Final Fantasy XIII Review

User Rating: 6 | Final Fantasy XIII X360

FF13 sounded like trash from the start, before it even came out - when they let it slip that there weren't even towns, so while it's no surprise that the game is a massive disappointment, the fact that it nearly outsold FF10 is amazing.

The story and character stat progression in this game is almost entirely linear. You rarely ever get to decide what you fight or when, only how - and that is in the loosest sense of the word. Considering you have no actual control over more than one character in any given battle, the only "how" to decide is which characters and which role they are playing. Oh, by the way, that's only starting in Chapter 10. In a game with 13 chapters. Before that, you control subsets, and you like it, buddy.

The voice acting is no worse or better than FF10 or 12 but it is annoying - especially when you consider Vanille who has an inconsistent accent throughout the game and makes the most annoying noises in FF history. What is she doing? Seriously, what is she doing, half of her sounds are wildly inappropriate outside of a sex game.

What really makes the game horrid though, is the battle system - more accurately the flaws in the battle system. You control one character, the party leader. The only way to influence what the other characters do is to switch paradigms - which is a necessary process in the game as the entire concept of combat focuses on staggering enemies to kill them, wherein they take more damage than normal. This would all be fine, except, if your party leader dies, the game is over. You get no opportunity to revive, they just die and you have to restart from a checkpoint.

The battle system will start to grow on you near the end of the game - which is the only time it works, when you have levelled the entire crystarium and your stats allow for entertaining combat. It just doesn't seem right that a battle system would only shine on bosses or when the game is almost over. All things considered, if you ignore the completely hands off approach of the system, it is fun and one of the better elements in the game, especially if you give it enough time to experience it.

The story and graphics are actually quite good, but the unfortunate reality is that Cocoon and Pulse are not even slightly interesting - certainly not enough to merit 3 games and definitely not enough to even make the plot of FF13 believable. Some people have issues with the manner in which the story is told, and I have to agree with that. While I find no fault in Tarintino-esque dropping you in the middle of a story already happening, it's hard to really care about any characters or the world in which they live when you don't even know anything about it.

The game is also utterly lacking in side content and any variety in side content. All you can do is missions to kill named monsters, nothing else - most of which are the exact same enemy, over and over and over again. I lost track of how many times I killed the same Behemoths or other enemies for C'ieth Stone missions.

Honestly, if the game was brand new right now, I'd tell you not to buy it, but you can get it for 20 dollars at the most, so it's worth 20 dollars.