The Final Fantasy series is one of the few video game franchises that makes grown men cry, both for its story and its decision to go multiplatform. And the latest installment is finally here. In a climate where JRPGs are rapidly losing relevance, many see Final Fantasy XIII as the Great White Hope for a genre in a downward spiral. What players will encounter, however, is a very different beast from what they hoped or expected.
A New Generation JRPG
Final Fantasy XIII has been cited by the developers themselves as being influenced by faster-paced western experiences such as the Call of Duty series. There was a feeling in the industry that the traditional complexity and depth that JRPGs are known for was stifling the market and preventing it from being more accessible to new audiences. Square-Enix took a long, hard look at what was considered to be the hallmarks of the genre in general, and the Final Fantasy franchise in particular, and decided to overhaul everything for their latest game. Four years later, the result is here.
The theme of Final Fantasy XIII is one of choice versus manifest destiny. The plot is a typical Byzantine one, in which demigods known as Fal’Cie hire human agents known as L’Cie to fulfill certain tasks. Lightning, a soldier cut from the same cloth as Cloud in Final Fantasy VII, becomes involved in Fal’Cie/L’Cie dealings when her sister, Serah, is chosen to be a L’Cie for an enemy Fal’Cie. Lightning and a rag-tag crew that eventually gathers around her embark on a quest to challenge this seemingly unbreakable fate.
Unfortunately the story is plagued with pacing issues and doesn’t explain everything to players, leaving them to figure out much of it by reading terminology and episodic summaries in a section of the menu called the Data Log. The characters themselves are the same JRPG clichés seen time and again, but oddly, with higher realism of the visuals; their simplistic and often nonsensical characterization is less easy to accept. There is a good story here, but it is not served well by its characters or pacing.
“Final Fantasy XIII is an interesting experiment that ultimately fail”
On the other hand, the graphics are beyond compare. FFXIII is the best looking JRPG currently on the market. To be specific, games like Lost Odyssey, White Knight Chronicles, andTales of Vesparia all pale in comparison to the visual fidelity of FFXIII’s in-game graphics and cut-scene Environments are richly designed with explosions of color, and character models are so well designed that it’s occasionally easy to miss when the transition from pre-rendered cut-scene back to in-game graphics can occur.
The audio front is also extremely polished, with a lush soundtrack that swings from ornate orchestral and choral arrangements to high-energy techno. For a Japanese game dubbed to English, the voice acting is also a cut above standard, with the professional delivery only being let down by poor script.
The Wind Tunnel
The most controversial aspect of Final Fantasy XIII was the design decision to strip the JRPG genre down to its bare essentials. Players expecting diversions like mini-games, interactive cities, or overworld maps will find none of that here. Square-Enix has decided that the main strengths of a JRPG are the cutscenes and combat, and they have streamlined everything else to create a much more focused experience. Unfortunately, they also assumed that many people coming to Final Fantasy XIII would be new to the JRPG experience, and this is where the game’s biggest problem comes to the fore.
The best feature of Final Fantasy XIII is a new and complex battle system that involves controlling one character in a party of three and switching roles throughout combat. So at one moment your character is more combat-oriented, and at another switches roles to heal. The complexity and depth of the system will not be fully appreciated until at least 20 hours into the game. Before that, the game simplifies and limits the battle system drastically, only gradually opening it up as the hours pas Like many JRPGs, FFXIII asks for patience, but runs a real risk of alienating players before that patience is finally rewarded.
The same fear of complexity also comes at the expense of more interactivity. FFXIII is a relentlessly linear game, with many sections consisting entirely of simply moving forward, getting into a fight, moving forward, getting into another fight, and then a cutscene. At every turn, players find themselves funnelled into a carefully controlled experience that limits everything they do, even traditional JRPG activities such as levelling up characters and upgrading their skills in any way.
In many ways, Final Fantasy XIII feels like “My First JRPG,” with its stubborn and almost paranoid hand-holding as it leads its players from one event to the next. It’s a misguided lack of trust in the player base that ultimately hurts the game.
In the end, Final Fantasy XIII is an interesting experiment that ultimately fails. It’s not a terrible game by any means, and the production values of the sound and visuals alone will be enough to impress a casual viewer. But the heart of any good JRPG is the battle system and the story, and Final Fantasy XIII fails to tell a compelling story, holding the promising battle system hostage for many hours until it feels the player is ready. This, coupled with an overbearing sense of linearity, makes Final Fantasy XIII a game that is almost too streamlined for its own good. There is fun to be had here, but it is of an uneven sort.
