Final Fantasy XIII

I can't tell you how happy I am that I am almost done with this game. I can't wait to play something else. It's not because there is something newer and fresher on my plate (though I do have Super Street Fighter 4), it's because I'm tired of this game. I can't stop now, though, because I am, what they would call in poker, pot-committed. I've put well over 40 hours into this game, and I'm pretty sure it's almost over. Doing some approximation math, I've got less than 10 percent of this game to play, so I have to finish.

Honestly, I'm quite amazed that I've slugged it out this far. Almost from the word "GO", I was disappointed. Even though it was well over 40 hours ago, weeks in the past, I still remember how this game started out.

I was bouncing from team to team. 5 of the games 6 protagonists, separated into 3 different teams, slugging it out in a frantic series of battles against a strange government military. I was struggling to come to grips with the game's vocabulary: l'Cie, Fal'Cie, Pulse, Cocoon, Cieth. Basically, I was dropped into a world I knew nothing about and expected to know it all. It was alright, though, because the characters didn't REALLY know about these things either. They only knew what they were told. Stories. So as the game slowly progressed, everything became incredibly clear.

But for the first whole chapter, I wasn't earning experience. I was flabbergasted. How in the hell could I NOT be earning experience! There sure wasn't a shortage of battles, though. Many of them I couldn't avoid. If you hadn't heard before, this game trashes the whole random battles idea, placing enemies on the map, meandering about. You engage them by running into them. At least I was strong enough to make short work of all of them. Battles rarely last more than a minute. If you manage to engage the enemy before they know you're there, you get a preemptive strike. This increases their stagger meter to nearly it's max. You normally build it by successive attacks. Once staggered, all of your attacks do a greater amount of damage.

By the way, once you do end up beating the enemy, you're graded on a five-star scale! How ridiculous is that? Time is the deciding factor in this rating, so be sure to kick their ass quickly. If you do, you'll get better spoils from them. It also give you a score for the battle, which I haven't the foggiest idea how it's determined. I used to think it was simply how much damage you dealt over the battle, which would be pretty simple, but repetitive. In the end it was just a bunch of number garbage that I would skip through.

Speaking of number garbage, I haven't seen as much in a long time. I get it that RPGs show numbers based on how much damage or healing you do. I know that health is represented by a number. After figuring out that CP is interexchangable with EXP, I was then left with TP. This number is sort of like your MP, but you need significantly less. You'll only get to use this for a select few spells, and you'll never get more than 5. It costs 3 for a summon, 1 for a couple of spells. But I didn't really use it, so it stuck at 5 for the most part.

Since I brought it up, let's talk about summons. Each character only gets 1. You only control your "leader" character, so it makes sense. But through the first 20 hours of gameplay, the game forces your party and leaders. So while you might come across your first summon after 5-10 hours, You won't be able to use it because you won't be using that character as a leader for a really long time.

This party switching really burned by buns as well. Getting stuck with a couple of characters who couldn't sustain a combo resulted in some really long, zero-star batttles. It became incredibly frustrating getting stuck with certain characters that I didn't want to play with. Characters that I didn't like which direction they were leveling.

Leveling, by the way, is similar to Final Fantasy 10. I say similar, because it seems like it was built on top of it. Using the CP you get from battles, you move around a personalized grid for each class of each character. It's got the basic stats: Strength, Magic, HP. Yep, that's it. Throw in some abilities and perks like an additional bar for your ATB gauge, and more accessories, and you've got yourself the Crystarium.

Big problem with it? (besides not advancing in it until a couple of hours into the game) It becomes incredibly easy to fill the Crystarium. Without going back and fighting extra battles for the sake of leveling, I easily filled the Crystarium before it expanded again. It wasn't until after 30 hours did this trend stop.

Speaking of things that take a crazy amount of hours to do. I wasn't able to change my party members for myself until 20 hours into the game. I would say that this was because the party wasn't big enough, but multiple times before that point there were more than 3 members of my party running around together with the computer forcing my team.

But the computer isn't completely bad. When you are battling, you have an Auto Attack option. This lets the computer figure out what you should be attacking with. After you've learned what type of immunities/weaknesses the enemy has, the computer will use the best case attacks for you. All you have to do is change classes when you want to, and you could basically hit Auto Attack the entire time. It really lends to the strength of this game.

It's really pretty. I can't argue it. This game looks good. It's all wrapped up in a pretty package. The battles are fast and frantic, and quite the wonder to watch. The presentation is all there. The menus are crisp and clean. Everything seems to be in a wonderful position. It even becomes hard to tell the difference between cut scenes and real-time graphics. It's all smooth and precise.

However, in the end, I think the game is a bit too much presentation and not enough gameplay. The gameplay doesn't get interesting until 20+ hours in, when you get to pick your team and start taking on missions in what seems like a free-roam environment. Until then (and after 10 hours past that point until the finish) it seems like the game is just a movie on rails. After you walk down a couple of corridors, there is another cut scene of varying length. At some points, you'll play a handful of battles and put the controller down for an equal or even longer time.

It feels like I've been watching a movie with minimal input. Even the bosses don't seem hard, just longer versions of the same battles. Like I said earlier, I'm so happy I'm almost done with this game. I'm ready to move on.