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u23art · 8 years

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A LOOK AT FINAL FANTASY XIII

Final Fantasy XIII, you’re lucky you’re pretty or I would have been much angrier at the ordeal that is your final 3 boss fights. I commonly tell myself that I was at an age some years ago where I simply didn’t have the patience to play or let alone beat RPGs, hence why I had put XIII down. Afterwards, I let myself get absorbed by the mindset that this is a game to be hated, that it was senseless bells and whistles and it was the popular thing to hate. It wasn’t until I beat Final fantasy XV and sat through the lack luster ending that I felt I should give XIII another try. Even while playing XV, I found that listening to the XIII soundtrack while driving was oddly more fitting. The story for this game revolves around the turmoil between the planet Gran Pulse, the world of Cocoon orbiting above it, and the governing body of Eden above Cocoon. Everything originates from Pulse, the humans and the magical beings known as Fal’cie. Long ago a was broke out between Fal’cie, leaving a lasting fear in the hearts of people towards them and those chosen by the Fal’cie, the L’cie. A Cocoon Fal’cie, sensing an approaching threat to the world chooses 6 individuals to be bestowed with powers to combat the coming danger that is Ragnarok. There’s Lightning Farron, professional ball breaking Guardian who is roped in after trying to save her sister Serah, and Serah’s fiancee Snow; the local rascal and top of Lightning’s punching list. While hell is breaking loose while Lightning and Snow fight Eden’s hired guns PSICOM, they end up bringing the reluctant pilot Sahz and freshly orphaned Hope along for this drama. And lastly there is Vanille and Fang, the last two party members who join you in due time and are suspiciously Australian. With every twist and turn bringing more bullets and distrust their way, the group must sort out their differences before the end comes. If there was one issue I had during my 50 hour campaign with this group’s relationships, it was that there wasn’t enough time spent having them speak to each other in humanizing moments. All dialogue spoken does not deviate outside of the focus given by the Fal’cie or events that led up to the Fal’cie’s ordaining. This became a problem for me when following two characters, Sahz and Hope. Now Sahz is a good character in his own right, if I had to compare him to anyone it would be Han Solo, he does the straight talking and doesn’t let his own discomfort with things keep him from speaking what’s on his mind or just reluctantly addressing what needs to be done. But his motivations all stem from his relationship with his son, who eventually drops out of the story at one point, leaving Sahz to join the group just because of the Focus. And then there’s Hope. I hate Hope. He spends the first few chapters of the game, plotting and conspiring like a serial killer, and the last chunk of the game has him spewing motivational speeches and one liners. It feels forced because he doesn’t even confront Snow, whom he bares an irrational grudge towards, for more than two minutes before being interrupted by an explosion. Then after Snow takes the hits for this piece of crap, the issue is simply resolved and we move on. It wasn’t until I compared his Ravager and Medic stats with Vanille’s that I came to the conclusion that I didn’t have to regard him outside of the story and removed him from my main party. Now the gameplay is a little tricky to talk about, it still features an ATB gauge like previous titles. But there is no micro managing needed in a traditional sense for each member of the party. This time around you simply switch between different sets of paradigms, and the character will automatically perform moves from that setting. Fast switching between your sets will come to be critical with most of the bosses thanks to the added feature of the break gauge. As an enemy takes hits, this yellow gauge will fill, and upon reaching a certain threshold of damage you enter a brief period where damage is multiplied for really wailing on your enemies. But leaving enemies alone will end up making the gauge deplete. Using the Comando paradigm’s physical attacks will slow down depletion and the ravager paradigm’s magic can drastically fill that meter. This adds tension to the gameplay when the bosses hit hard. Honestly solid, but you never really feel powerful. There are no random battles in this game, enemies roam around the maps and touching them will bring you to a separate battlefield. And leveling up is similar to that of FFX where you activate nodes on a grid to gain benefits. However, this time you have to spend Crystarium points that are accumulated from defeated enemies. These two points together can make progression feel slow, this combined with relying on the break gauge periods against enemies with 100, 000 to 500, 000 HP can feel like a grueling uphill battle. And an additional small nitpick I have is the extra long animation that plays when switching paradigms the first time in each battle, this is annoying and leaves you vulnerable. And there are even fewer options for healing and equipment as previous FF conventions are removed. This includes the usefulness of potions and items, and the removal of Gil after winning battles. There are places to shop online in the game at save points, but you could end up ignoring most of them since you never have much gil to spare.

Now the game is linear yes, but it does eventually open up once you reach Gran Pulse, a wide area with branching paths, but this isn’t until at LEAST 30 hours into the game. If anything, the entire game should have been structured around multiple hub areas of the sort. These could have provided actual side quests and fixed two big issues I had. Side quests could present opportunities to level up, provided character building between the main cast AND remove the feeling of being funneled to the end of the game. I mentioned early on that back a few years ago I did not have the patience I have now to finish RPGs, this is crucial to have or at least it was for me on this game’s final boss. The three phases are a test of patience that took me over 2 hours to beat. The final boss has 3 phases, the first phases isn’t hard, you just have to slowly shave away the health while keeping alive after hard hits. But the other 2 phases go into the realm of being unfair, as not only do you have to stay alive after hits that take off nearly all your health but you are also hit with the cast spell death. If your party leader dies the battle is over, thankfully I was allowed to start at the beginning of the boss phase I had died on. But I couldn’t allow myself to quit because I didn’t want to fight the 1st phase again for half an hour. And within that 2 hour fight, I died a lot.

And last, but certainly not least I need to talk about the music. The music is what made me forgive this game. The music is unique in the sense of putting a modern twist on otherwise more orchestral pieces, it’s refreshing and in most cases enthralling. And thank you to whoever chose Leona Lewis’s “My Hands” to play for the final cinematic. The original song in the Japanese version would have made the ending feel generic and I actually WOULD have been angry at this game. But My hand’s coupled with the visual of the sunrise hitting Cocoon in the sky, made the party’s victory feel like a strong personal triumph for each of them. This is in strong contrast to the original japanese ending overselling this idea of friendship between them, and honestly that isn’t really there so My Hands does a gets the job done better. So I have to make an apology to Final Fantasy XIII, it doesn’t deserve most of the harsh criticism it gets and I forgive most of its indiscretions thanks to how rewarded the player is with the visuals and music. Given everything put together, I give Final Fantasy XIII an 8 out of 10.

Feel free to comment or contrast, and thank you for reading.

#Mister23 #Final Fantasy #Final Fantasy XIII #Final Fantasy 13 #Square Enix

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