Final Fantasy is one of the oldest IPs in the industry and over the years its rich JPRG content has been constantly enhanced with each new installment. Whether it was the combat system, the way the characters developed or simply the beautiful story that held everything together in perfect harmony, a FF game always came with the underlined promise of progress, of taking the whole series one step further on the evolutionary ladder. So it comes as a surprise and not a pleasant one to see the game not following its own rules and going for a simpler and accessible approach, especially for a debut on the PS3 and Xbox360 consoles that has been anticipated by fans for so many years.

Final Fantasy XIII follows the destinies of six characters and the way their paths intertwine into a common goal. Following the story at the beginning of the game might be a bit too much even for the most experienced and fanatic supporter of the series, as the focus constantly jumps from one character to another and the size of mythological background meant to glue all the provided information together is huge and not easy to cope with. So don’t bother trying to understand it: just go with the follow because the more hours of gameplay you add the count the more clear the relationships between the god-like fal’Cie, the chosen l’Cie, the tormented Cie’th and the twin human inhabited planets (Cocoon and Pulse) on which the action takes place, will become. Once the veil of confusion gets lifted the story will start to make sense, but unfortunately by that time the emotional luggage each character comes with will be so large that the chances the player has to identify or sympathize with one of the characters are drastically reduced. The dramatic touch of the events is lost and although I tried hard, I found it almost impossible to truly care about one character or another’s emotional struggle. And that’s a shame, because the story is really good and complex and detailed, and the voice acting for all the characters is superb, but the overall presentation made it overwhelming in a very wrong way.

This might have been also enhanced by the fact that the game offers no clear main character, although one might argue that Lightning, the emotionally opaque female soldier, is the central one around which all the others revolve. But since Lightning is not always in the spotlight and there are big chunks of the game in which she is nowhere near the main stream of events, that argument has small chances of success.

The way you control these characters, both in and out of combat, didn’t help either. Using a three men party, the only character you can give direct orders is the leader while the other two will perform actions depending on their predefined role in the party. The only way you can influence the actions of these two is by changing their roles, which you can do on the fly during combat, but the nature and order of the used abilities is almost completely out of the player’s control. The roles fall under general definitions such as tank, healer, damage dealer or support class, but since most of the game the roles certain characters can assume are limited, the way you can build your party is also limited, or in other words carefully controlled by means of game design.

The two personal sidekicks the party leader has perform decently well given their limitations, but since direct control over their actions is limited, situations where they do the unexpected which leads to the party’s demise and the frustration of the player can and will be encountered. Even the direct control the player has over the party leader can be frustrating because the combat elements are poorly synchronized: the list of abilities is too large and you need too much time to find them and queue them up, so by the time the party leader is ready to perform the manually input set of commands, the other two party members have already performed twice. So as you progress through the game and the action gouge that determines the maximum number of abilities that can be queued up gets larger and larger, you will be inclined to start using the automated combat features that will chain commands for your party leader and also take away even more of the control you have over that character and over the entire party.

Although through this the game scores serious points in accessibility and countless fans in the limited brain activity consumer section, I personally found it to be a bit disappointing. The combat system is quite fun, but far from challenging. The role changing action brings back some really disturbing memories from FF X-2 and the fact that the perfectly designed gambit system from FF XII was completely dropped underlines that when it comes to the combat system this installment made no effort to evolve. And taking the easy way was not something I would have expected from the Square Enix developers.

Simple and easy are the worlds that would describe the character development system also. Although all the characters have six roles in which you can sink points and gain new abilities or upgrade stats, the added up points of the mandatory fights for a full walkthrough are sufficient for fully developing at least three of these roles. Adding to this the fact that the crystalium (character development system) gets unlocked level by level as you progress through the game and that for about 80% of the game only three of these roles are available per character, the chance of spending crystalium in a wrong way is close if not equal to 0.

Comparing Final Fantasy XIII with the previous installment will only bring to the surface more problems, from which the most disturbing one is the limited exploration. Most of the game is linear and the whole idea of free roaming was almost completely ignored. There are a couple of areas towards the end of the game that come to challenge the player’s thirst of exploration and it is there that players can truly pick their fights and search for hidden treasures, but this is certainly not enough since these areas represent only a small fraction of the whole FF XIII universe.

Finally, praising the graphics or the sounds for a Final Fantasy game would be redundant. Each and every installment of the series has been breathtaking from this point of view and Final Fantasy XIII rises up to the expectations delivering once more a unique visual experience strongly supported by the soundtrack and sound package.

Final Fantasy XIII is fun game to play. It’s packed with 50 hours+ gameplay experience with fast paced combat, beautiful graphics and a decent story. It’s easy and accessible and entertaining, and for many that will prove to be more than enough. But for Final Fantasy fans the popcorn approach, the linearity and lack of complexity might spell disaster. When compared to its predecessor FF XIII feels shallow and empty and will be remembered like that and nothing more.

Final Fantasy XIII is beautiful fake diamond: it glitters like no other, but has little long term value.