Final Fantasy 13 after 3 hours (no spoilers)
Filed under Video Games
I’m about 3 hours into Final Fantasy 13 now. My thoughts so far? (No spoilers):
* So VERY linear – I haven’t been able to explore freely yet. :( The game feels like it runs on a rail and you can’t really deviate from it – what’s the point of an RPG without free exploration?
* You can tell this is the team that did 10 and 10-2, and not 11/12, as the battle system is a huge step backwards. The game feels so herky-jerky after playing through 12, which felt so seamless and natural once you got accustomed to it. There’s an area within “Anima’s Throne” where you have Cie Corpes (they translated it to Cie’th for North America, which means nothing – whereas Cie Corpse *does*) lined up one after another – but instead of your group encircling the situation and dealing with it incrementally – the action stops, loads up the battle system, returns you to the map, action stops, loads up the battle system, etc. You do that 5 times in sequence. Of course you could use an item that would allow you to waltz past the situation, but this early in the game you need the experience. Point is – they could have met the FF12 battle designers halfway and did a Crono Trigger-style battle system where you don’t leave the map, but instead of free-ranging like you did in 12 you handle the paradigm system instead. Maybe it will grow on me, but I’ve been playing it for 3 hours and I’m just not liking it. Worse – your party leader dies, game over. You can’t switch party leaders. Oh, AND you can’t give any kind of specific instructions to your other party members. It’s really a party of 1 – you can give a general direction by assigning them a role – ie, you can tell member 3 that they’re a healer, and they’ll do what a healer does: remove status ailments and restore HP, dole out Phoenix Downs, etc, but you can’t tell them to heal *you* at all costs because the game is over if you fall. They will always do their own thing.
Mar14
