Game Reviews

It's hard to talk about Final Fantasy XIII without getting into a debate about what an RPG should or shouldn't be. With a series as beloved and long-running as Final Fantasy, combined with its history of reinventing itself (or at the very least, changing things up) with every major entry, it's understandable that a lot of nervous hopes ride on the first FF of the current gen. We all have our favorite game in the series (which we'd practically go to the death defending), so it makes sense that fan expectations for FFXIII vary widely too.

So it follows then, that since the Japanese release, fan reaction to certain aspects of FFXIII has been mixed. If you're reading this, you've probably already skimmed through many a kneejerk reaction forum post of rage that made you anxious to see the reality of the final product for yourself. So let's get right to it.This is the main point that causing some otherwise sane people to lose their freaking gourds.

At the very beginning (the first few hours), we're talking 2D side-scroller levels of linearity. Walk forward, fight some dudes. Walk forward a few more steps and fight some more dudes. The path might curve a bit from time to time and have little offshoots that contain treasure chests, but that's the extent of it.

But listen, it's awesome – really! There's no need to fall into a pit of despair and fanboy rage just yet (unless you're an utterly unreasonable person, then by all means go ahead).

The Final Fantasy series has never truly given the player freedom in a role-playing sense, and every major plot point in each Final Fantasy story (FFXI excepted, obviously) has been 100% fixed. FFXIII simply takes it a step further, streamlining the formula into a more controlled, more focused experience (and in the end it's not wildly different than the structure of Final Fantasy X).The upside to this structure is that the pacing is fantastic – from the first moments of the opening sequence, you really feel swept up in the story and action in a way that's completely unprecedented in a JRPG. There's no lengthy, tedious, expository opening cutscene where you watch the characters from afar and wait for the actual game to start. Instead, you're right there with Lightning and Sazh in the thick of the action as they throw themselves desperately into an us-against-world fight to survive.