Opening words:
Final fantasy 13 has a lot to make up for in my opinion, ff12 was majorly boring to me, it was here, program scripts and watch your fighters fight. The battle systems have been going down hill after ff10. We all know that final fantasy games are very beautiful, and this installment is no exception. we waited a long time for this game, does it live up to the expectations? HELL NO!!!!!!!!
Presentation: 9.5
The presentation on this is absolutely amazing, one of the prettiest video games I have ever seen, it rivals all the top games out in terms of graphics, the story telling is great. The menus are typical final fantasy. One thing that I really hated though was having to go to the us menu to see the world map.
Single Player: 6.5
ON THE RAILS. You will feel like a bull being pulled by his nose ring down a predictable path. It’s like they went to nintendo and asked, “how do you make games for normal people and five year olds”‘ and Nintendo gave them an on the rails blueprint. The game is impressive at first, until you realize that you have no control over your team, who’s in it, and what they do in battle. Visually there is no other rpg on this level as far as cut scenes and in game graphics. However the pacing of the story telling is so drawn out, too little to often. I like more game play then a big cut scene. Like ramping up the excitement in a way that is thrilling, this is not the case in this game. Instead the story is told over a long period of time with cut scenes to often. I don’t mind the characters all that much and the voice acting doesn’t drive me crazy like in some other recent RPGs. Over time, a long time, they slowly give you normal rpg features, like who’s in your team, and what skill sets your characters can develop. Sad thing is that by the time the game let’s you have any control, you get bored. Later in the game, they throw you into an open world you can even explore. the problem is, this is like 45 hours into the game. At this point I got really tired of the game, the bad guys in this land are all like mini bosses, and the battles take way to long and there are so many of them, and there all these side quest you need to do in order to level up to end the game. It’s boring at this point in the game. I did like it at first, but honestly it just gets tedious and boring toward the end.
Visuals: 9
Seriously one of the best looking games on the market. The FMV, and the game engine are gorgeous on the ps3. The detail in the monsters and environments is great in some parts. Some of the world environments are kind of boring though. The characters look good, some of the clothing is very lame though. Reminds me of final fantasy 10′s Hawaii surfer look. Blah. One ing i hated is the battle graphics, ey are pretty, but hard to tell what is going on. You never really see the bad ass magic because everything is so washed out in the realtime battle s esteem, and your characters wondern in close together and it gets confusing, stupid how they wander in clumps and when everyone is casting and fighting it just looks like a big blob of shit flying around getting mixed together, i wish it was separated like the old games were and you could see the magic clearly and really appreciate the graphics.
Audio: 5.6
The music sucks. It’s so generic and has nothing in common with the old games that had great music. BAD vocals plague the songs constantly. STUPID LYRICS. The voice acting is ok, nothing great, but not the worst. Not impressed with the audio at all.
Game mechanics: 5.0
This is where the game really fails compared to the past versions in the series. You cannot have more than 3 people in your party, and then you cannot even control the other players. It picks your partners for up to 40 hours of the game play. every character can have different skill sets, but they feel so crippled. You have to do so much grinding, its so annoying in the later levels because of how long the battles take on the more advanced creatures, they all become like boss battles, and i never ever felt like i was a bad ass towards the end of the game. You have the option to pick from a very limited attack moves depending on the class you are, or auto battle, and in the end you just end up auto battling all the time so the game is like pushing one button all the time. Since the characters have different skills, you can set up different attack lay outs with the different skills. You do this by building your paradigms, this allows you to set up which mode your characters can be in, medic, magic, combat, synergist, saboteur, sentinel. This is the only thing that makes the fighting interesting, you have to switch modes in battle to heal, but you still do not have direct control over other party members while in battle, so they will stupidly heal the wrong person at times and you will die because of it. This is a real time combat system, where your meter builds up and then you perform the move, you can build combos, or auto battle. It gets so boring and tedious. They do unlock stuff later on, like let you chose your party, and there is this upgrade grind thing, but its so linear and boring, you never really customize what you unlock, and most of the upgrades are things that happen automatic in battle and you have no control over them. LAME. Just like in the last final fantasy, they made the summons boring, you summon your aeon, and then you control it and no one else is in the battle, I liked how it was in ff7 and ff10, where you summons, it runs its movie and does its damage, then its over. So they fucked up the Summons on this game as well, just like ff12. The last good FF game was ff10. Seriously.
Replay: 6.0
If you like a boring battle system that is really pretty and blabbed up in the heat of battle, that grinds into infinity with bad pacing, sure torture yourself and come back and play it over and over. There is a lot of game play here, too much.
Total score: 6.5
It is above average, but has to many issues to make it a fun engaging game. It feels a lot like the last one, where you don’t feel in control. The way they paced the game is terrible. All the pretty graphics in the world cannot save it from its boring battle system, boring fights. The story is OK, its not amazing, but its OK. I played it to see the ending, but unless you grind in pulse, you get your ass kicked at the end, and when they finally open up the world to you for exploring, you are already bored of the battle system, the tedious long mini boss battles that are happening constantly. This was a huge disappointment. Save your money, it’s not even worth a rent. Go buy White Knight or Star Ocean on ps3. This is a waste of time and money. If you are mainstream and like simple un complicated tedious battles, this is really pretty and you might like it. If you come from the old school RPG days, you will really hate this. Don’t waste your time. Hell I even liked Demon Souls more than this.
