The tube you will never forget.
| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| PlayStation 3 | 9.10 |
| Overall | 9.10 |
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Imagine a Final Fantasy game that is gutted, has many RPG staples removed, and is reduced to its core combat component. Final Fantasy XIII is this game, a game that will bring about mixed emotion for years to come. I am not even sure how to react to this game at times. I love it and yet I feel like it could be so much more. Lets begin with what is NOT in FFXIII. An open overworld, towns to explore, physical shops to visit, NPCs to interact with, and mini games for the most part all gone. It is a very lonely game, at times it feels like no one lives in this world but you. The few times there are NPCs around they are just there as background elements. In battle imagine a FF game where you only control one character; that's right, you have no control over your teammates outside of paradigm shifting. Instead of dying once the entire party has died, you now die only if the user controlled character is killed. No multiple summons to find, only one per character and they are all found as part of the story. No hidden characters to add to your party. Powerful weapons are not found, they are upgraded to them. Most of the stats are gone; no magic points, no defense, no magic defense, no luck, no elemental resistance. It has all been reduced to strength, magic power, and HP. Any defensive stats are added by accessories which give you a percentage of defense, like lower physical damage by 10%. No limit breaks, not even an ultima spell. Traditional leveling up is gone, no money is dropped after fights. The leveling up system is a new take on the sphere grid introduced in FFX but this one is guided by the game as there are almost no choices to make. You may level up only when the game allows you and not through experience but through game progress. There are no characters with unique skills like mimicking enemy attacks or learning melee moves, everyone can essentially learn every class and ability except for one that is unique to each. FFXIII streamlines everything to make a game for the action generation, at least that is how I see it. I think the developers at Square wanted to make a game that the average FPS playing gamer would not get bored of or get confused by. So they removed almost everything that gave the player chooses, anything that only added to the game if one would master it. The game is extremely linear offering only a few branching paths that only lead to an item and usually require you to backtrack to the main path. Everything is slowly explained and introduced to the player. You spend three hours at the start before you get any attack other than the basic attack. Yes for the first three hours you can just hit X in fights, maybe take a potion or two. The game chooses who is in your party and who you control. This way it can slowly introduce you to the different roles like the commando or ravager (the spellcaster). This also allows the developers to make sure every enemy you battle is specifically tailored to your group and skills. Since you have no choice at all in who is in your party or what skills they know, you can't make any tactical decisions until about 30 hours in. Every fight, including boss battles are won by simply by using what the game gives you. Say you take control of a saboteur, a class that casts debuff spells on the enemy. Odds are the next boss you fight will be susceptible to your debuffs, what a coincidence! It takes nearly 30 hours before the game lets you the player be in control, luckily there is plenty of content after that mark and for most that will be core of the game, still those first 30 hours can and will be annoying to many. This game sounds horrible doesn't it, why would anyone play it? Well it still offers an epic story, breathtaking locations to run around in and what I think is the best combat system of the entire series. This game is all about combat, it is basically all you do, if that didn't work nothing would work. Luckily it works, it is fast paced, fun to watch and exciting to control. Yes they removed so much of what made FF combat so deep in past games but it has been replaced with a system that doesn't drag out simple fights. It doesn't burden you with having to manage magic points or even health, after every battle the slate is wiped clean, you regain full health. Each battle is a self contained fight so you may use all your abilities without fear of what is coming up next. Speed is such an important part of the combat that the game rates you on how fast you defeat the enemy, it's like an action game rating system. The new combat system introduced to FFXIII is called the paradigm shift system. Each character can be assigned one of six roles. Included are dealers of heavy damage, spell casters, debuffers, buffers for your party, healers and defense classes. Each character learns three of these classes at first (very late in the game you gain the ability to learn all six with all characters). During the fight you may switch classes on the fly, that is the key to combat system, choosing the right mix of classes in each fight. You may choose what mix of classes your characters can have by setting certain formations. You have five slots to choose different formations during combat, lets say two healers and a defense character to turtle up and heal, or a buffer and two commandos. The limited slots on formations you may chose from can lead issues, I would love to be able to select from a lot more different formations during a fight but then the menu would be way too cluttered and you would have a lot of useless formations. This way you choose the five most effective formations for the fight ahead. The biggest issue I have with this is that there is no way to save formations you like, every single time you switch teams you need to set up the formations from scratch, that becomes annoying. As I stated earlier you control only one character, the AI controls the rest. The AI determines the best attacks and spells to use in each situation. Even your character has the option to just use the AI by pressing the automatic button, it can come in handy when you are not sure which attack will do the most damage, the computer will know. At the start of each fight you should cast a spell called Libra which will reveal all strengths and weaknesses of the enemy, once the AI knows this it will always pick the attacks that do the most damage, or the debuffs it is most susceptible to. The AI does a decent job at attack, it's the healing and team buffing that introduces issues. The AI always uses a basic set of rules, like heal character under 30% of health first or buff characters with haste and defensive buffs first. Say one of the characters dies, the AI won't cast a revive spell until all characters are above 70% health, you cannot do anything to change this. Say you want to maximize your characters attacks first, you cannot set that up with the AI. You will find situations where you will need to control a specific character just so you can employ the strategy you want. There is no way to change characters during a fight nor change the AI's rule set. Those two changes would have made the combat practically perfect. The fast paced nature of the combat makes each encounter exciting. Even the really easy battles are made interesting cause you can always try to get a higher time. The combat truly shines when you battle the bosses and powerful enemies. You will need to quickly navigate through different paradigms to always have the best team for each situation, in this game situations change quickly. That is the beauty of this combat system, in older FF's yeah there were a ton spells and skills, but you hardly ever needed to use any of it. Here there is a purpose to every skill you have and the enemies make sure to use them. I have not mentioned the chain gauge which is a major aspect of the battle. Each enemy has a bar that fills up as you damage them, ravagers raise the bar much faster than commandos, the key is to mix these two classes to raise this bar up as fast as possible. Once the bar is maxed the enemy enters stagger mode where they are extremely weak, their weaknesses change, and your strategy will as well to take advantage of the stagger. The key to winning fights quickly is figuring out which enemy to stagger first and how to do it in the quickest way possible. Each fight is almost like a puzzle to figure out the best teams for each enemy. Once the game gives you full control of the team and how you level them up the combat fully opens up and the depth emerges. The combat isn't the only aspect that opens up later in the game. Once you reach chapter 11 the game gives you a large open field to explore. For the first time you are not bound to a giant hallway. On the fields of Pulse you may ride chocobos and take on marks which are like bounties on monsters. As you complete each mark harder ones unlock and even new sections open up. It is a drastic change from the main game, finally there is exploration and the combat gets to shine as these marks are not easy. The flip side is that the story takes a back seat, so that non-stop well paced adventure you are used too halts suddenly. You may return to this section once you complete the game to future find harder marks. I don't like that the game makes this section the only area for side questing, it's like the game telling you "now you are allowed to do side quests, in this one section", that sort of kills the mystique of finding a side quest, but I will take what I can get. There is a ton of marks to find, a player may spend more time on Pulse than the rest of the game. Even though the majority of the game is linear it is one hell of a ride. The story is familiar but still presented on such a large scale, with great cutscenes that make Hollywood movies seem tame. There is such a contrast from WRPG storytelling which is done mostly through dialog and simple cutscenes and this which has incredible CG and in-game sequences. The main characters are well fleshed out and surprisingly they are voiced by good actors. Only one sounds like an anime reject, the cute girl of the group, Vanille. The story goes through all ranges of emotion, it surprised me to find some very powerful scenes scattered throughout. It's engaging enough to always want to move forward, Square nailed the two most important aspects, the combat and story. I only wish that it had a better supporting cast, especially the villain which kind of sucks. Did I mention that this game is GORGEOUS. The worlds you see, full of color and imagination. There are beautiful futuristic cities contrasted with sections of nature, all stunning to look at. This is another area where WRPGs are weak in, I find their worlds to be boring, this is a fantastical world, clearly the artists imaginations were allowed to run wild. Many times I would just stand and rotate the camera around to soak it all in. The enemy designs are top notch as well. It's always fun to see a new take on a classic Final Fantasy enemy. The musical score is one of the best the series has ever had. I guarantee you will have the battle music stuck in your head forever. The menu system is slick as hell, so well organized with an entire encyclopedia that gives a summary of the story and characters. I wonder how we ever played a FF game without this. In terms of production values it is perfect, it is a showcase of graphics and sound, a benchmark for this generations power. I am conflicted with this game cause as you saw with the opening paragraphs I can write a ton of reasons why this is nowhere near the top of best Final Fantasy games. Yet I truly enjoyed it from start to finish. Some Final Fantasy games I find hard to complete, I just loose interest half way through, this is not one of those, I was compelled to finish it and play beyond the ending. Clearly something worked, I know for many the changes are unacceptable but for me it lead to one unforgettable experience. One that I know could have been better but still one that is very much worth taking. |
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Posted by Dvader Mon, 26 Apr 2010 22:29:58
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robio (2m)
This review is full of
Peniswin.Seriously, nice write up. Very strange how they strip back everything.