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Being an avid Final Fantasy fan, I picked up Final Fantasy XIII on release day. I of course intend to review the title – but it’s going to be a fair while until I’ve seen everything. Therefore – I bring to you my Final Fantasy XIII review – so far! In case you’re wondering – I’m up to Chapter 7, Part 4, with just over 16 hours clocked up. Be warned – it’s not all good news.

The title tells the story of a world that thrives inside a sphere-shaped world called Cocoon. Something like gods, deities called the Sanctum fal’Cie regulate the world’s elements – it’s water, it’s light, and it’s food, providing a live for the people who live within. However, there is a world outside of Cocoon – known as Pulse. Little is known about this world – only haunted memories and tales of attackers from this outside land, believed to be some sort of hellish landscape. The world of Pulse also has it’s own fal’Cie – and if people come into contact with them, they are branded l’Cie, doomed to complete a mission given to them by the Pulse fal’Cie – and branding them enemies of Cocoon. As people fear the l’Cie, anyone believed to be tainted by a Pulse fal’Cie is hunted down and exiled on a one-way train to Pulse. The story is a little confusing to understand to begin with, with “fal’Cie” and “l’Cie” and “Cie’th” terms flying around, but background information can be looked up and explained more in detail via the in-game “Data-log” menu which updates as the story progresses.

The story focuses on six characters, most namely Lightning – a former solider and Snow, leader of a group of young rebels called NORA. As with all Final Fantasy titles, the characters all have their own backgrounds, motivations and beliefs which all become clear as the story progresses. Rather than being in the shoes of Lightning all the time, however, FFXIII has so far had me switching between the various characters as they all make their own journeys, sometimes meeting up or going their own ways. This means for a while you are constantly changing which character you play as and seeing things from their perspective.

The battle system is somewhere between the old ATB system of Final Fantasy, but more in the vein of Final Fantasy XII with real-time action which is always moving, and the fact that you only control one character in battle. The character you control has an “ATB” guage which constantly fills, but unlike older FF titles, it’s split into sections. Different abilities cost a certain amount of these sections, and depending on how many sections are filled you may chain up different attacks. For instance, if you have 3 sections filled, you can chain one “Attack” action (section cost of 1), and one “Blitz” action (section cost of 2). The character will then execute the attacks in a combo, and the battle will continue with the ATB filling once more.

Once you reach a certain point of the game, you may then switch character classes to access different attacks and roles in battle – for instance, the “Commander” class focuses on damage dealing, the “Ravager” class assists in raising attack chains to deal higher damage, the “Medic” class focuses on healing and the “Sentinel” class revolves around taking damage in place of others. You are then able to change formations during battle, which allows you to choose sets of different classes for the team – such as “War and Peace” which makes one character a Commander, and one a Medic, or “Doublecasting” which makes both members Ravagers. You need to switch these on the fly to make the best of the situation and optimise your performance.

Levelling up occurs on a Sphere-Grid style system, where each character has a seperate grid for each of their classes, and you can expend CP (Crystal Points) to move around the grids activating nodes which grant new abilities and stat upgrades. Abilities are specific to each class – i.e. Commander abilities like Blitz can only be used when the character is using the Commander class. Stat upgrades, such as HP+50 and Accessory Slot+1 boost the character permanently.

I won’t spoil it, but so far I really like the plot – the characters are all fairly interesting, with their own feelings and motivations which keep me wanting to know more and see where their paths will lead. The graphics are brilliant, and really brings the world to life with fantastic looking areas and cast.

However, I so far have found the game to be rather disappointing. While the story and characters keep me going, I can’t help feeling that behind the game’s graphics lays a fairly linear and bland game. The general flow of the game goes from cutscene to linear path with enemies, the odd boss and that’s about it. While older FF’s of course had a lot of battles, the fact that you only control one character at any given time means that the battles can feel very repetitive at times since you only control one role within the fight. The battles also feel fairly drawn out – as you generally only alternate between one or two different attacks it can feel as though you are just repeatedly entering the same commands to wear the enemies down – who seem to have a bit more health than normal FF enemies, perhaps since you fight less of them overall, with enemies being visible on the field as you progress. Although you do unlock new attacks, they seem very far apart and few in number – meaning that you simply add another attack to your chain which you see over and over again.

In this way, I find that the battle system (aided slightly by the Paradigm system which allows minimal control over the party’s actions) is alright, but not the best seen in a Final Fantasy title so far. This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, only the linearity of the game means that aside from the battles theres nothing else to do – no side-quests, towns or other tasks to do along the way. Although I do believe some side quests open up later in the game, I’m expecting the majority of them will simply be fights against bigger and harder bosses. Where most FF games broke up the fights with exploring cities and searching for items, FFXIII pushes endless battles upon you and gives you access to all shopping and upgrading through a simple menu accessible via the save point. On a side note - 16 hours in and I still can’t select my own party members – although I doubt it’s far off. It’s not a huge flaw in comparison to other things, but it would be nice to at least choose between the characters I have in my party at a given time.

Although I’ll certainly be playing more of the game to see what happens to the characters, I can’t help feeling as though I’m more of a spectator of the story rather than a participant – the constant character switching doing nothing to help this fact. To be truthful, most of the enjoyment of the game has come from the story, which would have been equally enjoyable if they had left the battles (i.e. the gameplay) out of it entirely. I’ll hope that the game will improve as it goes on – but I’m not holding my breath. Let’s just hope the storyline doesn’t disappoint. A real shame – the characters and plot really gave the game a lot more potential than it’s shown so far. As a big FF fan, I really don’t think the game has lived up to what it’s predecessors gave us in terms of content, sacrificing gameplay for graphical power and dialogue.

Expect a full-review once I complete the game, but I’m not expecting my opinion to change dramatically between now and then - let’s hope I’m wrong.

- Leon