Final Fantasy XIII Review for PS3 - Part 3

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During battle you only control one character, the leader. For this character you can chose what abilities they use based on their current role (more on that later). So let's say the enemy is weak against fire and water. If you're only controlling one character how do you get your party members to use fire and water? The answer is simple; you don't. Use Libra, you find out the enemies weaknesses and automatically your party members who have those abilities will start using them against that enemy. No tactics/gambits or any of that, your party will automatically make good use of the information you acquire without you so much as opening a menu.

Here is another example. Let's say that you are controlling Lightening (a character) and you chose for her to attack. Here's what happens. A set of attacks are queued up in a chain and the Active Time Battle gauge begins to fill. As it fills up past the first attack, hit triangle and you'll perform the attack. Let the gauge fill up all the way and you'll perform all attacks in the chain. Let's say Lightening has an ability called "Group Attack". If you chose to attack an enemy that is part of a group the ability "Group Attack", will automatically be placed in the chain. Now say an enemy is killed while you wait for the chain to fill up. It will automatically take group attack out of the chain and swap it for a more appropriate attack. Sound like the game is playing for you? It's not. The burden of micromanaging is taken off your shoulders in lieu of a system where you concentrate on the overall battle while details are dealt with quickly and efficiently.

NOW we talk about roles. Each character has certain roles they can fulfill. The roles are Attacker, Defender, Blaster, Jammer, Enhancer, and Healer. Each character is proficient in a few roles, but not all of them. Let's say you have 2 members in your party at the time. One can be attacker, blaster, or healer, the other blaster, enhancer, or healer. You set up optima sets and use Optima Change to switch between them. During battle you may keep the leader in role attacker, while the support character is role blaster (let's call this "Attacker/Blaster"). When your characters get low on health you may switch to "Attacker/Healer". Maybe you want to take out an enemy's defenses and put them in a "break" state and spells do the trick? Try "Blaster/Blaster". Swapping these role sets on the fly is key to battling as you get further into the game.

Continue to,
Final Fantasy XIII Review for PS3 - Part 4
Final Fantasy XIII Review for PS3 - Part 5
Final Fantasy XIII Review for PS3 - Part 6

Return to, Final Fantasy XIII Review for PS3 - Part 1

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