Final Fantasy XIII Import Impressions: The Battles

Last time we were just being general, but in part two of our Final Fantasy XIII Import Impressions I'd like to get serious and discuss some of the finer points of the battle gameplay in FF13.

Complaints about the linearity of the gameplay and story have been all over the web, but I have to wonder - aren't most Final Fantasy titles similar in this respect? Sure enough there are missions and sidequests, but almost all Final Fantasy titles are essentially linear in the story.

Like most Final Fantasy titles, the sheer amount of blood and sweat that a player has to put into powering up your characters can be staggering, which offers quite a bit of gameplay. Once you arrive at Gran Pulse, the requirement to level up steps up another notch still.

Indeed, I would recommend developing a strategy to gain levels quickly or else the game will leave you in its wake. I'd like to tell all Final Fantasy fans that while the early segments of the game are more linear than previous titles in the series once you hit Gran Pulse you'll find a number of quests to undertake and things to do.

Don't get me wrong - the game is extremely linear early on - but the first third of the game is misleadingly linear compared to the latter end of the game, which opens up with more content and sidequests.

Some of the normal monster encounters in FF13 can be ridiculously hard with buckets of HP, but battles are given a new strategic element by an all-new element in the gameplay: the break gauge.

The break gauge appears to be an attempt by the designers to add a form of real time strategy to battles. In a nutshell, different attacks will add different amounts of damage to the break gauge. When the gauge is full, the enemy can be hit for massive damage if you get your timing and choice of attack right.

Outside of building up and making use of the break gauge, battles are a satisfyingly chaotic orgy of magic, explosions and frantic bouncing and jumping. This is Final Fantasy with a major case of ADHD.

Further than the break gauge and the basic Final Fantasy setup, there are six major roles or jobs that your characters can have. I'll be going into this system in full detail in the next article in the series, but this series of six jobs leads towards the 'Optima System' in battles, which is to be known as Paradigm Shift in the West.

Personally, I find it annoying to have to continuously change the roles of my party in order to heal, cast magic and use support spells effectively. I wouldn't mind if you only had to change roles every so often, but you'll find yourself frantically and constantly changing your optima throughout the battle in order to stay alive and dent the HP bar of that difficult enemy.

Worse still, if you don't learn to change your optima in the nick of time you'll have to watch each character's Optima Change stance over and over again.

I feel like the optima system is just a simplistic version of Final Fantasy XII's Gambit system in part, as one of the roles it serves is to help tell the party member AI what to do, as you only control one person at a time in FF13. It's also is a way of trying to add another level of strategy to the battle system, and it succeeds to an extent.

More criticism and praise will come in the full review, but for now I will state that the battle system is really neat and any complaints I do have are relatively minor.

The summons or eidolons of Final Fantasy XIII are very unique from the others in the series. In FF13 each party member has a summon of their own who matches their character. In the video below, you can see Hope summon Alexander.

I must admit the summon sequences didn't strike me as being as grandiose or over the top as in previous FF titles, but they're still very polished and shiny. Once the summon arrives, they stay alongside the character until their gauge depletes.

At any time during the eidolon's appearance you can initiate what is known as Gestalt Mode - or Driving Mode - and the summon will transform like a robot in disguise, taking a different form - one the character who summoned them can ride.

The transformer summons have been highly publicized, and they certainly look cool and do a decent amount of damage, but on the whole the summons in FF13 are relatively weak compared to the damage that can be done with advanced skills and a well-timed break status on an enemy. They sure are pretty, though, and when a summon leaves the battlefield your party returns to the fray fully-healed.

My earlier statement is definitely true - this is a fast-paced, speedy, over-excited bundle of a game, bouncing off the walls with excitement with speedy battles and flashy visuals. An ADHD Final Fantasy isn't all bad in this day and age, though.

In a generation when a six hour game can sell several million copies, this action packed gameplay can really hit a home run in terms of drawing you in, even if it is less thoughtful than previous titles in the series. On the flip side, it also left me frustrated and cranky on occasion.

In that sense, FF13 definitely remains in keeping with Final Fantasy tradition. This is a series where historically there has always been a lot of rough with the smooth, and FF13 is clearly no exception.

Check out the gameplay video below to see the frantic gameplay in action. Next up for analysis is the Character Progression system. Stick with us, and if you don't want to wait for March you can Import FF13 from Play-Asia today.