The Hanging Edge

The name shared by both the first area and its accompanying background music in FFXIII immediately transmit the sense of tension and exhilaration that both of them contain. As you gain control of Lightning, the area around you is chaotic, crawling with enemies, rife with conflict. The slightly panicked piano pops into your ears, compelling you to start to move forward. Yet then it is also a sweeping strings section that bursts in as well, conveying the scale of everything happening around you. It makes you want to soak in the stunning environment, the excitement of your surroundings. But there is only one way forward, and the only option left is to run.

It wouldn't be true to say that XIII is defined by freneticism necessarily, but it is such a striking element that it bears mentioning nonetheless. That first level sets a tone that doesn't let up for quite some time, one that deserves immense credit for how committed they were to it. The paths only have one way to go because it's the only way the characters CAN go. They are hunted by what feels like the entire world around them, while pitted against the ticking time bomb they've been stuck with, and still not even able to keep from fighting with each other. Needless to say, the design directly serves the story by adding that tension for them to spin great character moments out of. This is a group of people struggling against circumstance, compelled to keep moving forward when they don't really have a direction. Splitting the party up works great for this, as it allows for Lightning/Hope and Sazh/Vanille to play off of each other and simultaneously get strong character development. These sections work so well because of how focused they are, but the resolution is equally as satisfying too.

The thrilling nature of the story plays very well into the design of the combat system as well, contributing to the consistent sense of energy that the game has. The original ATB system was inspired by Formula One races, yet this system is the first time that dream feels fully realized. The segmented ATB bar gives that sense of actual speed, making it rewarding to act as quickly as possible. It also rewards attentiveness, as even with just auto-attack the timing of your actions is important. Strategy is more important than ever as well, due to Paradigms allowing for mid-battle adaptability. The stagger bar is a great mini-time limit that incentivizes all of these things. It all works quite excellently, and while it takes some time to fully unfurl it is easily one of the best battle systems in the franchise. If anything, I wish it could have been taking advantage of even more. The menus could be even snappier, the time between switching paradigms even faster, and even enemies with more emphasis placed on countering player inattentiveness.

I mentioned before that the fast-paced style of the game isn't the only one it has, and the marked shift it undergoes later is interesting in a lot of ways. There's an inherent satisfaction in stepping into a vast open area after hours of being essentially trapped, a really well done contrast that shows just how foreign Pulse is compared to Cocoon. However, it also feels disappointingly compromised in a lot of ways. A side mission based structure is a fun idea, but it mostly functions as a way to still lead you from point A to B rather than giving a real sense of exploration. Having a lot of enemies that are meant to be avoided is a neat idea for an area consumed by nature, but it also feels at odds with how enjoyable the freedom of the combat is. It also just feels unnecessarily trial-and-error heavy, which just feels like wasting time. Of course the dungeons at the end of this area are quite strong, but it still feels like it missed on the potential at hand and just went back to what works.

This is just one chapter though ultimately, so it's hard to say it ruins the game. One aspect that it does show that I found to be much more detrimental, however, is that the story starts to crack pretty hard around this point. The story thrives off character moments for most of its run time, but it feels somewhat aimless once it moves past that. Of course, this isn't to say it's bad or anything. Oerba is a particularly impactful moment, letting a long lost town just completely speak for itself for the most part is an excellent contrast to the excess of Cocoon. Outside of this though, the story fails to entirely deliver on the promise it makes. We know that Cocoon has elements of a police state, that people like Cid resist it, and that its citizens support its crimes, yet it never feels like we get solid resolutions to these aspects of the world. I don't think answering all of these necessarily makes for a great story, however I don't think pinning them all on the influence of a Fal'cie does either. The main villain has plans that are greater than we know, but that also makes it hard to get attached to the main characters fight against him. The idea that defying fate is the only reason you need to fight is a good theme, yet I don't think that means it couldn't have been more as a whole.

Even if it falls short of being my favorite in such a stacked franchise, I want to reiterate that I think XIII still resonates quite well all around. It's hard to not be impressed by how bold this game is when it pays off in so many ways. I heard most of my life about what a disaster it is, and now it feels like that just speaks to what a tough time it was for JRPGs to get a fair shake. Rather than a fundamentally broken mess, it's a game that could have tapped into its potential even more. Yet what is there is still quite special in its own way, and for that I hope it manages to get more recognition some day.

Has any other game given us something like Watch For Rolling Rocks in 0.5 A Presses? And if they haven't, could they? A lot of games when taken to their outer limits feel like breaking them; like you hotwired the machine of Pokemon Red or Ocarina of Time to spit you out at the ending. There's fascination in that, sure. But for all the non-Euclidean twists and taffy-stretching it has been exposed to over the past two-decades-plus, Super Mario 64 in a sense remains whole. You can pull at the seams of this game on a quantum level in the name of not pressing the A button and it doesn't ever really split, but rather reveals another wrinkle to tug. On top of that, this magic is achieved not through behind-the-scenes manipulation but instead through a small Italian man gleefully performing acrobatics and building up enough speed to phase through gaps between atoms.

Its place at the dawn of 3D console video games only strengthens its pull in this regard. The new dimension begged so many questions about what was and wasn't possible that it feels like we'll never hit the end of them in this single game, let alone in the medium. Equally important is the meticulous commitment to making basic locomotion feel so easy to grasp yet hold remarkable depth that people would care about it on its own, inventing convoluted challenges because they got bored of playing the game as it was designed but not of playing with the game as it is. It was always going to be The First 3D Mario Game and thus would always have a pull on people, but I don't think that accounts for just how deeply people have studied and stretched and scrambled this game. There's something deeper there.

Think about the general recognition that the stacked "mario-yahoo" sound effect of backwards-long-jumping has reached. What once sounded like something going wrong now carries a sensation similar to an older sibling asking if you want to see something weird. A signal that you are about to unravel something previously solid and follow the loose tendrils to new places. Maybe not the most emotionally resonant or life-changing type of depth, but one that feels largely distinct to video games as a medium. Though I'll never personally dip my toes in those waters I still find enjoyment in watching others diving to the bottom of this game's ocean, and in my own time spent floating in the comparative shallows.

Played through on critical for my first playthru

Some people call this the best action RPG of all time.

But i dont think the best action RPG of all time would have attacks that leave you stunlocked for thirty straight seconds with no escape.

I also dont think the best action RPG of all time would have Haley Joel Osment voicing the main character.

I'm sorry dog, I just can't. I don't like having to change equipment for every boss. I don't like hitting enemies for 1 or 2 damage until my combo ramps up and I can start maybe hitting it for actual numbers. I don't like having everything come to a screeching halt every two seconds because somebody's casting a spell. I do not appreciate arbitrarily placed invisible traps that only exist to make me cast a slow-ass spell every time I walk into a room. None of the systems in this game give me any satisfaction or joy. Fiddling with inventory crap is almost universally my least favorite part of any game, and Vagrant Story perfectly represents to me the issues with difficulty in so many RPGs. Show up with the right gun and fire the silver bullet, or prepare for abject misery. The only choices are the right and the wrong, and even being right still feels like shit. In my experience, I have found defenders of Vagrant Story's gameplay to all be operating under the same misunderstanding. Something having depth or it being difficult to discover, does not actually make it fun. The complexity of Vagrant Story does not, in any way make it a more enjoyable experience for me to play. It just makes it even easier for me to have a miserable, god-awful time by entertaining any of the fifty thousand ways to play it "wrong." Even if you're doing Vagrant Story "right", it is so stop-and-start, so infuriatingly slow in each of the wrong ways, so loaded to bear with stupid block puzzles that even the game's fans don't seem to actually like, that I am adamantly convinced no teacher in the world can help me learn how to enjoy playing Vagrant Story.

The writing however, is something else entirely. As is typical of all these Ivalice games, it is stellar. The dialog here is immaculate and carries the same type of maturity present in Xenogears and Final Fantasy Tactics which is so uncharacteristic of the rest of the medium even today, but especially for in its time. The most impressive thing about this whole game though is the honest to god cinematography of its cutscenes. The introductory section is absolutely phenomenal and feels like a genuine feature film, in a way that not even Metal Gear Solid does. It's such a pity that I find it hard to enjoy playing through this even with a supercharged, action-replay powered character. Even when making the combat as painless as possible for me in this way, on a second playthrough, just trying to navigate and traverse Lea Monde is so fucking irritating to me that no amount of optimism can show me a good time. If I felt like being even more inflammatory, I could call Vagrant Story the worst metroidvania I've ever played, but even if every second of gameplay makes me wish I were dead, its writing and cutscenes absolutely demand my respect.