Good story as always and an interesting combat system, but the lack of adventure freedom pulls the grades down a bit.
A new chapter in a new world from the Final Fantasy Universe, and as being a Semi-Hardcore Square Enix freak, I just had to buy this game. But this time I was in for a bit of a surprise.
The most innovative part about this game, is of course the new combat system, witch has taken many fans of the series with storm, but the question is, is it a good storm like AC/DC's Thunderstruck, or is it bad like in the movie "The day after tomorrow". Well, here are a few of my personal thoughts on the subject.
GOOD: It's easy to simply focus on kicking some monster-butt, since you only control one of the three characters on the battlefield.
Everything moves in TRUE-realtime speed so some of the fights are over quite fast.
You can see your enemies before you fight them, witch give you a chance to avoid some of them(like in FF XII or The Last Remnant)
BAD: No control over the two remaining characters on the battlefield leaves their combat skills in the hands of the computer AI, and it is VERY stupid.
But that's just the combat part, now we move to the gameplay part of this review.
Progressing in the story is quite easy since it is absolutely linear, and in someways this is good, like in the older FF games there were many times I walked around for maybe half a hour just wondering where i was supposed to go, but now there are only very few ways to go. So far i've played for 30 hours and i have only been able to go one way. This is also where the game has it's ULTIMATE flaw. Today everyone who plays RPG's expect to be given choices in the game, even in the old FF games, you had many different, and quite fun things to do before progressing further with the main story, but from what I know, you have to play maybe 40-50 hours in this game, before you can go on anything that even resembles sidemissions.
THAT'S JUST NOT HOW RPG'S WORK.
This makes the game look like a desperate attempt to combine RPG's with an Action/Adventure like Heavenly Sword, but in the WRONG way.
But the story itself is very compelling, and the characters seem more mature and believable than in most FF games, but still with a touch of the innocent fairytale like story that we've come to expect, and this is a very big plus.
Overall a good game where the story truly is the main event, and if you don't mind spending the first 40-50 hours just fighting and talking a bit, then this game is sure to keep you entertained.