Final Fantasy XIII

Preview from Jae - Sunday, 10 May 2009 @ 11:55am

We all have that one game that we buy a console for. You may say a selection of games that got you to buy that machine, but theres always one game that tips you over the edge of temptation. I'm willing to bet Final Fantasy XIII could be that game.

A Square Enix promise that this title will be as big, if not bigger, than Final Fantasy VII has sent this game past it's limit break for hype. I know - bad pun - but that's the best I can come up with when I'm sober. I've managed to complete the demo for FFXIII recently which comes packed in with the Japanese release of FFVIII: Advent Children Complete for bluray. No word yet on whether this will be released locally or whether or not a playable demo will feature with it. I'm sure Square Enix will play the translation card and say that it won't be released but they'll make it up to you by sticking a cheap blow up chocobo with your limited edition movie.

Now my Japanese is very poor, it takes me about 30 seconds to read a sentence out loud then a further 30 minutes to translate it. Thankfully google has all the answers. You start the demo off in a scene with Lightning, the game's female protagonist, and Sazh, the token black guy, as prisoners on a freight train. Some quick action scenes later you end up highjacking the place. A very nice move Lightning has is she can snap her fingers and her whole body is surrounded in an electrical field and she's able to power her moves across the room. Sazh has a tiny chocobo chick living in his afro that brings a whole new complex as to what that bird actually does in his hair.

You've got to have 'Lightning' fast reflexes

The second part of the game sees you playing as another character, Snow. You know the guy with the Japanese look except he's got non-black hair and eyes the size of tennis balls. Honestly can't they just make a bloody typical Asian character I can relate to? Snow seems to be the leader of a resistance against the government and is helping to lead a fight against a small army. A few emotional scenes later a bunch of people die and it looks as though Snow falls off a broken bridge to his death. Don't worry someone down there should have a phoenix down ready for him.

In total the demo is less than an hour long and you get to fight a fair few enemies and bosses. Lighting's weapon of choice steals most of it's design from Squall's gunblade. Sazh uses a couple of guns that look like the ones you get in Halo 2 and Snow uses his fists like a real man. I tried to find the menu while walking around in the demo, though they had carefully taken this out to avoid spoiling elements of the battle system for you. These battle scenes are beautiful and look as good as you'd expect in this console generation.

Whilst in battle you have limited options to attack - each turn you have, as either Lightning or Snow, allows you to chain 3 moves. The most conventional would be 3 attacks, but you can choose to wield fire or ice depending on your character. There was an inferno or blizzard type move which hit many enemies multiple times but it did take up your full 3 slots during a move. You have the ability to only do 1 to 3 moves in one turn with the less amount of moves giving you a chance to get to your next turn quicker. Throughout battles you could rely on your team to heal you, so no need to worry about that pesky health bar.

Also the transition between walking into an enemy and battle mode was rather smooth. It wasn't real time like in FFXII as it takes about 2 seconds to switch between the two. I'm sure this will be customisable in future but it was a little annoying when you switched enemies to attack, since all the other characters would do so too.

FFXIII is shaping up to be the RPG that will end all RPGs. That may sound like an overstatement but I'm really keen for this game. Let's hope the localisation delay won't put us too far behind the 8-ball. Hopefully a PSN and Xbox Live demo come about soon and you too can experience a short but sweet taste of Lightning.