More delayed than an airplane from the north pole which has been hijacked by polarebears wearing tights and singing french lullabies to the penguins(this is one actully impossible, and yes I'm saying the other stuff isn't!) I finally pulled my thumb out of my ass and wrote this review. NOT LIKE YOU'RE READING THE NEWS ANYWAY! LOLOLOLOLOL. Internet rage aside. I will cut this review short due to the fact that I spent over 200 hours with this game and no one can see why. FINAL FANTASY XIII! (13 for you less educated people, you may sit down Frank Jaeger.) A promise of rainbows and madness riding on chocobos while puking awesome cinematics at you and a climactic story that will blow you away further than Twister did.(The movie, not the social-interact game, because if so it'd be a fun thing considering that Twister the movie sucked wet toast.) A new set of hopefully interesting characters, ground breaking battle-system, customization and other promises of the holy grail.So what do we think about it? Story: Right, We got Lightning, a former soldier to hops around a train shooting and totally owning soldiers as she sees fit. All of this to save her little sister. She is basicly the Cloud from FFVII(7). She's wenchy, egotistic and rather gloomy at the start but then blossoms into something more...alot later. She meets up with Sazh! The black witty comic relief guy with an adorable chocobo on his head. He's the fun guy with the heavy past (present?) that some people can relate to but then dismiss because...honestly, a black guy that doesn't curse? He's got the beard though... They later meet up with Snow, you're official charmboy, fists of fury, blonde, muscular greek god without any sense of reality. These two parties are followed by Vanille a horrendus white girl that moans and makes several cut-scenes sounds like porno. She's the positive and "let's do it!"-girl that many many people will hate, except the hopeless otaku fanboys that has been sexstarved ever since... well... Life was given to them really... As a game critic in this phase I should be neutral to everything but FUCK SAKE WOMAN! SHUT THE HELL UP AND GET BACK TO THE STOVE!. At this point you might say "HEY! Thats demeaning to women. Yes, yes it is, but she's not a woman she's a spawn from satan that has come to screech loud into our ears and make us bleed from every single entrance, exit, socket that god ever created. (yes, I really DID spend 200 hours on this game). Together with her lovely companion Hope! A boy whos mother dies almost directly in the opening (spoilers alert, but honestly, it's like 20min into the game, live with it) and bears a grudge against Snow, I know, we all hate the winter. This boy is emo and only cares about revenge...for starters. The quest goes on too save the little sister of Lightning, Serah (HAWT!) but alas they fail immensely. There are LOADS of terms in this game like Fal'cie. Cieth, L'cie, Cocoon, Pulse etc etc which I could explain but make the text one million times longer. One day I'll make video reviews to prevent walls of text critting your eyes for 9999 while having BLIND junctioned to it. ANYWAY! THR QUEST! They all get "branded" and recieves a mission which they must fulfill or they get turned into evil zombies. Later on in the game you get introduced to Fang(HAWT!) which is a character I really like, not only due to the awesome name or the clothes she's wearing but also because she's the almost most relatable person in the game. She's witty and entertaining aswell a good provider of up-skirts(black). The storyline itself is rather intriguing if you involve yourself but if you're a newcomer to RPGs you'll probably shrug at it and say "Well...my pubic hair is growing inwards again, oh dear." AKA: Might not be the thing for you. The plot has a few twists but nothing really special, sometimes it feels like the plot isn't enough to drive you further and it can even feel like a hassle to walk to the next cutscene. But if you push yourself further along you'll get more into it as the plot becomes more serious and a deeper meaning is revealed (SURPRISE!). Though I will admit, this takes time. All in all, the story is good, but only if you really push yourself and hang on through those "Let's turn off this game and go wank to brittish taosters instead"-moments which WILL appear. I honestly don't think you should have to do this to play a game, it should make you WANT to play it not make you FORCE yourself to play it just because you're curious and still have a deep hope buried underneath the remains of what once was Squaresoft but then got smacked in the face by Square Enix and their bravado FFX-2 and FFXII and the huge single player letdown FFXI(good game though). Story score:6.3 It's there, it's just not enough. Design: The game is GORGEOUS, honestly. The cinematics spares no one. The game looks like it feels when you're having sex, sticky, ashamed, 80bucks poorer but soooooo gooood. The backgrounds are the pricewinners in my opinions. It all looks so vivid and interesting and make's you all warm inside. The characters look realistic and so does facial expressions, blinking and movement. Everything flows and looks natural. It's bright and colorful, you have weather and varied enviroment. The water looks good, the hair spreads nicely and the ground seems down to earth... That was bad. All in all the effects of everything you do, everyone around you and yourself will look insanely good and enough to tighten your pants to straining point, except for the ladies whom I can obly make the comparison like spending an entire day in a shoe shopping mall with your boyfriends platinum credit card. However this later pisses you off as you realize "THAT PLACE LOOKS AWESOME" Well, sucks to be you, because you can't go there and there wont be any Downloadable content for this game, now sod off you pikey. Design: 8.9 it looks maddeningly good, but the biggest focus seems to have ben set on the BACKGROUNDS which makes me bash my head against a concrete wall at times. Gameplay: Right, now, let's get down to the CORE of every single game, the official gameplay. First things first, orientation. I will make this clear, one word will be mentioned SEVERAL times. Anywho, back on topic. Orientation through the game! ...LINEAR! It's so forward and one-wayd you're surprised when you actully do a 180 that a speeding truck wont hit you in the face or the police will fine you for going the wrong way AND let you wear a cone saying "JACKASS" for going the wrong way for even a second. It's straightforward and easy to follow, you even get a small navigation point which basicly turns it into "Go here for cutscene". Walk down the road straight forward, maybe take a tiny detour for some treasure sphere, reach the marked point at the minimap. watch short-long cutscene and run to the next one. This goes on until a good 20 hours into the game when freedom strikes like a freaking blow to the head from a rampaging rhinosaurus. You recieve a huge area to explore and grind, do quests and fill your heart with what we've all come to expect from a Final Fantasy, but honestly, not 20 hours after actully booting it up. How long you get to enjoy this freedom is all up to you depending on how long you wish to stay before moving on with the mainquest. You will get an option to return here later in the game right before the last boss and once again after you've completed the game. Apart from the VERY linear running of the game there are other things to put the focus on. While freestrolling you run around with your party leader just like any other Final Fantasy. In battle you can also only control your party leader. Your party members will assist you as they deem necessary. But then again being a bunch of tossers some of them tend to be complete titwanks in some of their actions and you wish you could control them because yes, you would do a better job, but a slower one so you face reality and live with it. Besides, if you could control everything you'd be swamped, killed and left stranded on a solitary beach 5000miles away having nothing to eat but cock meat sandwiches.(Interpret that however you see fit.). Speaking of battling! The battle system gives you a bravado of commands. Auto-battle, Commands, Abilities and Items. "Woop di doo" you say thinking "that's easy, I can quickly rank up my commands and unleash hell!" No, you're wrong, because queuing your own commands takes way to long and render you vulnerable if you're dimwitted enough to take more than 3 seconds to fill you entire bar with more than 2 commands. Auto-battle is the way to go due to the rather intelligent priority system depending on whatever you know about the enemy. However this is not necessarily a good thing, at all. Some battles I will admit, I engage the enemy, touch my balls, crack my neck, make another rant about the french and have my bellybutton pierced, all of this while pressing Auto-battle. Now you might say! "HEY! The combat system and the battles shift later on making it more dynamic and interesting and rather challanging. Yes, I can agree to this due to the fact that it is actully true. Paradigm shifts. Every character gets a sortiment of 6 different classes. Commando, heavy physical oriented class that slapps stuff across the face with the weapon you have equippeed AKA Attack, attack attack and pro-longs stagger(More on that later), Ravager, a magic based attacker, think "Red Mage" who rapidly fills the stagger meter quickly. Sentinel, the "Tank" in question, reduced damage taken, ability to taunt players and protect them. Saboteur, weakens the enemy and exploits additional weaknesses such as lowering physical/magical defense and or magical resistances and a whole bunch of other stuff. Medic: Kind of speaks for itself, sends the cures flying and prevents you from dying. Synergist: the buff guy, thats gives all players haste, protect and whatever necessary magic enhancements they need to defeat whatever unspeakable evil lurks in the shadow of the kitten who innocently plays with the ball of yarn which happens to be a bomb meant to destroy all of mankind and possibly the kroatians. There you have it, the classes that helps you to triumph evil, every member of the party can partake in one role each giving the setup fancy names such as: Commander + Ravager + Ravager = Relentless Assault Bitchin'? well honestly, I think so, so sod of you tosser. Cool names are cool. You can setup a total of 7 pre-rendered setups which you neatly switch through during the battle. So if something seems impossible at first you're just using the wrong tactic. More about combat. As I revealed earlier the auto-battle command varies depending on how much you know about the enemy (I did mention that right? If not... well..sod off, now I did.) so does your teammates action. If the enemy has a high physical defense the synergist will buff everyones magic offensive strength before considering that boosting physical strength is awesome, but it's not...'cause the turtle has huge amounts of physical resistance...weren't you listening? ...twat. And so on, if the enemy is weak against lightning all magical attacks are lightning based (Yes, you throw your hot female party member/leader at the enemy, I know, I'm hilarious, shut up, this is alot of text and I have to entertain myself SOME freaking way.) I could go on about every aspect of the system and you'll sit there like asshats going "Dude, the game is one month old. get over it, we know this shit." WELL BOHOOO I still did it. The stagger system is a clever invention which let you fill up a bar that at some percentage goes into "stagger" and the foe becomes extra vulnerable to all your attacks and a few special attacks become devestatingly strong. There are a few none-battle segments thats not really worth meantioning, there's Chocobo treasure hunting, a part where you walk around with a huge robot and a few collectables. The character development is rather good, reminds you slightly about Final Fantasy X(10)'s sphere grid, just, less confusing and (SURPRISE!) completely linear, except a few odd turns for maybe an ability or extra strength node. But you have three different trees to invest you characters development points(Crystalum Points). It's a good system and presents a balanced growth of characters and a satisfying change in gameplay the further you invest in the classes unlocking extra ATB gauges and Accessory slots. Item customization. Back to the good old: ONE PERSON ONE TYPE OF WEAPON......ACCESSORIES FOR ALL! HARRR HARRR HARRR. Gloves, swords, polearms, poop boomerangs and whatever kind of tools you can use to somehow hit the opponent with are character specific. These can all be upgraded through your Savepointshopupgradeterminal which is strategically placed....EVERYWHERE. There are so many save points I believe the game can't even think of a way to punish you for having a real life, some game huh? There are no "towns" in this game so all shopping and upgrading are done at the Savepointshopupgradeterminal, which can be rather nice and saves backtracking, because you might get lost....on this straight road...of linearness...... sarcasm sarcasm. Anyway, the upgrading of your equipment is rather dull, it's use all your loots to feed your weapon experience so you can kill the baddies. There's no real challange to it it's just a long and stupid grind which will bore you to tears. Gather 99 of those those those and those and then you have something awesome. Or you can buy them, BUT OH WAIT! Combat does not award money, so you must go grind money from monsters by getting items you can sell to upgrade your weapons so you don't have to grind monsters to upgrade your weapon. .....hold on? In other words, the upgrade system is flawed and just, not good at all, which is a shame because the battle and the customization system work really well together. Imagining having a family of three kids a mum and a dad. The Father is named Michael, the mother is named Michelle, the first kid is named Michaella, the second kid is named Michael Jr and the third kid is named Fuckface. Gameplay: 8.8 It's good, really good even, but flawed on alot of places. Presentation: Stunning visuals and convincing voice acting (Apart from the retarded Vanille who still needs to hit puberty, get drunk, loose her virginity to the "cool" guy in the closet at school wearing nothing else than a skunk roadkill that she picked up longing for her fathers throbbing member......ship in some gouverment, this really doesn't matter I'm ranting.) If it wasn't for the insanely ridiculous voice script. The lines and sentences are worthy of biggest piece of turd to be splurted from the mount resembling words award. I will admit, this varies at times, sometimes it's actully quite captivating. cinematics pull off a good job upping the general score and the music hits well as it's kind of electic/rock/orchestra version. And the battle theme is insanely good and currently inhabits my phone as my new ringtone. There are always things to be craved from the game, but it did a good job of standing on it's own two feet. My main question remains however. WHY THE FUCK ISN'T NOBOU UEMATSU THE BIGGEST MUSIC GENIUS ON THE PLANET MAKING THE MUSIC ANYMORE!? Presentation: 9.1 Horrible script writing makes me bleed from my ears and one HORRIBLY picked voice actor who moans more than speak. I am however curiously mot turned on by this. It's that bad. OVERALL SCORE: 8.3 It's a good game if you manage to stay the course. I'm afraid however that the first 8-10 hours is many people's breaking point if not even earlier. It tries alot but unable to have the proper pull until later on. So adding some fun math here. Sazh the witty black guy, Hope the emo kid, Lightning the cold hearted former soldier, Vanille the wench you loathe because she happens to be the best healer in the game so you actully HAVE to use her on several occasions, Snow the heroic fanboy thats rather dimwitted and Fang the sexy up-skirt woman make into one solid being. A black emo kid standing in a Snowy Lightning storm while eating Vanilla ice cream pondering his Dental issues. Fuck this took long.