This blog is going to be equal parts ponderance as it is about the game. Sorry about that. Sometimes I just like to meander through my own thoughts.

It’s been three days since FFXIII went on sale in Australia, and the first returns have starting to drift back in to the EB Games/Gamestop where I work. When questioned about why they were bringing it back, most said the same thing: “Too linear”, “to boring”, “hated the characters”.

Which suggests that most of them probably gave up within the first ten hours of gameplay. In this case, I can understand that. I always prefer people to give a game a chance, but I have to admit that even I’m feeling the fatigue. Six hours in, and the game STILL feels like it’s only just getting started. Not to mention it still insists on “training” me. What the hell? It’s almost like it was designed for people who don’t even play computer games, the way it holds your hand for so long. But more on that later.

I’ve been thinking a lot about why I’ve been so resistant towards the story format of XIII. I mean, I literally spent this long just running around the beginning city of Rabanastre in XII, and I was happy as Larry! Why am I complaining about a game that’s so far been almost nothing but story, which I also usually love

The only conclusion I can draw is: this is the first time I’ve ever been forced to play through the main story of an RPG without any opportunity for rest or deviation. Exploring, talking to NPC’s, visiting towns, doing side quests or dungeons… these are all staples of the RPG that we seem to take for granted. Both JRPG’s and Western RPG’s have them, and for many of us these are more interesting then the main story itself.

Just look at the Mass Effect games! You can play the main story in less then ten hours, and though they’re good, you might feel a little non-plussed about the length and content. The real meat of the game is the planet exploration, the errands, the character development, the secret missions. These can easily increase the game time to forty hours or more, and deliver twenty times more information then if you’d just played out the central plot and then left.

XIII seems to have taken the stance of  “Look, we simply don’t have the time to make an entire next-gen game that has an epic open world with enough towns, monsters and side stories to fill it. Let’s just get the main story out of the way, and then make an absolutely enormous area for players to explore at the end”.

It’s a theory that sounds like it could work. And for many I guess it does. But then there’s a community of people like me who’ve always played it the opposite way: done everything that’s possible to do in the game at your current level, then continue with the main story. The plot is an integral part of the game, true, but it’s also a series of road blocks, offering new challenges, loot and areas to explore only once each one is hurdled.

It’s these breaks that help us reflect on the main plot, slow the pace to one we feel comfortable with, and evolve the characters to a point where we feel confident and ready to move on. “Grinding” might seem boring for some, but to others it’s actually a form of mid-game relaxation. We can chill out, refine our combat techniques, kill stuff, earn exp, cash, and occasionally decent loot. Grinding is only bad when the game forces us to do it, to make up for its lack of content and artificially extend the gameplay time.

Even though things are picking up in XIII, my enjoyment and interest are still struggling to be maintained. Yes, the story is coming together. Slloowwwllyy. Once again it’s not so much through the dialogue as through the Datalogs, though at least the flashbacks are helping to illuminate the characters pasts a little. I strongly believe the lack of rest/deviations points is causing my fatigue, and general impatience towards the game as a whole.

In regards to the combat training: I feel like I’m being led through the game on a leash. A very strong, unbendable leash, and whoever is holding it is forcing me to learn things the way they want me to learn them. It’s like the game doesn’t trust that I can handle it’s oh-so-intricate systems; a feeling supported by the entire first half of chapter four, which plays more like a glorified training course then an actual level, attempting to put you through every possible outcome in the foreseen future.

Here’s what combat’s like without a Commando. Here’s what it’s like with only two people. Here’s how enemy’s fight each other. Have another three or four of these battles, just to be absolutely certain you got it the first time. No, you can’t just go out and play around with different enemies at your whim. No, you can’t freely change your team members and get better acquainted with their skills and habits. You will do it this way, because we tell you too.

Bah. This is an exuberant amount of QQ over seemingly small things, but I suppose we can’t control the things that bug and hamper enjoyment of the games we play. Plus, there’s still so many chapters to go. Enough pondering. Time for the gameplay:

                


Chapter three ends with a battle, and lovely Vanille almost becoming lunch for a hungry Boss. Damn, so close. I was cheering for it, trust me. Lightning and friends kill it, steal a jet and fly off into Chapter four.

Meanwhile, Snow is still doing hero stuff, back in the Crystal Lake. After another fight, and a quick cutscene, we meet our first Summon: The Shiva Sisters, and learn how we’re supposed to capture them.

Seemingly each Summon requires you to fight them in a certain manner, in order to gain their respect. These can be revealed by casting Libra on them multiple times, and pushing (R1 on the PS3) to read the details. A “Doom counter” is clocking down while you do this, with death and failure the assumed result if it reaches zero. You have to keep raising the “acceptance bar” until it’s full, and you can finally push X to claim the Summon.

Considering how much effort the game puts into making you understand every facet of the battle system, I found this fight rather confusing. Mainly because, despite doing what was required, the acceptance bar seemed to climb erratically. I don’t know if it was a bug or glitch, or perhaps there were other requirements to reach – in this case battle chains or successfully blocking attacks – but I couldn’t seem to nail a consistent result. In the end, I did… something, and the bar jumped a lot, allowing me to push the Win button despite it being only three quarters full. Weird.

This is as much as we get to see of Shiva, however, since Snow is immediately interrupted, and we finally get acquainted with our final team member: Fang, the hunter chick. And it’s awful. Her “Australian” (it might be the intended result, but it’s far from the reality) accent is three times thicker, heavier, and more pronounced then Vanille’s, and just as offensive to the ears. God I hope she’ll be the strong silent type like Lightning when she joins the crew.

Speaking of our cranky protagonist, things haven’t improved between her and her new “friends”. Having crash landed in a junk yard, Lightning proceeds to abuse, belittle, and finally abandon her comrades, leaving Sazh to exclaim “Daymn, that is one uptight ho!” Ok, so he doesn’t actually say that, but I does call her “Grumpy”. Sazh is so cool

The first half of Chapter Four, as mentioned above, seems geared entirely towards training players in every possible aspect of the Paradigm system. I suspect this is due to the linearity; thanks to the lack of open ‘practise’ areas, the game feels it needs to hold your hand and lead you through a series of preset trials, to ensure you feel tested and ready.

The game does this by removing/adding an element at certain points during the level (eg. removing Lightning, your Commando/fighter, and thereby forcing you two cope with only two Ravagers/Spellcasters). Then it will throw a few battles your way; usually by placing a select number of enemies in your path between the starting point, and the point where it wants you to learn something else.

Oh, you can avoid the fights, sure. But remember, there’re no grinding areas. You need to fight every battle you can to earn enough CP, advance your characters, and make sure they’re strong enough to keep plowing through the story.

You progress this way, swapping out Vanille for Hope, or using all three at once, versing a varying amount of enemies both strong and weak. Given how little time the game has for anything but pushing through the main story, it’s an effective, and probably necessary procedure… for people who have never played video games before. For the rest of us, it  feels slow, staged, and redundant.

We know how to fight. Hell, we probably picked that up from the explanation tabs. We don’t need you to organise or limit our available party members and enemy encounters in order to further the point. When do WE actually get to take control of our party and set it up the way we want (not this chapter obviously)? That’s kind of where most of the fun is. Honest, we don’t need you setting up these elaborate training courses, designed to look natural by thinly veiled cutscene events.

           

Right, well I think I’ve ragged on about that long enough. How about something positive now?

Despite the overly thorough training procedures, the battle system is getting increasingly faster, more frantic, and gaining new layers. The chapters of “Push X to Win” are thankfully long gone, as rapidly switching Paradigms not only becomes common, but almost necessary in every fight. The speed in which it all takes place is exhilarating and tense, where a brief lack of focus can result in your main character being targeted and decimated before you even have time to call out your Medic.

The strong enemies especially require an enormous amount of attention. Most have so much HP that anything but a full team assault barely scratches them. One thing becomes very apparent: if you don’t stagger your foe fast, you’re in for a long, arduous fight.

While attempting to raise the stagger bar, you soon learn a number of different factors need to be taken into account:

* The bar degrades around four times faster if the damage dealt to it was done by magic, then if it was dealt by melee attacks. This makes it extremely hard for Ravagers to stagger enemies quickly without fast and precise (or lucky, given that you can’t really tell when you AI comrades will attack) teamwork. Each attack raises the enemies stagger threshold, demonstrated by a percentage (think the Super Smash Bros health system), and the higher it gets, the more the stagger bar is filled with each attack. Ravagers have to deal damage constantly in order to achieve this.

* The stagger bar depletes quite slowly when the damage dealt is by a weapon wielder, but should it be allowed to deplete completely, the stagger threshold will also drop in percentage, and you’ll essentially have to start from scratch. Once again, a constant assault is required in order to maintain the bar. And this is where a new technique comes in handy.

At this point in time, most characters have at least three slots in their action queue. Waiting for all three slots in the queue to charge takes a good four seconds, and though it makes your character deliver a power onslaught of attacks in quick succession, it also means that the stagger accumulated from the previous attacks has probably had time to deplete, or even reset. To stop this, the player can interrupt the queue by pushing (Triangle on PS3), and force the character to attack with two, or just one action charged.

The idea behind this is not so much to deal damage as to keep “juggling” the stagger bar, ensuring that it doesn’t fully deplete while your team readies their attacks. Once the stagger is successful, then you can charge the bar and smash away until your hearts content.

        

This kind of depth to the combat was just the thing I was hoping for; something to pay extra attention to, and eventually micromanage for maximum effect. Trying to keep track of a single enemy’s stagger progress while fending off other attacks and constantly monitoring your teams health and status ensures you’ll be on your toes for the entire battle.

One final thing that helps make this process a whole lot easier: the Pre-emptive Attacks, mentioned way back in Blog 2. These are not as easy to get as you might think. Some enemies have a wide field of vision, and will see you coming even if you think you’re directly behind them. You can deploy special items called “Shrouds” (L1 in the level exploration mode), one of which hides you from enemy sight and makes sneaking up on them easy. Shrouds are rare and uncommon to find, though you’ll earn quite a lot of them if you repeatedly fail to get any star ratings in your battles.

When a Pre-emptive attack is earned, players are rewarded by the lead character attacking every single enemy at the beginning of the fight, and raising their stagger bars and thresholds to max. It usually only takes a single hit after this to instantly stagger an enemy, but the effect doesn’t last long. You need to choose your targets quickly, and choose them well, because by the time you’ve finished your first attack, all remaining enemy stagger bars will have reset to null.

Do you choose to take out the biggest and strongest? Stop it from dealing huge damage to you occasionally? Or do you take out the smaller, weaker enemies first, and avoid receiving their less-damaging-but-numerous attacks on a constant basis? Such decisions need to be made usually at the very beginning and on the fly, with the ability to drop any plan you had and change Paradigms if it all goes to hell. One things for sure: support classes i.e. anything that can cast boosting skills on its fellow baddies, or detrimental effects on your own team, needs to go. And fast. Thankfully, most are pretty weak, and will go down quick as long as you all focus on them.

The game helps you further explore this choice by introducing you to “fighting enemies”. These are two different enemies types (eg. Beasts and Mechs), who simply don’t get along, and are fighting each other out in the opening. You can nearly always get a pre-emptive strike on these guys, since they’re so focused on each other they rarely see you coming.

The battle itself is practically a free ride. The enemies will pay you no heed, and go on attacking each other. You could sit back and watch if you like; see who comes out the winner. But the spectator sport doesn’t last. At some point, one side is going to beat the other, and once that’s done their sights will be set on you. You need to decide how to handle it: help the weaker side kill the stronger, so you’ll only have a few stragglers to mop up? Or kill the weaker side so you can focus on fewer, or even a single stronger enemy?

Decisions decisions. FFXIII combat is becoming full of them, and the time you have in which to make these choices grows smaller as the enemies grow stronger. I seriously can’t wait until the ending with its giant free roaming setting to explore, full of monstrous creatures to challenge. Hopefully it’ll make this tedious slog through the main story feel worthwhile.

The first half of Chapter Four draws to a close with a huge (but not difficult) Boss that will be familiar and nostalgic to many long time fans. Lightning says “Screw you guys, I’m going to kill whoever I want”, and abandons Vanille and Sazh to whatever path they please, before marching off into Chapter Four Part 2, Hope in tow. I breathe I sigh of relief.

Maybe now the game will let me continue without the training wheels? Maybe. And will I actually get to use a Summon? Gah, considering I didn’t even get to play today, I guess I’ll find out tomorrow.

Not really.

Character development going nowhere fast, other then the odd flashback and some vague conversations here and there. Lightning is still being a hard and unlikable *****, Hope is still gearing himself up to kick Snow in the nuts next meeting. The hero himself is unconscious somewhere, and Vanille is still annoying the **** out of everyone. Sazh Evercool is stuck among crazy people, simply wishing he could get on with his task minus the drama. Man, I feel his pain.

The levels are still linear and uninspired, the story is vague unless you want to read the Datalogs every time they update. Only the combat is advancing in leaps and bounds and becoming a wondrous part of the game to play. Hopefully the rest will catch up as the chapters go on. I have many friends assuring me it will, and honestly, I hope their right. I’d love to come out enjoying this game. Who would wish four years of waiting to feel like a waste?