Final Fantasy XIII: A series of tubes

The worst reason to hate Final Fantasy XIII is because of its linearity. Non-linearity doesn't necessarily improve a game, and following a constrained path doesn't necessarily make it worse. All Final Fantasy games, including the most highly praised ones, have been essentially linear in both story and world design, and FFXIII is not even unique in degree, given FFX. A player's desire to break out of a constrained experience is usually not a result of linearity per se, but instead reflects a failure of the game's story to engage that player. "Failure" is a reasonably good description of FFXIII's story, which is surprising because Square-Enix had done so much of this stuff before.

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Final Fantasy XIII: The best part

Despite respectable review scores and reasonably good sales, Final Fantasy XIII is widely derided, for many good reasons and a few bad ones. Defenders of the game often point to the battle system as the game's saving grace. I found myself sharing the sentiment when I played through the game recently. That might be seen as damning by faint praise, given that so much of the game was attacked, but the combat system really is quite strong, and manages to incorporate principles that are familiar from hard-core RPGs in a dynamic and accessible way. While it probably won't satisfy players who cut their teeth on those older systems, FFXIII represents an interesting fusion of principles.

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FFXII: Superficially Epic

As I started writing that review of FFXII: Revenant Wings, I realized that I'd never taken out my notes on its predecessor and arranged them into a review. So, I decided I would go ahead and do that. I've played through the game twice now, and I feel it likely that I'll play it again at some point in the future. Final Fantasy XII walks an interesting line: compared to recent entries in the series it seems very much like a new direction. I felt, however, that it actually hearkened back to older entries in many ways. This synthesis had many strengths, but the game did not play to them as well as it could have. For all its epic grandeur, FFXII never really connects emotionally, in the end producing a superficial experience.

The battle system garnered the most attention, because it was the largest departure from Final Fantasy X. A turn-based system with a separate battle screen was replaced by "real-time" encounters in the field. However, the "real-time" system is something of an illusion, and in fact is a throwback, because it is essentially a partially-automated version of the active time battle system that series veterans are familiar with. The real difference here was the elimination of the battle screen, a move that made sense in terms of firmly rooting the action in the world, but which highlighted the oddity of having only half your party involved in a fight. The advantage of the change is most evident in terms of scaling. Giant enemies seem truly enormous in this system, and it also accommodates swarms of enemies that can be a drag in a turn-based system, as anyone who has sat through a Dragon Quest battle with 8 or more slimes can attest.

The removal of discontinuities and transitions between the overworld and battle screen adds a greater sense of immediacy as well, and creates some interesting moments—your characters might end up running through the desert with an enormous dinosaur on their heels, for instance. This engagement is adversely affected by the "Quickenings", rather inexplicable special attacks that seem to take place on some other plane. It would have been better, and achieved more to differentiate the characters, if these had been replaced by in-field special techniques.

The price of all this is the control afforded by a turn-based system. While it is possible to manually direct all your characters, it is more efficient to use the rudimentary AI system (gambits) so that they control themselves. There was some grousing about this, and also the "license" system that forced you, in the early stages of the game at least, to pick and choose what weapons and abilities your character could use. In the end though, these aspects of the system, however controversial, were secondary, because the real selling point of the Final Fantasy games has been presentation and story.

The story was quite a departure. While many of the popular FF entries were highly personal stories intertwined with a traditional fantasy epic, FFXII is much more distant from its characters. In FFX, Tidus repeatedly states "This is my story," but FFXII is emphatically not the (supposedly) main character Vaan's story, nor even Princess Ashe's. The player's characters are all very small relative to the conflict being played out, and for the most part they are unable to affect its course. Only at the very last do the efforts of the characters amount to a thrust against the march of their history. Even then, they affect only the superficial aspects of the moment (i.e. who wins the battle); the great task, the toppling of the Occuria, has already been achieved.

The presentation matched the epic focus in several ways. Full-video cutscenes seemed slightly less textured than they were for FFX—compare Tidus' skin and hair to Vaan's, for instance. Full-video also seems to be used somewhat more extensively for establishing shots than in FFX, and the main characters get rather less screen time in the action shots. Thus, in general, the full-video cinematics feel more remote from the characters. Similarly, the soundtrack is very grand and highly orchestrated. Horn and string ensembles take the lead here, rather than the solo instruments that dominated most tracks of FFX. As a side effect, the music is less intimate, and at times feels almost superficial, like it came out of a fighting game. Although some themes get repeated, the music has nothing like the coherence of FFX. These features work with the nature of the story presented.

So too does the general vastness of the landscapes involved. Entire regions of FFX could fit into single screens of FFXII, and the exterior landscapes are generally quite distinct. Interiors are something of a problem for the game, however; the differences between the various mines in the game mostly amounts to pallette work. Also, in some instances the scale seems very odd—particularly in the corridors of Imperial ships, which are too wide, too purposeless, and have improbably high ceilings. In general, however, the scaling of the environment works to the advantage of the game's approach, emphasizing how large the world is relative to the characters and their story.

This is not to say that there is no personal conflict motivating the story, but it does not play out nearly as intimately as in some other entries. Vaan (the protagonist) and Vayne (the principal antagonist) see each other briefly at the beginning of the game and do not meet again until a few brief moments before the end, but the story tracks their movements and the development of their opposing ideals. Curiously, both wish to be free of oppression: Vaan from the Empire that Vayne represents, and Vayne from the godlike Occuria who try to control history. That Vayne and the Occuria both view their respective rule as benevolent does not impress those who endure it. Despite their key similarity, Vaan and Vayne are presented as physical and emotional opposites, with very different reactions to the resented oppression. Vaan wishes only to be free, and his own master, while Vayne wishes to take the godhead himself, by manufacturing his own version of the magical stones that the Occuria use to distribute power (and with it, control). The problem with this dichotomy is that while Vayne is the unquestioned leader of his side of the argument, Vaan is not a leader nor seemingly even essential to his.

As the story progresses it sounds two main thematic notes: a suspicion of power and the powerful, and the futility of revenge. Criticism of current events could easily be read into either of these if one wished, though the tale of small nations caught in a conflict between two great empires seems more directly analogous to the Cold War. Intertwined with the theme of vengeance is the resolution of loyalties—familial and political. In general the characters choose to be loyal to the future rather than to memory, which could also be read as a political statement.

One interesting feature of the story is that Vayne and Doctor Cid both have a habit of talking to thin air, seeming to be insane. Yet the "Venat" they speak to, a renegade Occurian god, is actually present (invisibly). The obvious note sounded about the ease of confusing religion and insanity may obscure larger questions about how we can distinguish a good God from an evil one, and whether any God that relates to the world purely through power can be truly benevolent. Is Venat good or evil, or both?

These threads are interesting, but through them we ultimately learn very little about the characters. FFXII spends so much time building up the enormous supporting cast that we never get to connect very completely with or truly understand the putative main players. At the end of the tale, we know that they have done certain things, but we understand very little about why. Nor does the story end with any resolution of tensions or personal transformations. Most of the characters (except Penelo, who is practically a non-character) reconcile with their past, but the significant transformations that Yuna and Tidus underwent in FFX find no echo here. Vaan, Ashe, and Basch are somewhat less bitter at the end of the story, but otherwise not significantly changed. The relationships between the characters of the party never seem to develop or change—at times it's not at all clear why they're even still travelling together. Rather, it is the secondary characters, Larsa especially, who are transformed by events of the story, and their relationships that develop and change. In that respect, FFXII resembled some of the earlier FF games to its detriment.

The only remedy to this weakness would be a change in the narrative. A narrowed focus would have helped—Penelo and Fran could have been excised or relegated to supporting-cast status without much of a loss. Fran and the Viera in general felt like an indulgence of puerile sexuality—the village full of scantily-clad bunny girls was almost fatal to the tone. Vaan should either have been excised or built up significantly—for long stretches of the story he seems like a supporting character who got stuck to the main plot by accident, which is not a problem unless (as here) the events of the story seem as insignficant to him as he is to them. Trimming some of the fat and refocusing the story could draw out Vaan's developing leadership and responsibility, and Ashe's resolution with her past, to a much greater degree. It would also allow more space to play on Ashe's relationships with Vaan and Balthier. At several points the Occuria seem interested in using Vaan somehow, or pushing Ashe towards him. Again, allowing more space for this to play out would also have been wise.

As an epic, FFXII mostly works, and the vastness of the landscape, the massiveness of many of the enemies, and the sweeping score help reinforce this property. However, while the political and military tale is compelling, the personal story is not: the main characters are never developed adequately, their relationships do not seem to evolve, and for all their epic scope the events of the story do not seem to greatly change them. The automation of your allies, the vastness of the world, the remoteness of the score, and the two-dimensionality of the characters creates a fundamentally alienating and impersonal environment only partly ameliorated by the engagement of the continuous-field battle system, and this only weakens the emotional impact further. Ultimately, FFXII is grand but not touching—all glorious gilding, and no lily.

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Revenant Wings doesn't play up to its presentation

Final Fantasy XII : Revenant Wings for the DS opens with some really beautiful video sequences, accompanied by lovely music. Immediately, the top-notch presentation that Final Fantasy games are known for asserts itself. Yet, as is so often the case with FF spinoffs, the actual game doesn't live up to the polish. Despite its production values, Revenant Wings is an uninspired game with merely passable mechanics.

The box promises a version of the FFXII battle system, and Revenant Wings more or less delivers that with its real-time action and skill charging, though the context is quite different. Each of the characters commands a group of monsters in most parts of the game, making it more of an RTS, though there really isn't any resource management going on. This isn't to say that there's no micromanagement—you'll be doing plenty of that, because the AI does not make good decisions and cannot be stopped from making bad ones.

You have no option with the AI other than setting a single "gambit" (automatically used skill). So you cannot, for instance, tell a group of creatures to stand their ground. Ranged creatures especially have a tendency of getting into trouble this way, but any of your creatures might chase after an enemy against your orders. It's also difficult to respond quickly to problems, in part because your creatures move so slowly, but also in part because your units have a hard time moving around one another. In fact, it will not be at all uncommon to see melee and flying units wandering aimlessly through the ranks long after you have ordered them to move to a particular spot, especially when you have lots of relatively stationary ranged units. As you might guess, units have no AI that commands them to stay together, which will occasionally result in a lone member of a platoon charging hopelessly into the mouth of death while his comrades mill stupidly about in your lines.

Other than the traffic jam problem, the touch control works pretty well. Unit selection is straightforward, and never caused a significant problem. Unfortunately, it's not always easy to get units to do what you want—your units and the terrain can obscure opposing units, preventing you from ordering an attack. Also, especially on screens where there is significant variation in altitude, it's not always clear where you are telling your units to go, or even where you can tell them to go. Once you successfully order them, they'll take a while to actually get moving; your commands always seem to take a backseat to whatever the units are doing at that moment.

As a strategy game, Revenant Wings is run-of-the-mill. There's a standard revolving set of weaknesses (flying creatures weak to ranged creatures weak to melee creatures weak to flying creatures) and the requisite elemental strength/weakness setup. It's generally more important to exploit the former than the latter when you choose what creatures and leaders you'll take into battle, but here too you are overly limited. For much of the game you have no real choice about what attack mode your leaders will use. Later on, you have somewhat more flexibility, but in the end you will have only one healing leader (Penelo) and four ranged combat leaders (with two each of flying and melee leaders).

Despite all the limitations, however, the game is not terribly difficult or strategically challenging. Most maps can be solved with a tenacious advance or simple distract and destroy tactics. The exceptions are one ill-advised stealth mission, a few missions involving allies (who apparently long for death) and the final mission, which is somewhat insulting in that you are essentially confronted with a gun that can only be destroyed by attacking the mouth of the barrel. It is doable, but tedious and frustrating, and made more so by the tendency of characters whom you have told to remain in a safe area to wander into the path of the shot (due to the aforementioned AI issues). Naturally, enemy troops are never damaged by the enormous laser blast. In short, difficulty is added in lazy ways—useless allies, massive enemy respawns, over-leveled opponents, and silly terrain effects—rather than more subtle approaches like truly coordinated enemy attacks or realistic competition of strategic goals. This feeling of laziness is accentuated by the interminable recurrence of bosses, especially the Judge of Wings and Ba'Gamnan's crew.

The presentation, as I mentioned, is top-notch. The music is especially notable. Although almost all of it is cribbed directly from the original, it was ported to the DS without a significant loss of sound quality. The result is a really enjoyable audio experience, though some of the sound effects are obnoxious. The in-game graphics of course don't match the detail and beauty of the pre-rendered cutscenes. However, they're perfectly serviceable in most instances. The environments are nice, and the map of Lemures is very pretty (this is less true of the Ivalice map). The monster designs have a lot of personality for their size, though I feel that the art department stretched themselves a bit too far on some of the larger espers—these are sometimes too detailed, resulting in an complex yet uninteresting blob.

This description could also apply to the plot, which hits many of the same notes as the original FFXII and adds some Kingdom Hearts-style rambling about hearts (anima). It's interesting to know what happened to some of the minor characters of FFXII, but it's striking that the main characters appear to be totally unimproved by previous events. Penelo is sent to video-game writing purgatory with stock jokes about her bad cooking, and at one point devolves into a sobbing useless wimp. This isn't anything original: I note it only because Penelo's backbone and sass were her only distinguishing characteristics in the previous game and here they are eviscerated for no apparent reason. None of the other characters do much to distinguish themselves—oh wait, one is an emotionally closed-off pretty boy, a novel concept for SquareEnix writers. Cameos by the several of the original FFXII cast amount to just that: cameos, with no additional character development.

Pretty cutscenes and pretty music achieve nothing if they're applied to a run-of-the-mill game with a lame plot. Regrettably, that's exactly what happened here. Revenant Wings' uninspired mechanics, oversimplified strategy, and limp story waste the value applied in the graphical and audio departments. It's not a terrible game, but those who expect a play experience as vivid as the opening videos will come away disappointed.

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