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Final : adj. Coming at the end (of a word, a series).

April 21, 2010 fun, games, play

Released a couple of months ago now was Final Fantasy XIII, you’d have thought they would have changed the name in some way after they decided to make a second, but then, this has always been a series full of irony.  Every game is played with an emphasis on plot, but all the characters, story and game world change with each version.  The turnbased, fighting aspect of the game, often changes with each iteration, giving a new experience on which the quality of the game relies upon, yet even though the first game was made over 20 years ago fans are still coming back for more. Despite the changes in character and game-world in each version there are still consistent themes that run through the series, however this latest incarnation seem a little more different than usual.  Mainly, the micro-management of spells and attacks most FF games have is still there, but to use them is practically suicide and as the game can pick the best moves automatically anyway,  the first 20 hours is spent basically pressing A.

This may sound a little boring, and in reality, it is, the story is complex with a new world’s worth of characters being drip fed to you whilst, very slowly, it guides you through the new fighting system.  The game’s narrative stalls many times and it’s taken me nearly 2 months since its release to get through the first half, I’ve simply had no desire to pick up the pad again, with the frustrating and constant changes in cast that deny any sense of narrative and stunt your freedom.  Your path is linear and there is no deviating from the battles that you will have, the power ups you will collect and the cut scenes with the main characters that entertain occasionally, but more often annoy.  However, if you grind your way through, the game starts to open up, and the Final Fantasy we know and love finally returns.

An interesting tactical battle system begins to emerge, having to pre select how your groups will defend, attack and support each other, so every player of the game has their own style, for example me and my brother have been working through the game and we keep arguing about how to play it.  I keep telling him to start buffing up his characters at the start of a boss battle, but he goes for speed and healing up on the fly.  I am obviously right, but I’m sure the fact he (occasionally) succeeds tells you there is more than one way of playing this game.  With more time passing the plot starts to fall into place, the characters and world start to make sense and become familiar, even charming, the music shines through too, keeping up the tension and controlling the pace beautifully.

It’s so frustrating though that you have to play through such a slow starting, unappealing and boring game to get to a rather exciting complex one, I imagine with this being such a huge franchise though, people will have stuck it out and kept playing to see where the story goes, and if you own it and have already put it down with boredom, have a good think as to how much more you’ll need to play to finally get your money’s worth out of this game.  As for someone new to the genre wondering whether to buy this?  I can recommend Final Fantasy, but I think I’ll do you the favour and tell you to go and buy Final Fantasy VII and a PSOne, it’ll cost you about the same and it will entertain for about 3 times as long and from the very beginning.  If the older graphics put you off, perhaps opt for Final Fantasy X instead on the PS2, it’s still a very beautiful game, even by today’s standards, and if you want to play Squaresoft’s best UK release try and track down Secret of Mana on the SNES, it’s like Zelda with knobs on.

Some people don’t like RPGs though, and I can’t blame them, they can suck up a huge amount of your time.  I still never finished VII,  my brother accidentally wiping 120 hours of my life away still haunts me 10 yrs on…

Final Fantasy XIII is out now on PS3 and XBox 360 for around £40

Tags: FF, FFXIII, Final Fantasy, Gaming, RPG