Final Fantasy XIII : PS3
I have spent quite a lot of time wondering what to write for my Final Fantasy XIII review - not as much time as I have spent playing the game, that’s for sure, but a while nonetheless. I kept trying to compare it to other Final Fantasy games and debating in my own mind whether it was better or worse on various scores, and then I realised I was only comparing it to other Final Fantasy games, not other games in general. So I paused, took a little time to myself and thought about it in the context of all the other games on my shelves and realised just how amazingly good this game is. Simply put, Final Fantasy XIII is pretty much the finest current generation game out there. I’ve put 80 hours of play in (short for an FF game in my opinion) and I’m running around now I’ve completed the storyline doing extra bits and it’s definitely the most straight up enjoyment I’ve gotten out of a new game on any of the current console generation. As for its comparison to other Final Fantasy games of the past, well, I think both VII and X pip it to the post overall, but even then it gives them a good fight.
Now, of course, I’ve got to back up this feeling. Just what is it about FF XIII that makes it so great?
I want everyone to be able to read this review, so I’m steering very far away from any storyline spoilers. It’s a shame as I could write a lot about the story, but I don’t want to ruin anyone’s enjoyment. I do warn that I will write about the game mechanics that occur later in the game, so if you want to avoid that, you’d better go away now. Still here? Great, let’s get on with it.
To say I was excited about getting this game is a little bit of an understatement. I do so love my Final Fantasy games, and I knew that the first PS3 outing was going to be impressive. Almost immediately upon release, there was a level of anti-XIII sentiment coming from people, which I felt was misplaced. People complained about the fact that the early dungeon design was simply long corridors and that there were too many cutscenes and tutorial parts to it. In the early days after the release I read quite a few comments that were coming saying that the linearity of the game meant that FF XIII was a bad game, but it didn’t take me long to realise that these comments were coming from people who hadn’t even taken the time to get into the game. Let’s not pretend that playing a Final Fantasy game is something you just pick up and do for ten minutes; it’s a massive investment in terms of time, like watching an entire series on TV, or reading a ten book sequence of novels and, as such, rating it on the first few hours of play is naïve. To the detractors, I say yes, FF XIII is linear, and yes, you are still getting tutorial information fifteen hours into the game, but neither of those things are bad. The linearity has allowed the creators to keep a complex storyline from fraying at the edges, and allowed character development and background understanding beyond the norm in a computer game. It has also taken away a lot of the boring aspects of the genre that have plagued games like this for years - for example, in XIII, the party are automatically healed at the end of every battle meaning you no longer have to worry about healing them before a fight. Negative, some people say, but all it really has done is to make it so that you don’t have to spend thirty seconds after every fight clicking ‘cure’ six times. They realised that everyone does this, so they just did it for you. Taking away choice? Well, maybe, but who chooses not to heal their party up?
The dungeon design is pretty much one long corridor, this I agree with, but in all honesty, every other similar game has the same issue - the only difference is in how clever the smoke and mirrors are to make you feel that it isn’t just a long corridor. Here, no one is pretending otherwise. In FF X, for example, everything was a long corridor with the odd room shoved off to the side to make it look like that wasn’t the case.
Enough about negative detractors though, what about the game. First off, Final Fantasy XIII is, without doubt, the most beautiful looking game you will have ever seen up to this point. The graphics are truly outstanding with cutscenes that are modern film quality and in game graphics which are only just distinguishable from the fully rendered cutscenes. Watching the combat when someone else is playing (and you don’t have to concentrate) is a frenzied blur of activity which is actually entertaining to watch. Every spell, every summon, every moment has a graphic which you wouldn’t think was out of place to pause, screenshot, and use as a desktop background. My one little aside here is that this isn’t apparently the case if you play it on an XBox, because they had to compress all the graphics due to the lack of bluray on the 360. Still, this is an FF game, and who the hell plays Final Fantasy on an XBox? Hmm… Moving on…
Alongside the graphics, comes the sound. I miss Nobuo Uematsu and the original crystal theme, but the music for XIII is still great; my special edition of the game came with a CD containing some of the soundtrack and it’s seen a few plays. The real beauty in the sound are the character voices though. Along with the fact that (for the first time) the characters all have their lips properly synched to the English version of the game, the voice cast are terrific, with the Australians getting to add their accents to the mix. There’s a real sense that the characters are as real as computer-graphic little men (and women) can be.
Another Final Fantasy skill is in character design. There are few games which can compete for having characters whom you actually get an emotional attachment to. Past Final Fantasy games have done this really well and FF XIII doesn’t disappoint. Each character has their own personalities and back story, each has development and growth and each one has moments on screen which make them interesting and allow you to empathise. I mentioned earlier that Final Fantasy VII and X are probably the better games than XIII and the main reason for this is about character. In VII and X, there was simply something a little more to the characters and storyline around them which draws you in as the player and makes you care. For XIII to come third in such a list isn’t by any means a detraction; far from it, it is testament to how good a game XIII is that it can be mentioned in the same breath as the other two; both masterpieces of gaming design.
Without saying anything to spoil the storyline for people playing (or intending to play), I do want to mention how cool some of the cutscenes are. There are literally moments where you just want to sit back and watch as the awesome graphics play out in front of you - sequences you’d be talking about with your friends in the pub after the cinema if you’d seen them in a film. Square Enix really know how to make impressive action cutscenes!
So I’ve talked about all these different aspects of the game, but what is it like to actually play? First of all, the combat system has had a major change. Final Fantasy games have never been scared to mess with the combat mechanics. Early games with their ‘take turns to attack and cast spells’ mechanics have long been adjusted and tweaked during the series. Once FF XI came along and you were only controlling a single character, there was going to inevitably be change, and FF XII showed this, with an AI system to control the other team members while you concentrated on one. FF XIII plays with this a little bit, bringing more control to the player, simplifying the AI (essentially by removing your interaction with it) and adding job switches similar to the way FF X-2 did. All this, plus speeding it up and adding a feeling of flowing. Does it all work? Yes. It’s an excellent system that honestly leads to a lot of excellent combats, but it does have its negative sides too. It’s a little too simple (Square Enix working hard to bring new players into the fold who might have no clue what to do), and it doesn’t have as much variety as it should have, but it is damned good fun and is sufficiently hard. It’s important that you can die in games like this, and oh yeah, you can die in FF XIII.
Levelling and grinding is fun. Lots of fun. I found with FF XII I spent many hours running around grinding and really enjoying it and I think (without having checked) that my review for XII mentions that the levelling was actually fun. The same is true here - it’s a case of the journey being worth it for itself and that is so important for a game which (as its mechanical core) is about beating up monsters for XP. The levelling part of the game (by which I mean the mechanic that determines how you gain skills) is way over simple and without choice (about the only time I’d say the linearity is a bit of a hindrance) but you forget about that and live with it. The fact that some of the largest monsters (and I mean that in terms of size as well as stats, these things are like walking mountains) are there for you to see (and take a poke at) from half way through the game is great - really incentivising you to get on and level. The side-quest mission system is great, with a nice percentage counter to tell you how far you have gotten through everything (again, like XII) and some missions that are hard enough to have you swearing and wanting to chuck the controller at the TV (this is a good thing!). When I was thinking of comparing Final Fantasy XIII with other games, it was a case of ‘would I rather play another couple of hours of FF XIII and grind some more or would I like to play any other game’ - that I’d end up playing FF XIII some more proves to me that it’s just that fun, even if it is (as I said to someone the other day) little more than data entry with a cool interface and lovely graphics on the top.
So that’s it. I watched the end credits roll the other day and was pleased to realise that I felt I was still able to go back and do more. The story is all completed, but FF XIII has a few more hours of play to offer me before I’m done with it. It’s really made me want to go back and play all the older games again (don’t be too surprised to see a review for FF VIII sometime in the nearish future) simply because I believe they are just head-and-shoulders better than everything else out there. There’re a lot of computer games on the market today, but you don’t get better than this. Final Fantasy XIII may well not be the best Final Fantasy game out there, but it’s a strong showing from the best computer game series out there. Now, when does Final Fantasy Versus XIII come out?! Oh, and XIV of course…
