Miracles Are Things We Make For Ourselves

Dear Followers (and Ivan),


After spending countless hours together and waiting for months during the school year, two remarkable things occurred this Spring Break (so much for studying for AP tests). First and foremost, I was able to see Katherine Law once again. I have known Katherine since elementary school, and last year she moved away to California. Before that, during high school, she would constantly throw sleepover parties at her house. These sleepover parties were often the highlight of my summer and watching Mean Girls and snorting candy never got old. Being able to see Mama Kath once more was the cherry on top of this fantastic Spring Break.

Secondly, I completely my lifelong goal of beating Final Fantasy XIII. I had been following this game since eighth grade as I turned back to Final Fantasy to curb my Kingdom Heats crave. After seeing the first trailer for the game, I was hooked and I would constantly check up on IGN for new updates. When I purchased the game last year with my dad I was overjoyed. Thankfully, at that time, I had practically finished AP European History and only had to look forward to my daily dose of Mrs. Larson and Mrs. Vanhorn, two of the most relaxed teachers I have ever met (Mrs. Larson actually isn't that relaxed).

I spent countless hours gobbling up this massive masterpiece. If you play Final Fantasy games, many of you know that FFXIII was more linear than most of the previous installments in the series, offering almost no towns or NPC's to interact with along the way. In fact, most of the game consists of moving down long hallways toward an exclamation point on your mini-map to watch a cut scene or fight a boss. While many may condemn this aspect of FFXIII, I enjoyed this aspect thoroughly. By focusing more on story development and character interactions, FFXIII allowed me to slowly be drawn into the game before shaking things up.

And what a story! FFXIII had, in my opinion, the most emotionally gripping storyline of any other installment. With the other installments I have played, like FFXII, FFX, and FFVII, I wasn't able to become emotionally connected to characters because of awkward interactions. The beautifully crafted backgrounds, character models, and smashing soundtrack didn't hurt either. While there were many scenes with cheesy character dialogue (yes, this is a Japanese RPG), I was surprised most of the time by how dynamic each of the characters were. The only thing that pissed me off was Vanille's accent (are you Russian or British?).

As for the actual game play, the fighting system was not the most interactive, but the fights were some of the most stressful I have ever fought. Even if your characters are automatically healed after each fight and they automatically fight with a single click, the enemies in FFXIII are brutal and can tear you to shreds if you make a wrong move. While none of the enemies up until Chapter 11 pose a real threat, when you reach the Archetype Steppe things get spicy quick. I honestly used a Paradigm Shift every 20 seconds on some bosses. The only thing I felt was missing was really powerful finishing moves or summons (Eidolons suck nuts) but I guess that would throw off the fighting system.

Overall, I am extremely satisfied as of now. The game was just the right length with a decent pace (except for the massive learning curve at Chapter 11), and I feel like almost all of my questions were answered. One annoyance to note however is that at Chapter 11, the cut scene quality decreases substantially and the characters barely move during forced pieces of dialogue (FFX all over again). Maybe the game developers just didn't care anymore. Oh well. The beautifully crafted CGI cut scenes and fight animations more than make up for this small annoyance.

With that I set down my controller. Seeing as I don't get much time to play videogames nowadays, this weekend was extremely nice. I look forward to playing FFXIII-2 which is scheduled for release this winter. Maybe I should finish FFX as well. Whatever. Yuna can wait.


We Live To Make The Impossible Possible, That Is Our Focus,
Noel