There's two ways to talk about Final Fantasy XIII. The first is to take the fanboy approach and bitch about the fact it's not a slavish remake of VII or XII – whether openly stated or not, that's the subtext around which people criticize the game.
The alternative is to examine the series and understand the team that made it – in order to better gauge what the game seeks to achieve.
The first thing that should be noted is that, despite the game suddenly being vogue-ish due to its "offline-mmo" structure, is that Square-Enix consider FFXII a commercial failure. Fans in Japan found the game too complex and the open mission structure was considered aimless by western reviewers. FFXII was an amazing game, for sure, but like FFXIII it bore harsh criticism for not being what fans expected.Faced with this, Square has obviously focused on the core elements of the franchise – a cast of unusual characters, an emotionally driven plot, a journey of personal growth, a tour of increasingly fantastical environments, and a nuanced, stunning looking, battle system.
These things, I'd argue, are the core of what fans have loved about Final Fantasy since FFVII was launched to rapture around the globe.
What Square has done then, is stripped away the chaff and delivered an experience that focuses on these things.
I ask you, when was the last time you played a JRPG where a town wasn't really just a search for a character with the right piece of dialogue to advance to plot? Basically just a switch for a locked door. Does having that make a game better? It didn't in Lost Odyssey – the towns were utterly contrived. What about a traditional JRPG overworld or map? Navigating a sprite across a map, to the next destination – praying that you won't have too many random battles on the way? Seriously? People miss this stuff?
Part of the problem is that the most hardcore fans of any series also tend to be the most vocal – and herein lies the problem. These people are also most likely to want more of the same!
We need to look at the team too – This is largely a Final Fantasy: X 'dream team' of talent from within Square. At the helm we have Yoshinori Kitase (producer), Motomu Toriyama (director) and composer Masashi Hamauzu – all of which worked on Final Fantasy: X, a game which is broadly similar to FFXIII. The structure is broadly the same too – only removing the plodding sections and the padding has created something akin to a joyride through the best of what makes Final Fantasy great.
My experience with FFXIII has been utterly joyous – the production values are immense. The environments and as beautiful as they are fantastic and after four hours play the battle system is just beginning to open up into something truly marvelous. The music is some of the finest in any game I've ever played.
The simple truth is that this game is the first JRPG in a long while to take any sort of risk – criticizing it for not being Fallout, Fable or Mass Effect is missing the point somewhat. This isn't trying to be those games and it would be a disservice to slavishly follow them anyway.
This is a beautiful game from a company that basically defines the whole JRPG genre – and few companies can match the level of technical mastery on display in the game.
I urge you to look beyond the critics and the slow opening level – because beyond those two things you'll find something truly special. Something that deserves far more than a mere 5 from Edge or 80% on Metacritic.
