Preview of Final Fantasy XIII, pink hair everywhere
Written by: Santiago Azpurua-Borras
Lightin' shure is purdy!
College allowed me to make a slew of new friends, including some seniors who have recently returned abroad from Japan.
With a copy of Final Fantasy XIII.
Obviously, I wanted to play it, and they let me (for free no less!)
So here is my first look at Final Fantasy XIII.
Final Fantasy XIII tells the story of Lighting and her pals as they play the role of fugitives because they are special or something. (Please bear with me; the entire game was in Japanese)
The story spans across multiple worlds and areas as certain things are accomplished. The story begins in a really confined narrow space with only one path to follow. It takes a lot of investment to find the huge open-worlds that are so often shown off in previews.
The graphics of Final Fantasy XIII are unbelievably good. There were moments in which I confused the gameplay for one of the games many CGI cutscenes. (Which look even better than feature films such as Advent Children)
All the enemies are incredibly detailed — the character models are near flawless — but the areas leave a little something to be desired.
Graphics in combat are also amazing, but sometimes there is so much going on, I often just found myself pressing buttons hoping something good would happen.
The combat of FFXIII is a little complicated to explain.
You see, like X-2, characters are assigned jobs, which give characters various abilities such as offensive capabilities, status-inducing magic, stat-buffering magic and the like. These jobs can be changed mid-battle, which creates for a really fun “adapt or fail” tension to combat, but FFXII lacks the sense of self-loathing that X-2 brought to the table.
Oh god whats happening I dont even --
As the battle rages on, a bar fills up, which allows your character to perform actions (attacking, magic, items etc., etc.). Watching and waiting for this bar to fill always kept me on edge.
Something I noticed: enemies in this game have insane amounts of HP. While I loved seeing all the numbers fly above their heads, I noticed that 30,000+ damage was barely denting their actual HP bar.
I had a chance to mess around with all the summons as well. With a few exceptions, they are nothing short of epic. Except for when they transform into vehicles. That definitely took me by surprise.
One particular summon definitely stood out from the rest, as he was what I can only describe as a white Megazord fused with the Great Wall of China. (Also, lasers.)
One thing I particularly enjoyed is the fact that HP is automatically recovered on all characters once a battle is over (assuming you won or ran away successfully).
My main complaint is that the entire game world feels very desolate and lonely. Seriously, you don’t even see your party members running behind you or anything.
Now, I’ve never been a huge fan of the series but I am definitely picking this up once it releases stateside. Still waiting on a collector’s edition, though.
Be on the lookout for our full review sometime after the game’s release on March 9th!
