Final Fantasy XIII, First Thoughts

Some people have a favorite developer or something. A series which they must own every single installment of. Well, I have been known myself to buy a game for no reason other than the words "Final Fantasy" on the cover. This differs somewhat from the traditional "Oh I like that series, I'll buy the next sequel" mentality on account of each Final Fantasy game having absolutely no fucking connection to the ones before it at all.

I had seen only limited previews of Final Fantasy XIII, so to be completely honest, before I went in a plunked down a cool sixty United States Dollars on it, I knew the main character had sexy legs and that's actually about it.

Now, my first impressions when I opened the case went a little something like this:

"OMGWTFBBQ THREE DISCS!?"

Yes, that's right. THREE DISCS. And I thought Mass Effect 2 was crazy big with its two discs. (Review of Mass Effect 2 is overdue, I know.)

So then I popped the game in to my Xbox 360 and got to playing.

The opening cutscene is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in a video game. It looked better than Advent Children, and the fact that there was a shootout on a train brought to mind fond memories of the second episode of Firefly.

Then the game started, and what do you know? It looks the same. The whole game looks like a cutscene. A beautiful cutscene.

I was shortly plunged into a battle against one of the ever classic Final Fantasy giant mecha things, revealing that the incredibly awkward and slightly retarded battle system of Final Fantasy XII had been thrown to the wayside, leaving in its place a shiny new polished version of the Active Time Battle system that most of us grew up with.

The new ATB system, however, has multiple bars for each character, and different special abilities use different numbers of bars. Starting off, the main character has two bars. Her standard attack uses one, so she can chain together two of those at a time, or she can use her special attack "Blitz," which uses two.

Now so far, I'm not very far in, but I have met one ally, a cheerful man with an afro and a baby chocobo for a companion.

And by the way, that baby chocobo is one of the most adorable things I have ever seen, ever.

I'll post up some more review when I get some more playtime in.