Several of us who have played both the Japanese and International releases of Final Fantasy XIII have noticed some rather irritating changes made to how the game plays. Although the differences are minor, they still have us wondering – Why?

Vibration
Many people have claimed that there is no vibration in the English PS3 version of FFXIII. This is untrue. However, how powerful the vibration is has been changed dramatically. You seldom feel it during gameplay and when you do, it’s so weak it’s barely worth having. This is the first game I’ve played where the vibration is at such a low frequency I can actually hear the motor inside my controller struggling.

Save Points
An extremely minor problem but I assume some of you have come across it. In the Japanese release, when you exit the save menu, you could hold down the analogue stick while the screen quickly switched back to gameplay and you’d immediately start running. Now if you do that you’ll stay motionless. You have to release the analogue stick and then try again.

Shroud Menu
Known as the Smoke Menu in the Japanese release, you could run around with it open and use it at the most opportune moment. Now when you press L1 to open the shroud menu you can’t move. This means you have to make sure you’re the perfect distance from your target to use an aerosol or the time limit will run out and you’ll end up wasting it. This gets especially annoying later in the game. Several times I’ve had to get so close to an enemy that I’ve alerted them and not had enough time to fumble through the menu.

You could say we’re making a big deal about nothing but the main reason I’m posting this is because I just don’t see the reason for making changes that make the experience slightly less enjoyable. We’ll give you our final thoughts on the game over the following days.

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