Bottom Line: An Amalgamation of features from previous Final Fantasies, brought together and streamlined into a fun, fast paced game, with a decent, character driven story, gorgeous visuals and a good score. Great for fans of the series, and easy to pick up for newcomers. The Action is fast paced enough to haul in some new recruits.

Also, let me know if you like my reviews. I want to get better at them and need some feedback.

And now, the Wall of Text that is my review:



Graphics: This game has amazing graphics. The cutscenes are some of the most beautiful animations you have ever scene. The world is very detailed. The characters look outstanding. The enemies look different than previous FF's (especially Bombs), but still somehow retain a FF feel to them. A lot of time was spent on the animations and it shows. You can see actual emotions on the people during the cutscenes. Fantastic Job Sqeenix (as usual)

Sound: The music in this game is very well done. A new composer behind the series but fantastic melodies and harmonies. Music is not overwhelming in the game, but is kept subdued and is used to accentuate moods during the story.

Story: The story follows 6 people who have get marked by a 'higher power' to do a job they have to piece together from a vision while running from the government because the mark makes them state enemies. Lightning is a military individual who is trying to help her sister Serah who was marked. Snow is Serah' fiance and the leader of a Monster Patrol Group called NORA. Hope is a hopeless kid who witnesses his mother's death and blames Snow. Vanille is an eternally cheerful person who tries to cheer up Hope. Sazh is a smooth cat with a cool head (and a hidden baby Chocobo in his 'Fro) who is trying to help his son, Dajh, who got marked and taken by the government.

Gameplay: For what seems to be most of the game, you are running from point to point, fighting a couple of battles, then watching a short cutscene. The scenes are short and don't take half an hour like the Xenosaga series, and almost all of them are skippable.

The Battles are fast and furious. You have what I consider to be the least amount of control over your party in any game. You can only control the party lead, but you can't move him/her around, only select auto-battle, ability, item, or technique. Auto-battle just chooses attacks are goes at it. With ability, you select what is used. Item is just using items during battles (Potions heal the whole party, which is good), and techniques are things like Libra. The good part is, when you fight and enemy enough to learn his ins and outs, or use Libra, your party will auto-battle making use of his weaknesses, things like using fire against fire-weak enemies.

Each character has a Role in a battle and the roles have very little crossover. The different roles are Commando (figher, attack only), Ravager(Black Mage), Sentinel(Defend-only), Synergist (Party Buffer), Saboteur(Enemy Debuffer), Medic (Medic!). Different Roles combine to form Paradigms of which you have 6. Switching between Paradigms is essential to getting through battles and most of your time in a battle will be spent watching health, etc, and switching your Paradigms. It seems boring, but once you get into it, you don't feel like you are just sitting and watching it unfold. Every enemy has a point at which they Stagger. When staggered, they take lots of damage. Play with the Paradigms to see what works best in a given situation and use it!

Characters also have Eidolons (Summons) and they replace two members and attack along side of you. As you attack, you will fill the Geshtalt gage, which you can activate at any time and do some CA-RAZY attacks. After activation, it starts counting down, and each thing you do counts down as well.

Your health is automatically refilled after each battle. This might seem like a cheat, or something Squeenix did to make it easier. But it is not. Gold is difficult to come by in the game. You don't get it from battles. You get it from selling items, components, weapons, or opening chests. It is not really necessary in this game either, for reasons I will explain later. Also, if your party lead dies in battle, it is over. But don't give up. You can retry and will start over just before you started the battle. Usually at the last place you a battle won. Items can be purchased via a retail network accessed from the Save Points which are scattered after every 4-5 battles.

You don't get XP after a battle either. You get CP and TP (Points used for Techniques like Libra) and maybe some loot. The after battle screen is a tally showing you in both score and Stars how well you did. The greater number of stars the more TP you get back and the greater chance for a loot drop (though I often don't get loot drops even with a 5-Star rating)

Leveling is done by using Character Points (CP) on the Crystarium. You add the points for what role you want the individual to play to unlock abilities and stats. Abilities are locked to that role but stats apply to the individual. Also, Each individuals Role develops differently. So, you might have someone's Ravager role heavy with fire type spells and someone else with water type. Or someone who gets more magic for their medic and someone else who gets more HP.

Weapons and Accessories usually start off pretty weak. But you can upgrade them all. Components you find in chests or as loot drops can be added to them to increase their level. Each component has a base value XP attached to it. Once you add enough XP, the item goes up a level and it's stats rise. Once you get to a certain level, the item will have a star by it, and you can use a special component to change it into something else. Something else you can level and make more powerful. It is kind of cool, but doesn't really make a lot of sense in this game. Squeenix took out towns and made the first part of the game EXTREMELY linear (like FFX linear, just hit up on the controllers type linear), but getting enough components to upgrade weapons isn't quite that easy. Enemies don't always drop loot, so you would have to do some grinding if you want to level up those weapons.

So what is the deal? Squeenix says this has been in development for years. I can understand what they mean. Features on this game were taken from all other Final Fantasies and streamlined. It starts off Hyper Linear but eventually opens up near the end (Like X). You level up in a manner similar to both X and XII. You increase weapons stats like VII did with Materia. Its got a job system like V and X-2. You can switch jobs like X-2. Your party fights on an automatic system (though hidden and not customizable) system like XII. If you have enjoyed Final Fantasy over the past 15 years, you will find something to like about this game.