It’s rare to fine me playing a game that isn’t Final Fantasy XI or an FPS with friends these days.  I adore RPGs, but barring FFXI I haven’t found one lately that can really hold my interest (admittedly, FFXI may be to blame for this).  However, FFXIII is doing a pretty damn good job at keeping me occupied.

I bought the game on release day (yesterday, actually) for the 360 and after a series of unfortunate, events and some chipotle, I finally got to sit down and play it.  Similarly, following work today I also played, taking advantage of my break.

So far the game has been outstanding.  The combat is fresh, the story is engaging, and the characters are both likable and interesting.  Moreover, the game LOOKS fantastic.  Visually stunning is a proper way to describe the game, though “Really Fucking Pretty” has also been used.

The combat feels like a natural starting place to talk about.  Unlike previous FF titles, the battles happen in real time. . . almost.  The ATB makes a return as a way to regulate how often you attack, and with what skills.  Furthermore, direct control of allies is removed in favor of the “Paradigm” system, which itself is an extension of the Crystarium system.  Every character has a collection of roles, a set of jobs one might say.  You set Paradigms for party setups outside of battle, depending on your party setup, and can swap between them at any time.  Each role fulfills a different roll: medics heal, sentinels tank, commandos are melee DPS, ravagers are magic DPS, synergists buff, and saboteurs debuff.  Thus, a typical balanced Paradigm may look something like “Commando, Ravager, Medic,” though since you can swap between them at any time during battle, you may find yourself with a setup involving Synergists at the start, and moving to another setup once you’re ready to fight.  With out getting too much further into it, this system keeps the battles interesting, as you find yourself having to change tactic not only fight to fight, but party to party.  It takes a bit of getting used to, but once you figure it out it’s very fun and very entertaining.

The Crystarium system is also pretty interesting.  Each fight earns you CP (Crytarium Points) which you can use to increase whatever role your character has access too.  You have to pick and choose which role the CP goes into, and which orbs to go to in each role, but it’s all very intuitive.

The game itself starts off. . . slow.  Not the various CSs, which are all action packed and interesting to listen too, but the combat.  For the first hour/hour and a half you have access to only basic commands.  Gradually the game introduces you to new combat mechanics, but it’s pretty slow.  Even after you first get the paradigm system they start you with a crazy broken setup, making it hard to really get a handle for how the system feels.  Furthermore, some of the common encounters take entirely too long, without any risk of losing.  For example, with Suzh and Vanille it takes me roughly 7 minutes to kill some enemies in a 2v1 fight with both attacking.  It gets a bit tedious some times, but since you can avoid many of the fights you can choose to simply stay out of their way many times. Luckily, the story and characters make up for this shortcoming.  Once you make it past that portion, the game keeps things interesting by swapping in and out party members, giving you a chance to see feel out the combat system and to see how the computer treats each job.

In addition to standard battles, there are also summon fights, which are a whole different can of fish.  Each summon has a different trick to beating it, and the only way to figure that out is to Libra the summon.  They can be pretty difficult it seems, so expect to lose every now and then.  I personally lost twice to Odin before I figured out the trick.

All in all, the first 6 hours have been a blast.  I was unsure at first about the combat system, but after the paradigm system got into full swing I was able to really get into it.  The game is going to be long, as the game comes on THREE disks, and I’m extremely excited to see it all the way through.  I’ll post a final review once I finish it.

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