Final Fantasy XIII First Impressions

I got my hands on Final Fantasy XIII on release day. Like everybody else. First thing I did, probably like everybody else, was to pop it in the 360 and start playing.

Now I have only had a chance to play the first hour or of the game so I can’t really say if I like the game or not just yet. I mean, I don’t even know what’s going on. There are people in fancy dresses and then there are these other people in fancy armours. There is a lot of fighting and exploding between the two and then a giant robot comes out and starts ordering the people in fancy dresses around, and I still don’t have an idea of what’s going on other than the fact that I am rooting for the people in the fancy dresses; and killing the people in the fancy armours and their dogs too. There is also a Pulse fal’Cie going around, but I don’t really know what that’s about either.

So far I have run into seven of the characters that have been in the party. At the start of the game you take control of:

Lightening: The ‘main’ character of the game and the first female lead (as I understand, other than X-2) who seems be a character based of the Cloud Strife (of FF VII and Advent Children) with breasts glued on and about as much personality. Maybe as the game progresses more is revealed. On the plus side, she does not run like Yuna. She uses a sword as her main weapon.

Sazh: Tagging along with our lovely heroine is this fellow; your run-of-the-mill black comic relief that uses guns. I can’t really think of much else to say here, because this character is very stereotypical of what you would see in a buddy action movie (if one character was white and the other black).

A dramatic escape and showdown later, we switch to:

Snow: The hero, as he is referred to quite a few times. Out to do justice and good and protect the other helpless civilians. Has the personality of any other hero type so not much to be said here. He seems to like punching people.

Gadot: Tagging along with Snow, he is a mirror image of Snow (expect he is the lackey type). Uses guns. Don’t think anyone is waiting for him though.

Lebreau: She is the Lingerie model turned action heroine of the group. She was probably at a photo shoot when she was arrested and shoved onto the train out of city, and had to grab whatever she could to cover herself up. She uses guns as well.

Another dramatic sequence and showdown later we switch to:

Hope: A young kid orphaned in this strife (his mother dies). He is still figuring things out while trying to seem put together. He has a facial expression that is stuck on ‘who me?’ or maybe ‘Whoa! Boobs!’, but I haven’t quite figured out which one it is. He uses a Boomerang? Where he pulled it out of is anybody’s guess.

Vanile: Provider of the above mentioned boobs and over-all general perkiness. She is seems to be the requisite air-headed pop diva ‘look at me, I am pretty’ type character, which makes the fact that she provides the narration (in certain scenes) really strange to me; Probably more going on there than meets the eyes.

Hour and some minutes into the game and most of it has been gameplay (which in most other JRPGs I have spent the majority of this time watching cut scenes)? It was quite a nice experience. But, I still have no clue as to what the characters are aiming to do (other than head to the huge robot building). So colour me intrigued. I’ll at least keep playing till the reveal about what is going on.

I do have to say though, I like the battle system.

· You control one character, the other are computer controlled.

· You either go the easy route and just pick ‘Auto battle’ which lets the AI decide what actions would be best in the given situation or you can pick abilities to pick and choose what actions to take during the allotted time.

· All playable characters start with an area effect attack. This may not seem like a huge plus but this is one of my gripes with a lot of RPGs that you don’t really get an AOE to start out. You generally have to work up to it.

· Potions heal the entire party! On top of that, using a potion does not use an action! That’s two for two. Though I wish that potion usage was a button press rather than menu navigation, but that is very minor gripe (maybe it is, I zoomed through the tutorials so I didn’t really read anything).

The only thing I can say about the graphics is, ‘Wow! Pretty!’ The FF team really made an effort for the game to look High-Def in, well, High Def. There is no marked difference between the cut scene graphics and actual gameplay graphics, which is very impressive. Characters and surrounding are well rendered, that I found myself stopping on ledges to admire the scenery. I have never done that on a console game so kudos to the FF team. Job well done.

All of this said the final point I would like to make is that as far as I have gotten in the game it does not seem much like a fantasy game as the title ‘Final Fantasy’ suggests. It is more of a ‘Final Technology’. But, maybe they are saving the ‘Fantasy’ part for later. I will have to wait and see.