Final Fantasy 13, a game that received a lot of negative feedback despite fixing a lot of the issues I had with the few previous installments that weren't online. They moved back to the final fantasy 10 style turn based combat, which was cool, and took the randomness out of random encounters, which I also liked. However, the bulk of the actual story of the game is incredibly linear for a final fantasy game. In previous installments you could actually do a bit of exploring into other areas and you generally had more freedom to do stuff, but for the first 2/3 of this game you're basically walking on maps with a start and an end point with only a few chests and corners littered in between. During this time you are left to deal with the several minute long cut scenes. Really if feels like the bulk of the first part of the game should have just been one big long cut scene since most of the actual game doesn't start until a few hours before you get into the open exploration part of the game. People came to play a final fantasy game, not play through what is for the most part basically an interactive cut scene. Speaking of which, you had better have gotten every chest in the area before moving on because in several cases once you move on you can never go back so if you miss something then too bad. The game actually seems to expect you to do this in some cases as well since some of the fights are pretty challenging even when you have actually taken time to explore.
The combat system in this game uses something called paradigms, which is basically the hard to pronounce word for classes. Each character tends to fall into one particular class of the six, though you will want to train all characters in each of the classes later on so that you can better come up with strategies and diversify for boss battles later. Strategy plays a key role in this game as well, where if you just try to use a team of only commandos for the entire game you will fail hard and often. Sentinels are basically the tanks of the game and early on they are of key importance as they basically take the bullet for weaker teammates. A lot of people do not like this combat system because it can at times become a guessing game when it comes to difficult boss fights where you're just trying to find a winning strategy. Basically you will want to save before every boss because there's a good chance he will tear your to shreds if you aren't prepared with a decent strategy. I actually like the paradigm system because it does bring more of a strategy element to the game, plus unlike other final fantasy games it allows you to change your classes in battle without wasting a turn, so it took one of the nice elements from FF10-2 and applied it there. If you're ever unsure in that game, a safe bet is to always have one sentinel in your party to basically take the brunt of it when you do screw up, and a synergist and saboteur to buff your party and debuff enemies always comes in handy when you start a battle.
As for the exploration part of the game, it is similar to FF12 and they even brought back the hunt system, but have improved it a bit. A good bit of advice to follow for the open exploration section is to do the first 26 or so hunts offered as the extra bonus is worth it and it'll make things easier for the boss run. They also brought back the super strong neutral enemies just to tease players. I would recommend against fighting the giant dinosaurs until you have done almost all the other missions, otherwise you will get your ass kicked and kicked hard. Those things are far stronger than the boss of the game because they can outright slaughter your party in one attack early on until you have pretty much maxed all your paradigms. The baby ones can be dealt with earlier on but not until you can at least handle the first 26 missions. There are a few mean tricks here and there in the big open world, in particular in the mines, where if you go down one hallway all the way to the end it starts an auto battle with a juggernaught, which will outright slaughter you early on since it can and will hit hard and likely will 1 hit kill you early on, though once you make it to the final boss you will have likely leveled up enough from enemy encounters that they are actually beatable, though still quite difficult.
Overall Final fantasy 13 was a good game, not the best in the series to be sure but it was good. The optional bosses are beatable without too much power leveling as long as you do the missions relatively in order. You will likely need a good bit of strategy for some of them but they are all possible to defeat, even the big dinosaurs though you have to spam death on the red ones really since that's the only good strategy. With the blue ones you can exploit a glitch in the game that causes Vanille's death spell to hit ridiculous amounts of damage after using her summon and letting it run out. So there's a practical use for possibly the most annoying character in the game. The biggest negative I have about the game is that some of the cut scenes, and even the final boss battle just drag on for far too long. It took me about 2 hours to kill the boss of the game the first time because I died a few times on his second form because of it spamming my characters with status ailments and debuffs. The credits and final cut scenes only serve to add an extra half hour to that entire battle as well. That aside though it takes some getting used to but it is essentially one of the better installments in the series. Oh and there's also the weapon upgrade system which takes way too many materials to really be useful in the long run. At lest you actually end up spending all your money on something but the amount required to fully level up at least one weapon for each character is astronomically huge, even after 120 hours of gameplay I was still only about halfway there for tier 3 weapons for each character, let alone getting all weapons to tier 2.
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