Final Fantasy XIII

[Paragon Fury]

So I just watched the latest Jimquisition and it got me to thinking about FFXIII.

I've played all three (XIII, XIII-2 and Lightning Returns) and I didn't find any of the three really "bad". Rather each of them was really weak in one or two areas that dragged the rest of the game down - even though each of the games actually has at least a couple of really strong points. And what Jim said about "experimenting" got me to wondering; what is the thought process that could lead a company like SQEnix to get something right in each one, but not realize that COMBINING those things was the way to go? I mean;

Final Fantasy XIII - Has an actually good plot and probably the strongest individual characters of the three games. Dragged down by bad exploration and poor TELLING of the story.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 - Has actually pretty enjoyable combat and gameplay. Has perhaps one of the best Final Fantasy villains, and probably one of the best recent villains in the form of Caius Ballard. Crappy story, and convoluted exploration though.

Final Fantasy XIII: Lightning Returns - Terrible story, ruins one of the better characters from the first two games, not really FF combat at all. However, has GOOD exploration and GREAT party/character customization.


In the series, they had ALL the elements of a great, even excellent FF game; so how could they not figure out how to combine them? The same people worked on all three games; what gives people? Maybe they've learned enough from Bravely Default - but it seems like they didn't need to "learn" so much as "stop ignoring what they already knew".

 

[Elfgore]

Well, FF13 is the only FF I've played and it isn't that bad. The story is very confusing, most likely because they make no effort to explain it. The characters are all eh at the best. My biggest problem is how long it takes to get your full party and actually make use of strategy.

I own 13-2 and the HD version of X and X-2 as well, but haven't gotten to playing them yet.

 

[Ikasury]

i will agree with you, not a big fan of FF13, to be honest i couldn't really get through it all (seriously the first 2hrs of the game feels like Square was throwing ever FF-trope they had and seeing how fast and how far they could drag them out .-.) but i've heard lots of people tell me it gets better, and few of them were actually able tell me WHY these characters are worth all the drudging beginning, and i'll admit it did sound good, even got me to play more of the game... then the exploration thing kicked in... and we were back to square one _._

if it had better execution of the story (which from the drawn out overview i was given actually is good) and less the bad bits i wouldn't have felt like i was drudging along and got through it... i even LIKE Lightning... sort of... even if she's basically a Female Cloud, but where Cloud failed, she seems to get it done better, if not actually 'right' (jury's still out) but from what i hear 13-2 and Lightning Returns basically flips everything on its head and makes it all a convoluted mess...

sigh... Square definitely needs to get its stuff together, it made some of my favorite games once, now its been very... meh~ i was honestly surprised when they managed to do something 'right' with 3rd Birthday, still could do without the convoluted combat shenanigans, but storywise... well the end was great, one of those 'it makes sense in the end' but even it presented better then FF13 at its odd beginning .-. kinda wish they'd go back to the stuff they were good at and stop being sissys...

but as Jim pointed out, sorta, they're 'getting' better... who knows, they may shape up by FF16, cause 15 already looks to be kinda 'bad' with its non-FF combat .-.

we can dream...

 

[Ikasury]

Well, FF13 is the only FF I've played and it isn't that bad. The story is very confusing, most likely because they make no effort to explain it. The characters are all eh at the best. My biggest problem is how long it takes to get your full party and actually make use of strategy.

I own 13-2 and the HD version of X and X-2 as well, but haven't gotten to playing them yet.

start playing FFX for a few hours, put it down, then look back at FF13... and laugh :3

that 'strategy' bit was a major flaw for FF13, you were limited in grinding (honestly, grinding is half of what you do in a JRPG and they 'limited' it? HA!) so you couldn't get anything really quick, sure you didn't need it, but it made options limited and weird... adding to the confusing mess .-.

 

[shrekfan246]

In the series, they had ALL the elements of a great, even excellent FF game; so how could they not figure out how to combine them? The same people worked on all three games; what gives people? Maybe they've learned enough from Bravely Default - but it seems like they didn't need to "learn" so much as "stop ignoring what they already knew".

In a recent post on this forum, I postulated that the Final Fantasy XIII mini-series was Square Enix's experiment as to how they could "fix" all of the problems people had with the direct previous Final Fantasy titles, all while completely missing the things that actually made each game enjoyable.

Spoiler

In XII, many people complained about the characters (which is a recurring theme for most Final Fantasy games, honestly) and the rote nature of the story, as well as the massive deviation in combat style (which wasn't really a big change, but oh well). So in XIII, they decided to bring back the absolute insanity of character and world design and kick the story up to eleven, and bring back the ATB pocket-universe combat. But the pacing was the worst it's ever been in the series, combat removed control of the entire party, and they tinkered around with the combat in ways that seem largely unnecessary. Not enough to make the combat system bad, but the pacing managed to ruin that too, because you didn't have enough to actually do in the early-game to actually keep it interesting.

So in XIII-2, they decided that they would make larger areas and really ramp up how quickly you get access to your combat abilities and the new tweaked system, and they would get around that pesky pacing issue by having a widely branching time travel story which allowed the player to take things at their own pace. But... the time travel plot completely derailed whatever story they were trying to tell in the first place and its impact on the areas you visit caused them to be, while admittedly better than the corridors of XIII, essentially just small islands in the void of time and space that you plop down on when you need exposition or some monster grinding. Nothing really felt connected or alive.

So in Lightning Returns, they make one big connected world again, for the most part. Awesome! But by now they're rolling with that time travel plot and it makes absolutely no sense and they're focusing on the two most boring and bland characters in the entire mini-series to begin with, while relegating the interesting characters to cheap cameos, and they've tinkered with the combat system again for no reason and thrown in some hackneyed time effects as well to compliment their big Majora's Mask countdown.

I couldn't rightfully explain why all of that happened, except for maybe blaming Toriyama again because he can't let Lightning go. But if I were to wager a guess, I'd think that they didn't actually understand what they did do right with the XIII games, and it's not like trawling through internet forums would've actually given them a straight answer either; The only consensus people usually come to on disliking Final Fantasy XIII is about its linearity and maybe a few of the characters.

 

[Fractral]

Final Fantasy XIII was the first FF game I played. I got to Gran Pulse, and then gave up because it was boring. Then I went and played FF4, FF6, FF7, and FF9, and came back to FF13 afterwards. On my second run through I enjoyed it a lot more, because I knew what I was doing and had some sort of handle on the plot. It's a good game IMHO, with a lot of flaws but none of them spoiled it for me. The boss fights were fun and the combat was nice. I liked it.
Initially I liked FF13-2 as well but after thinking about it I've decided it's a worse game. The story makes no sense and the ending is terrible, the main characters aren't as interesting and it's far too easy. The gameplay was better, though. I think my main problem was with how forced it felt- the story didn't lead on naturally from the prequel, which did a good job of tying up the loose ends. It was just unnecessary.

 

[KikReask]

I never played any of the titles in the XIII trilogy but I did play the demo of Lightning Returns recently and as a fan of old school JRPGs like Chrono Trigger just jumping into a new JRPG, I thought LRFF13 was actually quite a bit of fun to play with. The whole outfit changing thing is silly but really fun for just wanting to keep the action going, the story is ridiculous but I like ridiculous anime type stuff, and it's honestly a bit more fun to be one character instead of a group of three.

I would honestly love to buy Lightning Returns if it goes on sale but I would prefer to catch up on the dumb story first. I guess the reason everyone hates Final Fantasy XIII upon it's initial release is because of the very limited player interaction with it. Which is a sin that plagues most games today. I'm still not going to be a fan of the first two XIII titles honestly but I think Lightning Returns is a nice little step in the right direction. Yeah the combat doesn't feel like Final Fantasy but if we honestly keep making games with the same turn based combat it'll be boring.

 

[Maximum Bert]

I eventually got some enjoyment out of XIII I really liked the combat by the end game when it FINALLY stopped holding your hand after the actual story was complete. some of the fights were actually a challenge to 5 star and required good tactics if not strategy. As for the story and characters well it didnt hook me in although I liked a couple of the characters and I thought they were way better than XIIs cast although thats not much praise coming from me.

Im about 40 hours into XIII-2 and I am not sure when I will finish it I am just not enjoying it anymore. I didnt mind Lightning in the first game didnt like her but I didnt mind her in this one I just cant stand her and I dont see Caius as a very strong villain in fact outside of FFIV,(kinda) V,VI and VII I would say the series has struggled with good antagonists although Sin worked well as a force to drive the story in X.

I dont think I will play XIII-3 I dont think I can take anymore Lightning rubbish. I will say one thing about XIII though and thats the combat is probably the second best in the entire series after X imo anyway well once it gets going before that its pretty bad as you just hit auto battle for hours on end as there is no point to do anything else. More fights should have been tougher so you had to select and activate attacks more carefully rather than just cue em up blindly because that would do just as well in this instance. XIII-2 is unfortunately even easier so tactics and battle awareness are even less important.

Im just done with XIII though just bring on XV and for the love of god dont put Lightning in it she not exactly miss popular and I dont care what their lying polls say just have a fresh start like the other numbered entries do.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

FF13 was ok but the characters and linear gaming sucked. FF12-2 was good for story and jumping through time. I played the demo for spin off and it sucked. Was horrible, hated the whole changing clothes thing and simple fighting. Prefer control of all characters etc like FF7 etc I like to manage my team, not let the computer do all the work while i press the attack button.

 

[Ironbat92]

I've only played FFXIII and only the Demo for XIII-2 and Lighting Returns. I though the same as you; just meh. It seems for everything that good about them, there's something working against them. XIII, for example, has good characters, a good story, and an enjoyable battle system, but it's linearity, bloated tutorial, and poor (or lack of) exposition.

 

[V4Viewtiful]

All 3 stories suck either telling it or plotting it and most of the characters sucked with it.

the game mechanics in the 1st is technically the most flawed but the latter 2 are bad for other reasons

 

[Vivi22]

I've only played XIII myself, and for good reason: it was hands down one of the worst games I've ever played. The story was stupid on the rare occasion it decided to make any sense, the rest of the time the characters spent their time reacting to things in the least believable ways possible, making stupid decisions, going back on those decisions for stupid reasons, and sometimes coming full circle back to where they started. They were never a group with a goal or a plan, they simply were and went along with whatever happened making them little more than observers of events who were occasionally forced to fight as a result of them. And the character development was awful. The only character that was remotely relatable or believable was Sazh. One good character in the whole game. Well done Squenix.

The world was awful for obvious reasons: it was hopelessly linear, you had next to zero interaction with anything in it, and it served as nothing but some background scenery for the stuff that happened. Stuff that was often only explained in the games datalog because telling the story when you're actually telling the story is for pussies apparently. The combat is one of the worst systems I've encountered in any RPG by design. You could literally get through the entire game using at most three paradigms meaning you only had to choose between those and mash auto-battle. And the faint of heart don't need to worry because when you should be using each of the three is so obvious you'd have to literally be blind to not figure it out.

And if that weren't enough, they capped the whole thing off with a mediocre soundtrack and some of the worst art direction and design I've ever seen in a AAA game. They spent a lot of money on this thing, but the fact that they didn't really find a direction to take the development in until about a year and a half before it released shows.

This wasn't a AAA, next-gen Final Fantasy like people were hoping. It was a god awful mess of terrible decision making, poor leadership, and lack of creativity. It may have been a polished turd, but it was still a massive stinking turd.

 

[wcaypahwat]

Well, I don't hate them, but I'm nowhere near as invested in them as I have been with other games. I feel it has a lot to do with people having huge misunderstandings on multiple fronts.

The whole previous gen JRPGs got a lot of mediocre-poor reviews due mostly to anything that defined them as JRPGs (plot staples, gameplay mechanics, "wacky" character designs). Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon were victims of this, and probably quite influential on the industry due to their pedigree.

Sure there were a few real stinkers, but a large proportion of these games did quite well in Famitsu, It's just the mainstream, western reviews that didn't go over so well.

And so, publishers/developers decide they need to shake things up a bit (see Jimquisition video mentioned by OP)... Leading to hugely divisive situations like this.

Cue vicious cycle.

On the other hand, you also have the consumers misinterpreting the developers intentions. Most complaints I've see regarding Lightning Returns involved it being too different to previous entries, despite it not being FF13-3, but more of an action spinoff more like Crisis Core or Dirge of Cerberus for FF7.

So yeah, I think everyone needs to sit down and talk it out, work out whats best for all parties involved. Heh, like marriage counselling with your waifu.