Done with 13. Clocked in at 43:31 with about 3 of those hours spent doing sidequest stuff/AFKing. A bit shorter than I anticipated…

Also of note – no grinding was done. Only killed what I had to, and sidequest experience was pretty much well negated since I skipped as much as I could toward the end of the game. It made for some challenging bosses, as they should be! I’ve only done about oh…12% of the sidequest missions so I guess I’ll be working on that until Resonance hits.

And to answer my questions from before…

Yes, it is linear. But that’s not the real problem here, because a lot of RPGs are on a straight path just like 13, its just how 13 presented it.  The problem is the game makes you feel confined. There are no towns where you can just relax and shop in. There’s no world map to wander about on. Basically, there is no illusion of freedom (until you hit Pulse). FF10 suffered from a bit of the same issue, but they still had towns – and eventually a world map even if it was just for convenient transportation.

Vanille’s VA didn’t grow on me, but it also didn’t annoy me.

And finally, the battle system is totally worth it. It’s definitely the best feature of the game, graphics aside.

Editing in more later.

EDIT 3/27: Now that the game rush is pretty much over, let’s elaborate a little more!

After initially writing about this, I went back and did a lot of the sidequest missions. They weren’t too bad – save a few which were pretty fun and challenging, particularly the ones that didn’t rely on gimmicky Paradigms/equipment setups and were just straight up hard (if you didn’t grind) but still very possible. I got bored of it before I finished all of them though. I’m not quite sure what it is about 13, the extra stuff doesn’t appeal to me as much as the previous games did.

I usually judge a soundtrack by whether or not they have great battle themes, and 13 didn’t disappoint. In particular  out of all of those, I think Eidolons is my favorite just because it reminds me of the tension of fighting against the Doom counter. Despite hearing the main battle theme in the trailer from so long ago, I’m surprised I still enjoy listening to it today. At the same time, it was disappointing that everyone had the theme spoiled just because they watched the trailer.