which people crave). And just like every area in this game, every dungeon in every Final Fantasy game before this has been the EXACT same way: one set path to follow to get to the end with occasional branches that lead to treasures and sometimes monsters or side-quests. So why is it okay in other FF games to have dungeons like that, but here it somehow makes the game bad? Why is it such a big complaint when every other Final Fantasy is just like this? Heck, most games, in general, are just like this. This complaint completely eludes me.

Only controlling one character in battle
I’ll say that I was pretty skeptical about that idea, since I liked having control over what my whole party did in previous FF games, so that’s one complaint I thought I might agree with. But I didn’t.

Controlling only 1 character does lead to a few problems of course. The AI for your allies usually does the job very well, but other times they’ll be completely pathetic. For example: in a boss battle, Hope died, so I wanted Lightning to become a Medic and heal him. But both Lightning and Fang (whom I was controlling) were damaged, so the Medic AI prioritized healing Fang and Lightning until they were healthy enough to go and revive Hope. Okay, that’s fine. Lightning COULD have just used Cure on me 4 times, and 3 times on herself, and we’d have been fine to revive Hope (without much of a chance of the boss hurting us too much). Instead, she kept using Cure once on me, then waiting a bit, then using it again, etc. After each time she used Cure, I got hit, making the previous cure useless. If I hadn’t stepped in and used a Phoenix Down on Hope, he probably never would have gotten revived by Lightning, and I probably would have ended up getting my party killed. For the most part though, other than the occasional hiccups such as the “Medic not healing properly” problem, the AI is pretty good at deciding what to do and when to do it. And you do have a BIT of control over them by choosing the right paradigm and choosing the proper enemy targets. It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough.

Another thing is that the AI can’t do some things you can, like cancelling a chain of actions. So if Lightning starts attacking an enemy with her physical attack, but the enemy uses a skill that makes it immune to physical attacks, she’ll finish executing her string of commands anyways. The only way to stop that is to use Stopga or Paradigm Shift. It’s a minor annoyance, and only applies to certain battles, but it’s annoying.

Another big problem I have is that, since you only control 1 character, you also don’t have access to any of the other characters’ summons. I understand not having access to those outside of your active party, of course, but why can’t Hope use his summon if he’s in my active party when I’m playing as Fang? That’s really annoying. It’s a problem that could have been remedied REALLY easily… Why not just put the summons of all the active party members in the “Summon” menu in battle? My problem is that now if I’m using Lightning as my party leader, and I really want to summon Hecatonchires (Vanille’s Summon), I can’t, even if Vanille is in my active party.

But other than those relatively minor complaints, I find that it’s a really good thing that you only control 1 character, since the battles are so fast-paced and there’s so much to pay attention to that you wouldn’t really be able to look at everything going on while, at the same time, giving commands to 3 characters(especially since the ATB bars fill up quite fast). You just have to learn the various quirks of the partner AI, and make good use of paradigms, and you’ll easily feel in control of your whole party despite only having direct control over 1 character. It just takes some getting used to.

PRESS X AND WIN!
Yeah, I actually saw moronic complaints like this. “All you have to do is press X (or A on the 360) non-stop and you win the game because of the Auto-battle option!!!!” or “ZOMG the game plays itself!!”. Not only is that completely stupid(easily the stupidest complaint I’ve heard), but it’s also false. I mean, yeah, as you power up the earlier fights can definitely be won just but using an offensive Paradigm and mashing X, but you’ll get destroyed in the later fights if you even think of trying that. In the tougher fights, you have to pay attention to everything: what your AI partners are doing, what the enemies are doing, which enemies you should prioritize on attacking, changing paradigms accordingly to fit the situation… There’s no way just mashing X (or A) will bring you anywhere in this game.

Like the linearity “problem”, this is something that is present in all Final Fantasy titles too. Fights are definitely gonna be super-easy(requiring only mashing A or X) if you’re much stronger than the enemies, but enemies in new areas, unless you’ve grinded a lot, will be tough and will require more strategy to beat. The same applies here, so this complaint is definitely really stupid. Why is it a problem here if it was fine with previous games in the series? Heck, it was more of a “problem” before, since grinding was a lot more effective in previous games than it is in this game.

Lack of NPC interaction
There’s one I can’t really relate to for one simple reason: unless it’s actually needed(Fallout 3, older RPGs where the next objective wasn’t easy to find at all like Dragon Warrior), I never interact with NPCs in an RPG. I know some people really like interacting with NPCs (I don’t konw why…), but here, I’ll say that it wouldn’t make much sense to talk with tons of NPCs story-wise. I mean, most of the time you’re nowhere near towns or highly populated areas in the game(Gran Pulse, which you spend  a good amount of time in, is pretty much deserted, other than monsters), and when you are there’s usually some kind of chaos going on because people are freaking out since your characters a “evil” L’Cie, so why would the NPC want to talk to you anyways? And when you are in a populated area and there’s somehow no chaos going on, you CAN talk to NPCs. So I don’t really get that complaint much. Maybe it’s just me.

I think what annoys people is the lack of inns and shops… But is there really any difference between talking to a generic NPC that has nothing to say to buy stuff, or just going in the save points and going through exactly the same menus? And still, having the shops centralized in the save point makes it less annoying since you don’t have to constantly backtrack to older places just to find a shop that has something no other shop has.

Overall not a “bad” complaint, it’s a matter of taste I guess, but one that makes very little sense if you actually follow the story.

My own complaint: you get access to some basic features really late in the game
There’s one thing I haven’t addressed yet that really annoyed me. And I’m not the only one, as I’ve seen this complaint in a few other reviews. The game locks certain features from you, despite not having any reason behind that, just to unlock them halfway through the game.

You get access to the Crystarium only when your characters become L’Cie, but that’s understandable (though that means you don’t power up for the first hour or two of play, which can be a bit annoying). But why do I have to wait until almost halfway through the game to be able to change my active party, or party leader? In the beginning you have a party of 5 people, yet you can only use 3 of them and you can’t switch them out. That’s really annoying. There’s a few other functions like this that are locked for a while until you reach certain points, and that’s really annoying. Other than the crystarium being locked at first, there’s no reason to lock any of the locked functions. That’s one thing that really annoyed me at first. Good thing that, half-way through the game, that problem completely disappears.

Another complaint that I agree with: You lose if your party leader dies
That’s one thing I find really stupid. I have 6 characters in my party, why should it kill my whole party if only the leader dies? Why don’t I get a game over when any of my other characters die? It happened to me multiple times, where the leader got killed really fast and my other party members had full HP, but I lost anyways… How does that make any kind of sense? It’s not a good thing, it’s just annoying.

Overall

Well, this is the second Final Fantasy game I actually completed (other than side-quests, but I plan on getting those done soon). The first was Final Fantasy 4, which I finished a very long time ago, and did all the side-quests in as well. So for me that says a lot. I mean, I played all the FF games, aside from a few spin-offs such as Chocobo Racing, and yet there’s only 2 of them I actually completed.

The fighting is really fun and requires fast thinking and fast reaction times. The leveling system is quite simple making the game slighlty more accessible for people who just want to check it out, though it requires a lot more from people who want to max out their characters or equipment. The game is VERY straight-forward, but from Chapter 11 and on, you have the choice of continuing the story, or exploring and finding all the 64 side-missions, which are a lot more challenging than the rest of the game. The story is very fun and enjoyable, so you really want to see it through. The ending is pretty predictable, but then again what RPG ending isn’t? (hint: none)

It’s not perfect, and there are various complaints (stupid or not) people have with the game, but really it’s a great game in the series. Much better than 12 (by far), I’d say around as good as 10 (which I really liked too). Sure, it doesn’t surpass FF4 (my personal favorite) for me, and it doesn’t surpass 6 (the best in the series) in overall quality either, but I still really enjoyed it, and will keep enjoying it while I complete the side-quests.

I say a game that’s able to keep my attention for over 70 hours is definitely not bad. I mean, most games get boring for me in 8 hours or less…

Pros and Cons
Pros
- Incredible presentation
- Fun enjoyable story
- Great fast-paced fighting system
- Leveling is fun and simple, enabling for a little bit of customization with the item upgrading and huge variety of accessories
- There is some challenge to be had with the side-missions
- Thankfully the cinematics are never too long or annoying
- Centralized shops at save points (yes, I count that as a good thing)
- Healing after evey battle enables the game to have much harder battles
- Lightning’s “Gun Blade” weapon actually makes sense! That’s what Squall should have had instead of that stupid and impractical… thing he carries around…

Cons
- The “linearity” might be a turnoff to some people (despite the rest of the series being just like that… yeah, I still don’t get that complaint)
- The whole party “dies” if the party leader dies… How stupid is that?
- Late in the game, Summons are basically just Panic Buttons that you can use to fully heal your party, since they’re much weaker than your characters
- Not being able to use a summon that isn’t your party leader’s
- A few quirks of the battle system (such as improved partner AI and maybe adding a Party Leader Change button…) could have been ironed-out/fixed
- Some features that shouldn’t be locked at all are locked in the first half of the game
- The AI never uses their skill that uses 5 ATB segments… why?
- You don’t get money from winning battles (minor annoyance)
- The game could use some puzzle-solving elements to progress through certain dungeons

The Save Factor
The Save Factor for this one would seriously be the starting price of $60. There’s some things that could have/should have been ironed-out, there’s some things that don’t feel just right, but it’s a really good game nonetheless. If you’re unsure about it, rent it first, or wait for a price drop. Either way it’s gonna be money well spent.

jobocan Console, Games, ps3, Rant, Review, xbox 360