Final Fantasy XIII First Impressions

Final Fantasy XIII. A game I said I would not buy as soon as it was released. A game I said would be terrible. A game I said was not a proper Final Fantasy.

I was wrong on all 3 points.

I bought it on Tuesday when I was released and so far I have managed to find the time to play about 6 hours of it. So far I have to say, this could be the best FF since VIII.

The story is relatively fast paced and quite engaging. Only 1 of the main characters so far is incredibly annoying, Hope, in fact, is possibly the most annoying character in an RPG ever.

The combat system is different from all previous but works very well. Certainly better than the abortion of XII. The game does not throw all the changes at you at first, buts gives you most of them over the first 4 Hours. This works wonderfully as it is so different without the game tutorials I fell I would have been lost and currently trying to remove my PS3 controller from the TV.

You only control the main character of a party, so far the game selects this for you. If that character loses all his or her HP, it’s game over. The abilities of your character are limited to the Paradigm, or role, they have currently. Other party members will do tasks depending on what Paradigm they have been given.

Paradigms include Commando, who attacks with normal attacks be they swords or guns. Ravager who attacks with Magic and Magic based strikes. Saboteur who issues negative effects to enemies. Sentinel who works like a tank having defence moves and aggro spells. Medic who heals and finally Synergist who issues buff spells to part members. The AI is competent at working with its Paradigm effectively and I have had no problems with it doing what I wanted.

You setup what Paradigms your party can select from in the Main Menu. The basic ones the game gives you for each part will always need more added to it. Luckily this is simple to do. You can also select which set your party starts off with in combat. In combat you can shift the Paradigms of your party by doing a Paradigm shift this can be done at any time and changes who is doing what at any time. It works wonderfully.

Combat has far more depth than this but I don’t want this write up to be all about the combat. Though it does play a major part of this game. Overall the combat is relatively deep but NOT complicated.

This is meant to be a quick overview and I will talk about it in more detail in the future. But so far the story has been good, with interesting character flashbacks. It has great FMV like all FF games and it plays a large part of the game. Combat is brilliant fun and the music is amazing.

For the first 6 hours this game so far scores a 9. I will update my progress on this game as time goes on.

Have Fun

Bob Bateman