Final Fantasy XIII Review

Final Fantasy XII is another line in the prestigious series known as Final Fantasy. The Final Fantasy is a strong RPG series, but this game has changed a few aspects and some were not well received.



Final Fantasy XIII is part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis Final Fantasy collection of games. These games include but are not limited to Final Fantasy XIII, XIII-2, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, and Final Fantasy Versus XIII

Final Fantasy XIII takes place on a floating world of Cocoon, it hovers above a hostile planet named Grand Pulse. Your main role changes, there are six main characters that you progress with and help them with their stories/lives. In the game there are 2 different types of people, normal ones and ones that are marked by beings called fal'Cie (beings with godlike powers) the problem with this is that there are fal'Cie from Pulse and Cocoon, whom both have had wars with. If you are on Cocoon and are either marked by a Pulse fal'Cie (humans that are marked by any fal'Cie are called l'Cie) or may have come into contact with anything Pulse related, they want to purge that horribleness from you to keep Cocoon safe.

You soon find out that this Purge is nothing more than a mass murder and it's your job to stop the Purge and uncover the truth.

This is where things go bad for this game. The main protagonist is Lightning, you are a former soldier, who is trying to save her sister Serah from the purge, however since you and your party members are l'Cie, you are all dangerous and deserve to be purged, most of the time Final Fantasy games might have some people who have it in for you, but in this story you are hated, it really makes you stop and think why go through all of this trouble to help poeple when they hate us.

I really think that they could have done more with the story, or at least lighten it up a bit. The other big problem with this game is that this game is really linear. I mean really, really, really linear. You don't get to travel from place to place like you use now, now you are on fixed paths that really make no sense at all. This is the one thing that I hated, and since this game is very long by the time you can really feel free to explore you are almost done with the game anyways.

The character development though is really good, you really feel happy when they are happy and sad when they are sad. So they made a somewhat weak overall game story but exceeded in character story, not sure why but I'm happy that they nailed that right.

A game can have a weak story and not impact the game's experience all that much. However if a character or characters stories are as weak or weaker then it fails, this doe not.

They did a really good job with not only their character detail but also their details that they out into the locations that you visit. They really portray what people like myself and others call certain games "art". They are not realistic, but it's not suppose to be.

They did bring one thing into this game that I really love called Paradigms. Each one of your characters have affinity for certain roles, later on you can teach them to be good at all, but they ahve a few main roles that they excel in, in the beginning.

These roles are Commando (fierce attacking), Medic (Healing, reviving, etc.), Ravager (Final Fantasy XIII's equivalent to a Black Mage, offensive magic), Saboteur (removing or granting an enemy with unhelpful status, like slow, imperil, deshell, etc.), Synergist (The opposite of  a Saboteur, the character grants helpful status on youself/team members. e.g. protect, shell, haste, faith, bravery, etc.) Laste role is a Sentinel, sentinel is like a giant target for the enemies, sentinels take damage while team members take less to almost none. Abilities include, provoke (taunts enemy to attack sentinel and not other members), steelguard (reduces the damage that the sentinel receives and reduces the damage more for each time the character is attacked. Another good ability is Mediguard, reduces damage taken and also regains health back.

Paradigm are only for when you have more than one character fighting at the same time (e.g. 2 or 3) There are many different roles to use (I won't list them all here, but here is an example or two of a Paradigm:

Cerberus: Com/Com/Com (all three members are set to Commando)
Bully:      Com/Sab/Syn  One member a Commando, one a Saboteur, and the other a Synergist.

You can change your Paradigms in battle by pressing Paradigm shift button and selecting which on you want to use. In order to use one though you need to make them while your not in battle in the game menu.

Battles are rated this time, by your time. You don't lose anything (except for certain missions that don't hurt the story) if you are slow. However the better score you receive, the better items you can obtain from battles (common and rare drops from enemies) and the more TP you earn back. TP (or Technical Points) is what you use to use certain spells or summon creatures. Some itmes let you earn them faster and the more enemies you battle and defeat, the more it refills.

With all of the good and the bad (LINEAR GAMES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) don't let anyone sway your decision. You should give this game a try. It's not a bad game by any facet of the imagination but a lot of poeple have given this game much disrespect because that's why a lot of pople are doing. They are being mindless sheep, they need to learn how to form their own opinions, or at the very least read a truthful review like this one and see what they think of it.

I give this game a 9.4 out of 10

This game is very long and the fact that like 75% of it is linear is a problem but since I've been around for so long I remember playing many linear games. While I hate them I will give them a shot, which is far less than what I can say about other people.