FFXIII's Crystarium system detailed

By Tom Bramwell Published 12 November, 2009

Plus: big news tomorrow, chocobos, more.

Square Enix is planning to make a big Final Fantasy XIII announcement tomorrow at 3.30pm GMT.

In the meantime, Famitsu has revealed details of the new character growth system, along with Hope's summon and the way the game uses series mainstay the chocobo.

According to the Japanese magazine (partially translated by IGN), FFXIII uses something called the Crystarium system, which the website compares to Final Fantasy X's Sphere system.

The idea is that rather than collect raw experience points, you gather Crystal Points after battles, and these can be used to progress across a chart, selecting which "role" you want for your character. As you improve in this role, you can move onto more advanced Crystarium charts.

Variety will come from choosing different routes across the charts, with progress capped by your overall "Crystarium Level".

Presumably that will all be rendered somewhat clearer by the Japanese PlayStation 3 version, since it's out on 17th December. Slightly easier to understand is the fact that Hope's summon is Alexander, a giant who either punches enemies or, in his Gestalt form, transforms into a fortress and bombards them with cannon fire.

Then there are the chocobos. According to IGN's read of the Famitsu piece, there's your standard Cocoon chocobo (cute, farmy) and the wilder Pulse chocobo, which you can ride around the world at high speed, at least until its health bar has been depleted by stampeding past too many monsters.

As well as being able to hoist you into new areas thanks to its powerful jump, the Pulse chocobo will be able to sense nearby buried treasure, a bit like Peter Molyneux's dog, although a bit more dispensable.

So far, so Final Fantasy, then. Not that we're complaining. The demo released with FFVII Advent Children earlier in the year was beautiful and enticing, and then we learned more about the battle system at E3 (and met Villiers' summon, Shiva), before gamescom introduced us to the Paradigm Shift system and Lightning's summon (Odin).

Look out for more on that big FFXIII announcement tomorrow at 3.30pm, and watch out for our import review around the turn of the year.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (10) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • 52pickup #1 2 years ago

    Big news? and on the EU PS site. Exclusive PS3 content? A EU demo date? c'mon hurry up tommorow!

  • andywilkie35 #2 2 years ago

    Sounds good, I really liked FFX's system, more than XII's anyway (which wasn't bad at all to be fair)

  • VMerken #3 2 years ago

    I really hope that in this system, once you've chosen a certain path for a character, it's not possible to go back and unlock other character-specific paths - i.e., every character can unlock everything during play and become totally all round, as was the case in FFXII. The fact that every FFXII character could ultimately do everything (apart from Mists which were divided across the board) was the only gripe I had with that game.

  • Widge #4 2 years ago

    I would like a jap store demo or something... much better than forking out £50 on the BR!

    +1 for character specialisation being forced upon the player. FFIX was all the richer for it. Otherwise your characters are identidolls with different skins.

  • Widge #5 2 years ago

    It wasn't that difficult to unlock all round chars in FFXII through normal play. The game encouraged grinding and general looting so racking up the points came quickly.

  • M_of_the_sys #6 2 years ago

    @Widge

    If you're talking about Advent Children, it's not £50 for the BR. I personally think it's a great film (over the DVD) but I am a big fan of FFVII.

    @kristianna

    I agree. I loved the customisation in FFVIII but it did turn it into a grind trying to collect 99 of each spell. FFX had a good system too though.

  • Widge #7 2 years ago

    Is there anywhere doing the BR with FFXIII demo cheaply? I'm sure its about £40-£50....

  • firefly #8 2 years ago

    Hmm, I'm pretty sure I didn't pay that much for the Blu-Ray. But then I was actually in Japan when I bought it so it was a little different.

  • M_of_the_sys #9 2 years ago

    Sorry. Yeah you're right. £40 - £50. Still a great film though but wouldn't pay that just to get the extra of a demo.

  • VMerken #10 2 years ago

    @MilkybKid1985:
    Not really, It took me about 50 in-game hours of play (which is standard for JRPGs) to get everyone a full board. It didn't feel like grinding either, as I didn't have to run around in the same area for extended periods of time to get the JP - in fact, the story progressed naturally along the way, and now I'm in the end game with identically abled characters. It's not a bad thing, but it just doesn't feel right that, without too much effort, Warrior Princess Ashe can do pretty much the exact same things as Sky Pirate Balthier.