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From the creative minds behind Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy X comes the latest installment in the critically acclaimed series. As Final Fantasy VII was for PlayStationr, and Final Fantasy X for PlayStationr2 computer entertainment system, Final Fantaxy XIII will be the first numbered Final Fantasy title for the PlayStationr3 computer entertainment system and Xbox 360r, and will look to once again reestablish the series as the RPG brand. Players will follow Lightning, Snow, and the other heroes who are dealt a hand of fate by the god-like fal'Cie. Cursed and regarded as enemies of society, they have the world against them and nobody to rely on but each other. Will they find the strength within themselves to break free of their curse and determine their own fates, or will they succumb to this higher power? With a story that is sure to connect with players' hearts, diverse new characters from world-renowned creator and character designer Tetsuya Nomura, and exciting new game play features centered around an evolved Active Time Battle system, Final Fantasy XIII will be the pinnacle in gaming experiences..../ Final Fantasy XIII / VIDEO GAMES SHOPPING
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- Live an epic adventure in a dual-world universe featuring one futuristic civilization and another open-expanse world wrought with havoc
- Features the latest in cutting-edge technology
- Provides tangible, intuitive controls
- Delivers seamless transitions between real-time gameplay and stunning in-game cinematics
- Developed by Square Enix
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Final Fantasy XIII - Doesn't Live Up To Its Legacy : Final Fantasy XIII
Before I start talking about FF13, I'd like to take a moment to look back on its predecessor. For those of you who remember, FF12 had a lot of high expectations, promise, and hype. It had been the longest wait since the last numbered single-player Final Fantasy (FFX in 2001 and FF12 in 2006). During the first few weeks, many people played it, and many people (professional reviewers and "normal" players alike) gave it plenty of praise.
And then we collectively hit the 20 hour mark and watched the game fall off a cliff. We watched as interesting plot threads dissolved into nothingness. We watched as dungeons started stretching on endlessly at a snail's pace. We watched, with horror I might add, as we collectively realized that, with the Gambits, FF12 essentially played itself.
I was one of those people. I had written an early review of FF12 just a week after the game came out, about 20 hours in. And I had given the game endless praise. 9.5 out of 10 I said. 40 hours later, I realized that I had made a huge mistake. Consider this my formal recantation of my FF12 review. (Not to be confused with the informal recantations I'd been giving in the last four years.)
To make up for that, I promised myself I wouldn't give FF13 a review until after I had finished the game, for fear of making the same mistake, for fear of playing the game for 20 hours and giving it endless praise only to watch the game fall apart afterwards and force me to eat my words again.
So that's what I've been doing these last 3 weeks. Playing FF13 for the right to review it. And now let's see where it takes us...
SOUNDTRACK
Let's start with the easy stuff. I agree with the Uematsu fanboys on this one. Final Fantasy music just hasn't been good since Uematsu became less involved. And FF13 is no exception. It's almost like the composer of FF13 (Masashi Hamauzu for those who care) was afraid of making his music actually good, afraid to make it anything more than ambient background noise for fear of people actually noticing that, yes, there is in fact music in this game. (To be fair, it's a problem that plagues most modern video games.)
There are two tests for video game music. The first test is if a piece makes you want to pause the game and just listen to the music for a moment. FF13 fails in this regard. Most of the pieces are just not very memorable, and very few of them stand out. Sure, there are a few gems. But a few gems in an otherwise bland and flavorless soundtrack does not make for a good video game soundtrack.
The second test, of course, is if a few years from now, listening to the soundtrack will make me reminisce about the game and make me want to play it again. Unfortunately, I don't have a time machine, and my promise for not reviewing the game until I finish doesn't apply to waiting a few years for nostalgia to kick in. (That, and this only works if I have fond memories of the game to begin with.)
GRAPHICS
If you were to tell me FF13 has good graphics, I would probably believe you. If you were to tell me FF13 has bad graphics, I would probably believe you too. To be fair, I haven't bothered looking at FF13 screenshots side-by-side with FF12's, so I don't know how much better it actually is. If it weren't for HD technology, I don't know if these eyes could even tell the difference.
What I do know is that when you play the game with its real-time rendered graphics and you hit a cutscene and see what pre-rendered graphics can do, the difference is jarring. Are FF13's graphics good? Sure. But they're obviously not good enough to make Square not load the disc with pre-rendered cutscenes.
STORYLINE
FF13 started off fantastically. Right from the beginning, the game puts you in the middle of the action and very quickly sets up a handful of promising character-based plot threads. The game quickly introduces you to the main characters, and then sets up the main plot thread that pulls the whole game along. And at the end of all that, you say "Wow, that was a great opening sequence!" And the game was only just beginning! (Footnote: This is a reference to my experiences with another J-RPG (which shall not be named), where I said, "Wow, that was a great opening sequence! Wait, that's the end of disc 1 already?")
And then the game falls apart. I have to give FF13 credit here. It took FF12 a good 20 hours to fall apart. FF13 managed to fall apart in only 3.
The problem is that FF13's storyline is incredibly slow. No, that's not the right word. "Slow" implies that the plot is actually going somewhere. FF13's plot went nowhere. The problem is that, after the great opening sequence, NOTHING HAPPENS. After the opening sequence, I crawled through hours of dungeons, fought dozens of battles, and sat through pointlessly boring cutscenes waiting for something to happen.
But wait, you say, that's anticipation! The game is generating anticipation of the story. That's a good thing!
No, anticipation is when you're wondering what's going to happen next. FF13's story is when I'm wondering if anything's going to happen at all.
Some of you will be quick to point out that much of FF13's story is told through flashbacks, and it's the flashbacks that I should be paying attention to for the story. Except (with a few very rare exceptions) a story cannot be told *entirely* in flashbacks. It just doesn't work. Flashbacks are retrospective in nature, and events in flashbacks feel more like backstory and setup for the "present" thread rather than like something that's actually happening. In FF13, the flashbacks end up hurting the story rather than helping it. Rather than enhance the story with interesting background information or a parallel plot thread, the flashbacks make a slow, uneventful story even slower and less eventful.
It wasn't until the 20 hour mark when something finally happened. I remember this because when you're playing a game where nothing happens, you remember when something finally happens. Unfortunately, my joy was short-lived. A few minutes later, the game brings you back to hours of nothingness.
Sure, from then on stuff started to happen. But it didn't help. The events in the story (if it can be called that) don't pull you along, but rather come out of nowhere and go nowhere. Rather than being driven, the story wanders. Literally wanders. Over 90% of the story is your party wandering around with no real purpose.
And all those character-based plot threads that were that were set up in the opening sequence? None of them are developed in any way, and most of them are unceremoniously dropped on the floor. The one character-based thread that is finally revisited was then immediately ended with a young boy crying to his nearest mother-figure. Literally. It's almost as though the writers just wanted to end that particular plot thread because they felt it would distract us from the main plot thread. But it's like Chehkov said. If you hang a gun on the wall in the first act, then by the end of the third act the gun needs to be fired. If the writers had no intention of developing and properly concluding those character-based plot threads, why include them at all?
In fact, I daresay FF13 has the worst storyline ever of any FF game I've played. Even FF1, whose storyline consisted entirely of a series of loosely connected quests, had a better story than FF13. Mainly because a series of loosely connected quests is *something*. Even FFTA, whose story is hated by pretty much every Final Fantasy fan in existence, had a better story than FF13. Because in FFTA stuff happens. In FF13, NOTHING HAPPENS. You know how they say Seinfeld is a show about nothing? No, Seinfeld is about something. FF13 is about NOTHING AT ALL. And unless that particular something is like stabbing yourself in the face, as far as stories go, something is always better than nothing.
And what's up with the names? Characters named Lightning, Snow, and Hope? Regions named Cocoon and Pulse? Crystarium? And what the hell kind of names are fal'Cie and l'Cie?
GAMEPLAY - COMBAT
Some people say FF13 has a new combat system that's more action-oriented. It's not. It's just a minor variation on ATB. Hell, they still call them ATB Gauges. Yes, it is a lot more fast-paced than the ATB of your SNES/Super Famicom and PS1 days. But FFX-2 was even faster-paced, and FFX-2 was straight up ATB. To be fair, in FFX-2 you had to control three party members, but in FF13, you only control one. If they made you control all three party members, FF13's combat may have turned into an exercise in insanity.
Speaking of which, in FF13 you only control the party leader. The other two members of your active party are controlled by an AI script. Except that 99% of the time, the correct thing to do with the party leader is to select Auto-Battle and let the AI pick the moves. So really, the AI ends up doing everything. Remember FF12? Remember how people complained that the Gambits basically put the game on auto-pilot and was very non-interactive? Yeah, as it turns out, since you can't customize the AI, FF13 is even more automated. (At least it hides it well.)
The game designers did try to add an extra dimension to the game with Roles and Paradigms. Except that Roles are just character classes, and Paradigms are just the Roles your party is currently using. Nothing new here. Sure, you can change Paradigms mid-battle (called a "Paradigm Shift", apparently), but changing character classes is as old as the original NES FF3, and changing character classes mid-battle is as old as FFX-2. So really, Paradigm Shifts are nothing new either.
But I've always said that innovation is overrated, that good execution trumps good concept. So rather than debating whether Roles and Paradigms are innovative (they aren't), let's talk about what they add to the gameplay. Before Paradigm Shifts, if you need to attack, you press attack over and over again. If you need to heal, you cast heal over and over again. In FF13 with Paradigm Shifts, if you need to attack, you instead switch to the offensive Paradigm and press Auto-Battle over and over again and watch as the AI picks offensive skills for you. If you need to heal, you switch to the healing Paradigm and press Auto-Battle over and over again and watch as the AI picks healing spells and heals your party for you. Hmmm... I'm trying to see the difference here. (Other than the superficial difference.)
And then there's the Chain Gauge. Basically as you attack an enemy, you increase the Chain Gauge. When it's full, the enemy becomes Staggered and takes much more damage than before. I imagine they designed this also to add an extra dimension to the combat. Except that it didn't. Actually, it did the opposite. Rather than making battles more varied and more interesting, it made them all play the same. Every boss fight pretty much requires the same strategy. You focus-fire on them until they become Staggered, at which point their defenses drop and you can actually damage them. Compare to Chrono Trigger and FFX for examples of boss fights that have a variety of strategies *without* resorting to a gimmick like the Chain Gauge.
Fortunately (or unfortunately), FF13's combat is the least offensive part of its gameplay. It's just more of the same. Straight up J-RPG combat has become stagnant, and it's really difficult to change things up without venturing into Action RPG or Strategy RPG territory. (I can name exactly zero games that have managed to pull this off successfully.)
GAMEPLAY - CHARACTER GROWTH
Whoever invented the Sphere Grid in FFX must have thought they came up with the best thing since sliced chocobo. ("Sliced chocobo"... that sounds so awful and morbid.) After all, FF12's License Board is just a variant on Sphere Grid, and similarly, FF13's Crystarium is also just a variant on Sphere Grid. Who can blame them? Linear stat growth is just so cliche now.
FF13's Crystarium is essentially instead of one Sphere Grid, each character has multiple Sphere Grids, one for each Role they have. This means you can either focus on one Role and specialize in it, or you can spread your Crystal Points around and level up each Role evenly and become a jack-of-all-trades. Basically, character customizability and multiple strategies.
Or at least that's what the game promised.
In actuality, the Crystarium is very limited. As you fight battles, one of the Roles on a character will fill up, and you'll be forced, whether you like it or not, to start spending Crystal Points on a different Role. (Or you could just save up those points, but as it turns out, it doesn't really matter.) Apparently, the game is tuned just so that right when you fill up all of your Crystariums, you get to a boss fight, and beating that boss expands your Crystarium. So unless you're skipping battles all the time, what actually happens is that you'll end up leveling up all your Roles evenly (and fully) anyway, just because of the way the game is structured.
Not only that, but the combat with its Paradigm Shifts make you *want to* level up in every available Role. A character who can only apply buffs or a character who can only heal is too inflexible to survive in combat. In order to get through battles without tearing your hair out, you'll need to use multiple Roles per character. And so, single Role characters simply do not work. (Although there's probably already a single Role challenge out there already.)
At about the 30 hour mark, the Crystarium opens up dramatically, and all Roles become available to all characters. So now, you would expect that the promise of choosing your Roles and customizing your characters to be fulfilled. Except as it turns out, non-starting Roles are so prohibitively expensive that, until near the end of the game, it's much cheaper to keep on leveling up your starting Roles. Not only that, but your characters are generally so far behind with their non-starting Roles that, ignoring highly specialized strategies, it's not worth leveling up non-starting Roles anyway.
So there you have it. FF13's Crystarium promised customizable characters and failed to deliver on that promise. Even FF12's License board, for all the ridicule it endured, was more customizable than this. FF13's Crystarium only provides the illusion of choice, making you go through the motions of directing the characters' growth, only to have them end up going down the paths the game pre-determined for them.
GAMEPLAY - OVERALL
J-RPGs are linear. That is a given. Anyone who knows anything about J-RPGs knows that they are linear. Complaining about a J-RPG being linear is like complaining that a cupcake is smaller than a regular cake. (Cue relevant Penny Arcade comic.)
That said, FF13 is incredibly linear even by J-RPG standards. FF13 is so linear, it makes FFX look like Oblivion by comparison.
You know how people say in J-RPGs, you're essentially walking a straight line from beginning to end? Usually, they mean it metaphorically. But in FF13, you're literally walking a straight line from beginning to end.
The game consists entirely of dungeon crawling. No exploration. No side quests. No towns to interact with (not in the traditional RPG sense of "town", anyway). It's just dungeon crawling. And the dungeons themselves are linear. They are straight line paths from beginning to end, the only branches being obvious alcoves with items for you to grab. Those don't count as branches anyway.
To be fair, this gets better at around the 30 hour mark. You get to a region that you can actually explore. You get some side quests to do.
Alas, the region is full of monsters that are way too powerful for you to handle until the end of the game. (And because of the way the Crystarium is structured, you *can't* become powerful enough to handle them until the end of the game.) And all of the side quests are monster hunts, which this particular gamer finds particularly boring. And still no towns.
But my biggest gripe is that the dungeons are just too long and drawn out. In general, I don't have a problem with long dungeons. But having long dungeons at the expense of an already slow story, making me crawl through a seemingly endless dungeon when I'm already waiting for something to happen, is just asking for complete and utter boredom. And it takes *hours* to crawl through these dungeons. There's no good reason for a dungeon crawl to take that long.
It's a common problem among modern games. Game designers try drag out their games to take as long as possible, focusing on hour counts instead of actual entertainment. (It doesn't help that many vocal game critics cite low hour counts as a flaw for some games.) And since FF13's game designers realized they didn't have enough story to fill out a 60 hour game, they compensated by making the dungeons drag on forever.
Older games don't seem to have this problem. If FF13 had been made in 1991, it would have been less than 20 hours long and *still* would have had all the same content. And I wouldn't have complained.
CONCLUSION
FF13 bored me to tears. About halfway through, I started looking forward to the end of the game, hoping beyond hope that the game would be over soon. Not because I wanted to know how the story ended but because I wanted FF13 to finally be over so I could do something I actually enjoyed. (Like write a review that thoroughly trashes every aspect of FF13.)
Only my promise to finish the game kept me going. Because really, none of you FF fanboys would accept my review of FF13 as a bad game unless I had actually finished the game.
That, and I didn't want to break my streak of having finished every numbered single-player Final Fantasy game. (It was the same reason I went back and finished FF8.)
Let me make this perfectly clear: FF13 is a bad game. And I don't just mean "bad for a FF game". I mean BAD. The music is bland, the combat is uninteresting, the character growth system is a failure, the story is too slow, and the dungeons are too long. (And my spoon is too big.) The game is terrible in pretty much every way by any reasonable standard for games in general.
Still, FF13 was merely boring. It could be worse. At least they didn't make me actively hate the game. At least they didn't make it a grindfest. At least they didn't make the computer opponent cheat. (Oh wait, the final boss cheats, what with him having a skill that can randomly and instantly kill your entire party without warning.)
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