My all time new favorite game in the series, Final Fantasy XIII steps up the game even further, reaching new heights in character and graphic design, as well as story. The graphics in this game are mind blowing, when you can zoom in on your character using the in game camera, and see that she has a belly button ring, you know graphics are getting crazy! The movie cut scenes, these characters look like real people!
Plot
Final Fantasy XIII is set within the world of Gran Pulse. Central to the story is Cocoon, a massive artificial sphere that floats above Pulse's surface and is ruled by the Sanctum, a theocratic government. The two worlds are controlled by fal'Cie (pronounced /fælˈsi), beings with godlike power. The Cocoon fal'Cie are responsible for keeping Cocoon floating, as well as providing light and water to the people that live inside. Each fal'Cie handles a specific task. The fal'Cie have the capability of marking the humans that live in Pulse and Cocoon as their servants. These servants, called l'Cie, are branded with a symbol representing either Pulse or Cocoon and are given a "Focus"—a task to complete. If the l'Cie complete their task in time, they are transformed to crystal and according to legend gain eternal life; otherwise they become mindless monsters called Cie'th. The l'Cie are not explicitly told their Focus, but are instead given visions that they must interpret.
Several hundred years before the events of the game, a battle known as the War of Transgression took place between Pulse and Cocoon. During the battle, l'Cie from Pulse attacked and ripped a large hole in Cocoon. Eventually, the l'Cie completed their focus and were turned to crystal. The hole was patched with material lifted from Pulse, and Cocoon's citizens have since lived in fear of another invasion; this fear is used by the Sanctum to remain in power. The Sanctum oversees two military branches: the Guardian Corps, responsible for keeping order on Cocoon, and PSICOM, the special forces in charge of dealing with any threat related to Pulse. The fal'Cie have given the humans advanced technology, including flying airships and mechanical creatures, and a form of magic also exists. This magic is normally only accessible to l'Cie, fal'Cie, and various monsters in Cocoon and Pulse, though distilled chemical forms can be used by normal humans.
Characters:
The six main playable characters of Final Fantasy XIII are Lightning, the main protagonist of the game, a former soldier and older sister to Serah; Snow Villiers, Serah's fiancee and leader of NORA, a paramilitary group; Oerba Dia Vanille, the game's narrator and an exile who is later revealed to be a l'Cie from Pulse; Sazh Katzroy, a civilian pilot and father to a young boy, Dajh; Hope Estheim, a young boy who is struggling within the relationships he shares with his parents; and Oerba Yun Fang, a l'Cie from Pulse who is working with the Sanctum's Cavalry branch. Other characters include Galenth Dysley, the ruler of the Sanctum; Cid Raines, a Sanctum Brigadier General in the Cavalry who does not trust the government; and Serah Farron, Lightning's younger sister and Snow's fiancee.
Final Fantasy XIII begins in Cocoon as the citizens of the town of Bodhum are being evicted, or Purged, from Cocoon after coming in contact with something from Pulse. Over the course of the game, the player is shown flashbacks of the events of the previous 13 days, which began when a fal'Cie from Pulse was discovered near Bodhum. Lightning's sister Serah had found the fal'Cie from Pulse and been changed into a l'Cie by it. Lightning and Sazh derail a Purge train bound for Pulse in an attempt to save Serah. In the subsequent battle, Snow leads his resistance group, NORA, to rescue the Purge exiles. Several of them, including Hope's mother, are killed. As Snow heads to the fal'Cie Anima to save Serah, he is joined by two of the exiles: Hope and Vanille. The two groups meet at the fal'Cie, and find Serah just as she turns to crystal. Anima then brands them all as l'Cie and they are cast out into a different part of Cocoon. During this transformation, the newly crested l'Cie all have the same vision: a monster called Ragnarok. The group, arguing over the ambiguous nature of the dreamed Focus, find Serah in her crystallized form; Snow remains with her as the others leave.
Snow meets Cid and Fang after being captured and detained aboard the airship Lindblum. Meanwhile, the others escape from PSICOM, but are separated during an air strike; Hope and Lightning travel to Palumpolum, while Sazh and Vanille travel to Nautilus. In Lightning's scenario, she unintentionally supports Hope's goal of killing Snow as revenge for his mother's death. In Vanille's scenario, Sazh discusses how his son Dajh was turned into a l'Cie by a Cocoon fal'Cie and was taken by PSICOM to discover his Focus. At Palumpolum, Lightning tries to persuade Hope not to go through with his revenge and meets Snow and Fang. Fang reveals that she and Vanille were l'Cie from Pulse who were turned into crystals; they were turned back into humans 13 days prior to the start of the game, sparking the Purge. Hope attempts to murder Snow, but after Snow saves him from an airstrike, he decides not to go through with it. The party then escapes the city with Cid's aid. At Nautilus, Vanille reveals herself to Sazh as a l'Cie from Pulse, and indirectly the reason that Dajh was turned into a l'Cie. PSICOM then captures Sazh and Vanille and detains them on board the airship Palamecia.
The other members of the party stage a rescue mission and reunite with Vanille and Sazh before they confront Galenth Dysley, the Sanctum's Primarch. Dysley reveals himself as the Cocoon fal'Cie ruler Barthandelus. He tells them that their Focus is to transform into the beast Ragnarok and slay the sleeping fal'Cie Orphan, who keeps Cocoon afloat above Pulse. Slaying the fal'Cie Orphan will result in the destruction of Cocoon. The party escapes and learns from Cid that the fal'Cie believe that Cocoon's destruction will summon the Maker, the creator of the worlds. The fal'Cie cannot harm Orphan themselves. Vanille and Fang reveal to the party that they were involved in the War of Transgression centuries prior, and that their Focus then had been the same: to transform into Ragnarok and attempt to destroy Orphan. The party flies away to Pulse and travels to Oerba, Vanille and Fang's hometown, where they hope to learn how to remove their l'Cie marks. They are unsuccessful, and Dysley confronts the group again. He tells them that he is forcing Cid, now the head of the Sanctum, to create chaos in Cocoon to force the Cavalry to attack Cid and Orphan in a coup d'état.
The party infiltrates Cocoon with the goal of preventing its destruction. They head towards Orphan only to find that the Cavalry have been turned into Cie'th. The party encounters Dysley and overpowers him, but Orphan awakens and merges with Dysley, then compels Fang to finish her Focus as Ragnarok while the others are seemingly transformed into Cie'th. The group reappears in human form, preventing Fang from transforming. The party engage and defeat Orphan and escape Cocoon, which is now falling towards Pulse. As the rest of the party turns to crystal for completing their Focus, Vanille and Fang remain on Cocoon and transform into Ragnarok together. They prevent a collision between Cocoon and Pulse by turning themselves into a crystal pillar between the two worlds. The rest of the party awaken from their crystallization on Pulse and find their l'Cie brands gone. The game ends with Lightning and Snow reuniting with Serah and Sazh reuniting with Dajh.
Gameplay
The player directly controls the on-screen character through a third-person perspective to interact with people, objects, and enemies throughout the game. The player can also turn the camera around the characters, which allows for a 360° view of the surroundings. The world of Final Fantasy XIII is rendered to scale relative to the characters in it; instead of a caricature of the character roaming around miniature terrain, as found in the earlier Final Fantasy games, every area is represented proportionally. The player navigates the world by foot or by Chocobo. Players may save their game to a hard disk drive using save stations, where the player can also purchase items from retail networks or upgrade their weapons. An in-game datalog provides a bestiary and incidental information about the world of Final Fantasy XIII. The Final Fantasy XIII Ultimate Hits International version of the game, released in Japan, also contains an "Easy" mode option.
Battle system
As in Final Fantasy XII, enemies are integrated into the open field and can be approached or avoided by the player. When the player's character touches an enemy, the screen transitions from the regular map to a separate battle screen similar to those used in previous Final Fantasy titles. A maximum of three characters may be used in battles, which use a variant on the series' traditional Active Time Battle (ATB) system designed by Hiroyuki Ito and first featured in Final Fantasy IV. Under this system, the player selects an action from the menus, such as Attack, Magic, and Item. Unlike previous games in the series, the player only controls the lead character while the remaining two characters are controlled by the game's artificial intelligence (AI). Each action requires a specific number of slots on the ATB bar, which continually refills to a set maximum number of slots. The ATB bar gradually increases in size throughout the game from two slots to six. The player may select less than the maximum number of possible actions or may stop the filling of the ATB bar and perform as many actions as can be done with the current ATB amount. The player may select an autobattle command, which fills the ATB slots with actions chosen automatically. Actions cannot be performed outside of battle, and the characters' health is fully restored after each battle.
Each enemy has a meter, called a chain counter, consisting of a percentage starting at 100 which increases when the enemy is struck by attacks or spells. Attacks by different roles have different effects; some raise the chain by a larger amount while others give the player longer before the chain counter resets. The amount of damage performed by an attack is multiplied by the chain percentage before it is applied to the enemy. When the chain counter reaches a preset amount, different for each enemy, the enemy is placed into Stagger State. In this mode, the enemy has lowered defense and may be launched into the air. The Paradigm system allows the player to program six different roles which the characters can then assume to perform certain formations in battle in response to the specific conditions. The roles consist of Commando, a warrior-type role; Ravager, a black mage-type role which uses damage-dealing magic; Medic, a White Mage-type role which can heal; Saboteur, which can weaken enemies; Synergist, which can strengthens allies; and Sentinel, which has protective abilities. Each of the characters can initially take on only three roles, but the player has access to all of them later in the game (although the other three roles are limited in their abilities for those players which choose them). The player can select which roles the controlled character and the AI characters are using both outside and during battle, which is the only way that the player can control the AI characters during battle. The player can only choose from specific sets of paradigms that the player has set up beforehand outside of battle.Each character can summon a specific Eidolon into battle. These summoned creatures include series staples Odin, Shiva, Alexander, and Bahamut, and newcomers Hecatoncheir and Brynhildr. When summoned, the Eidolon stays in combat while the characters accompanying the summoner leave the party. While an Eidolon is summoned, the player can trigger a feature called Gestalt Mode, in which the Eidolon transforms into a different form and performs different attacks while the summoning character rides them.
Crystarium
The Crystarium is a leveling system consisting of six crystals and resembles the Sphere Grid from Final Fantasy X. Each crystal in the Crystarium represents one of the six Paradigms, and is divided into ten levels. Each level contains various nodes that supply bonuses to health, strength, or magic, or provide new abilities and accessory slots. These nodes are connected by a semi-linear path. The player may advance down the path by acquiring Crystarium Points, which are awarded after defeating enemies. The full Crystarium is not available to the player at the beginning of the game; at specific points in the game's plot, the player gains access to new crystals or levels.
That is FFXIII in a nutshell, but I cant even begin to describe the story, the beautiful cut scene's and game play graphics this game has to offer.
In the limelight we have our second official main title FF game with a female lead, Lightning. And I have to say, Lightning has taken first place in my book, followed closely in second by Squall. Lighting is one tough woman. Not afraid to speak her mind, even with her fists if needed, Lighting is a strong well trained soldier. Taking up the provider for her sister when her parents died, Clair Farron took on a new name, Lightning. A name of power, Lightning strikes its target and then vanishes just as quickly as it came, she is very much the same. Quick, agile and strong. This has lead to her being a somewhat cold character, even to her sister, who ambushes her and not only tells her shes become a Pulse l'cie and also engaged to rebel and hot head Snow Villiers.
The Characters all all also have weapons that are specific to there character. What really impressed me with this game is they actually took the time to figure out how each character would carry there weapon. In all previous titles, the weapons would either be pulled by the characters from thin air, or just be there when the battle started. Not the case in this game, each characters weapon has a place in the actual design of the character.
Lighting also takes the cake in this field too with her specialized gunblade in this title called the Blaze Edge, this sword actually folds into itself and becomes a gun. Not a light weapon, Lightning has trained enough to be able to manipulate this weapon with one hand. She then can put the Blaze Edge in gun form, fold the handle down flat to the weapon and place it in a case hanging off her belt behind her legs, part of her actual character design.
Snow, using his show of strength actually has no weapon to speak of, using only his fists to fight.
Hope, the youngest member of the fal'cie group, wields a boomerang. The boomerang can fold in half and be placed in a pouch on Hope's belt.
Sazh wields two dual wielding pistols, that can actually come together to form a bigger gun as well. Sazh' has two holsters implemented in his character design on each leg that can hold his guns.
Fang wields double edged spear, with the blades on each end having the capability of folding down so as not to cause injury, and to be able to carry as the blades add length to the spear making it almost longer than Fang herself, which is placed in a holster on her back.
Vanille is the toughest to describe, she uses a staff like weapon with hooks on the ends, this hooks are attached to wire in which she can swing these hooks like multiple whips. It has been described as a multi-pronged fishing pole. In which the game actually acknowledges this, in one scene we have a wayvern that Fang wishes the party to ride, and as she so eloquently puts it, she says "Vanille, go fish" in which the hooks are thrown capture the creature, while Fang attacks from above to bring the creature down to the rest of the party. This staff can fold in on itself and be carried in a holster designed for in, actually in the character design for Vanille.
While the game was linear in play, I absolutely loved this game and it had me wanting more. As much as I enjoyed in previous titles, exploring the contents of the world I was in, I am ok with sacrificing this for beautiful environments and characters. I am ok with not having to talk to every single person in the town to figure out where I have to go next. Or travel to an INN every time my characters need to rest. Which a new feature this game implemented was that after every battle the characters healed, limiting the use of infamous items such as potions and elixirs and such. I like that I didn't have to go to twenty different shops in the town (ok an exaggeration), to buy accessories and upgrade my weapons.
So I really don't care what all you nay-sayers have to say about FFXIII, this game was amazingly done. I will trade real like graphics and characters for a world map any day.
I mean when your standing in the city of Eden, on a street and you turn the camera just right and you can see the individual beams of sunlight coming through the buildings, just like you can in real life, is that not a thing of beauty.
While I can understand some frustration for the story line, there are things had I not had the special edition strategy guide, I would not have picked up on in the story. They could do a little better in explaining things and connecting the dots, but the story is still amazing.
I believe in a FF first, we have our heroes who face a lose lose situation. In most games you have the choice for the heroes,They can run and survive and pretend like nothing will affect them in the events that take place, or you can fight them and live happily ever after. In XIII these characters were faced with two situations, that I don't know about you I would be asking about door number three. As they were marked as Pulse le'ci,could either complete their focus, destroy the home they have all grown up on and kill millions, bringing about the existence of the maker, then in doing so live in crystal forever. This choice doesn't sound good for multiple reasons. One they have to kill millions on the slight chance that the Maker will be summoned to recreate the world for the fal'cie. Two they end up in crystal forever which is practically a form of death. Shut off from the world going on around you, the people you care about gone, not much of a life there if you ask me. The other option should they choose to not complete there focus, become Cei'th, monsters within the realm of Gran Pulse, who wonder aimlessly, no goal nothing to live for, no existence belonging to you at all. So there you have to two choices our heroes face in this title, which what ends of happening is they choose to go against there "gods" wishes and fight and choose for themselves, while Barthandalus backs them into a corner to destroy Cocoon, they still fight and do what they were intended to do, they brought down Cocoon, but they didn't kill the millions in doing so, thwarting Barthandalus' plan to summon the Maker, and showing the world of Cocoon that they have been lied too, while Gran Pulse over the years grew wild with no one there to tame the frontier, it is not the place of Fire and Brimstone that the Sanctum made them believe for thousands of years that it was. It was indeed inhabitable, and in turn brought about the downfall of a fal'ci government.
While most people didn't like the Paradigm system, I thought it was genius for this title, the game playing being so fast paced, controlling only one character at times becomes difficult. This system forces you to think strategically for each enemy you face. This systems starts off maybe a little too easy, but as the game progresses, so does the level grinding. You want to make sure that for certain bosses and monsters even that specific traits and abilities are reached for certain characters.
Lastly we see a slight change in the summon system. In this specific title, each character receives an Eidolon usually in the story the character has reached a breaking point or life changing situation to be received and used in battle.
The characters summon them via a crystal and are as follows:
Lightning summons Odin who's Gestalt mode is that of his Horse, while instead riding it himself, Lightning is the rider instead.
Snow summons the Shiva sisters Nix and Stiria, who become a motorcycle for Snow.
Hope summons Alexander the Holy Knight, who doesn't so much become a vehicle but a chess piece with others connected.
Sazh summons Brynhilder, the replacement of Ifrit in this game as the summon of Fire, Brynhilder becomes a hot rod.
Vanille summons Hectonchier, who becomes a walking arsenal of sorts.
Fang summons the recognizable Bahamut, who becomes a ride able dragon in his vehicle form and a more human like dragon in his normal form.
One of the characters not mentioned in the game although very minor, who I think makes this game fun, and he is adorable. There is a baby chocobo who was meant for his son Dajh, that Sazh owns, who actually lives in the mans Afro. This chocobo comes out from time to time to inspire a laugh or the character to move forward in a remembrance of his son.
This game is so amazing I cant even tell you how much I have enjoyed this installment. My next post will be pictures from the last three covered titles. Dissidia, Duodecime, and FFXIII. To follow will be coverage of the summons through the history of FF and how they have evolved, followed by coverage of the evolution of Moogles and Chocobos (with pictures). Lastly a closing as to why this blog is titled NO MORE FINAL FANTASY VII!!! Followed by coverage of the new games and titles in development.
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