FINAL FANTASY 13
Chapter 4, first disc, 8 hours in the clock.
Mmmmm, MMMmm, its linear yea, dungeon crawler for sure so....much better than I had anticipated and very far from what reviews says you will feel like playing it, at least in my case.
Yea, I repeat, its linear, its a dungeon crawler, heck even the game decides your party but basically because of the story not just for the hell of it.
Battle system: for once I am having kinda fun with the battle system in a FF game, you really need strategy and take advantage of all option AND characters here if you want to survive, I find myself dying every now and then, you really need to use the paradigm shift system which is a system that more or less changes your characters powers, for example in you can have your character be of medic class or in another be a commando, one class cannot use the abilities of other class so you really need to change into different classes AND USE TACTICS! to not die every so often.
Of yea, the battles are in real time, so time never stops but when you want to see your enemies data, thumbs up to SE for this, also you cannot control your other 2 character in your party of 3 BUT the AI is very good plus you really will be too busy controlling your own character!!
That said is it me or FF difficulty this time has gone up a bit?
Anyway, as I said for once I consider the battle system pretty fun and well executed. You control different characters in battle as story progresses so you get to know very well you character and they all develop evenly so not much worries when you change battle party.
Story: Suffice to say I almost cannot stop playing because I want to know what happens next, this and the excellent characters SE created this time make up for the dungeon after dungeon we have to go through, but believe me its not bad, as I said the way its presented, story and characters almost makes it feel not dungeon crawler-like at all. Hard to explain but as you keep playing you know its a dungeon crawler but at the same time its does not feels like it at all, believe me I HATE dungeon crawlers but SE executed it rather good.
Characters: Excellent cast, after 8 hours we hardly know anything about the characters, I WANT TO KNOW MORE about them, I would say SE created the best cast since...mmmmm, Final Fantasy 9 IMO.
English Dub::shock: Quite good! Really, cannot believe it really is good and fits the characters very well. Anyone that ALWAYS prefers the original Japanese dub wont be disappointed, I am positive.
Visual: DO i need to comment? Best graphics ever! so far.
Overall: After how much I HATED the shitty FFXII...Damn you SE, I wanted to not enjoy this game BUT I find myself enjoying it!! Damn

I DO NOT LIKE SE!
So after 8 hours in, so far what reviews says out there about being incredibly linear is true, no exploration either, no towns, no sidequests, no world map, all is true BUT BELIEVE ME, the lack of that is BECAUSE OF THE STORY, no one says that!. In a game that pretends to be as logical as FFXIII having those elements is plain impossible and thet were there it would be totally ridiculous, as it is often the case in some rpgs (i.e. the world is about to be destroyed but you can go out of your way to do some ridiculous sidequest, or conveniently save at the last minute too go mind your own business while the world or ?????xxxxxx-thing is about to happen and doom everyone??, give me a break).I mean in FF13, an entire army is after you, the whole world fears you and you want to explore towns, go into shops, chit chat with NPC and go find items for stupid NPCs!!!
This time I gotta give thumbs ups to SE, so far I am liking the game a lot in all its aspects, its getting almost hard to stop playing because I wanna know what happens next, plus the very logical story SE --seems to-- wanted to give us this time is worth praising and definitely the lack of elements mentioned before are consequence of the story as I see it, and not because of a lazy SE, I do not think they are to blame for trying to make a great story with great characters and wanting us to feel it as real as possible.
Sure, those hardcore WRPGS fans that love open worlds and random boring emotionless characters, kill townspeople just for the hell of it and rarely mind the story as its not one of the core elements, most likely wont like FF13.
Anyway, so far very good game IMO, we will see once I advance more into the story but so far whatever happens and more importantly how it ends can hardly turn the game bad, and ending can ruin a game but this time it can be happy, sad or bittersweet or something in between and be a good one as I see how the story is going.
Or maybe is just me liking it? I hated FFXII, such shitty game in all aspects, IMO at least, but all reviewers and many fans loved it and even got perfect score and now with 13 all reviewers that SURELY have yet to REALLY play the game are saying its too linear, boring, ect, etc.... MMmm