X10: Final Fantasy XIII On The Xbox 360

With the game's release date for countries abroad less than a month away, the world outside of Japan is being inundated with information on Final Fantasy XIII, to everyone's delight or dismay, depending on how you view the franchise. That's why we weren't surprised to see Final Fantasy XIII kiosks taking center stage at Microsoft's X10 event, especially when they have a lot to prove, this being the first Final Fantasy game to release on the Xbox 360. After getting some hands-on time with the game, I can safely say that it looks as lush and rich, and plays as fast and frantic as its PlayStation 3 counterpart.

For the show, they decided not to let us spoil the story any, and instead dropped us with a party down on the more primitive and naturalistic plant of Pulse to wander the area and experience the battle system. While I didn't have a PS3 right beside the station to compare with, the graphics on the 360 amazed me and, as always, it seems that Square Enix has raised the bar even higher for what to expect graphical on these "next gen" systems. The transition from walking around the world and fighting an enemy was also very more fluid as were all the animations while fighting the enemies.

The element being showcased at the event was the battle system. I know I'm not stating here something that hasn't been spoken about numerous times on other blogs, but it was interesting for me to see how they had combined both tried and true Active Time Battle System and the Job System into one dynamic and fun way to battle. So, in the game you mainly control the actions of the party leader, and using an Active Time meter that slowly fills up during your fight you can assign different tasks to your character. On top of this, you also can have one of six different job types active on your character. The other two characters in your party will automatically do actions based on their jobs. The real fun comes into the system from the fact that you can change everyone's job class at any point during battle using what they call a "paradigm shift". You can have up to six different paradigm decks setup for your party, thereby allowing you to quickly switch between a defensive and offensive party structure on the fly when dealing with any enemy.

Overall, Final Fantasy XIII showed off very well on the Xbox 360, which only shows that when the game finally drops on March 9th, it really doesn't matter which system you grab it for. Just make sure you have plenty of time to devote and popcorn to eat while you play through the myriad of stunning cut sequences and spectacular bosses you'll be seeing in this cinematic and engaging RPG.