MGR – Final Fantasy XIII Part Two

As part of the on-going process of me developing a video game review style, my current subject is Final Fantasy XIII.

Just a reminder that if you are looking for caustic, sarcastic reviews – you’d be better off checking out 95% of the other game reviews you can find – let me recommend Zero Punctuation. It is my intention to write my reviews the way I would like to find reviews for me to read: thoughtful analysis of the game, with the reviewer proclaiming his personal biases and examples of what he or she likes and dislikes. Not the reviewer trying to be the most cynical and snarky stand-up comedian he or she can be. In fact, odds are if I’m writing a review of a game it means I enjoyed it enough to finish it – I’m reviewing games that I found to be enjoyable. I may or may not, in the future, review games I don’t like – but the odds of me FINISHING a game I don’t enjoy are not very good.

Spoiler – I finished FF XIII.

PREVIOUSLY …

I started to look at the mechanics of the game, focusing on combat. Now to look at the non-combat mechanics.

MECHANICS (cont.)

The leveling system used in FF XIII is the Crystarium. At the start of the game you only have on path to level in, your primary Paradigm. Later in the game every character will have 3 Paradigms to put Crystarium Points (C.P.) into. Every combat you earn C.P., which act like experience points in most other RPGs, and you can spend those C.P. in any Paradigm path that is open to you. The level progressions offer little choice outside of which Paradigm to put points in, though there are side branches on your Paradigm paths that you can choose to not put points into. It’s a very visual character development scheme that worked just fine for me.

While playing the game you cannot save whenever you want – like most JRPGs and almost all FF’s, you have to reach a location called a save point. On the plus side there are plenty of these around so you won’t be running through encounters for a half-hour or more at a time without a place to save. The save points also act as the areas where you can access the shops – digital stores where you can buy and sell your items at, as well as the place where you can upgrade or breakdown equipment (more on the last point in a bit.) You have (at least on the 360) 99 save game slots, all visually compelling until the repetitious nature of it loses you and you long for what many western RPGs have with screen shots of where you are when you save. The game does also do some auto-saving before big battles, but I wouldn’t rely on this feature for anything long term.

The shops are limited at first. There are quite a few shops you can pick from at the save points, but most aren’t available right away. You unlock these shops throughout the game as you win battles where the access to new shops are dropped like loot. Also, the shops gain new inventory at different points throughout the game. I know a lot of hell was raised over the lack of traditional towns in FF XIII, but let me tell you that from my perspective, the fact that stores were going to constantly appear at points along my journey and I wouldn’t have to travel / transition to get to them… it is a MAJOR game improvement, IMO. Anything that removes tedium, repetition, and boredom from a game is a bonus for me. The digital shops were, to me, like using Amazon (or the WWW in general) for all your shopping instead of driving around town (or across the country / world) for the goods you want – the expediency and convenience trump any loss of “fun” traveling to the stores and “shopping.” Your mileage, however, may vary.

Equipment in the game starts off very limited and you have little choice in what to buy. You have your one weapon and one slot for an accessory for each character. But that, too, changes over time. While you will be stuck with only being able to equip one weapon at a time, you do gain more weapons and the ability to upgrade your weapons, as well as more accessory slots and the ability to upgrade accessories, too. There are three phases to the Upgrade process – breaking down items you no longer want and don’t want to sell (sometimes the only way to get certain game items is to breakdown certain other items), upgrading weapons and accessories with items you find or buy that are for upgrading, and transforming items into more powerful items via catalysts (also bought or found.) The upgrade system starts very simple and restricted and grows more and more deep and complicated as the game wears on. Which brings me to my last points about the FF XIII mechanics.

Training mode. The game doesn’t officially have one as you’d recognize in many western RPGs. A level you can outright skip (like Bethesda games or some Bioware games) or that you have to trudge through with tutorials popping up even if you’ve played the game before. No, the first half or so of the game is your full on tutorial, easing you into the complex and challenging game system that is FF XIII step by step, all wrapped up in character development, cut-scenes and story. You are only allowed so many ability choices, so many items, so much ability to manipulate your environment and your equipment, until you’ve played with those options for awhile and new options open up (switching Paradigms, Summoning Eidolons, choosing your team leader, etc.) and this effectively prevents new players and those inexperienced (or rusty) to JRPGs to ease into the menu heavy, options heavy style of gaming that is Final Fantasy.

I think this is a mixed blessing – it worked perfectly for me, keeping things simple and easy as I got into the game, adding more options and complexity as the game rolled on to keep my interest while not outpacing my learning curve. The problem is that many experienced JRPG players, or RPG gamers in general, could be (and were by my estimation) quickly turned off by what seems to be a dumbed down, simplistic game early on. The “tutorial” nature of the early stages of the game (all pre-Pulse) can make the game seem too straight-forward with no real choices or options. As revolutionary and well-executed as I believe this to be, it is likely that the gaming public in general are not receptive overall to this kind of game design and execution.

STORY

This will be minor spoiler-y, but not plot-twist revealing or such. I will just be going up to fairly early in the game, to get to the point where the thrust of the plot is, so someone reading this review would have enough to go on to know what the story will be like. Still, it will tell a bit of what happens early on. You are warned.

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The game opens in the middle of action – Lightning and Sazh are in a line of refugees boarding a train, directed by well-armed soldiers. A purge. As the train travels onward you learn a bit more about the purge, as well as get to witness Lightning attack the soldiers and Sazh follow behind her. Hope and his mother are among those being purged as well and as such are on the train, as well as Vanille though she remains hidden. We also witness Snow and his gang of young rebels trying to rescue the refugees at around the same time as Lightning is making her move.

The story jumps between Snow and Lightning for a bit until the two groups collide. A big battle with a big beastie occurs, where many of the refugees are lost. The group splits again, but eventually all the separate players end up inside the case carrying the sleeping fal’Cie (think angel or one of many gods) whose discovery is really behind everything that’s been going on up to this point. Inside they meet the fal’Cie and are turned into l’Cie (think chosen warriors or disciples of said angel/god), which turns out to be something of a curse – for many reasons.

And most of the rest of the story is the main characters blaming themselves, blaming each other, trying to wrestle with their “destiny” – that is, even trying to find out what they are meant to do as l’Cie – running away, coming to terms with their pasts, with themselves, with their fates, and with each other until, at the end, they are a tight-knit group (I would even say “family” if that wouldn’t sound so trite) and work together to forge their own destiny.

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I think now is a good time for an aside. I’ve seen many, many people complain about how FF XIII has a “weak” story, or “no” story. While such calls are subjective and, hence, never really wrong for the person making the call, overall I think these people at the very least misunderstand what “story” means. I think they mean plot. I think I should give what I think the key difference is between “story” and “plot.”

The plot is the sequence of events; that’s as simple as it can be said. Think of all the events in a piece of fiction, and place them in chronological order as they occur in the fiction – like plotting them out on a time-line. The plot is what happens. So a story with a light plot would be one where not many things happen, or very mundane things happen. A story with a strong or deep plot would be one where an awful lot of things happen, or the things that happen themselves are fairly big or complicated.

The story, on the other hand, is the how and the why. If the plot is the line of events as they occur, the story is the paths by which the events connect and are caused and, most importantly, why we as readers/listeners/watchers/players should care. The story is the explanation of the cause of events and the reasons behind the events. A piece of fiction could be full of events, it could truly be just a time-line listing what happens and it would be story light. A piece of fiction could be almost empty of plot but be story heavy, like a story about one event happening (say, the announcement of JFK’s assassination and where people were and what they felt upon hearing it.)

FF XIII is, arguably, light on plot. Often characters are running from one place to another because they are being chased and have no real other reasons for where they are running nor any real goal they are racing towards. There’s no “they gather their forces, then they go to three separate cities to solve the problems of those cities so they are strongholds against the enemies, then with their forces they move and confront the enemy through strategic battle plans.” It really is “rescue Serah” then “flee being killed” then “defy destiny.” You can realistically (and without malicious intent) boil it down to those three plot points as being the big ones.

FF XIII, however, is deep with the story telling. I say this because I believe that FF XIII is a character driven narrative, not a plot driven narrative. The whole story is about the characters, how they react to their situations and each other, and the choices they make. The story is not really about a series of important events and uncovering each one eagerly – it is not plot driven.

You might like plot driven stories better. The ones that don’t have introspection on character, but lots of action and twists. And if so you might dislike the “story” of FF XIII. But if you like stories that are mostly about characters learning who they are and trying to decide who they want to be, then you may well really like the story of FF XIII.

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This is a journey of self-discovery. Each character goes through some profound development, which is IMO very rare in video games. Master Chief is always the stoic soldier. Mario is about bashing turtles and rescuing the Princess. Col. Blair wants to shoot down Kilrathi. Spider-Man is all about “with great power comes great responsibility.” It’s the rare video game where you can watch a whiny, angry young man grown to be a confident, optimistic leader, or a bitter, violent loner turn into a caring, protective team-player. It’s almost always only in RPGs, and even then in my experience it’s fairly rare.

FFXIII has some of the most developed and involving characters in a game that I’ve played in a long time. Each at first on the surface seems superficially one-dimensional. Then early on you get that second dimension, the almost cliche’d “there’s more to this soldier than being bad-ass, he also loves his girlfriend!” kind of traits. But it is as you move through the game, with all the short cut-scenes and you slowly see more and more of the characters revealed, that you finally get that third dimension. While often that last layer isn’t anything revolutionary itself it does make the characters well rounded, developed, and gives them depth and meaning. Almost universally, games are lucky if their characters have two dimensions.

It moved me. I am, I’ll admit, often easy to move. I am a sentimental sap quite often about certain things. But FF XIII did push all the right buttons and, at the end, I was kind of cheering inside and very glad I stayed through to the end.

MISCELLANEOUS

I won’t go much into the graphics and sound. You’ve seen the trailers. You know it’s beautiful – cut scenes and combat and everything. And even if you aren’t a fan of the Final Fantasy style game-music (I am), you must admit that it is critically acclaimed and widely adored. The music for FF XIII is wonderful – every time I came back to the game I got a feeling of peace and happiness as the first few notes sounded as the title menu came up.

I cannot speak accurately as to the length of the game overall. I used to be a horrible completionist for RPGs, as in I didn’t want to miss a single line of dialog or the tiniest of areas to explore, but Bethesda has bloodily beaten that out of me pretty completely. Add to this that often when I was playing the game I was also watching my eight to nine month old daughter and had to pause and leave the game for sometimes several hours at a time (many save points, but not child-needing-attention proof.) My best estimate is that the game took me roughly 60 hours to complete, and considering how the game is structured (and the fact that on Gran Pulse you can run around forever battling stuff and collecting stuff (grinding)) I figure this means people playing can take anywhere from maybe 35 hours on up to over 100 playing it, with an average probably being around 45.

One last thing I want to touch on – that horrible notion of “linearity.” It has become almost as bad a thing to call a game as “turn-based” – no, scratch that, it’s WORSE. People sure hate the concept that a game can happen in a pre-ordained order or that they can’t choose where to go and what to do at all times. I’ll be up front – the more I’m exposed to “open sandbox” games, the more I dislike them. I long for a little structure, a little direction, a feeling that everything I’m doing is adding up to something bigger than my stats or bank account.

That said, while FF XIII is not quite as linear as many people would want you to believe it is pretty straight-forward. Especially if you constantly watch the mini-map and just run directly towards the arrow showing you where to go next. No matter how big areas are with sweeping vistas, that mini-map shows a flat, featureless path (often with little branching at all) that goes one way. And when you exit one area it is more often than not to go directly to another area, no choices about it. This really fits the story (and the plot, honestly) – for most of the game you are on the run, being directly chased by forces out to capture or kill you. It would make little sense to let you back track right into the forces trying to snatch you. And there are points in the game (Gran Pulse, mostly) where you can wandering around literally forever if you want, going back and forth through the multiple areas in any order you like.

Guess who tried to burn through Gran Pulse as quickly as possible to get back to the “linear” – er, I mean story.

OVERALL

I thoroughly enjoyed FF XIII. The game mechanics changes that the creators made really improved the game, in my opinion, over the Final Fantasy’s of the past (the few I’ve played, mind you – FF 3/6, FF 7, FF Tactics, FF Tactics Advanced.) Particularly the combat system. The story is very enjoyable, and the characters are absolutely great. It is probably not everyone’s cup of tea, even those who usually drink tea and this brand of tea.

I’d recommend this game to those who don’t mind a strongly-structured story-focused game. To those who like character development in their games. Anyone who enjoys strategic and tactical combat over button-mashing. Most Final Fantasy fans who enjoy the series overall and not just certain games in the series. People who used to play the adventure games of old where you were moving through a story and that was what mattered, the game play needed to be fun but wasn’t your focus.

If you need to create your own characters, you’ll probably not like this. If your narratives require huge events, plot-twists, many menacing villains who try to steal the show from the protagonists, you will most likely find this character-driven story boring or trite. Anti-heroes, if those are your preferred characters, are not present – these are good guys, not Jack Bauers or Frank Castles.

I think the Final Fantasy franchise got many needed changes in this version of the game. That said, I think they should take seriously many of the complaints the game keeps getting. Throwing a few bones to large portions of your fan-base to keep them happy is mostly a good idea.