Final Fantasy XIII Review

Final Fantasy XIII is a Japanese RPG in which your goal is to survive the unfortunate sequence of events that led you and your friends to exile.

Paradigm shifting.

The gameplay is very simple, you move your party through a very linear map battling multiple opponents. Like other games from the franchise you have an "action bar" that fills up as time goes by and allows you to queue up battle actions. The special thing about this game battle system is that each character has one of five roles: Commando, Ravager, Sentinel, Synergist, Saboteur and Medic. Each role has exclusive abilities. In order to efficiently fight different enemies proper shift of Paradigms (the defined roles of your party) is essential. The usual goal is staggering an enemy for increased damage. You only control the party leader, the other two members are controlled by the AI, a mediocre one.

Leveling up a weapon to maximum level.

Each battle awards you Crystalarium Points (CP) and occasionally upgrade components. As you accumulate CP you increase basic attributes and learn new combat actions (skills). Components on the other hand are used to upgrade equipment. This components are divided into two categories, organic and synthetic. Organic components give a small amount of experience while providing a bonus multiplier for the next components. Synthetic ones give a big amount of experience while decreasing the bonus provided by organic components. Unfortunately this ends up removing experimentation and constant progression, as the optimal strategy is to always accumulate enough organic components to reach a high level booster and then dump one single type of synthetic component to make full use off all the experience multiplier.

For some reason it was decided that each chapter would give the player increased rewards. Which means that the more battles you pick the longer it will take you to reach the strongest tiers of power. Artificially increasing gameplay time without any real benefit. Overall Final Fantasy XIII is not a bad game, we really like the idea of been able to use creature parts to enhance equipment. But the game becomes very repetitive quickly with nothing really pushing your forward but the plot. In the end you can just watch the whole thing on Youtube without having to spend 50+ hours fighting the same creatures, in different colors, over and over.

Here are some very useful links and guides we recommend giving a look:
Detailed in Depth character guide
FF XIII Wikia and Components list
How to get Auto-Haste
Mission Locations
Mission Guide