When I'm not busy working, watching sports, hitting the gym, or out making it happen, I like to spend my free time playing video games. One of the games I'm currently playing is Final Fantasy XIII. I am what you might call a "second generation FF player", meaning I really didn't get introduced to the series until the big hit on the first Playstation, Final Fantasy VII. There are several FF fans out there that will say some of the best FFs preceded 7 and that I'm really not a true FF fan until I try the first 6, but if you recall my Avatar posting, I'm somewhat of a graphics whore. I can really only go back and play those old school games if I played them growing up, otherwise it's hard for me to get acclimated to the 16-bit graphics or worse. So anyway, call me what you want, but I own every FF that has come out since 7, except the MMO that was 12.FF13 is the first FF made for the new generation of consoles. I personally own it for the PS3 because I like PS3 better than XBox360 and it was orginally developed for the PS3 anyway (the XBox360 version is ported and you may notice a slight degradation in graphics between to the two). I'm about 15 hours through and these games typically take 40 hours for me to complete. The game is stunningly beautiful, as are most games these days on these systems. The FFs are each pretty different in their own way, although they all center around a role-playing epic storytale theme. This one has the feel of FF12 but does get back to some of the more turn-based style of FF7 through FF10. This game is very linear so far (and kind of easy), but the battle system and story is definitely starting to grow on me the more I play it and the further I get. At first I was a little disinterested in the characters...some of the characters are really emo and annoying, but not surprising since this game originated from Japan, which is these days emo-city. During gameplay, the only challenge seems to be keeping an eye on your health and switching to a paradigm with a medic in it when you need it. Otherwise, it's just focus on attack chain and stagger the enemies so that you can really deal some damage. The game allows you to go on somewhat of an autoplay mode, since the AI is capable of learning what enemies are vulnerable/invulnerable to what and consequently use the right spells and avoid the wrong ones. But for the most part, I actively switch between paradigms to ensure the most success.
As for the story, it's definitely developing into something more intriguing and I'm becoming more attached to it. Although I am a little disappointed of the girls in the story. Lightning has a tomboy personality and isn't very appealing. Vanille has a very annoying voice and is a little too perky for me, plus they all call her a kid, so for all we know she could easily be like 14. Serah wears this kinky little school girl outfit, but she's non-playable and also looks a little young; she's probably 16 or so. So really that only leaves Fang to gawk at (see hot brunette chick in picture below)...
My friend Valentina, who's farther in the game than me, argues that this is her favorite FF to date. I have to disagree based on what I've experienced so far, but then again I loved 7's characters, story, and gameplay so much that I think it'd be hard for any new FF to top it. The music has also gone downhill ever since composer Nobuo Uematsu left after FF9. We'll see though as I still have more than half the game to go. Either way, no matter where the series goes, I'll probably continue to get each game 'til it dies based on loyalty to the franchise alone. Reminds me of The Simpsons in a way...I still watch every episode they make, heh.
