Mostly Spoiler-safe Review: This article is written to avoid major spoilers. Game mechanics will be discussed, along with the game’s general length and minor spoilers (such as the story’s tone and central themes, most of which are established within the first hour of play) will come up in broad ways, but there will be no major spoilers. The screen shots might also count as minor spoilers but are hopefully vague enough to not be a problem.

Final Fantasy VII back on the original Playstation was the start of Square-Enix’s epic, mega-budget RPGs containing revolutionary graphics, top-notch music, and mainstream exposure. Now with around a half-dozen titles in this style, the developers have had time to learn and improve, and the console technology is finally here to make the visuals as breathtaking on the screen as they were in the writers’ minds. In streamlining the play experience, Final Fantasy XIII focuses on telling you an amazing story and it largely succeeds; when the worst I can say about it overall is that it’s a worthy entry to the series, it’s doing quite well.

Like most RPGs, the game mechanics are really just enough to give you some interaction and investment in the outcome. You don’t usually need quick reflexes, just a decent head for RPG stats and how they interact with one another in quasi-real time fights. What makes FFXIII stand out is it simplifies things; you have three characters in your party at any time, but only control one directly (and the game does offer a set of "Auto-Battle" commands for that character). Instead, you set a general policy using the "Paradigm System"; the other two characters automatically pick actions that usually make sense within that plan, so if you tell them to heal they’ll focus on keeping the team alive, if you tell them to attack they’ll start flinging fireballs and sword-slashes around, and so on. Rather than focusing on the precise actions each character does, your job is to watch the flow of the fight and pick the correct plans at the right times; it actually does feel like traditional Final Fantasy, just more efficient.

The other major change is just how linear this game is. There is no ’overworld’ to speak of; aside from a few segments that let you pick where you travel, you are basically on rails. Once you’re in a location, the only way to leave is to plow forward, fighting enemies and watching story segments along the way, while the only exploration available consists of ducking into small side-alleys to find hidden items. To my surprise, this isn’t a flaw in the game; FFXIII uses this linearity to keep you on track and moving the story along at a great pace. It’s very rare to get lost or wonder what you need to do, and this means that almost the entire game is filled with meaningful action or plot progression. This was certainly a bold experiment, but it works out for the best even if it does make it hard to get a grasp for the true scope of the world your characters are in.

FFXIII has a very small cast as far as major characters go; even a generous count of what defines a ’major character’ leaves you with less than a dozen, but that means each character gets a lot of meaningful development. They don’t get just one scene apiece where their part of the story is resolved, all of them get plenty of screen time and this does a lot to help you identify with them. More encouragingly, it turns out that when character designer Tetsuya Nomura can get over his addiction to belts and zippers he does some amazing work; most of the designs here are at least vaguely plausible, and have just the right amount of flair to let you know they’re important characters without being ridiculous. Combined with mostly excellent voice acting and each character getting their chance to shine, you’ll certainly find at least one you like.

The game’s level-up system embraces this idea as well, giving each character a distinct role. There is some cross-over between them, but generally speaking each one of them is the best in one field, good at another, and passable at a third; developing any other roles beyond that requires you to explicitly go level grinding, and given the linear layout of most of the game’s locations there are only a few good spots to do that. The roles are pretty clearly defined, consisting of a primary attacker, secondary attackers (they help get ’stagger combos’ going, which you need in order to beat many tough enemies), durable sentinels who draw attacks onto themselves, buffing and debuffing, and of course healing. Each segment of the game calls for at least slightly different tactics, so chances are you’ll find a reason to voluntarily use every character at least once even if you have a ’default team’ you favor.

Next: Story tone & presentation, game length, and conclusion.