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Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of waiting, Final Fantasy 13 hit the shelves in the US last week. I’ve been trying to follow the game as closely as possible since it’s release in Japan a few months back, but I can only enjoy so much game-play footage in Japanese. Well Square-Enix was kind enough to provide me with a free copy to review for you and I went and picked up this hard bound collectors edition strategy guide to accompany me on my adventure, and I’ll tell you, I haven’t put the game down since I picked it up. I really think that Square-Enix has done something special here and brought a new hand to the JRPG table. There were a few minor things that I didn’t care too much for, but to me, this was easily the best Final Fantasy game yet. Make sure to check out my other channel, ZeitgeistOther, for a bunch of HD game-play footage, and follow me on Twitter to get daily updates with gaming news and my review schedule.

Like every other Final Fantasy, the story is the most important aspect of the game, and 13 is no exception. The majority of your adventure takes place on Cocoon, which is essentially a small man-made planet containing a utopia for millions of men and a supreme race of magical machines known as the Fal’Cie, which resides in the sky above the larger planet, Gran Pulse. While many secrets as to the origin of Cocoon and it’s inhabitants become revealed to you as you play, initially you know that the humans and the Fal’Cie of Cocoon don’t get along with those who live on Gran Pulse and the Fal’Cie have the ability to take control of humans and force them to do their dirty work. Humans branded by the Fal’Cie, known as l’Cie, are essentially punished to one of two fates: complete the work for the Fal’Cie and become a crystal for all of eternity, or stray from your path and become a zombie.

So, a Pulse Fal’Cie is found hidden in an old vestige on the beach town of Bhodum inside of Cocoon. Being that the Fal’Cie can control humans, and this Fal’Cie is from Gran Pulse, it is obviously a huge threat to the civilization, as it could turn all of Cocoon’s people against each other. So the government orders an immediate evacuation or extermination of basically anyone in the vicinity of the Pulse Fal’Cie. The game’s six characters that you will control, for one reason or another were all in Bhodum when the Fal’Cie was found, and as such, are being evacuated to Gran Pulse. As the characters meet up initially, something terrible happens to them, ensuring that they now have to stick together and have a common goal. They are all fantastically detailed with a great back-story and you’ll become emotionally attached to each one of them as they grow and change together. Each of the six characters has a different story and a different reason for reaching their end goals, but you really have to play to find that out.

From start to finish, Final Fantasy 13 took me around 50 hours to complete, and that was sticking solely to the primary story path. There is a good 30 or so hours of extremely challenging side quests that you can tackle as well, though it’s not recommended to do so until after you have completed the game, as you can still control your characters following the final encounter. Square-Enix took a unique route with this JRPG in that there is no open world to take you from one place to another, and no towns to interact with tons of annoying townsfolk. You literally walk linearly from beginning to end.

There are several difficulty spikes that you’ll encounter through your adventure. The beginning of the game is extremely easy and doesn’t involve much skill at all. Things start to get interesting around chapter 3 and gradually get more difficult until around chapter 11 where all hell breaks loose where you’ll be sweating your ass off for the remainder of the game. The battles over the last 15 hours or so of the game are extremely difficult and this actually bothered me. I’m alright with a boss fight taking 20 minutes and really making me work for a win, but I don’t really care to spend 4 to 7 minutes every fight on the trash fights leading up to the boss. Give me 30 second easy fights until an epic boss please.

Prior to chapter 3, I had a very different opinion of the game than I do now. The combat was extremely easy; as all you have to do is click the “auto-combat” button, which queues up the best set of moves to use for the given circumstances. You also control only a single character in your party of three, you don’t gain levels as you fight, and there didn’t appear to be any management of armor, weapons or gear. Once chapter 3 hits, everything changes as all of your characters gain the ability to use magic and begin to have specializations, and these actually level up instead of your characters. Shortly thereafter you find that there really isn’t that much gear in the game, but all gear can be upgraded many times providing better stats and abilities. So it makes sense to hold on to everything you come across, because it really gives you a lot of flexibility as to how you want to play your characters.

Square-Enix has taken steps to eliminate the things that many gamers of the past have found annoying in Japanese Role Playing Games. There are no confusing dungeons, as everything is relatively straightforward and there are no random encounters, as you can see every encounter coming up. Your party’s health is also restored after every battle and there is no longer mana in the game. Essentially you’ve got a new type of game that focuses solely on the great story and fast paced and intense combat.

The combat system in Final Fantasy 13 is truly unique and exiting. First, in battle, every enemy has a “stagger point”. You can see in the top right corner there is an orange chain gauge that grows, and upon reaching it, your enemy becomes extremely vulnerable to attacks and usually reacts to your actions differently. To get the chain gauge to increase, you’ve got to attack it, and with that, you need to understand the new mechanics called Paradigms and Roles. Upon learning magic, each character gains access to a few Roles that they will specialize in. Commandos slow the chain gauge from depleting, Ravagers build the chain gauge up quickly, Sentinels draw attention from monsters and protect party members, Medics heal, Saboteurs debuff the enemy, and Synergists buff your party. Now, each character can specialize in several roles, but only one may be active at a time. A Paradigm is a pre-defined setup of party member roles that can be switched on the fly in combat. So you may have a paradigm where everyone attacks, or one where one party member tanks, one heals and one fights. The possibilities seem endless.

Earlier I mentioned that I thought the combat was too simple because of the auto-attack button. Well once your characters gain roles and utilize paradigms, the auto-attack button is a blessing as it always picks the best actions for each of your characters. You see, the combat is so fast paced and action packed, that you’re constantly shifting Paradigms and there truly is little time to actually tell each party member what you want them to be doing. So you use the Paradigms to issue generic orders.

After each battle you are awarded Crystogen points based on how efficiently you fought. The Crystogen points are used in the Crystalarium to level up your roles where you can advance your overall stats, or unlock new abilities and spells to use while your role is being utilized in the active paradigm. Your party is often split up into smaller groups and not until many hours into the game can you actually define your party or which member you specifically you are going to control, so you are given many opportunities to play with different paradigms to see what you like the best, as each character has a different set of roles.

If you can’t tell by now, the graphics are absolutely stunning. You can truly tell that much love and attention was spent pushing the hardware of these machines to pump out such beautiful, and dare I say sexy, and just plain awesome presentation. The pre-rendered cut-scenes are so realistic you almost couldn’t tell that they are animated, and the game-rendered cut-scenes can hardly be distinguished from the pre-rendered ones. I’m willing to go as far as saying that I’ve never seen a game with cinematics as lifelike and beautiful as Final Fantasy 13. Hell, even the freaking menu’s look awesome! Of course, I have to mention that because there is no armor in the game, your characters will always look the same from start to finish. Only their weapons will render differently in combat. Normally I’d be disappointed by this, but I actually really liked how each character looked that I didn’t care about this downfall this time.

Being that probably 40 percent of the game is cut-scenes, you are presented with wonderful voice acting and you’ll never have to read a single word of it. Initially I didn’t really care for the main character Lightning’s voice; I didn’t like that she was all badass sounding; I wanted her to sound more sexy; but it eventually grew on me. There is also a really great soundtrack that will accompany your adventure and there is even a track or two by Leona Lewis.

While not flawless, a lot has been changed to bring new gamers to the genre. There are still things that need to be fixed, like grinding, and long battles, but Square-Enix has done something special here, and they need to be commended. I realize that I am a hard core Final Fantasy Fanboi, so my opinion is likely biased, but I honestly believe that this is a title that every single gamer out there should at least test out, if nothing else than to see the drastic changes that have been made to the genre. Ultimately, none of the things I disliked about this game would EVER prevent me from wanting to play it, hell, I’m actually sad the journey has ended. The last week stationed right in front of my big screen with no outside human contact was ABSOLUTELY worth it. Now, I don’t give ratings to my games, but if I did, this one would be right up at the very top. This is a must-have. You MUST play this game. Let me know your experiences with Final Fantasy below. Who was your favorite character and why?