gamespot score:8.5( great)
my score:8.6
(+)Pros:- addicting and rewarding battle system, - challenging battles encourage more stragetic approaches, - has a great plot worthy of a final fantasy game,- graphics are breath taking, -gran pulse and cocoon are 2 very beautiful worlds,- great boss fights especially later on, - good lenghty main story that lasts at least 50 hours, - has many side quests
(-)Cons:- Exploration is godamn linear throughout the whole game, - character stats progressions are very very straight foward.
gameplay time:50 hours+ (long)
Okay! Final fantasy 13 baby, the long awaited HD final fantasy to arrive on the PS3. Well having waiting for 3-4 years for this game, of course people have high expectations to it, and thus, when it was released, it received criticism of being "not good enough". Well, I agree waiting 4 years was too long for this, but, its still a great game. One cannot think of it being something as epic as final fantasy 7 or 10, think of it as an average final fantasy, not the epic ones, then you will be able to enjoy it for what it really is, a great RPG game.
Story wise, theres quite alot going on in final fantasy 13. It still features the same save the world storyline, but theres alot of background info. The start of the game will be confusing, as you dont know shit of what's going on, make sure to turn on subtitles. Final fantasy's story is based on a war that is going on between 2 worlds, cocoon, and gran pulse. Supposedly this wars been going on for quite awhile. The game starts out awesome, with lightning, our main character, and sazh busting out of a train, beating up cocoon soldiers. Lightning is going to save her sister, which is being held in the fal'cie, sazh is tagging along for some reasons I wont spoil. However it seems there are many going for the fal'cie, other than lightning and sazh, theres snow, the leader of a resistance group called NORA, who wants to save his bride to be, which is in fact lightning's sister, there are also vanile and hope, who were people to be purged, but are making an escape. Later the all get turned into pulse l'cie, all 5 of them, and are wanted by the government of cocoon, being people of dangerous power. The story is confusing to explain in words, but this is just the gist of it, the story is huge.
I'll jump straight to the gameplay, which is probably the key point in final fantasy 13. The battle in final fantasy 13 is something never tried in any final fantasy game before. IN FF 13, theres no such thing as mana, thats right, you heard me, casting all spells, no matter how weak or strong, is free. The battle in the game makes use of ATB system, where you wait for the bar to charge, select whatever you want to use, and then boom, your character starts attacking. All spells are free, but the currencies for "skills" in this game are the ATB gauges themselves or TP. TP is used for shit such as libra, to scan ur enemies, summon, to summon ur eidolons, or other skills such as quake, to dish out easy damage.
The ATB gauges in this game are consumed for skills or attacks. During battle you have to stragitically switch roles to perform well. In simpler terms, each character has his/her number of roles in battle. There are 6 roles, commander ( specialise in dealing high damage), ravager (specialise in increasing the stagger gauge), sentinel ( specialise in absorbing damage), synergist ( specialise in buffing up allies), sabotier ( specialise in debuffing enemies) and the medic ( specialise in healing). Each character has only a set of roles early in the game, but eventually all roles will be unlocked for all characters. You go into battle, with each of your 3 characters each assigned a role, and fight. But this isnt enough, enemies may change strategies to fight you, and you must perform a paradigm shift, to change your party's roles to fit the con current battle flow. So, in short, you will be switching roles here and there like a mad fool until you win the battle. Later battles are tough, and require more stragetic paradigm shift choices, you cant just switch as you wish.
Final fantasy 13 is a very challenging RPG game, which is good, it has great story too, which is also good. But 2 things make the journey less pleasant. For one, this is a first for a final fantasy game, linear exploration. An RPG should be about exploring the areas around you and revisiting them as and when you like, and the area must also be broad and have alot to offer. Final fantasy 13's maps are linear, straightfoward, there are almost NO branching paths when exploring, its mostly a straight path all the way! Next is the character progression, the crystarium. I was hoping for something like the final fantasy 10's sphere grid, now that was aweswome, but it turns out to be like some wanabe line that goes through crystals to increase measly stats, for each of your 6 roles. Each character has some pretty confusing looking grids to go through, but all thier side roles have pathetic path ways.
Happy gaming!
