A big step for mankind and loads of money for Square-Enix. However you choose to look at it, Final Fantasy will never be the same again after this title. Not for me anyway.

It´s quite fun to see how they managed to make a game that is so damn hard to follow and where battles are a choice of either sitting and inputing more commands than FFXII or just letting the game´s AI choose the attacks for you.

My first impression is pretty mixed so we´ll just point some stuff out.

Story
Lightning boards a train that holds a lot of people that are going to be purged. Removed from the floating city of Cocoon thanks to a fal’Cie. But given that Lightnings sister is a l’Cie, a human cursed by the fal’Cie she isn´t going to let her die.

Wrecking havoc on the train with her gravitional skills and that she was a part of the protective corps gives her an edge.

After kicking some personal and mechanic butt Lightning and a crew of people gathered at the fal’Cie finds Serah, only to watch as she turns to crystal, having fullfilled her focus.

Thrown into despair the fal’Cie crashes down into the world below the floating city Cocoon.

Then all of a sudden we are thrown back two days before anything has happend and we get to see Snow propose to Serah.

Back again to where we left our heroes, in a icy field of crystals. Having decided what to do: Destroy Sanctum that goes after l’Cie.

For everyone, a destiny
This is the first irritating thing about FFXIII, the story is told from so many directions. We start out with Lightning, get thrown to Snow, back to Lightning, then we are suddenly playing as Hope a third character along with Vanille. Then back to Lightning, then back to Vanille and back to two days before anything happends, before everything started or even further away from the stuff that you´ve done.

And with this time I´ve spent I´ve played as every character, which is five in total. It gets a little irritating always being thrown around the characters.

A determined fighter
Fighting battles is easy, pick automatic battle and the AI does the rest. What you have to keep your focus on is what classes that the characters are using. Against certain opponents a hard hitting commando, a sentinel for defence and a medic for healing might be a good choice.

For another enemy a status inflicting Saboteur with a magic using Ravanger protected by a Synergist is a good combo. You decide what role a character should have in battle. But you only controll the leader which is also seen as the on screen character.

If you want to make your own decisions all completely then pick “ability” and a list of available abilities for the role you´re using at the moment becomes availabke. Pick anyone, for a maximum of three abilities(in the beginning) and then choose who to unleash the pain on.

Rince and repeat.

The battles are pretty showy, Lightning doing backflips and using her gunsword as a gun firing away for example.

Confusing at first, but ?_? at the end
With all the jumping around in the storyline where every character gets his/her own time as the main character, developing their feelings of hate or regret or just about anything it´s hard to pick one character to like as you rarely get the time needed to get to know them.

Getting summons is also a pain in the ass. Each eidolon that you face need to see that you are worthy of being it´s master, so it challanges you. First of all it casts Doom on you, which places a time limit on the fight. Then you have a meter where is says “gestalt” that you need to fill before time runs out or you are killed to acquire the eidolon and can then summon it at will as long as you have the required TP.

Conclussion
The story is part interesting and part confusing. The battles are meant to be showy and irritating as a false choice of role for your characters makes it game over and you have to retry it. Getting sent back to just before the battle.

So it is indeed a new type of Final Fantasy, and as I both enjoy the game and look at it with a ?_? face I really cant say. This Final Fantasy is not for everyone, that is one thing that is for sure.

p.s if this text is a lot weirder than what I usually write it´s because I´m sick and have some kind of semi-version of the flu. No fever but muscle pains, running nose and a sore throat. Which trashes my mind and my ability to write properly. Sorry bout that. But I think the point got trough.