Impressions: Final Fantasy XIII

I'd been putting off playing FFXIII for a few months now. It wasn't due to a lack of interest (far from it), but it's hard for me to jump into a game knowing that it's going to consume 60 to 70 hours of my limited gaming hours. That's a hell of a lot of investment, especially with a stack of other quality titles collecting dust on the shelf.

Last weekend, I decided I was ready to take the plunge and despite only being about five hours in, I am completely hooked.

Heading in to FFXIII, I had heard two major complaints; the linearity and length of the first section, and the battle system. In regards to the former, I've actually enjoyed the pacing quite a bit. Rather than throw everything at you all at once, FFXIII does a nice job of rolling in new features of the battle system every twenty minutes or so, so you get nice and familiar with one feature before tackling the next.

The linearity also solves a problem I have with a lot of RPGs, where you are thrown in to the middle of a grand world, with not a lot of driving force. Sure, I'm supposed to be saving the world, but is that fishing over there? And oh look, an archery contest I can enter! Keeping the game on a linear path for the first few hours allows FFXIII to push the narrative forward at a quicker pace before then opening up a vast world to explore.

In terms of the battle system, I'm just now starting to get into the meat of it. This is actually the first Final Fantasy game I've ever played (disgraceful, I know) so I don't have much basis for comparison. I've enjoyed it so far, though, and I'm looking forward to really digging in to it.