Final Fantasy XIII is an odd beast of a game. For the first time in the series history I would only recommend it to fans of the genre (or series) with an asterisk.

“Sure play Final Fantasy XIII*”

*player is subject to possible boredom and inability to NOT compare it to your personal Final Fantasy benchmark… but at the same time, you just might love it. Or hate it. I’m not really sure… hence the asterisk. Furthermore, I’m willing to admit that it isn’t as good as many of its predecessors.

In Final Fantasy, pink hair isn't weird at all. In fact, what the hell are the brunettes thinking?

Before we go on, let it be known that my favorite games in the series are parts 7 and 12. So basically, I’m looked down upon by so many different groups of fans that if I were to attend a Convention of Final Fantasy Nerds I wouldn’t be accepted anywhere. The pretentious “6” guys will yell big inexplicable insults at me like “You’re beneath us… You’re proletarian at its absolute worst.”

The “7” crowd will later chant “you suck!”

I would hope to find solace in the “12” crowd, but they would politely take me aside and say “We’re lucky they even let us here, but with your affiliation with VII, they might start throwing stuff at us again if they see you here.”

You know, I dream this day would come. I would give a rousing speech about my ability to appreciate the past, but at the same time, I look to the future. I look to change… We should all look forward to change. C’mon. I can do it. You can do it… Yes… … We can.
 

Between her face and Bayonetta's derriere, I'm having a very hard time maintaining the fact that a videogame character has never given me an... ... nevermind.

Moving right along. Like I said earlier, I find Final Fantasy XIII to be an odd one, and I’ll tell you why. I was bored for the first few hours. Nothing really important seemed to happen, from a gameplay perspective. I was fighting battles for the sake of fighting battles. There was no stat-growth for my characters. I was just going through the motions.

When the ability to upgrade my party finally unlocked, I started to have more fun with it. I started to enjoy myself. It was turning into a solid title. But Final Fantasy games aren’t supposed to be “solid.” Not to this browncoat (Mmm… Firefly). Final Fantasy games should be fundamentally epic. That is the paradigm that Hironobu Sakaguchi set down for his children.

Hour 35 came along. More accurately, Chapter 11. The game opens up somewhat. The mandatory straight line is lifted and you’re free to run around and look at things. I had a bit of a “Jurrasic Park” moment at this point. The first time I saw that Brontosaurus as a kid was a special moment, and so too was the first time I saw that… You know what? I won’t spoil it for you. Instead, I’ll say Adamantoise in place of what I was originally going to type. Those things are pretty big, too.

Science has decided to rename these brilliant beasts "Apatosaurus" because Science always gets it right.

A solid game turned into a great game. At least in my opinion. Exploration was finally mine to get drunk and take advantage of. Even if the supplied sidequests were nothing more than bounties, I got to run around, damn it. I don’t mind being told where to go, I take issue of being told when to get there.

And now it is time for me to tell you what I find so odd about this game. It wasn’t until the very last 30 minutes of the game that I really fell in love with it. Yep. I wasn’t willing to sing it’s praises until the very last 30 minutes of gameplay/cinematics. In message boards I read a lot of hate directed at the ending, but it’s that last little effort on square-enix’s part that made me love the stupid thing.

In the next paragraph I’m going to spoil something. But it’s so miniscule that I don’t even know if the warning is warranted. It’s not related to the story or anything like that. It’s just a cool little gameplay “unlockable.”

I had planned on taking a break from the game after I finished the game. It let’s you save after the credits roll and if you load up the game it places you just before the final boss fight. The final section of the Crystarium is now unlocked and you officially have free reign on the “open world.”

Kind of like the Sphere Grid's less fun cousin.
 

I don’t think this has ever happened to me before, but the game actually got better after I had finished it. Let me rephrase that. The game got epic after I had beaten the boss and watched the closing cinematic.

Maybe I’m alone in this. But my respect for the game is just so much higher now that I’m doing the post-game stuff. I actually find myself going back to it. To be honest, there are quite a few games that I would really like to play instead, but it keeps reeling me in like some sort of addictive crack induced coma (because nothings better then crack and sleep).

Has this ever happened to you? A game that seemed fairly mediocre throughout, all of a sudden turned positively gangbusters after its climax? It’s not entirely uncommon for games to fall apart for me at the end, but here I am glowing and raving about how awesome a game gets after 40-60 hours (depending on how long it takes one to finish it).

Gah. I’m such a pathetic Final Fantasy nerd.