Final Fantasy XIII - Over but not End

Over the course of last week, I spent a bit of time playing, and finishing the main story of Final Fantasy XIII through to the very final boss- an estimated 40 hours of total gameplay. That's not the end of the road though, as there are still post-game content that can be accomplished just for the sake of completion, since they (in particular, the Mark Quest) are not related to the story in any form. Anyway as usual, a brief of my impression toward the game before I write a lengthy review some time later:

• Linear, linear and linear. I feel that the "real" FFXIII only started at chapter 10 (out of 13 chapters....) when all playable characters are assembled and you can form your own party. Chapter 1-9 were merely 20 hours of movies. Your party and movement was very limited, there's no such thing as exploration during those period which made things boring and uninteresting. I really wish SquareEnix could just compact those 9 chapters into 1-2 chapters and extends the remaining 3 chapters. What's the fun when you're forced to play with Sahz and Vanille in your party =.=

• combat difficulty: chapter 1-10 were rather easy, then at cp11 it started to get difficult as some stronk monsters started to appear (since the world started to become huge and you encounter all sorts of monsters). But Chapter 12 almost drives me nuts. The monster combinations, especially after Eden was so difficult to beat that I often need to change my party/Paradigm just to adapt with specific monster combination. And then we're forced to battle against the friggin Adamantoise and King Behemoth...they're beatable but since I didn't power leveling much...

• character evaluation: I agree with the general concensus that Lightning, Fang and Hope are the best combination of character from chapter 10 to the end of the game - balanced offensively and defensively. Fang is a must because of her brute strength, Lightning is so awesome with her Army of One (seriously easy 999% stagger), while Hope, although he is so paper, was very useful because of his huge AoE elemental magic (and highest magic stat) and synergist support. Snow comes close next because of his obscene amount of HP, plus Sentinel role is very valuable at the end of the game. Vanille is okay, but she kinda lack good ravager skill and I don't really want to have 2 Saboteur in a party (since having Fang is a must). While Sazh, well, I never like this guy to be honest. Weak as a Commando (can't even Launch), average ravager but good synergist. So if I were to tweak my party, I need to party Sazh and Vanille together for their Sab+Syn combo.

• The gameplay is actually pretty fun. One of the review I've read gave a bad rating to the gameplay because the reviewer said we did nothing but "Press X". Uh...excuse me, but what rpg/turn based game didn't? At mid-end game, you almost always want to change paradigm in every tough battle (hence pressing L1), therefore that kind of claim was not making any sense. In fact I believe Auto-battle is a good feature because the gameplay is revolved around speedy, active time battle. The only thing that might annoy people (and myself too) is that we can't set how the AI work, so sometimes it frustrate me that Hope didn't cast the buff that we actually want. And, I wish the AI would know how to use their ultimate skill, so that I can build combo/stagger to 999% with Lightning, then finish off with Fang's Highwind XD
  

• story: Can't comment much, because I lost interest with the plot at mid-game. TOO MANY CUTSCENES!! Are we playing a game or watching a movie? Hence I skipped many scenes, although I still have the rough idea of what actually happened (Fang and Vanille's action, the role of fal'Cie etc). In fact I even skip all 6 scenes leading to the final battle, AND the ending.... well I guess I don't mind missing the ending since I would surely revisit the final boss again after I powered up my party, to get the Superstar Achievement/Trophy and get Lightning's theme :3333

• Lightning = Cloud Strife w/boobs. But an awesome upgrade of Cloud. If only her summon Odin (or should I say, ALL summon in FF13) is any more useful than just to refill hp...
  

Overall: I'd say FFXIII was a nice game to play for RPG fans, but lacks variety in term of exploration and sidequest. No town, little NPC to interract, always on the run, little sidequest (except near the end of the game). IMO the game only started to get fun at chapter 10 onward, which is rather late considering there are only 13 chapters in total. Oh and, SquareEnix, please don't make cutscenes every 5 minutes, it's tad annoying :(


p/s: next stop: Nier Replicant/Last Rebellion