A rambling about the first 20 hours.
By Ace829 83 Comments
You’re wondering how I’ve only played 20 hours since the last time I blogged about this almost 2 months ago. That reason is because of my new PS3 that I bought in December has sucked me in with it's fantastic exclusives. I'll get into that another time but for now, my first 20 hours of Final Fantasy XIII!
I don’t like it. From the confusing intro, to the annoying characters, to the very forgettable setting, this game has been mediocre so far. However, I don’t hate it at all, the graphics are absolutely gorgeous, the battle system is enjoyable to look at and play, and the music, while not memorable, is catchy and nice to listen to.
My biggest problem with the game’s story is why should I give a shit? Due to the game’s very linear gameplay, absence of the JRPG staple “towns”, and refusal to explain anything without me going to the game’s dictionary, I really don’t care about Cocoon’s fate. I don’t even know what it looks like! All I can imagine is literally a giant cocoon moon world orbiting an earth-like Pulse. Anyway, the world of Cocoon has no personality other than it has an irrational hatred for Pulse l’Cie and that it’s a weird mix of steampunk and Tron.
The characters are mostly forgettable with a few on the irritating side (Snow The Stereotypical Saturday Morning Cartoon Hero, and Vanille who’s still very weird and voiced inappropriately). Sahz is the only character who I somewhat like. He just wants to end this badly told story and be with his only son. Hope has gotten better and is the only one with some form of character development.
On to the gameplay, I do love how the battle scenes look when I’m kicking the monster’s asses. Square Enix decided to make the battles more cinematic and I believe they succeeded with some battles even getting my adrenaline pumped for a bit. Although, it got me thinking that Square Enix wants to make movies more than video games because some of the mechanics are pretty flawed. The summons are useless due to the crappy amount of damage they produce and whatever stagger they produced are automatically reset once the summon goes away. The fact that you lose if the character you control dies is very irritating. Couldn’t Square Enix just let you switch control to another character who could then revive the fallen character? This fact isn’t helped by the fact that there are bosses that deal so much damage to one character that they’ll die even if they were at full health! Playing as Lightning in the battle against Barthandelus, I spent a good 20 minutes chipping down his insane amount of health (another stupid problem, why artificially make the boss harder with this crap!? It’s not fun at all) before his ultimate attack kills Lightning, who cannot guard, despite her being at full health. It sucks that one little mistake can ruin 20 minutes of flawless effort against a broken boss. /rant
So yeah, I’m struggling to keep playing this game, but I must because I have this irrational sense of duty to complete every single game I own. I also have a huge backlog of unplayed/unfinished games. I need to stop buying games. Anyway, that’s it for Final Fantasy XIII 20 hours in. I’m glad to know that this game gave me the privilege to change my battle team after 20 hours but whatever I can now hope the game gets much better after all this crap. Check back tomorrow for my impressions on my PS3, all 4 people who care!
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