Yes, I'm just now finally getting around to finishing Final Fantasy XIII. Originally I had borrowed this game from a friend shortly after it's release but was unable to finish due to time constraints. Now, after picking it up on the cheap ($4 shipped off eBay), I am intent on finishing. Here we go!We keep it simple
Tough and outright
Easy to swallow
Final Fantasy light
GAMEPLAY: 3/5
The Battle System is fun. It's a faster, streamlined version of the traditional battle system with a quick change take on the job system - the ability to change paradigms (jobs) mid-battle creates for a heavily strategic environment. The speed of the battle system keeps most battles from getting too drawn out or boring. My only real gripe with the battle system is that there is a MOVE command missing. Certain spells and attacks (from both the enemy and player) will have a certain range of attack with the possibility of hitting multiple characters if they are bunched together. The problem without having the option of moving characters takes away any strategy this may offer and it leaves you feeling like you were playing a handicapped Grandia game.
Equipment in the game has been streamlined (or gimped depending on who you ask) so that you only have to deal with equipping a weapon and a few accessories depending on where you are in the game. At this point, they may have well just left equipment out as a whole and just created a skill system where you purchase the beneficiary aspects of the weapon/accessory and equip it on your character. They got lazy. Item creation is fun in the beginning but the novelty quickly wears off when you realize that the only challenge in creating items is how friggin' expensive it is and how hard it is to make Gil in this game. I don't need to revisit modern American economics in my JRPG, tyvm.
The world of FF13 is very narrow and straight with the exception of Gran Pulse. Often times, I caught myself just looking at the mini map in the top right of screen thinking, "oh hey look, there is a small branch out from the main path, there must be a treasure chest there." That's about the depth of the exploration of the majority of this game. The size of Gran Pulse was a nice attempt, but the novelty wears off quickly once you realize how tedious it is getting around, even with a chocobo. Had Gran Pulse been introduced closer to mid-game I may have felt better, or had more patience for it. The Mission System introduced on Gran Pulse was fun for the first 18 or so missions but quickly got stale after you realize the missions are comprised of rehashed enemies.
GRAPHICS: 5/5
This game is beautiful. There's not much more I can say about it.
MUSIC: 2/5
¿Dónde estás, NOBUO!?!? What is this elevator music that torments my ears so? Why! Why have you left us!? Change can be good, but this is like that time you were served a shit-sandwich after you told the waitress you were vegan. NO BUENO!
STORY: 2/5
Nothing new here. The tripe, cliche, pseudo-intellectual, politico-religious common fare that modern JRPG developers shovel into our fat fanboy faces when they realize that "we're hungry... we'll eat anything at this point." Character development is almost non-existent and what is there is heavy-handed and often forced into a quick cut scene. Save for Sazh and Lightning, I made little to no connection with the cast.
OVERALL: 3/5
Let it be known: When it comes to JRPGs, I feel that gameplay and story play a huge factor in how good a game is overall. Like most Final Fantasy games after VI, save for Final Fantasy XII, it's well known that Square made graphics the number one top priority. While the graphics did shine, the cliche story, lack of character development, bland music, and monotonous-linear-traveling-from-point-a-to-point-b-between-cutscene-exploration just made the game mediocre at best.
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