Final Fantasy XIII impressions, Review to come soon
Hey all, finished God of War III recently (two playthroughs and most trophies) so I decided to delve into a very long JRPG. Of course, this has been out for about a month now, but up until recently, haven’t had the time to devote to an RPG. Now that I’m playing, and about 20 hours in, I have some impressions. May be a while until I write my full review, since I hear this game is very long, but I just wanted to post some impressions and deny all the bad press this game is getting.
So I’m sure you’ve heard by now, FFXIII is very linear. So linear that many people don’t like it. Yes, there are no towns, the NPCs are there but not really interactive, and the story is very linearly progressed. It’s a lot of straightforward paths of battle-cutscene-battle-cutscene with limited freedom. Sounds kinda sad, don’t it? Well, yes, I’m disappointed they didn’t keep all the aspects from the other Final Fantasy games, but honestly, I can see why they made the game so linear. The story is very focused and never is dull. Something exciting is always happening, and because of that the characters go through a lot of interesting situations. So, yes, FFXIII is very linear and you have little control over the experience itself, but its one of those games where your “along for the ride”. Kinda like Uncharted 2. Its fun to just watch and see what happens. So, no, you don’t get to customize your character as much as you would like, you don’t get to explore nooks and crannys of towns, complete random sidequests given by random strangers, and you can’t just randomly run around the world map for an hour and half looking for new areas and fighting monsters that you’re not supposed to be fighting yet, but is it really worse of?
A little. But not enough to hinder the game. The game’s straightforward, but its also very focused. I never loose interest in this game. It’s very addictive and you’ve got to see what happens next. You can tell they wished to put in more there, but didn’t have the time or resources. You can tell there’s some stuff the developers would’ve loved to add, but they were focused on making a great RPG experience. So we don’t have towns anymore. Yeah, kinda sad, but all in all I’m not disappointed since the rest of the game is so good. All in all, FFXIII is different from the other games in the series in some aspects, but the same in others. It is the most focused Final Fantasy to date, and while not the best one, definitely a step in an interesting direction for the genre, good or bad. Because lets face it, RPGs are grasping for new things nowadays with all the technology we have now. Every game is adding RPG elements and classic RPGs are kinda loosing the edge. Final Fantasy XIII spits in the face of those comments and says “hey, we’re sticking with what we do best”, which is telling a great story while serving up an enjoyable game. And that’s really all fans can ask for.
