So I've finally decided to do it. I'm going to blog about Final Fantasy XIII. I have been a fan of this series ever since I can remember gaming. My favorites in the series are 5 and 7 and I also had some fun with Tactics. Now I am sure everyone out there has an understanding on the story of the game. If not it is not too different from any of the rest of the games in the series. A group of people are outcast and have to fight through hordes of bad guys to defeat the main bad guy and save the day. It's all pretty standard for the genre. I'm not really going to go into the story anymore or even most of the gameplay. Everything I could say has already been said more times than I can count. I'm just going to give my opinion as a fan of the series and what I think about the finished product.
I along with all the other Final Fantasy fans have been waiting on this game for about 4 years now. I picked my copy up at my local Gamestop during their midnight release and popped it in right when I got home and dropped about 5 hours in on my first run. Now let's say you are very used to a certain type of gameplay and when this has all been changed it can become a little frustrating trying to learn this new gameplay while also trying to understand a very intricate story and still trying to figure out why 2 of your characters are Australian and the rest seem to be American...wow. In all honesty I love this game. It looks great and once you learn everything with the battle system and upgrade systems it all flows together very nicely. There are a lot of issues in the game however and it does hurt the product overall. I am near 30 hours in and have not played in about 2 weeks because in all honesty it really hasn't hooked me in like previous games. Overall it is a good JRPG but I think it would have fit better in another series other than Final Fantasy. The linearity in my opinion doesn't hurt it, but then again I play Persona which tells you what you have to do for the most part. The grind doesn't feel the same because you aren't grinding levels as you are grinding items and points for your skills. It works, but not in the way most people would think. It comes off as tedious and the only thing I have heard is later on you can grind out while hunting large animals...which is odd and just doesn't par the course for a game known for addictive mini games and a large area of side quests. That isn't to say I don't like the weapon building component but it just takes so damn long and I am a gamer who likes to have all his ultimate weapons before he beats the game...not after.
Overall if you are a Final Fantasy fan you will enjoy the game just for the namesake. I do like this game but I don't think it stands anywhere near the perfection of some of the older games in the series. It plays well and tells a story. Will you like the story? More than likely you won't. Will you like the gameplay? That one is a better bet just due to the fact it isn't bad but as far as other games in the series go I would prefer they step back to the old systems. As far as Next-Gen JRPGs go however you could do much worse.
Overall - 8.7 out of 10
No comments:
Post a Comment