Square Enix has released their thirteenth installment in the main series of Final Fantasy. Beautiful environments, characters with depth and a combat system that flows like water make up the essence of Final Fantasy XIII and it is a great game, if you don’t mind being pushed from place to place.
Final Fantasy XIII follows the formula that Square has set for its Final Fantasy video games. You have scenery that expands from rain forests filled with dangerous creatures around every corner to a city under siege by a forceful government. Take control of intriguing characters that get tangled together by one cause and thrown into an epic adventure where they have to save the world or lose all they love.
Combat has been changed in order to create a rhythm with fast thinking. The mixture between turn-based actions with real time fighting is what makes Final Fantasy XIII’s combat fresh. Players can either create a smooth fight by actually thinking about their decisions or use the auto-battle command which lets the AI choose what to do depending on the situation at hand. The AI does a good job at choosing what attacks or skills to use at any given moment, and you can basically play the game like that and just mash the action button every fight. The choice is up to the player.
One of thing that is not up to the player is where he or she wants to go. The game is extremely linear. You go from beautiful dungeon to beautiful dungeon, beating monster after monster till the big boss arrives at the end. Some environments do have certain aspects about them that make them unique like the rain forest where you are able to control the weather and what monsters appear. Most Final Fantasy games allowed the gamer to travel to different worlds and do whatever they wanted, whether it is to look at the beautiful cities or one of the dangerous dungeons to get something you missed before. It just doesn’t let you have all the freedom you had in games in the series such as Final Fantasy X or Final Fantasy VII.
While you’re running through these dungeons, you advance your skills and attributes with the new upgrade system called crystogenesis. Using the crystarium, you upgrade a character’s class using points won through battle. For example, commandos can be upgraded to learn more up close attacks and medics can learn more powerful healing abilities. Every character has a particular class that he or she is good at, but it is good to switch up the classes in order to save your party from certain death.
Paradigms are the latest addition along with the crystarium. Paradigms allow players to set what classes the party can be. A paradigm group that is offensive would have a physical attacking commando with two magic wielding ravengers or group that enhances each other would have a commando, a medic and a synergist who temporarily enhances the group’s abilities and attributes. While in battle, players can switch between each paradigm simultaneously. It can turn the fate of the battle around dramatically if you learn how to use them wisely.
Final Fantasy XIII is a big footstep in the trail of Square Enix’s masterful stories. Characters that make you feel for them when they are in despair and drive you to run through the straight forward dungeons is a great experience for any JRPG fan to enjoy.
