Final Fantasy XIII (X360)

[Sanshin77]

Ok, so this is my small review of Final Fantasy XIII for Xbox 360, the Game is also available for PS3. This is my first review. If it's too much reading for you, just read the sections you want or jump right to the "Overall" section.

Intro:
Ever since Square Enix announced Final Fantasy XIII for the Xbox 360 I've been excited, and It's really good to be playing a final fantasy game again, it's my favorite game series, and I haven't enjoyed any of the games since X and X-2. I loved 1, 2, 4 and 10, and I liked the others as well but never owned them. It's pretty widely known that the 360 version is on 3 discs and has some graphical problems compared to the PS3 version, but I'm not going to downrate the game because of the disc swapping, cause I don't care - It was over 70 hours of gameplay for me and I swapped discs 2 times total, the first 2 discs are linear and most of the time playing will be spent on the third disc. You use a total of 2 minutes max which was about 0.05% of the time I spent with the game.(2/(70hours*60minutes)) With that out of the way let's look at the actual game :P :

Presentation:
This game looks amazing. The highly detailed models and textures look fantastic and the reflections are really impressive as well. If you've watched some videos you'll also be aware that the Monsters and Spell Effects look good and this makes the combat so much fun. I played it on a 19"(1280x1024) LCD monitor and had no problems with the resolution. If you have the huge TV and are picky about resolutions, most sites seem to report that the gameplay and cutscenes are rendered in 576p, while the GUI and menus are of higher resolution. My only complaint with the graphics is the hair, for some reason the closeup hair in non-cgi cuts-cenes is jagged/slightly pixelated but this is a minor complaint and the cut-scenes are still enjoyable.
Score: 9.0

Gameplay:
Final Fantasy XIII is a linear Japanese RPG, and I don't want it to be anything else. You'll always know where to go and I always had the feeling of playing a good JRPG. The new combat system is brilliant, it's sort of like an evolved version of the previously seen and loved Active Time Battle system. It has more emphasis on speed and most of the time you'll be changing between "paradigms", that is sets of classes that you choose between battles, rather than casting individual spells. Either manually or automatically you stack up abilities on the chain gauge and they're executed when the ATB bar is filled. This system works very well and because of the animations and spell effects it looks really cool.

The only distraction from the main storyline is the missions(side-quests). They have increasing difficulty and you can choose whether you want to do them or not. They're all based on go to place a and kill monster b and you have proper navigation on the map, so they're not really hard, but because of the battle-system I enjoyed doing them. Some of them are cool boss-fights and some have cool cut-scenes as well.

The leveling system is divided into two parts. To gain abilities and stats you advance in the Crystarium grid, this is a 3D and more linear version of the sphere grid seen in Final Fantasy X. You use Crystarium points(CP) to advance but most of the time it's very linear, your main choices are which classes you want to develop, and whether or not you want to skip certain "off-shoots". At first I didn't like this system, but after more classes and characters are unlocked it gets decent. You can also develop your weapons and accessories. This is done by inserting "components" (thrash items) into your gear. Every component has a experience value and there are also some multiplier bonuses when you insert a lot of items. The really bad thing about this is that you shouldn't start doing this before you're almost done with the game. Because of the multiplier bonus you should save all items until late in the game, and then use them to get the most levels. To me, that is a bad mechanic.
Score: 9.5

Audio:
The sound effects are decent and a lot of the music is great. Some of the themes may get a bit repetitive but for the most part, it's good :P
Score: 8.5

Story/Characters:
Critics have had very different opinions of the story of this game, and I can sort of see why. I liked the characters and enjoyed the story. Some might have problems with the usual "unrealistic dialogue" of many JRPG's or the high-pitch voice girl in your party. But I watch a lot of anime and play JRPG's and have no problem with it. What I don't like about the story though is the first part. After the opening events of the game you basically spend hours just walking from one place to a city pretty far away. That's it, some of the characters move faster and leave the others behind, so they split and that's about it. It gets a lot better though, I don't want to spoil you on the story but I liked it a lot and you want to focus on understanding what's going on and what happens in the flashbacks, you'll have a much better time if you do so.
Score: 8.0

Overall:
By now you know that I liked the game and I can safely recommend it to JRPG fans. It's missing a lot of the traditional Final Fantasy elements like the world map, cities and mini-games, but it also innovates in some key areas like graphics and combat system.
Score: 9.0
+ Awesome Battle System
+ Nice Graphics
+ Not a lot of grinding needed
+ 50+hours of gameplay
- Some Graphics glitches
- Slow start, story-wise

Thanks for reading my review, or some of it. I know most of you have heard enough about this game already, but I wanted to write a review for it anyhow. What did you think of my review? Was it too long? Did you miss anything? Please correct any bad grammar you may find(I don't speak English natively). I'll try find some images soon.

[EdBoon]

Thanks! Just what I was looking for

[Thel]

The OST is eargasmic!

Proof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WlSwGrI3iQ, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4h1tf1kPvg

[davidthefat]

PS3 version with like a 100 inch HDTV and surround sound would be epic I heard...

[Jayden]

I'm not going to lie. I dreaded Final Fantasy XIII's battle system. I found myself pressing A over and over through every fight for the whole game. Pressing A for 50 hours is not fun.

Taking control away from the player is a joke in my opinion. Atleast XII did it right by giving us the gambit system (which was amazing). XII was an example of the series moving in the right direction, and XII was the complete opposite. 1 step foreward, 2 steps back.

[Light-Dark]