Fainaru fantajî XIII

Final Fantasy XIII (and its sequels) is very different than the rest of the FF series. Especially its extremely linear pathing and story that you wont fully understand unless you read the datalogs. It (thankfully) got rid of Random Encounters for this game, and instead you can see your enemies, pick and choose your fights, and (hopefully) win. The music is not composed by Nobuo Uematsu for this installment, however this does not cut down on the quality of the soundtrack, as a lot of the songs are wonderful and memorable earworms. The story is genuinely good (in my opinion) and i like the themes that are covered by the game (taking charge of our destinies, not giving on to despair even when things get difficult, etc). The game is good, even if long and a little tedious. Get it when its on sale if you can. Dont buy it on PC though PC Port is not very good (not bad enough to take away from the game as a whole, but definitely not the best port i have played)

It is clear that FF13 tries to innovate the franchise in order to compete with other next gen titles. And while I also think that some changes have to be made it shouldn't lose it's charm of the old JPRG genre we learned to love. Visually FF13 is the most beautiful game of the PS3 at the moment (Although I assume it will be just as beautiful on the xbox 360). Game play wise it is still Final Fantasy,only much more linear (until Chapter 11) with side quests and secret areas to explore. However I must say that the sudden rise in difficulty is a bit shocking. Because clearing the first 10 chapters didn't require much grinding,in Chapter 11 is a must since even the tiniest monsters can beat you in a whim. The new battle system takes time getting used to. And when yo do you will experience one of the most fun and intense battle system created in the genre. But it can be off putting in the beginning since it seems almost too easy in the beginning. In Chapter 11 you will find out however that it is pretty deep and that the first 10 chapters have served as some sort of training levels. (I must add that in the beginning I really missed the old turn based strategy system,but the fights wouldn't have been as intense at it is now.) So visually and game play wise there is nothing wrong. Story wise however this part just falls short. Yes the cut scenes were brilliant and yes there were some solid moments where you learn to care for the characters. Only in my opinion not enough. Not everything is explained in the cut scenes. Most of the background story is explained in the datalog. But even then it is hard to make sense what the purpose of your characters are to defeat the villains. The villains in FF13 aren't as evil as they were in the earlier parts of the franchise. The story wasn't as engaging as it could have been. And to me that is just as important as the visuals and the game play. I'm still playing this game even after finishing the main story for the side quest monsters who are brutally more difficult than the end boss. Overall Final Fantasy 13 is still one of the best games on the next gen consoles. Only people who expect a story as engaging as the for example FF10 will be disappointed.

Stunning graphics,good plots and strong characters.All of that is still not enough to make this game superior to FF 7;FF 8;FF 9;FF 10 and mainly to FF 12. The lack of optional things to do in this game is its greatest flaw.While in other FFs we have several optional bosses,stories and stuff,this one only has hunts!Why one would waste its time hunting monsters,many of them that can only be defeated after the end of the game,to earn items to make your characters stronger to fight no-one else but these hunted monsters??

We can have good times playing this one.All magic lies on the first time you play it.It is a Final Fantasy,thus it deserves to be played,only once, not twice.We can't spend too much time playing this one.

The Game opens with a bang – a bang that lasts for 20-25 hours. The characters are some of the most believable, likable, fun, and personally identifiable to date. At this point in the game, I thought for sure that this was going to dethrone Final Fantasy X as my favorite Final Fantasy ever. Unfortunately, the game sort of became lost in itself and failed to hold its high standard to the end.

The Positives: True to form, Final Fantasy XIII boasts fantastic graphics, cinematics, and cutscenses. In fact, they are likely the best visuals to date for any video game period. In addition, FFXIII comes with some wonderful orchestral pieces and all around excellent soundtrack. The six protagonists are for the most part lovable, real people and Final Fantasy XIII makes you feel their joy, pain, and anger. This is only increased by the high quality of voice acting.

The Negatives: There is little that I would classify as purely negative, however, there are a number of facets to the game which leave something to be desired. I will refer to these as the In-Betweens. (The only true negative that I found highly frustrating was that player control of the camera was frustratingly slow and uncontrollable while running.)

The In-Betweens: The story starts out really strong. Unfortunately, the plot becomes highly convoluted later on to the point where I wasn't even sure what was happening. The game does include a play-by-play journal that documents plot events. This helps when confused, but a person shouldn't have to keep reading these entries to find out what just happened. Probably the largest controversial aspect of this game is the super linear adventure. There are almost no areas to explore, no side-quests, and no way to even go the wrong way, because this game is more linear than any game of this scale by far. On one hand, this keeps the plot moving along at a nice clip, and I found that it made the first 20 hours or so a lot of fun and full of action, cutscenes, and awesome battles. However, at the same time, the lack of freedom feels unnecessarily constraining and strays from the Final Fantasy norm. The battle system is certainly different and interesting. It is fun, especially when first learning its intricacies and then learning to master it. Items are few and far-between. Unlike all of the previous final fantasy entries, there are only a very limited number of items. MP is gone. There is no cost for using magic. This sort of makes sense in the scope of the game, but it feels strange playing a Final Fantasy game without MP, ethers, and the like. The leveling system is similar to the sphere grid of Final Fantasy X, although this grid is artificially limited by plot events, which puts a reasonable cap on leveling ahead of where you are in the game.

Conclusion: Unmatched visuals, lovable characters, a reasonable difficulty level, and a challenging battle system give the game a good feel and plenty to really enjoy. Unfortunately, a few aspects prevent this very good game from being legendary.

I finally got my version for the Xbox 360 of this amazing game, after all those words about being too lineal or too boring, here's my review of 6 hours of game (if it gets different, I will update this review) I won't talk about the story, don't want to spoil anything, except saying something about the people who says this is the worst "Final"...well I have played all Final fantasies and the first one was the VI, all I wanna say is that this is by far the greatest in characters, story, graphics, fights, everything.

Story: 10/10...the best story I've ever heard from a game, it captures you, it makes you feel their pain, their feelings.

Graphics: 9.8/10...The best graphics I've seen, even from the Xbox 360 version, they both look amazing (put a 10/10 for the PS3 version)

Sound: 9.8/10...The only game I ever liked the music was Final Fantasy VII, but this game is too much, I love the battle theme! The voices are great (Vanille is maybe too loud, but you get used to it)

Duration: 9.7/10...50 to 60 hours the principal story...more than 100 hours to get all done, is it enough for you?

Gameplay: 9/10...yes, it is lineal and straight at the start, just fighting and hearing the amazing story from these great characters (specially Lightning OMG I love her!) but it doesn't look boring for me.

RATING: 9.8/10 : It is the highest note I haver ever putted on a game

I know all the bad reviews but I just LOVED the game, story, characters (I repeat, Lightning is too much!!)...everything! It's lineal at the start, yes...but a lot of games are too (counting Final Fantasy X, Devil May Cry, Call of Duty, etc)