I'm here to share the wealth with you. In the sense that I'm going to tell you how it's going, not that I'm going to give you my game. Now, I have purposefully been avoiding any kind of media based on FF13, so you might hear some stuff that's been done by other people, but here we go.
Visuals and Sound
All I can say is my jaw was locked in the dropped position for about the first half hour. I am playing on a 32 ich LG 720p 60hrz television, so I'm sure it could look even better, but honestly it is the most intense, amazing thing I've seen this far on either Xbox or PS3. The surround sound is really well handled as well. Most of the time your party members are walking, chatting around you, which is realistically rendered with surround sound.
Battle System
I didn't like FF12. One of the main reasons was because I detested the battle system. Now while I didn't read much, I have seen early vids of FF13 and was a little worried by the notion that I wouldn't be able to control all my characters. After I started playing however, those fears were quelled. FF13 is very fast pace, and utilizes the Active Time Battle system. A new addition to the ATB is that different moves take up different amounts of ATB gauge. As I mentioned before, I like using all my characters, but with how fast-paced the battles are, I have my hands filled just managing one character. Though the original vids resemble FF12's system of running around, don't let it fool you. Characters and enemies do move around a little, but you don't control it, your characters will run up and attack when necessary. The main thing you'll notice about this is that there are some Area of Effect attacks that can be tricky to time. I would highly recommend choosing the option to select enemies from the screen rather than the list.
One thing confused me for the beginning of the game when I didn't really have many options with how to attack was there are two selections available, "Attack" and "Command." "Attack" chooses what the computer determines the best move to do at the moment is and fills up your ATB accordingly. It seems kind of boring and too easy to do it that way. You can choose if your cursor starts on "Attack" or "Command," and there is also an ATB Easy choice in the config menu.
I kind of would have liked to see a party change option like FF10.
Optima Change
The Optima system is basically a job system. You get different stats and attacks based on your job. I don't know yet if all characters can access all jobs, but you can at least access new jobs over time. So far I have unlocked Attacker, Blaster, Jammer, Enhancer, Healer, and Defender. I don't know if there are more or not. You can change your Optima in battle, which changes your party's classes to a another predetermined by you set instantly. I found out after 30 minutes and a few deaths against a very irritating mini boss how important changing classes is.
General Gameplay.
FF13 starts you off in the heat of things. There are tutorials to show you how to play, which basically answer the question "What is that option/status/random thing on the screen?" as soon as you ask yourself it. There are a lot of cutscenes, but I think it's par for the course. I mean, older rpgs have tons of cut scenes too, it's just instead of full amazing animation with voice acting, they were sprites with text. There is no real craziness in the running around part of the game. You run around, fight enemies which appear on the screen instead of random encounters, and occasionally activate little circles which allow you to jump over terrain.
The Crystarium is pretty interesting. You could look at it as a simplified version of FF10's sphere grid. Every battle instead of XP you get Crystal Points(CP) which you can use on your grid towards new abilities or health/strength/magic upgrades. However, where the sphere grid let you do anything with any character, the Crystarium is pretty straight forward. You basically choose which class you want to upgrade and when. I'm not sure which I like better yet. I will say it's tough to not go to the menu and use every CP as soon as I get it.
Well that's about all I thought of that I wanted to talk about. I am really enjoying the game so far. The story is not super creative, but it certainly isn't a copy of any other FF game. The character's personalities are... hmmm... good and bad. Snow and Vanille get really irritating with their almost catch-phrase like use of "I'll protect it!" and "Let's run away :D" respectively. Sazh provides for some good comedic relief, while Hope has the angst zone covered. In short, I really like this game, and highly recommend it for anyone who likes RPGs. The battle system feels pretty fresh, and requires some thought(I'm looking at you tough-to-break enemies). Like I said I'm about 8 hours in and still just scratching the surface. So what are you waiting for?
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