After a 4 or 5 year development cycle, a roller coaster of delays, platform changing, and a universe planned out to play out among 3 games, Final Fantasy XII has finally landed on our shores. And it sure has been worth the wait. Final Fantasy XIII has a massive significance in this generation, not only for consoles but Final Fantasy as a series overall. XIII marks the newest advancement in graphical and technological design as the first Final Fantasy in true high definition and the first original multi-platform numbered offline Final Fantasy ever.
From a technological aspect the game is very well built. Visually, its difficult at times to tell the difference between the in-game character models and the game’s CG sequences. We can see a justification for a long localization process with so much detail involved. All the dialogue in the game has been voice and lip matched, and I mean everything. Of course some things don’t receive as much attention, but at the start of the game I had to double take at NPCs talking to me, their mouths didn’t simply move when they talked, but they move matching the words they speak according to the English dialogue. The game requires absolutely no install, it plays straight from the Blu-ray (I played it on the PS3) and there’s virtually no load times for things, although I experienced exactly 2 instances when I had a lag time when switching from overworld to battle scenes, but that might be because I rarely ever turned off my PS3. Otherwise, entering a battle was absolutely seamless. The horizon is expansive, in an area similar to the Calm Lands from Final Fantasy X, you can really feel the grand scale of the area. In the distance you can see a colossal creature’ moving around behind the mountains, flying monsters in the sky, packs of wolf monsters running around the plains, and giant walking elephant-like creatures (they’re this game’s version of Adamantoise) grazing.
Gameplay is solid as well. Battle is revolved around the paradigm shift. Essentially job changing mid fight; likened to shuffling a deck of cards. In preparation for battle, you assign each character in your party a role: healer, physical attacker, magic attacker, enemy enfeebler, party support, or a tank. And you need to change your party members’ roles on the fly according to the situation in battle. Combat is as involved as it has ever been in a Final Fantasy. Gone are the days you can simply mindless push the action button to advance the fight. While most of the combat is automated, if you turn away from certain fights for even a moment your game could be over. You only control one character essentially, and if that character dies, the game is over. Luckily, to reduce the frustration of having to retry you don’t have to restart from your save point, after losing a battle you pick up right were you engaged the monster and can try again or choose to run around it. Once again random battles are no more. Monsters are seen and you can try to sneak up on them prior to the fight to get a head start on the battle. At the beginning of the game, the combat seems too easy, you’re healed to full after every fight, even if you have character’s K.O.’ed. But it turns out to be very welcome near the middle of the game. You don’t have to buy restorative items constantly at shops, monsters don’t even drop Gil. HP levels are absurdly large, normal monsters seem to average around 600k near the end of the game. To balance this off, damage dealt has been largely increased as well. Battles revolve around chaining attacks to build a chain meter, once that meter reaches a predetermined point dependent on each enemy they are put into a stagger state when damage is exponentially increased. Then taking down a boss with 3million hit points doesn’t seem so daunting.
But this isn’t a new concept, other RPGs have given large amounts of damage before. But this is where things have changed in the themes of Final Fantasy as a franchise. Certain elements are very different this time around. The musical elements are something I personally missed. The only familiar tune is the chocobo theme. There is no traditional victory fanfare, no prelude, no Final Fantasy theme, not even in the ending credits. The gameplay is linear throughout the entire game, the only real time you can break away from the story is at the very end of the game prior to the last dungeon. While a linear story is not new to FF, (FFX was linear) there is no world map, no airship, not even towns. The side quest system is borrowed from Final Fantasy XII a la monster hunts and summons are limited to only six; four of which are classic summons. It doesn’t always feel like Final Fantasy, but it’s still a a great game in its own right. Each character is likable and there’s a bit of character development, albeit a tad cliche. The voice acting is well done and not awkward (like White Knight Chronicles). People have complained that the series has become stale and old and Square Enix responds by an even larger departure from tradition. It’s only fitting that the last story trophy/achievement you receive is called Instrument of Change.
