Fainaru fantajî XIII

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)

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)

This has been an event four years in the making. With the power of PS3 and Xbox360 behind it, Final Fantasy XIII is something special to behold.

From the first cut scene, to the unforgettable race track scene near the end of the game, the graphics are something that we have not seen before. There were moments in this game that took my breath away and made me think how far we have come since Final Fantasy VII.

The major criticism of this game is how linear it is. I do agree that the game is very straightforward, but that is the only real major problem I had with it. Even that, it didn't really bother me as much as my fellow gamers.

I think the best feature of the game is the battle system. It kind of reminded me of FF X-2, where you can change battle styles in the middle of battle. This makes for not only exciting battles, but battles that must be thought through with careful detail. It also prevents from you using the same characters the whole game, at least for me. I had the same team throughout most of the game, until the end.

The story is pretty interesting and the characters are well rounded. If you love video games or Final Fantasy...pick up this game...It is damn fun.

This game came out a while after part twelve and I was eagerly anticipating it. Twelve, quite frankly, is my least favorite Final Fantasy game and I was hoping this one would make up for it. Well, it is better, but in the end still a disappointment. It amazes me that Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX and X all came out in a five year span. Since then we have gotten four original stories, but wait, two of those are online and quite frankly should not be apart of the sequential FF games. They should have been called FF Online or something, so that makes the list of original games down to two...TWO! The two we get are also two of my least favorite of the series. What happened? Before Enix and Square united, both were so much better and produced lots of RPG games. During that five year stretch, the one year we did not get a FF game we got Xenogears which is better than this game and its predecessor! Lot's of things wrong here and the only thing this one has going for it is phenomenal graphics, but it is missing many elements that make an RPG an RPG. The previous game, twelve, would be better had they just tightened the game up and made better characters. One just had to level for too long to finish the game. This one, as I said, is just missing so many components that make a RPG game fun.

The story is pretty good. It establishes a lot and it does get to be a bit much in this game's sequel when they add even more stuff to what is introduced here. The game opens up on multiple fronts as a warrior named Lightening is raising a ruckus on a train that is taking people to something called a 'Purge'. Basically, the people live on this strange manufactured type world while there is a planet that is a bit rough in nature below them called Gran Pulse. A boy named Hope sees his mother die, a rebel leader, literally causes her death and a man fights to save his son. All of these people will soon join together and try to figure out how to not only save themselves, but also that of the world!

The game play is unfortunately a bit too simplistic for a game of this nature. During most of the game, you guide your character from point A to point B while fighting enemies. There are no towns to visit, characters to speak too or any of the things that make an RPG an RPG. I tend to think they are trying to make up for the fact that the towns in twelve were a bit overwhelming, but now it goes from one extreme to another! The combat is very fast paced, and not very complicated; however, it is not a very involved combat either. You spend most of the time simply changing your characters class and occasionally making them throw an item into the mix. Like I said, it makes the game very fast paced, but a lot of the battles are not of the epic variety. The last fight took me less than eight minutes and I apparently took too long to defeat it!

The game has its good points and overall I did enjoy it. I just wish they would make them more like they did in that five year stretch or even during the cartridge days. If they could make a great story and fun game in such short spans of times, why do they seem to be having so much trouble making games when they take forever to make them!?! We get a nice game that has super cutting edge graphics, but is missing a lot of the elements a RPG is supposed to have in it. The game before we had a wonderfully expansive world, but one where you just spent so much time trying to power up your character that you forgot the story. Perhaps, they should simply just try to focus on other aspects rather than graphics? In the end, a nice game, that I probably would not be so hard on had it been titled something else. I just miss the old days which were most certainly the good old days in this case.