Final Fantasy 13 Review: Is It As Bad As People Say?

It’s been some time coming but here it is.

So what to say about Final Fantasy 13.

Now I have to say that I am a big fan of Lightning and Final Fantasy 13 and I’m more than happy to run off at the mouth about the good things about the games…I can’t deny that there are some flaws.

Just to spice up the review, there will be some pictures of Lightning to make it more than just words.

So let’s get those out of the way first.

1. Linearity

This is the first thing that anyone is probably going to talk about when it comes to Final Fantasy 13. And I have to say that they’re pretty much right.

The game from Chapter 1 to Chapter 10 is pretty much a very nice and vibrant hallway. Sure there are other paths you can go down but most of them are dead ends unless they’ve got a treasure at the end.

It’s only once you get down to Chapter 11 do you get some freedom but that’s not even true freedom to do as you please.

I’m talking about the Cieth Stone Missions, 64 little missions that you can do down on Gran Pulse. While they’re nice they still boil down to find the stone, go to the place where the mark is, kill it, and reap the reward.

The good thing is that this was fixed in Final Fantasy 13-2 and became the truest expression of non linear in Lightning Returns.

2. The Locked Crystarium

I generally believe that people don’t like to be held back so the fact that the Crystarium is locked until you beat certain bosses or complete certain events.

As someone that wants to make sure that he isn’t getting owned by bosses because he’s under-leveled, I made sure to do some grinding before a boss so I ended up maxing out the Crystarium most times before the boss of the chapter.

However especially with the fact that the game splits up the party a lot, it left you with some characters that had some gaps in their skillsets.

For example, when you’re playing with Lightning and Hope, you don’t have a Saboteur so you can’t debuff anyone while with them. You have to use Hope and pray that his buffs are good enough to keep up. I got my butt handed to me when I was fighting against Odin because he always attacked Hope. And Hope has the HP of a wet newspaper…so I got most of my charge from keeping Hope alive.

Now if I had some better buffs or debuffs that wouldn’t happen…

Add to the fact that some spells show up so late for some characters. Haste is the best spell in the game. However Sazh learns it first, then Hope, then Fang and that’s pretty much the only people you should use it on. Lightning learns it too but not talking about that.

Granted I understand why they did it. Fang is broken enough as is, seeing as she can do every role save Medic very well. Hope is pretty much the fastest mage in the game and is great at every magic class save Saboteur. Sazh…he’s pretty much good for just been a Synergist and his Blitz Trick.

The point is that while the game forces you to think on your toes and deal with what you’ve got, it’s still annoying.

This was fixed in Final Fantasy 13-2 where the Crystarium is open from the beginning. If you had the points, you could technically max out the roles very early. Then again you couldn’t use any of the broken spells like Haste or Imperil so I guess it evens out.

Now to talk about the good parts.

I love the characters. As I said in my Lightning Becomes A Fashion Model Post, these people aren’t heroes. They didn’t come here to try and save the world. It happened on accident and it shows.

They have no idea what they’re doing. They’re raging, running, and just doing what ever. They aren’t heroes. They’re people and that makes them more interesting than the true hero that goes from town to town and beats the monster at the end of the line.

The combat was excellently done. I found myself making sure that I had everything I needed in terms of setting my paradigms.

I considered it to be like some MMO games where you need to be on your stuff to make sure that you’re switching between paradigms at the right times.

My favorite characters and also my favorite team have to be Vanille, Lightning, and Fang in that order. Although I typically use Fang or Lightning as the leader for Highwind or Army of One but I’ll change out to Vanille if I feel that I want to her Death Trick.

All in all, Final Fantasy is a flawed game but it doesn’t mean that it’s a horrible game. I personally like the series.

So that’s all I’ve got for this review/opinion.

So until the next one,
Later Days
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