My Rating: Cafe Latte (3)
I'm Not Crying! My Eyes are just Sweating!
Back in 2011, I was one happy gamer. After saving all my hard earned money from working various jobs, I finally had just enough to buy a PlayStation 3 with Final Fantasy 13. Needless to say, I was hooked. I know that the game itself had a lot of backlash for being so "linear", not having towns to explore, and not completely giving you all the features until "50%" of the game was through, but I still loved every moment of it.
I was one of those people that went through the entries and read the backstory of the game's world. I cried for a lot of cut scenes and even the game's very emotional ending. I would spend my school days thinking about Lightning's plights and even play the battle theme in my car on the way to work.
Final Fantasy 13 for me was an escape from my stressful life.
Below is my review for Final Fantasy 13:
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An Adventure You Won't Want to Miss!!,
Final Fantasy XIII for the PS3 is one of the best games I've ever played since buying the system. It's filled with beautiful graphics, spot on gameplay, believable and vivid protagonists, and a rather long adventure that will keep you playing for hours on end. (Note; This is spoiler free!)
Pros:
-The Soundtrack in this game, is by far, some of the best I've ever heard in video game music. I'm a musician myself and I gotta say, if I died and went to heaven, this is the kind of music that you'd only hear angels sing. If your a musician, you should consider getting the game just for the soundtrack itself! A lot of the songs in the game are also very catchy to the point that I find myself humming or whistling the tunes throughout the day. If you really want to get an idea of the soundtrack, look for Lightning's Theme on youtube, you will be blown away!
-If you like games like Kingdom Hearts, or you've played other Final Fantasy games like FFX or FFX-2, then you'll probably like this game a lot. The characters in the game are so believable with their graphics and voice-acting, I forget that I'm actually playing a game sometimes. The game has tons of cut-scenes, which really enrich the storyline and it constantly adds all kinds of fun or crazy twists. My only gripe with cutscenes, are that I wish they were more interactive like Heavy Rain. It's fun to watch characters in battles do cool things, but it would be even better to execute commands so that you actually feel like you've contributed to the cutscene.
-Battles in this game are really really fun. They're basically a revamped version of a quick time battle. When walking on the map in the game, enemies don't appear randomly, they're actually already on the map and you have the choice if you want to fight them or not. I think this is a great idea since the players can focus more on the beautiful environments and micro-managing their attributes with ease without walking two steps and entering a battle.
When battles are started, players have to wait for an attack bar to go up. Once it's up, the character will attack. You can only control one character in battle, and if that specific character gets knocked out, you lose the battle. You also have two allies that help you in battle, healing you if your health is low or helping you kill enemies. In battles, you can't physically move your character; instead, you select an attack option and you watch it play out. One of the things that I liked about battles was that using potions don't affect one character, they fill the health of all three characters! It's extremely helpful, especially when enemies give devastating physical attacks on all three of your characters! It just really saves time! Characters can also "stagger" enemies by attacking them enough times, which makes them do more physical damage even when using the most basic attacks. If battles get tough, players can also use Eidoons, which are basically "summons" that can do really heavy damage on foes. Overall, battles are really fun in this game. I actually found myself wanting to go into any battle I could because they were so much fun.
-Developing characters have a new system called a "crystalarium". After winning battles, you'll earn something called crystogen points, which you can spend in the crystalarium for new abilities, increased health or magic, and also attack techniques such as Libra, which analyzes enemies to help you figure out their weaknesses. Overall, developing characters is really user-friendly and very easy to use.
-The game's story involves a lot of switching between protagonists since at some point they do split up. One of the things I really liked was the fact that the characters that you did not play as during one segment still gain experience points when you were not using them. So if you played as one character for one scene, and now you're in a completely new scene as a different character, that new character gets the experience points that you worked your butt off for in battles. It was really helpful, since most of the time the game centered on a group of characters for a while, and to switch back to them with an abundance of experience points was just awesome.
-Throughout the game, I've never felt "underprepared" for battles. Sometimes I would get stuck on certain bosses, but I never got stuck to the point that I had to back off and grind for more experience points. I found this to actually be a really nice advantage since the story in this game is very heavy and engrossing and adding a boss battle that made the player underprepared after putting hours into the game, would be unfair.
-
Cons:
-This game is extremely linear. A lot of the maps involve just walking in one direction, with the occasional shortcut that leads to a treasure. The linear factor isn't really a bad thing, it does save time compared to other FF games that take way too long just to figure out where to go, but these maps could have been spanned out a lot better.
EDIT: I have completed the game and once you reach about halfway in the game you'll end up in Gran Pulse, which is a huge and open, free explorable world. Although there isn't any towns in Gran Pulse, the linear factor here is completely gone, which I found to be a refreshing twist!
-There's no explorable towns in this game. I mean, the characters do come across quite a few towns, but because they are fugitives throughout the entire game, town exploration is minimized to none at all. So instead of walking around and looking for stores, players simply shop for items at save points.
EDIT: Since there's no towns, players can also shop for various weapons, upgrades, and different items at save points as well, which is a huge advantage.
-You can't save anytime in this game. I mean there is a ton of save points at every corner, but it would've been nice if I could be given the option to save wherever I wanted to, or even quick save like some of the remastered FF games have.
-If you have more than three characters in your party, you can't switch them out during battles like you could in FFX. These characters simply remain in the pause menu to indicate that they're in your party. It's a shame too, considering how I really wanted some of these characters to fight with me in battles.
EDIT: Once you hit Gran Pulse, you actually can switch your character battle team around in the game. It's a little disappointing that we finally get that option halfway through the game, but better to have it than not at all!!
-When you're in battles, there's an option called "Auto battle" which allows you to choose the best possible actions that you can choose. While it is extremely helpful, I it would be nice to have the ability to turn that off, or have it removed by the user's choice. That way, fans that have been playing the games for a while can focus more on micro-managing rather than completely relying on the auto attack command.
-Whenever I played the game, I always felt like I never had enough money to spend on cool items such as accessories or weapons. Battles don't exactly give you too much money, and treasure chests just have other weapons or accessories. So whenever you come across a save point that has a new shop in it, you really don't feel excited or curious about it since you have no money!
Overall-
Final Fantasy 13 is an epic game. It has an engrossing storyline that extremely in-depth, it has a really fun and simplistic battle system that really keeps you coming back for more, it has characters that are believable and make you sympathize with them, and it has beautiful environments that transform your living room into the world of Cocoon. It's definitely not like any of the older games; it is something that tries to be new and fresh for young and experienced gamers alike, and it definitely achieves it!
Post Game Summary:
Since I've written this review, it's been a few months and I was actually halfway through the game. I can now gladly say that I have completed Final Fantasy 13. It was truly and amazing experience. From the intro cutscene that feels like a movie, to the final hand sweating boss battle at the very end, this game was most definitely worth my time and money. I will not spoil the ending, but I must say, it is truly deep among any of the Final Fantasy games I've ever played and it's truly something you can only achieve by actually spending the time through this game from start to finish. Just listening to the ending song "My Hands" was really emotional and to this day I still think about the game. I can't wait to start playing Final Fantasy 13-2!! I highly recommend this game to anyone; rpg fans or new ones alike.
Pros:
-The Soundtrack in this game, is by far, some of the best I've ever heard in video game music. I'm a musician myself and I gotta say, if I died and went to heaven, this is the kind of music that you'd only hear angels sing. If your a musician, you should consider getting the game just for the soundtrack itself! A lot of the songs in the game are also very catchy to the point that I find myself humming or whistling the tunes throughout the day. If you really want to get an idea of the soundtrack, look for Lightning's Theme on youtube, you will be blown away!
-If you like games like Kingdom Hearts, or you've played other Final Fantasy games like FFX or FFX-2, then you'll probably like this game a lot. The characters in the game are so believable with their graphics and voice-acting, I forget that I'm actually playing a game sometimes. The game has tons of cut-scenes, which really enrich the storyline and it constantly adds all kinds of fun or crazy twists. My only gripe with cutscenes, are that I wish they were more interactive like Heavy Rain. It's fun to watch characters in battles do cool things, but it would be even better to execute commands so that you actually feel like you've contributed to the cutscene.
-Battles in this game are really really fun. They're basically a revamped version of a quick time battle. When walking on the map in the game, enemies don't appear randomly, they're actually already on the map and you have the choice if you want to fight them or not. I think this is a great idea since the players can focus more on the beautiful environments and micro-managing their attributes with ease without walking two steps and entering a battle.
When battles are started, players have to wait for an attack bar to go up. Once it's up, the character will attack. You can only control one character in battle, and if that specific character gets knocked out, you lose the battle. You also have two allies that help you in battle, healing you if your health is low or helping you kill enemies. In battles, you can't physically move your character; instead, you select an attack option and you watch it play out. One of the things that I liked about battles was that using potions don't affect one character, they fill the health of all three characters! It's extremely helpful, especially when enemies give devastating physical attacks on all three of your characters! It just really saves time! Characters can also "stagger" enemies by attacking them enough times, which makes them do more physical damage even when using the most basic attacks. If battles get tough, players can also use Eidoons, which are basically "summons" that can do really heavy damage on foes. Overall, battles are really fun in this game. I actually found myself wanting to go into any battle I could because they were so much fun.
-Developing characters have a new system called a "crystalarium". After winning battles, you'll earn something called crystogen points, which you can spend in the crystalarium for new abilities, increased health or magic, and also attack techniques such as Libra, which analyzes enemies to help you figure out their weaknesses. Overall, developing characters is really user-friendly and very easy to use.
-The game's story involves a lot of switching between protagonists since at some point they do split up. One of the things I really liked was the fact that the characters that you did not play as during one segment still gain experience points when you were not using them. So if you played as one character for one scene, and now you're in a completely new scene as a different character, that new character gets the experience points that you worked your butt off for in battles. It was really helpful, since most of the time the game centered on a group of characters for a while, and to switch back to them with an abundance of experience points was just awesome.
-Throughout the game, I've never felt "underprepared" for battles. Sometimes I would get stuck on certain bosses, but I never got stuck to the point that I had to back off and grind for more experience points. I found this to actually be a really nice advantage since the story in this game is very heavy and engrossing and adding a boss battle that made the player underprepared after putting hours into the game, would be unfair.
-
Cons:
-This game is extremely linear. A lot of the maps involve just walking in one direction, with the occasional shortcut that leads to a treasure. The linear factor isn't really a bad thing, it does save time compared to other FF games that take way too long just to figure out where to go, but these maps could have been spanned out a lot better.
EDIT: I have completed the game and once you reach about halfway in the game you'll end up in Gran Pulse, which is a huge and open, free explorable world. Although there isn't any towns in Gran Pulse, the linear factor here is completely gone, which I found to be a refreshing twist!
-There's no explorable towns in this game. I mean, the characters do come across quite a few towns, but because they are fugitives throughout the entire game, town exploration is minimized to none at all. So instead of walking around and looking for stores, players simply shop for items at save points.
EDIT: Since there's no towns, players can also shop for various weapons, upgrades, and different items at save points as well, which is a huge advantage.
-You can't save anytime in this game. I mean there is a ton of save points at every corner, but it would've been nice if I could be given the option to save wherever I wanted to, or even quick save like some of the remastered FF games have.
-If you have more than three characters in your party, you can't switch them out during battles like you could in FFX. These characters simply remain in the pause menu to indicate that they're in your party. It's a shame too, considering how I really wanted some of these characters to fight with me in battles.
EDIT: Once you hit Gran Pulse, you actually can switch your character battle team around in the game. It's a little disappointing that we finally get that option halfway through the game, but better to have it than not at all!!
-When you're in battles, there's an option called "Auto battle" which allows you to choose the best possible actions that you can choose. While it is extremely helpful, I it would be nice to have the ability to turn that off, or have it removed by the user's choice. That way, fans that have been playing the games for a while can focus more on micro-managing rather than completely relying on the auto attack command.
-Whenever I played the game, I always felt like I never had enough money to spend on cool items such as accessories or weapons. Battles don't exactly give you too much money, and treasure chests just have other weapons or accessories. So whenever you come across a save point that has a new shop in it, you really don't feel excited or curious about it since you have no money!
Overall-
Final Fantasy 13 is an epic game. It has an engrossing storyline that extremely in-depth, it has a really fun and simplistic battle system that really keeps you coming back for more, it has characters that are believable and make you sympathize with them, and it has beautiful environments that transform your living room into the world of Cocoon. It's definitely not like any of the older games; it is something that tries to be new and fresh for young and experienced gamers alike, and it definitely achieves it!
Post Game Summary:
Since I've written this review, it's been a few months and I was actually halfway through the game. I can now gladly say that I have completed Final Fantasy 13. It was truly and amazing experience. From the intro cutscene that feels like a movie, to the final hand sweating boss battle at the very end, this game was most definitely worth my time and money. I will not spoil the ending, but I must say, it is truly deep among any of the Final Fantasy games I've ever played and it's truly something you can only achieve by actually spending the time through this game from start to finish. Just listening to the ending song "My Hands" was really emotional and to this day I still think about the game. I can't wait to start playing Final Fantasy 13-2!! I highly recommend this game to anyone; rpg fans or new ones alike.
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One of the symbolic things that I find to be very interesting about the Final Fantasy games is their uncanny way of showing religion in different forms. The gods in the game were the antagonists, pitting humans against their own family members. I feel like this really is a testament to how our modern religions are. Always claiming to be the one true religion. Born and raised Roman Catholic, I do feel like my religion condemns more than it accepts.
As I grow older, I do feel that diversity is very important in our world. And we should always be very accepting of the differences that we do not share with others. It is such a repugnant thing when the lives of people are at stake due to the teachings of a destructive religion.
Think about what you put out into the world, stop being so cruel to others, and accept others for their differences.
Final Fantasy 13 really showed me that kind of message and I definitely took it and ran with it.
Thanks for reading my review!
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