Final Fantasy was one of the most anticipated titles of the year for me, it has its shortcomings and it has its unique traits that keep you hooked for awhile.
Too bad it didn't keep my attention for more than 3 weeks.
Since i broke my collarbone i decided to play it and finally beat it otherwise it would never happen. So let me break down what i am going to go over. I'm going to go over the standard Graphics Game play re playability and the standard categories. But then i am going to go over what the designers did that actually did well and what fell short.
Graphics:
Not much to say, other than that they are quite gorgeous. You can see all the tiny detailed shadows from each characters hair, the pre rendered cut scenes are amazing and roaming around the world (when you are able to) is pretty exhilarating.
Game Play:
Now i went in to the game not knowing what to expect for the game play. I force myself not to watch video for upcoming games i want so i don't know what to expect. But this does not prevent the hype that it IS a Final Fantasy game. SE likes to experiment a little bit in each game, and lets see what they decided to experiment.
The game is completely linear up until about 25 hours in, and you cannot change your party members until 15 hours in.
The linearity doesn't really bother me, since the other Final Fantasy games are really quite linear. Not being able to change characters for the longest time is what bothers me, although in Final Fantasy 4 you were unable to but that game had much better characters
Final Fantasy 13 uses an updated version of the ATB system. During the time between turns you input the actions you want to do during that turn, but through most of the game its pointless to because "Auto Battle" will do what you want to anyways. (there are some exceptions though) and if you actually input the actions yourself, you'll just end up dead unless you're quick about it. The ATB bar for each character starts with 3 "ATB" bars and can end up with 5 at the end of the game. Some abilities and actions require 2 or even 3 bars and they simply end up being AoE and more powerful versions of ones that require 1 bar.
The main objective for each battle in this game, is to stagger your opponent. This only happens if you deal enough damage to them in a certain amount of time unless you have a commando. During this state the enemy has considerably lowered defenses and makes it easier to kill them.
What is unique about this game is that you can actually use certain actions to dodge your opponents attacks; its possible but hard to do. You just need to know the animations for each of the actions.
The one thing about the battle system that requires the most timing is the new "paradigm shift"
system. This allows you to switch between class combos that you set up. The 6 classes are
Commando: They sustain Stagger and focus on melee/ non-elemental magic damage
Ravager: The Burst damage and they increase Stagger incredibly fast
Sentinel: The tank, they provoke enemies and take all the damage.
Saboteur: One of the 3 Support classes, they debuff and cripple the enemies while increasing stagger substantially.
Synergist: A support class, they increase survivability by buffing your party.
Medic: Support; focusing on keeping the party alive.
Being able to time a switch between an all out offensive paradigm from a balanced paradigm requires practice, but it is also essential to do.
This system is actually very cool, but you can only look at the HUD, not the battle. In my honest opinion, they should have lowered the speed of the battles since hey are at break neck speeds and is hard to keep up with them. That's why the Auto Battle button was created, so you could actually keep up with it. But this turns the battles in to snore fests and you just end up hitting X and then L1 up or down and another X. Oh yea, forget about consumables, they are essentially useless except elixir. No point in using them throughout 95% of the game and are extremely over priced.
The battle system is good but way too fast to enjoy. If they continue to use this system, they need to make it slower paced so you actually input you own actions to make it more engaging.
This seems to change post game, but i am not going to bother with it at all.
Story Line and Characters:
If this story was a whole lot more interesting, i would have beaten it months ago but alas, it isn't.
About the characters: I hated Snow, I hated Hope, I was hardly able to tolerate Fang's design and the awful accent, Sazh was awesome because of the chocobo chick, Lightning is a bitch, Vanille is an annoying cute ditsy chick. There you go, all the characters in a nutshell with bias.
The story takes place on the world of cocoon, which is a floating world above the actual planet of Gran Pulse. Gran pulse is a world full of beasts,wilderness and L'cie. The people of cocoon are very scared of the world below due to the war many years ago between Gran Pulse and Cocoon. There are beings called fal'cie that regulate everything within Cocoon.
The game starts out with people who have been "contaminated" by the l'cie and are being sent to be purged. This is where the fateful main characters meet and where their journey starts.
What makes this game so boring is that the characters really have no background and they interact kind of Awkwardly. Through half the game you will not know what they are talking about half the time unless you take the time to read the database. I am mainly talking about the differences of L'cie and fal'cie.
What is quite disappointing is that most of he memorable summons are gone.... Ramuh, Ifrit, Leviathan, and many others. I was quite disappointed about the same thing in 12, but that took place in the FFT universe, and they decided to use the zodiacs which made sense.
Re playability:
Well after beating this game, you can decide if you really want to take the time and get all the trophies/achievements. That's the most "re playability" you can get out of this game, although it really isn't. Other than that, i can not see myself playing this game again for another 5 years or so.
A few changes could make this game great, but with the current flaws it only makes it good.
3.5/5 ; 70%
