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It's funny, but the part of the Final Fantasy XIII demo that had me most worried about is the part of the game I ultimately find I like best: The combat system. I couldn't help it -- it was so limited! -- even though I knew at the time I shouldn't have been too concerned. A weird quirk of the Final Fantasy series is that its intricate battle mechanics make the opening hours of the games -- the sections before you're given access to all your abilities and techniques -- terribly dull. Final Fantasy V is a slog until you get the first crystal and unlock jobs; FFVI does at least give every character a unique command right out of the gate, but it's still pretty repetitive until you meet up with the Espers; FFVIII is incredibly simplistic until you can junction; FFXII drags until you can build gambits.
Little surprise, then, that FFXIII is exactly the same way -- and the demo was based on the opening minutes of the game, well before you're granted access to the real battle system. But once you lean to use Paradigm Shifts (Optima Changes in the Japanese version), the real game begins... well, in battle, anyway.
Believe it or not, FFXIII's battle mechanics really are an evolution of all the battle systems from the series' PlayStation 2 chapters. Supposedly the team's real ambition was to create battles that felt as dramatic as the brawls in Advent Children, but fortunately they drew upon the series' heritage (i.e., videogames) to achieve that cinematic aim. Like I said in my preview, there's a lot of FFX-2 here: The pacing, the overlapping actions, the need for teamwork, the ability to change classes immediately in the thick of battle. But FFXIII also incorporates the need for strategy that I loved in FFX and a tactical element of indirect party control similar to FFXII.
It's interesting to see reactions to FFXIII by people who haven't yet played the game, because the response to things like our hands-on preview and impressions posted on various Internet forums is overwhelmingly negative. Yet the actual experience of FFXIII is pretty damn positive, even if the structure of the game is maddeningly linear. I'm really not too happy about the world design, which is basically one long corridor, but I'll be damned if the fights that take place in that tube of a universe aren't some of the best I've ever seen in any game with "Final Fantasy" in the title.
FFXIII does not reward complacency. It does not allow you to spam fight-fight-heal. Sure, the early battles don't require much thought, but once the game makes Paradigm Shifts available, all bets are off. You'll quickly begin meeting foes who can only be taken down with well-considered strategies, and not just the bosses; you'll have to adjust your tactics on the fly to account for the special defenses and abilities of plenty of cannon fodder mooks, too. Relying on the safe trio of Attacker/Blaster/Healer will only get you so far; sure, you probably won't have to worry about dying if someone in your party is set to work as a permanent healer, but some foes just can't be beaten unless you pour on the offense or the debuffs. And since the level of your efficiency in battle determines how quickly your valuable Tech Points are refilled, it's a pretty dumb idea to chip away at a high-defense foe for one percent of its max HP per round.
The first major boss you battle after gaining access to Paradigm Shifts initially seems like a pushover, despite spamming powerful group attacks: I wiped the floor with it in practically no time. But then the second phase of the battle begins, and the boss trades its high-pressure offensive skills for a more balanced defense. The only way to beat it with anything like efficiency is to force it into a Break state in which your party's damage output is multiplied several times. Of course, you always want to break enemies whenever possible, but it's trickier here; in the boss's initial state, its frequent attacks stun the party, giving its break gauge time to reset to zero. Once it enters the second phase of battle, though, it attacks less violently and less frequently, so it's possible to push it steadily toward the breaking point.
For the first sequence, it's essential to keep a Healer in the party to help recover from those constant attacks. Once you enter phase two, however, the boss's only major attack is a gravity bomb that hits the entire party for about half their hit points -- it's powerful, but it requires several rounds of recharge time before the boss can use it again. An ideal strategy here is to keep the party set to three Blasters -- offensive mages whose attacks have a high impact on the break gauge -- to build the boss's break gauge as high as possible while it's in its defensive phase. When it launches the gravity bomb, it's smart to switch to a Blaster/Blaster/Healer arrangement to allow your team to keep up the pressure while recovering from the big attack. And once the boss enters a Break state, it's wise to have main character Lightning switch her role to Attacker in order to make the most of its weakened defenses, while support character Sahz continues to attack as a Blaster and Vanille alternates between healing and blasting as needed.
Paradigm Shifts are basically a way to switch tactics between the various modes of action seen in every Final Fantasy. But there are a few unique wrinkles in FFXIII that allow the game to raise the stakes in a way that's decidedly rare in this series. For starters, there's no such thing as a Magic Point. Instead, every action a character takes requires a point of the Active Time Battle meter; a spell like Thunder costs one point, the same as a physical strike, while crowd-control techniques may cost two or three points. This equalizes the cost of magic and spells; there's no worry about recharging MP, and there's not even a need to worry about healing after the battle, since HP is recharged once the fight ends. And so, fights can be tricky. Effect spells that used to be cost too many MP to have any real value in Final Fantasy's throwaway battles -- be it Slow or Poison or whatever -- are no longer too expensive. Battles have therefore been balanced almost more like those from a Shin Megami Tensei game, where every fight could be the end for an unwary player unless they employ the proper tactics. Despite the more action-oriented feel of battle, it's not superficial. It's not mindless. It's not shallow. On the contrary, it's meaty and involving.
As someone who lives for good, challenging RPGs, this discovery pleases me.
I know a lot of people are freaking out about the fact that your support characters are AI-controlled, and that's actually kind of funny. This may be something new to Final Fantasy (disregarding the entire existence of FFXII, of course), but it's hardly a new idea for the genre. Ever played a BioWare game? How about Persona 3? Dragon Quest IV? Seriously, you guys gotta stop panicking about trivial things.
There's still more to battle that I haven't touched on, believe it or not. Tech abilities, for instance: They draw on a separate, unique meter (the TP meter, don't you know) and consist of highly specialized abilities -- mainly summoning Eidolons, but also casting certain Paradigm-independent spells like Libra. The higher your combat rating for each battle, the faster your TP meter recharges. There's also the Crystarium, which is basically FFX's Sphere Grid, except prettier.
But then, everything in FFXIII is prettier. Looks alone don't count for much... but fortunately, I'm finding the game does have a lot of substance where it really counts. Now that I've unlocked all the classes, I'm hoping combat becomes even trickier. This quest may or may not end up being a straight line to the very end, but at least the points along the way are becoming interesting.
