Final Fantasy 13

With the recent release of the demo of last years working copy of final fantasy 13, there is a lot of buzz around it and the fact it was reasonably well recieved despite being a work in progress demo copy. With this in mind we cant see why some websites are so keen to find problems with it – its proof that we are going to get one hell of a good final fantasy 13 when it arrives.

Based on interviews with square enix, feedback from magazines etc this list has been put together detailing the changes that are likely to be made (or imo probably already have been made) between the demo copy of ffxiii and the relased version which we should get in winter09/early 2010. The following list is an a ffxiii.co.uk version of things – a version of this list that should get most of the credit.

• Game difficulty – Said to be “greatly increased”. In fact, Toriyama expects XIII to be “the most difficult Final Fantasy Game ever”.
• In the demo, party members are CPU controlled. In the final, you’ll be able to issue them directives.
• Chain Combo’s will be a huge part of the release version of final fantasy 13 – it wasn’t so big in the demo.
• The classic Final fantasy victory fanfare isn’t present in the demo, but you can bet it will be in the final.
• Bug whereby regardless of if the first strike critically damages the enemy the combo continues should be fixed.
• Weapons for Snow (We cant wait!)
• Random Encounters will be from all directions in Final Fantasy XIII.
• Much more streamlined targeting mechanism will make it easier to select a target to hit (demo targeting wasn’t great.)
• The final will have an “item” command in battle.
• NPC dialogue will be subtitled in the final. In the demo, there is only voice.
• Sazh’s rather bizarre battle animation will be altered to be less strange, and more “jolly”.
• The Time Gauge maxes out at 3 in the demo, but you’ll be able to add more segments in the final through a new character growth system.
• Summons will be present in the final. The mysterious “TP Bonus” that appears after battles in the demo relates to them.
• Finally, the occasional frame rate drops in the demo will be fixed, according to Toriyama.

All in all we cant wait for the release version of ffxiii, even if they don’t fix all of these (but this is square enix, we know they will – the game will be flawless no doubt.) Its also great from our point of view that they have made the game more difficult to beat, this should keep the final fantasy fans gaming at it for a lot longer!