A JRPG for the ages or an aged JRPG?
First the main negatives, the game is slow, there are no two ways about it. This game doles out its battle mechanics and character upgrades so slowly. It takes you an hour or two before you get the pardigram system and learn the real ins and outs of combat, and it's boring. For those two hours you are essentially pushing forward on the left analog stick and pressing X. It takes a further hour or so to get summons, then by the 6-7 hour mark you will be able to assign experience points to upgrade your characters and upgrade weapons. And by the 20th hour you can finally select and choose your party members. Now I've been gaming on and off for 20 years, sure, not everyone has, but the average gamer isn't a complete idiot, and a tip Square I don't like being treated as one. After all your combat system isn't that complex.
Anyone who thinks JRPG storylines are poor and characters are uninteresting this game will not change your mind, there is still a brooding 'main' protagainist, a chirpy pre-pubescent girl, a 'coloured' guy and an all round bad-ass. The characters do manage to stay likeable, Vanille being the main, giggly exception. The voice acting is a little inconsistent, as an Australian, the accents are grating in contrast to the American voice actors, mainly because you are not sure if they are Australian or just trying to hide that they are.
The story itself, while hardly bad, doesn't break much new ground, it's a quest to save the world from an evil force against all odds. If you've played Final Fantasy there isn't much new here to be brutally honest. It never really picked up. It is all pretty standard fare, interesting enough but not much that sets it apart for other JRPG storylines.
Linearity is also an issue, the game is basically funnelling you from one location to the next, it isn't nearly as bad as some have made it out for be, it possibly does make for a tighter experience (hard statement to justify in a 20 hour tutorial), but when the game is drip feeding you the combat system also, it doesn't make for a strong first impression. The game does open up around the 20-25 hour mark and while there is still one main goal there are actually side quests but I still do get the feel that the game is constantly trying to funnel you in certain directions.
Aside from these issues it is a damn fine game, not many games keep me interested at 10 hours let alone at the 35+ hour mark, it's quite rare for a game not to be wearing thin by this stage. The combat system is fun. Some may level that the combat system is a little easy, and I could see that but there is some depth there. Selecting the right pardigram at the right time can be crucial and you can find the battle lost quite quickly if you are not careful in your selection or do not pay attention. Also the lure of just one more battle for the next great piece of upgrade item or the next thing on the crystalarium is really strong and pulls you in.
The game looks fantastic, the environments look amazing and fantastical and while don't quite match the locations you see in Uncharted 2, the character models trump it in every single way. I could argue which is actually better but it would go in circles they are both excellent and have their own strengths and weaknesses graphically. One thing it does lose points on is that it recycles enemy monsters and simply gives them a pallete swap to create more creatures, it some how makes the game feel cheaper.
That being said it still is a beautiful game, artistically and technically.
The battle animations are so fluid and awe inspiring. I found myself often getting lost in the onscreen action that I would miss my next immediate opportunity to attack, the battles are almost indescribably frantic and beautiful.
The sound is amazing too, the score is suitably epic and as mentioned the Voice acting is mostly strong although it has its moments.
I've seen scores all over the place ranging from 5's up to 9's and beyond in some instances. It's easy to see why the slowness of this game will alienate a lot of people, and rightly so. It is agonizingly slow at times and the first 20 hours should have been condensed into maybe a quarter of that time, it almost stopped me getting into the game. Also this hardly advances the JRPG genre, if you aren't a fan of JRPG's this isn't going to alter your opinions.
Final Fantasy 13 is a good game, maybe even a great one but there is quite a lot that is holding it from being everything it can be. The team at Square Enix certainly know how to present a game and push a system to its limits, but there are some interesting choices that have been made with how slow it introduces the battle mechanics possibly to make it accessible to all gamers, but there is no use if you are going to bore people out of their minds. The slow nature of this game brings it down, and it brings it down a lot.