In the story of Final Fantasy XIII Versus, there are still some differences compared to Final Fantasy XV.
Because the original framework of the story was meant to connect with the Final Fantasy XIII series.
That game carried a lot of regrets. It could have been two very good stories, but due to various reasons, the original director was pushed out. A new director came in with a different style, and the two styles got mashed together—turning what should have been a strong work into something bittersweet and incomplete.
Since this work is called Final Fantasy XIII Versus, Takayuki wanted it to fulfill the dream and mission the series originally failed to complete:
Tell a story well.
A story about a prince and a princess—and also about life and death.
As for the original Final Fantasy XIII Versus, Takayuki only knew the rough outline of the plot. Because the project died, he could only piece together its shape from scattered fragments.
If it were Takayuki from a few years ago, he might not have had much confidence in telling that story well.
But now, he was no longer a lone developer. He had a large group of elite talent under him. Years of cultivation hadn't produced puppets who only followed his orders—they had their own understanding of games.
So Takayuki could lay out the story outline, and let his people fill in the structure.
And there was also the countless demo fragments of Final Fantasy XIII Versus sealed away in his memory.
He remembered the first moment he saw them—how instantly he'd fallen in love.
It was the first time after getting into video games that he felt as if he were immersed in a film world.
Murakami Kazuo had already reached the part where the prince returns to the royal capital.
But the capital is now a field of ruins.
No one tells him what happened—and soon, a group of soldiers appears and begins chasing the prince and his attendants.
At that point, a cinematic sequence starts: the protagonist flees through the city, scrambling everywhere, occasionally using his abilities to blink away and evade.
Now and then, the viewpoint cuts to other supporting characters fleeing as well—switching into their action segments as they run.
Story and gameplay mechanics fuse together here, staging an exhilarating race between life and death.
Murakami immediately felt his blood surge. He was completely focused.
The last time he'd felt this level of concentration was when he played Cyberpunk 2077—or maybe a little bit with The Binding of Isaac.
Just to create this sequence, Gamestar Electronic Entertainment spent tens of millions of dollars, plus a number of experimental technologies they'd never used before, to deliver action scenes with film-like camera movement inside gameplay.
For this action segment alone, Murakami already felt he'd gotten his money's worth.
Throughout this sequence, the protagonist is hunted nonstop—running constantly, barely able to breathe.
The pressure is intense—maxed out, even—but it doesn't come from a powerful boss fight.
It comes from the urgent, desperate feeling of wanting to escape while you still can.
That kind of pressure makes players take everything more seriously.
Under Murakami's control, the prince slips into a room to catch his breath.
But he only gets a brief ten or so seconds of respite—spending another few seconds on the radio coordinating with his companions—before enemy soldiers pick up his trail again and close in.
So he has no choice but to sprint again, more urgently than before.
This time, the escape is through interior buildings. And the third-person camera occasionally tilts at sharp angles.
That tilt makes it feel like the camera itself has entered the chase.
As if you, the player, aren't controlling the prince from outside—you're fleeing alongside him, escaping the soldiers together.
When Murakami reached this part, he couldn't help cheering inwardly.
This—this was the kind of game he'd always wanted to see.
Everything he'd played before felt like it had been wasted.
Well… that might be a little extreme, but that was genuinely how he felt right then.
So many previous games never used this kind of "camera language," where the camera becomes part of the game itself.
Even Uncharted, the so-called benchmark for cinematic games, hadn't done it like this. At most, it added camera shake during pursuits, or overlay effects as if you were being hit—but the immersion was nowhere near this level.
Clearly, Gamestar was still improving its cinematic grammar in games.
And in this title, he could once again feel that progress.
If they kept advancing like this, other studios would find it extremely hard to catch up.
After about an hour of high-intensity running and escape, the prince and his attendants finally get out of the capital and reach the outskirts.
At that point, a former Lucis minister contacts the prince and tells him he needs to gather the late king's weapons—those weapons will be essential for the prince's survival going forward.
With that, the prologue is basically over.
Murakami immediately felt he'd wasted time earlier.
How had he gotten addicted to fishing and forgotten the main story?
All he could say was: the fishing was genuinely fun.
As a fishing guy, he'd been completely conquered by the game's fishing system.
After that, he deliberately restrained himself from returning to fishing—because it didn't help his review work. He needed to clear the main story at least once.
And if you truly focused on the main quest, it actually didn't take that long.
The full run was around twenty-something hours. If you rushed more—cutting unnecessary leveling and grinding—you could finish even faster.
Over the next two days, Murakami spent about twenty hours to clear the story once.
The ending he got involved the male lead and female lead being separated—another classic Final Fantasy tragic ending.
Murakami felt a bit pained watching it, but he understood.
Tragedy has power—that much he couldn't deny.
He just felt that… if everything is tragedy all the time, it starts to get old.
Of course, he wasn't saying the story was bad.
Fine—stop thinking about it. Finish the review first.
For Murakami, Final Fantasy XIII Versus was a pretty good ending for the "New Crystal Mythos" line. It basically wrapped up the original structure of that mythos.
If they wanted to expand it in the future, they could—but whether Gamestar still had the desire and impulse to do so was another matter.
He wrote his review with full focus, then spent about one night rewriting and polishing it until a long, detailed review article was finished.
Then he logged into his review site and uploaded it.
And once the upload was done…
That was his personal time.
He could do whatever he wanted—like starting a new playthrough of Final Fantasy XIII Versus.
This time, he was going to catch every fish in the game!
Heh heh heh. Fishing is so fun.
The next morning, it was already the fourth day since Final Fantasy XIII Versus released.
Most players who bought it were still immersed in the "save the princess" journey.
Not everyone was like Murakami—rushing urgently toward the end.
Most gamers played patiently, taking their time. And because of that, they were more likely to discover content Murakami had missed.
Murakami rated the game: 4 stars.
A rare-quality standout, and a qualified final entry for the series.
The story was complete and satisfying, with that very Final Fantasy-style open-ended tragic finale—leaving endless room for imagination, and delivering a heavy emotional impact.
Murakami's review website was also one of the most authoritative in the industry.
Many review sites had lost credibility for various reasons, but Murakami's site remained a breath of fresh air.
If Murakami gave a game four stars, it was absolutely a worthwhile title to play.
Players who had been hesitant about this type of game stopped hesitating and began placing orders—triggering another wave of sales.
Several other companies were monitoring Gamestar's Battle.net platform sales data in real time.
It was the only official dataset that could still be used as a solid reference; other places had too much distortion in their numbers.
And what they saw was this:
Day one: an explosive launch.
First-day sales were already in the million-plus range.
Day two: still in the millions.
Day three: dropped quickly below a million.
In three days, it was close to four million total. They could only sigh: Gamestar's brand alone could pull in huge numbers, plus loyal fans. Even if the series showed zero ambition, it could still rake in profits.
Then day four: sales unexpectedly rose again.
Players who'd been watching from the sidelines stopped hesitating.
Many had hesitated because the game cost a full $59.
Not everyone was willing to spend $59 on a launch title.
A lot of people wanted to wait for a discount—especially now that discounts were arriving faster and faster. One company even started slashing prices hard just one month after release, drawing massive player backlash.
But that company didn't care—because discounts made them a fortune.
Some companies even started studying "new economics":
Set a high launch price first, then later slash it dramatically so players feel like they're getting a bargain—and mindlessly buy, buy, buy.
It was, to some extent, exploiting human weakness.
Of course, they weren't stupid on the surface. Players who paid big money at launch would at least get some pre-order exclusives—limited items, materials, and so on.
All virtual things—easy for game companies to create—perfect for shutting up launch buyers.
This kind of behavior hurt players and made them cautious about pre-orders, unwilling to buy early unless it was… a certain kind of "golden brand."
But even with a golden brand, new players still had worries.
At that point, review sites became the last fortress—taking on a certain responsibility.
Murakami's site firmly stood on the players' side, becoming a moat that players relied on and praised.
If Murakami recommended a game, then it was worth playing.
Four stars meant: if you're not extremely picky, you should give it a shot.
Under those conditions, Final Fantasy XIII Versus's sales surged again on day four, returning to million-level daily sales.
Day five: still hovering around a million.
A first-week total breaking ten million was basically a lock.
That actually surprised Takayuki a little—so game reviews could have this much impact?
He'd already arranged for marketing and dev teams to promote the game across different channels.
For example: paying high-quality streamers who didn't normally play games to play Final Fantasy XIII Versus, to attract non-gamers.
And buying more ads in countries where sales were weak.
If it came to it, Takayuki could even personally go out and promote the game.
If sales were bad, he didn't like sitting around helplessly. At the very least, do something. If it still failed after effort, then the game just wasn't suitable—and he'd accept it.
Even if he "accepted the loss," he wasn't afraid—he still had other revenue streams, and it wouldn't shake his core position.
But if it succeeded, then it meant the game's brilliance finally got to shine.
Still, he kept the team prepared—if the momentum didn't last, they'd need to act fast and keep the hype from dying out.
He understood the truth of: "First you surge, then you weaken, then you collapse."
Other game companies, watching those sales figures, could only feel envy—and toothache.
Envy, because if they had a game like that, they could rest easy and live off it for years.
Toothache, because Gamestar kept maintaining its overlord record and status, making it extremely hard for anyone else to challenge them.
Look next door at Suri Electronics—eyeing the "king of games" throne for over twenty years, and still stuck as perpetual second place.
After Murakami's review went up, other outlets gradually published their own reviews too.
And to differentiate themselves from Murakami, they chose different angles to examine the game—put simply:
They chose to praise it.
After all, the game had already proven to be a major success. Praising an obviously excellent game was easy—no risk of getting attacked by players.