The lights are on
I am a longtime fan of the final fantasy series and have enjoyed the game a lot so far after recently completing chapter ten. The chracter development is great, however the voice acting is just simply lame. I switched to the japanese voices with the english dub, it's the only way to go for this. The battle system is great though the lack of control I did not like as much. I wanted the ability to switch characters in battle to issue different commands in some fierce fights instead of the AI commands, but this ability just aisn't there. The level system is really easy to master, yet with it there really is no true sense of accomplishment when you progress. The linear story and the way too frequent cut scenes takes away from the final fantasy series in different ways, I felt they could have done something better with this. The graphics, visuals and music are clearly the best I've ever seen in any RPG I have ever played which is this games strongest point. I also disliked the weapon system, no sense of accomplishment here again, no long searches for treausures to get the best weaspons, all it is simply upgrading your equipment. No armor, is a plus and minus, minus no custimizing, plus no need to play around for the right combination. Over all the game is great, just not as great as the hype that was made for it.
This game is a farely avergae Final Fantasy game designed exclussively for the Wii. To be honest this game may have been better suited to be just a stand alone DS title minus the motion controls. The motion controls with this game are at times hit and miss, and even though the game was not designed with motion plus in mind, the motion plus accessory seemed to get the motion controls more on track for me. Don't know if this was by chance, but it seemed to work fine. The ability to lock areas after defeating all monsters in the area for a period of time is a great feature that allows more chances of exploration, than getting mad due to the frequent random battles. The storyline was a ho-hum storyline, with a typical plot line that any RPG player will be all so familiar with. Using the motion controls to reach items in areas to me was very simplistic and the difficulty of the game as a whole was way too easy for a Final Fantasy Chronicles title, or any game labeled with Final Fantasy. The graphics are standard for the Wii so don't expect much here. Over all the game delivered it's premise to incorporate motion controls into a Final Fantasy game, I just wish this was done with more depth to it than just the simple throw stuff at enemies, but it did still work. If you own a Wii and are waiting for XIII to come out in March, pick the game up and give it a try, to me it is a worthy game to play while waiting for the big dog.
The controls are better formatted in the PC version. The game does run good and vibrant on the PS3 though. The controls just seem a little off using the analog stick as opposed to keyboard mapping. Graphics wise they run about the same. If you have an old PC with a poor graphics card than I would get the console version, if not stick with the PC.