I don't really understand how Microsoft justifies spending no doubt a lot of money on a TV advert for a multiplayer beta. I guess what this really shows is, like the one that came before it for Halo 3, this is in no way a beta. It's a glorified demo in sheep's clothing. The only real reason to use the beta moniker is incase everyone truly hates something they can change it without looking like they don't know what they're doing.

But what am I complaining. It has jet-packs! Everyone knows jet-packs are cool.

In September 2007 I posted my thoughts on Final Fantasy's twelfth instalment, back when Late to the Party was my less than regular reviews column. And by less than regular I mean I did two of them. Which officially makes it a column I'll have you know. 

Two and a half years later I've just completed Final Fantasy XIII and my have things changed. For all the things I hated about Final Fantasy XII (and I hated most of it), the one thing I truly loved was the incredible landscapes, the rolling vistas and the truly massive environments to explore. For a game I didn't like very much, I played over eighty hours for this reason alone. The world was just so incredibly rich and deep it made up for all the other insecurities and faults. 

It's a crying shame then, that Final Fantasy XIII throws all this into the trash like a microwave dinner gone bad. The game is as linear as a modern first person shooter. This shouldn't be that surprising considering it comes from the team that brought us FFX, which if you ever looked at the world map was a literal straight line from the bottom to the top. FFX was able to hide this issue however, with interesting and complex locations along the way, something XIII is having none of.

From the begging to end, your goal is always straight ahead. There are no alternate roots, no optional passages, no back alleys to explorer. There is always you and the path ahead. It makes you wonder why they even bothered to give you a map as it's impossible to get lost. 

There is no exploration. No towns, no shops, no people to talk too. The game is one single roller coaster ride made up of cut scene, move forward, fight, move forward, fight, cut scene, rinse and repeat. With all this apparent "baggage" shed what you're left with is an RPG that focuses entirely on it's combat.

Which is where I forgive the game, because the battle system is second to none. Once you have your entire party and you can choose who is in your team, it all becomes about strategy. You have two computer controlled party members and an auto battle option for the playable character, so you're probably wondering if the game expects you to do anything except twiddle your thumbs. The answer is paradigms. 

Your main role is to guide the flow of the battle. Prior to the fight you setup paradigms, which are basically battle configurations where you choose the roles each of your party members can take. In it's simplest form you can have one paradigm where you have a fighter and two magic casters and another where you have a fighter, a caster and a medic. You start the battle with the first paradigm, and when your party starts to take a lot of damage you give up one of your attackers for someone that can heal you by switching paradigms. This is a very simple description of what becomes a very deep, complex system, but what I want to get across is the idea that it's no longer your job to select attack five times to win a random battle. There is no recharge period for swhiching paradigms, and you can do it as many times as you want. Every fight in XIII is fun, and that's what makes this system so unique. It also has possibly the best battle music of any RPG. 

The caveat to all this is that Square believes the battle system to be so complex that you simply can't be trusted with it until you've gone through ten hours of tutorial. No joke, for the first ten hours of the game the battle system is simply awful as you are drip fed features one at a time. This is why you will hear about so many gamers that were bored to tears with XIII, and it's a damn shame because if you can get through those dreadfull growing pains, the rest of the game is simply outstanding.

The game consists of thirteen chapters (thirteen, get it?…), ten of which can be completed in about twenty hours. Chapter eleven is where the game truly opens itself up, giving you a single optional side quest of hunting missions to complete and the feeling of a more free environment. This chapter alone can take another twenty hours to complete. The truth is the game never becomes less linear at this point, but for a single chapter it pulls the FFX card in it's ability to charade that dark secret in beautiful landscapes, and the game becomes much better because of it.

So there you have it. Final Fantasy XIII is a game of two halves. The first ten hours is shit. The next ten bearable, and the next twenty some of the best you will play this year.

You can give the game a pass for it's broken economy and weapon upgrade system. You can even ignore a lot of the linearity because the combat is just that good. What you can't forgive is the fact you have to play nearly half the game before it gets good.

And that really does suck...

Oh, and it has Leona Lewis.