TRUE Eye Candy. I thought I was impressed with my PlayStation... until this of course.
The Good:
-This game is TRUE EYE CANDY.
The environment and the characters are simply BEAUTIFUL. The game development team didn't take any time off creating this game, as every place you travel to, the enemies you encounter, and to the Eidolons you can summon is clear evidence of a visual masterpiece. This is the pinnacle of what stunning graphics can look like your PlayStation 3. Extremely realistic looking characters.
-Real time based fighting system.
To all the Final Fantasy Veterans out their may disagree to a certain extent on the new 'Paradigm System', I believe it was a realistic improvement to games past. And also makes the battle system more user friendly to new-coming Final Fantasy fans whom have never experienced the battle system. The old, stare down your enemy until you've selected actions for your entire party, and than attack scheme is out, and the new is in.
-The Story Line... to an extent.
Now before I get roasted on this one, I will go ahead and state now that I will make a comment about this in "The Bad" part of my review as well... but lets stick to the good.
What I did like was how creative the story turned out to be towards the end and also how they have incorporated some of the original beings from Final Fantasy's past into the game (for example, Shiva, Bahamut, Tiamat, Cactuar etc...). You can appreciate these characters much more when you've played through with them in the previous games, some with even slightly different roles.
The Bad:
-The most linear Final Fantasy, of all time.
One of the things I enjoyed most about the FF series was how you grew attached to certain places you've traveled, maybe certain people that you've met, and if you wanted to go back to those places during the story you had the option to. This really was a big downer to me, although I do understand, that it wouldn't make much sense as far as the story goes to be consistently traveling back and forth when you are a wanted criminal not only on pulse, but even when traveling through Cocoon. I really disliked the fact that you are not even given the option of exploring the world until your three chapters away from the end of the game. I understand why...but still, I was disappointed.
-Confusing Storyline.
This series of FF really led you to wonder where a lot of things where coming from all at once... in the sense that you were introduced to a variety of characters of very different backgrounds, and it was very hard to put together on your own what connected everyone and what motives each character had. The data log feature was nice to read up on what was going on in case you missed something... but even that you were still left in a state of confusing on certain topics. To top it all off though, what really got me is that before in all the FF series, character development and story lines used to be one of the strongest assets of the game, and always preformed at a high level and delivered in the most enjoyable way possible to the gamer... Leaving you in a state of confusion until about chapter 11 and making you look things up like as if your using a dictionary to try and gain entertainment value kinda sucks. I felt like the developers REALLY could of delivered the story more effectively. One of my other really big side complaints about this game.
As these two complaints are the limited issues I had with the game, I felt that they were extremely big issues concerning this series background. I would hope that if another game came out that it would steer clear of these negative points and kind of keep to the originality of what essentially we all love about the series.
- A beautiful story line with great character development
- Customization amongst weaponry and characters, the new fighting system is definitely here for the long run.
- Outstanding visuals. Keep the roots of the game the same, if its not broken in this case, don't try and fix it. If modifications are needed maybe just tweak next time instead of doing a complete remake.