Today I want to talk about the newest offering in the Final Fantasy saga: Final Fantasy XIII. The main story revolves around a woman named Lightning who's a soldier in the city of Cocoon. The city is ruled by deities called Fal'Cies that roll out their rule through the government of the Sanctum. As the story unfolds, we find out that the Sanctum and its leaders aren't exactly for the people's wellbeing as they wage war against the lower world of Pulse with no regard as to who gets caught in the crossfire. Another character named Snow is the leader of a rebel faction called NORA. Other characters eventually join in the story that intertwines each of them in a way that only the storytellers of the Final Fantasy series can do. No spoilers here, you just have to play the game yourself.
They put back the old turn-based battle system with a new twist. You only get to control one character at a time in a party of 2 or 3. But the real meat of the system is that you can change the role/function of your lead character and the other characters in your party on the fly. This system is called the Paradigm Shift. Each character can be leveled up to specific roles such as Commando (physical attacker), Ravager (mage), Medic (cleric), Saboteur (casts status ailments), Synergist (casts status bonuses for party) and Sentinel (provokes and takes damage for the party). This leveling up is done via the Crystarium, a system similar to the Sphere grid in FFX. Weapons can be broken down or upgraded as needed. There is a lot of depht especially in the battle system where you can gain 2 or more ATB (Active Time Battle) gauges.
One thing that disapoints especially die hard fans of the series is the linearity of exploration. I have only been 16 hours into the game as I write this and I really don't mind. The story is pretty engrosing that moving seemingly "on rails" doesn't hurt the experience. This is out on both the XBox 360 and PS3 but from what I've heard the PS3 looks better while the XBox 360 version is spread across three DVDs as compared to Sony's single bluray disc (I smell fanboyism!)
All in all, FF XIII is an outstanding game and a real showpiece that only SquareEnix can deliver. This is a must buy!
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