What I love so far:

• The battle system – I’m not sure what FFXIII game some of the critics are playing but this game is not easy.  I have by far accumulated more Game Over screens in the first 20 hours of this game than I have in all previous Final Fantasy games combined.  Yes the majority of the battles can be completed by spamming ‘X’, especially if you’re in a Commander, Ravager, Medic role.  But to do each fight successfully and in a timely basis, it’s really a lot of fun.  There is constant switching of paradigms and even strategically hitting triangle (to unleash your queued ATB earlier) makes this battle system by far one of the best, if not the best.  I find it advantageous to open up a lot of fights with Synergist buffs and Saboteur debuffs.
• The variations of ‘Flan’ mobs – Flandragora, Flanitor, Flanborg.  A nice little treat if you grew up playing Final Fantasy games.
• The soundtrack – I love Final Fantasy music.  So much so that I even attended their Distant Worlds concert last year in San Francisco and plan on going to it this year.  FFXIII has the best soundtrack of any Final Fantasy game by far and really lends to the epicness of the entire game.  Everything feels much more on a grander scale thank to the game’s score.
• Sazh has a CHOCOFRO!
• Not having to use potions, tents (or cabins!) in the game.  Each battle is like a mini-strategy game where the goal is to just succeed.  Having to have potions in between fights was always an inconvenience in my opinion and I’m really glad Square Enix did away with that.
• Item upgrading is really cool.  There is just so much strategy involved with choosing the right weapon, what to upgrade, and how.  Especially with the lack of Gil in the game so far.  There have been a few grinding spots, but it’s not like previous Final Fantasy games.

What I dislike so far:

• The characters.  I feel like they went a little over the top with the “us against the world” theme.  It’s a little played out in my opinion, though they do a good job with the actual story, it’s annoying hearing every character whine about this and that so far.  This game needs an Auron from Final Fantasy X.  Someone that just never cried.
• More specifically, Sazh – by far the weakest character in any Final Fantasy game to date.  His story seems to be filler, and it’s almost like he was the token black guy that Square Enix tossed in.  Up until now the majority of his story is played out paired up with Vanille, who is also a somewhat weak character (though her background has meaning to the game, much more so than Sazh).  The one thing that really hurts it is the gap between revisiting their story line and even when you do it’s for a real short duration compared to the other heroes.  You move two screens, watch a couple of cutscenes, and then it’s back to business with Lightning and her crew.

What I hate:

• The crystarium system is really weak.  It hasn’t gotten better since the first 10 hours, not that I ever expected it to.  It’s just blah.  Considering how great the Sphere Grid was in X and the License system in 12, I’m a little disappointed in what they came up with for 13.  Especially how brilliant the battle system is.
• Hope – Unlike the characters I dislike, Hope I just hate.  At first I perceived him as a much younger version of Cloud.  But he’s just a big baby and his character development is just horrible.  Wah wah wah.  He’s not the weakest character though because his story develops with a little bit more of a meaning from the get-go, unlike Sazh’s.  If you were to mix Final Fantasy universes, Auron would cut off Hope’s head with his big giant sword.

Overall I find it ironic that I’m complaining more about the story than the gameplay changes Square Enix did with this one.  I personally think every one of the changes that every one else is complaining about are great.  I like the linear gameplay, progression of the storyline, lack of towns and shopping made simple.  I mean did you really enjoy buying your potions from one place in a town then walking across the map to buy a weapon?  Weapon upgrading is so much better.

I’m a little further behind than other people that are playing this game at this time mark.  But I took some time to grind for Chips (that you sell for Gil) and to upgrade my weapons, accessories and characters.  I found a nice little spot where mobs actually regen as you walk back and forth and most of them drop Chips.  So I’ll blog again once I get out to Gran Pulse.

So far the game is more fun than any of the other previous Final Fantasies I’ve played, but the story line so far is probably in the middle of the pack.  Greater than 8, 9 and 12, but certainly less than 4, 6, 7 and 10.  1 doesn’t count, and I don’t think I should bother comparing it to the ones that hardly anyone played since they came out as remakes on PSX and random platforms like GBA.

I play JRPGs for their epic (and sometimes not so epic) story lines.  Most Final Fantasy games are known for great character development, touching stories and brilliant music.  Those are the main reasons why I entertain myself by playing JRPGs.  If I was to rank my personal favorite top 5 Final Fantasy games it would probably look something like this: Final Fantasy IV (II in the US), Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy VI (III in the US), Final Fantasy XII.  I always found the story of Cecil being the best one and the overall game was just great – basics, each character was defined with their own role and who can ignore the greatness of Palom and Porom!  But anyways, onto Final Fantasy XIII.

I anticipated the game much like everyone else and was overwhelmed when I saw plenty of gameplay footage while I was in Tokyo, Japan earlier this year.  When I first started reading the reviews internationally, some of it raised eyebrows on whether or not the game would be as great as its predecessors.  Sure I wasn’t expecting something to top some of the previous games, especially given that I don’t exactly play RPGs in the same sense that other people do, but many seemed to be underwhelmed by Final Fantasy XIII.  So when I finally popped it in in all its glory on my 60-inch Pioneer Plasma TV, I wasn’t sure what to expect.  Yes people complained about linearity, and no towns, and no EXP, and… the list goes on.  But I was OK with all of that.  Personally I always found towns and NPC-conversations to be a waste of time, if not even an annoyance in JRPGs.  And no I’m not simply saying that just to justify that Final Fantasy XIII is a good game.  I wholeheartedly feel that anyone that has been a die-hard fan of Final Fantasy games since the first one has to find it refreshing that they aren’t wasting hours wandering around a town looking for that one person that they need to talk with to continue onward with the story.  I always felt that purchasing items was a chore rather than an upgrade.  I mean most Final Fantasy games you walk into a town, purchase the newest and most powerful items, equip them and that’s it.  There’s nothing more to it than that, so the upgrading system that Final Fantasy XIII has to offer was intriguing.  And as far as linearity goes, wandering around a world map to go to the next destination is really just a mirage to cover up so-called linearity.  Yes you can wander anywhere you want on the map, but ultimately you have to go to the next destination.

Final Fantasy XIII opens up with a grand sequence of movies that really works its way into the storyline of each character.  I have to admit the opening sequence is a nice combination of Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy X nostalgia.  I mean really, another train ride?  Almost seems like Square Enix is teasing us about no Final Fantasy VII remake.  Let’s just drop some hints in here and there from previous FF games to appease fanboys!  The game opens up with pairs and trios of the main characters, with Snow being paired up with his NORA buddies, that seem unplayable once you get past the beginning sequence.  The game is beautiful and the score complements it from the get go.  Much like watching Avatar in IMAX 3D, you’ll find yourself just staring endlessly at the graphics and the marvelous job that Square Enix did with the game.  Once you get rolling though, the game jumps around.  You play just enough to discover just enough about a character or twos storyline before it switches over to another pair of characters.  But the game does a great job flowing it altogether so you don’t get overly tired of a single character’s story line.  The conversations and dialogue between each character is fitting, even though some of the pairings are odd – such as Sazh and Vanille.

The game is linear.  In fact it’s like a line.  Just go straight.  The game sometimes teases you with treasure spheres placed randomly on the map, but for the most part you will find your way to it, fight a monster guarding it, then backtrack to where you need to go.  Is it bad?  I don’t think so.  I like the idea of being able to see the monsters and knowing that I won’t be annoyed with a random mob encounter when I just want to get somewhere.  The game does a great job, in my opinion, of breaking up the movement with cut scenes of story telling and going deeper into each character’s past, revealing more and more as you move along.  But yes, it feels like a dungeon crawler – move forward, fight, hear story, continue on.  Some of the areas seem to have absolutely no meaning to the game other than to occupy your time so you spend 40-60 hours trying to finish the game.  The journey through it all thus far though is beautiful and not entirely monotonous.  I’ve played much more “highly acclaimed” games that were much more boring in order to progress through the storyline.

As for the battle system, it’s fun.  But the hand-holding is really annoying.  It’s clearly obvious that once Microsoft was onboard with the XBOX360 release that Square Enix had to dumb the game down a little.  Because any true Final Fantasy fan would not need a vast majority of these tutorials.  And there are save spots (and subsequently stores and upgrade stations) everywhere.  You can go 3-4 minutes in between save points, it’s sort of ridiculous.  The game starts of really easy and you could probably play it with one hand if you wanted to, pushing the auto-attack option.  Even once paradigms open up it takes a while before strategy is involved.  But once there is, it gets fun and very interesting.  I’ve even experienced several Game Overs already, while in past Final Fantasy games I could probably make it through a grand 80-90% before seeing that screen, if ever.  Certain battles can be difficult if you’re not paying attention and simply just mashing a button.  And controlling one person only seems to be more than enough, especially with the pace of the battles.  My complaints?  I would have liked to see the Gambit system from Final Fantasy XII worked in for the computer controlled AI party members. Sure they do a good enough job keeping you alive and fighting the mob at their weaknesses, but I really think the battle system could have benefited with a combination from Final Fantasy XII.  Yes it would probably have complicated things a tad more, but it would have made the game a much more fun.

Weapon upgrading is interesting.  I don’t have a whole lot of weapon choices, and Gil is really hard to come across, so you don’t exactly buy every weapon that becomes available to you.  Also the stores start off rather light, with options of Potions and Phoenix Downs (which are not even affordable for an hour or two, and even then you don’t want to waste your money on it).  There are some bangles that do your typical +50HP, +20STR kinda deals.  But I have yet to spend actual Gil on weapons or accessories from the store.  I don’t know if you come across Gil more easily later on in the game, but so far it’s in sparse treasure spheres.  Once weapon upgrading opens up though (along with additional paradigms for your characters) things get interesting.  So far some of my characters have two weapon choices that I’ve gotten from spheres.  One boosts majority STR while the other boosts majority MAGIC.  So depending on which paradigm you want to focus on, Commando or Ravager, you can upgrade the weapon as you see fit.  Equip and upgrade the magic boosting weapon if you want your character to be more magic-friendly.  It’s sort of interesting, and since the items used to upgrade your weapons aren’t exactly easily available either (they drop as spoils and can be found in spheres throughout) you have to wisely choose how to upgrade.  Another interesting layer to it all is when you use a bulk of a certain item, then the item gets a leveling XP bonus.  Rare items give more XP, while common ones give less.  So you have to really choose in when you use your rare items.  Preferably once you boosted the XP bonus to a nice level.  So far I feel that Gil is better spent on materials to upgrade items than actually purchasing items.

No Final Fantasy game would be a Final Fantasy game is the story wasn’t confusing.  Some of it makes sense, some of it is just weird.  But it’s Final Fantasy and so far the story telling is great.  Things seem to go together, and in a little bit of a Lost sense, all the characters lives intertwine in weird ways.  I’ll be updating the blog with more impressions as I get to dig deeper into the game, maybe at my 15-20 hour point I’ll post some more up.  But so far it’s an enjoyable experience.  I don’t think it has captured my attention as quickly as Final Fantasy X did when it first came out, but it certainly is a different experience.  At the end of the day though, the game isn’t frustrating.  You don’t get lost and you don’t have to wonder where you have to go.  And if you take a break from playing, you don’t come back asking yourself where or what you were doing.  The game also does a nice recap of your progress while it loads your save game as to freshen your memory on what was going on.  When you fight mobs for the first time, you try to discover their weaknesses and the best strategy to beat them quickly.  I’ve had some battles where I had to settle for a wimpy 3-star rating only to develop the strategy to beat them in much less time for a 5-star rating.  And as I mentioned before, I’ve had gone through some Game Overs (Odin was a bit frustrating for me) but much like Demon’s Souls – it’s a fun game over.  You rethink what you did and how you could have done it better.  Rearrange your paradigms and it requires a little bit of thought.  Which is nice, since most previous Final Fantasy games just involved curing, potions and attacking at will.  You could use magic if you wanted to in previous games, but in Final Fantasy XIII it’s important to balance everything especially when trying to build up the meter for STAGGER.

Last tidbit – the Crystarium system is sort of a joke.  I was anticipating something similar to Final Fantasy X’s sphere system, but as many critics have already reviewed, it’s linear.  Much like the game.  It gives you a false sense of choices, but your best bet is to just hold down the OK button until you run out of CP and then repeat it for your next character.  So long as you don’t avoid any battles on your path through, you’ll have more than enough CP to upgrade all the classes for each character before new levels open up.  There isn’t much choices in building your characters, mainly focusing on what skill you may get first, but the periods in between gathering CP is so minimal that at the end of the day you’ll have the same result in 30 minutes.  And as far as having to grind, so long as you progress through the game there’s no need to rinse/repeat and fight mobs over and over.  At least not yet for me.  And really there isn’t much of an option so far to grind on mobs.  Once you kill them they’re gone.  The only way they’ll reappear is if you die and come back at the save point to Retry.  Then you can backtrack and fight some mobs for some CP to get your next HP +10 (YAY!) bonus.

Is it everything we could have wished for in a game that took over four years to make?  Graphically, yes.  I mean it’s leaps and bounds over any other game experience.  The transition from gameplay to movie sequence is seamless and Square Enix really did a fantastic job tying it altogether.  Giving you breaks before the game gets monotonous and boring.  Switching out of the character stories also come at a great time and really keeps you intrigued on what’s going on next.  Is the game itself groundbreaking?  Depends who you ask I guess.  The removal of towns and stores and talking NPCs shock some.  But FFXIII does sprinkle in some light dialogue and town wandering.  To me they do just enough to satisfy me, in fact that few minutes that I had to wander around as Snow in Bodhum and talk to people I was annoyed.  So I’m still giving two thumbs up to that choice.  I’m looking forward to the rest of the game to offer more impressions to those who care.

Oh and the real last tidbit – at the Final Fantasy XIII Experience we had the opportunity to wander around open land (not sure where it is in the game yet) and choose between all six characters and their paradigms.  I fought a cactaur and it took 17 minutes.  I obviously didn’t know what I know now, but the reports online of mobs having over a million hp is true.  Fun times ahead and it’s sad that Starcraft2 Beta is taking a backseat to it all.