Recent reviews by treidan

I don't normally spend the time to write reviews, but I felt like I had to for this game.

By all accounts this is an extremely poor PC port. Expect to take multiple hours figuring out a proper configuration that allows the game to function in your PC environment. PC Gaming WIKI[pcgamingwiki.com] is a godsend in this case. I had to install a 3rd-party program and enable Windows Aero in order to get fullscreen windowed working without screen tearing. Even with proper setup, the game itself will perform terribly with frequent framerate drops and slowdowns that are very noticeable.

Legendary for the term "hallway simulator," I think this aspect of the gameplay is actually the least of the game's faults. In the first half of the game, being limited to hallways doesn't matter too much - there's a lot of story being thrown around, and it really just serves to break up the gameplay. However, the pacing is way off, and this is what causes the linearity of the hallways to really show its ugly face. You'll find decreasing amounts of story and increasing amounts of hallway as the game progresses, and couple that with more mobs/longer fights, the game starts to drag immensely.

This culminates in Chapter 11 when you're presented in what would typically be the "Open World" part of most Final Fantasy games, except in this case it's not really open as each exit is guarded by monsters which are near impossible to kill - requiring you to grind mindlessly in order to max your characters/weapons. This is where most actually stop playing, as did I.

This gets its own section, but it most certainly contributes to the issues I highlighted above with the increasing monotony of the game.

Final Fantasy XIII uses a time-based turn system, where each character's actions are on a timer and they will act when their gauges fill. This means you have a limited amount of time to select which actions you want to perform before the enemies will attack you again. From the early onset you are presented with the option to auto-battle, where the AI chooses commands for you. You will use this for the majority of the game, since it's the fastest. (You can only enter actions for one character). Most of combat is simply spamming one key.

The "depth" of the gameplay comes with Paradigms, which serve as a kind of "stance" for your heroes. Each Paradigm can swap a hero's class, allowing them to change roles on the fly. Rather than manually choosing spells/abilities tailored for the situation, you simply swap Paradigms and let the AI handle it for you (in most cases).

This system is somewhat interesting as enemies are introduced which require certain Paradigm loadouts or correct reactionary Paradigm swapping to respond to enemy moves/commands. However, as the game progresses, managing these Paradigms becomes a major pain due to the character development and team selection features.

"Hallway simulator" is also a great term to describe the progression system for each character. It practically mimics it. To level up your character, you use currency gathered from battle to progress along a path of nodes which give you varied stat boosts and abilities, with the occasional offshoot path for extra stats or extra abilities. The only real choice provided within this system is what class to spend the points on - and it turns out there is an optimal class for each character you want to choose, or else you're going to have it rough later in the game.

Because of the Paradigm-based combat system, it becomes imperative to properly load your team with the correct loadout of characters and Paradigms. This is where the system falls flat on it's face - every time you want to swap around characters, your Paradigm loadouts are completely reset, forcing you to remake them on every switch. You'll spend more and more time remaking your loadouts as the game progresses, and it'll eventually become so annoying that hamsters may be shot.

Ah, the good ol' Final Fantasy story. Can't go wrong here, right? ...right?

Suffice to say the story part of Final Fantasy XIII is definitely more subjective than the rest. Some will like it and some won't, and it's really your interest in the story that may help power you through the rest of the games flaws when they start wearing on you.

There's kind of a larger picture thing going on here. When I was younger, jRPGs were very popular. I remember when Final Fantasy VII came out and everyone was talking about it at school. Hell, Square Enix was probably the sole reason they were popular. Most stories/characters in jRPGs are aimed at younger audiences though, and I believe it's precisely this reason that they've fallen much for western audiences in recent times. The Final Fantasy franchise is one of the last ones that provided a much broader storyline that could interest older audiences, especially those who had played the earlier games.

Final Fantasy XIII is the first jRPG I've touched in over a decade, and FFXIII highlights why. The game is appropriately marketed towards the teen crowd, but does cover some more adult-themes such as death. Older audiences are probably more capable of pointing out the glaring holes in FFXIII's plot, which make it much less appealing.

Without spoiling too much, essentially the central plotline revolves around the characters receiving the label of "bad guys," thinking it means they have to do bad stuff. Insert standard persecution/minority subjugation routines. What's worse, though, is that this "bad stuff" is never clearly presented to them - so they... think they kind of have to do bad stuff but aren't really sure about it, but if they choose wrongly they could die (which they conveniently misinterpret from "living for eternity"). Great. Insert 30+ hours of woe-is-me until they finally discover the human concepts of common sense and free will, mostly thanks to the one character who is presented as probably the least intelligent. It's thanks to this guy (albeit sometimes at great deliberation) that the plot even moves at all.

The rest of the story only masquerades as complex due to inadeqately explained name drops, some with weird use of apostrophes that can easily lose the player.

I will note, however, that the presentation of the story is at least superb, as we would expect from a Final Fantasy title. The dialogue sequences and cutscenes are fantasticly beautiful, and probably the best part of the experience even if you don't care too much for the plot. Just get ready to swear at your PC when you see that framerate drop during an important cutscene.

This game wasn't worth finishing to me, and I think that says a lot. Every bad thing you hear about the game has merit, and in the end the only thing to hold it up is a mediocre storyline that's aimed for younger audiences. I wouldn't waste your time on this one.