Systems: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Windows
Release Date: December 17, 2009 - October 9, 2014
Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Square Enix 1st Production Department
Time Spent: 91.7 Hours
[The first three paragraphs of this article are back from when I started writing it as a First Impressions article. Then, after almost 20 hours, I really got hooked and knew that I was beyond the point of a First Impressions article and would have to come back with a Game EXP article. But then, I really loved what Dr. Potts did for his playthrough four years ago and I will just link them all here because he was very much correct, that trying to tackle this game with a single article would have been too difficult and a journal method was probably the best; something I may seriously consider for the next big JRPG I jump into, likely very soon.
- Dr. Potts' First Impressions (2019-03-19)
- Dr. Potts' Play Journal Part I (2019-04-01)
- Dr. Potts' Play Journal Part II (2019-04-29)
So again, the next three paragraphs are essentially, my First Impressions]:
I picked up Final Fantasy XIII during Square Enix's [Summer] sale on Steam, I think to celebrate the release of the Pixel Remasters editions on console. But I have enjoyed the music that is included in the Theatrhythm series, I enjoyed Dr. Potts's take on the game when he talked about it in the Before Times, and I saw that it was rated as "Playable" on the Steam Deck, so I figured I would dip my toe in the waters of this linear railroading JRPG.
Well, 18.5 hours in (as of this writing), I understand all of the hearsay and a bit more of what Dr. Potts was talking about. But maybe coming off of playing Final Fantasy X and being railroaded in that game for a good portion of it prepared me for this specific design choice? I know that if I had gone straight from the open and MMORPG-ness that was Final Fantasy XII, I would have been on the annoyed side of things. And I know that I am fewer than 10 hours in, but the linearness of the game has not gotten to me and at least makes sense story-wise. [I have no explanation for the difference in time at the beginning of the article at 18.5, and here mentioning I was only 10 hours in. Maybe I rewrote the opening sentence and intended to make further edits?]
Hmm, story. At times I feel like I can follow the story, on the loosest terms. But once nouns start getting thrown around like "Pulse," "Sanctum," "The Purge," "fal'Cie," "l'Cie" and "Cie'th" things start getting a little confusing. Yes, I have been reading everything in the DataLog and that does help quite a bit and I really do appreciate the recap during the loading screen (taken from the event/history section of the DataLog) because at times when I start the game back up, all I can remember is that I was going from point A to point B. I did mention on Twitter after starting the game that I felt that a lot of this information could have been better delivered, but I don't really know how without a long intro to familiarize the player with how much lore there is in this game. It's like you just have to dive in and be in it for so long before it starts to become second nature and you no longer question what all of these new words mean.
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Welcome back to the present. By now, if you read through Dr. Potts' articles and if you go back to the top of this one and notice how much time I spent on this game, there is a bit of a disparity. Part of the reason why I took so long, at least in the first 10 chapters, was because I did not fully grasp and appreciate the battle system. I obviously knew about the Paradigm system after it was introduced in Chapter 3 and found it pretty exhilarating switching between different jobs and battle strategies, but I never felt that I fully took advantage of customizing the Paradigms until the point in the game where you have everyone accessible in your party and all of the jobs open up. Part of this could be that before Chapter 9, you play with pre-determined characters in their own little story beat, maybe an hour or so before switching to another group of people with a different paradigm focus. Maybe having the player frequently switch between who was in your party was an interesting method of keeping all of the characters in the player's mind, but it made for a weak connection to each of the character's mechanics. I felt that after I gained access to every party member and could select who I wanted in my party, I had a better grasp of the mechanics I felt I was learning up until that point. This is all probably why certain boss battles took me over 22 minutes to complete when the "par time" was closer to 9 minutes, so I was likely doing something wrong. I also did as much exploring as I could, accessing as much of the map as I could. And once I was in Chapter 11, I rarely used the C'ieth Waypoints to fast travel.
I still have some complaints, quite a few actually. To understand this, we're going to be jumping around a bit. In the previous nine chapters, when you would switch to different characters, it would usually be from a particular person's perspective, be it Lightning, or Snow, or Szah, etc. They would be labeled the Leader of that group, being the character you actively controlled in battle with the "game" controlling the other members in your party deciding what they would do based on the Paradigm you the player selected. Since the particular story beat would often be from the perspective of the Leader, it made sense that if the Leader were to die in battle, that that would be a bad thing. But this being an RPG and since healing potions and Phoenix Downs are a thing, it's still a little surprising that the Leader dying would immediately bring up a Game Over screen. Even more so in Chapter 9 and onwards where you still have the Leader mechanic and if they die, then the game ends, regardless of the status of anyone else in the party. This made keeping the Leader alive paramount, similar to the mechanic in the Fire Emblem series where the mechanics almost behoove the player to not have the main character engage in combat to prevent them from potentially dying and losing 30+ minutes of game time because the computer decided to gank the lead character. Unfortunately, there wasn't the level of customization to have your Med prioritize healing the Leader over anyone else, so you had better have potions at the ready or have your Leader have some skill points in Med to heal yourself.
Similar to this mechanic, was that only the Leader could use their summoning ability. The game makes it a major story point for each character learning their summoning ability, like an ultimate Limit Break-type ability. Each character has an encounter where they combat their summon, usually being a character growth moment for them that always felt pretty significant. The battles themselves were also somewhat annoying as you had to bring the summon's HP down to a certain point, but how that happened differed depending on the specific summon. Using healing actions on your teammates might lower the HP of one summon more effectively than only hitting it with your gun blade, or using Sabateur skills like Poison or other debuffs beforehand might be required. It was like solving a puzzle without really knowing where the edges were. But then, only the Leader was able to use their respective summon and you couldn't cue the other characters to use theirs. This meant that for the majority of the game, I only used Lightning's summon of Odin and only would use other characters in specific context-specific battles when I could not have Lightning as part of the team.
Leveling in FF XIII was also initially (as in during the first nine chapters) somewhat disorienting. I understood that they were taking the FF X approach and having a skill tree that you applied skill points to instead of traditional leveling up, but it felt like they went with form over function in how the skill tree looked. I really would have liked it had all of the skills been laid out on a flat surface where you could zoom out (similar to Path of Exile, which I know was heavily inspired by FF X) rather than an ever-branching structure that looked like a chessboard on the Enterprise NCC-1701-D. A minor complaint but still feel like it's a valid one.
Another major complaint concerning confusing mechanics was the method of upgrading your equipment. This could only be accomplished at save locations, which also served as storefronts for in-game merchant shops that looked like they were taken from The World Ends With You. Maybe I missed something somewhere, but I felt there needed to be more direction or guidance on navigating and efficiently upgrading your equipment. I ended up having to look up a tutorial to know what I was actually doing effectively. And by "effectively," I mean that it is most "effective" to apparently use organic materials (Barbed Tail, Sturdy Bone, etc) that you earn from battles or purchase from vendors to boost the % multiplier to its max of 3x before using better components like "Perfect Conductor" which boost an items level significantly more (as in say, and I'm making this up, that the Perfect Conductor would normally give you 500 XP towards leveling your Iron Bangle which levels up at 1000 XP, but if you first use 36 Barbed Tails which also give you 2 XP per Barbed Tail, then you get a multiplier of 3x and so those Perfect Conductors are now worth 1,500 XP. But then you had better be sure that you don't max out your piece of equipment, which varies by equipment piece, because if your equipment is at level 9 and you need 2,000 XP to level it up, there is no way of telling, from what I could tell if that equipment would level up past 9 or go all the way to 20. Oh, and usually, but not always, your multiplier may only last one or two uses and then it would usually drop down to a 2x multiplier, and then you'd have to use 12-24 more organic parts to bring it back up to 3x). If it's not obvious, I really did not like this aspect of the game. I'm only now wondering if this was intended to be some kind of mini-game.
Let's talk about good things now as I feel like I need to do that to help keep myself just a bit sane.
Once I grasped what was going on with the Paradigm system, I loved the combat customizations. When I was in Chapter 10, my team was made up of Lightning, Fang, and Hope, because I liked the combination of the following Paradigms:
- RAV-COM-RAV
- I like to have two people as RAVs to bump up the stagger meter faster and one COM to maintain that stagger so that it doesn't reset.
- COM-SEN-MED
- Good for non-emergency healing and to maintain the stagger meter.
- COM-SAB-SYN
- Once Hope learned Haste, this was my starting paradigm as it would also frequently debuff the enemies somewhat quickly.
- COM-COM-RAV
- I only first created this setup while we were in Oebra and there were a lot of C'ieth who were weak/normal against physical attacks. I then kept it in my rotation after Oebra.
- MED-SEN-MED
- If I needed to focus on healing quickly and not worry if the stagger meter reset to 0%.
- MED-MED-MED
- I had Fang learn some abilities in MED which came in handy during the final battle against Orphan (Form 1) where I needed to have quick healing immediately after the Merciless Judgement attack.
While in most of Chapter 11, I did switch out Hope for Vanille because I felt that it made more sense to have Fang and Vanille with Lightning as they explored Gran Pulse as there might be area/context-specific comments from the characters to build up the lore even more. Once we went back to Cocoon in Chapter 12, I switched back to Hope since Synergist was one of his three primary skills, and because he learned Haste I felt like it was an integral spell to have at that point. I would have liked to have used Sazh more, but I really liked having the COM-SAB-SYN paradigm and the Lightning/Fang/Hope team was the only one I could find that included Lightning.
As easy as it is to poo-poo the story and lore in this game, by the end, I really enjoyed this long-winded new-noun-rich beast of a story. It kind of reminded me of how I felt confused listening to "Blood Merdian" but when I read a synopsis, it turned out that I had in fact followed the story for the most part. While playing Final Fantasy XIII, even with the DataLog, I felt confused as to what meant what and who people or places were, but after I beat the game and I read the Wikipedia article for the story, I found that I did follow a lot of what had been happening. Kind of. That's the only way I can think of to describe it because I stuck with the game, I was able to understand most of what was going on at the end and was able to appreciate everything that went on in the beginning, but only as the credits were rolling. And because of this, it definitely made me consider replaying the game from the beginning which I felt would give me an even better understanding of the story. One of my critiques of the story though, is that, being a father myself, I felt that Sazh's emotional reactions to anything relating to his son Dajh, could have been ramped up a bit more, especially at the end of the game, but that's just the emotional side of me talking.
How I felt about the story at the end of the game made me wish that there was a NewGame+ option instead of the end-game content that now exists. And I don't think I fully understand the purpose of the end-game content. I get that a new role level in the Crystarium is now open, which means my characters have more HP, and stats to increase, but for what purpose? The "finished game file" starts you off right before the final battle(s) against Bartandelus/Orphan/Orphan2.0, but I was apparently already strong enough to defeat them the first time, so what's the point? I guess it would be odd to have your characters doing stuff on Gran Pulse without Fang or Vanille, but I guess I just see the point in doing more grinding if you've already beaten the game. Would it be to make the final battle(s) faster? Can you one-shot Orphan 1.0?
My takeaway from Final Fantasy XIII is that it very linear game with a battle mechanic that I love, which helped keep the monotony of the linear level design at bay long enough to keep me interested. I am very happy that I played this entry in the Final Fantasy franchise and I am intrigued in the remaining two games in the Final Fantasy XIII franchise, although I am saddened that Final Fantasy XIII-2 is currently rated as "unsupported" on the Steam Deck, although I guess I could always try it out and if it doesn't really run well, or at all, I can just go ahead and do the refund route.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
P.S.
Just a couple of thoughts here at the end.
Maybe I just suck, but I found the Eidolon battles to be needlessly complicated. I get that each Eidolon is supposed to be representative of the character that they're attached to, but considering how many "How do I beat. . ." threads out there for how to beat them at least makes me feel a little better in knowing that I'm in decent company; even if some of that company is upwards of 15-years old.
That final battle against Bartandelus/Orphan (final battle number two of three) was annoying as hell, but thankfully I was started right before fight #2, and that I didn't have to do fight #1 all over again. I think it took me six attempts, with the last attempt taking me 24 minutes; one battle lasted fewer than five minutes because Lightning was poisoned after Orphan used the Merciless Judgement ability and I couldn't heal in time.
I did look up how to defeat Orphan 2.0 (fight #3) because I was afraid that it was going to start me over at fight #2 if I died during that fight and because Lightning had Doom cast on her from the start and that just made me anxious as hell.
Also, why the hell does Esuna only remove a single status effect at a time!?
Lastly, I thought it was an interesting choice to give the narration during the game to Vanille considering that Lightning is mainly the main character. It definitely made the end of the game significantly more emotional than it would had it been narrated by Lightning. It did take me a while though to get used to Georgia Van Cuylenburg's take on Vanille, but like a lot of things in this game, by the end, I was fully on board. And I loved the relationship between Vanille and Fang.
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