Final fantasy XIII is a role-playing game in a long-running line of games developed by the very well-known company Square-enix . There was considerable hype leading up to the release in North America on March 9th 2010 and I had extremely high hopes and expectations for this game. It definitely delivers on what I was expecting, but does this masterpiece deliver on the side of accessibility? Let's find out shall we?

The environments and sets in final fantasy are beautifully done and varied throughout the game. There were a few parts where I would stop just to look around and enjoy the scenery for a moment, although a few parts had less than perfect water textures. This is definitely the best looking game in the series and the beach city cut scenes with the fireworks were absolutely breathtaking!

Enough talk about the obviously amazing graphics and just a quick note about the soundtrack. I have been playing since final fantasy II and I would like to say that I am very familiar with the kind of music that goes into each game. I found the soundtrack to be good but not absolutely mind blowing like some of the previous titles of the series. I really enjoyed the first chocobo song you hear in the game at the amusement park. Cheerful and upbeat, makes you feel relaxed and energetic. Overall the soundtrack is good, but not the greatest.

It's time for me to stop being a fan boy and get down to the part that actually matters to people reading this site....... accessibility!

Definitely the subtitling is done the best in this iteration of final fantasy, especially the extra option which you can turn on. This option will have the character's name displayed next to the text whenever they are talking, even when they are not displayed on screen. Another excellent option is the ability to slow down the fights to half speed which will give you more time to react in fights.

Another very helpful menu option in combat will automatically fill in commands for you and generally they are the best choices. Using the ability called Libra can find out the weaknesses of enemies and the AI / your character will use the proper abilities to exploit their weaknesses when using the auto attack ability. You can also choose to have the cursor default to manual input or auto attack first depending on your preference.

Also when you change equipment its color coded to tell you whether something raises your stats or lowers them, it also has up and down arrows to also signify changes.

Overall it has some nice options for accessibility in the options menu.
Some of the ambient speech was not subtitled, mostly mumbling and shouting from the crowds in certain scenes. Even though you do not miss any of the story or anything important, it would have been nice to subtitle these particular parts of the game.

The mini map uses symbols that are easy to distinguish between each other, but enemies are red dots and your teammates are grey. This may or may not be a problem to some colorblind players.

The upgrade system could have used a better tutorial to better explain how the system works and not leave you in the dark for the most part.

The main controls of the game that you absolutely must use in combat are L1, X, left analog stick and sometimes circle to cancel your actions. Even on a slow setting, some of the battles can be hectic to slow moving players.

One handed players might have a problem if they're unable to move the joystick or press X to confirm actions and L1 to change roles as needed. If you can handle this with limited mobility or one handed play you will have no problem, if you cannot handle this you will have great difficulty completing some of the missions and bosses. Please consider this before purchase.

Overall the game is very accessible to deaf players, colorblind and more accessible than most games to the one handed player.... although not completely perfect. It's a very enjoyable game with more accessibility then most of the games I have played in the past few years. If you can handle the four main control elements needed for the game you will not have any issues playing FF13. Suggestion is to rent to make sure you can handle the four main elements and if you can... I recommend purchasing it as there are many things you can do are after finishing the game.