In the storied history of the Final Fantasy series, there's no game, at least in my
experience, more divisive and bitterly debated among fans than the thirteenth installment.
Twelve certainly has its detractors, as does fifteen, believe me, but Square hit a very
specific and tender nerve among a large portion of their fanbase with this game. The reasons
for this are varied, and attempting to sort out and analyze them has been an exhausting
process, but during the course of my research and discussion I've found a ton of people
who were moved and inspired by it, and coming to understand that perspective has been a
pretty enlightening experience. Ultimately it's an extremely character focused story
set in a world with an ambitious mythos that continued a trend leading the design philosophy
of the series away from tradition and into this continuing search for a new identity.
While a lot of disappointment has been expressed by fans, especially those who have an attachment
to the way that Final Fantasy games were made in the 90s, there are still many people who
enjoyed the new ideas that were brought to the table.
Final Fantasy XIII's development began as early as 2004, just after the X-2 team had
completed work on their international version. It was then that director Motomu Toriyama
and Kazushige Nojima—who had been a scenario writer on FFVII, VIII, X, and X-2—began
conceiving ideas for the plot and lore of XIII's world, which they would continue
to develop for the following year. According to the Ultimania, it was Nojima who devised
the mythology and setting the game would take place in, which ultimately expanded into an
entire universe of games Square would put into the works. Originally this included Final
Fantasy versus XIII and Final Fantasy Agito XIII, spin-off games that would tell wholly
unique stories while incorporating the same mythos and thematic concepts. Final Fantasy
XIII itself, however, was to be the flagship of this new universe, which was formally designated
the 'Fabula Nova Crystallis', a Latin phrase which translates as 'The New Tale of
the Crystal'. It was director Motomu Toriyama who envisioned the plot for Final Fantasy
XIII proper, and Daisuke Watanabe who would take all of his ideas and put them to paper
in the final script. With the storytelling in this game, much like his work on Final
Fantasy X, Toriyama wanted first and foremost to focus on the characters and the emotional
content of the journey they would take as those who were at the mercy of an unjust fate.
Initially, Final Fantasy XIII was intended to be released on the PlayStation 2. However,
due to the delay of Final Fantasy XII, as well as the incredibly enthusiastic reception
of the Final Fantasy VII technical demo, it was decided that the game's development
would be moved over to the PS3 and built with Square-Enix's own Crystal Tools engine.
As expected, this caused delays during early development, but the hope was that it would
speed things up considerably down the line. Unfortunately, due to Crystal Tools requiring
tweaks to accommodate a number of other titles, the move to a new engine ended up delaying
the project significantly throughout the entire process. This is why when the game was announced
at E3 2006, almost everything that was shown in the trailer was purely conceptual, and
the final gameplay ended up looking nothing like it. Likewise, Versus XIII was announced
alongside it, and similarly only showed artistic concepts rather than an actual, playable build
of the game. The idea in both cases was that Square was seeking to create games that integrated
battle mechanics that were as visually exciting as Advent Children, but it seems actually
realizing this within Crystal Tools was nearly impossible. Despite grandiose proposals and
ambitious intentions, each of these games were announced before much of the legwork
had been done with the actual development, and I find it telling that each of the original
three Fabula Nova Crystallis games suffered from major setbacks and delays, and subsequently
have each received a mixed reception from fans. Only Final Fantasy XIII itself survived
the development process while keeping most of its original ideas intact, though it still
went through a number of growing pains as well. The reasons for this have been highly
speculated, and I don't want to add to the conjecture, but what we do know is that working
with the Crystal Tools engine proved to be problematic, especially considering the company's
reputation and earnestness to be considered a graphical powerhouse, which was described
by Naoki Yoshida as "an unhealthy obsession with graphical quality". In addition to
this, the largest issue with the game's development seemingly came from a lack of
shared vision within the team. In a detailed postmortem written for Game Developer Magazine,
Toriyama offered the following quote: "Final Fantasy XIII was first introduced through
a concept trailer shown alongside the announcement of the Fabula Nova Crystallis project at E3
2006. The trailer was merely a visual concept, and we had not yet created anything playable
at that point. I felt that this trailer set the bar for the quality we were aiming to
achieve, in terms of battle speed and cutscene imagery, and believed that this sentiment
was shared by the rest of the team. However, it became clear that, at the time, there were
actually very few members who saw the trailer as a representation of what we wanted to achieve
with Final Fantasy XIII. This lack of a shared vision became the root of many conflicts that
arose later in development. This lack of vision and direction continued
until the team was tasked to create a demo that would be released as a package with the
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children blu-ray set in Japan. Apparently, it was within the
creation of this demo that the team finally found the clarity they needed to get the project
moving again. "Even at a late stage of development, we
did not agree on key elements of the game, which stemmed from the lack of a cohesive
vision, the lack of finalized specs, and the remaining problems with communication between
departments. What enabled us to conquer this line of seemingly endless conflicts was the
development process for the Final Fantasy XIII demo... Whatever effects creating the
demo had on the schedule, once it was complete we realized it was just the panacea we needed...
With a tangible version of the game that could actually be played, internal debates transitioned
from theoretical discussions based solely on abstract concepts to concrete dialogue."
With the team finally rallying behind a unanimous vision, Toriyama was able to begin making
real progress on the game, and the company pressed forward confidently with a solid release
schedule. With a goal to sell 5 million units, Square put together a brilliant marketing
plan that catapulted fan anticipation, and promised to be a deeply personal and emotionally
rich story. I myself was absolutely sold by the game's trailers, which seemed to be
delivering everything I was looking for in a Final Fantasy game. When the game finally
hit store shelves though, it seemed Final Fantasy XIII was not going to have the same
widespread impact that Toriyama was hoping for. Being the first game in the series released
on the PS3, he had been aiming to deliver the same quantum leap forward that Final Fantasy
VII had provided as the first game on the PS1. Likewise, Final Fantasy X had created
a similar impression, taking graphical fidelity to an entirely different level. While there's
no doubt Final Fantasy XIII is among the most visually remarkable games of the platform,
and is still impressive even today, it was in other areas that fans responded with…
fierce negative feedback. The story is one of the hottest sources of
contention, and for myself I think that it's fair to say that while the ideas, themes,
and concepts are interesting, it's mostly in the execution that people find fault with
it. I think the lore of the Fabula Nova Cyrstallis is really fascinating. The basic scenario
and the intentions for the character arcs are also—on paper—really good ideas. The
notion of this world that is completely dependent on these supernatural, ageless caretakers—who
can also subjugate people on a whim and completely change or destroy their lives—is promising,
and creates this really believable set of high stakes. It's easy to empathize with
that plight, and it's a great setting to start working in creatively. However, many
people feel that the actual presentation of these ideas—the way the dialogue was written,
the way the story is paced, and the events that reveal the details behind that premise—are
amateurish and sloppy, making it difficult for some players connect with the characters
on an emotional level. I conducted discussions on the game over the course of several weeks,
getting feedback from hundreds of players, and what I've found is that if you're
more of an ideas person, and usually give some leeway to dialogue and cheesy performances,
then you might still enjoy it. If execution is a big deal to you though, then you'll
likely struggle to settle in and feel invested, at least through the first couple of chapters
which definitely contain the worst examples of dialogue and writing that rub people the
wrong way. I personally find that the dialogue throughout the game often falls into being
obtuse, flamboyant, repetitive, and written on the nose; lacking the nuance and depth
that I look for in character driven stories that seek to be emotionally effective. That's
not to say that it's all bad, there are definitely some standout scenes that I thought
were both written and performed beautifully, but it is a frequent enough problem in my
opinion to keep me from fully engaging in the narrative.
One thing I do want to say though, is that the emotional response from those who were
disappointed with the game has definitely carried over into exaggerating how bad the
execution can be. I'll agree with most in saying the first two chapters are really rough,
but it does steadily improve as you move through the second and third act. The game does highlight
some nice character moments, and gives time for most of the characters to demonstrate
gradual change and development. The effectiveness of those scenes can be individually debated,
but they are there, something I've heard others claiming is not the case.
Unfortunately, this focus on the characters' personal journeys and internal struggles left
little time for the writers to do much world building. A lot of that is put into the players
hands to discover on their own, either through closely studying scenes and piecing together
their own inferences, or through reading the extensive datalogs which continually update
with new information about the world and how it operates as you move through the story.
Many players have expressed disappointment in this, claiming that in order to truly understand
what's happening you're required to read these datalogs rather than having the information
present in the exposition and flow of the story itself. I don't agree with that completely,
but it is true that developers relied heavily on the datalogs to inform players about the
world. That's not to say that they don't have any examples of world building within
the scenes, just that there's precious little of it for such a complex universe with rich
lore and history. This is a difficult thing for me to analyze because most of the stories
that have resonated with me throughout my life have similarly left a lot of the mythology
and history to be explained in supplemental works. The Lord of the Rings is an example
of this with the appendices and the Silmarillion that give incredible depth to the world that
you never would have known about by only reading the trilogy or the Hobbit. There are many
games in this very series that try to walk that line, offering enough world building
to hopefully get the players to make sense of the story, while also withholding enough
to generate discussion and theorycrafting among fans. I'll say that if you are the
kind of person who likes to search for answers in ancillary works, through discussion with
other players, or by playing the game multiple times to pick up on things you didn't see
before, you might find some satisfaction here, but if you're the kind of person who likes
to have a solid understanding of the world and characters after one playthrough, then
search for more that can give greater context to the events and increase their impact—something
I feel the Silmarillion does really effectively for Lord of the Rings—then the way the exposition
is given in Final Fantasy XIII might frustrate you a bit. Ultimately though, this game's
primary focus is on the characters themselves, so your enjoyment of the story will largely
depend on whether or not you can sympathize with them. Many people find them to be annoying,
and I can certainly understand that position, but others see them as deeply flawed people
who are meant to be a bit unlikable at first, but then find redemption in the eyes of the
audience in how they mature by the end. For me, the execution did not match the potential
the characters had, and the villains are barely developed at all, but I'm definitely a person
who highly values believable dialogue and clear exposition.
Another criticism you'll hear a lot is that the voice acting is weak. I want to touch
on this specifically because it's amazing how many people feel this way when the talent
of the voice cast is so strong. Troy Baker, who voices Snow, has gone on to create an
established career for himself, and is currently one of the most sought after actors in the
industry. Ali Hillis has also played beloved characters in other franchises. The rest of
the cast I feel are all fine talents, so why is this game's voice acting harped on so
much? When it comes down to it, in my opinion anyway, it's all in the voice direction.
I've shared this example a few times before, but in this interview with Myouterspace, Vanille's
voice actress, Georgia Van Cuylenberg, talks about how she was instructed to emulate the
Japanese actress, even down to getting very specific vocal idiosyncrasies right. Take a listen.
I just so completely, fundamentally disagree
with this approach to voice direction. I firmly believe that the actors should be chosen because
of their unique interpretations of the characters, and that they should be given freedom to express
that in the ways they find the most natural. Anytime you start asking them to emulating
another actor or actress, the performance will begin to lose sincerity. Additionally,
there are some pretty massive cultural differences between Japan and English speaking countries—differences
that will come across as abrasive and strange to those who are not familiar with them—and
anytime you ask a performer to specifically accentuate those things it's going to create
confusion with the audience. Anytime that happens, it's like the player is experiencing
a road bump that briefly takes them out of the story, and I just feel so strongly that
those kinds of things should be left out unless they are adding to the purpose of what's
being explored thematically with the work. Now, I understand that a lot of times in Japanese
localizations the writing and performances are constricted by the fact that the actors
have to try to match the lips of the characters, which in almost every case are animated to
sync with the Japanese voice overs, and that this often accounts for some of the awkwardness.
With this game though, they actually went through the trouble of reanimating the lip
sync to match the English dialogue, so that really can't be used as an excuse here.
When all is said and done though, considering the talent of the English voice cast, I really
think the voice direction is the problem not the actors themselves. Also, did you notice
Georgia Van Cuylenberg's accent in that interview? Vanille gets all kinds of crap
for how "strange" or "fake" her accent is, but that's how she talks in real life—that's
her real accent. The gameplay mechanics are also a big source
of controversy within the fandom, and it's hard to know where to even start with this.
I think the overwhelming issue here that sort of pervades into all aspects of the game is
its restrictive, linear nature. This is true of the field map design and exploration, the
character progression system, the battle mechanics for the first ten chapters or so, and even
in who you're allowed to bring into your party. Now, to be fair, for a large portion
of the game the characters split up, so you're following only two characters at a time, but
there are a couple of sections where you have several party members, but no control over
either who you bring with you or who you can take direct control over in the battles. I'd
like to posit that it's this very heavy level of restriction and lack of choice that
was the largest issue with detractors of the game. In every way that you can interact with
it for the first twenty hours, you have little to no freedom to explore or experiment, and
it really makes you feel like you're on rails in just about every conceivable way.
Leveling up your characters in the crystarium is basically a complete linear path upward,
and locks you out of advancement until you've progressed to a certain point of the story.
Just about every field map up to chapter 11 is a thin hallway leading forward, with only
a few very short branching paths leading to obvious treasure.
Now, I want to step back for a second and put an idea out there. Considering the content
of the story, where a group of people are taken against their will and forced into a
cruel fate, could it be true that the developers wanted to instill a similar feeling in the
player to link these themes with the gameplay itself? Sure, the player feels limited. Sure,
they can't choose their own path or go at their own pace. However, this is also true
for the characters in the story, and for a number of people I've talked to, they feel
as if there's a strong connection between the narrative and the way the game has to
be played; I mean, after all it's a story about fate. In addition to this, I've heard
many defenses for the game's linearity that claim it wouldn't make sense for the player
to slow down and visit towns or explore the environment openly. The characters are on
the run, being hunted down by the government, and they have a time limit to complete their
focus before being transformed into monsters. For these players it wouldn't fit with the
story to have lots of towns to visit, NPCs to interact with, and sidequests to engage
in because those activities aren't congruent with the narrative. While this is an interesting
interpretation, and perfectly valid if you made that connection and it deepened your
appreciation for the game, I don't believe this was an intentional, artistic choice on
the part of the developers, nor do I ultimately think it's the best way of connecting the
player with those themes. When you read interviews with Motomu Toriyama, the reasons why he tends
to lean toward linearity in the games he designs becomes clear pretty quickly. In response
to criticism from fans, he was quoted as saying, "When you look at most Western RPGs, they
just dump you in a big open world, and let you do whatever you like... [It] becomes very
difficult to tell a compelling story when you're given that much freedom."
Also, in the Final Fantasy XIII Scenario Ultimania, he gave this gem of a quote. "The game's
linearity was just because depicting towns and so on like we did before was impossible
to do on an "HD" console – it was too much work."
I also disagree with the notion that due to the urgent nature of the character's plight,
that towns and sidequests were simply incompatible. Balancing survival—the need for food, water,
and supplies—with the urgency of their focus is one way that entering towns and interacting
with NPCs could have been implemented sensibly, and definitely would've injected much needed
diversity into the gameplay. Which brings me to my greatest criticism of
the game, the complete lack of variety. Let's speak frankly, there's nothing wrong with
a game being linear. Linearity in and of itself is not a flaw. The Prince of Persia trilogy
on the PS2, XBOX, and Gamecube are some of my all-time favorite games and they are extremely
linear. Final Fantasy X, which shares an incredible number of similarities to FFXIII, is incredibly
linear but also well beloved. So why is it that audiences responded well to FFX, but
with contempt toward FFXIII over something that is prevalent in both games? The answer
lies in pacing and diversity. Consider this, within Final Fantasy X's field maps you'll
encounter NPCs that deliver lore, you'll find mini games that gives small breaks from
the repetition of fighting battles, you'll find puzzles and mazes to navigate within
the trials, and you'll also have the opportunity to engage in the Aeon combat challenges that
differ from common battles. The Sands of Time is a game full of hallways. Literally, you're
running through castle hallways for the entire game, but what makes it more interesting here?
It's the diverse number of ways you can interact with the game. You don't just run
forward, there's a lot of platforming involved. Then you'll often find yourself stuck in
a room looking for a way forward and will need to solve puzzles in order to do so. Then
you'll come into a room with a lot of enemies and have to fight them. Then you'll watch
cutscenes that tell an engaging story. We now see that this game involves well designed
platforming, puzzle solving, combat, and storytelling, all of which is paced in such a way that you
never feel like your doing just one thing for too long. It mixes up how you interact
with it, keeping things feeling fresh and interesting rather than being repetitive and
boring. Final Fantasy VII is another great example. Yes, the battles account for the
majority of how the player interacts with the game, but it's also full of mini games
that break up the monotony of fighting and introduce some humor and charm that help with
pacing. You can sneak past guards, solve puzzles, fight off enemy motorcyclists, protect wildlife
in tactical style battles, try to fit in with a military marching ceremony, play arcade
games at the Gold Saucer, snowboard, shoot down enemy submarines... the list goes on.
Of course I'm not suggesting that FFVII's minigames (or FFX's for that matter) are
the most amazing ever, and lots of them are downright frustrating, but the point is that
there is an attempt being made there to break up the monotony and keep things interesting,
which I feel is very important in keeping players engaged.
In Final Fantasy XIII I think it's accurate to say that 90% or more of the gameplay boils
down to running forward, fighting, running forward, and running forward and fighting.
I'm not one of those people who thinks the battle system is bad. I actually think it's
pretty good and contains a lot of depth after it finally opens up to you, but even with
a good combat system it's going to start to feel stale if you all you do in the game
is run and fight. This game desperately needed either mini-games, sidequests, or meaningful
exploration to help break up the tedium of battles. There are only three total examples
in the entire game where they tried to do this, but the diversions in each case were
extremely short and totally uninteresting; hardly enough to mix up the gameplay over
the course of 50 hours. To accentuate this problem, the dungeons in
this game are far too long—agonizingly so in a number of spots. In previous Final Fantasy
games, at least for the most part, areas were usually just a few map screens long, maybe
something like five to ten—five to twelve—something like that. Dungeons rarely felt like they
were overstaying their welcome or dragging on forever (with the exception of say final
dungeons in the NES titles). That's not the case here. There are three areas in particular
that I grew extremely frustrated with because they just go on, and on, and on, and on with
carbon copy hallways and the same three or four enemy groupings that you fight and fight
for hours. It feels totally excessive and a lot like padding. Producer Yoshinori Kitase
touched on this as well. "As you know, XIII introduced a completely new battle system.
Because it was so new, we wanted to give each player time to get used to it, and to get
the hang of it. Before, with XIII, we just wanted the stages to be quite long, where
you have to go quite carefully and slowly and which would look like very lengthy tutorials,
which a lot of people didn't like at all." In trying to keep a balance with the flow
of new information and allowing players to get used to the new battle system, the developers
here (in my opinion) took it about a thousand steps too far, providing instead repetitive
tasks with almost no variety. This is why I'll continue to claim that the problem
with Final Fantasy XIII's gameplay is not with the battle system or the linearity, but
with pacing and diversity. In my view, it's one thing to spend the first couple of chapters,
maybe an hour or two at the most, limiting the player in order to gradually teach them
about all of the systems that are in place and how they work. However, when we start
talking about taking 20 hours to completely unlock the battle system and allow the player
to start using it to its full capacity... in my opinion you've simply taken it too
far, and in the end it really turned a lot of players off. In addition to this, there
is an area of the game where the map does open up and the player is incentivized to
take some time doing side hunts. These are, quite literally, the only kind of side content
there is to do in the game. I can't even really call them side quests, they're just
monster hunts; a slightly different rationale to do more of the same running and fighting.
There are tons of them, so if you enjoy the combat there's a lot of value this will
add to your experience. Now that I've gotten that out of the way,
let's actually examine how these systems work, and perhaps debunk some commonly exaggerated
criticisms along the way. First of all, there's a prevailing stigma with this game surrounding
the auto battle feature. You'll often hear people claim that FFXIII "plays itself",
or that all you need to do is auto battle your way through the whole game. This is because
auto battle is set by default to be first in the command list during battles, and will
fill out your ATB bars with abilities instantly, rather than requiring you to select them manually.
Let's point out a big difference from previous games in the series though. In this game you
select multiple commands per turn, up to six in total, rather than just one, and this game
doesn't feature a wait system where you can take your time to navigate the ability
list and select the attacks you want. Everything moves in real time, and it was designed to
be fast paced. This fast pace is more or less the pivotal aspect of the combat upon which
every other choice was based in my opinion. You see, ever since Final Fantasy X Square
has seemed to be on a quest to develop a perfect hybrid system between command based mechanics
and flashy, fast paced action combat, which is why they kept talking about wanting to
create a battle system that looked like Advent Children. At a glance it seems like a good
idea. If you could take the strategy and the tactical implementation that comes from managing
a party of characters, each of which you've customized to support one another's strengths
and weaknesses, and combine that with exciting, skill-based action battles, you'd have the
best of both worlds. Unfortunately, the reality is that it's impossible to actually do this
because of the limits of the human brain, and the closer you get to the center of those
two very different approaches, the less likely you are to fully satisfy players on either
side of that spectrum. Think of it this way, let's say you're playing Dark Souls, but
you have to control three characters at the same time. You couldn't even begin the first
step of that because moving all three characters independently is impossible, much less dodging,
blocking, and executing their attacks as well. It's difficult enough to focus on proper
timing with one character, much less two others at the same time, so developers have to take
some of that control away from the player in order to make it manageable.
Final Fantasy XIII does this by only allowing you to control one character in battles. The
other party members are handled by the AI. Final Fantasy XII was similar, but it also
allowed you to switch which party member you controlled at any time. XII also had an extremely
deep gambit system, which gave the player minute supervision over the actions of the
AI controlled party members, essentially allowing the player to tell them exactly how to behave
in battle without having to give all those commands in real time. Trying to do so would
just be too overwhelming. However, if you wanted to give every party member manual commands
it was still possible, pausing the battles to give yourself time to make your selections,
which would in turn slow the pace of the battles and make them feel a lot less intense and
action based. In FFXIII they elected to make the fast flowing action of the combat a higher
priority than meticulous control, something that has inevitably divided many players.
I believe this is the reason why the auto battle feature exists, but it's important
to note that it can be changed in the options menut, and if you like the challenge you can
make all of your selections manually while trying to keep up with the quick pace. I believe
this is also why they decided to only allow you to directly control one character during
battles, but it is a bit puzzling why they don't give you the option to switch characters
during combat. The AI handles things decently for the most part, but there were certainly
times where I would have definitely preferred that the AI controlled healer prioritized
things differently, and it would have been nice to have some level of control over that.
You see, FFXIII doesn't have a gambit system like XII, so you can't really customize
at all how the AI acts. The only form of control you're given over the party is in the pre-battle
selection of paradigms, which are essentially combinations of this game's classes. There
are six total classes or roles in the game, and while each character can eventually obtain
all six, for a vast majority of the game they specialize in only three. More on character
progression in just a minute, but the point is that again, the only form of control you
have over your other party members in battle is to select which roles they'll be able
to switch between, but how they act is totally out of the player's hands. This can lead
to frustration due to the fact that when the party leader, or the player controlled character,
is defeated you get an automatic game over even if the rest of the party remains standing.
However, a game over here isn't nearly as punishing as it was in previous games. You
don't get sent backward to a previous save point, but generally just appear in front
of the enemy you just lost to and can try again.
All of that being said I think there's a decent amount of depth to be found here. Of
course, much of what I've described or will soon cover becomes available so slowly that
for a majority of the opening act it really does feel like most of the battles only require
you to hit the auto battle button without any thought put into what you're doing.
There's definitely some truth to those sentiments, but you certainly can't get through entire
game, or even the majority of the game like that. There are a number of pretty tough fights
that come up within the first 4 chapters that will require you to use paradigm shifting
adequately, and to utilize buffs and debuffs effectively as well. In fact, I would say
that the usefulness of buffs and debuffs in this game is one of my favorite features.
In many of the previous games, there were so many abilities that ended up sitting unused
in a long, cluttered list because they ultimately just weren't very effective, some of which
I would never even touch. In FFXIII though, a vast majority of your abilities remain useful
throughout the entire game, and the buffs and debuffs are essential to success against
late game enemies and bosses, which I think is great.
Unfortunately I don't think the game does enough to incentivize players to really optimize
their strategies like that. There's a star ranking system after every battle that I believe
was an attempt to do this—where getting a higher efficiency rating gives you better
item drops—but those rewards aren't nearly significant enough to fulfill that purpose
in my opinion. One of the players I spoke with in preparation for this review—a speedrunner
who goes by the name of Mrzwanzig—described the battle system by saying it's a game
that has a lower skill floor to beat it than it does to enjoy it. I thought that was fairly
profound. You can get through the majority of this game with a basic setup that you use
in almost every fight, but the battles will be long, tedious, and dragged out if you do
so and you'll constantly get low star ratings. If you learn to maximize your efficiency,
however, you'll find yourself zipping through battles and really finding the flow that I
think the developers were aiming to deliver. It's unfortunate that so many of the good
parts of the battle system are kept away from the player until you reach chapter 11, but
according to the players I've spoken with who really enjoy post game content, Final
Fantasy XIII has a lot to offer. I don't personally like to get into post game content
myself, but this is a sentiment that I found was pretty widely shared among those who do.
I also don't really like the way weapon upgrading works. It's a little tricky to
explain, but basically you can find two different types of components for upgrading weapons—organic
parts, and mechanical parts. Organic parts are used to increase an experience multiplier,
which is then used with the mechanical parts to boost the weapons with as much exp as possible.
That's all fine I guess, but I found that the game didn't offer nearly enough components
as rewards from battle, nor did it give enough money away to buy those parts so as to allow
you to experiment with upgrading a fairly robust number of weapons. You either have
to do a lot of grinding, or wait until super late game enemies drop items you can sell
for a lot of gil before you really collect enough resources to experiment, which is a
shame. One fairly significant change to Final Fantasy
XIII over previous entries is the fact that the party is fully restored after every battle.
This changes the nature of the game in a profound way. In previous Final Fantasy games, resource
management was a big consideration. You knew in the middle of a dungeon that you'd need
to keep your MP up to fight the boss at the end, and might need to bring and use restorative
items as a means to keep yourself prepared for that. In this game that isn't the case,
because like I said, after every single battle all of your characters are immediately healed.
The game also doesn't utilize MP at all. There is a TP gauge used for a very select
number of abilities like summons, but it isn't really a factor most of the time since summons
are virtually useless for dealing damage—though they do give your entire party a full heal—and
the other abilities tied to it are needed so sparingly that you're guaranteed to refill
your TP gauge before you'll find yourself using them again. This puts the focus of the
game on surviving every individual encounter rather than on surviving a dungeon, and leads
to what I would consider to be the toughest set of regular encounters in the entire series
once you've progressed through the first couple of chapters. You can easily find yourself
getting wiped out if you aren't paying attention. I like the idea there, an attempt to make
every encounter meaningful, but I certainly also see why some players might miss the resource
management of previous games. The major goal with the combat is tied to
the stagger meter. The stagger meter is essentially a damage multiplier, and the higher you drive
it up the more damage each of your attacks will do. The idea is to build it up until
you stagger your enemy, which basically accounts to stunning it for a brief period of time.
While the enemy is staggered it's vulnerable, and you can choose to either go all out offensively
at that point, or spend a little extra time continuing to drive up the multiplier before
delivering massive damage. Whether you choose to do the former or the latter will depend
on the enemy type, where the effectiveness of either choice is contextual. It's a fairly
simple idea, and the fact that it's basically what you do in every fight can make battling
seem a bit repetitive. In my opinion it would have been nice to add a little variety to
the combat by making your own party vulnerable to being staggered as well, which could have
necessitated some really heavy defensive paradigm phases and gone a long way to mixing things
up. Ultimately I think this battle system is bound to be polarizing, but if you don't
mind the fact that you can't control your full party (which a lot of other jrpgs do
as well), and if the notion of fast paced combat with buffs and debuffs that are actually
useful for a change sounds exciting to you, then you might find that there's a lot to
enjoy. Character progression is also one of my larger
criticisms with FFXIII. It's all handled via the crystarium, which is where all of
your characters' stat increases and abilities are earned. You don't level up in this game
like you would in most rpgs, meaning your characters don't have a number associated
with their current level. Rather, through fighting battles you earn crystarium points,
which you use to unlock both stat increases and new abilities within the game's six
roles. Those roles are Commando, a class primarily concerned with dealing physical damage—though
it comes with a few spells—Ravager, a class most closely associated with the black mage
job of previous Final Fantasy games and which is primarily used to drive up the chain gauge,
Sentinel, which is this game's tank class, Saboteur, which inflicts status effects and
debuffs on enemies, Synergist, the opposite of Saboteur which casts buffs on your party,
and Medic, which is self-explanatory. Through a large portion of the game each character
is only given access to three out of these six roles, and they can't be chosen by the
player. That fact is actually fine with me, because the roles for each character were
selected in a way that makes sense with their temperament and personality, and as a brief
note I have to say this game does a pretty good job of telling its story through gameplay
systems like that. Down the line it also actually gives strategic value to the choice of who
you bring with you into your active party. I also really like the fact that the abilities
earned within those roles—and at which points on the crystarium—are different for each
character. So for example if we look at Sazh in the Synergist role, he earns access to
haste a lot earlier than Hope does, but Hope earns access to a lot of good buffs within
that role that Sazh can't get until later. This created situations where I would go into
certain battles knowing I wanted haste, but also realizing I needed Hope's ability to
eliminate some nasty debuffs from my party—so the question became which set of abilities
do I ultimately value more in that situation? It's choices like these that make a pretty
big difference on how tougher battles will play out, and causes the player to adjust
their strategy. This was definitely a factor for me during the last few chapters, where
I would be rolling with a party that was really working for me for a time, then would find
myself facing enemies that forced me to make adjustments. That was when the game's combat
started to click with me a little more and became a lot more interesting. The utility
of actually working up through the crystarium to earn the abilities however, seemed really
dull and inefficient in my opinion, mostly because these paths are incredibly linear.
With how the game is paced, if you generally fight each enemy you come across you'll
earn just about enough CP to make your way up as far as the game allows you to go within
the three roles the characters have access to, so it seemed to me that the process might
as well have been automated. However, if all six roles had been unlocked for the characters
earlier in the game, then there might have been some choice and consequence tied to how
you choose to proceed through the crystarium, and which roles and abilities you would like
to focus on. The crystarium bears some resemblance to the sphere grid of Final Fantasy X, but
is definitely more limited in practice. When it comes to the music though, Final Fantasy
XIII generally tends to see more positive reception. This time around Masashi Hamauzu
was the sole composer, after having worked closely with Nobuo Uematsu co-composing Final
Fantasy X. When listening to the tracks he wrote for X's soundtrack, I found his style
to be very distinct, and it really shines through here as well. There are many, many
tracks that are just beautifully moving, but I definitely have some qualms with how some
of the music is used within the game. In other words, while I think just about every piece
of music in the game is well composed, I'm also really confused by the choices made within
certain contexts. In this scene for example, we have Sazh and Vanille talking to each other
about the nature of Cocoon's Pulse-phobia, the ruthlessness of the sanctum, and their
concern for the other party members' safety. If you haven't played the game before, I
invite you to imagine what you would assume the music would be like given what's being
discussed… now take a listen to the actual track.
I mean... why? Why was this upbeat,jazzy tune inserted here? I understand that the track's purpose is to inform us of Sazh's
personality, but how is this moment to tell us that with the music? This isn't a problem
for the majority of the game, but it does happen enough in my opinion to make it worth
mentioning. Outside of that issue I think the soundtrack is actually pretty excellent.
I really love Hamauzu's use of wide soundscapes, ambient fullness, vocal accompaniment, and
bright piano leads, but it's certainly not for everyone. I've seen a sort of a growing
sentiment, especially among jrpg fans, that strong, memorable melodies are always preferable
to ambient music. I'm neither here nor there on that issue, I'm really more concerned
about whether the music helps me to identify with the characters and feel what they are
feeling, but if you're really not into ambient music then you might not appreciate this OST
as much as previous Final Fantasy games. The game's main battle theme, Blinded By Light,
is yet another source of divisiveness that so perfectly summarizes the overall landscape
of opinions of this game. It amazes me how on the same video you'll find someone who
will say "Blinded By Light is my favorite regular battle theme in the series", and
then another comment stating that "The sound of those loud strings swelling up is like
nails on a chalkboard to me. It's almost a triggering sound at this point, I really really
hate that battle theme." I must admit, when those strings kick in, it is rather abrasive.
I don't know, I kinda like it though. In any case, I'm glad Hamauzu is still doing
work for Square, most recently with World of Final Fantasy which is also excellent.
While opinions are divided on the quality of Final Fantasy XIII and whether or not it's
worthy of the prestige that the series has earned over the years, I find that really
diving into it and spending so much time discussing its various features with the audience has
given me a newfound understanding of why so many people genuinely love it. I was initially
very dismissive of the game when it was first released, but this latest playthrough has
opened my eyes a bit and it's been interesting to see how there are certain aspects of the
game I disliked before that I now enjoy, and inversely several aspects I liked before I
dislike now. However, my overall opinion of the weakness of the game's writing and execution
hasn't changed, and unfortunately those are things I hold in high priority, but there
is a lot that I learned about the battle mechanics and lore that I really appreciate. Overall
I feel that whether you enjoy this game or not will have a lot to do with whether you
prioritize execution over ideas when it comes to the story, and whether you'll enjoy the
battle system… because there really isn't anything else to do in the game other than
fight and move forward. For me, while I enjoyed the battle mechanics—and especially loved
the usefulness of buffs and debuffs—the incessantly long dungeons made combat feel
way too repetitive for my taste, and while the lore and premise of the story is fascinating,
I just could not personally connect with the characters due to awkward writing and delivery.
In short, while I can understand why this game offers a lot for those who enjoy it,
I ultimately did not enjoy it much myself. I respect and acknowledge that it's a deeper
game than I gave it credit for when I first played it, but upon this second playthrough
I found myself more often than not feeling frustrated by the repetitious nature of its
design and it's lack of freedom and variety. These frustrations didn't help to sweeten
what I already felt was sour execution on the part of the storytelling, and ultimately
kept me from fully enjoying my experience. Therefore, I'm going to have to give Final
Fantasy XIII 2 ½ worst birthdays ever, out of 5.
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