I felt that it was a shallow social commentary coupled to a beautiful and thoroughly developed tech demo.
Overview
I have always enjoyed a good RPG, by which I mean one that creates a story about characters involved in a situation greater than themselves, that has a story structure that does not leave gaps and has a variable pace, that has a fun battle system, that has an engaging leveling and customizing system, and that has music that creates feelings of peace, closeness, longing, earnest, and any other emotion felt by the characters involved.
Final Fantasy XIII was not such an RPG. To summarize, it was a tech demo with a story, if it could really be called a story. I thought that its battle mechanics were very fun and that the visuals were indisputably stunning, but the music, although good in its own right, never fit the environment or situation, the voice acting ranged from 'pretty good' to 'please oh please will someone stab you and leave for the wolves', the story was NOT about characters part of a story about a quest or mission bigger than themselves, and it did NOT have a variable pace. The characters were part of a quest larger than themselves, but their involvement was not a focus of the story (more on that later).
The Battle System - Excellent
The battle mechanics, although new and a major diversion from the turn-based systems of the past, were top notch, trading the classic turn-based system for a real-time system, and a random-encounter system for an encounter-by-choice system. Creatures wander the world, much like in FFXII, and the player can choose to avoid or fight them. Unlike in most of FFXII, there comes a point in the game where the player can choose to fight creatures that are way beyond their skill level and that will squish the player and spit them out. Fortunately, FFXIII is very forgiving of failure and returns the character's party to their condition before the battle and positions them just outside the enemy's detection range, no save required.
In and out of battle, the player can only control the party's 'lead' character, which they can select once party composition control becomes available. In battle, an advanced AI can automatically select abilities for you, or you can select them yourself. Enemy units have a new mechanic called a 'Chain Gauge', which is this game's method of implementing tactical depth. As the gauge fills, the unit takes an increased amount of damage directly proportional to the increasing percentage in the gauge. When the gauge fills, the unit is 'staggered' and takes significantly more damage than normal, is highly susceptible to interruptions, and can be knocked into the air, effectively disabling it. An AI controls the two party members, and it does an excellent job of it in battle, although the path finding out of battle leaves something to be desired. Fortunately, if a character gets left behind out of battle, they are soon teleported directly too your location or, if you run into an enemy, automatically join you in battle and re-spawn behind you at its conclusion.
Each character also has access to different 'Paradigms', classically called 'jobs', of which there are 6 total, and each of which grants different benefits to the party. The Medic, for instance, is the reincarnation of the white mage and responsible for healing and removing debuffs, the Sentinel is the party's tank, and the Ravager, a re-incarnation of a black mage job, is responsible for quickly filling the enemy's chain gauge. Paradigm combinations can be set for the existing party, and can be switched on the fly in the middle of battle. Switching combinations is essential to survival, and the player must know when to drop to a defensive position to heal and buff the party, or when to surge forward, ignore damage, stagger the enemy, and bring it down quickly. All these changes allowed the development team to create many powerful creatures that will stomp the player flat if they don't switch Paradigm combinations at the right times, but through careful maneuvering, they can bring the creatures down.
Overall, I think that the battle system is fun, in depth, and very well balanced considering the number of possible tactical decisions.
The Leveling/Customizing System – Shallow, but Pretty
The leveling system was pretty darn linear and shallow, but had a very pretty and shiny 3D interface. There was a level system for each Paradigm, each Paradigm was divided into 9 stages, and each stage into a circle of orbs that granted attributes bonuses (strength, magic, etc.) and abilities that could be obtained by expending experience. Functionally, it was mostly a straight line. Considering the lack of depth, they could have character progress automatic like in days of old if they didn't want the player to be able to level up different Paradigms at the same time.
Every piece of equipment in the game could be upgrade by using various pieces of loot to level it up. The only restriction on applicable loot came when the item reached a max level and required one of only a few special items to upgrade it further. Thus, upgrading an item largely fell into a system of throwing junk at an item until it was better, with only a few variations. Upgrading your items, including swords and guns, with creature fangs (huh?) granted an experience bonus, but other things, like spark plugs and bomb shells (and that goes where?) took the bonuses away. There were also some very odd and expensive leveling items, such as reactors and particle accelerators (imaging swinging a sword with the LHC attached would make me feel like expressing mirth if it weren't a real upgrade system).
Overall, the leveling and customizing system was shallow, but pretty and effective, and being effective is the most important characteristic in a game.
The Visuals – Excellent
The processing power of the PS3 is seen at work in the scale and detail of the world, and considering the wonders that have been brought out of it, I can only imagine what is to come. Some of the rendered environments are huge, and even in these, the texturing, particle effects, and in particular the lighting are all a testament to what CG artists can do when given the proper tools. I sometimes found myself stopping and looking around in amazement at everything going on. Most creatures and other enemy units look appropriately vicious, and the main characters are actively rendered with a quality that surpasses the pre-rendered sequences of FFVIII and even approach those of FFX. The pre-rendered sequences though surpass any previous Final Fantasy sequence, and are on par with Advent Children. This is one good-looking game.
It should be noted that after staring at the actively rendered characters for awhile, I noticed the octagonal polygons used for the limbs, but I couldn't find a fault with the faces, which is where most of their detail was located. The hair was separated into several fixed curves, which moved as a unit (this is pretty standard for actively rendered hair), and the cloth appeared to move in a pre-rendered fashion associated with the characters' movements. Other than these, the modeling was superb.
The Music – Nice, but Didn't Fit
I don't know what happened here. It wasn't my speakers, since I have a Logitech Z-5500 taking a digital input. Final Fantasies VII, VIII, X, and XII, along with many other games composed by Nubou Uematsu, contained music that moved the player, that set a variety of emotional tones, and that has been remembered and remixed by numerous fans, including Mr. Uematsu himself. Although XII did not have the same personal feel to the music as its predecessors, the orchestral music was powerful, memorable, engaging, and set the tone for the scenes. Final Fantasy XIII's orchestral music, on the other hand, seemed to be the result of Mr. Uematsu being told to write music that told the story of and set the tone for a day in the life of a field of flowers in the summer. Seriously, the game had zero sense of urgency until the end of the game at the final approach to the bad guy's tower (of course he dwells in a giant tower; the writers weren't THAT dense), in which the music indicated the urgency of, "We're out of milk". The music was generally light and happy and didn't change for almost the ENTIRE GAME. If the characters are staging a daring raid, the music suggests that they should be hiking through a mountain range with a great view. It was good music, yes, but not powerful, peaceful for some reason, and NOT fitting. Wandering through the underworld, being attacked by all manner of creatures and ancient, autonomous robots? The music suggested that they should be hiking in a field of flowers. Reflecting on the torn past of an individual? Twanging harmonica music (??). Exploring the caves of an ancient and powerful creature? Pop music (?!?).
What happened to the oboe accompanying a harp and backed up by French horns? What happened to the flute and cello combinations, the lonely violin crying a longing tune, or a solo piano constructing a theme about uncertain fates? What happened to the memorable theme? Final Fantasy XIII's theme was the battle music, for crying out loud! What happened?
Overall, the music was good in its own right, so I don't blame Mr. Uematsu, but it never fit the scene into which it was incorporated.
The Voice Acting/Scripting – 'Pretty Good' to 'Shoot Them Now Please'
Who was in charge of translation and voice acting for the US version of this game? There were only a few characters that I would say were pretty good, and most of them were not lead characters. Lightning sounded sincere, as did Cid(of course there's a Cid; this is Final Fantasy), one of the main character's parents, and the main bad guy. The lead characters ranged from too cocky to overconfident-as-an-emotional-stabilizer to MY-EARS-ARE-BLEEDING-MAKE-IT-STOP-JIMMY! Two of them have British accents, which serves to amplify their perceived personality, for better or for worse, and to show that both of them are from a different part of the world than the other characters. It seems that many foreign worlds that have to speak English for story reasons must speak in British accents, even though they are in a fantasy world and there is no Britain. Either that, or the British crown lost more empires and land and peoples when they ceased to be a world power than I previously thought.
I don't understand how someone thought that this would make the characters seem more real, but every lead character voice actor would often breath heavily, giggle, grunt, gasp, and startle (apparently that is a sound effect) into the microphone. The characters would walk to an edge, see something, and then spoil a potentially excellent camera shot by gasping, grunting, huffing, and all manner of vocal rubbish into the microphone. In particular, I have to talk about Vanille, who is responsible for making me cry for mercy. I don't know who has the special skill for finding female voice actors with no tone inflection and a narrow but ear-splitting vocal range, but her sorority-girl-on-the-phone voice was used throughout the whole game with only a few rare breakthroughs into what I could believe was an honest-to-goodness human voice. She is a young and shy girl who uses high-pitched laughter to compensate for her fear, which manifested itself as fussiness. I would have preferred it if her voice was replaced by a flashbang grenade set off in a library, along with the accompanying cries of afflicted individuals, rather than getting up at every cutscene to turn down the volume out of fear that she might speak.
Overall, the voice acting and scripting was poor. Vanille was the outlier that lowered the average from 'acceptable'.
The Story – Shallow, Fractured, and Mind-Numbingly Linear
The story structure and the story itself both had a lot of potential, but they were both poorly implemented. The structure was actually pretty interesting. The player starts in the middle of a series of events, and as the story progresses, you learn more about the background events. This might have worked well if it had not been for the miss-inspired idea to tell the story in cinematic events AND in the Datalog. The story is told mostly by cinematic events, and the Datalog provides a written summary of the past chapter, but the cinematic story is fractured since many elements necessary to understanding the characters' background are told in the Datalog only. Such fracturing occurs frequently, and I can only surmise was the result of drunk CEO wanting to tell the writers who was boss and locking the cinematic story teller and the Datalog writers in separate cubicles at sea and refusing to feed them unless they didn't talk to each other. Occasionally, the player will learn something through the Datalog that is a big part of one of the character's background story, but was never told cinematically, and is later brought up in casual conversation and nobody bats an eye. This is bad storytelling. It is like going to a movie and requiring frequent pausing to consult the script and read directors comments about what the characters are supposed to be feeling.
The structure was also ludicrously linear. There was no choice about where to go until just before the encounter with the main bad guy, and even then there were only two portals instead of the traditional airship to explore the world. There were no towns (items were bought, sold, and upgraded at save points), no stopping points, no branches, no exploring until late in the game, and zero change in pace. A major story structure casualty of this consistently pace is the climaxes, which could only rise above the usual pace by a small amount. The player didn't get a break from the pace of the story until it ended, so it was difficult to feel anything but exhaustion at every turn in the story. I should correct that last statement: the story never 'turned' at all, but rather marched, unfeeling and forceful, like an invasion, into my memory.
The story itself had potential as a social commentary, but abysmally failed as story set in a fantasy/sci-fi world. The best that I could tell was that it was a commentary about the Japanese perception of worth in the world, the uncertainty about where they are going, and whether they can overcome their fate that was dictated by another. I'll admit that this could have been a cool introduction to game, but it should have been resolved in the first few hours and been replaced by a strong central narrative about events larger than the characters, or it could have served as a background plot in a larger story. It should not have been the focus of the entire game. There were several times that I felt that a larger story was intentionally squashed in favor of the commentary. For example, if some characters escaped from the bad guys, they didn't say that they were going to destroy the bad guys and save the world. No, they said that they were going to find a way to change their fates.
And the bad guy? The bad guy was the bad guy, not for doing anything particularly bad, but because he had plans to do bad stuff and was responsible for attempting to dictate the main characters' fates. In some landmark mistake between the world lore and storytelling that has to be somewhere in the book of Worst Decisions Every Made, the bad guy was actually incapable of doing bad things like blowing up the world and killing people or taking their stuff. He was only capable of trying to get people do things for him. The main characters didn't want any more bad stuff to happen, so they had to stop the guy who made people do bad stuff in order to stop him from making anybody else do bad stuff.
Then there was a lot of uncertain talk about people turning into crystals. Again, there was potential for crystals being a larger part of the story, but it was turned into another tool for the commentary, since people turned to crystal for doing what they really wanted. I think.
Overall, the story was shallow, fractured between the cutscenes and the Datalog, and forced to be a social commentary instead of a good, original story.
Other Notes – Interesting…
Out of battle, the player can move the movement joystick back and forth and cause the controlled character to do what I like to call a 'Coffee Dance', but after a few turns the character will automatically stop, shake their head, and give a 'cut it out' signal with their hands. The programmers had a sense of humor.
One of the lead characters, Sazh, is a black guy, and he has a black son with the same hair style. I do not know how they came to be because, after playing through the entire game, I did not see a single other black individual. Seriously, if you are going to have a character that appears to come from a different genetic background as the other characters, either show some sort of community from which they came, or say that they are an alien and leave it at that. Otherwise, I must assume that they are a single celled organism and reproduce by dividing, amoeba-like. In the grand scheme of things though, this lore issue was negligible.
Overall – Fun, If You Can Overlook the Story and Characters and Music
Near the beginning of this review, I talked about the battle system and visuals and how they were most excellent. While the story structure was fractured, the lore-story combination reflect a few world-class bad design decisions, the characters were shallow and not worth caring about, some of the voice acting was so horrendous that I wished the death of a thousand fiery suns upon them, and the music gave the impression that the player should be waltzing in a flowery meadow in summer even though giant flesh-eating creatures walked not 10m away, waiting to devour them, the battle system was excellent enough and the visuals superb enough to justify at least one time through this adventure. To be honest, my ripping on the story and characters was the result of no single horrendous thing except Vanille's voice, but rather the result of the proverbial thousand cuts. So much of the game was almost right, but far enough off from 'good' that it was as if I was on an epic journey with small sharp things in my foot for the entire time. If any part of the game was so horrendous that I couldn't play any further, then this review would have been much, much shorter. My guess is that so much time and money was spent developing the graphics engine that the world from a tech demo or concept phase was forced upon an innocent and unsuspecting story rather than making a good story from scratch and building the world to support it.
After all I said, I think that all Final Fantasy and RPG fans should play this to experience a different type of battle system and a gorgeous world.