Belonging to the biggest RPG franchise in the world means that more is expected of Final Fantasy games than other JRPGs and each entry in the series is looked at through a microscopic lens. And while Final Fantasy XIII does many things right, it ultimately does not hold its own against the other entries in the franchise because of an overbearingly mundane structure. The story has plenty of exciting moments, the visuals are as fantastic as you're going to see for a seventh generation RPG, and the combat system is a much more graceful change of pace than the somewhat clunky but novel system that Final Fantasy XII offered. However, the overall game never lives up to the excellence of some of its parts because of extremely one-note pacing that makes the experience feel repetitive and at times, shallow.
Despite some sloppy execution, the story in Final Fantasy XIII is quite interesting. It primarily takes place in the high-tech world of Cocoon, which is controlled by the fal'Cie, who are kind of like deities and who provide the people of Cocoon all of their basic necessities. For reasons that I won't spoil, the fal'Cie turn certain citizens into servants called l'Cie. The l'Cie are given a mission that they must complete (weirdly enough, they don't know what these missions are; they are only given vague clues through visions and what not). If they do complete the mission (which is called a Focus), they are enshrined in crystal. If they fail, they turn into monsters called Cei'th. And as an added drawback, they are despised by the citizens of Cocoon and are subject to a "purge" by the government under the guise that they have been infected by "Gran Pulse", a wilderness beneath Cocoon that the citizens greatly fear. With this set up out of the way, Final Fantasy XIII is is basically the story of Lightning, an ex-soldier who is on a mission to save her sister Serah, who is a l'Cie, from the cruel fate that lies in store. This soon turns into an epic struggle between FFXIII's serviceable cast and the Sanctum, Cocoon's theocratic government.
As I said earlier, the substance of the story is very interesting, but it unfortunately is held back by sloppy execution. The story details are never made very clear and you'll have to consult an in-game story log to actually make sense of a lot of things, and even with the story log, some plot details are still not very clear. Had the developers kept the story more simple, it could have been great since there are plenty of exciting moments and plenty of emotion. But the constant stream of terminology and details to keep track of distract from the story's excellent core. Furthermore, once you get to the more "open" part of the game (Gran Pulse), the story slows to a crawl and you'll start to think the developers had no idea what to do with the narrative once they had to incorporate it into a non-linear area. To be fair, the story does recover once you go back to Cocoon, but the damage is all ready done.
Many people complain about the characters in this game, but I think they all serve their purpose quite well and are competently developed. You may not like all of them (for instance, Vanille will grate on the nerves of those who don't like perky overly cheerful characters and Snow is dumb as a bag of rocks), but they all have their place within the narrative and their motivations and emotions are well fleshed out. Sometimes I didn't care about the plot, but for the most part, I always cared about the characters.
I also always enjoyed the combat, even if the game relies on it way too much. Basically, the system is a kind of modernized version of the infamous "jobs system." You have about six classes that have different tasks during battle. For instance, commandos deal heavy damage, ravagers fight by casting elemental magic, medics heal, saboteurs weaken the enemy with negative status effects and debuffs, synergists provide support with positive status effects and buffs, and sentinels protect the party with defensive techniques. The player determines the strategy of the battle by setting up varying combinations of these six "jobs", which the game refers to as "paradigms." While some characters are more adept at certain jobs than others, any character can take on any job within any given paradigm. You can set up multiple paradigms, which you cycle between during battle depending on the situation. Because battles move so fast, you'll probably rely on the game's auto battle function to input commands (you can input commands by yourself however). This means that actual spell casting and attacking is handled by the game while you switch paradigms depending on what's happening in the battle. You also can only directly control one character, though you can switch what job you're taking on by switching paradigms. You won't always be able to rely on a balanced paradigm consisting of both attackers and healers because enemies have what is called a "stagger meter," which is basically a thick layer of protection that must be broken down before you can do any substantial damage. It is nigh impossible to stagger an enemy without an all offensive paradigm and sometimes you'll need to do some very serious healing, so it pays to have balanced paradigms, all offensive paradigms, healing paradigms, defensive paradigms, paradigms for buffing, paradigms for inflicting status effects, and various combinations of these basic types. After all, you'll never know when you'll have to quickly switch from an offensive paradigm to one with at least two competent healers. You can also use items to heal, but it is not advisable. I found healing items to be useless with the exception of a few isolated situations.
Although I wished for a bit more to do at times, Final Fantasy XIII's battle system is extremely well done. The jobs are all very balanced and useful and many encounters in the game feel enjoyably tense because of all the quick paradigm switching you'll have to do. You won't have to have too much of a strategy in some of the easier encounters, but the game's excellent bosses are an enjoyable challenge because they force you to think about the paradigms that you are using as well as be quick on your feet. The only real complaint I have is that the stagger meter makes some battles drag on far too long, even if they appear to be quick just by looking at them. That being said, the battles are always a joy to watch. They are flashy, pretty, and frantic at the same time, and while the summons are not as useful as they are in other Final Fantasy games, some of them have very cool animations. However, a personal gripe of mine is that the developers decided to give the summons a vehicular form, which strikes me as more than a little derpy.
As strong as the combat is, the game's overall structure is so lacking that you'll start to feel like you're doing nothing but fighting. Like Final Fantasy X, you'll mainly be traversing very straight-forward areas, but unlike Final Fantasy X, there are no traditional towns to give the player a breather (shopping is done through save points), and there is nothing like The Cloister of the Trials or Blitzball to give the pacing variety. You are pretty much always walking down straight paths, watching cutscenes, and fighting, which is not always a bad thing as the cutscenes are frequently awesome looking and the combat is often very fun. But the lack of variety eventually will exhaust even the most patient of players and with nothing to break up the uncompromisingly linear structure, progressing through the game quickly becomes an exercise in tedium. Would it have killed the developers to throw some puzzles or something else into the mix?
As restrictive as the areas are, they are quite beautiful, as is the rest of the game. Cocoon is a very interesting looking place and though its aesthetic can be called "futuristic," it is unlike any futuristic setting you have ever seen. There is tons of visual imagination in the places you visit and it is brought to life with an uncommonly high level of visual fidelity. That being said, the world never feels as "lived-in" as Spira from Final Fantasy X or as fun to explore as Gaia from Final Fantasy IX. It is mostly limited to looking very pretty. But the developers must be given credit for the astonishing visual presentation all the same. Similar attention has been paid to the characters, who have very solid designs and tons of expressiveness in their facial features and their facial movements. With the exception of some rough looking hands, you simply won't see better looking JRPG character models on the PS3 and 360.
The sound design is also very good even if the soundtrack is not as memorable as the ones in earlier games. The songs sound very pleasant and provide an appropriate amount of gorgeous ambience, but you're not going to hear too many memorable melodies here. This is mostly mood music and while it does an admirable job in building atmosphere, it doesn't stand on its own quite as well as the songs in previous FF games. That being said, the battle theme is absolutely superb and is easily the best in the franchise.
The voice acting is also surprisingly good. The voices fit their respective characters extremely well and the delivery is admirably fluid even if some of the dialogue is spotty. It must be said that Final Fantasy voice acting has definitely come a long way since FFX.
A final gripe I have with the game is that it doesn't have nearly as much side content as previous entries. Once you arrive in Gran Pulse, you can do some sidequests that involve killing monsters, but that's really all you can do if you want to get away from the repetitive main quest. The lack of variety in terms of sidequests and extra content is disappointing because the Final Fantasy series has always been so good at providing a good variety of things to do and find outside the main quest. Equally disappointing is the simplicity of character customization (this game's Sphere Grid equivalent, The Crystarium, is much too linear) and the shallowness of the crafting system, which boils down to finding a bunch of junk and using it to enhance weapons and items. It's nice that this game actually provides a crafting system, but if you're going to provide something, Square Enix, don't half ass it.
Final Fantasy XIII is not a bad game, and you'll see many flashes of Final Fantasy excellence, but the game's overly simplistic structure, its single-minded pacing, and its unwillingness to provide anything resembling variety prevents Final Fantasy's thirteenth entry from being the great RPG it could have been. Hopefully next time Square Enix will build a substantial game upon FFXIII's excellent combat system and aesthetics.
GAMEPLAY-4.5/5
DESIGN-2/5
STORY-3.5/5
VISUALS-5/5
PLAYABILITY-4/5
VALUE-5/5