One of the stand out quotes of Jedi Master Yoda was “fear leads to the dark side”. He knew what he was talking about, fear has the power to corrupt and manipulate our thoughts and actions in many subtle and not so subtle ways, often in a highly negative way. My mate Pete also has some great quotes of wisdom, although not a Jedi Master; at least to my knowledge; he does tend to have an element of Haiku to his thought process. Take the following “expectation is the mother of all f%&k ups” – Pete knew what he was talking about when he said that and over the years I have come to appreciate his wisdom in more ways than one. Now before you all start looking at each other with raised eyebrows, I haven’t lost the plot, I’m just trying to be insightful in my introduction to this Final Fantasy XIII review, keep with me.
I have been a player and admirer of the Final Fantasy franchise for well over a decade now – I have played most of the releases across a number of platforms and they have provided me with some of the stand out gaming experiences of my existence. Perhaps the pinnacle of this experience to date has been the ground breaking, still referenced for greatness, epic masterpiece that was Final Fantasy VII. For those that get it, the Final Fantasy games have provided an almost more than a game experience, the surrounding lore, epic craftsmanship of the story telling and for their time the exquisite use of technology all manifest themselves into a collective whole that transcends the limitation of a one dimensional interactive experience. I have spent many hours in pubs, cafes, bedrooms, sitting rooms and park benches talking with friends about series – for the most part it constitutes discussion of some very fond memories.
This all leads me back to Pete’s point, as I like to term it, Final Fantasy XIII has been in development for a number of years, it has been teased and titillated in front of fans for what seems like forever and it’s release in Japan last year only left the European fans wanting it more. To say it had a degree of expectation around it’s neck would be putting it mildly, on top of that the dual release of the title on both PS3, the original target platform and Xbox 360, for which a port was developed, only fueled more on the fire of what will it be like? All this expectation could only mean one thing right? Pete would once again be right and a game that I had been looking forward to for such a long time would materialise to be nothing but an underwhelming experience. Well actually no, in some cases expectations can be fulfilled, surpassed even and great hopes can indeed become reality. Pete this time you’re wrong – Final Fantasy XIII is bloody awesome.
Final Fantasy is what fans of the genre will expect on just about every level, JRPG fundamentals hold true through. You begin with a group of individuals trying to save the world from certain doom, the game provides an engaging story which interlinks each of these characters and allows the player to have complete control of how they develop throughout the some 50+ hour experience. Characters can take on different roles, acting as healers, tanks or damage dealers to name but a few while a paradigm system allows for builds to be swapped on the fly at any moment thus making the combat system intricate, complex and rewarding. To describe Final Fantasy XIII as ordinary or conventional however would be a complete injustice and nothing short of a lie. This is without doubt the most polished JRPG I have played, one of the best looking games on any platform and quite possibly the best of the series to date!
To begin with the graphics are what will draw the player to begin with, everything looks lush in a beautiful and lush colour palette that makes many games seems almost washed out in their execution. The lighting his honed to perfection and the combat effects and spell abilities light up the screen in spectacular fashion. True gamers will have no doubt stopped and just moved the camera around the environment in which they are playing on certain occasions before, impressed by what they saw, rolling landscapes, epic viewpoints, interesting areas of visual narrative – I don’t think I have ever been as impressed with the visual style of a game while doing this in Final Fantasy XIII – it’s simply breath taking. The cut scene elements raise the bar to a whole new level, my first point of comparison would be Halo Wars which I thought was fantastic in it’s cut scene content and execution, here however even it is put into second place, the cut scene sections of Final Fantasy XIII are mesmerising, beautiful and technically stunning.
The game is not just a pretty face however, the voice work and audio development is spot on although many will find the Japanese cheese factor annoying at times. Some of the one liners could have been better translated but I have actually come to expect and enjoy such niche nuances of the genre. Leona Lewis lends herself to the OST and the tracks are majestically and perfectly suited to the game. The core game battle mechanic, mentioned earlier, is fantastically designed, presenting what at first seems like a somewhat limited and restrictive queuing of actions and growing into a intricate and perfectly crafted method of battle engagement. You will need to manage your party, assign battle roles, switch paradigms, focus on chaining attacks, make use of battle techniques and much more to succeed. The delivery of this system across the opening 10 hours of the game is perfectly paced and there comes a point where you actually feel better as a player when the elements start to connect.
The game is pretty mammoth in size and you don’t really start to get full control over many of the games mechanics until 20+ hours into the experience. This may be one of the limitations of the game, if you don’t have the time and patience to spend with Final Fantasy XIII it could perhaps become a little frustrating. Thankfully this factor doesn’t apply to me. I’m about 25 hours in now and thus far it has been nothing short of excellent, I’ve grown to admire cultural differences in thinking, laughed out loud at some of the little quirks, been completely shell shocked by the games narrative twists and completely compelled by the leveling and powering up of the characters. While the experience doesn’t provide character development or engagement on par with say the likes of Heavy Rain, it still does a pretty damn good job. A final point which I think is worthy of mentioning is that there is a significant difference in quality between the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions, for once the PS3 version materialises as superior, I will not begin to describe the technicalities here, much better to leave that to the experts, check out the Digital Foundry article on the matter here. I subsequently went for the PS3 version of the game and I am glad I done so.
So sometimes then, expectation can be a good thing and on rare perhaps a couple of times in a lifetime expectations can be exceeded and surpassed. Playing Final Fantasy XIII is certainly one of those times.
Rating: 
