THE THIRTEENTH FINAL FANTASY

A long, long time ago, in a land far, far away, there was a video game company known as Square. Why they wanted to be named Square is beyond me, but that's what they were. Square had almost no money and barely a name for themselves. In one last mad fit of attention/money-grabbing, some guy who worked at Square was like 'Hey, let's take one of my fantasies and make it into a video game. And since this will probably be the last fantasy I ever have, let's call it FINAL FANTASY.' Everyone agreed as those two famous words rebounded off the dingy blood-stained Square HQ walls. Unfortunately, this guy's fantasy revolved around a bunch of guys in a quasi-medieval setting killing monsters with their swords. (What a weirdo.) Fortunately, it set off a revolution. And this guy... well, let's say it wasn't his final fantasy.

12 main series games, countless spinoffs, and millions of horrible Cloud/Sephy slashfics later, we reach another Fantasy of the Final Variety. This one caused a huge uproar because it's on both the Xbox 360 and the PS3, but that's because fanboys are stupid and I punched one in the face. That has really nothing to do with anything whatsoever, so let's move on.

Like every FINAL FANTASY before it, XIII features a male lead who looks so girly you could swear he is a girl. Square Enix even took it farther this time and made all the characters refer to him in the female persuasion, but you ain't fooling me. Along with this guy called Lightning, you have some white rapper guy with a hero complex, a little girl who whines too much despite being named 'Hope', the token black guy who has guns and an afro, another little girl who doesn't whine enough and has a magic skirt, and some lady you get later on who fights with a pointy stick. ...I'm not touching that one.

The story involves all of the main characters coming together because Lightning's sister got an STD or whatever from the Hero guy and then getting tentacle-raped by some giant face-machine thing called a False Sea. This makes them something called a Pulse la Sea, which is bad, probably. After that everything goes to hell and they run around trying to figure out their Focus, which is a thing that vaguely gives the plot direction or something. Sooner or later they say 'Suck it destiny' and decide to blow some shit up, and that is exactly what they do.

The battle system involves something new called Paradigms. What that means is that your characters can't multitask. Which is all fine and dandy, but way to perpetrate male stereotypes, Square Enix. You'll switch your paradigms to fit the situation. Like, if your party is near death, you switch to a paradigm containing a Ravager (magic shooter), a Saboteur (messes enemies up), and a Commando (not wearing any underpants). And then you will die, because you are stupid for not using a Medic (nurse), Sentinel (defendy person), and a Synergist (who arranges flowers, I think). Other than that it's a super-chaotic version of the Action-Time battle system.

Outside of the battles, Square basically decided you were too dumb to figure out how to find your way around by looking at a map, so they funneled everything straight forward. Talk about linearity. Doesn't Squeenix know that JRPGs are all about non-linearity and stuff? Sheesh. It's like they took a nap while making this game or something. Crap job, Square! You also do all your shoping from save points. It's like the future is so dumb, you buy everything online and have is shipped instantly to you. Stupid future.

The world itself is very beautiful. Square Enix did a nice job of making trees look as phallic as possible. Okay, maybe not, but I wanted to say that. Every area is unique and full of baddies and item chests and stuff. It may be linear, but it's pretty. It's like the Avatar, only the Avatar was a crappy movie. And this is a game instead. Musically this game is not done by Nobuo Uemustard, so of course it sucks. Not really, it's actually fantastic, so there.

This game is a total testiment to the fact that you can't ever have enough fantasies. In fact, you can even have thirteen fantasies of the final variety and still plan out your fourteenth, if you want to. All in all, it's a very well made game and deserves a whole lot of accolades and stuff, if only because it redefines what FINAL means.

And that means I give FINAL FANTASY XIII a score of 9.9 rainbows with sugar.

And I ship Light/Fang.