An evergreen stable of the franchise is Summons, once again available after defeating some tricky enemies known as Eidolons allow you to call forth large, powerful beings to aid in combat. Summons are normally accompanied by beautiful, visceral – and unnecessarily long – scenes depicting these being materialisation, and Final Fantasy XIII is no exception. Unfortunately they seem to be Transformers inspired this time round, and quite frankly a bit lame. I didn’t use summon nearly as often as previous games.

Another huge change to the established format is that of levelling. Gone is the traditional experience and levelling system, replaced instead by the Crystarium. After each successful battle you’ll earn Crystarium points, which allow you to travel around the Crystarium unlocking status upgrades, attributes and abilities for each of your characters. It sounds like it offers a new way of levelling up specific attributes, but in truth it’s just as linear as the first half of the game.

Genre fans should note that their rewards for playing through the first 20 hours of trudgery, the second half of the game isn’t nearly as linear, opening up a little, and letting go of your hand. Its in the second half that the game earns its right to be called “Final Fantasy.”

As with modern Final Fantasy games the gameplay takes a backseat to the story and its CGI cutscenes – and neither disappoint. The story – although it starts out slowly and is initially quite confusing – features everything you’d want in the way of entertainment; Drama, revelations, romance, comedy, suspense, and a whole lot more drama. It’s a sophisticated and engaging tale, wrought with real character development that’s enough to drive you to finish the game, despite its faults.

The GCI scenes – such an integral part of the Final Fantasy experience – are beautiful – and on par, I’d say, with the Final Fantasy films. Even more impressive – on account of them being rendered in real-time – are the in-between scenes, which look so good they can sometimes be mistaken for pre-rendered CGI.

Final Fantasy XIII is a game filled with hits and misses, and ultimately a disappointment. The ingenious battle system is offset by the game’s lacklustre, linear levels. Its story gets lost in that fact that almost all of the role-playing has been stripped away. For everything the game does right, it does something else, so, so wrong. Don’t be mistaken though, taken on its own merits Final Fantasy XIII is indeed a pretty damned good game, it’s just one that should have been more.

If you’re a multi-console owner wondering which platform to get the game for, it’s quite simple; While the gameplay on both systems look quite comparable (despite the 360’s running at a lower resolution), the difference between the quality the CGI scenes is vast. The PS3 version, thanks to the extra space afforded by Blu-Ray has its CGI presented in glorious 1080p, while the 360 has to make do with heavily compressed sub-HD movies, which suffer from macroblocking artefacts, and may dissuade those with a discerning eye.

For Fans Of: Final Fantasy, picking your nose, boredom, Tactical turn-based combat.

Scoring (not an average)

Gameplay: 6.5

Seeming endless, linear corridors, helped only by the fact that the combat system is the best the series has seen.

Presentation: 9.5

Everything, from character design, art-style and CGI come to life in beautiful HD. One of the best looking games available at the moment.

Sound: 9.0

Voice acting is mostly good, although you may get annoyed with some quasi-Australian accents, one of which is provided by Claudia Black, who PS3 fans might recognise as Chloe Frazer from Uncharted 2. The music is sublime, although there’s too much reliance on refrains from the Leona Lewis provided theme song.

Value: 8.0

You’ll get  between 40 and 100 hours of gameplay, which is more than worth the asking price – even is half of it is terribly linear.

Final Fantasy XIII is a good game – it’s just a pity that it takes up to 30 hours of slog before you get to it. It’s streamlined and more focused, but the fact that it dispenses with so many RPG traditions may end up alienating fans of the series.

[Reviewed on Xbox 360]