Finally?

My incredibly early impressions of XIII?
Glad you asked.
Final Fantasy is tough because you play it knowing that you like it.
But you have to rank it in the lineup, or you're not hardcore enough.
It's higher than Mystic Quest.
Which also had visible monsters.
People complain that random encounters are boring.
I consider the opposite to be far more tedious.

It's a good thing that IGN posted this blurb from SE director, Motomu Toriyama.
For those of you too overweight to check the link, he defends the linearity in the game's first portion.
Which prevents dweebs like me from complaining about it.
As of now, the game sort of plays like a giant tunnel.
And the enemies are mixed and matched.
Like nuts.
Alright. Fight two pistachios and an almond.
Now fight the almond with a cashew and a pistachio.
Now it's two pistachios and an almond again, but they have a back attack on you this time.
I'm not saying that it's bad.
But I am saying that I'd be concerned if I hadn't read the Toriyama comment.
All of his buddies call him by his last name.
I have his number in my phone.
It's a Japanese number, so there's a bunch of digits.
He calls me when he's hammered sometimes.

Anyway.
The visuals might be next-gen, but the lead character movement through this tunnel is not.
Animation, even the sound of footsteps for world exploration is taken directly from X.
Sure, it's nit-picky, but it does feel a little Savage Garden.
A little 2001.
It just makes movement feel subconsciously dated, that's all.
We'll get over it.
You know when you go out with Roman and you get hammered in GTA?
At that Russian place across from the burned-out apartment?
Well, when you're all hammered, yelling at the cabs.
That's sort of how the camera controls in XIII.
It moves sluggishly sometimes and intuitively the rest of the time.
Though full camera rotation in battle is a nice touch.
And it does so fluently during combat.
Which is when it counts.

Remember XII?
And all of the cool shit they said in XII?
Here's Basch, being all romantic and chivalrous:

"If I could protect but one person from war's horror...then I would bear any shame. I would bear it proudly."
I was sort of hoping that Final Fantasy characters would speak like this from now on.
But, much like the rapper, Snow had to come along and fuck that all up.
For any American readers out there, Snow is sort of a Canadian inside joke.
Well, he's an outside joke, too. Wherever he goes.
Snow Villiers has as much charm as that guy at the party who no one wants to talk to.
My favourite part is when he recruits Hope's mom.
Who is designed like a real tart, by the way.
She sort of reminds me of the druggie mom from the first Crow film.
Anyway, she says she wants to fight, and Snow hands her a gun.
Then he says something about being brave and so on.
And then I can't remember what he says.
But it's just as well he said:
"And babe, right now, in this chaos, you're some chick I'd like to bang."
Vanille sometimes sounds like a Japanese girl impersonating an Australian.
Sometimes she sounds like she has a speech impediment.

Okay, this is enough complaining.
The treasure chests bounce.
They're supposed to be hard to find.
Alright. Now this is enough complaining.
I may make it sound like I'm not enjoying the game.
But I am.
The paradigm system has a lot of promise for intuitive battles.
And the customization of this system looks like it will allow the player to develop character roles as they see fit.
Sorta like a job system.
Which has never been a bad thing in a Final Fantasy game.
There's my one-tenth review of the game that no one will read.
Take it away, fellas.