I got Final Fantasy XIII for Xbox 360 earlier this week, and I’m afraid it’s been commanding all my game-playing time. I’m also afraid that, so far, the entire game has been one giant string of cutscenes, with the occasional player-controlled fight or locomotive section thrown in to keep your attention. You don’t really feel like it’s you accomplishing anything, though. All you do is move your character along a line from one place to another, or dispatch some enemies in a decidedly more clumsy way than they could probably do on their own, and then you get another cutscene. And when I say linear path, I mean linear path. They’re so narrow you could spit and hit the wall. They’re also deceptively rendered. At several points while I was “exploring” I thought I found a side passage, only to run into an invisible wall. The ground clearly continued along the same plane I was on, but the game just wouldn’t let me go there.
Those are about the biggest “problems” I have with the game so far. I’ve only been playing it for about 6 hours, though. (Over half that time was probably spent in cut-scenes.) As for the good impressions, it is very shiny. I haven’t seen one clipping problem yet–no cloaks through characters or hair through walls–and when you stand on uneven ground, your characters actually stand unevenly on the ground. I’ve also noticed that the music is reminiscent of Cowboy Bebop. Not necessarily a bad thing, since Cowboy Bebop was so epically awesome, but not really the kind of music I’m used to in a Final Fantasy.
Over all, I’m still on the fence about whether or not I like this one. It’s no 7–although it does smack of its predicessor–but it does have its attractions. I’ll make sure to blog about XIII more in the future, after I’ve played it a little more and actually unlocked the ability to select my own party setup.
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