Final Fantasy XIII

Rating: T

Score: 8.5/10

Final Fantasy is no small name in video gaming. They established themselves as a big name RPG (role-playing game) over two decades under the name "Final Fantasy" and that's exactly what they had: one final fantasy of a success for game designer Hironobu Sakaguchi before declaring bankruptcy. Pouring his heart and soul into one single RPG title was a huge risk, and here we are twelve sequels later, not even taking into account the twenty-some spin-off titles, so his risk was well rewarded. How much has the series evolved since then? It is questionable if "evolved" is the right word. This game is available for the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3.

The story goes that you're a team of various people with one mission. Any more information would be given about 2-3 hours in, including: who everyone is, who you're fighting for and against, why, and how. It's a VERY slow game, yet it doesn't feel nearly as slow as it actually is (thankfully). The story jumps from plot twist and random battles to stop the game from being (and feeling like) one long movie with a lot of walking and some battles. Even though you get a lot of video for your "game", it looks amazing. In fact, I'll go as far to say the cutscenes are the best I've seen in a game yet.

For every minute of video, you probably have about two minutes of walking/battling. The random battle system is not present, so all enemies can be seen clear as day from a mile away. Usually, enemies are grouped together, and it can be a full minute or so between groups (which may not sound too boring, but you need to remember you're just running, nothing else, at this point).

Battles are not more or less what they were before (for better or worse). Fans, put on your helmets because this will blow your mind (although its likely you already knew): You only control one single character as opposed to the whole party. Why? Because I guess you can't be trusted to lead a party anymore after doing so for over two decades. You now only have direct control over one character, although you can slightly alter the general attack method of your allies. Thanks to the new Paradigm Shift feature, you can set your whole party to different types of attack or defence methods (which you can alter before a battle how exactly these are laid out). It still doesn't feel like a whole lot of control over the other members of your party, which starts to become a problem when you realize your party members have items/abilities you would really like them to use but have no way of actually announcing this to the computer (unless you have the odd ability to speak binary through a television set).

In true Final Fantasy way, battles can last for half an hour or longer before any decisive conclusion is reached (either your party or the opponent dying). Thanks to the new Stagger feature, you can (in theory) make those battles easier with careful planning. Each enemy has a "stagger bar", which fills up as the opponent is attacked but slowly decreases over time. Once it's filled, the opponent takes more damage than usual so long as you can keep up the assault to keep the now-rapidly-decreasing stagger bar filled. It's based on attacks, not damage, so setting your party on a constant-attack mode as opposed to one to maximize offense (or defence) is the way to stagger. Just remember to switch to defence if the enemies get too many strong attacks in and your party is starting to look grim.

Whether it's a huge advancement in the series is questionable at best; whether it's fun is not. It may not be everyone's cup of tea being it's a series for the less-casual RPG gamer, yet there's still fun to be had. It's not a game you'll beat in a day, or a week, or maybe even a month (it's on three discs for a reason), but it will deliver for fans expecting to see their beloved Final Fantasy series in beautiful high-definition.