Final Fantasy XIII: 6 Hours in

This game is very strange.

That might seem like an odd thing to say about a game in the Final Fantasy series. I mean this is a series where the women are often more masculine, more mature, and emotionally more balanced than the men, eldritch abominations can be found in your back yard, and remakes with more faithful translations receive enormous backlash because they don't have the word "spoony". But yea, this game so far is just strange. Elements of it are good, while others are kinda idiotic.

The voice acting and dialogue are pretty good (first time I've seen both good at the same time), and yet while the story is fairly simplistic, there are a few aspects of it that cause it to be sorta confusing. It skips the usual buildup of your party by introducing you to all but one playable character by 30 minutes in, yet it tries to make up for this by repeatedly breaking up or re-organizing the party. It's irritating. Also, I find it amusing that at least half of the playable characters have completely forgotten how to simply wield their weapons (a consequence of losing their basic job class). Apparently becoming an L'Cie and gaining magic means you lose the ability to throw a boomerang or shoot a gun.

The level up system is yet another re-hash of X's sphere grid. It's better than XII's license system (which isn't saying much) since the characters have different classes available to them (at least so far). There also seem to be some minor differences in what certain characters have available even for the same job classes, so it at least feels a little more flexible. But the organization of the Crystarium is idiotic. It branches out in three dimensions for absolutely no reason, which creates a needlessly complicated camera operation and makes it confusing. And even if it's 3D, it doesn't matter, because your progression through a job is still 99% linear. So why bother? Also, you can switch between different characters in the Crystarium at any point with L1/R1, but you can't switch between their different job classes without going back to that character's main area? I mean c'mon, you couldn't just use L2/R2 for that?

You get the point, I think. So far everything that's good or interesting seems balanced by something mind-boggingly retarded. Time will tell if the good elements gain favor as I continue playing. I'm not far enough in for a genuine review, so I think I'll try to put up a few more posts as I keep going.