A co-worker of mine happened to bring this in to show off. I asked if I could give it a test run, so here I am. I’m not a huge fan of Final Fantasy or Square Enix, so please bare with me if my terminology is off or I sound like a complete hater.

The opening CG movie was beautiful, which is now common in Final Fantasy games. Environment details were up to Square Enix standard. Really pretty stuff here. Soon enough, people started shooting at each other and things blew up. The explosions could be improved a bit, to look a little more realistic. I expect nothing but high quality work from these guys, so I can get a little picky. These cyber dogs jumped out of portals, which looked pretty awesome. The effect for that was great.

When the movie was done, it transitioned to an in-game cutscene. The frame rate would occasionally get sloppy. This should be fixed for the final product. Navigating along the area was simple, with walking or running being the only options. Whenever I wanted to talk to a NPC, all I had to do was walk up to them and they would start talking. No “action” button was required. Plus, there was no dialogue box; only audio played when they spoke. When enemies spotted you, they would get an exclamation point above their heads (thank you, “Metal Gear”). Then they started running after you and if they touched you, then CHUWEEHOO! Note that the only ones that would be in battle are the ones with the exclamation points. So let’s say you find 5 enemies and you are able to alert 3 of them. One of the 3 would touch you to start a battle. Those 3 are the ones you end up fighting against, even though the other 2 are clearly in the vicinity.

Since my Japanese language skills are low and I had no idea with what was going on with the story, the battle system was very important in keeping me from quitting the trial. The Active Time Bar had 3 levels. When one level was reached, a command of equal value could be inputted and you could end your turn. Or you could wait for 2 or 3 levels and perform more actions. For instance, the Attack menu had 4 options: normal attack, launcher, magic, and super magic. The first 3 options each took 1 level of Time Bar to perform, while the super magic required 3 levels of Time Bar. You can mix them however you like, as long as it totaled the amount of Time Bar you had available. It kept things interesting, so I liked that. When an enemy began to glow a yellow-reddish color, you could use the launcher attack to send them into the air and perform air combos. So when you had 3 levels of Time Bar accumulated, the launcher attack would be inputted first, followed by 2 normal attacks. Some crazy “Marvel vs. Capcom” stuff right here, folks. There was no MP required in casting the magic spells, which I liked. The enemies’ death animations could be a little more flashy, rather than just fading away. At the end of each battle, you got a rank ranging between 1 and 5 stars. There were no spoils or EXP.

The trial version lets players use Lightning and a CPU-controlled Sazzu for the first half of the trial, while Snow and his CPU-controlled gang are used for the remainder.

Final Fantasy XIII Trial Version is bundled with the Final Fantasy VII Advent Children Complete Blu-ray movie and is now available in Japan for 5,900 yen (roughly $59).