Pixelnauts.net

To many of the Final Fantasy faithful, XIII has come to signify the last best hope of the JRPG. With each successive title since the groundbreaking Final Fantasy VII amounting to little more than a variation on a familiar theme, the once lauded genre has become little more than an industry punch-line in recent years; your go-to spot for spiky-haired, effete, teenaged heroes. Final Fantasy XIII was supposed to change all that. With the first female lead in the franchise's history and a supposedly revolutionary new battle system, the expectations were that XIII would revitalize the tired genre in much the same way that Final Fantasy VII did twelve years ago.

Being a gamer who counts himself among these hopeful, I can't tell you how much it saddens me to announce that despite all the hype and expectations, XIII is most certainly not the genre's second coming. Indeed, XIII is a mess of a game that now bears the unfortunate distinction of being the first major misstep in the series' exalted history.

The principal problem with FFXIII isn't that it suffers from poor gameplay, it's that it suffers from a lack of gameplay; most likely the unintended and unfortunate result of Square Enix's expressed intent to make XIII as accessible to a global audience as possible. A good idea in theory, but XIII's gameplay isn't exactly what I would classify as particularly "accessible." Considering that the vast majority of the game can be played by a Dippy Bird placed above the 'X' button, "rudimentary" would be a more appropriate descriptor. Of the games 45+ hours, 30% is spent watching cut-scenes; another 30% consists of holding "forward" on the analog stick as you plod down a seemingly endless series of corridors; and 40% will involve engaging with enemies in the redesigned battle system, most of which are won by simply selecting the "auto-attack" command over and over and over again. You don't play FFXIII, you're merely tasked with guiding it along the path to completion.

The overhauled battle structure itself forgoes the traditional party micro-management style in lieu of a pseudo job format, called the 'Paradigm system.' This pretty much means that your party members make decisions independently based upon the Paradigms that you assign to them on the fly: Ravager (spell caster), Commando (warrior), Sentinel (defender) etc. There are six different Paradigms to choose from, each with its own set of upgradeable skills and abilities, and you can mix and match different jobs with different party members until you find a balance to suit your particular play style. Writing it out makes it sound more complicated than it is. The only times you'll need to shift Paradigms is for the occasional healing or status boost. But most of the time you'll be able to dispatch an enemy long before it comes to that. In short, this is some of the most simplistic, and consequently, boring, battle mechanics you're likely to find in any JRPG, let alone a Final Fantasy game.

It's a shame too, because there are moments, albeit few and far between, but moments nevertheless, where you'll encounter an enemy that requires actual thought and preparation to defeat. During these fights, the atypical frequent shifting between Paradigms raises the game's tempo till it bursts into a kinetic blend of strategy and action. It was in these moments that I realized what the developers were trying to achieve with the new system. That is, the coveted perfect melding of these two characteristics that the genre has been seeking for years. And I gotta say, when it works, it works very well. But regrettably, the lack of balance throughout the majority of engagements assures these moments are rare. A real shame made glaringly obvious and even more frustrating by the painfully tedious linearity that separates these fights.