Like its plot, FF13's combat is all about forward momentum, and is more about learning what your enemies are capable of and reacting accordingly than bogging down in the menu-based minutiae typical of the genre. So instead, Final Fantasy 13 focuses on running your team through a gauntlet of exciting locales and deadly creatures, and provides you with a deceptively rewarding combat system.
If you wandered into an item shop looking for hi-potions, the store's owner would hit the silent alarm so fast, you'd be surrounded by the military before you even had a chance to react. Sanctum troops are always nipping at your heels, and Cocoon's citizens are inundated with wanted posters and warnings of your imminent arrival. Meanwhile, trying to do something similar in Final Fantasy 13 wouldn't make any sense. With a significant amount of downtime between story beats, there's more opportunity to shop or play blitzball. There's a big, bad, world-destroying monster you're trying to defeat in FFX, but you're not really being hunted by anyone, so you have time to take a load off when you hit a new town and get to know its people. Both are incredibly linear, almost to a fault, as Tidus and Lightning make a beeline toward their objectives, until their respective games finally open up a bit around 30 hours in, granting the player a little more freedom in where they can go. Its structure is actually not all that different from Final Fantasy 10, all things considered, and yet FF10 is largely considered a modern classic. Instead, Final Fantasy 13 is more keen to get you acclimated to its characters by watching how they interact with one another, how they handle the stress of their new designation as public enemy number one, with occasional flashbacks interspersed throughout to provide new context.
Like Fury Road, it's a bit difficult to stop for things like character development and an explanation of everyone's complex backstories when you have an entire military complex barrelling toward you at full speed. You run through a forest, ancient ruins, the cities of Palumpolum and Nautilus, all while Sanctum troops breathe down your neck. You run through a lake transformed into sweeping crystallized glaciers. In Cocoon, l'Cie are basically seen as terrorists, and unfortunately, you and your whole crew have been marked by the gods.Īnd so you run. But none of this matters right now, because you have to run, run away from the PSICOM and Guardian Corps troops that want nothing more than to terminate you. L'Cie: people marked by fal'Cie, granted magic powers, and forced to carry out a 'focus' - completing it will grant them immortality (as a giant crystal), failing turns them into a monster-like being called a Cie'th. Fal'Cie: godlike beings that power much of Pulse and Cocoon's technology, but have a tendency to 'mark' people, forcing them to carry out their will.