[ livenudeturtles ]

I have played every major Final Fantasy game except for X. I will admit that I have not finished all of the ones that I have played, but I have played enough to have experience.

I remember playing FFI on my old nintendo. FFIV (AKA FFII) was the first game that I owned on my snes. A friend of mine leant me his snes so that I could play FFVI (AKA FFIII). I played FFII and FFV on the imported PSX collections and later on the GBA ports. I more recentlay played FFIII on the DS remake. I bought the import version of FFVII, and wasted many days and nights in college playing through it in japanese and again in english when the US version came out. This is probably the only video game that has gotten me emotional enough to cry (sappy, I knowL. I also played the import version of FFVIII before the english version. I will admit that I never got into FFIX, I was starting to get sick of the series at that time. For that reason, I skipped FFX. I would rather play my games than watch them. I threw the most hours of my life away in a Final Fantasy game playing FFXI (this was pretty easy to do considering that it was an mmorpg). Again I was going to skip FFXII, but after hearing so many of the fanboys disliking it, I gave it a try. I have not finished it yet, and lost my save game when my PS3 was stolen, but it is one of my favorites since the series went 3D.

Damn, that’s a lot of Final Fantasy. I never realized how much until I put it down here in writing. Almost makes me sound like a fanboy, but I’m not.

Just recently I had picked up FFX, and was going to play that. I was also going to finish up FFXII. Unfortunately those plans were cut short when my PS3 was stolen. So, I decided to give FFXIII a try.

Final Fantasy XIII seems to have the fanboys in an uproar. They removed a lot of the little elements that have been persistant in the series. Even most, if not all, of the music has changed. Also there have been crys about the lack of an overworld map and towns with shops. It sounds like you can explore a bit more and do some side quests about 30 hours into the game. So, I have put about 5 1/2 hours into it so far. Obviously this is a first impression.

One thing that I have disliked about the newer final fantasy games are the cutscenes. Granted, they are beautiful, but as stated before, I like to play my games rather than watch them. There have been many a time that I have fallen asleep from too much reading and watching in FF games. Actually in most JRPGs. I haven’t had this happen while playing FFXIII. Most of the cutscenes so far have been of decent length and the pre-rendered scenes are done with the game engine so that it is an almost seemless transition between player control and cutscene. Also, all speech is spoken, there is no reading conversations. You can even eavesdrop on others’ conversations by standing near them.

This does not mean there is no reading. A feature that I don’t hear people talking about is the datalog. This works similar to the codex in dragon age or a number of other games. It has extensive backstory that is revealed as you progress. It also has extensive recaps of the events. This is nice if you miss or don’t understand something. It also reveals things that may not have been so obvious. There is also, of course, a list of enemies encountered with stats.

So far, the game is very linear. It almost has an “on rails” feel to it. Also, there have not been any open areas. I don’t mean large explorable areas, nothing that I have gone through so far is much bigger than a large hallway, although the areas that I have been to aren’t all enclosed and at least give the illusion of vastness. The linearity has not bothered me. It really helps with the pacing of the story. Instead of running around on a big overworld map, fighting random monsters, and going to towns between plot points, you are continuously moving forward in the story. This gives it some momentum that doesn’t let the story meander.

Best thing to happen to JRPGs, and something I liked in FFXII, NO RANDOM ENCOUNTERS. You can see all of the enemies before combat. Sometimes you can isolate enemies from the group and fight them individually or in smaller groups.  Combat is pretty fun.  At first it seems too easy, but it isn’t until about 3 hours in that you actually get to use paradigms and and jobs.  Also, summons don’t show up for quite some time.  The combat is fast and not too complicated.  You can let the AI select your moves, or you can queue up your own.  The AI does a pretty good job of selecting the right moves, but sometimes I use my own judgement.

I haven’t had a good chance to figure out what I think of the characters.  Apparently they evolve quite a bit through the course of the game.  So far, my favorite is Sazh.  He is an airship pilot that has an afro with a chocobo chick living in it.  How can you go wrong?

Anyhow, this is getting to be a little more in depth than I intended.  So I am going to leave it here.  Over all, I am enjoying this game.  Although, I think that I still like FFXII best…