Final Fantasy XIII
GeekswithWives Mini-Review
Platform(s) PS3, Xbox360
Publisher-Square Enix
RPG
Final Fantasy 13 takes place in a futuristic metropolis on the planet Cocoon at the beginning of the story and later moves to another world, called the lower world or Gran Pulse. Introduced in this game are various new enhancements and techniques to yet again take the player on an epic story of friendship, adventure, danger and the culminating point when villain meets hero. The development teams behind Final Fantasy have always strived to bring the story in new ways and to adjust game play to reflect current technologies and player needs. Whilst that still being true in 13, there were far more differences with this title, than in between previous games.
In FF13, you had an item synthesis/disassemble capabilities, fairly good camera control, fast paced combat, a huge amount of amazing cinematics, near seamless transition between cinema and game play and a new battle mechanic system to enhance combat in a new way by debilitating enemies, interrupting actions/casting, launching into the air etc. From the beginning until chapter 11, game play is straight forward and very linear. Don’t let that scare you though, you don’t get the feeling that you are barreling down a path of monotony. Developers did a great job to interject game play at strategic points to input more stimulation, whether it be a short cut scene, a break to show the player part of the surrounding environment or to switch entirely to a different sub-story with different characters. You can think of this as a tutorial in some respects as parts of the game are revealed at certain points and the game begins to pick up each time.
Story wise this makes sense and for those reasons I will not spoil it too much for you, just bear in mind that even though play at this point is out of your control, there is a lot of natural effects happening around you that lend to an open ended theme. Character advancement was a little bit of a letdown for me and there are other parts of the game I’ll touch on in a bit that I wish had been done differently. Advancement boils down to spending “exp” on nodes in a tree, similar to FF10, with the sphere grid. Main difference is there are no locks and everyone pretty much starts at the same point on their own tree.
This is a great game for Final Fantasy fans, especially if you enjoy story and solid game play. For reasons mentioned above, I don’t think it is the best or most liked, but it is definitely a good experience and worth a play through. (if you are interested, list your favorite FF in the respective forum)
Expect to Platinum this game in approximately 110-130 hours!
Looking forward to Final Fantasy XIV, the next MMO, tune in!!
Purchase @ $40