A bunch of random weirdos band together in order to walk through a long hallway, fighting monsters and robots along the way. There's a bunch of mystical BS and people turning into stone (and you get to fight a badass attack helicopter), but you'll be focusing more on the fact that every single person in your crew looks like they came out of Tiger Beat magazine. Except for the black dude. Black dude is normal, and I like him for that.

awesome game

TLDR: A gorgeous and grindy FF experience, that lives or dies based on how well the player likes the combat system

I'd seen a lot of negative commentary on FFX13 before I picked it up but I wanted to give it a try and see for myself. Results were mixed.

The story starts out on the world of Cocoon, where humans live sheltered lives under the care of the Fal'cie, powerful alien beings. Our six heroes are present during a refugee breakout and find themselves inexplicably tied together on a quest for (you guessed it) the fate of the world.

FF13 can be played with a keyboard or a controller but I found the controller more intuitive and comfortable to use. Movement, interaction, and general controls are all easy to figure out. For the first three-quarters of the game, the path is pretty linear and littered with foes and treasures, and a ton of tutorials. The game is still introducing new concepts at the two-thirds mark. Some players complain about the "hallway simulator" nature of the game but this particular issue didn't bother me, as I've played plenty of linear games.

Combat is a real-time affair. The player can assign up to three characters to their active combat team. This is sometimes limited by available characters, as party members come and go through the early story (in the second half of the game, all six characters at last mostly stay together). The player only directly controls the team leader. Combat strategy consists of building "paradigms," which assign each character to a role--a healer, a tank, DPS, debuffer, and so on. Up to a certain point in the game, not all characters can fill all roles and even later, they do not fill them evenly, so some care and thought goes into filling the party, picking the one you want to control, and assigning the paradigms. Paradigms can be switched on the fly in combat, say to take you from a full DPS mode for all three characters, to a tank and two healers when a big enemy attack is inbound. Making these switches at the right moment is the core to successful fighting in this game. The main goal is to "stagger" the enemy, where damage rapidly mounts and enemy actions can be interrupted. Naturally, different mobs have different stagger thresholds and vulnerabilities.

Combat is not always a sure thing in FF13. For one, if the team leader goes down, it's game over, even if you're well ahead, which is disappointing. Other characters can be revived if incapacitated, so protect the leader. Many fights are simple and can be button mashed. Some require strategy and rapid paradigm switches. A few, including several bosses, pretty much require the right party make-up for success. I had to try some of the bosses several times before stumbling on the right solution--and every boss is basically a test of player endurance and patience.

The game also has a tendency (especially late) to line narrow paths with groups of mobs that cannot be snuck past or surprised for a critical first strike ... mobs that will do multiple annoying things, such as constantly knocking the party down, mass debuffing everyone, fully healing themselves, doing colossal area-of-effect damage, or throwing instant death spells. Once in a while would be fine but it gets to the point where these encounters are stacked one after another. Most of the time, playing conservatively, these enemies can be whittled down and the fights won, but especially against bosses it is easy to slip up and let your team leader die--or simply be unlucky and have your leader targeted repeatedly with one-shot abilities. The repetitive nature of the slog feels like it's artificially extending the duration of the game. Meh.

Aside from combat, there is a limited amount of side content. Aside from a few cutscenes, there are almost no NPCs to really speak to and no settlements to explore. Purchases and sales are done through the save point kiosks. No minigames either (I missed having something like Blitzball to break things up). There is some treasure-hunting content based around riding chocobos. Wouldn't be FF without chocobos, right? But that is a brief diversion. Even the late-game side missions--given by former "chosen ones" now reduced to stone statues--are about killing mobs. It's a combat game, pure and simple.

It also wouldn't be a FF game without upgrading characters and items ... and I have to say that both were so tedious I knew I'd never max them out. Characters are advanced through ladder-like upgrades to raise their stats and grant more skills, the last tier of which does not even open until the main story is completed. Weapons can be upgraded, at tremendous expense that will require a lot of repetitive fighting, even in the best of circumstances. I appreciate having some post-game content but this grind is ridiculous, and I couldn't be bothered.

Also, I have to say the plot was a bit of a mess in this one. The main story beats were easy enough to follow and several of the hero subplots were entertaining. On the other hand, some of the main characters' behavior--especially that of Lightning and Fang--is highly inconsistent. Uneven protagonists can be pulled off if the story is a competent redemption arc but that never fully materialized. The antagonists didn't fare any better, with obtuse lectures about ending the world that made little sense. The story itself wound up being very predictable--even a little boring. I never got a real sense of urgency despite the narrative trying to paint one, and the story didn't pack the emotional gut punch of other FF games.

FF13 is an absolute delight when it comes to its visual and audio design. The worlds are lush and pulsing with color. Character animations aren't the smoothest I have ever seen but are rendered with painstaking detail and the result is very appealing. Ambient sound is easy on the ears and like many FF games, the musical soundtrack here is stellar. While the voice acting is pretty good (though Vanille's adolescent giggling gets old), the dialogue in places is stilted and unnatural. I suspect this is just a victim of inexact translation.

I read about the trouble some players had with the port. As of this review, running the most current version of Win 10 with an i5-6600 processor and GTX 1070, I did not have any crashes. Load times were acceptable. An older computer but it seemed to handle the game okay.

This isn't a game I'd recommend for anyone who's into hunting Steam achievements, since getting 100% pretty much requires doing every endgame side mission, holding every item, and completely maxing every character. You'll be at that for a long while and if you're not absolutely loving the game, it's going to feel like an eternity.

I didn't find Final Fantasy XIII as intolerable as some folks but it does feel more limited than other FF games. If you're someone who really enjoys the combat system, you will probably like this game. If not, you won't, and you'll know which one you are in the first hour of play. I did for the most part, so I am giving this a thumbs-up ... but because of the other issues, only a marginal one.

Pros
- Combat was pretty entertaining
- Beautifully rendered, excellent sound/music design

♥♥♥♥
- INCREDIBLY grindy
- Story was kind of a mess

Final Score: 6/10