I beat Final Fantasy 13 over a month ago and it’s been a month and then some of me trying to write this article. Why? FF13 was a game that I wasn’t sure how to feel about going into it. Final Fantasy 12 was one of the biggest disappointments to me and as a result I wasn’t sure I could give my heart to Square-Enix all over again like that. I knew FF13 was being done by entirely different people, but did that really matter? Was the company’s direction changing in a way that I didn’t see eye to eye with? Had I changed and lost interest in what had always been my favorite RPG series? What exactly happened? Well, thankfully Final Fantasy 12 was the fluke and the next Final Fantasy ended up being one of my favorites.
Why?
Final Fantasy 13 is one kind of RPG that I’ve always wanted.
To me, some of the most fun in the Final Fantasy games have been the bosses. They tend to feature a pattern, almost like a musical rhythm, that repeats over and over. Your job is to get in sync with this rhythm and stay in sync. Doing so will allow you to deplete the boss’s health points before it brings you to the game over screen. FF13 managed to make every battle like this. Basically, a boss rush RPG. I’d had the thought before and was quite shocked when I realized Square-Enix gave it to me.
What is wrapped around this system is a set of multimedia that ranges from average to excellent. The graphics and music are quite splendid and I’ll leave that at that. The story I could take or leave, but it at least managed to pique my curiosity enough to want to see the ending which is all I really ask. The characters were a tricky part. They are all well known and defined stereotypes, but they played off each other so well. Character types I disliked were treated by character types I liked the exact way I wanted to see them behave. So while it was not a unique blend of character flavors, the orchestration was quite marvelous.
The game proceeds in quite a linear fashion. In story and character progression. Only near the end of both parts of the game do you get some wiggle room. This is where I can understand some great frustration from players of the game. If Final Fantasy 10′s linearity in both game and character progression didn’t please you then FF13′s would do no better, I’d think. But for me, the path that they gave felt so natural, so inclined, that I didn’t feel restricted at all. Had I freedom this would have been the path I’d taken anyway. I never wanted to stop and smell the roses in this game. When given the chance to explore I only wanted to press onwards. When given the chance to branch my characters out, I wanted them to stay on the path they had been given from the start. This natural feeling smoothed over any negative feelings I might have had in any other game with such a rigid progression system.
What really won me over is the game’s fast paced battle system that let me feel like I had exactly the amount of control I wanted. When trying to get into that aforementioned rhythm, being able to select my commands and set up my party member’s AI to help me was entirely painless. While this led to the occasional sense of being overwhelmed, it was being able to keep myself right on the edge of being overwhelmed that gave me the most joy.
If I had a complaint it would be that the game was a bit too slow in unveiling all of the many layers to its battle system, but this had a benefit. While proceeding with the game it often gave you a predetermined party of characters who at that point had a limited selection of classes to choose from. What this meant was that you were forced to work within very finely defined rules to proceed. The key point, though, is that the player is forced to try out many different character and class combinations that I’m confident I would never have bothered with had I complete freedom from the start. By easing me into the system by the time I had freedom to choose my own characters and classes I felt more than comfortable with the game.
So while I was surprised with what Square-Enix actually did with Final Fantasy and how much I liked it, what really threw me for a loop was how difficult the game was. I cannot recall any other game in the Final Fantasy series where I perished as much as this one. Getting to that rhythm was extremely important because being unable to meant my quick doom. Sometimes it felt as if the game was too difficult or unfair, but with a bit of thought to those combinations the game forced me to try previously led to my victory. And I loved it.
Sadly, all was not perfect with this game. They decided to not give money for battles which meant you had to rely on what was given in treasure chests or selling items for your cash. This wouldn’t have been an issue were it not for an overly complex weapon and accessory upgrade system. I won’t bother getting into it, but not being a fan of item creation systems to begin with, this clunky system was easily my least favorite part of the game. Thankfully, I was able to ignore it until the end where I had to use it to give me a boost to do the damage needed for the final boss.
Final Fantasy 13 will never be listed as my favorite Final Fantasy game. But it managed to give a unique experience that I’m glad I had. Would I want the next game in the series1 to be exactly like 13? No, I’d actually like to see them try something else. Maybe work the Final Fantasy 12 formula into something else that I’d enjoy. But with this game I’m glad to see different things being tried with a series that by all means could quite easily just be phoning it in.
- That’s not an MMO… Damn FF14 [↩]
