Final Fantasy XIII (PlayStation 3) review "Is it good? That's what everyone has been asking in tremulous voices when the subject of Square Enix's most expensive addition to the Final Fantasy line up comes up. "

Is it good? That's what everyone has been asking in tremulous voices when the subject of Square Enix's most expensive addition to the Final Fantasy line up comes up.

Well... no. It's not. For the most part, anyway.

The combat in Final Fantasy XIII is amazing. Without abandoning the Active Time Battle system that has been the mainstay of the series, Final Fantasy XIII manages to add a need for precise tactical timing to each fight. Combining a simplified gambit system from Final Fantasy XII with the in-battle job changes of Final Fantasy X-2, the game places a keen emphasis on mixing the right skill sets at the right moments. It hearkens back to the old job system while bringing in the action genre's emphasis on timing attacks and defense maneuvers just right. Paired with some of the smoothest next generation graphics available, Final Fantasy XIII's battle system provides the pleasurable distraction of free-flowing, customizable, combat.

And with that, I could very well be done with my review and you might suspect that Final Fantasy XIII would get a nice high score. What you wouldn’t understand is that, outside of combat, Final Fantasy XIII has little to offer.

Exploration, for instance, has been completely cut from the game. Many are going to miss the ability to stray from the beaten path and explore fantastic environments filled with legendary monsters, hidden treasures, and mysterious dungeons. Not only are there none of these offerings, there are also no towns, cities, or really even any NPCs. Indeed, gone are the very markers that used to keep adventurers focused in their quests! The characters in Final Fantasy XIII rarely know what they are doing and instead just wander aimlessly until something happens to them. This lack of identifiable character goals mixed with the “point A to point B” environments can easily make a player feel like they are along for a ride that they don’t understand. With little understanding of where they are headed and no ability to affect that course or even explore other paths along the way, it’s easy to become apathetic.

Apathy is a feeling that pervades other areas of the game, too. The writing in Final Fantasy XIII is thoroughly lazy. Rather than take the time to build a theme or a relationship with a character oftentimes the script will try to build emotion for an NPC that players know nothing about. It accomplishes this through the expedient method of “spoon-feeding.” For instance, early in the game, Square Enix introduces a character, has her say two or three times that she’s a mother, and then kills her off barely five minutes later in a scene that's obviously supposed to be emotional and surprising (but isn't). “B-r-r-r-r-rum! Open up, gamers! Here comes the airplane!”

This dedication to treating the audience like children is an issue that continues throughout the story. There are a lot of twists to the plot, but many involve characters that you only know the barest of information about. Being betrayed by an NPC you’ve met maybe twice in the game doesn’t carry much weight to it, despite the full string orchestra playing in the background. Even this in itself wouldn’t be more than a slight annoyance if the game didn’t make the story such a focus, continually interrupting the action to wrest control away from the gamer and show them a cutscene. With a Final Fantasy game this might not seem like such a bad thing, but nothing new is happening here. Yes, the graphics are pretty, but how many times since Advent Children have we seen Square Enix do hand-to-hand aerial combats? When there’s talk of one of the party members becoming a big monster that will destroy the world, then even casual Final Fantasy fans may start to think “been here, done that.” Those who have played Final Fantasy X, on the other hand, may need to check their disc to remind themselves that this is a new game.

Final Fantasy XIII excels in one aspect, in that it adds a nice tactical element to the battles. Even this isn’t free of complaint, though. With the higher level of graphics comes a lesser level of enemy diversity. Especially when compared to past titles, this Final Fantasy seems lacking in the monster line up. Perhaps the biggest indicator of this is that you fight the same flying boss three or four times throughout the game. It looks the same, it shows up in the same manner, and for the most part it even fights the same. That would be fine if it was something interesting, like a wise-cracking Octopus who held a long-standing grudge against the party, but in this case it just happens to be a mechanized creation that the enemy manufactures en masse. Original Boss Fights (TM) have long been a mainstay of Final Fantasy games. It didn't get that reputation by copying sprites, at least not without providing a solid In-Game Reason (TM) for it. On a similar note, while the need to pick and choose job combinations in response to real-time combative situations provides a nice puzzle element to the game, it is a puzzle that usually has the same solution. After fighting a string of battles, gamers will most likely catch themselves shifting jobs at exactly the same point in each fight to take advantage of exactly the same situation. Fight enough enemies and the innovative combat can suddenly seem as mechanical as the old “tell everyone to attack while Rydia casts Fire 3” system.

The presentation of Final Fantasy XIII is such that more seems to be constantly promised. The levels are designed with obvious imagination, but no options for exploration. The sweeping orchestral movements and over-emotional voice acting only serves to showcase the shallowness of the script. Depending on how much you like the battle system, your attention may be held for the length of the game, but you’ll always feel like something was missing.

The insult is compounded by the final stages of the game, where suddenly the claustrophobic canyons and empty cities littered with invisible walls give way to wide expanses filled with a variety of new monsters. The Archylte Steppe quickly became my favorite environment of the game, where I could run along the edge of a wide lake while in the distance massive elephantine beasts shook the countryside with the heaviness of their steps. Taking my party to the hills, I would watch as the shadows of Wyverns in flight created moving patterns on the grasses below. Here, too, I could finally accept side quests at my leisure, finally giving me some feeling of investment in the character’s actions. Indeed, in these moments I saw the kind of game that Final Fantasy XIII could have been.

But I was already past caring.

Community review by zippdementia (March 19, 2010) Zipp has spent most of his life standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox there. Sometimes he writes reviews and puts them in the mailbox.