Final Fantasy XIII
So, I managed to play 3 hours of Final Fantasy XIII last night. I finished the first few chapters, finally reached a point in the game where I can start leveling up and using strategy in fights, and earned three trophies for... well, I'm not entirely sure what. For not dying straight away, I think. So here are a few of my first impressions!
- The story makes more sense than I thought it would.
I was admittedly trying not to think too hard about the story, since I enjoy working with as few spoilers as possible going into a game (or book or movie or whatever), but from what little I knew, I admittedly couldn't make a whole lot of sense of things. But everything is actually very easy to understand in context. Plus, the game has... essentially a very good in-game encyclopedia. But unlike other games, the encyclopedia actually gives fairly important information, simplified but in detail, and reading each short entry makes the game much more understandable. It's certainly easier for me than trying to make sense of the intrigue and slightly archaic language towards the beginning of FFXII. - The battle controls are actually very cool.
I say this because in the demo, the controls admittedly weren't terrific. Each character has a set number of slots for battle actions. Battle actions can take up one or more slots, and you can perform the actions as soon as the ATB bar fills up for the slots. (For example, normal "Attack" takes up one slot. If you have two slots, you can either wait until the ATB bar fills up completely and attack twice, or you can enter one Attack command and attack once after the ATB bar fills halfway.) However, in the demo, you had to press a button once the ATB bar was filled in order to attack. Since it's obviously to your advantage to attack as soon as the ATB bar is filled, I would mash the O button as the ATB bar grew. Unfortunately, this caused an "error" beep to sound every. single. time, and my battles ended up filled with button mashing and loud beeping.
But they changed this so that now, the attack is automatically performed once the ATB bar is filled, and instead, you can press the Triangle button to perform attacks when the ATB bar is only partially filled. With no more beeping and no more button mashing, battles are very smooth. Plus, they now have a "fight" option that automatically fills your slots with appropriate attacks for the situation. I don't know if they actually changed it after the demo or just made the demo purposefully different for some reason, but either way, kudos. It works. - The camera is slightly wonky.
I don't know whether it's the speed or sensitivity or what, but there's something... off about the camera. It's just not entirely smooth, and the camera doesn't always seem to go where you want it to go, when you want it to go. I dunno. There's just... something off about it. - The Optima system is both easy to understand and kinda cool.
This is basically a combination of a level-up system (closest in nature to FFX), a class system, and an AI system. There are 6 "roles", each of which have their own stats that can be leveled-up, their own abilities, and their own ways of reacting as a supporting AI member in battle. You can pre-set different combinations of roles and switch between these presets during battle, making it easy to change the AI depending on the situation. Plus, you earn "CP" during battle, and the CP can be used to move along the Optima system spiral to power up (the spiral has branches and nodes, making it look a bit like the FFX system). It seems pretty cool so far. And now that I have access to the system, time for me to level up! Bwa-ha-ha. ^_^ - Vanille rules.
During Chapter 1, you meet 5/6 of your main characters: Lightning, Snow, Sazh, Hope, and Vanille. As a general rule, the "cute girl" tends not to be my favorite character. In most Square-Enix games, I'll *like* all of the characters, including the "cute girl", but she won't be my favorite. (I tend to respond to the more adult/mature characters, like Quistis and Lulu.) But in this game? Vanille is the bomb. It's hard to describe why I like her, but essentially, she's a bit like the wacky alien character; all of her social interactions are just slightly inappropriate. As an example, Hope is the hysterically trod upon young man who is just not having a good couple of days. (He spends most of the beginning of the game shrieking stuff like, "What am I *doing* with you people!?" or "Are you *insane*!?") And how does Vanille react to Hope's panic attacks? She wraps him up in a big hug and pats his head like a puppy. And Hope is usually so busy going "WTF?" that he forgets to panic. She's hugged him 2-3 times so far, and every time, it makes me laugh. Ohhhh Vanille. Ohhhh Hope. I like all of the characters so far, but the combination of Vanille and Hope cracks me up.
Unfortunately, I was informed this morning that we're all expected to come in to work tomorrow to help with the moving process at work (which makes very little sense because we'll be spending a lot of time waiting around for the actual movers to put up walls and stuff, and there's not a WHOLE lot of work to do, so I have no idea why we have to come in all day), and I nearly strangled the company president when I found out. Screw you! FFXIII is obviously more important than work!