Final Fantasy XIII

Final Fantasy XIII has been one of the most anticipated games of this whole series. The hypes, and the doubts has been finally put to rest with the release of the game in Japan. The game has many flaws, yet it has many strengths; it may not be an amazing game of epic proportion that the fans had hoped for, but it is a polished game that deserves at least one play-through.

The Story

The story of Final Fantasy XIII has both the deep sea area, and the shallow beach. The world view, the concept, and the theme are all very ambitious but ultimately fall short in delivery because of its traditional structure of a weekly 16-page shounen manga textbook style. The exposition, the gathering of companions, figuring out the common destiny, and ultimately overcome the destiny has all been used too frequently.

The Gameplay

While the battle system is streamlined, and satisfying; the AI should of been more developed. The game uses ATB, or Active Time Battle system, where it is turn-based but the enemy will not wait for command inputs. So it can be understood as a semi-active turn-based gameplay.

While the AI is decent, and will get you through the game, it falls short to deliver a comprehensive AI system: Beside changing roles or jobs, on the fly which dictates your AI action, nothing else can be altered for you AI teammate. That's right; no turning off skills that you may not want your teammate to use, no manual quick targeting to ask your teammate to attack a certain enemy, and no prioritization of skills or spells.

Crystarium System

The leveling system has also been cleverly disguised as a Crystarium system where you earn CP after battle and can be used to alter the character's stats. Your Crystarium level are 'capped' at each point of the story, therefore the game provides more challenges than that of previous Final Fantasies in the series. Therefore, instead of gaining experience points after winning a battle, characters gain CP (Crystarium Points) which can then be spent in order to unlock abilities and increase attributes such as maximum HP.

One of the most glaring omissions and departures from the usual Final Fantasy landscape(s) are; lack of towns, and shops. The game flows from Cinematic movies, to fighting enemies, to walking in a linear path, then more Cinematic movies, then more fighting, then a boss: repeat. Although many long time fans may be disappointed by this fact, it is not all intolerable especially the combat and the Cinematic movies are decent enough to serve as a distractor from these omitted elements.

The Sound and Music

Final Fantasy XIII's music is great, it has a wide variety of genres: ballad, pop, techno, trance, classical. Most of the tracks are great -- although not too memorable. The Japanese voice actors are of the high quality Japanese anime caliber, delivering natural speech and great expression.

Replay Value

While the story takes somewhere between 40 and 60 hours to complete and another 20-30 hours of additional "hunt" missions to be done, players may not wish to replay the game again in its entirety simply because you probably only want to go through the same one-way path once in a lifetime.