Final Fantasy XIII has been out for a few months now (and even longer than that in Japan), but a late review is better than no review, right? Besides, I’m not as young as I used to be, and I can’t polish off these epic JRPGs in a week or two like I could in the good ol’ days. It’s been a long time since the last true Final Fantasy title was released, and as the first (and perhaps only, at this rate) entry of the series to be made for the current generation of consoles, FFXIII faced some lofty expectations. How well does it live up to the Final Fantasy pedigree? Well…

Let’s start with the story, an integral part of any RPG experience. As in most recent FF games, XIII’s plot follows the adventures of a group of angsty young people with impossible haircuts. However, unlike in past entries, where the game seemed determined to have its ragtag group of heroes win over the hearts of players, FFXIII labors exhaustively for about the first third of the game to make its protagonists as unlikeable as possible. Ostensibly, this is done in order to create a greater sense of character development, as the characters “grow up” and mature, but the result is that the first part of the game is genuinely hard to get through because of the inherent difficulty in getting attached to characters you don’t like.

The plot itself is pretty standard Final Fantasy fare: an evil mastermind hatches a confusing plot to summon an ancient and terrible power in order to destroy the world, and an unlikely group of heroes whose lives have been drawn together by fate realize they are the only ones who can stop him and save the planet. The story has enough plot twists, betrayals, and unlikely alliances to keep things interesting, if not always completely coherent. It’s clear that Square Enix put a lot of effort and care into crafting Final Fantasy XIII’s worlds, but even after spending 50+ hours with the game, I still find myself a mite fuzzy on some of the details of the story. I guess that’s about par for the course when it comes to Final Fantasy, though.

Alright, that’s enough talk about story. Besides, everyone really plays Final Fantasy for the deep, rewarding character progression systems that are a hallmark of the series, right? FFXIII’s progression system is called the Crystarium (imagine FFX’s sphere grid in 3D), and I’m sorry to say that I didn’t much care for it.

In theory, the Crystarium allows players to custom tailor their characters with a diverse and unique set of stats and skills. In practice, it’s a lot less interesting than I just made it sound. Because each character initially only has three roles available, and because the game constantly “level caps” your characters by preventing them from moving further up the Crystarium until you reach the next chapter, you don’t really have any choice in how your characters develop.  Even later in the game, when the level caps are somewhat relaxed and your characters are given access to all six roles, there is a surprising lack of customization available. One of the most rewarding aspects of role playing games is watching your characters grow into finely tuned killing machines with access to a suite of powerful spells and special abilities that can turn the tide of battle. Sadly, FFXIII never really delivered that experience for me, and I blame that fact upon the lackluster Crystarium system.

Complementing Final Fantasy XIII’s shallow and restrictive Crystarium is a boring and uninspired equipment upgrade system. There are two types of equippable items in the game: weapons and accessories. Unlike in most RPGs, where players upgrade their equipment by finding new gear with better stats and flashier colors, FFXIII allows players to improve their existing equipment by expending consumable components in order to increase the item’s level. Higher level items have better stats, and… that’s about it, really. Once you get an item to a high enough level, you can use a transformational catalyst that will upgrade it into a different item. Unfortunately, the majority of accessory transformations (and 100% of weapon transformations) just give you a cosmetically different item with the same stat benefits. Some weapons have an additional equip effect, such as boosting the power of cure spells, but at the end of the day, you’re basically just choosing between a weapon with more strength, a weapon with more magic, or one with an even balance of both. And you will use that weapon (in a couple of nearly identical incarnations) for the entire game. How exciting is that?

Another issue with Final Fantasy XIII is its claustrophobic environments. FFXIII offers a seemingly endless sequence of hallways, catwalks, and circular arenas. I know the go-anywhere-do-anything sandbox RPG is more common in western games like Oblivion, but I really cannot overstate how much FFXIII feels like an RPG-on-rails experience. Without towns to visit or dungeons to explore, the game’s environments boil down to a series of long, winding galleries full of monsters that you must run through in order to reach the boss and move on to the next area.  There is one large, open-air section of the game, complete with side quests and hidden treasure, but the whole area feels like an afterthought, rather than a necessary, important part of the overall experience.

If you’ve read this far, you must be wondering why the hell I devoted 50+ hours of my life that I can’t get back to playing this game when this review has been little more than a laundry list of complaints. Well, for one, as a professional amateur game reviewer, I am duty bound to play the game to completion. The other reason is that despite Final Fantasy XIII’s flaws, I still enjoyed most of the experience. Once the characters stopped acting like idiots, and the game was kind enough to reveal its key plot elements, I found it a lot easier to get into the game. The first several chapters took a long time for me to get through, but my speed (and interest) increased as time went on.

It also helps that Final Fantasy XIII has a solid battle system. For this game, Square Enix streamlined the fighting process as much as possible in order to emphasize speed and action. Characters start every fight with full HP and a charging ATB bar. Each action that a character can take in battle, such as attacking or casting a spell, expends a number of ATB segments. Attacking a single foe uses only one segment, but casting a devastating multi-target spell could require up to three ATB segments, so some strategy is involved in determining the most efficient use of resources. The flip side of this is that there is no such thing as mana or MP in FFXIII, so characters are free to cast spells until they’re blue in the face. Because the player no longer has to worry about healing the party in between battles or rationing mana usage, each individual fight is faster and more intense, creating more drama in even seemingly mundane encounters.

It should also be said that Final Fantasy XIII is a challenging game. Over the course of your playthrough, you will die. A lot. I know I did. It’s frustrating at first, but the game is very forgiving and will let you retry any failed encounter. Most boss battles are both strategic and challenging, forcing you to react quickly and make smart tactical decisions. The Paradigm Shift system allows your characters to switch roles at a moment’s notice in the heat of battle, and the key to victory lies in knowing when to switch things up. The roles themselves are fairly basic: commandos are your physical fighters, medics heal, ravagers cast offensive spells, etc… but there is a great deal of nuance in how these roles interact with each other. Suffice it to say that despite a few hiccups (many battles will simply play themselves out if you select the auto-battle command every turn, and I didn’t really like the way summons were implemented), Final Fantasy XIII’s combat is pretty damned good.

As much as Final Fantasy XIII differs from previous titles in the series, its production values absolutely live up to the high standards set by pioneering games like FFVII. The music features the sweeping orchestral score that fans have come to expect, and the English voice acting is solid – even if the translated dialogue itself isn’t always eloquent. And then there are the visuals. Honestly, I thought I was long done being impressed with the graphics of this console generation. Instead, I found myself repeatedly staring in slack-jawed wonder at the beautiful images on my television. I lost track of how many times I stopped my character in mid-stride to pan the camera and admire the scenery, or the subtle character animations. The visuals in Final Fantasy XIII are quite literally arresting, and if a picture is worth a thousand words, then a fifty hour game chock full of eye candy is worth at least a few points on an otherwise mixed review. Equally impressive is how well the Xbox 360 (the version I played) handles running the game. Even without installing it to the hard drive, loading screens were relatively short and uncommon, and – aside from some very noticeable slowdown in some of the humongous outdoor areas later in the game – framerate was always smooth and steady.

So, with all of that being said, is Final Fantasy XIII worth fifty-plus hours and fifty-plus dollars of your respective time and money? I’m afraid that all depends on what you want out of the game. Do you want to go on a high definition roller coaster ride (albeit one that’s slow to start) through a pair of beautifully imagined worlds that will repeatedly leave you breathless? If so, FFXIII‘s fast-paced action and high production values will no doubt leave you satisfied. If, on the other hand, you don’t mind the slow, plodding pace of most conventional RPG’s, but do crave their depth, complexity, and high level of character customization, then this might not be for you. This game is difficult to rate because, as a gamer, my relationship with it is – as they say on Facebook – complicated.  Final Fantasy XIII left me bitter and angry on more than one occasion, but we also shared enough magical moments together to make the whole experience worthwhile.

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Things We Liked: Jaw-dropping visuals. High production values all-around. Combat that keeps you on your toes and rewards you for being aggressive.

Things We Disliked: Terrible character progression. So linear that it makes other Final Fantasy games look like Grand Theft Auto. Characters and plot develop painfully slowly.

Target Audience: Graphics junkies. Final Fantasy zealots. Famitsu and Dengeki, apparently (they felt the game deserved a 39/40, and 120/100, respectively). People who feel that Final Fantasy needs fewer RPG elements?

(Final Fantasy XIII – Developer: Square Enix. Publisher: Square Enix. Available on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 – Xbox 360 version reviewed. A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review purposes. Unfamiliar with CFD!’s review system? Read our newly revised explanation here.)