Final Fantasy XIII

Here I stand, seemingly one of the few remaining defenders of Final Fantasy XIII: the game that probably shouldn't have had Final Fantasy in the title, isn't super awesome, but is still pretty good.  As anyone who really knows me can tell you, I've been a long-time series fanboy.  I'm not proud of it, really, but what can I say?  Final Fantasy has always appealed to me on a basic level: these were my type of games and still are today.  I legitimately enjoy all of the first ten games to varying degrees, which as any big fan of the series likely knows, are the ten games that involved series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi.  Separating the creator of a series from it can have mixed results.  While there have been plenty of success stories (Come on, Disney.  I know you can fix Star Wars!), something is bound to be lost in translation.  In the case of Final Fantasy, it's not that something has been lost: it's that the developers don't get Final Fantasy or don't care for the old games and are just making role playing games and forcing Final Fantasy paraphernalia in to them to make them sell.

Final Fantasy has always been about change.  Each new game has a revised or updated combat system and something that separates it from the previous titles.  Until the eleventh game, however, I wouldn't have used the word 'change' so much as 'adaptation' or 'evolution.'  Dragon Quest always stuck to its roots and continued polishing, and I'd argue that on some level Final Fantasy did too; it was just better at hiding the changes.  Consider Final Fantasy VII, the most successful game of the first ten. While it takes place in a wildly different setting from previous games and had a more gritty cyber-punk setting than previous entries, the core mechanics are just an improvised version of those seen in Final Fantasy VI: Materia is an evolution of Espers, the ATB is much the same, and Limit Breaks came from VI too.  We can split hairs on some major differences, but the point is that fans of one game know what to expect on some level when they jump from one to another.  They like the games because there are familiar elements that link them, but there's enough wiggle room for each to be its own creative entity.

Final Fantasy XI changed all of that.  This wasn't a refinement of previous Final Fantasy gameplay: it was an online game with moogles and chocobos in it. I (and certainly not just I) was always confused as to why it had 'XI' in the title when games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Mystic Quest had succeeded by just using subtitles: that did a good job denoting these were spin-offs and not the comfortable entries in the series everyone expected.  Since XI, there has not been a Final Fantasy game that I think sits comfortably with the rest, and it's why I have no problem saying "Final Fantasy died when Sakaguchi left" is my head canon.  XII is drastically different from X, to the point where I can't even say they're part of the same genre.  And XIII, while it does have some things in common with XII, still feels like an entirely different beast. 

While I clearly have issues considering Final Fantasy XIII a part of the series, I do think it's a good game.  Not a great one, mind, but one I enjoyed playing and am now sad has gotten milked to death and tarnished by terrible sequels.  Everyone who criticizes the game concentrates on a few issues: long, narrow hallway map design, hold X to win gameplay mechanics, 40 hour into, terrible plot.  They never talk about Sazh; come on, Sazh is the man.  None of this other than the plot bothered me while playing the game, and I firmly believe the combat criticisms are in error.  In fact, I think Final Fantasy XIII has an extremely fun, fast-paced, strategic battle system.  Like in the Fire Emblem series, you play the role of tactician here, assigning sets of jobs to your team ('Paradigms') and adjusting them to fit battles in the areas you travel through.  The six classes do a great job covering basically all combat types used in RPGs without a lot of map/space-oriented mechanics: big damage, softening things up, status effects, buffing, healing, and tanking.  I do wish there was a way to slow down the action and make more coherent choices from time to time, but considering that FFXIII was one of the first games to really distill its combat system in this way, I'm willing to give it a pass.  Just for the record, I think Xenoblade Chronicles handles this form of combat a little better.  

FFXIII spent a lot of time (not 40 hours, but yes, probably an excessive amount) introducing mechanics slowly in the early chapters.  I guess I'm just a moron, because I actually appreciated this: I didn't fully comprehend the new combat system until around the time the game stopped feeding me tutorials.  I can imagine this hurts XIII on replay, but I haven't replayed it so I can't judge.

The long, narrow hallways and lack of towns and NPCs are an interesting case.  I understand where the hate comes from: it sucks to see conventions we're used to defied and replaced with what seems to be lazy design, and I'll certainly admit the map design could have been a lot better.  That said, if there is one thing I appreciate about these odd design choices, it's the lightning pace Final Fantasy XIII plays at.  While I used to love exploring RPG towns as a kid, nowadays I find myself wanting to get on with things, and XIII does that exceedingly well.  Final Fantasy XIII-2 added towns back in and they were terrible, for the record.  When you have a game with a story presented as a long, action-driven narrative, removing pointless downtime can actually improve the experience.   It's akin to playing a game on an emulator with fast forwarding: you already know that old man at the item shop isn't going to tell you anything significant, so why not skip through what he's saying?  XIII skips the old man, and I don't really have a problem with that; I don't want all games to skip past NPCs and such, but it does work here.   

In closing, I do want to express how much I hate this game's storytelling.  It has some cool ideas but executes them in the worst ways.  I still don't understand anybody's motivation in this game, especially the villain's.  The words "L'Cie," "Fal'Cie," and "Pulse" are only fully explained in data logs you might never even know exist, and I kept playing the game hoping for an explanation and never got one. While I think there's something to be said about throwing the player in to the water with no idea what's going on, one thing FFXIII could have had to smooth things out for players was a character who was unfamiliar with all these big, fancy words.  Or better writing.   Final Fantasy XIII's ending may be the worst deus ex machina I have ever seen.  On the other hand, I have to praise a lot of the first half of the game.  I enjoyed playing what was essentially a travel narrative about six bozos who  are often at odds, and it was especially interesting seeing the dynamic between Lightning and Snow (who planned on marrying Lightning's sister, which she disapproves of).  All of the character drama is actually pretty cool, but once you get in to the game's larger plot everything becomes stupid anime excess without a lot of substance.  The quality of the plot reflects that of the game: it's patchy, but there's a lot of good stuff there if you're willing to wade.  Still, this isn't Final Fantasy as far as I'm concerned and I wish it were not masquerading as such.

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