I am making this review so that people can now about the game, minus the story. I am currently on chapter 11 out of 13.  First of all i think this is one of the harder games of series. 

Well to begin this review/ explanation, i will talk about the chapters. There are 13 total, i am 23 hours through the game and just started chapter 11, so take that as you will.  when you load a game you will get a small recap of what has happened so far in the story, which of course you can skip. 

Now lets go to the  classes, well there are 6 total: attacker, blaster, defender, jammer, enhancer, and healer. Attacker is the strength class where you pretty much do only physical attacks. blaster is the black mage class, where you do your fire, water, ice moves. defender is defense and it can provoke enemies to attack them instead of allies. jammer is your status effect class, and can cast stop slow, etc on enemies. enhancer is also your status effect class and it can cast haste, attack up, etc. helaer class pretty much heals. 

Now lets talk about the battle system. The battle system is the gem of the game, story is up to the gamer. out of ll the ffs i have played this ff13's battle system is the best. it is a faster pace battle system, which makes it harder and fun.  well it is true that you only get to control one character, which up to chapter 9  you do not get to choose.  the rest of the characters are controlled by computers, btw they are very smart. first of all you choose your initial classes like attacker for lighting, blaster for hope, and blaster for snow.  once you get into a battle you start out with these classes, you can change them with the optima shift, into any class that you set yourself. the battle screen has four options autobattle, abilities, special, and items. autobattle automatically choses the moves for you so you only have to press one button instead of 4 or 5. it is helpful it you quickly want to heal, just change to healer role and click autobattle. abilities is your attack and magi moves. you get to choose your moves manually if you dont want to use autobattle.  special is like summonings and other abilities, such as libra and quake. they cost tp points which you only have a max of 5, libra cost 1, summons cost 3. tp points regenerate after  you win a battle.  another thing added is the break system, similiar to xenosaga, if you break a enemy you do massive damage to them.  after you win a game the game rates you based on time. i am not fully sure what the stars do but i think the higher rating the greater chance of a rare drop. 

( two annoying parts is that when square changes your party members they also reset your optima sets, so you have apply them again. another is that allies dont seem to use items, so if you have an attacker, blaster, blaster, and you have low hp they wont use an  item to heal you. )

leveling stem is similar to ffx, instead of a sphere grid you have a crystarium, unique to each character. so you cant swap place and stuff like that. at the begining of the game square caps your crystarium, think of like sphere lock lv 1, 2,3 ,4,5.  as you progress if begins to unlock more and more, until chapeter 10, you have only a choice of 3 different preset roles for each character, then you can choose any, but be warned they cost alot of cp point. cp point are used to advance in the crystarium. you get cp from almost every battle. sooner or later square will advance the crystarium so much that you have to begin grinding.  note that different roles have differnt special unlocks for characters like accessory up and atb up. also there are pretty much only 3 stats, hp attack and magic.

the weapons system is also very interesting. you have to level weapons by giving it exp points. which you get from different dropped or found items throughout the game. some of the items cause exp x3 which multiplies the next items exp by 3. different weapons max out at different levels.  also one big note to this is that gil is very hard to come by as enemies do not drop it. you get gil by selling items so make sure you see the price items sell for before merging them with weapons.  

i hope that cleared some things for you. if i forgot some things, hopefully someone else can say what i forgot that played the game. as i progress through the game i will let you all you any updates to the systems.  well then i personally think this is my favorite ff, it is truely better than ff7 for me, other may have different opinions.  this is my game of the generation, i cant wait to see what the future of ff holds. 

any questions or comments leave them and ill try to answer, with out ruining the story.

some common q/a

1. Are there sidequests?

Yes there are, in fact there are 64 missions that you can do. i will update when i find out more.

2. Are there towns? 

Well not really, but i dont think they will be missed.

3. Is there a leveling system?

yes there is, by both the crystallium and weapons

4.how long is it?

i am about 37 hours and midway through ch 12, i expect it to be about 45 hours long

5. is it awesome/ should i at least try it.

yes you should, ignore every review out there and at least borrow from a friend.

6. is it hard. 

It may be the hardest ff ever made...

Nice to read good things about the gameplay for a change!

yeah the game is amazing, but it is normal that some people will hate it, sad that those people are very vocal this time around...

Nice read, I think what I've read has upped my anticipation over the course of the week. My biggest worry is the 'other stuff', the side quests and whatnot. I know this game has lots and lots of monster hunts, and I understand they can get pretty dam intense, but if that's it I'll be slightly let down.

Do you know if you'll have to do all of them for the platinum? I'm a bit of a trophey whore and it'll make my life determination to kill all the hunts alot more significient if theres a platinum in it for me :P.

So far so good! But how does the story compare to FFXII?

so far it is great, not the best but still great. i personally liked ff12 story and this one definitely a step up. also character development is really good, though there those characters that everyone hates. 

So I have heard it is linear, but does that mean there are no side quests? Admittedly I really want to know what there is to do once you finish the game, but I don't think you are in a position to answer that unfortunately....

It may seem like an odd question, but is there a controllable airship? Either like FF X or more like VII. I have also heard there are no towns, so it might not be in there

23 hours and already at chapter 11 of 13 does that mean the story is shorter then previous ff games or are you skipping a lot of side quests

i will let you know once i finish the game. ill put a black highlight but spoiler alert around it, also by then ill fully know what you can and cant do. 

i dont want to spoil but i just reached the sidequest portion of the game, where  you have 64 missions, also i didnt grind yet, now i am 25 hours along and i am not strong enough to advace further into chapter 11.