Final Fantasy XIII Gameplay Preview — A Very Cinematic Game and a New Spin on Final Fantasy » 30ninjas

Final Fantasy XIII Gameplay Preview — A Very Cinematic Game and a New Spin on Final Fantasy

Share on Facebook posted 12-30-09 by Angelo D'Argenio

Recently, I got a chance to try out the Japanese release of Final Fantasy XIII. We won’t be seeing the game here in the states until March 9th 2010. Even so, it is one of the most anticipated game releases of the New Year. So instead of being a greedy bastard and keeping the game all to myself, I have decided to give you guys a sneak peak at what you have to look forward to. Make no mistake; I don’t speak fluent Japanese. I have a very rudimentary knowledge of Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji, and one hell of a Japanese to English dictionary on my bookshelf. As such, I am in no position to talk about Final Fantasy XIII’s story about the Fal’Cie and Cocoon and all this great fucked up stuff. It’s hard enough to keep track of a Square-Enix plot when you speak the native language, trying to translate is downright impossible. Still, I have gotten more than enough gameplay experience to tell you about the systems of the game, and that is what this preview is about.

Let’s start with the battle system. The battle system in Final Fantasy XIII is once again a slight derivation of the classic Active Time Battle system we all know and love. Like, Final Fantasies of the past, every character has an ATB bar that fills when they are not fighting, however unlike Final Fantasies of the past, characters don’t simply go when the bar is full. Anything that a character can do costs a portion of his ATB, which is divided into points. You can spend as many points as you like, and you don’t have to wait for your bar to be full to spend them. More powerful attacks obviously take up more points, and less powerful more basic attacks take fewer. You can string together your attacks by lining up your actions in a queue while in battle. As long as you have the points, you will continue firing off each action one after another. You can also set up a queue of actions to be taken as soon as your ATB bar fills enough to execute them. The number of actions you can queue and the number of points you have available appears to increase as your characters increase in power. Note that I didn’t say level. I will get to that later.

Final Fantasy XIII has a job system, but it is nothing like the traditional Final Fantasy job system. Characters can change their jobs in battle on the fly through the Optima Change system (localized as the Paradigm Shift system). Each job has only a very specific set of actions, and these actions differ for each character. For example, Attackers just have a variety of physical attacks to choose from while Black Mages (other websites have said the localization is “Blaster” but screw it, I have played Final Fantasy before, they are Black Mages) will constantly fire off elemental attacks. Characters will learn new abilities for each job, and even new jobs altogether as they increase in power. Different characters will have different commands available to them in each job, so utilizing many jobs with many characters is important. Changing jobs in battle can sometimes circumvent the need to wait for the ATB bar to fill, which allows you to string together longer chains of attacks.

Chains are important in this game, because they help you slay even the most powerful of enemies. As your characters perform consecutive attacks, your foe’s chain meter will fill. The meter constantly decreases when you aren’t attacking, but if you manage to fill it completely, the enemy goes into a Break state. While in this state, the enemy won’t attack, will take significantly more damage, and your attacks will have a bit more of a dramatic flair to them, juggling the enemy in the air and generally making your own characters look totally bad-ass. Figuring out how to successfully break enemies is one of the key strategic aspects of Final Fantasy XIII’s battle system, and some enemies simply cannot be defeated without utilizing the chain break system to its full potential.

Your battle party consists of three characters, but you only control one at a time. The other two will be controlled by decent A.I. at all other times. Of course, your commands will always supersede the A.I. Since you can queue commands up for other characters, you will frequently finding yourself setting up a queue for your active character, and then switching to another to do the same in quick succession in order to build up your chains. Unlike the system of Final Fantasy XII, Final Fantasy XIII’s battle system calls for your intervention almost constantly. This is good, because it makes epic boss battles feel frantic and fast paced, while less important random encounters can be handled quickly by your input, or slowly via the A.I. depending on how much effort you want to expend. After battle, you earn a rank, and higher ranks of course mean greater rewards, so if you want to make the most out of each battle you will have to pay close attention and finish off your enemies quickly and effectivley.

Summons are handled interestingly in Final Fantasy XIII. Each character can only summon one Eidolon. When an Eidolon is summoned, the rest of the party disappears. The Eidolon can then fight with the character that summoned it in two different ways. It can either attack alongside the character through the normal battle system, or it can convert to “driving mode” through a very Transformers-like transformation sequence. In driving mode, the Eidolon turns into a vehicle of some sort, the summoner boards said vehicle, and different button combinations trigger different, extremely cinematic, special moves. Each move reduces the amount of time the Eidolon has to stay on the field, and one extra spectacular signature attack uses all the Eidolon’s remaining time to deal massive damage to everything in sight. It seems like the correct method to use summons to the fullest of their capabilities is to let the Eidolon fight alongside you until its time is just about up, and then convert it to driving mode to get some extra damage in.

A lot of trailers have made Final Fantasy XIII’s battles to appear cinematic in nature. In fact, an early rumor about the game had us believing that battle would entirely be carried out via context sensitive commands. That isn’t true, but characters do move in a bit of a context sensitive fashion. If an enemy gets knocked into the air, they will jump to pursue them. If an enemy gets knocked to the ground, character animations change to represent attacking a downed enemy. This and skillful use of a moving camera makes battles in Final Fantasy XIII feel more epic. The experience stops just shy of feeling like the battles from Final Fantasy VII Advent Children, which was the goal, if only because the action is so frantic you don’t notice differences in animation. In fact, one of the only times you will really take notice of specific character animations, is when you catch a stock animation being reused. This is because it is an exception, not the rule. It is a bit disappointing to increase in power far enough to get a brand new ability, only to find it has a similar animation to an ability you already had, but this doesn’t happen often, so no worries there.

I have been saying “increase in power” instead of “level up” because there is no real level system in Final Fantasy XIII. Instead, it takes a cue from Final Fantasy X, with its new Crystarium System. Aside from having a stupid name, the Crystarium system involves characters spending points to learn new abilities or increased individual stats on a grid much like Final Fantasy X’s sphere grid. There is of course, a decent amount of customization available, but characters will always end up falling into basic roles, some being better healers, some being damage monkeys, some being tanks, and so forth.

There are no “towns” in Final Fantasy XIII, at least in the traditional RPG sense. Sure there are places where people live, but you won’t find these settlements sporting the normal Inns, Weapon Shops, Item Shops, and so forth. Instead, your basic town duties of heal;, find better equipment, and shove off into danger once again, all take place at save points. So it’s not like the game has any fewer features than your normal Final Fantasy. Instead, the designers seemed to want to get rid of towns for the sake of “realism.” However, how real you can be in a game that has you fighting giant cactuses, is debatable. Speaking of giant cactuses, all the enemies in Final Fantasy XIII roam around the map screen, but you still fight them in separate battle screens. So the encounters aren’t random, but they also aren’t integrated into exploration either.

I haven’t completed the game yet, and I probably won’t complete it until it comes out in America, simply due to the difficulty of translation. As for what I have seen thus far, the game is very linear. Most of your actions are totally rail-roaded, and you are basically pushing along between one scripted story event and the next. There isn’t much of a focus on exploration, but I have a feeling that I won’t mind as much when I can actually figure out what is going on in the story. Either way, make no mistake; this is a very cinematic game. Much like Xenosaga, it feels like a movie, with some fights interspersed. If you are looking for a video game with more game and less video, this might not be the game for you.

Overall, Final Fantasy XIII seems to be a mix of traditional Final Fantasy elements, and new innovations which work pretty well. It has been fun to play thus far and will probably be even more fun when the American version drops. Keep your eyes peeled for this one. It won’t be the next revolutionary RPG classic we are all looking for, but it will certainly be a better addition to the Final Fantasy family than some others have been in the past (*cough cough* Mystic Quest). We will have a full review when it releases.