HAPPY'S PROFILE

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It's roughly 2 months until the worldwide release of FF XIII, anymore. While I have been skeptical of the direction of the series in the present day, I can't deny my impatience for getting a copy of this game in my hands, already.

Final Fantasy XIII brings some fresh innovation to the series with its new sort of battle system and fresh setting that features both futuristic and natural elements; it is set between a land of wilderness and the high-tech world above it.

Another thing I found out is that Yoshinori Kitase (part of lead design in Chrono Trigger, FF VI, VII, VIII and X) is making a return to the series. With this said, as well as after seeing several parts of playthrough video, I can say the game looks very much alike to Final Fantasy X in terms of screenplay. (I personally liked FF X very much, and it's one of my favorites, while directing in FF XII falls flat in comparison.)

What comes to the audiovisual presentation, Tetsuya Nomura is in charge of the art again, but this time the soundtrack has been done by Masashi Hamauzu (earlier work: SaGa Frontier 2, FF X, Unlimited Saga), a person that has all releases of Nobuo Uematsu to the date. From what I've heard the soundtrack is a pleasant new direction to the series, as well. It mixes futuristic and symphonic and while it might take some adapting to get into, in the end it does show excellent quality.

In conclusion from the looks of it, it seem as if the series is design-wise continuing from where it was left roughly 8 years ago with FF X, but without TIDUS.

I also like to imagine this to be some sort of counterpart to FF VII as the setting has some similar elements and Tetsuya Nomura was even asked to create a female version of Cloud Strife when designing the main character, Lightning.

With all of this said, to me it seems this will be another epic and memorable game added to the series.

Additional information:

Plot:

The plot of Final Fantasy XIII, taking place in a world known as Pulse, revolves around the fal'Cie, mechanical beings of godlike power created from crystals residing inside them. People who are marked by the fal'Cie for greater purposes are called l'Cie. Each l'Cie has a Focus, a goal the fal'Cie wants him or her to fulfill within a certain amount of time; however, the fal'Cie do not explicitly say what the goal is. L'Cie gain the ability to summon Eidolons, but this ability comes with a price: if a l'Cie dies before completing his or her Focus, fails to tame his or her Eidolon, or fails to complete his or her Focus within a set period of time, he or she becomes a monster known as a Cie Corpse. If a l'Cie does complete his or her Focus, the reward is not much better: permanent transformation into a crystal. For this reason, being chosen as a l'Cie is seen as a curse.

Some 1,300 years ago, a fal'Cie named Orphan constructed a paradise for humanity: the shell-like city of Cocoon, which floats high above the surface of Pulse. Then Orphan created life forms and machines for Cocoon's inhabitants to use, and humanity flourished. Over time, after disaster destroyed Oerba Village and wiped out its residents, the people of Cocoon began to fear for the safety of their world, worrying that it would be cast down from the sky into the hell that they saw Pulse to be.

Although most Cocoon citizens have never seen Pulse with their own eyes, they have been told that it is a dangerous place that has strange effects on those who venture down to its surface. Consequently, anyone who is discovered to have visited Pulse is immediately subjected to quarantine and exile by the theocratic government of Cocoon, known as the Sanctum. The Sanctum enforces this policy with its strongest military branch, which is called PSICOM.

As Snow leads the resistance group Team Nora in an attempt to stop the purging of civilians, the mysterious Lightning fights her way past PSICOM soldiers with the aid of Sazh to find a Pulse fal'Cie, Anima, who turned her sister, Serah (who is also Snow's fiancée), into a l'Cie. Through a chain of events, these three, along with two exiles, Vanille and Hope, are forced by the fal'Cie of Pulse to become l'Cie, and with that become enemies of humanity with the Focus of bringing about the downfall of Orphan and Cocoon.

Mechanics - battles:

The concept for Final Fantasy XIII's battle system is to maintain the strategic nature of command-based battles. The Active Time Battle system will return, but it will work differently from its predecessors. Users will be able to chain large numbers of commands together in order to achieve attack bonuses.

In battle, the player can only control one character at a time out of a party of up to three.
Multiple commands can be stacked into slots per turn and released at the same time to form a combo. The number of command slots increases as the characters grow in strength.
These commands include series staples such as Attack, Fire, Blizzard and Cure, as well as new ones such as Ruin, Ruinaga, and Radial Strike. The difference between XIII's battle system and the ATB gauge is that these commands can still be placed in the slots even though the bar has run out, and the actions will be executed once the required slots are filled up. This, however, affects the chain combo hits as the combo has been interrupted.

The game does not make use of MP but introduces "cost points" for each command, which determine how many times the commands can be used per turn. Because magic cannot be used outside of battle, the HP of the party is completely restored after each battle.

The player is able to view the HP and name of the enemy before engaging it in battle. When engaging an enemy, the camera moves to another position and the battle menu appears, making the battle transitions nearly seamless. The after-battle victory screen in XIII holds information such as the time it took to finish the battle, the highest number of combos executed, the number of break attacks and the quality of battle which is determined by a ranking of one to five stars.

A "break state" is one of the new features of the Final Fantasy XIII battle system. The breaks refer to the times an enemy enters a state of non-retaliation. This occurs when a chain combo has been maintained for a certain period of time on an enemy. When a high level combo has been achieved, the enemy will glow red and enter this state, during which the player will be able to inflict high amounts of damage. The chain bar will gradually deplete during this period; when it becomes empty, the break state ends.
The party will be able to purchase new weapons in the game and actually see them in battle.

Mechanics - leveling - THE SPHERE GRID IS MAKING RETURN:

The leveling system for the game is called the Crystarium System which resembles the Sphere Grid in Final Fantasy X. Instead of gaining experience points after winning a battle, characters gain CP (Crystarium Points) which can then be spent in order to unlock abilities and increase attributes such as maximum HP.

A few playthrough videos (May contain poilers (In japanese) )
The last one is just a song from the soundtrack.



Looking forward to it yet?

Well, it's not really my concern. I can't release earlier, even if I wanted to. :O

Oh, by current version I mean the one I have. The only downloadable one is the RSD version, which still has all those numerous problems. =(

Why would it be weird Darken? I consider both of the games getting most votes as winners.

Craze: It's more of a matter of personal preference, probably, rather than what's "right" or "wrong" way to design the maps. While simplicity can work very well in game design, I can't say Stormrider's maps would look bad either.

I'd just consider them two separate ways to design. Either a sort of a mixed bag of graphics, or well sustained selection of graphics. Which is easier way to work with, depends on people. I find it personally harder to decide what leave out, rather than what to include.