Final Fantasy XIII (unlucky for some) is the fourteenth full installment of the Final Fantasy series…(haha I bet you suckers forgot about Final Fantasy X-2!). Well anyways I’ve always been a big fan ever since Final Fantasy VII burst onto the Playstation and single handedly ruined my potentially good GCSE results! Anyways, this is the first time that Xbox have managed to get their grubby hands on it which saved me a shit load of money by not having to buy a PS3!

Anyways while I’m reluctant to properly review this game because reviewing a FF game is a bloody minefield of spoilers so I’d rather keep my mouth shut on anything related to storyline rather than spoil it like 97% of the FF13 videos on YouTube, made by the legions of virgins that populate Xbox Live. While I was amused by Zero Punctuation’s review of this game, I have actually completed it in 3 weeks flat because I, in fact, have no life. Well that’s not entirely true, I was off work with a throat infection for 4 whole days. So anyway 63 hours later I find myself sitting in front of the ending credits, only to be greeted in horror that the Outro song is Leona Lewis (WTF?!). PersonallyI really liked the storyline. It was emotive and effective and was quite possibly the one thing which FF12 was missing. The graphics are just superb and the FMV sequences are just mind blowing. As with every Final Fantasy title there’s always a rehashing of gameplay, be it combat, levelling up system or trading items. In this case it was completely different from its predecessor by changing absolutely everything!

• The combat is intuitive and slowly introduces you to the various augmentations of battle as you go through the first disk, almost too slowly as you could be a good 5 hours (well 2 if you don’t constantly grind for exp like me) and they could still be showing you how to smash a wolf in the face. It resurrects the ATB gauge like in X-2 and 7 but in the beginning part you have just one, maybe two attacks so you find yourself mashing the A button like your playing Dynasty Warriors….or using a really rubbish potion which remains so useless its as salubrious as putting a band aid on an aneurysm.
• The character classes are really good though as you can tactically deploy various permutations of characters and every combination of class will bring benefits, so that provides a tactical element into it. Plus it also depends on your style of play and if you’re like me, there’s a heavy swaying towards offensive stances. Commando classes also learn the launch skill relatively early on which causes staggered enemies to be shoryukened skyward Team Rocket style before being mercilessly battered in mid-air like a ping pong ball in a hurricane.
• The levelling up system or Crystarium is similar to the grid in FFX except amount of experience or CP in this game is exponential with the amount required for ascending to another level. Later on as a grinder of exp I felt quite frustrated as inreasingly tough battled were never really awarded properly as really tough battles with generic monsters didn’t seem to yield as much CP as perhaps the battle was merited. This makes the whole grinding/farming areas process slightly contrived rather long winded. Plus in later stages of levelling up when it takes about 60,000CP just to move one space, it’s quite disheartening. It’s kinda like pouring dulux on your cornflakes…you start off noticing the massive difference from what your used to and at the end you’re wondering if it was worth it!
• Summons have also returned in the form of Eidolons this time and as per most FF titles need to be impressed before one can harvest their power. Now this means when they appear, you beat the shit out of them yeah? Wrong. Each different one has totally different criteria of what it likes. So walking up and laying the smackdown on them doesn’t always work! Instead it feels like your jumping through hoops whilst spinning plates just to get a summon which usually lasts in battle for about 30 seconds. But quite possibly the stupidest thing is the Gestalt mode they have…this is when they turn into a vehicle mid-battle. While I was witnessing quite possibly one of the biggest WTF moments I couldn’t help but wonder if the developers at Square Enix had been watching just a little too much Transformers! It made it a bit silly but I continually forced to do that as that’s where the best attacks were! Plus Snow has a lesbian motorcycle, now who thought that was a good idea?!?

The only criticism I have of the game is the sheer linear gameplay of the level design. It does feel like you’re just moving one direction through a series of corridors, much like what Call of Duty is like. It was a good 20 hours before the world opened up to me and even then your minimap is polluted with giant arrows coercing you to your next objective. I did wander off from time to time but I just didn’t feel like I could properly explore anywhere, which has always been one of the strengths of Final Fantasy games. Plus there are no shops in the game which you can frequent unlike other titles let alone random houses where you can ransack and the NPC living there never seems to mind!

So in conclusion Final Fantasy 13 is a very good title which certainly had me entertained for 60 hours of storyline plus whatever I have to finish off now, but falters in the A to B lemming following approach the gameplay is implemented as. I personally loved FF12, and while this had an awesome storyline, they should have stuck to the battle system from 12, instead of trying to appeal to the short attention spans of the new market FF is trying to reach, also known as shit RPG players.