Final Fantasy 13 (fanboy) Review (20 hours in)
I’ve just reached the point most reviewers describe as the good part of the game, so let’s discuss how the experience has been so far.
Shall we start off on a good foot?
The Good
- Holycrapgraphics. At 1080p, Final Fantasy XII is pure eye-candy.
- The music is cute sometimes.
The Wretched
Whelp, glad we got that out of the way.
The first minute of the game involves killing people you don’t know as people you don’t know for a reason you aren’t told. If you think that’s charming, you’re in for a treat. Each of the characters has a history that seeks to explain away their shitty personalities, and this isn’t explained for hours either. And then there’s fal’Cie, l’Cie, Pulse and all other manner of made-up words that aren’t explained either. It’s like watching a movie where every fifth word is in French. Sure I’ve got a dictionary, but fuck all I just want to watch this movie.
Thus begins a trend wherein the game will treat you, the intrepid player ready to explore its wonderful vistas and whimsical inhabitants, as nothing more than a hindrance. From tutorials still appearing hours into the game to not letting you pick who is in your party, FF XIII knows you are very stupid and shouldn’t be trusted. Maybe this is why it doesn’t bother to explain things. I suppose the developers thought, “Well, if you’re smart enough to care you’ll just look it up.” To emphasize this, particularly cantankerous combats are often followed by movie sequences in which your characters do sweet backflips, accompanied by much sweet ninja action. It’s as if they are saying, “See? You can’t do this. Because you fucking suck.”
Let’s talk about combat. The nicest review I’ve read (and in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve read a few of those in a failing effort to convince myself I like the damn game) basically said it’s better than FF XII. This is not high praise. If you’re not familiar, combat is highly geared around the same general meta-structure MMOs use. You’ve got your healer, your guy who makes the monsters attack him, people who do more damage and so forth. The twist is that you can switch who is which role during combat.
Mostly. You have to configure what different combinations are available before combat, and you only control the party leader. Changing your computer-controlled teammate to a medic doesn’t give you the agency to say “Heal me,” it only lets him heal whatever he damn-well feels like. This can mean dispelling poison rather than saving your life, which can mean game over.
Oh, right. You’re a big dumb idiot, so you can’t tell your other party members what to do, but if you die you lose the game. The combat system sounds nice at first, and sure it looks pretty, but it’s a departure from the series for no good reason. An example: FFVII had a very simple combat system. Certain combinations of materia were better than others, but the basic premise was very clear. FF XIII is the opposite of that. Keeping track of who has what abilities and figuring out when the game expects you to change to what combination is the majority of the game. Once you figure out how it expects you to do this for each fight, it’s extremely easy. Hard to understand and easy to master does not a good formula make.
The story should be fairly decent, and it follows the general evil empire thing its sisters tend to do, but only after being mired in an absurdly bad exposition. The entire game is a long hallway very occasionally punctuated by simple puzzles and very frequently broken by movie sequences. From beginning to about twenty hours in, you’re on a railroad. There are no towns (shops are part of save points), and NPCs don’t talk to you, so much as if you do push X on them they stare glassy-eyed into the distance and make pity remarks. I’ve reached the point where you can supposedly get off the tracks and look around. Not too impressed yet. The characters are…I’ll let Tycho from Penny Arcade sum it up.
God, I hate these fucking people. I don’t give a shit what happens to Sulky, Twat, Twit, Pip, and Marm. Sometimes, I kill them on purpose.
Yup. I’ve been playing this and Heavy Rain a second time through at the same time and the later, which I do not consider holding up very well on a second play-through since it’s a fucking murder mystery for Jesus’ fucks’ sake, has been more enjoyable. And I mean, really, it’s not even a game.
I plan on finishing FFXIII, getting the platinum trophy out of sheer spite, and never playing it again. Ever. The rest of the game might change my mind, but I will never go through the first 20 hours again. It’s horrid.
