Final Fantasy XIII Review

ファイナルファンタジXIII

1 playthrough, 57 hours. That's how long it took me to complete Square Enix's much anticipated title, Final Fantasy XIII. 

I. Graphics

Remember Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children in 2005? It really was quite good. Remember the 2009 HD version, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete? That one literally blew our minds. One of Square Enix's aims for FFXIII was to make it as similar to FFVII:AC as possible. Graphics-wise, they succeeded! The pre-rendered scenes are truly outstanding, and the real game scenes look nearly as good, it is honestly hard to distinguish which are which, except perhaps for the hair of the characters, which does look a lot better in the pre-rendred scenes. The shadows are very well made, the places are gorgeous, the depth of field is excellent, nothing is bad. Plus this is one of the only 1080p PS3 games. Truly outstanding. The menus are well designed and react well. Things are always easily legible, good choice of fonts. Only slight problem, the PSN notifications that come up in the top right-hand corner of the screen (trophies, message received, friend online...) cover the Chain Gauge... A little annoying, but nothing major. To put it briefly, this is the best-looking game I have ever seen. You will constantly be amazed at how good everything looks, and might even find yourself stopping to look around you... It's that good. Take a look at some YouTube videos if you don't believe me... So that's a definite 20/20, well-deserved I think, as a lot of work clearly went into this. 

II. Soundtrack

The English voice acting is great. Many people didn't like the soundtrack, I did. Hamauzu is one of my favorite composers, so I have to say I was really looking forward to it! I pre-ordered it before it came out on January 28th, 2010, and don't regret my decision the slightest bit. I gave 49 of the 85 tracks a 4-star or 5-star rating. I only gave one star to two of them (Sazh's theme and Daddy's got the Blues, I hate blues.) The vast majority of the tracks are amazing, both in-game and out of it. I haven't heard a soundtrack like this one in a fair while, this really is great! I think it deserves a good 18/20, because it is amazing all-round, but perhaps lacke a couple more poignant pieces... Blinded by Light is great though! :)

III. Plot

Most RPGs have a complicated plot. In most cases, there is a 'big' plot - the leading story of the game - usually saving the world. On the side, you get some side-stories, which usually about the relationships between the characters. Final Fantasy XIII's main storyline is pretty boring and cliché, predictable as hell and not particularly interesting. A lot of work was done on the character's relationships and feelings though, which I liked - it gave the game a more 'humane' dimension. The characters are all really interesting and nice, you get really attached to them and are profoundly touched by some of the events. Overall, I'd say that Final Fantasy XIII's main plot could have done with a little more originality and development, but the amazingness of the characters does make the player want to see the game through to the end, not letting you let go of the controller. Catchy! 16/20.

IV. Delivery

When playing Final Fantasy XIII, one cannot help but get a strange feeling of déjà-vu. "Where have I seen this before?", you might ask yourself, over and over again... Where have I seen this Gran Pulse field? Where have I fought on airships? Where have I heard an Hamauzu soundtrack? Where have I experienced this feeling of a linear game where you can't go back? Where, where, where? Final Fantasy X, that's where. Yes, Final Fantasy X clearly inspired the creators of Final Fantasy XIII. Everything is extremely similar. The characters, the graphics, the places, the plot, the style, the atmosphere, everything except the fighting system basically. I really liked the fighting system, nice and quick. The paradigms are great, it's a shame you can only have six though - eight might have been better. But I guess they force you to think about the battle you're about to fight, and only really matter during boss battles - the rest of the time you're basically going to be switching between COM-RAV-RAV, COM-COM-COM when the enemy is Staggered, and MED-MED-DEF or similar when you're in trouble... Great system though. The fighting system, partly based on Final Fantasy VII's ATB, lets you fill five bars with actions. 'Attack' takes up one bar, more advanced spells might take two, three, four or even five bars. Clever way of not letting the player go all-out the whole time :p The game is extremely linear, you cannot go back to places once you've left them. Once you reach the final dungeon (which, by the way, is insanely confusing and complicated. And it's bright pink. ^^), you can teleport back to Gran Pulse, so you can explore some of the areas again and complete the 55 quests there are. Good game, but it would have been nice to have shops and towns, like Final Fantasy XII (Rabanastre, Jahara, Nalbina, Balfonheim, Eruyt, Archades, etc)... Here your only option for buying stuff is to save points - they integrate shops, more of which become available as you progress trough the game. I also found you're not getting enough money/items to sell - really annoying. Not a bad game, enjoyable, but I didn't like the extreme linearity of it and its lack of communication with the 'locals'... 14/20.

V. Trophies

The trophies in Final Fantasy XIII are pretty good. You get 11 bronze, 2 silver and 1 gold trophy for completing the game. The rest are for completing quests and set things, and none are missable except the 'Treasure Hunter' one, which requires you to have carried every single version of every single weapon and accessory in the game. The quest ones are pretty good, you can come back to the Gran Pulse field at the end of the game to complete them. The game is so bloody linear and there are no side-quests, the developers had no other option than putting quests at the end of the game... So the trophy list matches the game - complete the game, complete some irrelevant side-quests, that's it, you're done. 13/20. 

Conclusion

Final Fantasy XIII was very promising. In actual fact, it's weird. The soundtrack is amazing. The graphics are amazing. The plot is pretty good. The trophies are ok. The game is ok too. The fighting system is really enjoyable. But it's not great. I know what it's missing. A real personality. A real atmosphere. The game is a good GAME, but you wouldn't want to live in it. That's what, to me, makes this game inferior to blockbusters like Final Fantasy XII or Tales of the Abyss. It's an enjoyable gaming experience, but does not leave the four edges of the screen. It doesn't make the player dream. I definitely recommend you play the game, just to make your own opinion and check out this perfectly developed game. It just lacks atmosphere. Great gaming experience though, but replay value is near-zero. I wouldn't want to spend another 50 hours in that tormented world! And it's a little boring, as there are no side-quests. 16/20 overall.

Raining Blood, hard as ever...

Still can't pass Raining Blood (Guitar Hero 3) on Expert. To make me feel better, I went into quickplay and tried it on hard. Passed it first time. 

Tried Expert again, no luck... Failed on 36%, as usual. :@ Jeez, that is one hard solo... I fail about three quarters of the way through, and am making progress! So if I keep on practicing, I should be able to pass it.... Just. Annoying thing is, it's the only song that I can't do on Expert... Pass this one, and I get the 20G achievement for completing Expert career :)

Magnacarta2 Review

마그나카르타 2

1 playthrough, 27 hours and 510 Gamerscore later, that's it, I've completed Magnacarta2. I didn't really know what to expect from this title - there was a fair bit of hype around it, especially since the character design is by Hyung-Tae Kim; and I'd heard it was fairly similar to Final Fantasy XII, as in it was real-time. 

I. Graphics

The Unreal Engine (version 3 here) is doing a great job. Things are always fairly smooth [I wonder how it does it, surely Zephie and Celestine's outrageously large breasts would slow it down...?!] - the only real problem in terms of smoothness is the menu, which is atrociously slow: if you want to change your party, you have to select the first character, press A, [wait one to two seconds for the game to take that into account - the character then has a blue line around it], select the second character, press A [wait another two seconds] and they swap over. That's a damn right pain, having to wait so long to do something this basic. Changing character's equipment or assigned kamonds is the same, you just have to wait a few seconds - and as a result, I couldn't be bothered to change my equipment or my assigned kamonds until the end of the game when I really needed to. So I think you can say fairly that this lag hinders the gaming experience - and that's unacceptable, especially for a game on the Xbox 360. The anime-style cutscenes are really well made, although some of them seem awkwardly placed. The in-game graphics are good, all the textures are well made and there is very little lag. The loading times are quite short so that's great too. Overall, the game would have deserved 19 or 20, but I'm afraid it's gonna be 16/20, simply because the menus are unacceptably slow [despite the game being installed on the Xbox 360 HDD.]

II. Soundtrack

The soundtrack by Sung-Woon Jang is pretty good. Most of the tracks are great in the game, most of them are impossible to listen to outside of it. Out of the 45 tracks there are, I only gave eight five stars, those eight being, アバジェットの風景, センティネル, コタ・マレ, Theme of Zephie - Orgel Version, The Way, Theme of Zephie - Piano Version, Hero, OP Localizing Version. The vast majority of the other track got three or four stars. During gameplay, the soundtrack goes along nicely and reflects the game, to the extent that it's good, but doesn't make the player dream. This is the kind of soundtrack you'd listen to extremely occasionally, after having completed the game, in order to reminisce parts of it; you simply wouldn't listen it purely for the musicality of it, and I don't think people who haven't played the game would listen to it at all, with the possible exception of some of the aforementioned tracks. Oh and I should perhaps also mention that the English voice acting is pretty good. 14/20.

III. Plot

Classic RPG. Guess what? The world's about to end. Jeez, not again... Well yep. Except this time they were quite clever about it. You don't really know who's on who's side until well past the middle of the game, which can be frustrating at times, but is also really enjoyable - and a little nerve-wracking when you find out the truth! The thing is, the goodies and the baddies all want to save the world, but their approaches are somewhat different - and they're trying to stop each other from doing it their way. The six playable characters (Juto, Zephie, Crocell, Argo, Celestine, Rue) are all great and more and more of their personalities come out as the game progresses. Celestine and Crocell are particularly funny, they argue constantly! They are all thoroughly thought out and all play a decisive role in the outcome of the game. There are a few other characters in the game, which are also really thoroughly thought out: Igton, and the bad people - won't name them :p. The characters are constantly faced with difficult decisions, dilemmas should I say, and I found I felt genuine empathy for them, which hasn't happened in a while... So that's a good point. The developers took a decision here, that to design very few characters (less than a dozen) very thoroughly rather than have hundreds of superficial, stupid ones. I liked that. Sure, the game is short, but it's short and sweet. The end becomes a little too predictable, and the way to the final dungeon and the final dungeon itself are unnecessarily long, you know exactly what's gonna happen and just want to get it over and done with, but you can't. That's the only thing I didn't like about it. So, to sum up, nothing incredible, but a great bunch of characters and a cleverly set plot. Well done! 17/20.

IV. Delivery

The places you go are good, and you're never too lost. The game is quite linear - although all the places you've been to remain available, you only have one place to go - some people like that, some don't. I don't mind to be honest. The fighting system is good - you can only perform a certain amount of moves before you 'overheat' and can't do anything for up to 15 seconds. There is one way of avoiding that though: chain breaks. You have to end your combo with a skill, then chain to another character. If that second character also ends their combo with a skill, both characters 'chain break', that is to say, their stamina bars are reset. Clever and efficient. The interface is easy to understand and use, and there are save points scattered all over the world. Another good point. The only thing that's really annoying is that you have to press LT to switch between Combat Mode and Exploration Mode. In exploration mode, you can't fight, in fight mode you can't run. Why? Why? Unnecessary. Annoying. A waste of a feature. Final Fantasy XII let you run in battle, and fight whenever. And it was smoother. This unnecessarily annoying and really hinders the gaming experience. It was still enjoyable and new nevertheless, and I enjoyed something a little different to most games that come out nowadays. 17/20.

V. Achievements

There is 1240G available in Magnacarta2, 1000 for the original game, and 240 for the downloadable content, which includes extra weapons and three funny cutscenes. 360G is available for simply progressing through the game, 360G for mastering all the skill trees for all the characters, 70G for learning special techniques, 80G for performing chain breaks (a fighting technique which resets your stamina bar), 180G for collecting all weapons, and the rest for completing all quests, some of which are missable. This is a good setlist for an RPG - it still requires you to play the game thoroughly to do all the quests, but isn't stupid like Lost Odyssey where you have to obtain every single chest in the game or Tales of Vesperia where you have to do literally everything. An easy but fair list in my opinion - so I'll give it 15/20. 

Conclusion

Magnacarta2 is a bit of a mixed bag. What's there is good, but you get this bad feeling which leaves a sour aftertaste, this feeling that you're a beta tester. The game isn't bad, but could have done with a few tweaks, for instance getting rid of that stupid switching between fight and exploration thing or getting rid of the lag in the main menu!! . What could have been a great game ends up being, in fact, nothing more than a good game. re It is sad, a lot of work clearly went into this, but I fear the game was released a little too early. Shame. If you want to play a good game, I wouldn't recommend it. I would recommend it, though, if you want to have a fairly good time, but are happy to have that aftertaste of failure. WYSIWYG, nothing more, nothing less. An ok game. 15/20 overall.

Reached 6000G on Xbox Live! :)

Took me long enough... And that 500 chain breaks achievement from Magnacarta2 (worth 50G) took me 4 hours! Jeez... Anyways, now I've got my 6000G :)

Doesn't he look happy with his little toy boat? ^^

Bought Xbox 360 Chatpad

I had enough of using a really old USB keyboard to type on Xbox Live, so I bought myself the official Xbox 360 Chatpad. It's really good, feels great and is nice to type on.

The best thing is, it lights up when you start typing. Really useful for late-night gaming! 

This is a great accessory, well worth its €30, and I think everyone should have one ^^

Completed Magnacarta2

Yep. Thanks a lot Korean people, this was a great RPG. I'll write a review sometime tomorrow. The last 4 bosses are quite strange - the first one is really hard, the second one easy and the two forms of the last boss are quite easy too. Lucky me! - I really didn't want to have to walk all the way back into town (that would have taken me the best part of 1 hour there and back.) I'm well happy with my 80G :)

Ok. Keep checking this spot for the review :)

Thoughts about 2011...

So now that I've spoken about the games I played in 2010, I guess I need to say a little about the ones I'm going to play in 2011 and what I'm hoping for this year in terms of new games.

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I've got a few targets for 2011 -

1. Play Resonance of Fate. Acclaimed by critics, or at least deemed to be 'intersting', I'm really looking forward to it. I like games with a dark atmosphere, and I've listened to the soundtrack by Sakuraba a little, and, I have to say, it's good. Got it on PS3 already, going to play it this summer when I have tons of time. It's been a while since I played a long RPG, and this is one! :)

2. Play Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom. This one is shorter apparently (Can't remember where I read this, but apparently it takes about 15 hours to complete, a little more to get 1000G... So that's not too bad.) I read it's quite similar to Zeldas, infiltration, puzzles, and it looks quite nice. Excited :)

3. Play Okami. Universally acclaimed by critics and deemed to be one of the best games of the past decade (we're in 2011 now ^^), Okami is a must-play. I haven't had a chance yet, but I am conscious that I need to play it. I'll probably play it this summer too - I don't think I'll have any time before then... I was also really lucky, I managed to get the game for €15 brand new :) And I've also got the gorgeously packaged soundtrack, cos apparently it's one of the best soundtracks ever... :)

4. Play some more Tales of games. I love Tales ofs. All of them. I'm about half way through Tales of Rebirth, amazing game. I managed to find Tales of Graces F, so I need to play that one at some point, and I also need to play Tales of Destiny, cos it's classic. ToR and ToGf sure as hell will make me practice my Japanese (sweet) and I'm still debating whether to play ToD in Japanese or English. I'll see when the time comes. :p

5. Try and play some oldies. I still have FFVI and FFVIII waiting on my shelf - bought both of those almost two years ago. I need to play them, just to know what they're like.

6. Try and play some of the good 360 games. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Fable and Fable 2 are awesome apparently. I'll see.

7. Hit 8000G on Xbox Live and Level 8 on PSN. My GamerScore target for this year is quite low because RPGs take ages to do. Seriously, +2000G just on RPGs is a lot for just one year. Reaching Level 8 on PSN should be easier - I'm on Lv6 1% at the moment, and if I play RoF and The Last Guardian, it should be nice and easy :)

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I'm looking forward to -

1. The Last Guardian on PS3. The trailer looks awesome. Due to come out in June. :)

2. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on PS3/360; 360 for me. I need to play Oblivion first, I'll see. Coming out 11.11.11.

3. Tales of Xillia on PS3. Due to come out at the end of the year in Japan, will probably never come out over here in Europe. Oh well, I'll just import it. ^^

4. Final Fantasy Versus XIII on PS3. I've watched the trailer and the music is divine. I love Hamauzu! The two characters that have been unveiled so far, ノクティス (Noctis) and ステラ (Stella) look charismatic and awesome. Can't wait for a dark and modern, different game :)

5. I wanna be surprised. Tons of games are predictable and, in all fairness, the same. I want something new, interesting, challenging, beautiful, whatever. 

The Last Guardian

Noctis (Left) and Stella (Right)

Looking back on 2010 ~ II. MUSIC

A lot of good music came out in 2010.

I. GAME MUSIC

Final Fantasy XIII had an excellent soundtrack, in my opinion. I pre-ordered it before it came out on January 28th, 2010, and don't regret my decision the slightest bit. I gave 49 of the 85 tracks a 4-star or 5-star rating. I only gave one star to two of them (Sazh's theme and Daddy's got the Blues, I hate blues.) The vast majority of the tracks are amazing, both in-game and out of it. Have a look at this - they're sorted by play count.

All of those are truly outstanding pieces. I haven't heard a soundtrack like this one in ages. Well done Hamauzu! :)
Just so you can have a look at the beautifully packaged limited edition - (Click to enlarge)

The Piano Collections from Final Fantasy XIII were also great. The arrangements were good and the selection of pieces good too. The piano player was Aki Kuroda, who also performed in the FFX Piano Collections. She's great, I love the way she plays. :)

Nier, stylized NieR Gestalt/RepliCant in Japan and NIER in North America and Europe, is a great game. The soundtrack is better. ^^

Firstly, you HAVE to love the box art with Grimoire Weiss on the front. He's a great character. But let's actually talk about the soundtrack... The vast majority of tracks are sung, very much like One-Winged Angel from Final Fantasy VII. You constantly get that very same feeling of awesomeness and greatness. Kaine/Salvation and Shadowlord are truly outstanding, beautiful and moving. All of the tracks are highly appropriate to the game and their context, that is to say, a stressful and dark RPG. They are mysterious and calm for most of them, with the battle tracks and the Northern Plain track (Hills of Radiant Winds) being a little more upbeat. Again, sorted by play count - 

This is quite possibly the best game soundtrack ever. Beautiful. Definitely worth every penny :)

II. 'NORMAL' MUSIC

Immersion by Pendulum is possibly the best disc I've ever bought. Every single track on there is OUTSTANDING, except Comprachicos which I didn't like at all. I imported the album in Apple Lossless (resulting in it being over 600MB on my HD :p ), but it's so worth it. Nothing quite beats BLASTING Watercolour or Witchcraft on some good speakers :p Again, sorted by play count - 

An amazing album. Everyone should have it. This is my ALBUM OF THE YEAR.

Until One by Swedish House Mafia

Teenage Dream by Katy Perry

The Fame Monster by Lady GaGa

Load by Rihanna

Believe (II) by Orianthi

are all great albums too. 

I loved Crystal Castles (2008) by Crystal Castles and Vampire Weekend (2009) by Vampire Weekend, however I was really disappointed by their new albums, respectively Crystal Castles (II) and Contra. Shit. You let me down. 

Looking back on 2010 ~ I. GAMES

What have I done in 2010?

Well, 2010 was my first big year on the next-gen consoles.

RPGs-wise, I feel I've done quite well, completing two big 2010 RPGs, Final Fantasy XIII and NIER. I still have Demon's Souls and Resonance of Fate on my shelf - I'll be doing those sometime soon. I also completed Tales of Vesperia in early January and Lost Odyssey in late August. Both of those are great games, I gotta play them again soon. I started Tales of Rebirth for the PS2, haven't had much of a chance to play it lately though. I hope to complete it in 2011, but can't guarantee - I've kinda lost interest in games on consoles other than PS3 or 360, since I'm so addicted to Gamerscore/Trophies... :p I'm almost done with Magnacarta2 - I've gained access to the last dungeon (won't name it to avoid spoilers). I'll complete it next time I feel like it and have enough time ahead of me.

My 2010 RPGs

Apart from RPGs, I've made good progress on WipEout HD (God that game is hard), completed Bayonetta (was really fun) and Platinumed Burnout Paradise (excellent game, except for the trophy which you've gotta go into every car park for - that's a PAIN). I also completed Super Mario Galaxy 2, and I have to admit, I was a tad disappointed by it - although it's good, it's not as excellent as Super Mario Galaxy was. Oh well. I also got all of the trophies on Flower, great game. Downloaded flOw, don't like it as much. Can't actually be bothered to play it at all...

My 2010 non-RPG games 

Gamerscore increasing!

I got my Xbox 360 a year ago now, and my gamerscore is ~5800G. Up until fairly recently, my GS target for this year was 3000G... I exceeded it by quite a bit! Good news. How did that happen, you may ask? Well, Guitar Hero Metallica, Guitar Hero 4, Guitar Hero 5 and Guitar Hero 6 all have A LOT of GS for just completing the career (with several instruments - so it can take some time, but it really isn't hard.) So now here I go, and I'm hoping to hit 6000G by the end of this week. Should be possible, only 200G to go :)