Final Fantasy XIII

[Samven]

I have a very weird relationship with this game.

On the one hand, I think, from a gameplay perspective, it's quite possibly the single worst game I've ever played. It's just too linear for me and I don't feel that I have any control over my characters in combat. I'm also not a fan of Sphere Grid-style upgrade systems. I hate having to manually upgrade each individual stat that my characters have and, while there are considerably less stats than previous instalments, I still find it a bit confusing how we have the option to upgrade all these different Paradigms for everybody when they all have their own innate "class" to start with. We're never going to level Snow up as a Ravager, for example, because he doesn't have a lot of attack magic. We're going to stick Hope in that class because he can learn every spell. It feels very much like complexity for complexity's sake. Call me stuck in 16-bit mud, but I don't see how there was anything wrong with the old class system. Just stick Hope in the Black Mage class and have him learn Fira and Thundaga as he levels up. I just feel that something as simple as that would be better.

On the other hand, XIII is also the first Final Fantasy story in over a decade that I've actually cared about. The likes of X and XII had good moments, but so many of the characters were completely irrelevant. Even Balthier, who is well-writen and extremely likeable, doesn't actually contribute much to the storyline. The plot is almost entirely built around Ashe. Not to mention you could remove everybody who isn't named Squall or Rinoa from the VIII party and it would have almost no effect on the main storyline.

XIII, on the other hand, did a much better job at involving the characters. It's the first time since the old school Final Fantasy games that I felt each character had a legitimate reason to be adventuring and that each one had their own issues, loves, losses and driving force. Snow in particular I really liked. I don't get why so many people complain about him. That kind of optimistic, never-give-up hero is exactly what Final Fantasy needed to drag itself out of the darkness. Also? I liked Vanille and I don't care what her detractors say. Like Snow, she did a good job at brightening the mood and keeping everyone from slitting their wrists when the going got tough. Not to mention, Lightning's pre-final battle speech was just awesome. The game is so much better for having gone down such an optimistic route: it's a huge reconstruction of traditional heroism. When the going gets tough, you get tough enough to feed it its own spinal column. Finally, the villain is almost close to escaping the "destroy the world because it's there and I'm evil" cliche that Final Fantasy antagonists keep suffering from...

So, yeah. I loved the plot but really disliked the gameplay. That's why I'm really looking forward to the other games in the 'verse, because I want to believe Square Enix can fix the problems with XIII's gameplay while still keeping the best world (in my opinion) since IV.