GameSpot editors give their early thoughts on the retail Japanese version of Final Fantasy XIII.
The PlayStation 3 version of Final Fantasy XIII has already been released in Japan (North America has to wait for its version to hit the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in March). As such, a few of the GameSpot editors dove right into the import and played a little over an hour to get a quick taste of what the latest in the long-running role-playing game series has to offer.
Ricardo Torres | Editor in Chief
After having seen the game teased for what feels like the past 20 years, I almost started to take the cinematics for granted. In some ways, it's easy to expect the CG visuals in a Final Fantasy to be shiny and slick. Square Enix's certainly been setting the standard for in-game cinematics since Final Fantasy VII first stunned everybody with its--at the time--amazing visuals on the original PlayStation. FFXIII feels like a new high benchmark for Square Enix; combining art direction with HD resolution is a really good fit and shows how far the FF team has come. The new secret sauce I'm a big fan of is the smooth transitioning between cinematics and gameplay.