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After playing the Western RPG masterpiece, Dragon Age, Final Fantasy XIII is an absolute bore fest in comparison.  I just purchased the Collectors Edition of FFXIII on the PS3 and have never been more dissatisfied with a game than this.

Linear progression, bash on X during a fight scene, watch next movie and so on.  I am a big fan of past Final Fantasy games and this game is the easiest of the lot.  The story is similar to Final Fantasy 6 without any epicness about it and its very badly voice acted.  I also want to cut Snows tuft of hair - It is god damn annoying.  To be honest I wouldn't even classify FFXIII as a RPG as it plays more like an interactive movie.

There is not even an illusion of exploration. An open ended storyline based on your actions is what an RPG is all about and this game fails at being an RPG completely, anyway first impressions:

• CGI cutscenes are excellent.
• Ingame suffers from framerate issues every now and then.
• Voice acting is absolutely shocking, they should have waited or spent more time on this aspect, Not liking any of the characters (a first in a FF game)
• Combat is the easiest of all Final Fantasy's – Where are the reflect spells and magic combination's.
• Exp advancement is similar to FFX though a really dumbed down version of it.

Hopefully it gets better though I am not sure I am prepared to wait 20 hours for some decent gameplay to be had. I think the death of the JRPG isn't as exaggerated as first thought, especially compared to Western RPG's and anything Bioware now produce.

Here is some gameplay I recorded:

This is what you can expect for the first few hours,  and yes I'll update my impressions on the game upon completion.