In case you couldn't tell, I go through major gaming phases. From about December of last year until about May I was on a huge platformer kick, spurred on by my Raspberry Pi. Then I took a quick spin through a few Metroidvania games, and came out the other side hankering for some RPGs. I think I am very close to done with this kick (at least on home consoles), and have one more left in me before I'll change up my genre. I'm thinking maybe relaxing with some MLB: The Show for a while. All of these RPGs require a lot of time and focus to finish up. But I'm glad to have worked through some of my backlog, and enjoyed some above average games to boot.
My most recent quest was finishing up Final Fantasy XIII, a game that I began probably 2 years ago, and left hanging at about 35 hours of play, basically on the last stretch towards the ending. This is also why I'm able to review it so quickly, having finished Banjo-Kazooie in mid July. I'm working on finishing every mainline Final Fantasy game, and this makes it so I just have to finish XV, which is great! Or maybe not so great. I'll have to review that one once I finish it.
FF XIII is a polarizing mess of a game, with a lot of good and a lot of bad. It is very hard for me to review it fairly, as I feel like if it didn't have the name "Final Fantasy" in it, I would probably have enjoyed it a lot more. But branding is important, and advertising a game as Final Fantasy comes with certain expectations, so I'll try to balance my disappointment as best I can.
FF XIII is a true ensemble Final Fantasy game, much different from a game like X, which focuses heavily on two characters, or VII, which focuses heavily on one. It's a lot more similar in orientation to a game like VI, with a large cast of characters, all of whom play significant roles in the story.
To summarize the story (which is really excellent), you find yourself in a world called Gran Pulse. In this world, there are two areas, a lower world inhabited by monsters (Pulse), and a floating orb in the sky called Cocoon, on which most of the people reside. Cocoon is ruled by the fal'Cie (pronounced fallsee), which are essentially like gods. The fal'Cie have the power to brand humans and give them a task, called a focus. Once branded, they are known as l'Cie (pronounced lesee). If the l'Cie completes that focus, they are "rewarded" by turning into crystal. If they fail or refuse to complete it, they turn to monsters. You control a team of 6 l'Cie trying to save the world. Resigned to defy the fal'Cie and risk being turned into monsters, your team must press on with courage, regardless of the certainty of their fate.
There were many good things about FF XIII. The graphics were excellent, both in battle, outside of battle, and during cut scenes.
The music, composed by Masashi Hamauzu, was really excellent. Hamauzu was one of the three composers, along with longtime FF composer Nobuo Uematsu, who was responsible for the great score for FFX, and Hamauzu steps out of Uematsu's enormous shadow here to deliver a really excellent soundtrack with far more fully orchestrated pieces than Uematsu could have done. I still probably would have enjoyed hearing Uematsu's attempt at adapting his minimalist, melodically focused approach to a true modern game, but I have little to complain about with this score.
I enjoyed the much maligned battle system. Rather than selecting options from a menu of choices, you instead mostly hit "auto-battle" here. While this may seem boring, it really never is, due to the differing roles you can select. Roles can be fluidly swapped during battle, allowing you to adapt to changes in battle and keeping combat reflexive and fun. All six roles have their own value, and you'll find that you'll need most of them to complete the game.
For example, Commandos are the physical attackers, and do the most damage. But central to the game is a stagger meter, which increases on an enemy as you do more and more damage to it. Commandos, however, merely stabilize this meter so that it doesn't decline, but doesn't increase much. In order to increase the stagger meter to the max and do enormous damage, you'll also need to bring in Ravagers, mages that do less damage, but rapidly stack up the stagger meter. Without a Commando, however, the gains in stagger you get from Ravagers will quickly go back to zero, so having both is necessary to beat most enemies. Buffs and debuffs are also extremely important in this game, much like in FF XII. As such, you'll make heavy use of the Synergist and Sabateur roles, which will help you to weaken your opponent and strengthen yourself. The Medic serves to heal you, which is useful when you get hurt. The Sentinel was perhaps the least useful role, serving as a tank for your team. I found that when properly buffed, a Sentinel was rarely necessary, preferring instead to just keep a Medic on standby to switch in if my damage dealers got hurt.
I found the game to be appropriately challenging, with plenty of difficult enemies, and several challenging bosses. The end boss, however, was extremely disappointing in how easy it was.
The story was really engaging and interesting, causing good immersion by making the player wonder what they would do in the situation. Is it better to complete your focus and turn to crystal, knowing you may be damning the rest of the world, or risk defying the fal'Cie to do the right thing, and turn into horrific monsters?
Ok, nice things are over. There were a ton of weaknesses to this game that I found incredibly frustrating. The level up system is interesting, and generally well done, but it was so very annoying to hit "caps" in how high you could level throughout the game. There were plenty of times when I was as strong as could be, and kept racking up more points to level up my character, but had nothing on which to spend them, as I hadn't yet been given more options. These options were typically opened at the conclusion of a chapter, but basically forced you to be a certain strength when facing a boss. One of the fun things about Final Fantasy has always been your ability to continuously make yourself stronger, and thus control the narrative of the game yourself. Do you want to be the well practiced and grinded team so strong that all bosses are very easy? I've done that in FF VII, where I was so strong that I beat the end boss in one attack. Or do you want to be the scrappy upstarts skating through the game as quickly as possible, but risking wiping on the tough bosses (my experience playing through FFIV)? That choice has always been available to you, but is not really available in XIII due to these caps.
Speaking of not having choices, this game is absolutely abominably linear. While the linear nature of the game probably strengthens the narrative a bit, there is absolutely no reason to make a game, and especially a role playing game, this linear. Each level is basically a hallway with a blinking light at the end. Once you hit this light, you get a cutscene, a boss, or both. If you think I'm kidding, go play it. I may as well be playing a new school FPS, walking along a path blasting everything that moves. At least give me some winding dungeons to explore! C'mon Square!
Your ability to explore takes a slight uptick at the end of the game, when you are finally free of Cocoon and can explore the lower world, which is large, beautiful, and mostly satisfying. Central to your experience in Pulse are missions, which are basically just big monsters to kill for certain rewards. This is the best part of the game, but got boring after about 10 of these missions (I ended up completing 30ish before finally throwing in the towel). This would have been better if the bosses were at the end of old school dungeons, requiring you to face peril in order to get them, and having big payoffs. But generally they were just hanging out on Pulse somewhere, and you received paltry rewards.
On net, I'd say that FFXIII is a slightly above average RPG. It has the Square flare for visuals, sound, story, and an engaging battle system. But it misses out on the classic feel that you control the narrative, which is one of the classic hallmarks of a great RPG, which this is not. Most Final Fantasy games have been truly great RPGs, so this is a bit hard to swallow. I'd compare this more to a Grandia quality game than a Final Fantasy, and say that it's in the bottom 1/4 of FF games. It's better than the abominable FF III, though. The real FF III, not the SNES III. If you like good stories, and aren't expecting a great Final Fantasy game, I can recommend this to you. But I'd advise you to go try IV. Or V. Or VI. Or VII. Or VIII. Or IX. Or X. Or XII. Or XIV RR. Or Tactics. Or Tactics Advance (I think you get the idea), before you try this one out. I'll give it a 7.6/10.
Next up, I'll be reviewing one of my all time favorite RPGs, likely the last console RPG I play for a while. Here's a quick teaser for you:
-TRO
No comments:
Post a Comment