This is for anyone into game music who has been anticipating at any level the music for Square Enix's upcoming mega RPG, Final Fantasy XIII.



My copy of the Japanese demo shipped out today, and I'm very much looking forward to it, but in the meantime I bring you a brief recording of some songs from the demo that another dedicated fan recorded. It's hardly perfect, but it gives gaming audiophiles the best taste they have so far of what the coming game will bring.

Final Fantasy XIII Demo Tracks
Composer: Masashi Hamauzu

I especially like the Battle Theme, which has appeared in a few trailers, though the Boss Battle is also pretty good, if reminiscent of Hamauzu's past work on Final Fantasy X. Check it out, tell me what you think.

Sorry, new forums = new way of posting links. Link Fixed.

And it's a demo of FFXIII, the game, that was packaged with the first run copies of FFVII: Advent Children Complete on Bluray.

It'll come out in the US... someday.

I just watched a trailer for this game.


I have no idea what the fuck was going on. Horrible writing.

I got the demo two nights ago and my only conclusion is that it's not enough to properly judge the game -- writing, gameplay or otherwise.

It may well have horrible writing, but the demo is so dropped into the middle of things that even understanding most of what's said, little of it makes any sense. Honestly, I'd rather the demo have no dialogue or cutscenes at all (oh to dream of a FF game with fewer of those) than a few snippets about places, groups and people that no player can comprehend.


My bigger concern coming away, though, was the gameplay, which was nothing more than running on rails down a set of straight paths, engaging preset groups of unavoidable enemies, and issuing one of four battle commands and watching it go. I have no doubt there will be more to the combat system than what's shown here, but just having more spells and attacks at my disposal won't remove the monotony. In my opinion, one of the worst things that FFXII ushered in was the AI-controlled party members, and the demo for 13 takes it even further. Now you don't have any over the other two people in your party, you just tell your main character what to do. As some people have said, this might change in the final version, but I highly doubt it. Only controlling 1/3 of the group does away with at least 2/3 of the strategy involved, and success or failure in a tight situation will almost certainly depend on whether the traditionally bone-dumb AI does what it's supposed to.

Overall, it's very pretty and I'm still interested in checking out the final product, but if it's just a slightly more fleshed out version of what was in the demo, this could be the final death knell in the franchise for me. That'll make 3 FF titles since I've actually enjoyed the experience, and for me, the third times the charm.

I really hope this is a good Final Fantasy. I can relate to Endyss a lot in that I think the recent trend of FF games just seems to be going in a direction that I don't like. I can remember back in the day when you read the cutscenes, there was no voice, and the menus and customization was minimal.

I mean, I liked XII. But I think all this sphere grid crap where you have to to sell loot to get money, buy the weapon with the money, get the minimum level to use it, and get the minimum number of license points to unlock the rights to use it, is just too much. The old Final Fantasys were great because they didn't have to resort to this crap to make the game good (I also believe a big part is that the voice acting kills the imagination aspect these games have in the story). I will definitely get the demo and try it, but I may wait until I read some real reviews or play a bit of my friend's, if he gets it.

Man, there sure as hell were not RPGs near the realm of some of the SNES ones, though. A couple of PSX RPGs are the exception.

Yeah, the voice acting I think can really burden the game's story and character development if it's bad, which I was referring more to FFX. Titus' voice just bothered me. However, FFXII was excellent in terms of voice acting. In fact, I think Vaan's voice was very well selected, and doesn't sound horrible generic like a lot of the characters in FFX did.

I can't believe I forgot one thing that you mentioned though - the soundtrack. The soundtrack in RPG games seems to keep me playing them also. I remember how much the soundtrack in Chrono Cross stuck with me in terms of things I enjoyed about the game (EXCELLENT soundtrack).

I also forgot to mention that something else that bothered me about FFXII was the gambit system. Yeah, a lot of people liked it, and I thought it was kind of cool at first, but it's getting a little too far out of my control than I'd like. Really, the game was built around the idea that people would use it, but I like to have full control of my characters. I suspect that FFXIII is going to be the same way considering that bulleted list of features the actual game will include. I guess my biggest gripe was that it took way too long to make an effective gambit list (why should you have to BUY them btw?) And it was often necessary to modify the list according to the area you're fighting in or if there were different character combinations in your party. I found myself just leaving it as a generic attack party leader's targeted enemy and would signal them to do something different if I needed them too, but I guess my point is that the series is evolving into a battle system that, in my opinion, takes some of the core foundation out of what made a FF game great in the past. I'm sure a lot disagree with me, but I am just a huge fan of the turn-based system, or a system that withdraws from menus for the most part and attacks with a button (like Secret of Mana)