Final Fantasy XIII is a beautiful underated epic. Yes, it truly is. - by Gab.

[Feylynn]

I liked the characters, I had no issue with linearity all Final Fantasies are linear.
I liked the first 30 hours of the game, the combat seemed like it might be going somewhere, I actually really liked the upgrade system, the music was wonderful, it has the single best graphics of anything ever period.

You know what killed it?

Chain-gauge.
I can't be assed to spend 10-20 minutes a random encounter every 5 steps.
Worse it's not even a specific enemy it's the archetype that's merely annoying at the beginning of the game but evolves to become intolerable.
The tanky one, where it has 400 billion hp, 90% dmg mitigation, and bursts you with massive AoE spells every time you try and build a chain.

If it was a fun battle system like any other final fantasy then I migth spend the time fighting.
But XIII decided it wanted to reinforce bull-shit-sudden-death-auto-battles that force you to switch between doing nothing but pressing X, and doing nothing but pressing X at extremely low health because you need to not have any defense to finish the fight within that 20 minutes.

Visual: 10+
Audio: 9
Story: 6 (Decent character and narrative so far but held back by the length and filler when what they clearly wanted to do was make a cinematic action packed streamlined story.
Had they just made a movie this would score higher)
Gameplay: 4 (Most of it was passable, no issues with leveling or upgrades, all the chain-gauges fault)
Re-playability: 0 (There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to ever think of touching this disc a second time, go buy Disgaea if you want to see infinite playability)


Chain-gauge Penalty: -50.
Overall: 0/50

Ok, ok, seriously 29/50, I'd even score it higher than that because of the + visuals and certain outstanding narrative moments but ultimately it's flaws drag it down to a final verdict of:
"I like it, and want to like it, but god damn if I want to PLAY it. They should have made a movie".
I'll tell you if I forgive it and bump up that final score if I ever find the patience to slog through the last several hours of the game.

 

[babinro]

Fantastic game thanks to its excellent combat system, wonderful graphics and decent story.

I don't care for the excessively slow start as the game takes far too much time to open up options for its players. I'm referring only to the first 2 hours of the game, not the first 10+ hours of the game when it finally opens up. I don't like how the game pigeon holes each class into three options until the end game. Finally, the excessively complicated item/weapon upgrade system is silly and should have been simplified.

I'd highly recommend this game <8/10>, and consider it to be my fourth favorite of the series:
1: FF6
2: FF5
3: FF1
4: FF13
5: FF12
6: FF7 (sorry fans, that's just how I feel)

 

[AbstractStream]

I expected this to be a flamewar already. Then again, I only read the first and last page.
Anyway, right on! Stick to your guns. I really like FFXIII...I don't want to say love (that's reserved for FFVIII and FFX), but truly liked.

Amazing music, graphics, and I don't care if it is linear.
Hopefully XIII-2 doesn't disappoint.

 

[DSQ]

i agree with gabmed on FF13, i really don't see much wrong with it.

The characters are interesting; there are three "classic" FF characters (Lightning, Fang and Snow) two characters who have stuff to hide so they try to stay strong and one character who doesn't belong in a battle at all (Hope). Hope struggle plays on emotion very well - people can relate to him.

The combat system is smooth and works, i wouldn't all FF 13 easy either. In fact most people find it very hard. It's not short like lots of other games and touches on valid points on Human morality, racism etc. Which is always good for storytelling games.

Final Fantasy 13 is one of the best RPG's out.

this.

Hope was grating but in a good way, it really made me like him because anyone who wasn't a fighter would act the same way.

FFXIII isn't the best final fantasy but it is a really good game.

The only thing i would change would be perhaps toning down vanill and maybe a tiny bit less linarity. (sorry for the spelling)

 

[Necromancer1991]

snip

I would have to agree with almost everything you've said, as I said I have many issues with the game, but overall can put them aside to enjoy the game. Again I'm not a fantard, as a matter of fact I'm totally reasonable as long as you present a good argument for your point, which you did here. Also I hate how people say "OMG teh plots is hard to understand!", it's not, this isn't like a novel with pages missing, the pages are just out of order and take some work on your part to be coherent, I'm by no means a genius but even I knew what was going on 85% of the time without resorting to the encyclopedia (most of the confusion comes from terminology that was completely alien to me (Imagine reading 1984 without the bit explaining Newspeak)).

 

[CM156_v1legacy]

And I must disagree with this

I think I had something to say about this before

*Ahem*

Final Fantasy XIII director Motomu Toriyama once Final Fantasy XIII-2 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/107030-Final-Fantasy-XIII-2-Will-Exceed-Final-Fantasy-XIII] would "exceed" the first game in "every way."

Good to know that you are setting your standards at the level of The Ninth Circle of Hell. Which, by the way, is where I think the person who designed the battle system is headed. Judecca awaits!

Christ, this brings back horrid memories. Oh well, FF fans will by the game no matter what. So I guess I cannot blame them for making something people will want to buy

And here

Very good for you. I only got through 14 or so hours before my rage/quit. I thought it was horrid for a few reasons

1) Combat made me feel like I had little control of events
2) The item leveling system was needlessly complicated
3) The aesthetic was boring
4) Hope was a little ***** and I wanted him stabbed to death
5) Snow was so stupid, and looked like a hobo
6) Lightning was emo without being badass.
7) Vanille was borderline insane and downright stupid.
8) What was done in the cutscenes was more awesome then you were allowed to outside them
9) I could not care LESS about any of the main characters
10) The level up system did not reward innovation or non-linear thought
11) Enemies have only a few tactics used to beat them
12) No money dropped
13) Few items dropped
14) Combat was downright dull
15) Did I mention that fucking hated Hope?
16) The fakey-made-up words made it hard to follow
17) There were some creepy moments in there
18) The story was beyond stupid
19) I did not ever once forget that I was playing a game. I was well aware of it. And if you can't let me escape, when I can believe in a curse of Spirt Eating from a dead god of the dead, then you fail!
20) Overall, I hated it, and it made me feel ill

At least FF X was so bad it was downright funny. At least it had a good combat system!

I hated it. I really did. As I said, FFX at least had a good combat system. Combat was just horrid for me. So, yes, I hated it.

But if you liked it, I suppose that is your business.

What killed the game for me was pace. It just took so long. And I felt like gameplay was a punishment, not a reward.

 

[Dick Johnson]

You're entitled to like whatever you like but just know that even the FF13 developers admitted that the game turned out to be a mess.

it is kind of hard for them to defend it when it has some of the most abysmal sales figures of any Square Enix product ever. If they didnt say that in a press release they might as well just kiss their fanbase goodbye.

IMO I think that was the real problem, that it was an Square Enix game.

Square has this historic reputation of being a great, if not the premier JRPG developer. They've given us many good FF games, and several other noteworthy titles, but lately their games have just lacked desirable RPG elements.

FFXIII isn't a terrible game. I'm not going to lie and say its one of my favourites, or even a great one, but if it was made by Joe Blow JRPG developer and not Square Enix I bet there would be two notable differences.

One, you probably never would've heard about the game [and it's failed reception] unless you were a JPRPG enthusiast
And two, those who enjoyed the game probably wouldn't have had to work so hard to defend their experience.

Definitely was not worth it as a $60 title though.

 

[holy_secret]

I don't understand how people can say that the characters are stereotypical.
When I see the actions of hope, vanille and snow, I see where they're coming from.

Seeing a loved one die makes you act irrational.
Seeing a slight ray of hope makes you act overconfident in a situation otherwise being completely hopeless.
Overdoing the happiness to mask extrem guilt or sadness.

Is this stereotypical? Is it really boring?
Am I the only one who can relate to hope and snow? Am I the only one who understands that vanille was pretending to be overly cheery and happy at he beginning of the game?

I would say the characters are extremely well done, considering how fooled the majority of the people are.
"Hope's actions make no sense! Why does he hate Snow and act emo all the time?"
"Snow is a damn douchebag who thinks he's all that. He's overconfident and annoying."
"Vanille's voice was overacted to the extreme and the character is over-the-top cooky."

 

[airrazor7]

-snip-

I'll have to respectfully disagree with some of your points. Actually developers can be known to defend a game when it is received poorly. An example of that is Other M. To this day Nintendo still thinks it produced a solid game despite its reception and sells.

Square Enix being a premier JRPG developer is very...debatable. Square Soft had a reputation of being great (yes, I know they're the same) but the current reputation of Square Enix could be described as a series hits and misses, I guess like most developers if put in that perspective. Also, there are those who think Square and Enix did the merger cause Square wasn't doing to well on its own at that time. I'm not saying that Square Enix is a bad company, I'm a Kingdom Hearts fan after all, just saying that they're not legendary, at least not anymore. They don't stand out among development companies like they used to except for the company's historic reputation. Besides there are other companies that are on par with Square in the JRPG market if not better than them.

Also, I do think that if FF13 was titled something else and made by another company, it still would have become common knowledge to anyone who is into gaming. Since the market for JRPGs and RPGs is unbalanced due to most of them going to the XB360, news of an RPG, even a bad one, still happens to be popular. Actually it may have been received a lot better because then the game wouldn't be held up to Final Fantasy standards set by the fans. So yeah, you're probably right about your last point.

 

[airrazor7]

-snip-

I don't think the problem is the characters, I think a decent majority of people who have been following the series are getting tired of seeing those types of characterization in Final Fantasy games. you could probably match those personalities you mentioned to characters in, not all of them, but some of the more recent FF games.

 

[holy_secret]

-snip-

I don't think the problem is the characters, I think a decent majority of people who have been following the series are getting tired of seeing those types of characterization in Final Fantasy games. you could probably match those personalities you mentioned to characters in, not all of them, but some of the more recent FF games.

No, I couldnt.
I've never seen a more human reaction to a loss like what was displayed in snow and hope.

What kind of characerizations do you mean exactly? Because I can't say I've seen characters like vanille, hope and snow before.

 

[SaikyoKid]

I think I would mostly agree with you on this one OP. It really isn't as bad as everybody seems to paint it and as far as the linearity really is in every FF at least to some degree. It really was very pretty too look at while playing it and the characters really didn't annoy as much as every one else seems to think.

On that note though, the gameplay for this one is what absolutely killed it for me. Not being able to control three characters at once and simply being stuck with one as the leader really was no fun for me. Also, trying to cycle through menus while everything else is just sort of going on really didn't do much for me either. Basically meant I would have been foolish to try to play the team healer as the computers do a MUCH better job at it than I could.

To basically sum it up, I would agree that this game warrants a lot of unnecessary hatred towards it. It really does look great and the story isn't the worst I've heard before. But the game play is far too much of a stretch from any of the other FFs before it and it really doesn't do much of anything for me.

 

[ShadowsofHope]

The only things I genuinely hated about Final Fantasy XIII, where Vanille (her voice and little "squeaks" drive me fucking insane) and the ludicrous amounts of HP the bosses throughout the game after Chapter 9 had that could leave some battles going for almost half-a-bloody-hour.

Otherwise, I did enjoy it, although the grinding in Gran Pulse did get a little annoying after awhile. Unfortunately, XIII-2 doesn't seem like it is going to live up to the quality that FXIII set for the typical Squeenix sequel trio per Final Fantasy game..

 

[go-10]

I agree on everything, I really enjoyed the game but I wouldn't go so far as to say its the best on the PS3. Also Snow, mother fucking Snow, I hated him from the minute I saw him

 

[DarkCrescendo]

The only things I liked about this game were Lightning (became tied as my favorite character of all time) and the combat. Other than that...I'm sorry, I just don't think it was really that good.

Story: 2/10

I'm sorry, but it was a convoluted, unbalanced, plot hole ridden, mess of a story. Subplots were dropped on the turn of a dime, most plot points were poorly explained (if explained at all), there was absolutely no foreshadowing to any of the major events, chapters 3 through 8 have little to nothing to do with the chapters 10 through 13, and very little is explained IN GAME (I'm sorry, but with EIGHT FREAKING HOURS of cutscense...why do I have to read summaries, character bios, and other such thing on the menu and later have to go online to read Episode Zero and the Ultimanium to understand what the hell just happened?). Also, that ending was nothing but a cope out by the writer as it had NO foreshadowing, it was FULL of Deus Ex Machina's, and basically it is written off as a "miracle" with no explanations given.

Characters: 3/10

Lightning: Like I said, Lightning became tied as my favorite character of all time, so I shall forgo all of the fanboy praise I would be prone to giving about the character.

Snow: He nearly ruined the entire game for me with all of his, "I'm meh heroz!", "heroz dunt need planz!", and his constantly screaming of, "SEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!" nearly had me stabbing my eardrums to soothe the pain. He has no redeeming qualities (he gets people killed because of his stupidity, he never thinks more than two seconds ahead, he is completely oblivious to most things around him, etc.), he has no character development, and he is rather poorly written.

Serah: Stereotypical Damsel in Distress character who served nothing more than a way to get Lightning and Snow motivated. She is also freaking selfish, stupid, and immature. Case in point: She decides to tell Light about her engagement to the man she absolutely despises BEFORE telling her about her becoming a L'cie (the stupid part). On top of that, it just happens to be on the ONE DAY that isn't about taking care of Serah or the bills, Lightning's birthday (the selfish part). Finally, the second Light doesn't believe her, she runs off sobbing (the immature part).

Fang: She's bearable, but only slightly so. She is basically the stereotypical 90's action female character that tries WAY TOO HARD to act cool (with one liner's like, "Eat this!" or "Unleash Hell!"). She has little to no character development... not much more to say.

Sazh: Once again, a character with little to no character development. Not much else to say...he was the comic relief character for the most part.

Vanille: Don't even get me started...

Hope: The only other character other than Lightning to get some actual character development. Overall, a likable character by the end.




The villans: Don't make me laugh...THEY HAD NO CHARACTERIZATION!

 

[Plinglebob]

Snip

I swear I'll stop repeating myself regarding FFXIII characters soon, but I find it quite interesting you seemed to have missed the point for a lot of the characters. I like FFXIII as its a good character study of the traditional RPG archetypes and what they would really be like.

Snow - He acts like the vast majority of game heroes act when we control them. He thinks he's special, that the rules don't apply to him, everyone should follow him and do what he says and is single minded about his main goal. The problem is this time he isn't the player character so this attitude comes off as cocky, abrasive and ends up screwing things over. Over the course of the game he learns, through Hope and other events like peoples reactions at the racetrack, how this attitude really doesn't work. He's like Zidane shoved into the real world.

Sarah - She's a teenage girl who finds out she's about to die and her boyfriend says he'll marry her. Personally I think you'd find it difficult to find an adult who would act rationally and maturely in that situation let alone a hormone-fueled teen.

Fang - Again, this is a typical PC archetype of the Amnesia-striken hero who instead of trying to find out more, decides to just act on instinct and what little memory they have and again we're shown how this behavoir would realistically end up causing a lot of problems. She's Tidus if he'd washed up somewhere else and sided with Seymour. I will agree though that I'm not really sure what development she managed to get.

Sazh - He's the "Tag-along". The guy in your RPG party who realy has no purpose or reason to be there, but comes along as your group seems the lesser of 2 evils. This game subverts this by not only showing that tagging along may not be the lesser evil, but also that these characters do have a life independent of the party. While he may not have much development as a character (I thought he was pretty well rounded and believable from the start) he has a strong and emotional story arc. Best example here is Quina if Quina actually had character and more then 30 seconds of back story.

Vanielle - I admit I didn't really get her character till my second playthrough, but then it really hit me hard. She's your traditional Genki Girl and in any other game, like Panelo in FFXII, she would be just that. This time we get shown why and how difficult it can be keeping it going. She's been through this before and realises they are in the shitter, but doesn't want to let on so she keeps up the happy face for the sake of others and so never gets help with her own sadness.

Hope - In most RPGs, the little kid who's gone through hard times then joins up is usually used as the comic relief, bait or the "awww, how cute" factor. Here we're shown just how screwed up that kid would really be. Like Snow, it makes him a more annoying character to play with, but a lot more believable.

If you haven't guessed already, I'm with the reviewer and really like this game. I have no issue with the liniarity, the turnbased combat (though a slower pace would have been nice) or the lack of towns/sidequests (the public would kill you on site!). My only real issue was the locked levelling (fine during the game, but let us have the final teir BEFORE the final boss next time) and only controlling 1 person out of 2/3. Also, though maybe because I'm used to it, I didn't use the ingame notes once and still followed everything perfectly fine. Overall, much better then the majority of people say.

 

[Pyramid Head]

I feel you're entitled to your opinion, but i've got to say it.

Square Enix murdered the genre they helped to make in the first place. Final Fantasy XIII pretty much embodied what is wrong with that fucking company. It had nice visuals.
...that's it. No other redeeming qualities. It just looks unique. And they've got more annoying recurring themes than a Stephen King television series. I personally see where a few critics were coming from when they called it one of the worst things 2010 offered us. The only thing good Square Enix has been doing lately is giving money to Eidos and letting them publish Just Cause, Deus Ex and Thief. I mean i like some of the things they help to fund, but the items Square itself makes lost their charm when the company was still called Square Soft.