Final Fantasy XIII #HO

Crystarium... crystals... get it? I don't have any shots of the Crystarium system, so this is the best I can do.

Final Fantasy XIII's growth system was kept under wraps until Jump managed to share first details a couple of weeks back. As explained then, FFXIII does away with standard leveling up and has you raise your characters via the all new Crystarium System. You don't actually build your characters directly, though. Instead, the Crystarium system is used to build your characters' roles.

Roles, you'll recall, are similar to jobs. In FFXIII, changing a character's role gives him a different set of skills. Roles are grouped together in a grouping called an Optima which can be switched around during battle, changing your party's battle capabilities in a flash.

Character/role building starts off by selecting the Crystarium option from the main menu. This takes you to a screen showing the character you've selected along with a crystal shape which symbolizes the character.

From here, you select the role that you want to build up. Screens shown in the magazine have Lightning with Attacker and Blaster roles under her belt. Select one of these, and you're taken to a circular chart showing a bunch of crystals connected by various paths. These paths are called Power Lines. You upgrade your character by advancing along these lines and arriving at crystals which correspond to individual upgrades.

Crystal types include new abilities/skills as well as parameter modifiers. Abilities shown in the Famitsu screenshots include things like "Thunder," "Ruin," and "Fight" (I was a bit surprised to see this myself -- if you don't have the "fight" command from the start, how do you attack your opponents?). Parameter modifiers come in exactly three forms: increased HP, increased physical attack power, and increased magic attack power. The parameter upgrades are listed in the form "HP+15," to mean you get 15 points of added HP.

Each Power Line has a Crystal Point (CP) cost associated with it. Earned at the end of battle, CP can be thought of as FFXIII's experience, as you get different amounts depending on the type and number of enemies that you kill.

While the crystal management screen has a flashy graphical display, you can probably simply think of each role's crystal chart as a tree which you traverse by expelling CP. You're always free to backtrack along the tree and explore new paths. Toriyama noted that players are free to try out a number of different character growth styles -- focusing on acquiring abilities, focusing on parameters, and so forth.

FFXIII does have the concept of "levels," only not for your characters. Instead, the roles themselves have levels.

You raise your character's level in a particular role by progressing through the role's crystal chart until you reach the chart's central point. The crystal at this point makes the role level up. Your character moves on to a new, higher level crystal chart for the role.

Your characters also have a Crystarium level. This increases usually as part of the story. As explained by Toriyama, the Crystarium level serves as a cap of sorts on your roles -- basically, the maximum level your roles can reach.