Final Fantasy XIII

10 Review to this product

• 

  Kenneth Geddings Jr.
  March 10th, 2010 on 1:13 am

  Rating

  I know what a lot of reviews and previews have said. This is a stripped down final fantasy….the graphics arnt as good as the PS3 version…etc.

  I am here to tell you that first of all the graphics still look amazing on the 360. If you do not have a PS3 and only have the 360 you will NOT be let down in any way by playing it on the 360. Unless you own both systems and both copies of the game and are playing it side by side.. i do not think you will really mind. It looks just as good as any other 360 game out there if not better.

  I took the time to play through the first part of the game twice (as the first time i was in bright sunlight in my room so wanted to play it at night for a better view). Haven taken the time to examine the cut scenes and close of views of the in game model of lightning and scenery and such. I believe it looks amazingly good. Lightning alone looks better then any pre-made CGI Final Fantasy character in the past!

  While some may gripe about the linearity of the game. I say it is a good thing. Lets face it how many of you here have played a rpg only to not know what the heck to go ….or what to do? You have to wander through town talking to 100 mindless NPCS till you find the right one to trigger the next event or wander a cave with 50 passages and floors just to find the correct path of the way out? This game cuts that out but still gives you a very enjoyable experience

  a big thing to keep in mind is even though it is more straight forward the game still manages to take a good 50 to 60 hours to finish! So that means..that despite the one track path in many cases. the game still has just as much content as any other final fantasy game…just in a different way. Meaning that …you will still get your moneys worth out of the game!

  Some say this is an “action game” and not a “RPG” well the battle system is still menu based and once it opens up you still have to deal with much tactics…you still advance your charterers and gain new items and abilities over time. The story is still epic and detailed… and the scenery is still Final Fantasy.

  This is not some game that was redone with the “Final Fantasy name” tagged on (ala Final Fantasy the movie) this IS Final Fantasy just in a different light.

  Also to note after you finish the game there are still around 60 side missions you can take part in too! and you can return to previous areas in the end you visited so its not like its just ..one story…one path and then nothing else.

  The main thing that should draw you to the game is the story, the scenery and the adventure. It may not be your old final fantasy you are used to but i think its just as good enough to stand as it’s newest member. and to be honest after playing for a while i feel just as excited for it as i did with Final Fantasy 7. While i wont say this is “better” then final fantasy 7 per say…i will say it if you put on the right mindset …it can be just as fun!

  Give it a try!
• 

  James Cavin Jr.
  March 14th, 2010 on 5:03 am

  Rating

  Let me preface this by saying that I haven’t completed the game yet so some minor changes might be in order in the future. I’m confident that those changes won’t make a bit of difference, though.

  Story – Easily stands among the best of any RPG i’ve played. The entire concept works right from the beginning and starts the countdown. I find it pretty amazing that the developers were able to instill such a sense of “urgency” in the experience. Within the first couple hours you are so heavily invested that you want to help them reach their goal, and hopefully change the unchangeable.

  Gameplay – The battles are simply amazing. It takes a giant leap forward in setting a new RPG standard on battles. I’ve heard a lot of people complaining that “the tutorial lasts 10 hours…” and similar comments. The bottom line is that they have introduced a completely new combat system with completely new ideas and strategies, greatly increasing the learning curve for such an involved and in-depth battle system.

  The developers chose to introduce you to their battle system in small increments while setting up the main story. This does 2 things. First, it keeps you engaged on a fast-paced story and doesn’t bore you with an hour long tutorial. Secondly, it keeps you from being overwhelmed by all the different aspects by introducing you to it slowly, allowing you to get a firm handle on how it should be played. Because, make no mistake about it, some of these battles can be damn hard.

  I’ll just add that the developers did a good job in their introduction, execution, and concept behind these battles. All of the complaining that compares it to traditional JRPG turn-based fighting is pretty much irrelevant. Why? Because when you pick up an old-school JRPG, you already know exactly how to play it. All the old battle systems were essentially the same. In FFXIII you have something completely new so you NEED that intro. However, if they do stick to this template in the future, you’ll be able to pick it up in much the same way you did in the old-school games. Someone has to set a new precedence sometime, and they have to do it correctly. That’s what they’ve done here. Let’s just hope other developers take notice.

  Sound – Not much to say on this, really. Aside from the 1 annoying character, Vanille, there isn’t much to gripe about. Everything sounds crisp and clear. I always fear watching a CGI cutscene that somehow manages to turn the sound effects and music all the way up while turning the voices all the way down, making it nearly impossible to comprehend the characters. Thank god that doesn’t happen here.

  Although it isn’t really a “sound” problem, I have to mention the dialogue. So cheesy… As long as you aren’t playing this around potential girlfiends or any of your friends that would just love to berate you about it, you should be fine. Otherwise, keep it off until they leave. Trust me.

  Graphics – Best i’ve ever seen in a game. Ever.

  The only minor gripe I have at this point in the game is the odd camera controls. For some reason it moves very slowly, which makes it kind of awkward when your character is running and you can’t move the camera fast enough to look around at the same time without stopping. Like I said, a small gripe and one that most people won’t notice.

  That’s all i’m going to say for now. If I come across anything else that requires a review about, i’ll add it.

  To summarize, get this game. If you are a fan of any game that is story-driven, action-driven, of the developers, of FF, or of any good game, GET THIS GAME.
• 

  E. Sagardia
  March 14th, 2010 on 10:14 am

  Rating

  I’ve just completed the game and wow, it sure opens up about 15-20 hours in. The music, characters and battle system is probably the most iconic and human out of any Final Fantasy game I’ve ever played, and I’ve played them all (including X-2). Once you beat chapter 11, you can start doing missions and after hunt mission 46 you unlock the Gilgamesh shop in which you can buy and start upgrading some of the characters ultimate weapons!

  Be wary of PS3 “fanboys” who are disgruntled because this series is now on Xbox, even though it originally was on Nintendo before going to PlayStation. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen greatly exxagerated and outright lies being posted to try to dissuade potential Xbox 360 purchasers; having owned both consoles I opted for the 360 version because I prefer the controller/achievements and 8-player party cross-game chat. Again, be skeptical from biased losers on the internet!
• 

  Gregory S. Pugh
  March 20th, 2010 on 4:16 pm

  Rating

  Ahh Final Fantasy, the series that has caused me to buy many a console system just to play the latest iteration. XIII continues the tradition of high quality offerings from Square Enix and does so in a new way, cross-platform on the PS3 and the XBox 360. It is well documented that the presentation quality of the 360 version is slightly inferior to that of the PS3 (576p versus 720p) but the actual game experience doesn’t seem to suffer in any appreciable way. Still, I can’t help but feel slighted somewhat by being offered the lower resolution version for my platform of choice.

  Platform considerations aside, the experience offered by Final Fantasy XIII lives up to the high expectation of the series with a few surprises that assist the more casual gamer with less time available to devote to play.

  - Improved Accessibility for Casual Players
  
  Story Recap: One of the unexpected new features the game offers is a recap of the story during save game loading. After firing up the game and selecting a save to restore the player is presented with the most recent story recap. This is a fantastic feature that help the player remember how far the story had progressed and what their next goal is in the game. During play, this information is also accessible from the menus but having it presented to you at load time is a nice touch.

  Streamlined combat concepts: Another welcome feature is how well the new combat features are presented to the user. The Paradigm system for combat and the way items and skills work are introduced with good pacing over the first several hours of play.

  Retrys: For a casual gamer I can’t emphasize enough how welcome a feature this is. Somewhat similar to the Checkpoint system found in Blue Dragon, Final Fantasy XIII offers the player a change to retry any battle that they lost rather than restoring a previous save game and progressing back to the battle. The Retry system doesn’t just throw you back into the beginning of the battle. It actually starts you just before the battle allowing the user to take a different path or perform more adventuring before even jumping back into the battle they just lost.

  - Some feeling of Deja Vu
  
  Concepts from older Square titles are revised and incorporated into Final Fantasy XIII.
  
  Loot system: Similar to Final Fantasy XII, XIII offsers a loot system where creatures can drop items. These items may be sold or used to upgrade equipment.

  Vagrant Story’s Equipment Construction: Final Fantasy XIII offers players the chance to level up their weapons by feeding them the aforementioned loot to generate experience. Existing equipment (weapons and armor) can also be disassembled into loot. The whole system is a really fun concept but doesn’t seem nearly as overwhelming (or flexible) as the similar system from Vagrant Story

  Final Fantasy VII revisited?: The intro reminds me of Final Fantasy VII’s train and the fact that the main character (even though female) is ex-soldier contributes to this feeling. This isn’t really a bad thing though since VII is regarded as one of the best games in the series.

  Final Fantasy XIIs Automatic Team Members: While XII provided a fully programmable AI (using Gambits) to control the actions of your team, XIII provides automatic group member actions for only support characters. While I miss being able to program all my characters, the support characters actually seem to make good battle decisions. The main character/team leader controls in a more traditional way where commands must be selected from the menu.

  Final Fantasy X’s sphere grid returns?: A new Crystarium system is used to allow characters to learn new abilities and boost attributes. This system feels somewhat similar to Final Fantasy X’s sphere grid and works reasonably well. It requires a player to enter the menus and make decisions to level up their character but this action can be done before each save point and doesn’t cause too much trouble.

  - As always an entertaining story
  
  An abundance of video cutscenes: I believe this version of Final Fantasy may have the most cutscenes of any. There’s plenty of video for fans to view with many humorous moments.

  Entertaining (and annnoying) characters: True to form there are some memorable characters in Final Fantasy. My favorite so far really has to be Sazh, the man with the chocobo chick roosting in his Afro like it’s some kind of nest. He has some of the best lines in any game.

  Overall a worthy member of the Final Fantasy series. I still can’t help but feel slighted by the inferior graphics of the 360 version so if you have a choice go for the PS3 release. The game does look fantastic even at 576p though.
• 

  Nicole Tyla Neel
  April 8th, 2010 on 7:41 pm

  Rating

  ( SOME SPOILERS BELOW. )

  After playing many of Square’s games for many years, I have finally regained faith in them. ( The Vincent stand-alone and FFXII made me cringe. ) I see many have pointed out so of the linear parts of the game so I’ll drive into something a bit different.

  Characterization-

  This is one of Square’s better Final Fantasies in a long time because of the character growth and change. Many fans put it to platter with the cast of others. It’s not fair at all. In FFXIII, you will see and learn more of the cast of six people you get. Every single one of them change. No matter how small, the dialogue to body gestures come and go. It’s amazing what a boost in the graphics will give you. We can see more now things we couldn’t years ago.

  Smiling, hand holding, hugs, and many more. People don’t give this enough credit because they’re use to the text doing the work for them rather then picking up tone within a character. Square should have pushed it a little more with the characters, though. There was some areas in the game where it could have ‘bonded’ the group together better. But some scenes really made me smile. And, gets me excited for future games with this direction.

  I wanted to strangle Lightning at the beginning. But as the story goes on, she proves it’s deeper then appearing to be Cloud-clone.

  Future settings-

  This isn’t Final Fantasy Tactics. Yes, a lot of high-tech things going on. But it’s actually a conflict notable in the game and its characters. The dependency of such on the fal’cie and technology is a recurring theme. Watch for it.

  Explaining the lack of shops and interaction-

  I will spoil this for you guys. Every single one of your cast members save for one person is a ticking time bomb. I can’t say WHY but they are. And people HATE and fear them. You’re an enemy now to the ‘government’ and the public mass. So of course you’re not going to be greeted into town after town. Square wanted this effect. The whole world is against you sort of feeling, yet you’re trying to save it. So if you enjoy the ‘after every boss battle we go sleep in town XYZ’ like FFVII, this might not be fitting for you.

  It’s a race against time for your characters to try to change the fate set for them.

  Battle system-

  Welcome to change. This is a breath-taking relief to know I have to be more alert then the past RPGs that were too easy. You level and grind out and fight boss XYZ. It becomes a predictable dance that just makes me facepalm now when I reply the older RPGs for PS1 and PS2. HOWEVER! They’ve spiced it up in FFXIII. There is mixture and there is it being fast-paced. This becomes more and more complex as chapters go by and you explore new roles for your party.

  Yes, it’s hitting L-1 and the A button. But many other games are just scrolling up or down to hitting the button for select attack. Slightly dumb to call this out because it’s a part of an RPG you cannot get rid of.

  Extra content-

  The final stage of unlocking and playing around happen at the end of the game. Don’t be fooled by the reviews saying you can do everything in 30 hours. If you honestly want to blast away all the ‘missions’ and unlock the best of the best weapons and leveling, you’re going in for much, much longer game time. Expect more then one hundred hours of farming, grinding, and running around on Pulse.

  In the end, it’s all about your personal taste. Giggle at the cheesy dialogue but watch for the things I mentioned. You might see the game better this way, it’s up to you. Once more, I recommend for any Final Fantasy fan to pick up this title.
• 

  AJPWNR101
  April 11th, 2010 on 11:29 pm

  Rating

  This game is amazing, probably one of the best Final Fantasys to date. I’ve read all these reviews from various websites saying this game is “linear” and no exploration or shops, but I went ahead and bought this game….and let me tell you it is phenominal! The story is so spectacular that you always want to know what is going to happen next. The voice acting is okay but that really isn’t an issue. The graphics are the BEST I’ve seen in a video game ever. The fighting system is what really makes this game stand out among the best, it has a pretty long tutorial but thats only so you can grasp the most out of battle system. I’ve played this game twice and it just gets better everytime I played it.

  Bottom line buy this game.
• 

  J. O. Bosch
  April 27th, 2010 on 8:18 am

  Rating

  Technically perfect.
  
  Linear and easy.

  Perhaps Square could program two kind of games. This one is for emos.
  
  FF VII was the best one and it was for PSX…
• 

  Kathleen M. Brown
  May 6th, 2010 on 2:10 am

  Rating

  I bought this game a little over a month ago as a birthday present for myself, and I must say that I quickly became addicted to it. The story is really good, though it does take a bit to get into it, but I have gotten a little tired of it as I play. It takes an insane amount of CP to develop your characters fully, and I’m one of those gamers who likes to make a super thorough first playthrough, and get as many achievements as possible on the first go round. But even I am getting a littl overwhelmed with all the grinding that it takes to max out the characters. I think that that in itself, coupled with my insane hours being a graduate student and holding down a full time job, has kept me from beating the game yet. I keep feeling burned out after spending 2 hours at a time to earn only 45,000 CP, and then barely advancing my character at all when I spend those points. But it is an amazing game with a great story, and I really would suggest it for anyone, and don’t buy into the nonsense about the graphics being so much worse on the 360, I’ve seen both versions side-by-side on two 54 inch high-def tv’s and unless you get right up on the screen, you can’t even see a difference.
• 

  Renaissance Man
  May 25th, 2010 on 12:06 pm

  Rating

  If you are an action or first-person shooter (FPS) gamer interested in trying something new such as a role-playing game (RPG), I highly recommend Final Fantasy XIII.

  I have played action and squad-based FPS games beginning with the DOOM series on MS-DOS through the Halo and Call of Duty series on Windows PC and Xbox 360. My only other experience with a RPG was the excellent Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic (Windows PC version), and I had no experience at all with previous versions of Final Fantasy, so I was able to appreciate this game in its own right without expectations or bias.

  First, as even most of its critics will admit, it is visually stunning. The eye candy in this game is simply beautiful, even with this slightly lower resolution Xbox 360 version. (If you have both an Xbox 360 and a PS3, get the PS3 version of this game). The settings and people in the game are attractive (even some of the villains), the battles are colorful and lively, and the cutscenes are cinematic. It is a pleasant change of pace from the often dark and foreboding battlefields of FPS games. The musical score adds to the beautiful aesthetics of the game.

  The story and mythology are confusing at first, but the details of the plot become subordinate to the fact that you begin to care about the characters and want them to succeed. The six main characters have distinctive personalities, and the voice acting brings them to life.

  Several critics have complained about how “linear” the game is, but that shouldn’t be an issue for action gamers, and it wasn’t for me. We are used to starting at point A and fighting our way to point B along a predetermined path, so the “linearity” of this game was familiar and no problem at all. In fact, it helped the story to move along and it made sense for the storyline, since the main characters are essentially fugitives from justice. They have a short amount of time to accomplish a goal before being turned into either crystal statues (if they succeed) or monsters (if they fail), while also being on the run from the authorities. It would have been inappropriate to the storyline for them to spend much time wandering around aimlessly, shopping and chatting with random people in villages or wherever.

  The battle system seems simple on the surface but there is actually a lot of depth underneath it. While some critics bemoan not being able to micromanage each individual character in the battle team, the chore of managing the non-leader character(s) is (thankfully) well-handled by the game’s artificial intelligence. The battles are too fast-paced (a good thing) to allow that kind of micromanagement of 2 or 3 battle team members. The challenge during battles is to intelligently and frequently reassign each of the battle team characters to one of six roles or jobs during the battle, which the game calls the “paradigm” system. That will keep you plenty busy during some of the tougher battles. There are also the many decisions that have to be made about which characters to use in a battle, which one to use as the team leader, how they should be leveled-up (powers/strength/abilities enhanced), which weapons and accessories to equip them with, which weapons/accessories should be upgraded, when scarce “shrouds” should be used to buff up a team before a tough battle or to enable a decisive preemptive strike, etc. All of these decisions determine how the battles play out.

  In summary, if you are new to the Final Fantasy series (the games are not really related to one another so there is no need to have played any of the other ones to enjoy this one) or RPGs in general and want to try one out, I highly recommend Final Fantasy XIII as a stunningly beautiful, well-paced, and enjoyable way to experience a role-playing game. Search for “Final Fantasy XIII international trailer” online, watch the trailer and see for yourself.
• 

  Fabian N. Munoz
  May 28th, 2010 on 10:30 pm

  Rating

  First thing’s first, I’ve played many of the FF’s of past. To me, what always stands out in every FF and makes it a superb experience is its:

  *unmistakable FF mythos and extravagantly detailed universe
  
  *remarkably well written plot and character dialogue
  
  *awesome spell/summon animations and unique battle system

  What I’ve also enjoyed is how you don’t have to play them in any order. Gamers of today can revisit so-called classics, while old-school gamers can drop in today and be treated to something new.

  Final Fantasy XIII is the first “traditional” title in the series to go multiplatform; FF XI being an MMORPG arguably made sense going multiplatform and was on PS2, PC, and later came out on Xbox 360.

  Plenty of PlayStation loyalists have objected to this, and have so far gone on to besmirch the game’s many merits under this supposed veil of inferiority of being on another console. Some have been so bitter that they no longer see the game as an FF.

  Moving on past the fanboy complaints, actual FF fans themselves have also complained of the game’s linearity. Unfortunately, these people have actually forgotten that FF’s (and rpgs in general) traditionally do have an element of linearity. For instance, the entire beginning of VII until you get out into the world map? Or how about the SeeD missions of VIII, even after Squall graduates?

  Final Fantasy XIII hits all the key notes at the right time. The roster of characters may be smaller than IX or VII, and it may not come close to the epic milestones that VII and X took the series through. However, the best things about this FF are what it accomplishes in breaking free from the stagnation that rpgs have suffered from lately. It marks a new age in FF and also marks a turning point as Square Enix now focuses on delivering FF to more than just one audience on one console.

  Minor complaints aside, what XIII manages to do is propel FF into a new vision. And it’s quite ironic, since the critically acclaimed VII did very much the same for the series.