FFXIII: I DID NOT WANT TO LIKE THIS GAME

[solaciolum]

I've avoided paying any attention to the news on FFXIII, because I didn't expect to have any opportunity to play it, and I didn't think any game could possibly top FFXII in terms of being awesomely good for me. I was just completely uninterested in it. Alas, now that I've actually played some of it, I am *anguish hands* all over at the fact that I won't be able to play it again for a while- I am hooked.

Preliminary thoughts on the portion of Final Fantasy XIII that I have had the privilege to play:



This game is stupidly pretty. I'm not all that big a fan of Nomura's designs, but this is utterly, utterly gorgeous. Perhaps if I actually owned a PS3 and played its games regularly, I would stop being so amazed by the quality of the graphics- although it certainly doesn't hurt that in this instance I am playing the game on a gignormous HD-TV.

When I first started playing, I hated the music. I'm still not all that fond of it- the lack of a distinct battle theme is annoying, and the vocals in the chocobo theme are unsettling. But the soundtrack has grown on me a bit, and I think it's one of those things where I'll actually enjoy it a lot more out of context than in. The overuse of vocals and symphonic strings keeps making me think of Our Lady of Soundtrack Sorrow, which is a terribly inappropriate thought to be having in the middle of battle.

At this point, it's impossible to not compare it to previous games- not only because the franchise has become so enormous that any new game will necessarily be standing on the shoulders of its predecessors, but also because XIII seems to take so many basic elements from previous games. I'm thinking FFX in particular, not only in terms of visuals but also in terms of mechanics and certain plot points. I don't know if the visuals/mechanics similarities are making me imagine those plot similarities, though.

I just keep getting the feeling that I've played this game before, until someone else unlocks their Eidolon and we see it in Gestalt mode (can I get a holy shit, Alexnder up in here, please) and I remember: we're not in Kansas anymore. For all that it feels very derivative, this game is very unlike the previous games in many, many ways. But the more I play, the less anything makes sense, to the point where I find myself missing the machinations of FFXII's plot, because at least I could understand those once I paid enough attention to catch them all. *anguish hands* And god only knows when I'm going to be able to play the game again, so I'm either going to have to wait, or get my plot second hand.

The linearity is kind of alarming; over twenty five hours in, and only now do we see the first signs of side quests and minigames, and only now do we have something like an overworld to explore. (But Spira Australia Gran Pulse sure is pretty, when you finally get there.)

Up until now, it's just been [dungeon slog], [cutscene], [boss battle], [cut scene] repeated ad nauseum- and until you figure out which combination of paradigms will take out which enemies the quickest, those dungeon slogs can be pretty agonizing. (]Dungeon] really did not need to go on for another hour after [boss battle]. Also [boss] totally did not help my feelings of deja vu when it went into Trance mode and then sprouted a bunch of wings.) And I like the battle system- once I got the hang of it, paradigms were fun to play with, and it's refreshing to have an intelligent AI to rely on. I do wish the system were a little more like XII's- it would be nice if I could control the other characters in battle and not just the leader, but the paradigm AI settings make up for the lack of customizeability that XII's gambit system had. It would be awesome if the game remembered which paradigms I'd been using whenever I switch my party members, though. Having to spend a minute trying to remember which combinations were most effective for various party members is annoying.

I think what I would prefer would be the option of changing each character's role in battle. instead of having to change the paradigms for all three characters. So if I need a medic, I can just select the character with the medic role and switch that, instead of scrambling through my paradigm menu looking for the one with the medic. ON THE OTHER APPENDAGE, when I really need to go on the defensive, being able to just hit "Combat Clinic" is incredibly convenient.

If it weren't for the retry option on every battle, this game would be endlessly frustrating, instead of just occasionally frustrating. (There was a moment of Seymour Flux redux at the end of Chapter 9- all enemies, but especially bosses, have a metric fuckton of hitpoints, so getting [big bad boss] down to less than 1% health before being felled by the doom counter was three million times worse than it could have been, because it happened after a solid ten minutes of gruelling, edge-of-the-seat, death-defying battle. Demoralizing, that's what that is.)

I miss limit breaks! Or overdrive or trance or whatever the hell you want to call them. Eidolons just aren't the same, and some part of me finds Gestalt mode just too ridiculous to deal with. (WHAT THE HELL, ALEXANDER.)

The Crystarium, like the battle system, takes a little getting used to- it helps when I think of it as a three dimensional sphere grid, and I like that each character is individualized even when they share the same roles. Like, Sazh learns haste as a synergist, but Hope doesn't; Snow is Tankerson McTankypants and gets some really sweet Commando abilities that Lightning and Fang don't have; Lightning learns Raise really quickly compared to Hope or Vanille.

I didn't expect to love the characters, but I really do- even Vanille, with her inexplicable, inconsistent accent (did she have to narrate? Really?) and Snow, who stole Seifer's clothes and Zell's attacks and acts like a slightly calmer, more jaded Zidane or Tidus. And Sazh! Oh, Sazh. I do not think I could possibly love you more, even if I keep thinking that you're just a cross between Barret and Cid Highwind with added awesome. I even like Lightning, which I definitely wasn't expecting what with the whole "female Cloud" thing- because she really isn't a female version of Cloud at all- or possibly, she is a female version of the idealized Cloud- the guy Cloud was trying to be in the first part of FFVII, after Sector 7 came down. I am probably distinctly in the minority in that while I like Fang, I don't think she's the best thing since sliced bread.

I have yet to encounter a single villainous character without bursting into mad giggles- something about the character designs is hilarious for me, and I'm not entirely sure why.


Hilariously, because I jumped into the game at Chapter 6 with no knowledge of anything that had come before, reading other people's reactions to the early game now is something of a revelation. I keep going "Ohhhh, you mean [plot point] was supposed to be all earth shattering and surprising? THINGS MAKE SO MUCH MORE SENSE NOW."