Final Fantasy XIII Ditches Leveling Up for "Crystalium"

[John Funk]

Final Fantasy XIII Ditches Leveling Up for "Crystalium"

Weekly Japanese manga-and-all-things-nerdy magazine Shonen Jump has revealed the upcoming advancement system in Final Fantasy XIII, which ditches traditional leveling for something like Final Fantasy X's Sphere Grid.

Now, for everything you can say about Square-Enix's landmark Final Fantasy JRPG series, you can't say that it hasn't ever tried variations on the basic RPG "level up new skill yay!" formula. But while the games have played with how your characters learn abilities - whether completely modular and tied to other items like in FF7, learned from equipment like in FF9, or learned from attached summoned creatures as in FF6 and FF8 - the games have still largely held to the formula of "hit an arbitrary limit of experience points, level up and get more powerful."

Not so in Final Fantasy XIII. The latest issue of manga magazine Shonen Jump has some scans and information detailing the game's advancement system, called the "Crystalium" System. According to the translation posted on Andriasang [http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2009/11/01/ffxiii_growth_system], defeating enemies in battle in FF13 will earn "Crystal Points," or CP - and these CP can be exchanged for new skills or abilities, like the standard Fire/Fira/Firaga tree of magic.

As you purchase certain skills, your characters will unlock new available paths - my guess is that these paths will presumably lead further down their chosen fields; purchasing magic abilities will unlock more magic-based points and so on. Nor will this just be skill and abilities, either - the screenshots in the scans show purchasable nodes that increase a character's health, so one can assume that they'll be able to increase their other statistics in the same way.

It all sounds very reminiscent of the Sphere Grid system in Final Fantasy X, which is good because the Sphere Grid was awesome (if rather hard to explain to people at first). True, if you spent enough time with it you'd eventually end up with characters that were all exactly the same, but that's true with almost every Final Fantasy advancement system out there, and it at least preserved the characters' in-battle identities for a while (Tidus was quick, Wakka accurate, Auron powerful, etc).

A more in-depth explanation on the Crystalium System is believed to appear in Famitsu later this month as we move closer to Final Fantasy XIII's December release date.

And no, I still don't know what "OPTIMA CHANGE!" means.

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[DrunkWithPower]

My guess is that "OPTIMA CHANGE!" is french for "DIGIVOLVE TO!"

 

[JeanLuc761]

Nothing wrong with that, so far as I'm concerned. The sphere grid was my favorite method of leveling up characters in any of the Final Fantasy games.

 

[A Pious Cultist]

"Optima change!"? I think the Japanese should hire a person from a Western country just to check if their names make any dang sense. "Executive producer of making things not sound silly".

 

[Irridium]

I'm guessing OPTIMA its just another way of saying Optimus, and CHANGE may just mean transform.

So I guess you will be able to summon Optimus Prime.

Which would totally rule.

 

[SharPhoe]

My guess is that "OPTIMA CHANGE!" is french for "DIGIVOLVE TO!"

I would gladly play a Final Fantasy/Digimon crossover.

I also loved the Sphere grid, as it was also the first time that a character limits could be put WELL BEYOND anything I'd ever seen before. Nothing quite like watching the frail and timid summoner smack a beast in the head for 20k damage.

EDIT:

I'm guessing OPTIMA its just another way of saying Optimus, and CHANGE may just mean transform.

So I guess you will be able to summon Optimus Prime.

Which would totally rule.

We do already have ONE transforming car in XIII, why not add another?

 

[The DSM]

I never remember leveling up being broken, why try to replace a formula that has worked for well over 15 years?

 

[John Funk]

My guess is that "OPTIMA CHANGE!" is french for "DIGIVOLVE TO!"

I would gladly play a Final Fantasy/Digimon crossover.

I also loved the Sphere grid, as it was also the first time that a character limits could be put WELL BEYOND anything I'd ever seen before. Nothing quite like watching the frail and timid summoner smack a beast in the head for 20k damage.

I have a save game where Yuna and Lulu's melee attacks do 99999 damage apiece.

 

[Gigaguy64]

Hmmm.
I like the way it sounds.
Hopefully it will let us make characters based around our own taste's a bit easer.

 

[GloatingSwine]

I also loved the Sphere grid, as it was also the first time that a character limits could be put WELL BEYOND anything I'd ever seen before. Nothing quite like watching the frail and timid summoner smack a beast in the head for 20k damage.

Disgaea would break your head then

 

[Terramax]

Reminds me of how you had to buy the licenses to wear better weapons and armor in FFXII. I welcome this new leveling system. Although I doubt I'd be playing this game any time soon.

 

[j0z]

So, is it similar to FF12's license board? Because I hated that thing.
Never played FFX, so I don't know how it was.
I agree with the above poster, OPTIMA CHANGE is definitely refering to Optimus Prime.

 

[SharPhoe]

Disgaea would break your head then

I plan on trying that series someday, hopefully soon. I'll make sure to wear a helmet so I don't make a mess when it blows my mind. XD

 

[SamElliot'sMustache]

I loved the Sphere Grid from FFX, just because it meant no longer grinding for several hours before I could take on the next boss. I just hope that they make it more customizable, as in FFXII, because it was a bit strange that they had this system for choosing how you could advance your characters, and then have each grid be essentially one line, with some exceptions.

 

[geldonyetich]

Come to think of it, they were sort of slowly working their way over here. You'd unlock more hitpoints and mana in FFXII, and if using a grid to unlock hitpoints and mana is the way you go then why do you even need levels? Might as well just give them the points (Crystalium, SP, whatever).

 

[Arkhangelsk]

As long as it doesn't end up like the license system in FFXII where you could get all abilities for every character simply by grinding like there's no tomorrow.

 

[Plinglebob]

this reminds me of buying skills and armor and weapons for your character like in FFXII

which was a interesting way of leveling up. You could teach anyone any skill or weapon or armor. But I keep all 6 of them different from each other when I played.

I thought this a now it has me worried. While I liked the system for learning skills and abilities, the fact you also had to learn how to wear a hat REALLY annoyed me. Hopefully its more like the sphere grid though. If so, I'm definitely buying it as I really like the sound of the combat system.

 

[Thunderhorse31]

Ending up with characters who are "all the same" is one of the things that made FFXII so damn forgettable. One of the reasons characters like Cloud or Vivi are memorable is because of their big effing swords and defined classes, not because they could have used spears or anything else you felt like giving them. I guess I see a characters' weapon/class/whatever as part of their personality, and this effort to "promote customization" kinda smacks of laziness in character development.

Maybe I'm reading too far into this. Maybe FFXIII won't in fact suck. I can only hope.