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So I just finished Final Fantasy XIII.

Which is funny, because I couldn’t even finish XII and I was totally convinced that Square had lost the plot.

They have still kind of lost the plot, but I think one person pulled his/her head out of his/her ass. Just the one, though.

So, as per usual, graphics are stunning. Music is outstanding (but not better than X). Character design is…okay. It’s getting a bit recycled. I was happy to see strong female characters in lead roles. I was less happy to see a black male with an…animal in his afro (put that one in the “fucking really?” files).

The gameplay is a more active version of the gambit system from XII which I think is a step in the right direction. It’s still not quite an RPG but here’s hoping.

The story is pretty good, but! The cutscenes are awful. Horrible. Every time I saw a cut scene come up I just started rolling my eyes. Once or twice they advance the story. The rest of the time your Group ff Heroes makes a motivational speech and continues on. Seriously, by hour ten I wanted to slap the writer.

Other things of interest, there’s a very lightly lesbian couple in the mix. I liked it. Duh. No one makes out, but it’s a very butch/femme dynamic and I liked seeing it never addressed, just treated as a natural affection for one another. Some of the message boards are AGHAST at the idea that Fang and Vanille are gay, but whatever. I have eyes. I know romance when I see it.

Vanille’s Eidolon’s final summoning is…interesting. Like “Hang on, I’m just gonna be on my sex tank” interesting.

The game does curb a habit that most RPG players have, which is to spend the first five hours leveling yourself into oblivion and facerolling the rest of the game. Your talent trees are locked until you hit specific story points. There is no way to overlevel for the final boss the first time you do it.

There’s also no way, short of a 200 hour time sink, to have the ultimate weapons for the last boss, either. You get them in your sorta New Game +. I actually like that because I was forced to play the game and work with the battle system, rather than setting up “Damage, damage, healer” and going to sleep.

In most of the games, there is that one Big Issue that has everyone screaming about the twist. The issue of Aeris. Yuna’s actual directive as a summoner. XIII had a moment like that where I almost fell off the couch going “OH MY GOD” but they wussed out on it. There’s no big reveal, there are very few plot twists. What you get in the first five hours are basically what you have for the whole game.

In short, I give it a B. Ish.

Sigh. Come back to me, square!