I wrote last week about FFXIII. I have put in about 10 hours now and think I have enough of the game under my belt to write up a decent little review, at least until I beat it.

One of the big things we discussed was the linearity. Yes. It is very very linear, not only in the world but also in the speccing and leveling. As for the world, it is a generic FF world. You always have to get from point a to point b and the biggest un-linearity is if you want to go around an object to the left or right.

Speccing is very similar to the sphere grid from FFX. Basically, each character has a "skill page". It is almost linear, with the exception of a few offshoots from the main grid to pick up something like +3 strength. To "level up", you simply hold down X and the direction you want to move. In game the system is called the Crystarium. You get "CP" (Crystarium points, iirc) from killing monsters... you can think of that as experience. To move around the Crystarium, you must spend Crystarium points.

Now then... there are six classes. A tank which holds threat. A healer whom heals. Then there is a buffer and a debuffer. To explain the last two, I need to explain the combat a bit. As I mentioned earlier, a mob has two bars. Its health and its "stagger". When a mob gets staggered it gets a massive debuff to incoming damage (think non-stop crits). The stagger bar increases when it gets hit. Immediately it starts decreasing but it keeps a mark to where the max stagger was. If the bar depletes completely then you have to start the stagger over again. If, however, you get another hit in before the (now depleting) bar reaches zero, the stagger amount increases as does the max mark to wherever your hit is.

So then... to explain the last classes... The first class rapidly increases the stagger bar. But their hits have an incredibly quick depletion rate of the stagger bar. So, even if you get three big hits in and the stagger bar is at 90%, the stagger bar will go back down to zero within seconds.

The other class doesn't increase the stagger bar by nearly as much, but their hits slow the depletion rate by quite a bit. This is hugely needed in a group, especially against bosses who need to be staggered to be beat.

So those are the six classes... now back to the Crystarium.

Each character can be a few different classes. Apparently at end game, they all can be any class. I was under the impression that I would have to plan out my speccing so I could get each character to max rank before movign to a different class...

Apparently that isn't the case. There are generally enough CPs to keep each character at near max rank for all their classes. So, for example, I have Vanille as a healer, ravager (big stagger hits, fast depletion), and commando (small stagger hits, slow depletion). The rest of the characters are similar.

But what this does do is allow the combat to be highly unique. "Paradigms" are class changes that you can do mid combat. At first I thought I would only use this against bosses. Make one paradigm of two healers and one tank then another paradigm of two dps and one healer.

Alas, these are needed to optimize nearly every fight. You might start off the battle with two buffers and a healer to get your guys buffed up then switch to three ravagers for some massive dps output then switch back to a healer with 2 dps then back. All in all, I switch paradigms about every 15 seconds during a fight. And you really need to to be effective. If you don't... then you might win (or rather, you will win against non-bosses if you just use 2 healers and a tank), but it will take agonizingly long.

I also got a few Eidolons now, which are similar to summons in the other FF games. You summon one down and he becomes an incredibly powerful addition to the party. And then you can enter "gestalt mode" which transforms the summon into a rideable mount who then tears up the opposition for a short while. I haven't played much with them, but they are unique and cool.

As for the linearity... it works. I will agree this doesn't feel nearly as open as any of the other FF I have played, this one plays out very similar to a movie. So many cutscenes.... but the cutscenes are beautiful and the plot seems solid. The lack of towns is a big downer, but oh well.

There is also item leveling in the game. You can "use" scrap parts to improve your weapons. I haven't messed with this too much, but talking to some people it will become necessary down the road.

I still highly recommend this game!