BOMT: Final Fantasy XIII

I’ve caught up with life, time to catch up on some games. I am continuing with my computer science degree, upgraded from single room apartment to two story house, and I’m here to seal the lid with the Box of Many Things. The only way to conclude this amazing adventure is with Final Fantasy XIII. How does it stack up to the others? Did they add too many ingredients and spoil the soup? Let’s find out.

It’s not even rhetorical to ask if you’re familiar with Final Fantasy, so I’ll assume you know that Square Enix is up to thirteen installments, and this one has a lot of that down home Final Fantasy feel, introducing a group of people who are brought together by the threat of their world coming to an end in a cyber-punk fashion. We have the main protagonist, Lightning, who is a female Cloud Strife with a gunblade. She is arguably the coolest character, and in my opinion makes up for the lineup of FFX-2. She is teamed up with the winner of the black dynamite lookalike contest, and Chocobo enthusiast, Sazh Katzroy. After they attack a transport train they are grouped with the rest of the lovable bunch during what feels like an ethnic cleansing. The game focuses mainly on Lightning and the trench coat brawler, Snow. Snow was dating Lightning’s sister and pissed off a ton of people and now they can use mako (Shut Up! It’s always going to be called mako!). The game is visually stunning, to the point where I didn’t mind the high amount of cut scenes; it really helped you get an idea of the scale of your surroundings. The game does like to show you the scenic route with consistent strolls down what feels like endless corridor-style roads. You are offered to pass by enemies along the way and, believe me, they are not being coy; you will get your ass handed to you if you’re feeling too ballsy.

With the obvious squishy enemies, you can take the time to grind some XP by taking them out and even collecting some orb items to help customize your arsenal. A note on that; I felt that collecting/buying “junk” items to enhance your weapons was a bit of a letdown. You could stay with one weapon half the game, feeding it rare candies of sorts until it’s a happy little sword of destruction, but then why ever get a new weapon? The new ones look cool but you’re starting the process all over again and soon realize that you already used everything on your current weapon. Even if you scrap it for spare parts you’re stuck with the Buster 4s which doesn’t feel like much of an upgrade at all.

Onto the goofy group of misfits you get to journey with. Everyone has some quirky reason for being on this quest and granted, some of them are worth listening to, maybe even for relatable reasons. Given enough time people start opening up to one another and develop back stories. I enjoyed learning more about everyone, because it didn’t make any sense in the beginning, but I felt that the game teamed up the wrong people at the wrong times. Sazh is a father with no son to whom he can give advice and guide, and he reveals this to the weird Australian girl who just doesn’t really have anything relevant to say. Lightning gets stuck playing mom to this kid who just lost his mother during an attack back in the city, and is blaming Snow for it. What the game is doing here is relying on the stronger characters to justify the weaker ones, which just makes me question why the weaker ones are getting so much face time to begin with. I will admit that each character plays their role during combat even though you could mold them to be whatever you want from the first battle, but that’s probably left for a second run through.

During combat you get to assign healers, magic users, berserker attackers, etc. The newest introduction to Final Fantasy was the acquisition and use of summons. First, you have to defeat the summon in whatever form it takes. Near the end of the fight, you hit the awesome button and your summon is now a motorcycle. This is where you either turned off your console or spit coffee all over the T.V. You are now able to use that summon in battle either in the form in which you fought it, or as an epic mount. Both are effective, one is ridiculous. I don’t know if the summons become stronger later on, but the ones i used didn’t seem to stay as long as I needed them. While exploring their set of moves I kept hitting the “Dismiss” button accidentally and never saw them again for the rest of the fight.

As a game I would say this one was enjoyable. As an RPG, it fulfilled the criteria and satisfied on an automated or customizable level. There is definitely a lot you can do to tweak the group to meet your needs in combat. With any Final Fantasy game, you need to be patient and take the time to explore all of your options. Most people start the game liking the rail roading feel and having all these things which they are given, but once they are let out into the world with an airship and a captain’s badge, they huddle in the corner and cry. Like a lot of games these days, this one has a learning curve and most people just want to stay on track and avoid any extra reading and just play the game through. FFXIII was fun to play, annoying at some parts, but a good experience. It doesn’t rank with my favorite Final Fantasy games but i would give it to someone who hasn’t played one in a while to see just what Square Enix has been up to, and that they can still pump out a fun game. Final Fantasy didn’t have a good run at a sequel with X-2 but Square Enix announced a FFXIII sequel back in January. Check out the trailer and tell me what you think.

I want to thank you all for staying with me through the Box of Many Things. I especially want to thank Zach Noble from Michigan for sending me the Box of Many Things and invite anyone else interested to send me games you want to be played, just send all requests to my email and we’ll get in touch. I also have been inspired to finally get my first game related tattoo. I will be starting it soon and have pictures up along the way. To those in the community with game related tattoos I would love to see them. Please send all pictures to my email: Chase@Golgotron.com and we’ll get them all together in a gallery for the site.