QuickNavigation - FF Odyssey Final Fantasy XIII (Last updated on 01/05/2012)

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By: wsim

In the world of Gran Pulse, the Sanctum government of the floating world of Cocoon orders a mass purge of civilians who have been in contact with the world below of Pulse, feared by Cocoon.  Several hundred years ago, Pulse and Cocoon were at war with each other.  The worlds are controlled by the fal'Cie, mechanical beings with god-like powers, each based around a crystal and created by "The Maker".  Each fal'Cie handles a specific task.  They have the ability to mark humans living in Pulse and Cocoon as their servants.  These servants are known as l'Cie and are given a focus (otherwise known as task) to complete.  If they complete their task in time, they are transformed to crystal and given eternal life, according to myth.  Otherwise, they turn into monsters known as Cie'th.  The l'Cie are not specifically given their focus, but must interpret them based off visions and illusions.

Lightning, a former soldier of Cocoon, begins her fight against the Sanctum in order to save her younger sister Serah, who has branded an unwilling servant of a god-like being from Pulse.  Along the way, Lightning is joined by a group of allies, who all find themselves in the same predicament and branded enemies of Cocoon, the very world which they live in.  At the same time, they all seek to find their assigned task and avoid being turned into monsters or crystals in the end.

Civilians of Cocoon are being purged or evicted from Cocoon after being in contact with something from Pulse.  As the game progresses, flashbacks of events from the previous 13 days are shown.  The trigger event is when a fal'Cie from Pulse was discovered in Cocoon.  The game begins with Lightning and Sazh Katzroy, a civilian pilot and father to a young boy named Dajh.  Lightning and Sazh derail a train bound from Pulse to save Lightning's sister Serah, a l'Cie from the fal'Cie Anima.  In the following battle, Snow Villiers, who is also Serah's fiancée, leads his resistance group NORA to rescue the purge exiles.  Some of the exiles, including Hope's mother are killed.  Hope is a young boy, struggling with his relationship to his parents.  Snow heads to Anima to save Serah and joins up with other exiles, Hope and Vanille.  It is revealed later in the game that Vanille is a l'Cie from Pulse.  The two groups eventually meet at the fal'Cie Anima and find Serah.  However, they find her just as she turns into crystal.  Anima brands them all as l'Cie and are all cast out to different parts of Cocoon.  As this transformation takes place, the new l'Cie have the same vision: a monster known as Ragnarok.  Snow remains with Serah in her crystallized form as the others leave.

After being captured and detained aboard the airship Lindblum, Snow meets Cid Raines, a Sanctum Brigadier General in the Sanctum Cavalry branch who does not trust the government and Fang, a Pulse l'Cie who is working with the Cavalry as well.  The others escape from the PSICOM corps of the Sanctum government, but are split apart during an air strike.  Hope and Lightning travel to Hope's hometown of Palomporum, while Sazh and Vanille head to Nautilus.  Lightning accidentally supports Hope's mission of assassinating Snow as revenge for his mother's death.  Sazh reveals to Vanille about how his son Dajh was turned to l'Cie and taken by PSICOM to find out his focus.  Eventually, Lightning tries to convince Hope not to go through with his revenge on Snow.  Shortly thereafter, they meet with Snow and Fang.  The backstory of Fang and Vanille is revealed, as they are l'Cie from Pulse and turned into crystals, only to return to human form 13 days prior to the start of the game, sparking the Purge.  Meanwhile, Hope attempts to assassinate Snow but does not go through with it after Snow saves him from an air strike.  With the help of Cid, the party escapes Palomporum.  In Nautilus, Vanille explains to Sazh that the reason for Dajh turning into a l'Cie was because of her, as a l'Cie of Pulse.  PSICOM manages to capture and confine Sazh and Vanille on the airship Palamecia.

The remaining members of the party stage a rescue mission and meet up with Sazh and Vanille.  They confront the Sanctum Primarch, Galenth Dysley.  He reveals himself as Barthandelus, the fal'Cie Cocoon ruler and informs the party that their focus is to transform into Ragnarok and destroy the sleeping fal'Cie Orphan, who keeps Cocoon afloat.  Defeating Orphan will result in the destruction of Cocoon.  After the party escapes, they learn from Cid that the fal'Cie believe that Cocoon's destruction will summer "The Maker", creator of both Cocoon and Pulse.  The fal'Cie are unable to harm Orphan themselves.  Later on, Fang and Vanille tell the party that they were responsible for the War of Transgression centuries earlier and their focus is the same.  After traveling to Oerba, the hometown of Fang and Vanille on Pulse, the party attempts to remove their l'Cie marks but are unsuccessful.  They confront Dysley again, who mentions that he is forcing Cid, now head of the Sanctum to create chaos in Cocoon to force the Cavalry to attack Cid and Orphan.

Cocoon is infiltrated by the party and they hope to end its impending destruction.  As they march toward Orphan, they learn that the Cavalry have been turned into Cie'th.  After defeating Dysley, Orphan awakens and combines with Dysley, convincing Fang to complete her focus and transform into Ragnarok while the others are apparently transforming into Cie'th.  However, the party makes a re-appearance in human form, preventing Fang's transformation.  They fight and defeat Orphan, escaping Cocoon in the process.  Cocoon is now falling toward Pulse and the rest of the party turns into crystal, completing their focus.  Fang and Vanille stay on Cocoon and together they transform into Ragnarok.  The collision between Pulse and Cocoon is prevented by them, as they turn into a crystal pillar between both worlds.  The remainder of the party wakes from their crystallization on Pulse and find that their l'Cie brands finally disappear.  Snow and Lightning reunite with Serah and Sazh reunites with Dajh.  As the game ends, Vanille and Fang oversee a new beginning for the people of Cocoon.

The in-game graphics, cutscenes and FMV sequences are incredibly beautiful.  The backgrounds and environments are also very stunning to look at.  This is by far the game's most strongest point.  While there are occasional bits of slowdown, it doesn't detract from the amazing visuals.  Presentation is also top-notch.  It is unfortunate that most of the game has a very repetitive and linear design, however that seems to be more of a design and gameplay fault here.  Battle effects are very flashy and quick.

Character models are very detailed and continue to increase the standard that we come to expect from Final Fantasy games.  There is little to complain about here, as there aren't any real flaws in this category that I could come up with.

The game plays out as an over sprawling dungeon crawler, filled with constant battles against endless mobs of monsters.  Unlike other entries in the series, there is very little else in terms of variety.  There are no open-ended worlds to explore at your leisure (With the brief exception of Gran Pulse, which is still fairly limited), no towns or real interaction with non-playable characters that are so evident in previous incarnations of Final Fantasy.  Clearly, the focus of the game is on the battles.  There is no substance anywhere else.  This is one of many reasons why this is very disappointing.  Battles operate quite differently from previous games.  Instead of a menu-based system and inputting the commands for characters, you only directly control one party member.  As the game progresses, you learn that simply attacking and healing is not sufficient enough to take down many monsters.  Players will have to fill up another separate gauge and get the enemy into "stagger" status, where they are vulnerable and weak to attacks.  There are different ways and combinations to complete this gauge.  Party members can be assigned roles, which specializes in certain abilities/actions.  For example, medics can use healing magic, commandos are offensive attacking characters and ravagers can cast attack magic (Fire, Thunder, etc.)

Roles can be shifted on the fly in battle by way of a "Paradigm Shift".  Additionally, you can set up various combinations (Paradigms) of roles before battle and can also switch between them in-battle.  The battle is lost and you get a Game Over when the party leader is KO'ed.  This frustrated me greatly, as I was used to reviving other characters with one member left standing hundreds if not thousands of times throughout my years of playing RPGs.  It is still annoying, but that is how the game works.  I've found the paradigm shift and exploring different combinations fairly interesting, unfortunately it doesn't really kick in later in the game.  For much of the early part of the game, you can only control one or two character parties and the roles you have access to are limited.

The Crystarium system works very much like the Sphere Grid in FFX.  Crystarium points are gained after completing battles and can be used to learn new abilities, or upgrade attributes such as magic, strength, increase HP and so forth.  Certain abilities can only be learned by specific roles and characters.  Weapons can be bought or found as per usual in RPGs.  They can be upgraded to different levels by using component parts to gain experience points.  For each weapon, a certain catalyst can be used to upgrade it to the next weapon after it reaches a specific level.  Accessory upgrading works in the same way.  Component parts are found throughout the game through treasures, monster drops and purchasing them in stores.

Battles are given a rating out of 5 stars, based on the target time and the time taken to finish the battle.  It reminds me a lot of Sonic the Hedgehog games, rewarding players on speed.  Better monster drops are obtained when 5 starring battles, for instance.  

Another complaint that I have in this game is that it is extremely linear, even for RPG standards.  The game is literally running around fighting battle after battle in a near straight line, with storyline sequences scattered in-between for a break in the action.  The only exception is the world of Gran Pulse, which you reach after roughly the 25 hour mark.  At this point, you can finally take a break and venture off into side-missions, which consist of hunting other specific monsters.  While this may sound pretty good at first, it gets extremely dull and boring fast.  The only sidequests in the game are random monster hunting.  To be honest, I really miss the fun and variety of the sidequests in previous FF titles such as FFIX and FFVII.  Hell, even another card game would have been a nice addition.  The dungeon and level design is mediocre at best, there are many times when I would get absolutely sick running through tube-like dungeons over and over again.  The pacing of this game is horrendous.

On the bright side, some familiar remnants of Final Fantasy are present, including Chocobo riding in one specific area, potions in battle (quite useless later on), shops were you can buy things and other miscellaneous items.  Credit to the development team and designers for attempting something different to break the mould, however, I consider it to be a failed experiment.

The storyline failed to capture my attention.  While it has some promising aspects, a few characters that had great potential either lacked in terms of the character development department or simply saw too little screen time to form a realistic opinion.  Final Fantasy XIII had several scenes that created a good sense of tension and surprise, however, they are too few and far between.  I was especially disappointed in the way the storyline was presented.  Plot details were poorly explained and players frequently had to rely on the in-game "Datalog" to piece together many important aspects of the storyline, including background information on certain characters.  To be frank, I don't think this is acceptable.  When the game does such a terrible job at presenting a key essential such as this, it reflects badly on the game itself.

As for the characters, many were not very likeable in my opinion.  I was never able to resonate or connect with most of the party.  In every other FF game, I was able to at least pick out a few characters that I did enjoy.  For Final Fantasy XIII, not so much.  Some characters, including many of the villains had lacklustre character development that also helped drag the storyline down.  The pacing was not very well done and felt that the first portion of the game was rather uninspired and mundane.  In many points throughout the game, it seemed that the magic or tension of Final Fantasy was clearly missing.

The soundtrack of the game is wonderfully written and done by Masashi Hamauzu, who also co-composed the music in Final Fantasy X.  Voice acting was well-done and although I've found some voices a little bit irritating, they complement the characters quite well.  Though the music is not as memorable or intense as previous FF entries, there are a lot of solid tracks with a decent amount of variety to go through.  The original FF XIII theme song (Kimi ga Iru Kara) was done by Sayuri Sugiwara, but was replaced by Leona Lewis' "My Hands" for the international release of the game.

I've found the battles to be quite enjoyable and changing combinations while in-battle is a welcome change to previous FF games.  The complexity, depth and difficulty was also appreciated.  You will find that the battle difficulty ramps up considerably toward the end of the game.  The battles and gameplay presented enough new concepts and ideas to keep things relatively fresh. 

Unfortunately, the constant dungeon crawling, endless battles, lack of freedom to explore and repetitive side monster hunts really made the game much more tedious than other FF games.  This game could have used more variety in exploration and side quests/missions.  Towards the end of the game, I was burnt out and just wanted to finish.  The game outside of the battle system was not interesting enough to entertain me for long.  I've never been this bored by an FF game in a very long time.  The storyline and characters did not do enough to grab my attention.

Final Fantasy XIII does manage to try some new approaches to traditional RPG fare, including the battle system and other gameplay elements.  The game is a beautiful visual piece with amazing rendered characters and backgrounds, along with a solid musical score.

While very impressive from a visual perspective, FF XIII falls far short in delivering a memorable RPG experience.  What was missing is the sense of epic adventure found in many RPG titles.  The game took far too long to ever get remotely interesting and suffered from poorly designed levels, pacing and did not at all feel like the Final Fantasy that we know and love.  Character development was lacking and the plot presentation was bad beyond belief.

The magic that is Final Fantasy was very much missing in action for this one.  I've found the game too much of a chore, boring and tedious.  However, the battle system presented a unique sense of complexity and depth that was intriguing.  This game had potential but did not do a good job of balancing out its many aspects.  FF XIII is a disappointment in my mind and one of the least enjoyable RPGs that I've played in a long time.  It is an average game, but for Final Fantasy standards, it needs to be much better.  Not good enough.

Lyrics

Kimi ga Iru Kara - Lyrics and written by Sayuri Sugawara, Yukino Nakajima
(English translation) 

“It’s okay if you cry,” because you suddenly told me so
For some reason, I felt happy and a smile spilled instead of tears

With way-too-awkward words, I ended up hurting you
However, you didn’t leave me
And even now, you’re supporting me like this, surely…

A wish I want to fulfill, a dream I want to fulfill, thoughts I want to send, everything-
The act of continuing to believe summons a miracle and it’s connected to the future
Forever, hey, I want you to watch over me forever
Dear My Friends

“You’ll be fine,” because you told me so when we were about to part
The loneliness that I felt, with that single remark, vanished neatly

To open a new door- Anyone would be scared and full of anxiety about it
But because if I recall you, who pushed my back
Strength comes and overflows in me

Honest feelings, inexorable things, frank words, everything-
If I could convey them audibly, then the future would unfold
Always, yeah, because you exist in my heart always
Dear My Friends

Even if I stand still, even if I seem to forget
I vow to face forward time and time again, for no matter how many times
Light shines in from the sky that I looked up at
Until the day when I can meet you again

Honest feelings, inexorable things, frank words, everything-
If I could convey them audibly, then the future would unfold

A wish, a dream I want to fulfill, thoughts I want to send, everything-
The act of continuing to believe summons a miracle and it’s connected to the future
Forever, hey, I want you to watch over me forever
Dear My Friends

"My Hands" - Leona Lewis Written by Ina Wroldsen, Birgisson
Produced by Arnthor Birgisson

I wake in the morning
Tired of sleeping
Get in the shower
And make my bed alone
I put on my makeup
Talk into the mirror
Ready for a new day
Without you and

I walk steady on my feet
I talk, my voice obeys me
I go out at night
Sleep without the lights and
I do all of the things I have to
Keeping you of my mind
When I think I'll be all right
I am always wrong cause

(My hands) don't want to start again
(My hands) no they don't want to understand
(My hands) they just shake and try to break whatever peace I may find
(My hands) they only agree to hold
(Your hands) and they don't want to be without
(Your hands) and they will not let me go
no they will not let me go

I talk about you now
And yeah I do without crying
I go out with my friends now
I stay home all alone
And I don't see you everywhere
And I can say your name easily
I laugh a little louder
Without you and

I see different shades now
(and I) I'm almost never afraid now
But when I think I'll be okay
I am always wrong cause

(My hands) don't want to start again
(My hands) no they don't want to understand
(My hands) they just shake and try to break whatever peace I may find
(My hands) they only agree to hold
(Your hands) no they don't want to be without
(Your hands) and they will not let me go
no they will not let me go

Sometimes I wake
I see them reaching out for you
Quietly break
Whatever shields I spent so long building up
I cannot fake
Cause when they cry I'm almost broken
They miss holding my baby

My hands, ahhhhh
no they don't want to understand
they just shake and try to break whatever peace I may find
(My hands)
(Your hands) they don't want to be without
(Your hands) and they will not let me go
no they will not let me go

(My hands) don't want to start again
(My hands) no they don't want to understand
(My hands) shake and try to break whatever peace I may find
(My hands) only agree to hold
(Your hands) no they don't want to be without (they don't want to be without)
(Your hands) and they will not let me go
no they will not let me go

no they will not let me go...