Final Fantasy XIII (Xbox 360) Review

Early in development, the producers of Final Fantasy XIII were very vocal about how this game was going to surpass Final Fantasy VII, as if they felt some kind of spite towards Hironobu Sakaguchi for leaving the company (and taking his money with him). While playing Final Fantasy XIII, it isn't before long some similarities begin to show up, like how the story opens with a train hijacking, a cold/aloof soldier protagonist, a black guy with a ranged weapon(s), invasion on some kind of industrial setting, rebels, and a ditzy girl in pink who fights with a stick. All of these similarities happen in the first 10 minutes, and it doesn't stop there. The point is Final Fantasy XIII is not coy about trying to imitate its most popular predecessor. Even concepts that FFXIII introduces as "original" are really just more convoluted versions of concepts from Final Fantasy VII, like the fal'Cie (XIII) and Weapons (VII).

Ignoring the fact that Final Fantasy VII exists, XIII's story completely misfires all because of the way it is told. There are some gaping plot holes and confusing inconsistencies throughout, but storytelling is so baffling, it is as if Square Enix is making it unbearable on purpose. Really simple little plot points are made all the more confusing because so much information is just never properly communicated at all, and this is because all the characters in XIII do not need anything explained to them. This creates a huge problem for anyone playing the game because so many weird and alien concepts are being thrown around very early and nonchalantly that it becomes bewildering and disconnecting.

This is where a fish-out-of-water protagonist becomes very helpful to tell the story. In Final Fantasy X, for example, Tidus was not from Spira. He would ask all kinds of questions about the things happening in the story, and by proxy the players learned with him. Everyone learned about Tidus, too, because of how he reacted to things, which establishes some kind of connection with the characters and world. That was the genius of Final Fantasy X. In FFXIII, there is nothing, and the game expects people to sift through pages upon pages of wiki articles within the game instead of telling the story in a way that makes sense. It is so important to understand alien concepts like the fal'Cie and l'Cie, what PSICOM is, how Cocoon works, and what Pulse is, but XIII does such a poor job of conveying these ideas and instead only compounds them.

After about 20 hours of incomprehensible story, the horror sets in when it's realized that none of the characters are really likeable. What is interesting is that Square Enix made the most detestable character a child who wants to commit petty revenge. As unlikeable as Hope is, he is the only character who feels human because his motivations are clear. All other characters have their reason for going on their quest (as arbitrary and nonsensical as they may be), but Hope was the only one that had real growth or any kind of arc. Lightning is always flat and boring. Vanille is always a ditz. Snow is always a dumb liability who ruins everything... It is hard to pinpoint why FFXIII is so bad at this, but it's probably because of the breakneck pace the game rushes everything. The story is always pushing forward without a moment for characters to character things, and instead are relegated to just moving the plot.

Final Fantasy XIII's story and how it is told is pure ineptitude, but where it excels is in the visuals. This came out in 2009 and still looks very nice - easily Square Enix's best looking title on the Xbox 360. Since there was not a lot roaming NPCs and it was a mostly limited cast, FFXIII was able to focus on a lot of details and expression. The time and money spent on the tools to render the characters in payed off well. Too bad the same can't be said about the environments. It is not because they locales are particularly poor - they aren't; they are quite serviceable. The issue with the environments is just how flat and uninteresting they are.

About 80% of XIII consists of corridors and hallways. The layouts and level design could not be more boring and lazily executed. The level design rarely opens up to an interesting setting, and the few times it branches, it leads to a dead end or an item that was not worth the trouble. Past games had interesting layouts with layers that would wrap around in interesting ways, and points of interactivity. Instead, playing XIII is like walking around in a museum. This boring theory of level design is a huge bulk of the game, and not until late in the story will it open up vast and boring fields. Some may say this is where XIII gets good, but, really, the walls of the boring corridor are still present... They are just bigger.

Core Final Fantasy titles (not counting MMORPGs) usually had battles that were played in active time turn-based method. While the franchise started to flirt with the idea of full-on action-hack 'n' slash mechanics around the time of Final Fantasy XII, it fully embraced it in FFXV. It is sort of a tradition for Final Fantasy to have some kind of gimmick for its combat, and XIII was no different.

This time, Square Enix opted to make the combat as uninvolving as possible. To achieve this level of boredom, the developers expertly removed all thinking that usually goes into strategizing while in an encounter and whittled all actions into an automatically deducting command. While in combat, there are only two things that should concern anyone: knowing when to paradigm shift and tug of war with the scratch damage and HP bars the enemies have. Since the combat is so restrictive, there is little room for fun builds for characters and pretty much every battle will play out the same. For some reason, the game has a battle rating, which makes no effort into explaining how anything is quantified and just seems random. Square Enix got its own genre wrong with XIII.

Today, Final Fantasy is a weird brand that can be anything. It used to just be simple variations of a hero's quest to fight evil, with some human elements thrown in to get players emotionally invested. When FFXIII came out, it really was a foreboding sign of things to come. It shows Square Enix's inability to tell a simple story and indecisiveness on direction. It feels as if XIII's developers are aliens and have never played a Final Fantasy before and are trying to guess what people want. Aside from the strong art and decent soundtrack, FFXIII is an abominable JRPG. It is a long and narrow hallway with no light at the end of it; only pain and darkness forever.