Plus XP

First off, if you haven’t read it already – check out my earlier 16th hour opinion article if you want to read a little more detail into the game’s battle system. I’ll cover it to an extent here – but no sense repeating myself entirely!

A huge FF fan, I’ve played most of them and completed many – each game offering a whole new world to explore with its own cast of characters – naturally things have progressed as time has passed, the natural evolution and growth of games allowing for bigger and better things. Final Fantasies VI – XII in particular standing out to me in terms of scale and plot. Although many people have personal favourites, and each game has had strengths and weaknesses, each has offered an immersive experience that has captured my attention in its own way. So naturally, I didn’t think twice about buying XIII – it was just a matter of waiting for its eventual release.

The game focuses on the world of Cocoon, a world within a sphere containing its own eco-system and history. Cocoon is governed by deity-like beings called Fal’Cie that regulate its life and elements, and the people live within it, happy except for one main fear – a constant worry of an invasion from “Pulse”, the uncharted world outside of Cocoon believed to be some kind of hell; legends of an ancient war between Cocoon and Pulse striking fear into peoples’ hearts. The story revolves around Lightning and co., six people brought together and given a choice - complete a task given to them by a Pulse Fal’Cie, the enemy of Cocoon - or be doomed to become monsters. Branded outcasts from their home and given an impossible choice, the plot revolves around their quest to understand their fates and take control of them.

It all sounds alright, the concept definitely plausible as a decent Final Fantasy plot, but I’m afraid this is as far as I get without having to be negative. Yes, I’m afraid that I must admit that I don’t enjoy FFXIII.

Why’s that? Well – the main problem is the gameplay – or lack of, I should say. Anyone who is used to the sprawling worlds of FF, the range of side quests and exploration will be sorely disappointed. The game is extremely linear, offering more or less a single route for the majority of the game, and with little opportunity for any backtracking or optional tasks aside from opening a chest here and there. There are also no towns to explore, so the basic structure of the game is: move forward, fight battles, fight a boss, cut scene, rinse and repeat. That’s it. I did keep playing in hope of it ever improving, but that really is more or less it. The game is pretty much 25% cut scenes and 70% battles. Which brings me to my next point.

The battle system is loosely based on the traditional ATB system, but mostly just because you have to wait for your meter to charge between attacks. Somewhat like Final Fantasy XII, you only control one character in battle and your teammates are controlled by AI. This wouldn’t necessarily be an awful thing, except for two main points: Firstly, the AI is worse than that of XII; and secondly – XII didn’t offer sod all to do outside of its combat.

Whereas XII allowed you to set very specific behaviour “gambits” to control your teammates, XIII utilises the “Paradigm” system, which essentially allows you to switch your team between different setups of Jobs/Classes depending on the situation. This allows you to change each character’s available moves, but always leaving the actual decision-making to the AI. Not too bad at first – but when you want your teammate to cast a specific spell (i.e. Protect) and they sit there casting all the other spells that they have (i.e. Shell, Veil, Vigilance), it’s a little bit frustrating. Not to mention the animation for switching between Paradigms gets incredibly tedious after a while, especially since you are supposed to change them constantly depending on the battle’s flow. The battle commands allow you to chain up moves to be performed in one combo, but aside from a tiny bit of tactical value, it’s little more than the normal selection of Attack, Magic etc that can be seen in all other FF titles. Oh – and the bosses are extremely boring, long fights which generally require little more than patience – one boss in particular must be fought multiple times, each time as boring as the last. I found myself groaning at the sight of it each time just knowing it’d be a good 10-15 minutes until I’d be past it.

As you can see, I’ve been a little disappointed with the game. Yes, it looks great – the graphics are fantastic, the odd area looking impressive, but it feels like such wasted potential – where the older titles had fantastic cities like Alexandria, Luca, Rabanastre, Midgar - all of which would look amazing on the PS3 – the graphics simply provide pretty cut scenes and backdrops to generic areas for battles. The lack of “civilised” areas such as cities really drain the game of any real life or personality, and it’s all too clear that you are simply being pushed down a route letting the story progress and reach its inevitable end with little to do along the way. Even shops have been reduced to nothing but a menu on the save screen – Final Fantasy I had more impressive design in that department.

Spoilers

My hopes were a little renewed upon reaching Chapter 11 - well over 20-30 hours in – when you reach a more open area, something akin to the “Calm Lands” of Final Fantasy X – an open grassland type region which allows for a little more exploration. My hopes were quelled, however, upon realising that again it was nothing more than an open area for little more than battles, and missions – which always revolve around Hunts – yes, that would be more battles.

Spoilers End

I hate to complain - especially about one of my most loved series, but anywhere in the game I can find a positive I can find a whole load of negatives. Some people have enjoyed the game – maybe it’s denial, or they find something they can enjoy from it, but I personally have been totally disappointed. Where the game excels graphically, it suffers in gameplay and lack of variety, and although the story was initially interesting it quickly becomes repetitive and just seems to repeat itself, re-stating the same few points over and over again. Although I initially liked the majority of the characters, they offered little in the way of storyline twists and I never really felt any connection with them, nor cared for their eventual fates.

I’ve been told that my expectations were too high – apparently wanting Square-Enix to produce something with all the standard features of the previous titles – exploration, cities, side-quests, enjoyable battle system - is too much to expect, regardless of them having done it multiple times before on a console of lower power. The real answer is simply that gameplay has been sacrificed in place of graphical design, the efforts in the game’s production clearly shifted from the importance of gameplay and depth in place of the need to meet the technical, graphical standards of today’s markets.

When the game was first announced in 2006, the trailer showed battles that were incredibly dynamic, with Lightning running around the arena in cinematic battles – this was nothing more than hype building, as I promise you the battles are nowhere near as good as they looked then. Skip the video to 0:23 to see what I mean.

In the end, XIII has a battle system that I find incredibly tedious and unimpressive – and outside of that the game is merely an aesthetically pleasing shell that simply pushes you along a path to progress the story. And the story isn’t that great. It’s been said the game gets a lot better at the very end – now, this may be true but I doubt anything extremely different will become available; but when you are sick to tears of a game before you get that far, it’s a bad game regardless. I’m well toward the end of the game, but I could lie to myself no longer – 57 hours in, and I just wasn’t enjoying it in the slightest.

I really hate to write such a negative review for a Final Fantasy title, but sadly I only offer my truthful opinion - so much potential but so little delivered. The graphics mask a very dull, shallow game and even the positive aspects of the game are minor compared to the sheer blandness of the whole product. If it wasn’t an official Final Fantasy title that was part of a large collection, I’d have already traded it in.

I only hope that Versus XIII turns out differently – I’d be very sad to see this as the end of my Final Fantasy days.

-Leon