I had been told a lot of things about Final Fantasy XIII. Mostly in abstract, and most of it not good. There are outliers, our own Rose sings the game’s praises often, but the general consensus has been that FFXIII marked a major downturn for Final Fantasy as a franchise. I had even tried it as a youngster, but bounced directly off of it. I recently became unemployed, and had also gained access to Final Fantasy XIII around the same time. I needed to know why everyone hated this game, and I especially was curious because I’ve pretty much been a stranger to Final Fantasy. I’ve dabbled, but never fully made my way through a single entry. FFXIII was the first Final Fantasy I’ve ever beaten. I almost 100% completed the game. I was powered by enough curiosity to kill a thousand cats, and almost lost myself in the process.
It hit me pretty immediately why folks were mad about FFXIII. The promise of a huge, “next-gen” RPG experience was something the mainstream audience was expecting, putting the power of PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 to good use. Instead, we got The Hallways. This was the thing I’d heard over and over, that most of the game was railroaded by long corridors. When I was met with this, I thought about it for a bit, and compared the maps to other RPGs I’d played. Dungeons are just…like that, JRPGs were, for the most part, like that. You have a few side paths, but you’re entering an area, going somewhere, then moving on.
A big issue is the utter lack of towns or side content. There’s a monotony to Cocoon, the floating nation where you spend the first half of the game. There’s no real connection to the world these characters live in. Even in the level where Sazh and Vanille go to an amusement park, it’s just that, a place of joy and celebration that doesn’t match the rest of the world. You can never meet others struggling under the grip of the fal’cie, powerful beings that can enthrall humans, and the party members don’t really get a chance to bounce off each other and the world around them. There’s a smidgen of character development here and there, but it’s never complemented by a deeper interaction, and I never felt like I got to know any of the party members beyond a list of events that happened to them.
Once you make it out of Cocoon (after 30 hours!) you reach Gran Pulse, the lower part of the world where the less opulent were not protected from the fal-cie’s wrath. Once you’re there, you’re introduced to a sprawling landscape, full of roaming creatures that are often far too strong to fight. This reminded me immediately of Xenoblade Chronicles, which was released a few months after FFXIII. Xenoblade’s sprawling plains are far better than Gran Pulse, as there’s more character interaction and further layers of combat besides avoiding strong foes.
I can feel a strong foundation here! The combat, in which you can swiftly swap between assigned roles for each character in battle, is exciting and deep. I fell in love with the soundtrack, and the characters’ designs are memorable and lovable. That’s what kept me coming back, not the world or the story, the gameplay and music! That can carry some games, but not RPGs, not something that’s dozens of hours long. I can’t feel good about a world I’m literally living in that isn’t allowing me to actually experience what’s going on there.
There’s a codex that does most of the heavy lifting in the story, which is only “heavy” in comparison to what goes on in the cutscenes. Oftentimes events are detailed in writing only, the history of each nation is told by wistfully written mythical texts, and none of those aspects meld with what’s going on with the characters in the moment. Sure, the gods and their creations are the source of our heroes’ woes, but even with them fighting back against their fate, it still doesn’t feel like Lightning and crew are actually doing anything to fight any of the fal’cie besides a specific one that’s antagonizing them. The party changes the world, but they don’t feel a part of the world until the exact final scene.
Combat is the strongest aspect of the game in my opinion. Paradigm shifting provides a ton of freedom, allowing for each character to specialize in a variety of roles that can be swapped on the fly. Boss battles are far more interesting, as you can basically form a handful of parties that fit into each phase of a fight, and it makes these big fights more like puzzles to unravel instead of button mashing frenzies or just picking the same option in a menu over and over. You can’t lean on a single party, as each character has their specialties and won’t learn certain moves even if they have the same paradigm. Once you hit the late-game, you can even start to dip upgrade points into non-specialized paradigms, meaning a character who can normally only do tanking, healing, and DPS can also do a little debuffing if you really need to lay on the debuffs.
It’s what I think the ATB system should always be! It’s actually active, as your moves come out in real time instead of just when your turn hits. It’s the perfect balance between RPGs of the past and action RPGs of today, and it’s pretty apparent why Final Fantasy XV plays the way it does after XIII set the course. It’s what I think Final Fantasy should be using all the time! Reject current trends, Square Enix. Bring us back to how it was. A middle ground is more unique than just leaning on real time combat like half of the RPG scene does.
Due to the combat being as good as it is, I ended up doing nearly everything in the game, since so much of the game is combat. I only skipped on the grind to fully level every character and to get every weapon/accessory. That sort of thing is unnecessary, even as someone who has been enjoying getting all achievements and trophies in games lately. There was challenge and excitement behind getting strong enough to beat the final boss with a five star ranking, not so much in fighting Long Guis over and over until I hit max level in everything and buy every weapon.
I’m glad I spent the time I did with this game, but I would never tell someone else to do this. It’s a complete experience, but what’s there isn’t a complete world. I now know why FFXIII flopped, and it’s not because of the hallways! It’s the writing, there’s not enough there. And that’s why I’m still interested in the sequels, since there’s a chance to expand on the world and spend more time with the characters. If that’s what the sequels do, I’ll warm up to it. Final Fantasy XIII as a stand-alone title, however, left me expecting and longing for more.
