Final Fantasy XIII

And here's even more in the 'substantial gaming' department, a game that took up a large chunk of my summer- Final Fantasy XIII. Critical reception to the game was decidedly lower than what's usually given the Final Fantasy games, and it quickly generated a reputation as being very boring. "It takes 24 hours to get through the tutorial!" was a popular claim. "Way too heavy on cutscenes!" was another. I realize I'm a bit of a logging optimist, and it takes a real stinker of a game/book/show for me to get very critical, so much like this past January's Metroid: Other M post, I feel like I need to break this post into a few different sections to talk about what worked and what didn't. Here we go!

The Gameplay- By far the biggest change here is gameplay. This isn't all that surprising as Final Fantasy games are famous for introducing wild new game mechanics with each installment. Developer Square Enix may not always hit the right notes, but you can't call them lazy. Unlike most game series, fan outcry would probably be the most negative here if nothing had changed. So what did they do for Final Fantasy XIII? We've got the Paradigm system. Basically each one of your six characters comes pre-set with three job classes that simplify a lot of the jobs in the Final Fantasy series down to a few basics: commandos do the most damage; medics are used to heal and the party; synergists cast buff spells; saboteurs cast negative status effects on enemies; sentinels draw enemy attacks away from allies; and finally the ravager deals weak attacks but are used to fill up an enemy's "stagger" bar- once an enemy is staggered, for a short time all attacks on the enemy become ridiculously potent. This results in a gameplay that's a little close to Final Fantasy XII's hands-off gambit approach but really completely different from all other games in the series. With most boss fights, your strategy will focus mostly on timing and setting up the best combination of "paradigms", or set of roles each character will have in a fight. For instance, you'll often want to include in your paradigm sets a sort of "starter" paradigm with a saboteur, a synergist and a medic- the first two cast all necessary spells while the latter keeps everyone alive. Another good one to include is a set of 3 ravagers so when the time is right you can hack away at the stagger bar to get an enemy staggered quickly. It's less like the old style of figuring out that a certain enemy is weak to fire attacks, and more about knowing what kind of attacks an enemy is capable of doing and when, and how they're affected by staggering. But enough about the specifics- does it work? In my opinion, yes. It's certainly an extension of Final Fantasy XII's mechanics so as long as you're not expecting old-school turn-based battles and can go in with an open mind, then the game can be pretty fun. But there's a problem. The scenarios I've been describing start happening when the game "opens up", which doesn't really happen until like 24 hours in. That's a full day of gameplay! That's longer than like 99% of games! What happens in those 24 hours is a much more specific and guided gameplay where you often play with only 2 characters and have very specific roles, forcing you to play in a very un-creative way. This more than anything is the reason I think so many people were turned off completely by Final Fantasy XIII, so let's expand on it more in...

The Pace- Just awful. RPGs start notoriously slow, but Final Fantasy XIII is frankly ridiculous. Where other games mask linearity by giving small choices and illusory freedome, Final Fantasy XIII is blatant about how linear it is. For those first 24 hours, as Trev had described to me, you will literally move forward, fight, and have a cutscene. "Leveling up" (which is actually pretty fun and reminiscent of the sphere grid, when it finally shows up) doesn't become a concept until many hours in. Cutscenes tend to dominate over gameplay, which doesn't help deflect the criticism that the game can often "play itself". Hell, even when the game does open up, you're met with basically a brick wall of difficulty the forces you to grind for a long time before you can move on to the game's suddenly very fun third act. The pacing is by far my biggest gripe about the game and hopefully is something that was fixed in the two sequels. Hey speaking of sequels, how about that story?

The Story- I found the story of Final Fantasy XIII to be above average for the series. There's a few dumb parts and some cheesy dialog, as is par for the course, but there were some concepts thrown in that I liked. You'll have to get over the cringe-inducing character names (Hope, Snow, Lightning, Vanille? Ugh.), some confusingly similar new nonsense terms (L'Cie, Ci'eth, Fal'cie), and Snow's constant referring to himself in the third person as "the hero" is a much less charming twist on Balthier's similar tendencies in Final Fantasy XII, but there's still an interesting story here at its heart. What truly separates the story in XIII from previous installments is just how much each character screws eachother over, accidentally or on purpose, and how it fuels a lot of in-group hatred throughout the game. Grudges last for a long time leading each character to a different "low point" that is actually integrated very well into the gameplay. The old gods, who created a floating civilization of Cocoon above the uncivilized wilds of Gran Pulse, have summoned our six heroes into a seemingly impossible task- to destroy their own world, or face a fate worse than death for themselves. Everyone in the group is quick to lay the blame on eachother for how it all went wrong, and their struggles for forgiveness made each character feel three-dimensional in a way I haven't seen since Final Fantasy VI. I mean, I'm at least looking forward to XIII-2 more than I've looked forward to any other Final Fantasy sequel, if only because there does seem to be a lot of potential for a better overall game. We'll see, but not for a while! And hey, just like that, I've got the main numbered non-MMO series of Final Fantasy beaten, and all of them have been posted here on the Blog. Some of my opinions have chaged over time, so let's jump into an overall Rank-ems!

12. FF3- The only new thing it brought to the table was the job system, but the DS version made an already hard game just excrutiating.

11. FF- Replayable only for nostalgic purposes. It's not awful, just completely bare-bones.

10. FF2- Introduced a failed leveling mechanic, but unlike the first two games on my list Final Fantasy II was at least quick and painless.

9. FF5- A significant step up from the previous 3, it really did the class system much better than III. Consider it the worst of the decent games.

8. FF8- This one just never quite stuck with me and gets appropriately labeled the oddball of the series. I didn't like Squall and the junction system was a little too bizarre, but overall it was still pretty fun.

7. FF13- Despite the ridiculous linearity, I did enjoy messing around with the paradigms.

6. FF10- Very fun gameplay, but a story that got too goofy at times.

5. FF12- The first game to switch from manually commanding each character to something a little like light programming of strategies. I loved it, but I understand why purists did not.

4. FF4- This begins a new tier of fantastic games- I'd suggest any of these four for anyone to play. Final Fantasy IV was such a huge step up from what came before it and I've been hankering for a replay since I played it first in the series three years ago.

3. FF9- It has one real downside in it's slow battle startup animations, and looking back I was definitely still playing RPGs all wrong on this, my third Final Fantasy. But it makes for a great homage to the older games while avoiding all of their missteps.

2. FF7- Commonly cited as the best game ever, this one will have to settle for the 2-spot for me, which is no big deal really! I think everyone here who has played a Final Fantasy game has played Final Fantasy VII.

1. FF6- The tiny screen of my Game Boy Micro felt like an innappropriate window into this deep, expansive game. Featuring the best villain, complete story arcs for like ten different playable characters, and fun gameplay; Sorry Webber, there's just nothing not to love.