A few of you on my Facebook and Twitter know that I'm pretty far along of the US version of FF13 and asked me to post my thoughts-- so here goes.  No plot spoilers ahead but I will talk about the mechanics in good detail. 

Having played through 50 hours of gameplay now and closing in on the end of the storyline, my one liner review of FF13 is that it is *almost* a great game, but because of questionable design choices, the game gets in its own way towards perfection and ultimately ends up just a decent traditional Japanese RPG.  It has its moments--but the game truly punishes players at times with uneven character development, tedious and unimaginative dungeon design, and a very poorly thought out and bumpy difficulty curve.

First the good stuff.  The game is pretty.  Crazy pretty.  The battle sequences have a fluidity to them that does an amazing job of distilling what an epic fight between good and evil, using steel and magic has played out in our heads and in the movies for decades.  Battles have a natural ebb and flow as either side presses their advantage or the momentum suddenly flips with a timely spell or sword swing.  At its best, it can be quite exhilarating and entertaining.  The battle system is easily the best thing about the FF13 mechanics.  Square Enix have taken two decades to refine the mechanics of the battle system to this point and it truly shows that they sat down for a good long while to get it right.

And now for the annoying to madly infuriating stuff.

That well conceived battle system?  You better like fighting.  A fucking lot.  No really, a whole fucking lot.  Your average play session of FF13 *will* consist of nothing but an endless stream of battles.  Fights interspersed with 30 second story segments is truly what the gameplay of FF13 is. There is no respite as you travel to new cities and towns, immersing yourself in the activities of the residents.  There's no ambling to the inn to rest up and then shop for new gear.  In fact, there are no towns or cities.  There are no minigames.  There aren't generally non-playable characters to converse with.  This ultimately is my biggest complaint about FF13.  As a fan of the series since my childhood, the series always managed to thrust you into a fantasy world that felt expansive--you were part of some intrigue and drama in some big ass world.  Even back in the 1980s in FF1 you were part of some grand scale world.  FF13 certainly has a *large* universe that you travel through--but that's the kicker, your whole experience through the expanse is guided on artificial rails the entire time, never allowing you to deviate from a set path--you sit and watch the world around you pass you by, unable to interact with it at all.  You experience what the rails will allow you to see, so the sense of grandeur and scale in the end gets watered down.  It's as if the designers sat back and said---"well fuck, we got ourselves a kick ass battle system!"  And they wanted to show it off to you as much. as. possible.  The end result is a game where you WILL be in the battle screen easily 80% of the time.  Absolutely no exaggeration.

You never quite shake yourself from the heavy handed "guidance" that the designers impose on you either.  The first 1/3 of the game, approximately 20 hours, absolutely drag in part because of this unshakeable feeling that someone is pushing you where they want you to go.  The early story points is a to and fro of following your six characters, understanding their motivations.  They go in independent paths and you bounce between controlling each.  I'm all for character development, but the execution here is absolutely tone deaf.  It doesn't take 20 hours for the player to understand one char is driven by rage and revenge, or that another is trying to escape their guilt, or that yet another character simply fights because they know not what else to do.  Instead as I played through the first 1/3, I'm hit over the head again and again and again with the same character development.  It becomes hilarious as you use the datalog, the game's built in historian that records everything that transpires--multiple consecutive entries will all basically recount the same thing because the early story telling is so damn repetitive.  And as you amble along, you don't even have full control of your characters---you "party" may in fact have 4 characters, but the game will artificially restrict you to using a prescribed duo, leaving the others simply hanging onto the coattails of their squad mates while they just sort of---well, while they do nothing.

All the little things add up to dilute the sense of scale of FF13 and causes the game to ultimately suffer.  Dungeons are laid out in a linear fashion--if you're a fan of exploration, you'll be disappointed.  It's so bad that in one case, in an absolutely *linear* path, the game started shining spot lights in front of me, in case I got confused as to which direction on the linear path I was supposed to go.  You don't get to freely control who you control until the 15-20 hour mark.  The Crystarium, the construct that you use to develop and "level" your characters are gated artificially based upon where you are in the plot (sorry power levellers).  Hell, even the camera is shitty.  It's the perfect manifestation of the fact that you never have a proper sense of control in your character's destinies.

I could go on and on.  Square and their penchant for overly emo protagonists.  Or that every character is a recycled character from a previous game or a well worn character archetype (Vanille is absolutely Selphie from FF8, except she uses magic for example).  It's a shame as the game really does pick up and gets a whole lot more intriguing at about the 1/3 point.  But that's the kicker.  No game should force you to wait 20 hours for the primary plot to progress.  You spend 20 hours basically not giving a shit about the big picture because, well, your characters don't appear to--they're too self absorbed in their own immediate needs.  Bottom line, FF13 is soooo poised to be great but poor design decisions lead to an extremely one dimensional experience  Enjoyable at times, but often exhausting in its monotony at others.

Scale of 1-10, 6.9.