FF13: The first 2 hours

The subtitle of this post should be: "or, Why I Didn't Finish Heavy Rain."

I didn't finish Heavy Rain, nor am I sure I ever will. To be fair, though, it's not entirely HR's fault; I moved to Brooklyn last week, and even though we've been settled in for the better part of a week, I still haven't really had that much free time. That said, the free time I did have was time I didn't really feel like spending playing HR. HR kinda needs to be played in a long, uninterrupted stretch, or else it loses its rhythm, which is what happened to me. Also, it falls into the uncanny valley way too often, it needs an actual English-speaking voice cast, and the script very much needed to be touched up by an English-speaking writer. That's really what hit the uncanny valley for me - not the graphics, but the stiff, stilted dialogue delivered by people who don't quite know how to pronounce certain words. Also, it felt almost a little too derivative of "Se7en."

Anyway. Final Fantasy 13 arrived in the mail yesterday, and God of War 3 will arrive next week, and so I'm not sure I'll ever get around to finishing HR anytime soon.

As for FF13. I should probably start by saying that I'm not really all that familiar with the Final Fantasy series. I tried (and failed) to document my playtime with FF7 last year (1, 2, 3); I also downloaded FF8 from the Playstation Network, although I don't think I've even installed it. And I played about an hour or two of FF3 (?) on the DS, and a little bit of FF7-Crisis Core on the PSP. But that's really the extent of it.

I understand, though, that FF13 is somewhat of a radical departure from its previous versions, at least in terms of its combat system and how relentlessly linear it is. So there's that.

Here's what I can say about FF13, now that I'm a few hours in and the combat system is starting to get a bit more expansive:

1. It's gorgeous. I'm playing the PS3 version, for whatever that's worth.

2. People weren't kidding around when they said it's linear. It's not just that you move in a straight line - it's that the straight line you move along is very, very narrow. I can appreciate that this very conscious design choice might make the game a little less intimidating for the FF noob; but just because I've never really played a FF game doesn't mean I've never played any game.

3. The combat system sounds a lot more complex than it actually is. At least at this stage.

4. Almost any Japanese-developed game has this weird idiosyncratic thing where every character has to be constantly voicing something, even if it's just grunting. And almost every female character's grunts and moans sound alarmingly sexual in nature, even if they aren't at all sexual in context.

5. It is basically the polar opposite of Mass Effect 2, which I am holding up as the gold standard for Western RPGs. (Whether that's true or not is not really the point; it's an amazing game, and it's still fresh in my mind.)

Most reviews have indicated that FF13 starts slow and doesn't really get going until 12-15 hours in. Which is a lot of hours that I might not necessarily have before GOW3 arrives. But I must admit that I'm kinda enjoying it so far. I have almost zero idea what's going on (and if I weren't playing the game with subtitles, I'd have absolutely no idea what a "fal'Cie" or "l'Cie" is; at least I know how they're spelled). But I'm intrigued. I think the last truly engrossing JRPG I played was Lost Odyssey; I'm hoping this will be somewhere near that ballpark.