First play.

So I played the first bit of 13. I already listened and watched to the GT.com review, and as well, got a gist of how the game looked and felt from the spoof IGN.com (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MmG41Tllxo) did. Not surprisingly, the spoof that IGN.com did isn't too far from how ridiculous the game is so far. I'll leave any real final judgements till I play more of the game, however, I'm going to have to rant a bit here. Spoilers may ensue.

So I'm glad they explained how the main female lead; Lightning, actually does all her crazy acrobatics. I'm also somewhat glad the black character in the game isn't entirely Japanese and does have some sense of being actually North American. There are some shots where you swear he's really just a Japanese person trying to act black. Unfortunately, some of the things he has to say are unconvincing, as with most of the dialogue so far. It's Final Fantasy so yes, it's mellow dramatic, but does everything everybody has to say, have to be so predictable and staged? At times, there's a lull in the script where you are expecting someone to say something, but because it's rude to make sound or say something in spontaneous reaction, the characters just don't end up saying anything. It's awkward. I'm guessing perhaps the voice recording director just told them to read a bunch of lines from the script, and didn't allow any improvisation lines. Or perhaps the script didn't have a matrix of lines which the voice actors and studio could record so they could fill in the blanks when the pacing was off.

And that's another thing. The pacing is off in terms of narration. The game seems to be overly concerned with telling the viewer what's happening and being extremely literal about it. The scenes don't flow well together such as, they don't rise and fall like you think they could, but instead just play out from scene to scene. It's as if the scenes were done independently from each other, or by different people, and they stitched it together. Granted, this IS a video game, but I just played the first hour or two, and I probably watched more cinematics than gameplay. Granted, it IS Final Fantasy of a next gen nature, but I just sat through most of the combat spamming a single attack (grenades) or pressing X to input my command.

The combat I would say I'm okay with for now. I imagine it'll open up when characters get more abilities. I do like the auto battle feature which removes much of the tedium of pressing X for standard attacks, and resources for executing special attacks seem to be centred around time. So essentially, time vs attack, which I would imagine to have pros and cons. It's funny though, since enemies are seen wandering the field/world/whatever, and how you begin combat is by being within a certain distance of them, the only way I so far found to engage in combat is to touch them. I have to TOUCH them in order to fight. Other times, a boss would leap towards me, the screen would fade and switch to the combat area, and the boss would be simply standing there getting READY to attack. I know, again, it's Final Fantasy, but for such a cinematic game, you would think they would consider continuity? Perhaps they did, but felt the dramatic effect was more beneficial.

As well, what is with the character designs? Character design or actually, any sort of design is supposed to tell a story. I know, again, it's Final Fantasy and they're supposed to have outlandish designs, and it's what defines these recent generations of FF, but what happened to the foundations of design? Suppose they're trying to go for personality and emotion with each of the characters designs, but looking at them, I gather almost nothing of who they are, what their motives are, their occupation, state and condition; nothing. There's a resistance fighting against an authority in the game, and the lot of them are comprised of kids and adults that are wearing clothes are untarnished, spick and span styled hair from various Jrock inspirations, and have super model faces. Also, of those who actually volunteer to fight the authorities and carry guns, can't shoot guns too. They all seem to shoot like Rambo, but at least Rambo can hit their mark. Nobody can seem to hit anybody even though it's an advanced and seemingly "rough" world, and all the guns have laser sights on them. As well, I felt it really awkward that there still needs to be a character in the game which acts like a Jpop idol or Japanese Gravure model. And even more awkward that one of the main characters; Snow, offered a gun to a kid. All the kid did was be emo about his mother. He didn't even--let's not get into that. It'd be too much detail and too much rant. There just are so many things which aren't explained or how characters act don't seem to reflect something that's natural.

Oh yeah, the game looks really nice.