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3/24/2010

Final Fantasy XIII reviewed

 Final Fantasy XIII

The first few hours of this game made me feel the spark of the old Final Fantasy episodes (rsp VII and X): breathtaking looks, intriguing characters, a promising storyline.. oh how I have missed this! But getting into the game, walking the endless corridors, hoping for some more information to reveal the full storyline and shed some more light on the characters it dawned on me: that's all the information I will get.

The characters seem to harmonise well together at first and some nice moments happen to and with them (between Hope and Lightning e.g.). Yet somehow they are quickly taken over by absurdity and one pointless event after another happens to Lightning & Co. as they seem to drift alongside a badly told storyline and are drawn into one random battle after the other. The cinematics are outstandingly beautiful and quite a bit entertaining, but it does wear off after some time and I unfortunately discovered that there's just no life in this mesmerizing world, and sadly, no plot to be found anywhere. And I have looked in every corner!

The battles are just annoying obstacles on the way to nowhere and while the paradigm system is somewhat entertaining and in the end more complex than I had imagined it still doesn't excuse the length of the enemy encounters. They really wanted to discourage us from grinding this time, I get it.

The other thing that really bothered me is a technical issue. Why oh why in Barthendulus' name is the music annoyingly loud while the volume of the voices is so low you can hardly hear the dialogue? I had to turn on the subtitles to understand what they were saying, so come on.. I heard some people had it the other way around in the US-Version with super-loud voice-acting and low music volume in the background. I'd rather had it this way, but, in the end, the characters really didn't have important things to say anyway..

I was hoping for some kind of enlightenment until the end, but, nothing, except countless battles with me, randomly dying at some points. I didn't get it at all. It really annoyed me, since the game had the full potential, going to waste in thin air.

Beautiful, mouthwatering designs and architecture, the coolest and most stylish heroine a game has ever seen and wonderful pieces of music to accompany the party on their journey. Why, oh why was there no point to it? Why, oh why was the gang split up randomly in the first half and then, it seemed, forcefully kept together in the second? What's the motivation for them or me to do anything, let alone go and save the world?

They really screwed it up this time.

Final Fantasy XIII for PS3

2 comments:

  1. pains me to say it, but i must agree. I'm still trying hard to come up with a scenario where skrewing up a game, that had so many time in development, almost unlimited resources and a team that is known for it's outstandingness, is even thinkable. But it happend .. oh my fucking god .. it happend ...

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  2. I hear ya! I just don't know what bothers me more at the moment: being angry about this giant failure or the nagging feeling that I am maybe getting a bit old for these kind of games. Either way, I'm still in shock..

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