Final Fantasy XIII is the thirteenth installment in the long-running Final Fantasy series and has deep combat scenarios and beautiful cutscenes, which make up a big part of the game. It is the first game to utilize Square Enix’s Crystal Tools engine, and throws you into a beautiful expansive universe filled with beings both within and totally exceeding the realms of your imagination.
The game revolves around a few characters whose stories are quite a bit intertwined, although you might not see it at first. Characters like Lightning, Snow, Sazch, and others, whom you can take control of from time to time, have varied abilities and each uses different weapons in combat, which come in handy as you strategize during battles. The game starts off with a cinematic sequence which shows you just how good the graphics are. Looking like something from the movie Avatar, the camera flows through canyons, dipping and rising to cinematic effect, giving you quite a scenic run-through.
Serah, love interest of Snow, has become a Pulse l’Cie and Snow stands by her, vowing to help her complete her focus. Her sister, Lightning, is not so understanding and casts her out saying that since she’s a l’Cie now, she’s an enemy of Cocoon and hence enemy to Lightning herself. Lightning is a young soldier fighting for Cocoon so her reaction is understandable. She later realizes her folly and sets out to meet Serah to try and help her. And the fantasy begins. There are a few other mysterious characters who emerge like Vanille, Hope, and Fang, each with their own dark sides, histories and powerful and inspiring backgrounds.
The Active Time Battle system or ATB system makes its return to the series, but is a little different in function. The ATB gauge fills as time passes during a battle and you can queue up a number of battle commands depending on the size of your ATB gauge, thus stringing them together and unleashing them upon enemies. Battles are not played out in the same place you encounter enemies though, a part of the game which seems a bit strange and detached. A battle begins when you approach an adversary, coming in contact with it. You are then seemingly transported to a different screen or arena where you must strategically use your abilities and the abilities of your team to overcome these foes. You can create and customize paradigms to mount the most effective strategy.
At first this battle system seems really boring. It takes a lot of fun out of playing a game. But as you go on, you earn more abilities and with them, the power to choose which to unleash upon your enemies increases. As you learn new attacks and magic you can choose which will do more damage to enemies. It gets more engrossing as the game progresses and switching around tactics never becomes boring. Cutscenes make up large parts of the game that are totally out of your control. This makes playing FFXIII a little tiring. Watching these cutscenes one after the other is not exactly what playing a video game is all about, and this brings down the level of entertainment the game provides.
Dueling is deep, and although you only control one character in battles, you can assign certain types of roles to your allies like Ravagers, Synergists or Medics to help you defeat enemies faster. “Staggering” an enemy causes any subsequent attacks to be more effective and damaging. The enemy is more vulnerable and will remain in this state until the stagger gauge has depleted. So quick actions during this time make for a more effective strategy in getting rid of hard to beat opponents. Focusing everyone’s strengths on a tough opponent to stagger it, and then going all out until you defeat that enemy works wonders. But this is not the case every time and you must pick strategies according to what sort of mix of enemies you come up against and what you have at hand. Gameplay is alright and receives a score of 8 out of 10.
The graphics in the game are beautiful. You won’t have a single complaint in this department. They form just another part of the game and help immerse the gamer in a Final Fantasy universe worthy of the title it carries. You really can’t see where the graphics need to be improved and so receive a well-deserved 8.9 score out of 10. The environments in Final Fantasy XIII are huge and expansive and quite stunning. Unfortunately the game limits you to certain “walkable” paths, and you can’t let your heart free and explore them as you wish. Interaction within the game’s environments is also limited. Since vast expanses of environments cannot be explored, the game feels very unidirectional, very limiting. You get a niggling shackled feeling when you look at the game’s great expansive environments, knowing it is not to be. Game environments get 8.5 out of 10 for want of more interactivity and “explorability”. Sound in the game is something you might greatly overlook. But the musical score of Final Fantasy XIII is truly engrossing and enchanting. After all the score is composed by Masashi Hamauzu, who has previously worked on the scores of Final Fantasy X and Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII. It receives 9.5 out of 10.
The Final Word: Final Fantasy XIII starts off well enough but doesn’t really do much after, though it has some intense, challenging battles along the way. It’s more of the same almost all the way through and battling enemies becomes mundane and monotonous. It is crucial though to further characters’ abilities. This can’t be side-stepped as enemies get stronger and harder to beat as the game progresses. Graphics and sound count for something and help you get lost in a magical world. But gameplay needs a good shaking up. There are various paradigms to explore and abilities to unlock though, in a game which rarely has you on the edge of your seat.
Sound: 9.5/10.
Graphics: 8.9/10.
Environments: 8.5/10.
Gameplay: 8.0/10.
Overall (not an average): 8.2/10.