My short review of FFXIII
Pros:
Graphics
Its Final Fantasy.
The black dude is cool, its nice to see some variety.
Cons:
I had no idea what the hell the story was about, nor did I understand the politics until after 4 hours of gameplay, which meant i was like "WTF ARE THESE PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT" for that entire time.
Battle system took me 6 hours of gameplay before I actually really got into it. Paradigm switching wasn't really necessary until the one boss battle with the Pulse Machine.
Extremely linear. To the point where I feel like im just playing through a movie. After playing games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2, I'm really put off by it.
Everything is really cliched.
The character Hope is a fucking pussy, Snow is an idiot, Lightning is the stereotypical 2D character who has a whole other side to her which they won't reveal until later, and Vanille is an annoying hottie, but you aren't sure if she is 18 or like 13, which is off putting.
I'm hoping that by hour 10 or so it will improve. Its a serious amount of time to invest in a game where you're not sure where its going.... but its final fantasy, so i'm going to play it through regardless. I'm no where near as impressed with it as I was with FFX and FFXII. I like having an open area with some secret areas to explore on a chocobo and shit. I don't mind a linear storyline, as long as it gives me at least some minor choices along the way... so far FFXIII seems to be missing that.
If you're into Final Fantasy, you're going to buy it regardless, so there's no point in reading any review. I just wish those Japanese developers would play a game like Mass Effect 2 and realize that there is so much more potential when you make an open ended world.
So far I give the game a 6/10. But that is tentative... There is still like 60 hours of gameplay left I suspect, so it might get alot better. So far its damned mediocre.