Review: Final Fantasy 13

Final Fantasy 13 is a game that gives the player the illusion of customization and freedom, but instead delivers a pre-rendered experience that rarely deviates from what you're supposed to do. This makes is less of a game and more a series of points you must go through, which comes of as excessively linear.

The graphics are about as flawless as one can expect from a game with a giant budget. Every area is well-detailed and all the animations are very fluid. Despite all the action that may occur on screen, the frame rate of the game never drops in the slightest. Much like technologically, aesthetically the graphics are very pleasing as well. The game boasts a gorgeous array of colors and effects in each environment, you might catch yourself stopping and looking around once in a while. Unfortunately, like many modern Final Fantasy titles, the design of certain elements, whether it's the technology or the costume design, are purely driven for the aesthetic experience and not the cognitive human response. The actual functionality of before-mentioned items improbable, making the world as a whole feel shallow and not well-thought out. The special effects are as chaotic as they are fun to look at, most of which occur during battle. There are little touches, like fire attacks briefly scorching the battleground that are nice, unexpected details. The computer generated scenes are probably the most visually impressive moments of the game, despite being almost obsolete because of the in game graphics are not too far away.

One element that does hamper the graphical wonders of the game is the camera itself. It awkwardly positions itself either slightly to the left or to the right of the character you're controlling. This makes it hard to adequately take in the complete scope of the environments. Also, the camerawork suffers in the more confinded areas of the game, drunkenly swinging about as if its hitting against the walls as you're trying to navigate around. The best camerawork is when the game takes over and offers a pre-positioned camera for a brief period of time. Only then are you fully able to grasp the notion of your character in the context of the environment.

One of the weaker aspects of the game is the story. The exposition does its best to leave you guessing and wondering what's going on right from the beginning. Key words that are critical to understanding what is going on are either never out-right explained, or are explained much later in the plot. This makes it hard to get drawn into the story of the game and leaves the player confused and put-off. Once you do understand what is going on, the plot actually comes off as pretty simple. Not much progresses as far as developments or plot twists, which is probably why they tried to make the plot merely sound confusing. The characters follow through with one overall goal throughout the entire game which makes running through various points in the game rather dull. All the different points of the story are kept in the Datalog which can be accessed at anytime through the menu. But breaking away from the game just to read paragraph after paragraph is not good pacing for the story or the gameplay and should've been included merely as a reminder of what's going on instead of being necessary to understanding the plot.

There are some scenes that get pretty over the top, or sacrifice logic to serve the game's purposes. Early on, a bridge is taken out and one main character and one sub character fall a considerable distance. The sub character is killed by the fall while the main character is not only still alive, but is able to walk away from the scene. It's moments like this that make swallowing some of the story a little tough; and there are several throughout the game.

The characters do little to enhance the story or generate any interest. Other than having some of the worst names in gaming, each character eventually falls into a stereotype seen in other games. Sazh is probably the best written character, mostly because he acts like a real human being for about half the game, but then succumbs to cliches like the rest of the cast. A special mention has to go to Vanille for being absolutely unbearable to listen to. For the most part, the voice acting in the game is pretty solid, until you get to her. I spent about 3 hours trying to decide what accent she was supposed to have, and the rest of the game playing on mute. Back-pedaling to the names, the cast consists of Vanille, Lightning, Snow, Hope, Sazh and Fang. To her credit, Lightning's real name, which isn't Lightning, is actually fitting, but the rest have no excuse. Names like Hope merely fuel corny conversations about how the character ironically has a lack of hope. It wouldn't be so bad if the conversation went down only once in the game, but the plot sees fit to keep throwing it at you every so often, with little variation or reason. In fact, each bit of dialoge not shamefully trying to explain the plot seems to consist of one character losing the will to go on, but then gets reinvigorated through a healthy pep talk by another character. It makes the character interactions a little predictable and immediately feels like the game padding itself out.

All the sub characters in the game feel terribly underdeveloped to the point of almost not being needed at all. Some characters are given points in the plot that call for you to be emotionally attached, but its never achieved. They are never given enough screen time, personality, development, or plot relevance for the player to care in the least. The only non-main character that gets a decent amount of attention is the main boss, who is pretty one-dimensional. He has one goal, and it remains the same the entire game. However, the plot doesn't do a good job of fostering him consistently. He has the power to make the characters suffer under illusions, effectively making them do what he wants. However, the plot does a poor job of taking advantage of this, and the one time he does do it, its conquered rather anti-climatically.

The soundtrack is rather hit or miss. There are ambient musical scores that manage to compliment the scenery which is all you can really ask for. But then there are tracks that contrast the events happening on screen too much. The biggest offender is probably the battle music. It doesn't capture the nature of the moment, and instead feels a bit too calming or passive. The sound effects are just what you expect, nothing too extraordinary, but very appropriate.

The heart and soul of most every RPG is the combat system. Final Fantasy 13 does a good job of breaking away from a traditional formula and creates a whole new experience. The creators have been quoted saying they would like to create a game that acted like an interactive movie. Well, that's exactly what the combat in this game feels like, a movie.

Battles are fought in real time, using an active time bar. Instead of have the bar represent one action a character can take, its broken up into segments. Each segment represents a different possible action, and the game slowly stacks on more of these segments as the game progresses.

Choosing what action a character takes done either through a menu system or automatically. When choosing the manual route, the menu seems to drag the gameplay down. Simply put, menu-based combat and real time action do not mix well, and have never been executed in a way that would replace just simply hitting one button to attack. Thankfully, you don't have to manually input any actions, as the game can do it for you. For the most part, the AI that selects the actions are pretty spot on, especially for the two attacking roles in the game. What mostly dictates what actions are automatically selected by you and your AI partners is how much is known by the enemy. You can learn more by either fighting the same enemy multiple times or scanning the enemy with libra. However, for any mage based role, the AI can range from competent to unacceptable. Healers will mostly focus on healing each party member to max health before considering raising a fallen ally, which may be another healer. Since there is no way to adjust the healer's AI or take direct control of anyone but the leader, you're forced to either compensate with changing your leaders role or accepting the AI as is.

The game features 6 different roles, each one well-rounded and purposefully place in the game. Commander is your physical attacker, Ravager is your magical attacker, Saboteur is your enfeebler, Sentinel is your tank, Medic is your Healer and Synergist is your buffer. You can assign a combination of roles to your characters in the game's menu. While the game offers you to mix up these roles just about any way you want, you only have a limited amount of variations before you run out of room. Though its not necessary to have that many different combinations of roles in battle, in fact, you need about 2-3 combinations throughout most of the game. This makes combat more redundant than exciting. Each enemy can be approached the same way, so each battle will play out very similarly. For the most part, the main goal of the battle, other than defeating your opponent, is to stagger them. Staggering an enemy allows you to do considerably more damage and sometimes renders the enemy unable to act. Every enemy in the game can be staggered the same way, so there's little variation in combat.

Switching between roles has been made easy; you just hit L1 and select the combination of roles you wish to execute. However, the game makes you watch the animation of each character changing roles one by one, but then every other time after that, has all characters changing at the same time. This wouldn't be a problem if the combat stopped during these moments. However, it does not; enemies will continue to beat you down while the game shows off more of its graphical power.

Inside of combat, enemies will use area of effect attacks or attacks that can hit more than one character. However, the position of your characters or any movement on the battlefield is simply out of your control. Your characters will continually walk into AoE attacks and you are helpless to stop it.

Other features found in combat, outside the traditional item usage, are techniques. This menu features summons and a few other abilities that you really never need to use. Summoning takes away two of your party members and replaces it with the leader's personal summoned monster. At this point, it is impossible to be killed. After a set period of time, you can initiate gesault mode. Gesault mode makes your summon turn into a vehicle and you can unleash attacks upon your enemy. This may sound like a treat, and for the first few times, it is, but it quickly gets boring and useless. The damage output eventually is not worth the lose of two other characters.

Technical Points used to execute techniques are replenished according to how well you performed in battle. Basically, you are rated from zero to five stars by how quickly you were able to dispatch your enemies, as shown at the end of each battle. Boss battles get special attention for having an unnecessary time limit to them. Eventually during the battle, the boss will cast doom on you at a predetermined time point and your character will fall. This was probably included to stop players from barely beating a boss, but makes no sense in the context of the game. There is no currency award at the end of battles at all, instead you must rely on selling items and gear you find. Instead of traditional towns with shops and inns, the game replaces all of that with functions at save points. While this does do a good job of making you feel isolated and alone in the game, which compliments the themes of the plot, it also makes the overall game feel devoid of substance.

Another thing accumulated after battles are crystaline points or CP. CP is your tradition experience points and used to boost the stats of your characters. Instead of traditional levels, the game follows more of a Final Fantasy 10 approach with a series of stats along a path. However, the path rarely ever deviates, making building characters rather mundane.

A game over will occur when and only when the leader's HP drops to zero outside of a summoning. Every other character in battle can faint as many times as the want, but the leader cannot. What makes the leader so special that a secondary character can't revive them? This mechanic merely feeds into the facade of difficulty the game artificially builds up.

In-game exploration is almost non-existent. You will continue down a mostly linear from start to finish. The few deviations are merely placed there to conceal predicable treasure spots. The only open-ended area isn't seen until two-thirds of the way through the game, and is difficult to navigate. This is mostly because there is no world map. The game only gives you the map of the area you are in, but no other locations, names or reference points to help you. Another hindering aspect is the map rotates according to which direction you are facing, making getting from one end to the other a little disorienting. The mini-map provides an arrow, pointing you to your next story-based objective, but for the most part, doesn't help much. There are points around each are, signified by glowing circles that allow your character to jump to different levels of height on an area. This does not compliment exploration, but feels more like the game containing you into areas you're supposed to go, merely giving the illusion of freedom. Even when the game presents you with an area you think you can jump, most of the time, it will not let you simply because it wasn't programmed that way.

There are some random elements in the game that briefly make an appearence, and then are never heard from again. Such is the weather-controlling level of the game, where you can control the environment, which affects what types of enemies are roaming around. The only problem is, this aspect of the game is localized to just one level, which you can never get back to, and is never seen again. This begs the question, what was the point of having it in the first place? Was it just an experiment in gameplay that was left in accidentally? It would've been nice if gameplay did throw some more variation, but sadly, this random occurance is all we get. Another thing the game fails to capitalize on is Lightning's ability to throw... lightning and somehow survive high falls or jumps. Its clear she has this ability, but its never used for gameplay purposes. Its only featured in a few cut scenes and then disappears from the game. It would be understandable to not have it considering she isn't the main character, nor you're not in control of her the entire time. But there could've at least been parts of the game where you were forced to play as her and it was fleshed out a little more. Not all random elements of the game are confusing though, there are moments where you control some of the mechs of Final Fantasy 13. These moments do bring a fair amount of joy and variation, but in the 50 hours it takes to beat the game, there's only 2 times this happens.

There is a small upgrading system put in place for accessories and weapons. Each piece of gear can be upgraded, but upgraded only one way. Most of the accessories in the game are downright useless and serve to make the treasure hunter trophy all the more time-consuming. Battles items have been overly simplified into healing items, status healers and a revival item. Despite there being about 10 different battle items, it never really feels like there needs to be more.

There is little to do after the main story. You can embark on similar missions which require you to go out and defeat a boss, 64 missions to be exact. There's a selection of missions called the Titan Trials. The Titan Trials features a pyramid like grid which you start at one boss and slowly work down a path to six different possible bosses. However, to encounter all these bosses, you have to go through the trials 6 different times, repeating each boss battle. There's even a 7th, hidden boss at the end of it all. This is a needless extension of game play that is unacceptable.

Once you do everything in the game, there's little to no reason to ever revisit anything. The game will only be played through one way. Battles play out the same no matter what, exploration is minimal, the plot offers no choices and characters develop their stats the same way, thanks to character stats being capped for no reason until you pass a certain point in the game. Basically there are very few game play variations to make each play through different. Final Fantasy 13 is a triumph of all flash and no substance. The game feels like a pre-made experience that cares little of what a gamer needs. It feels like game play was sacrificed to satisfy Square Enix's fetish with top-of-the-line graphics, and for that, the game suffers heavily.