March. A month I had been counting down to for sometime. The daylight hours fade and autumn paints the leaves as I gain an extra years experience in this life. I had an incredibly lazy, yet wonderful week off work. I saw my first film in 3D, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. Based on the work of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll), it is more of a sequel where Alice, who is now 19, falls back down the rabbit hole only to find that she must save Underland from the Jabberwocky. March also saw the release of Final Fantasy XIII much to the delight of eager fans.
I have been a fan of video games for as long as I can remember, playing everything from Alex the Kid on the SEGA master system, to games available online from sites such as Poptropica Games. Once I start playing, the hours seem to melt away as the stories take me over and none have had this effect on me more so than the Final Fantasy franchise. With Final Fantasy X easily making my top 5 games of all time, the count down to XIII seemed like an eternity. But the 9th of March finally rolled around and I was able to take home my collectors edition for XBox.
Within the first few minutes you are visually blown away with the opening scenes and even when the game play kicks in, the graphics are outstanding – but then you get into your first battle. Many people are fans of FFX’s turn based battle sequence, something that other games have tried to replicate, but in FFXIII, the battles are in real time and you only have the ability to control one characters actions while the others act more as backup. It is also a bit frustrating for the first hour or so as you are introduced to the characters and the game play cuts between them almost too frequently. But this improves as you learn of the links between them and their stories start to intertwine. The battle sequences also improve as you unlock new roles for your characters. Each of the different roles – Commando, Ravager, Sentinel, Synergist, Saboteur and Medic, have their own abilities which are only available to the character if they are assigned that role. You can only assign one role to each character at time, with the combination of three for your party in use being called a Paradigm. You can create your own custom paradigm combinations and shift between them during battle. Selecting the right roles and getting your timing spot on gives the battles a new and exciting direction that is more fast paced. You are also able to upgrade weapons and accessories using “Spoils” won in battles or found while exploring and you can develop your characters using the Crystarium – a system slightly similar to the sphere grid of FFX.
So overall my first impressions of Final Fantasy XIII are good, although I am only 8 hours into the game – yet it did take me at least two to actually start enjoying the actual game play. But like all Final Fantasy games, the real beauty is in the story. I think that they could make a FF game that has the worst game play in history, but if the story was still stellar, I would still enjoy it. If I were to give it a premature rating, I’d say at the moment 4 out of 5 stars.
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The new island is coming really soon in Poptropica. Can’t wait to check it out.