Sitting Down With Final Fantasy XIII

AKA, "Why the fuck am I trying to go in on a game whose sequel just came out?" Just shut up and read. ;__;

Around early 2010, a friend of mine picked up a copy of FFXIII. We heard the mixed reviews, we tried it, we hated it. Granted, I hadn't played through much of the story, but what was there already (in addition to being biased from my friends' feedback) made me cringe.

So, a few weeks ago, I decided to borrow a copy from another friend, partially because I'm in my "give things more of a chance" phase and partially because I got a PS3 for Christmas, but only own one game for it (IT'S MAHVEL BAYBEE). I intended to give my review/opinion/rant/whatever when I was done, and since I'm pretty much done (I only really need to finish off about 4 more missions, so I'm taking some time to farm/upgrade), here's what I've got so far:

Starting with the most obvious and complained about feature of the game (feel free to skip down a bit), it's extremely linear. Experienced Final Fantasy players know about the vast worlds that comprise most of the series' games through out the story. Worlds where at some point you could break off from the "main route" to check out an extra dungeon for items/abilities, and where dungeons branched off into multiple paths and puzzles at every turn, seeking to drain you of your strength like a horde of Zubats before you made it outside. If you REALLY haven't heard about this so far, 13's entry does away with all of this. At most points during the story, if you see a path branching off somewhere, it's just a quick detour to a dead end with an item.

"But Umby, what's so bad about this? Some people just want to enjoy the story, not sit in a cave for an hour trying  to figure out where the fuck the switch to the exit door is."

Oh, is that why Square Enix put most of the unmentioned parts of the story in a big log in your menu? Honestly, nothing's wrong with trading gameplay for story/cinematics (I mean, Heavy Rain is well-received and the only actions required for playing most visual novels is  pointing and clicking). The issue here belongs mainly to the game's branding. It's a FINAL FANTASY game. We've come to expect certain things from this title, so the linear progression is highly disappointing to a significant number of fans. Had it been called something like Lightning's Tsundere Quest or The Search for Hope's Genitals, it's been said by some people, but I'm sure no one would have had as much as a problem with that factor of the game.

"Alright, alright, whatever. You still get a big world to explore in Chapter 11."

Oh, goodness. Where do I start with this?

First off, the game is thirteen chapters long. I sat through a mediocre story dealing with characters I don't like (I dislike Snow's "hero complex," Vanille's English VA sucks, and Hope somehow managed to have three separate demeanors in his personality and was annoying regardless) while being prompted to save after every cutscene, ran through an endless funnel (to be occasionally stopped for yet another cutscene after taking about 5 steps), and I have to wait until near the end of the story to get to a world map? On top of that, said world (Gran Pulse) isn't even that special. It's huge, no doubt, especially when you have to go everywhere on foot (until you unlock wild Chocobos), but the only thing there to "explore" is the land itself. There are only two places that actually account for dungeons there, and they're on the main story path. Everywhere else is just a sectioned of area, made distinctive by what kind of enemies show up there.

Then there's the missions/quests...

I understand that sometimes, in various RPGs, you have to go out of your way to initiate a quest. I understand further that sometimes you have to go out of your way to meet the requirements for completing a quest. But the way 13 set this up makes it feel like a huge chore. For one thing, it's not always clear which quests you are/aren't able to accept. Ideally, you want to go in order from Mission #1 to Mission #2 and so on, but let's say, for example, you just cleaned up #6, are looking for #7, but find #10 in the vicinity instead, there's some confusion to be had when you find out you couldn't do #11 afterwards because you needed have #8 done which you can't do with out #7RAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

The whole system would have worked better if you had a central place or two to accept the missions from, so you weren't out looking for where you had to initiate it. This is especially important when you have to get a mission from way out in the middle of nowhere, then go all the way across the map to find your mark, only to realize you aren't strong enough to deal with it yet (Because the A-E ratings are really relative and don't really mean AS much as you'd like to think) and general you could keep better track of what the hell you were doing. The only things you CAN keep track of at will are your current mission, what missions you ran into (but declined), and what missions you've completed. To even figure out what missions are available to you next, you'd have to pay real close attention to your map, but you can't really prioritize the missions you WANT to do for prerequisites because you won't find out which mission it is until you get there. To get an idea of why this is so troublesome, I ended up completing a lot of mid-level missions before I found out I could have been riding on Chocobos by completing the low-level missions. -_________________-

Moving on from that, let's talk about the battle system. I must say, I'm somewhat glad I actually decided to sit down more with the game to get rid of the original bias I had towards this. On the first sit-down I went, "wtf?" from seeing an "Auto-Battle" option on the screen (Note: This is a time when I was particularly irritated at the gaming industry's general direction changes towards "ease-of-use") and was a little mad that battle efficiency required its use. After getting to a certain point in the story where battle roles were more varied and I was able to use three characters in a party, I gradually gained more respect for the system.

13 really forces its Paradigm Shift feature on to the player. There aren't any raw defense stats, just HP. The thing is, your enemies have soooooo much HP that, at first, you aren't just going to straight whack them to death. The general key is the Chain Gauge/Staggering.

*** SKIP IF YOU ALREADY KNOW THIS SHIT ***

If you haven't played the game, each enemy has a Chain Gauge with varying capacity. Hitting an enemy with an attack slowly raises the gauge, and any point of inaction causes it to drop. If it drops completely, you have to start filling it all over again. If you can keep hitting the enemy before that happens, it will continue to rise until it meets its capacity. When that happens, the enemy is in Stagger mode, where they take extra damage, and with the exception of some enemies, will flinch, preventing their actions, when you hit them. You can even continue to make the Chain Gauge rise further to increase the damage you are doing.

*** MOVING ALONG ***

This is important due to the way three specific roles work: Commando, Ravager, and Saboteur.

• Commandos, when attacking, cause the Chain Gauge to rise very little, but decrease the rate at which it depletes. They also do the most damage to a Staggered enemy.
• Ravagers, when attacking, cause the gauge to rise more quickly.
• Saboteurs, when attacking, can decrease the rate at which the gauge depletes.

So, if you're trying to bust up certain enemies (not exclusive to bosses or high profile monsters), your general pattern of offense is to attack with a Commando/Saboteur to slow down the gauge, attack with Ravagers (the more, the faster) to Stagger the enemy, then attack with Commandos to finish it off. Additionally, because you can't just walk in, guns blazing, without expecting to occasion get your shit wrecked, you've got your three defensive/supportive roles, Sentinel, Synergist, and Medic. With all six characters (in a three-person party) eventually gaining access to all six roles, you have a ton of paradigm combinations to factor into your strategy. Because all of that requires utilizing Paradigm Shift to change your party's roles (duh), already that's generally more active and requires more attention than the standard of bashing things with your strongest spells and skills- something to appreciate when other parts of the game are lacking in depth. Even going back to the topic of Auto-Battle, even though it supposedly chooses the "best" options each time, you will find that you'll need to manually make choices, usually if you're controlling a supportive role or if you want to use a character's special skill (Lightning's "Army of One," Sazh's "Cold Blood") and the game allows you to do that. It even offers a "Repeat" option so you don't have to run through the list to find what you chose again.

Another thing I pseudo-like is the way you can upgrade weapons/accessories. Instead of having armor to augment your non-existent (or rather unlisted? Correct me on that) defenses, you get accessories, which you can build up and make stronger. Same for your weapons, which means not even your initial equipment is necessarily useless once you find a new one in a treasure sphere (aka, don't immediately sell your shit). You can also get some nifty items from breaking down your maxed out equipment (aka...don't immediately sell your shit). The only issue is that the process is EXPENSIVE, and the game gives you very few ways to make enough bank to fund your upgrades. To explain, weapons have three tiers. You level the first tier up, us an item to change it into the second tier, level THAT up even mo...fuck it. It's just like Pokemon, except you use various items for experience instead of battles. You can pick up some of these items as loot or treasure, but that collective is nowhere near enough to max out something, so you end up buying your stuff. The more experience you need, the more money you need to spend on items, and you don't get the money as standard loot from fights. You have to sell items specifically made for the purpose of selling (like gold dust and perfume and all that other useless junk). Suffice to say, these types of items are generally rare drops/finds. The worst part is trying to get a tier 3 weapon, because the item you need to upgrade to one goes for 2 million gil in the shop and is a rare drop (I think 1% if you don't add on the effects of certain equipment?) from defeating GIANT TURTOISES. Keep in mind that you have six characters that you probably want to upgrade weapons for. It's not that I mind grinding, but by the time my characters have worked out enough to do all of this shit, one starts to ask "What am I..." wait, I'll let Zero finish this for me:

I believe everything  I've said already is the hard-hitting stuff. Anything else I'd have to say are minor, probably insignificant, yet annoying, though that's probably what helps to decrease general opinion of FFXIII as a game: All the little things pile up. Let me see if I can't list them out (thanks to Dogysamich for insight on some of this a while before I started my playthrough):

• There's battle menu lag. You know how you can't just tap X (or A) twice in a second to select the command you want? You have to wait for the fraction-of-a-second long animation to finish before you can press the button again.
• That first Paradigm Shift in a battle takes up AN EXCESSIVE AMOUNT OF TIME and YOU CAN STILL GET HIT DURING THE ANIMATION.
• The map on Gran Pulse is retarded. Having the minimap rotate while you're moving around is fine, but why does the MENU MAP rotate? If you were trying to direct someone to a specific place you couldn't say "it's in the northeast section of the map," because technically (technically) there's no way to distinguish the cardinal directions on the map.
• There's a faggot of a monster named Zirnitra. You have to fight it about 3 or 4 times in your missions.
• Why do certain things cost Technical Points (TP)? I understand Summoning, I can even understand Renew, if everyone gets it as a skill, regardless of role, but why do I have to waste such a valuable thing on a skill like Libra?
• Chocobo's can randomly sniff out treasure, but the way you find it is essentially by a game of "Hot/Cold."
• Did SE forget about Reflect magic?
• Why is it that no one gets Curaga in the Medic role? Only your summons use it on you.
• Pairing up certain types of equipment grants a character an extra passive skill. Stuff like randomly and instantly stagger an enemy on hit. That's fine, but why are some of those skills so insanely detrimental, like severely reducing your health?
• Boss fight -> Save? -> Cutscene -> Save? -> Character control. Save point next to you. Walk forward 5 steps -> Cutscene -> Save? - A slight exaggeration of what happens during the story, but...whyyyyyyyyyyy?
• I completed about 50+ of the 64 missions before I got to the Gigantuar mission. He still has his "10,000 Needles" skill. Only my Snow, at this point has even a few hundred HP over that amount. How do I get up to 10,000+ HP with my other characters? Oh, I have to actually finish the final boss fight to get an extra level in my Crystarium to GRIND FOR MORE CRYSTARIUM POINTS TO GET ENOUGH HP.
• Sometimes I wish I could direct parts of my ATB bar towards separate enemies. If I cast Aero twice in the same attack, it has to go to one enemy. I'd like to occasionally be able to choose one Aero to hit a certain enemy, then the other Aero to hit another. I mean, the way the system is now, setting that up might be wacky, but it's still something I'd like to have.
• "GODDAMNIT, HOPE! LIGHTNING IS THIS PARADIGM'S SENTINEL. YOU'RE THE MEDIC. WHY THE FUCK DO YOU KEEP DRIFTING TOWARD HER WHEN SHE'S GETTING BLASTED BY AOE ATTACKS?" *exaggeration*

.......Yeah...so it's not a COMPLETELY bad game. I'd register it as "barely okay," but so much of the little stuff could have been changed around and it might have been a significantly better experience. As of now, though, it feels like all the captivating graphics and beautiful music went to waste on a project that was less than mediocre, and on a big title name at that! Maybe I'll listen out for what people have to say about XIII-2 before giving it a shot, but with this precedence in tow, I'm not looking forward to anything but the soundtrack.