After three years of waiting, and being one of the biggest supporters of FFXIII, I figured it was time to post my impressions of it so far.

I’m currently 16 hours into the game almost exactly and at this point (on Chapter 9), I still feel the game is good but not great. There are a lot of interesting and worthwhile elements, but certain design choices are just… disappointing, I would say.

I’ve sort of categorized everything into subsections here:

The linearity.
If you thought FFX was too linear… well, to me XIII seems even more so. At first it didn’t bother me, but this far into the game it really is starting to wear thin. For example, especially when you encounter flying enemies that can travel around the map as you’re confined to specific spaces. For me at least it led to some really frustrating moments. It would have been nice to see a little more exploration and have the ability to return to previous areas.

Scripted party.
Now this almost ties in with the linearity issue. For each ‘scene’ I guess you could call them, you’re forced to be in specific party pairings. Again, at first this was okay because it was something different, but at this point I find myself wishing I could use specific characters in specific situations whenever I could. It just feels too restricting to me and sometimes I really don’t want to use the characters they force you into.

Actually, the whole game, at least so far, is very scripted. I jokingly called it Metal Gear Fantasy XIII just based on the amount of cutscenes, but maybe that wasn’t far off considering the game apparently has 9 hours of them…

The characters.
If I had to describe the characters, they’re definitely a random assortment. I really haven’t come to like any of them yet, maybe Vanille actually, but I won’t say anything more on that… In fact, I really hate Snow. He’s just all around irritating and has probably the most ridiculously stupid dialogue out of anyone. It’s so cliche and very anime-archtype. Over-all the dialogue has been pretty mediocre and in some cases down right terrible. I can only imagine how the English voice actors will force themselves to act out some of the cringe-worthy lines. The Japanese VA is fine though. It works, and I’m happy with it.

The story.
So far, the story hasn’t been anything spectacular. It’s definitely not as good as previous entries in the series, in my opinion. As of Chapter 9, I honestly don’t really care about it, and it’s not really giving me a reason to have any care for most of the characters either. It really has too much of an anime-like appeal to it. Perhaps not having Nojima involved this time was a bad choice.

The graphics.
The visuals in this game really are a mixed bag. I would say they definitely did not reach their target gameplay render from 2006 for the gameplay models. Not even close if you factor in the physics they had going on with things like cloth and hair.
There are three types of renders: CG, high detail, and gameplay. Now the CG of course looks amazing– no complaints there. The high detail models, or bullshot models as I like to call them, are basically very very close to those first bullshots Square released back around August of last year. (Which, by the way, that scene in Lake Bildge that the downgrade controversy stemmed from… yeah, they ended up using the lower poly gameplay models for it…). The gameplay models are at a reduced polygon count, resulting in square fingers, sharp knees, etc. They work fine for the battles, sure, but my big issue with them is, they decided to use them for a lot of the cutscenes as well… and often close up with the camera, so you do get to see how poor they are in comparison to the high detail models. I wonder why they went with those low quality ones for so many scenes, even though they do often cut to battles with the high detail ones.
Another issue with the graphics is there is a lot of low resolution textures in the environments. Obviously that was known through pre-release screenshots, but it’s not just confined to Pulse. Low res ground textures are all over, and on things such as rocks and walls… it really seems unpolished in that way, especially given the linearity of the game and the amount of time it took for them to develop it.

I will say though, that the framerate is rock solid at 30fps. Haven’t seen a drop yet. V-sync is also in place, as there is no screen tearing in the game. 4xMSAA gives the game an over-all clean look. Not a jaggy in sight.

Music.
The music is fairly different from past Final Fantasy games. There’s a lot more vocalish background tracks that definitely remind me of Persona. So far though, nothing has really stood out for me aside from some interesting harmonica tracks and a few variations of the prelude theme. I think I’ll reserve further judgment on the OST until the full version releases in January.

Gameplay.
The battle system in this game is fairly straight forward. It’s also fairly enjoyable. The main thing I really like is the fast pace of everything once you figure out how to break enemies as well as having to switch Optima roles on the fly in order to accommodate your needs. It works. I like it. I have no complaints except that it is a little too easy especially if you know what you’re doing. Actually, the summons would probably be the one thing I dislike the most about it. They’re almost gimmicky a lot of the time and in the long run, don’t do as much damage as ones in other games did. I still think the whole transforming thing is ridiculously lame too so I try not to use them often. They’re not really necessary in most battles.
The Crystarium system, is also a bit of a joke. There really has been no effort on my part involved in maxing out the role levels so far. It almost has this tacked on at the last minute sort of feel to it. It’s easy enough though I wish every character had access to every role from the start.

All in all, I am enjoying the game so far… I do however seeing a lot of people either loving it or hating it. Especially those people who thought the game would have more exploration and town-like areas. They really did drop the ball on that because there has been a couple locations were even a Gold Saucer type thing could have worked. I don’t blame the skeptics though… I mean, after all, it did take a long time for the game to release and people had very high expectations due to that. I can’t see myself liking the game as much as VII, VIII, or even X, but I’ll reserve final judgment until I finish the game.