Final Fantasy 13

In Final Fantasy 13 you play as a group of people that were chosen by the godlike Fal'cie to accomplish a certain task, but the only clue as to what their mission is was a breif and unclear vision shown to them when they became the chosen ones or L'cie. The party proceeds to decide what their focus or mission is then they try to figure out a way to escape the task set before them. The games story is somewhat hard to follow and more akin to an anime than a classic Final Fantasy game like Final Fantasy 4. The terms L'cie, Fal'cie, Focus, and Cie'th are thrown around enough that you'll be able to understand them once you play it. There are severl interesting characters such as Sazh and Hope, but there could have been more exposition of their stories with less story about "I'm a hero!" Snow and "I'm a female version of Cloud" Lightning. Overall I didn't care too much about the story as long as it put monsters in my path which brings me too the batle system.

In Final Fantasy 13 the battles revolve around the paradigm system. There are six paradigms that are basically classes. The commando is a warrior, ravagers are black mages, medics fill in for white mages, and sentinals are almost like knights but have no direct attack ability. Then there are two other paradigms the synergist and saboteur. Synergists take a white mages enhancing buff abilities and the saboteur takes the black mages ability to debilitate enimes with debuffs.

In a battle you control only the actions of just your party leader while the AI handles your two companions. You select abilites like cure and attack that use up a portion of your acitive time bar. simple acions such as a simple blizzard spel use up one bare where as a blizzaga will cost you three segmants. During battle you have a paradigm deck that is  sets of paradigms your party can take on at any time. Switching between different paradigms is key to increasing an enemys chain gauge. Chain gauges are bars that fill as you deal damage to enemies. The chain gauge has a percentege under it that tell you what percent of your commando's damage is getting through. So if the gauge is at 100% you deal regular damage, but at 200% you will do double damage. So to get a good battle rating you have to increase the chain gauges percentage with ravagers and keep it constant with attacks from a commando or saboteur. The battle animations and effects are entertaing to watch and don't get boring.

That brings me to the graphics. There is no dening that Final Fantasy is a magnificent looking game. The prerendered scenes look incredable and are nice treats spread throught the game, and the in game scenes are appealing as well. There are sweeping vistas and enclosed areas that are very detailed. I like the games style but I wish that I had a more free camera or first person look to really look at the scenary without my character alway's being the center of attention.

The game is great, but that dosn't mean it is without faults. The largest misstep has to be the narowness of the game. Most of the game is on a straight path with no exploration, the times where paths spilit is just for treasure hardly off the path, except for the short Gran Pulse section towards the middle of the game. The story is not particularly attention worthy with a confusing plot. Then there is the beginning of the game where you only have two characters in your party, which is not fun. Overall a great game for someone that likes graphics and an engaging battle system.