So. I gave in to my temptations and bought me Final Fantasy XIII. So much for waiting for a price drop.

My initial reflections on the first... 12 hours is fairly favorable. It seems that every positive is more or less countered by a negative though. I love the way they tell the story. They split the cast into smaller groups, much like they did in Final Fantasy VI. But- and you've probably all heard it- the game's level design is very weak. Sure, all games make you go from point A to point B, but few do it so linearly, even in the realm of JRPGs. The battle system is fantastic and requires a certain degree of strategy, but the ability to master several roles and to change them on the fly means that characters will develop fairly similarly to each other. The story itself seems pretty decent so far, but suffers from some overly dramatic characters, and honestly, some rather annoying ones too. Believe me, my issues with the BOY Hope doesn't end at his name. Overall though, the goods outweigh the bads, so it's actually been quite an enjoyable experience.

Essentially, this is Final Fantasy stripped down to its roots. There are no towns to stop in (that I've encountered thus far), there are no minigames, there isn't even magic outside of battles (you get restored after every battle). What is does have is a story that constantly gets pushed forward (for better or worse. Mostly by the linearity of the level design). While it doesn't feel like it's ever really dragging on, it does feel like Square-Enix missed a LOT of potential here. The stages themselves are some of the most wonderous sets I've ever seen in any game, but you're limited to the tiny little corridor of movement. Thankfully though, the game constantly awards our progress with bit and pieces of the story, so I never really minded the lack of towns and such.

I think that at its core, this is a game for diehard JRPG fans. It's hard to imagine any other kind of audience because it strips away everything but the core JRPG experience.