Final Fantasy XIII Impressions part II

I really want to review this game, but I feel that before I can review it, I have to play it until the end. On top of that I really haven't decided on a way to review games. I guess that can be on my next topic.

In my last impressions I think I was only a few hours into the game. I can talk about leveling up and the battle system in a little more depth now.

Optima System: After you become a 「ルシ」, Lushi, which are people that are order with a task from 「ファルシ」, Falushi. (Side note: Names will likely change in the US version so I really don't know what to label them then to just write the Japanese characters into Roman Alphabet.) So once you bear this mark you and your party members can use magic. Not only that they start off with their three main job classes. Forexample, Lighting can either be a fighter, blaster, or a healer. Fighter does just normal physical damage and has a semi magic attack called 「ルイン」, ruin. Blaster has your elemental magics such fire, water, wind, and lighting. Blaster also has a physical attack but it's not as strong as a fighters physical attack. Healer as you can guess is where all the healing spells are located but a healer cannot attack the enemy, (at least not where I am in the game. You know in some FF games there are special white spells that are all powerful, so you never know.) Then there's Snow, he starts with Attacker, Blaster, and Defender. Defender is the tank of the group but he only has one attack called "Revenge." The way it works is the defender first  draws the enemies attention towards him. He then chooses a target with revenge. After acculmating damage he returns it to the targeted enemy. ( I don't think it's really all that great.) But having a tank is awesome when taking on large amounts of enemies. I've actually survived some boss battles because of my tank. Other job classes are Jamar and Enhancer. Jamar puts spells on the enemy that weakens it and Enhancer puts spells on teammates to enhance them.
          You can have your party switch between each of the jobs on the fly in battle. You can setup about six different combinations per your three man team. Forexample, I have my battles preset to start with Lighting as a fighter, Snow as a blaster, and Vanilla as a blaster. If a party members health start to fall I'll quicly switch where Lighting and Snow stay the same but Vanilla becomes a healer. You can even switch jobs in the middle of Lighting doing an action which makes it nice when your characters are near death.
           One thing I don't like about the battle system is that once you're leader in your party falls it's game over. This is really annoying when you know your other teammates have the ability to perform raise. One good thing is when you die you don't start from the most recent save but from before the battle you fell in. Good and bad. More friendly for non-hardcore gamers but probably drops the difficulty which will probably make hardcore gamers whine a little. As soon one who is between the two I can kind of welcome this because I don't really want to repeat all the battles all the way up to that point in the game.

Summons: Summons are interesting. Before gaining the ability to use summons you have first defeat your summon in battle. The battle starts with the summon casting death on the lead character. You have to fill up your summons vehicle mode gauge by either attacking it or fulfilling special battle needs. One example, is with Shiva, I just had to be a Defender and just use guard until the gauge was full. Fighting a summon can be difficult sometimes.
              After gaining a summon as an ally you can summon them in battle with 3 TP. (You usually gain TP depending on your ranking battles.) In attack mode your summon fights along side of you and heals your leader if you near death. If you fall your summon will heal you and then disappear. As you fight along side your summon you build up it's vehicle mode gauge. During any part of the battle you can turn your summon into a vehicle, but you it can't return to attack mode after becoming a vehicle. You get a cool transformer cut scene when it becomes a vehicle. You can skip this scene anytime you call fourth your summon. Depending how high your vehicle gauge before switching to attack mode your summon has limited amount of attack points. Each button combination takes certain attack points. I.e. Up and circle takes 2 attack points. When you use all of your attack you press triangle and it ends the summon with a limit break type move. Actually your summon in vehicle mode is basically like FFXIII version of a limit break.. Kind of fun to summon in FFXIII.

Final Thought: Until I beat the game I really don't have an opinion on the story. Most Japanese stories have a hard time concluding we'll see if FFXIII follows this trend or not. So far playing through the game hasn't been a chore, yet. It's been rather fun thinking of ways to win in battle. I recommend picking this game up when it comes out to the US. It's definitely a fun game.