A Closer Look: Final Fantasy XIII

By: Andrew Triplett

Final Fantasy is finally gracing us on the next generation consoles this week! A very unique aspect for this game is that it will be available on both Sony’s Playstation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox360. It was a fairly shocking announcement a couple years ago when Square Enix declared that this game would also be available for the Xbox gamers out there. If you’re unfamiliar with what the Final Fantasy games are, I’ll give you a quick rundown.

Final Fantasy is a Japanese RPG series that was started back in 1987 in Japan and 1990 in the US. Each of the games have their own particular story while retaining the distinctive Final Fantasy feel. These games usually aim to draw you into their various different worlds and have you participate in saving the world from the many different evils plaguing their worlds. While there are 13 official titles under the official names, there are numerous spinoff games under the Final Fantasy umbrella (such as the Crystal Chronicle games and the other miscellaneous titles for PSP).

That being said, let’s get into the newest release. As I had told you earlier, this is the first release on the new generation of consoles. With that, the game produces the best and most vivid graphics seen in their games. You can expect to drop over 50 hours into this game and upwards to 75+ hours if you are a perfectionist. Some people can see this as a good thing, others – not so good. Me personally, I like bang for buck, so a dollar per hour of gameplay is pretty sweet in my book!

While retaining the open world with creatures roaming about, Square Enix is ditching the realtime battle system that Final Fantasy XII had implemented. It’s more of a hybrid from the realtime system and the previous turn-based combat system. Also changed is the fact that you can only control the main character and once killed, you must start over either from the last save point or right before that last battle. Having a fairly linear start, the game provides you with a pretty open-ended tail to the game.

Some of the changes may be designed into the game in order to mask some of the shortcuts that had to be made to push this game through the gates in a timely manner. One of these shortcuts would be the choice to remove traditional cities from the game. The major driving force behind this decision would be because of the massive amount of time and energy that would have been required to develop these cities for Final Fantasy in it’s usual fashion.

With the huge built-up anticipation, there are also some criticism that has been cast on this game. With a good-but-not-great Metacritic score of 83, some of the gripes about this game is about it’s linearity, straying from Final Fantasy’s roots, 25 hours of tutorial, and hours upon hours of cut-scenes. As you can see, these could be some tedious things, but they are all subjective. This game could very well reel you into the Japanese RPG genre, so I wouldn’t pass on this simply because of a critic’s words.

This game without a doubt is not following the lines of it’s predecessors, but I wouldn’t say that this is a bad thing. This game carves it’s own path through the franchise of Final Fantasy and will prove to take this genre in a different direction. Hopefully, it will bring in many new fans to the Final Fantasy games and keep their current fans entertained. Regardless, this game will provide you with hours of gaming fun and keep you busy for a long time.