Final Fantasy XIII: A series of tubes

 Critique, Role Playing Games  1 Response »
Jul 072011
 
Final Fantasy XIII: A series of tubes

The worst reason to hate Final Fantasy XIII is because of its linearity. Non-linearity doesn’t necessarily improve a game, and following a constrained path doesn’t necessarily make it worse. All Final Fantasy games, including the most highly praised ones, have been essentially linear in both story and world design, and FFXIII is not even unique in degree, given FFX. A player’s desire to break out of a constrained experience is usually not a result of linearity per se, but instead reflects a failure of the game’s story to engage that player. “Failure” is a reasonably good description of FFXIII‘s story, [Read more...]

Final Fantasy XIII: The best part

 Critique, Role Playing Games  No Responses »
Jul 062011
 
Final Fantasy XIII: The best part

Despite respectable review scores and reasonably good sales, Final Fantasy XIII is widely derided, for many good reasons and a few bad ones. Defenders of the game often point to the battle system as the game’s saving grace. I found myself sharing the sentiment when I played through the game recently. That might be seen as damning by faint praise, given that so much of the game was attacked, but the combat system really is quite strong, and manages to incorporate principles that are familiar from hard-core RPGs in a dynamic and accessible way. While it probably won’t satisfy players [Read more...]

FFXII: Superficially Epic

 Critique, Role Playing Games  3 Responses »
Feb 142008
 

As I started writing that review of FFXII: Revenant Wings, I realized that I’d never taken out my notes on its predecessor and arranged them into a review. So, I decided I would go ahead and do that. I’ve played through the game twice now, and I feel it likely that I’ll play it again at some point in the future. Final Fantasy XII walks an interesting line: compared to recent entries in the series it seems very much like a new direction. I felt, however, that it actually hearkened back to older entries in many ways. This synthesis had [Read more...]

Revenant Wings doesn’t play up to its presentation

 Critique, Role Playing Games  No Responses »
Feb 142008
 
Revenant Wings doesn't play up to its presentation

Final Fantasy XII : Revenant Wings for the DS opens with some really beautiful video sequences, accompanied by lovely music. Immediately, the top-notch presentation that Final Fantasy games are known for asserts itself. Yet, as is so often the case with FF spinoffs, the actual game doesn’t live up to the polish. Despite its production values, Revenant Wings is an uninspired game with merely passable mechanics. The box promises a version of the FFXII battle system, and Revenant Wings more or less delivers that with its real-time action and skill charging, though the context is quite different. Each of the [Read more...]