Ruminations: Over-Analysis of Final Fantasy XIII

So, considering it’s what I’m playing right now, I figured I’d give my own personal impressions on FFXIII.

Let’s start with a bit of a preamble: I am a huge Final Fantasy fan. I played FFIV on the SNES when it was known as the second entry, and the FFVI when it was known in North America as FFIII. To be honest, I’ve played every main FF entry except for the first two on the NES. One thing the series often does is reinvent itself with every entry. Each game stands alone.

Not all of these changes, of course, panned out for the best. Every entry will have at least one weak point. Personally, I’m not too fond of FFVIII. The story’s a mess, the main villain’s goal is nonsensical, the main character’s such a jerk for such a huge chunk of the game that it’s hard to feel any sympathy for him, and his love interest is such an airhead that you can’t even see how either one could fall for the other. It’s also one of those entries that eschews magic points. Instead, you draw different magic spells from enemies and stock them up to a total of 99 per spell. Drawing gets tiresome, however, especially when your draw fails or you draw only one of the spell at a time, and once you get the ability to junction spells to stats to raise them, using spells becomes fairly pointless, lest you see your Strength stat fall, or your Hit Points go down.

Is the game a total abject failure? Not at all. It’s still fun to play, so long as you can get past its faults. And, again, a lot of people love it. I’m not one of them. Certainly I’ll go back and play it, but when the main couple have as much chemistry as (and as much in common with) Anakin and Padmé, things get aggravating. Zell’s not too bad, at least, for a blowhard jock, and Selphie’s kinda cute, in a vaguely annoying sort of way. Let’s face it, though, the game’s main cast is saved by the presence of Quistis, least annoying of the cast you’re first introduced to, and Irvine, the cowboy sharpshooter and ladies man. Even the rivalry that they introduce in the intro cinema, between Squall and Seifer, goes absolutely nowhere.

It’s a testament to the series that, even the episode I rank as lowest of the ones I’ve played (I find it hard to count FFXI as a main entry, considering its perpetual online world), despite all of its faults, is still fun to play. Talking about it even now makes me want to pop it in and give it another go.

Final Fantasy XIII is, again, a huge departure for the series. The gameplay is fast and furious, the layout is almost horribly linear, and almost all control during battles is wrested from your hands. But, for me, all of it works.

Now, let’s get another small bit of background out there: I loved FFXII. That one, along with VI, ranks as my favourite entry. I loved the politically-heavy plot, I loved the characters (especially Balthier and Fran), the localization and voice acting was absolutely amazing, and the combat was surprisingly strategic. For those not in the know, you directly control one character, the others are controlled by the AI. You control the AI by way of the game’s Gambits system, which basically means you tell the game “If Condition X, Do Action Y.” It gives you a wonderful number of options and strategies, and it’s wonderful to see the Gambits work like they’re supposed to. Character progression is done by spending points on the Licence Board, with only adjacent squares available to you. This means you can teach anyone to be a mage, or a thief, or a healer, or anything. All that’s required is the proper licence, and sometimes the proper spell (you need to purchase a magic spell before you can use it).

A lot of people hated the Gambit system. “It’s like watching the game masturbate,” people said, as you simply watched your entire party act without a single input from yourself. (as for myself, I always made sure that the party leader’s Gambits were turned off, so I had direct input over something) Some even disliked the Licence Board, a bit of a take on FFX’s Sphere Grid, another non-linear method of character progression. But where the Sphere Grid only gave you stat and abilities upgrades, in XII you could only use better equipment if you bought the proper licence. This irked some. The politically-heavy story also rankled some people. I loved it through-and-through, though.

So, is it really any surprise that I’m really enjoying FFXIII?

Level layout, at least over the first eight to nine chapters, is very similar to the entire design for FFX. One straight line, no real branching paths, and no world map. Again, this doesn’t bother me as much as it does a lot of other players. What some don’t realize is that most JRPGs are exceedingly linear affairs, basically pushing the player from Point A to Point B. What the World Map and Towns do (two features lacking in FFXIII) is give players somewhere to explore and people to interact with, thus giving them the illusion of something that’s significantly more open-ended than they’re aware of. Oh, sure, you can go all over the map, but you won’t be given anything new to do until you go to Point B, and even then it’ll simply be to make your way over to Point C. Tales of Vesperia does exactly this. You have your objectives, and the story won’t continue until you accomplish them; there are no side-quests to really speak of, that I can recall. Even Eternal Sonata, during the first five or seven hours, was decidedly lacking in anything resembling a deviation from the main story.

FFXIII is a lot like that, but without the illusion of nonlinearity. It’s a more streamlined experience, but because of this, it also holds your hand for a good chunk of the game. The opening hours are potentially tedious, especially when your team consists of one or two people. Combat is a matter of spamming the x button. While the game does, eventually, give you the opportunity to Paradigm Shift (change the roles in your party between six presets that you determine in the main menu), your initial choices are limited to only three or so variations, limiting your combat options. Granted, Square-Enix did this to ensure that those new to the game weren’t lost, or weren’t poring over an instruction manual to learn to play, but the initial few hours could be boring, depending on your temperament.

Eventually you get three party members, and the combat takes off. It’s invigorating when your party’s full and you need to switch Paradigms constantly depending on the situation. So, yes, while the game is playing itself, you’re micro-managing to ensure that your party leader doesn’t run out of Hit Points. The combat system has been built so that it would be virtually impossible to control the entire party during combat and keep everyone alive without pausing it at each turn, thus interrupting the flow. Does this make their decision right or wrong? Who knows. But I’m having fun with the combat. The only issue is that, during the first eight chapters (a good 20 hours or more of gameplay, at least on my clock), you rarely have more than two people on your team, and when you do, it lasts for far too little time. Only in Chapter nine do things really open up combat-wise, with a satisfying chunk of it taking place with a three-character party.

Sadly, the voice acting is a step back from the previous entry, and I blame at least part of that on the setting. In FFXII, you had a world that was fully realized. Everything had its place, everything had its history, and it felt immense and huge, with multiple warring factions and races, fabulous character designs, with everything oozing personality and style. FFXIII, by contrast, is missing much of this. Certainly, there’s a history and mythology here, with a good portion of the datalog dedicated to Cocoon society and mythology, but it doesn’t permeate the game, it doesn’t feel important. There isn’t that over-arching sense of history that XII had, and the character designs (with the exception of Sazh and Fang) are fairly generic, nothing truly memorable. By contrast, it’s hard to forget either Fran or Balthier, and Vahn’s design was unique in a street-urchin kind of way, as was Penelo’s. (sadly, I’d have to admit that Ashe and Basche got the short end of the stick when it comes to character design, good thing their voice acting was just as good as the others) And how can you forget the judges in the game? Or any number of the other races and monsters? So far, it’s sad to say, there’s so very little variety to be seen in FFXIII, so little of the society that you truly get to glimpse (as far as Chapter 9, at least), so very little of the setting that actually feels inspired, that it’s no surprise the voice acting isn’t as stellar as before.

Plus, no matter how you spin it, it would simply be damn difficult to top XII’s vocals. They were that good.

Again, I’m harping a lot about what may be missing from the latest entry in the Final Fantasy series. The fact remains that, despite all of this, it’s still a great game. Despite how uninspired the setting feels, the story is actually quite intriguing, and I find myself playing to see where it will go next, how it will all play out in the end. I want to know more about the rivalry between Cocoon and Gran Pulse. I want to know more about the fal’Cie and the l’Cie and all of these things. There’s so much that’s slowly fed to the player, so much mystery still left that the datalog doesn’t fill you in on, that it’s hard to not wonder about it all.

Speaking of the datalog, this is a feature that Final Fantasy has been sorely missing for years. If nothing else, it’s a way to keep track of what’s going on in the story in case you need to walk away from the game for a while. A lot of RPGs need this function, and while Western RPGs have it in the form of Quest Logs, very few JRPGs have adopted it (notable exceptions: the Tales series and, to a lesser extent, Rogue Galaxy). Why? I can’t say, but I hope that more and more of them will include this option as this console generation goes on.

So, yes, I’m enjoying FFXIII. While it may not be the strongest of the bunch, it’s certainly a fun, challenging (the challenge ramps up in Chapter 9) and intriguing entry. It’s not VI or XII, and it certainly isn’t without its faults, but it’s still a damn fine game that deserves the attention and reviews it’s been getting.