Title: Final Fantasy XIII
Platform: 360/PS3
Genre: RPG

It's here.

JRPGs suck. There, it's been said. And yet, I've spent the better part of my teen and adult life lapping them up every chance I get. Seeing a company as big and bad as Squeenix shred their flagship franchise into something almost unrecognizable was a bold and beautiful move, and really gives me hope for the state of the genre in general, which seems to have the current trend of "semi-MMO style combat = INNOVATION". Ugh, fuck JRPGs.

Where was I? Anyway, I won't go into detail on the new semi-tactical battle system, nor will I bitch that I can only control one ally. This is a strategy-heavy game, turned up to 11. Almost to a MegaTen-level of pants-wettingly thrilling, but a tad easier, and in glorious real-time. Admittedly, it takes a while to really get off the ground, but I prefer it this way - with 3 characters, 6 paradigms, and 7 or 8 enemies at once, things can get overwhelming in a hurry. Which is odd, because it seems like all of the ideas sound stupid as hell on paper ("you only control one party member!", "auto-battle function picks the best chain of actions!", "game over when your leader dies, but you can retry the fight!") and yet they really, really work well together.

The other half of a typical Final Fantasy review is the presentation, so, away we go. Suspect voice acting and fantastic graphics have been par for the course since Number 10, and while FF13 does not fail to disappoint in either way, I personally found both the voice work and graphical design better in FFXII, for its time. Not to say it's bad this time around, mind you. Also, the sound effects in battle are strangely subdued and make the combat lose out on quite a bit of impact. The menus (oddly, again) are a sight to behold, though, and the soundtrack ranks up there with Number Eight as the best in the series. Again, all superfluous opinion, but that's why you're here anyway.

Give it a whirl, even if you're a passing RPG fan. It's RPG Unleaded. All the tedious bullshit is cut out for pure gameplay. Cutscenes are of tolerable length (and thankfully skippable), and the levels of JAPAAAAAAAAN!!! are mostly kept to an inoffensive degree. It's so unique on a whole that it's really hard to put into words, except that the fanbase will likely still be divided ten years from now (and still just as inarticulate, no doubt).

Zing.