So I went to the doctor today, and while the wait was long, he basically said that the pain wasn't anything to worry about, just some kind of muscle strain/inflammation. I'm just supposed to take a crapton of advil every day and come back if it doesn't get better within a week. While I'm glad that it doesn't look to be anything serious, I don't like the idea of taking so much medicine every day. @_@ Oh well.

Aaaand as promised, here's my overall consensus on Final Fantasy XIII!


Overall? I enjoyed the game! It was fun to play and I enjoyed the story. Is it my favorite FF game ever? Well, I haven't played that many of them in the first place, but I don't think it's my favorite. Don't think it's my least favorite, either, if that makes sense.

Gameplay

Once I got the hang of it, it was a fun game to play, and I liked both the crystarium and the battle system. People complaining that the game "played itself" must not have played the same game I did, because while it did have something similar to the automated-AI system that XII had, I had to pay a lot more attention to what I was doing in battles. It was a faster, more action-oriented style of battling, and dang, it was hard at times! I seriously think this game was the most challenging to play, at least out of the FF games I've played thusfar (which have only been X, XII and Dissidia). There were several times where just patient grinding wouldn't save me from getting pummeled in a boss battle, and I had to actually try and strategize to win. And there were also several areas where I'd get frequently killed by normal battles *cough behemoths cough*, which I can't recall ever happening to me in X or XII. At times, it was actually frustrating, but at least it kept me on my toes.

So yeah. This is definitely not a game that 'plays itself,' nor is it a game where you can just grind for a couple of hours and expect to breeze through everything that comes afterwards. It's a challenge, which hey, is good for games!

One thing I didn't like so much was the fact that we couldn't go back and explore most areas in the game, with the exception of the wilderness on Pulse. I don't mind a game being linear and telling you to go from one place to the next in sequence, but what if I want to come back there later? Places like the Garpa Whitewood, or the Sunleth Waterscape, the crystallized Lake Bresha...those were all really beautiful locations, but I can't go see them again unless I start the game over completely! Not like in FFXII or KH games, where I can revisit any area I want and grab things I may have missed. (And I know I missed a few treasure spheres in some areas of FFXIII.) So yeah, I didn't like the fact that it's near impossible to revisit most places again once you leave them for the story's sake.

Graphics

Most obviously, the graphics on this game were friggin' gorgeous. I wish I'd had an HD hookup for my TV so I could see them in their full glory, but even without it it was clear that they spent a lot of time and effort in making the game look good. Whereas XII had a lot of pretty environments, all of their environments were pretty basic and 'stock,' I guess you could say (especially the tombs). XIII pushed every environment into new territory; everything looked unique.

And wow, the characters looked amazing, too. Real-time mouth movements and motions on characters, even when they're not in cutscenes? Hells yes! I loved the party chatter they included when you're just walking around (something I also really enjoyed with Uncharted 2), and I loved the fact that all of the NPCs had voices and proper mouth/body animations, too.

Honestly, seeing FFXIII's graphics just made me really excited to see how KH3 would look on the PS3 (assuming it'll be on that, which I am assuming), because I've always fully believed that the KH series has some of the best modeling/texturing of any game series. Seeing that level of detail and care coupled with the processing power and disk space that's been seen in FFXIII? *DROOOOOOL* *_*

Basically, it all amounts to lots of SHINYYYYYYYY!

Characters

I liked all of our main crew! No one really bugged me in any way, but then again, I've never been the type to latch onto any character hate. Not sure who my favorite is, but I am awfully fond of Snow. I liked the fact that we got to delve more into each character on an individual basis, at least in the first half of the game (see more below). I also found it interesting how there was no real 'pretty boy' antagonist, I guess with the exception of Cid and Rosch, but their roles both felt pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. Barthandelus ended up being our primary bad guy, although they made it WAY obvious that he was not a guy to sympathize with.

Even though Lightning is portrayed as the main character, I felt like her story was a little...downplayed? I dunno. She does have character growth, but it's a lot more subtle than some of her teammates.

Also, I must say that I'm not-so-secretly glad that they forewent the usual Square standby of having lots of slashy subtext and instead went for lots of femslash instead. Our main male characters are a) a kid, b) a widower with a son, and c) engaged and fiercely loyal to his fiancee, while all our main female characters are single and have lots of subtext, particularly Fang and Vanille. The outcome of all of that subtext is up for debate, but at the very least it was nice to see a) some canon het couples (sorry fandom, but it would be WAY OOC for Snow to go after anyone that isn't Serah), and b) some lesbians. Not that slash isn't nice, but variety! In a major game series! We likes it, yes!

Story

I liked the story as a whole, although I'll admit I had a bunch of confusion and some unanswered questions after it finished. On the whole, I think the story was stronger in the first half than the second half. The first half was TONS of character-building on everyone's parts...Hope learning to forgive Snow, Snow learning to humble himself, Lightning learning that she had to look out for more than just herself and her sister, Vanille admitting her misdeeds to Sazh and then Sazh learning to forgive both her and himself. There were a WHOLE lot of gut-punching emotional moments, particularly that scene when Hope and Snow are caught by the baddies, and when Sazh finds out what Vanille did. Of course, it was all building to that midway point when the whole group became a real 'family,' all looking out for each other. However, once they did reach that family unit mentality, it seems like the story and their development just slowed down a lot and (with the exception of Fang and Vanille) it became more about the grind and C'MON LET'S BEAT UP THE FAL'CIE GUYS! Either the second half could have been a lot shorter, or we could have found a larger problem to deal with besides just constantly knowing we have to get rid of Bathandelus. Really, I wouldn't have even minded the grind if we could have just carried that tone of emotional gut-punching development all the way up to the end. The game started out SO strong in that regard (I think moreso than X and definitely moreso than XII), whereas X rolled out the gutpunches towards the end, XIII kinda tapered them off. Don't get me wrong, I loved it when they all became a family unit, because they were all destined to get there anyway. It just seemed like there should've been something more after beating Barthandelus the first time. There was some stuff between Fang and Vanille, but not, say, on the same level as there was with Sazh and Vanille.

And while I GUESS I get the ending, it still seems a little out-of-nowhere to me. If the entire l'Cie family was required to become crystalized in order to help stop Cocoon's fall, then why did Fang and Vanille stay as crystal? Or was it only them that became Ragnarok? In that case, why only them? Was it really the lesbian love? (Looking at it now, I do think that Ragnarok suddenly looked like a cross between Bahamut and Hectaconchier, so...) It just seems awful unfair that the rest of the l'Cie family gets their happy ever after while Fang and Vanille get stuck as (apparently still sentient and awake?) crystal forever. D:

- Whatever happened to Jihl, asshole that she was?
- You know, with Pulsians often describing Cocoon as a "viper's nest"...was that symbol that kept appearing on doors in Eden that looked vaguely like a cobra head any relation? Was that the l'Cie brand that appeared on Dajh, too? Hmmm...
- Are we to assume that there are absolutely no humans on Pulse anymore, and they all come from Cocoon now? Is this something I'll find out from secret reports? Because right now that's looking like the case.
- What happened to Hope's father? I really liked where they went with him meeting up with his dad at home, and would have liked to have seen what happened to him.
- In that vein, I really wish we could have seen some reaction from the general populace to our l'Cie family at the end of the game. I mean, a major problem throughout the game is that l'Cie are hated, feared and assaulted at every given opportunity, because they're believed to destroy Cocoon. And then, after it happens and Cocoon is narrowly saved...what then? Are l'Cie accepted as being okay now? Or does the family get off the prejudice hook because their brands are gone and they're no longer l'Cie? I felt awfully unresolved with that.
- Are we to assume that we destroyed all of the Sanctum fal'Cie when Cocoon fell in on itself? And while that's definitely an a-o-kay thing if so, what about the Pulse fal'Cie? They're just as assholish, and obviously didn't get what they wanted since the human race wasn't destroyed outright and the Maker didn't show up. Would humans have to deal with all their nasty tricks now, too?
- Will we never get Fang and Vanille back? :(


Buuuut aside from all those questions, I overall had lots of fun with the story. Maybe I'm just easygoing and not so picky with this sort of stuff, but I had fun playing, and as long as the game is fun to play I can overlook some weak points in a game's story. I suppose YMMV on that front. Regardless, if you've got a PS3, I'd say go pick it up! If nothing else, it's really beautiful to watch. :D

And hmm, I suppose I should do a bit of fanart for it, too...

Drawing: Storyboards all day

Writing: On to chapter five~

Consecutive Days Gone Spoiler-Free: 28 (coming up on one month!)