So I began playing Final Fantasy XIII yesterday for the Xbox 360. After opening it, I was instantly disappointed by how it was packaged. The game includes three discs. I had been expecting these discs to be set in different tabs, but instead they were all piled on top of one another, in the wrong order. I had to check for scratches just to make sure they hadn’t been damaged by the way they were set. I also realized I had no idea how many discs there were supposed to be. I couldn’t find where it was written on the package, so I had to check online. The game includes three discs, apparently, but previously I had heard four. Maybe that was for the PS3 version. It also came with the promise of a “free item” if I registered my game at members/square-enix.com/na. The site itself was lagging to death, and I was kicked several times trying to register, or rather re-register. I had already registered at their site years ago, but apparently that wasn’t good enough. I had to register with a second site of the same name, then link my two accounts. This caused numerous 401 errors. I was trying to play while dicking around with their shitty site, so I eventually gave up and went back to the game. I came back a few hours later and it was closed for repairs. Fifteen minutes later, I finally re-re-registered and got my gift: male and female Avatar soldier uniforms. The uniforms themselves look gay as humanly possible, and don’t include the helmet the soldiers in the game wear. They also look completely different. Not even the most desperate Cosplayer would dress like this. I was also informed I couldn’t download the female outfit because my Avatar wasn’t female. So here I now held the code for an item I owned, and I couldn’t use it. I gave it to my fiancee’s Avatar, without her consent, because I wasn’t going to let it go to waste.
The intro movie for Final Fantasy XIII looks exactly like Avatar, the movie, where they’re flying around on those fucking alien bird things, and I mean EXACTLY. It’s just another in a long line of things Avatar completely resembles without actually infringing on anyone’s copyrights. Getting into the gameplay, I found there wasn’t much to be had. Final Fantasy has always been a “Step One: Select Attack. Step Two: Wait. Step Three: Repeat,” affair, but this game has something called, “Auto-Attack.” Meaning you only ever have to select the one option, and maybe throw in a potion or two. Seriously, every battle so far involved no strategy whatsoever. As for equipment, you only ever control one character out of three at any time, called the leader, and they only have the option of equipping a weapon and an accessory. No armour, no materia, nothing else. The game is about 80% cut scenes, and 15% walking along a straight path. I’ve had battles that laster 2 seconds, and I know that because it shows you the time.
It’s really more movie than game, and in terms of drama, they already killed off someone’s mom in slo-mo during the first hour of play. Then immediately went into a scene with everyone laughing and high-fiving each other. Way to ruin the mood, Final Fantasy.
Also: the game’s sole black man used the phrase, “I’m getting to old for this,” during the first fifteen minutes.
Also: the heroine’s name is Lighting, and she uses lightning magic. Clever. At least Black Lightning added the “Black” to his name to show you he wasn’t a one-trick pony.
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