So um...What was so bad about Final Fantasy XIII?

[Jolly Co-operator]

I really didn't care for the way the gameplay was introduced. Don't get me wrong, I think it was fine, conceptually, but they just took WAY too long in introducing the more strategic battles, and because of this, getting along by pressing auto-battle and occasionally switching Paradigms was perfectly feasible for a good chunk of the game. It really does get better the further along you get, but it takes such a long time, and I doubt all of the people who hate it played through to that point, and personally, I can't really blame them.

 

[shrekfan246]

Is it really that bad?

How many times have I answered this question on this website? I can't even remember... and yet I keep coming into these threads.

The Pacing:

The game moves at a snail's pace. There's no beating around the bush here, it's a slow game. Made agonizingly slow by the fact that there's no exploration allowed, which will be touched upon later. Cut-scenes serve to spit out exposition, at a rather startlingly high interval. Par for the course for Final Fantasy, I suppose, but the major difference here is that you never feel like you're actually having any effect on the story. It's moving along with little input from you, the player, and it's moving along extremely. Slowly.

The World:

It's beautiful. I can't deny that. It looks gorgeous. But it's all superficial. All of the environments are set-pieces for you to look at as you run by, go "Ooh" and then be ushered along to the next one. Nothing is particularly memorable, because you're not interacting with the world. You're just watching it go by. And everything is so small, too. The areas are incredibly small and constricting, allowing the player no concession for exploration. There are no side areas. There are no quests. There isn't even any NPC interaction. You are given one, and only one way to continue on in how you play the game.

This is probably most hilariously and unintentionally lampshaded in one section where you're running through a crystal forest and the path you're supposed to take lights up, as if there were any chance you'd get confused and go the wrong way when every 'alternate' path immediately stops before even leading anywhere.

The Characters:

Lightning is Cloud. Brooding, snappy, quiet, with a mysterious past and a penchant for kicking ass. Sazh is the token black character, and to be honest the only one who didn't piss me off. Vanille is kooky-spice, with a good back-story that doesn't get revealed until apparently close to the end of the game. Fang isn't even introduced until ten hours in. Hope is an arrogant, distraught teenager taking out his frustration on someone who couldn't change the events that led to his mother's death. Snow is a cocky douche-bag with ties to Lightning through her sister.

And you know something? All of that by itself, I could handle. But the game decides that it would be a great idea to split the characters up and give them their own separate character arcs, switching between a different group every few hours or so and never giving you a choice of who you want to control or even who you want to be in your party, again sacrificing the player's interaction for the chance to push along the story.

The Gameplay:

Boring. Should I expand on it? Okay. In the overworld, you're given one option: Run forward. Every once in a while you might find a floating ball with an item, or a Save Point that conveniently doubles as a store so they don't need to bother with things like towns or NPCs, but in general all you do is run forward and either smack an enemy or try to get away from it. Once you're in battle, you have a few options: Use a skill to determine what the monster you're fighting is weakest against, and then hit Auto-Battle. And keep hitting Auto-Battle. And if one of your characters is getting low on health, you get to utilize the Paradigm System and switch them to a more defensive set-up on the fly. And then hit Auto-Battle. And more Auto-Battle.

The largest amount of interaction the player gets with the game is in setting up the Paradigms. You don't want your entire party to be Sentinels or Saboteurs, you may not want a Paradigm Set of all Medics, but you're given free reign to make a decent list of various predetermined Paradigm Sets, all for use to freely switch between in battle. It sounds interesting, doesn't it? It also falls horribly flat by the fact that practically all you need to do for almost every single battle is switch between Paradigms and then go back to smashing the Auto-Battle button.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________

For the record, as someone who played every Final Fantasy from VI through to XII and loved them all (even spin-offs like Crystal Chronicles), I only made it twelve hours into FFXIII before I had to put the game down because I realized I was literally having no fun with it.

 

[slackboy72]

Terrible characters.
Terrible gameplay.
Still haven't finished it. Gone back and replayed FF7 twice since ff13 came out.

 

[Overusedname]

Dang, I've never seen such a mixed reaction...Though I have seen few people say it was a great experience. Somewhat above average at best, and a disaster at worst...

 

[Savo]

I liked the game. It's one of those games that had so much money thrown at it that it'd be almost impossible for it not to be at least decent.

I liked the combat, but it grew old by the end of the game. The main problems with the gameplay was the difficulty and focus on spamming. The game's most epic moments were where you'd have to switch between paradigms at a head-spinning rate trying to keep up with enemies. If they had kept the combat and made it more interactive, it'd have been amazing. It was still fun though, at least until the final dungeon when I lost interest.

The writing was a bit of a mixed bag, but I'd definitely say it was underrated. The story was pretty nonsensical, but it was toying with some very epic material. If they cleaned up the writing some, I think we'd have had a modern storytelling classic for video-games.
Also, Hope was my favorite character, bite me.

The final boss has ridiculous insta-kill attacks that really pissed me off...so much so infact that i didn't even bother getting all the achievements.

I feel your pain bro. Little story: I'm fighting the final boss and am doing awesome. My main's at almost full health and I'm feeling good. I take my eye off the health bars for a second, BOOM, insta kill. Wasn't even a special attack, just one of his generic hits and that somehow took off 8000-9000 HP off Lightning.

My reaction:

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

The first FFXIII, ignoring the triology I mean. Is it really that bad?

I'm not asking sarcastically or anything. I actually don't know. It'll be quite a while until I can afford one of the consoles needed to play it...but I kinda like the look of it. It seems very pretty, expressive, Lightning seems genuinely badass and interesting, the music is great...Is it the story?

I rarely see a clear answer that people have a consensus on. Is it that bad? What good sides are there? I'm asking as an old FF fan (note the avatar) and I never saw the big issue from the trailers and gameplay I've seen. I just want some info. I'm an under-informed neutral for now.

For me just felt like I was watching a movie, even the game play was very controlled and nothing like the strategic fights you would get in other Final Fantasies. I have heard tell of people beating some bosses/creatures by auto-attacking. You really do feel like you are playing a 60 hour tutorial.

As other people have said the game doesn't open until REALLY late on and even then it isn't that impressive. It's a linear corridor game for 90% of it and for me that just isn't Final Fantasy.

I have issues with some of the characters (oh god Vanille) but that could be seen as highly subjective so I won't mention it here.

I would only play it if you are interested in the sequel which is much more fun if not perfect.

 

[lapan]

Extremely linear level design
Characters were even worse anime stereotypes than usual
Battle system was a mess, either autoattack or fall behind in the atb battles.

 

[MiskWisk]

For once, I agree 100% with yahtzee. If you want the problems, watch his ZP on it.

 

[King of Asgaard]

Is it really that bad?

How many times have I answered this question on this website? I can't even remember... and yet I keep coming into these threads.

The Pacing:

The game moves at a snail's pace. There's no beating around the bush here, it's a slow game. Made agonizingly slow by the fact that there's no exploration allowed, which will be touched upon later. Cut-scenes serve to spit out exposition, at a rather startlingly high interval. Par for the course for Final Fantasy, I suppose, but the major difference here is that you never feel like you're actually having any effect on the story. It's moving along with little input from you, the player, and it's moving along extremely. Slowly.

The World:

It's beautiful. I can't deny that. It looks gorgeous. But it's all superficial. All of the environments are set-pieces for you to look at as you run by, go "Ooh" and then be ushered along to the next one. Nothing is particularly memorable, because you're not interacting with the world. You're just watching it go by. And everything is so small, too. The areas are incredibly small and constricting, allowing the player no concession for exploration. There are no side areas. There are no quests. There isn't even any NPC interaction. You are given one, and only one way to continue on in how you play the game.

This is probably most hilariously and unintentionally lampshaded in one section where you're running through a crystal forest and the path you're supposed to take lights up, as if there were any chance you'd get confused and go the wrong way when every 'alternate' path immediately stops before even leading anywhere.

The Characters:

Lightning is Cloud. Brooding, snappy, quiet, with a mysterious past and a penchant for kicking ass. Sazh is the token black character, and to be honest the only one who didn't piss me off. Vanille is kooky-spice, with a good back-story that doesn't get revealed until apparently close to the end of the game. Fang isn't even introduced until ten hours in. Hope is an arrogant, distraught teenager taking out his frustration on someone who couldn't change the events that led to his mother's death. Snow is a cocky douche-bag with ties to Lightning through her sister.

And you know something? All of that by itself, I could handle. But the game decides that it would be a great idea to split the characters up and give them their own separate character arcs, switching between a different group every few hours or so and never giving you a choice of who you want to control or even who you want to be in your party, again sacrificing the player's interaction for the chance to push along the story.

The Gameplay:

Boring. Should I expand on it? Okay. In the overworld, you're given one option: Run forward. Every once in a while you might find a floating ball with an item, or a Save Point that conveniently doubles as a store so they don't need to bother with things like towns or NPCs, but in general all you do is run forward and either smack an enemy or try to get away from it. Once you're in battle, you have a few options: Use a skill to determine what the monster you're fighting is weakest against, and then hit Auto-Battle. And keep hitting Auto-Battle. And if one of your characters is getting low on health, you get to utilize the Paradigm System and switch them to a more defensive set-up on the fly. And then hit Auto-Battle. And more Auto-Battle.

The largest amount of interaction the player gets with the game is in setting up the Paradigms. You don't want your entire party to be Sentinels or Saboteurs, you may not want a Paradigm Set of all Medics, but you're given free reign to make a decent list of various predetermined Paradigm Sets, all for use to freely switch between in battle. It sounds interesting, doesn't it? It also falls horribly flat by the fact that practically all you need to do for almost every single battle is switch between Paradigms and then go back to smashing the Auto-Battle button.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________

For the record, as someone who played every Final Fantasy from VI through to XII and loved them all (even spin-offs like Crystal Chronicles), I only made it thirteen hours into FFXIII before I had to put the game down because I realized I was literally having no fun with it.

Yup, this is pretty much my entire opinion on FFXIII.
I can't add more to this masterfully crafted post.

 

[roushutsu]

FFXIII was one of those games where while I was playing I thought it was OK, but once I was done I realized it didn't really have a lasting impression on me compared to previous titles (4, 6, 7, and 9 specifically). Nothing about it really stood out enough for me to remember fondly, but when I do sit and think about it, it's pretty much the cons that everyone has listed a dozen times already. I'll spare you from repetition, but all in all I feel that despite how Square is milking the game with its sequels and other side material, FFXIII is pretty flash in the pan and ultimately a major disappointment for the franchise.

 

[Simonoly]

I really struggle to find anything nice to say about FFXIII. It does looks really pretty and yes the soundtrack is cool enough, but that's about it.
Everything else is just incredibly frustrating. The combat is so uninvolving and the entire game is horribly linear. There's nothing mysterious or exciting about FFXIII because there's just nothing for you to do. There's no hidden summons to find, no ultimate weapon quests and no dungeons to explore. It's so frustrating, especially after playing FFXII which had so much content to explore.

 

[NickKuroshi0]

Really? I had no trouble understanding the story. The gameplay was sorta what I expected from Final Fantasy and the music and graphics of the game were great.

 

[Casual Shinji]

It. Is. Linear.

And no, not the usual Final Fantasy-linear - In FF13 you might as well be strapped to a set of rails. After 25 hours or so you're finally allowed some mobillity, but by that time you'll already have gone bonkers.

The story makes no fucking sense, and I don't mean in the usual Final Fantasy way. The game starts off by throwing vague terms and words at you without ever explaining what the fuck it all means. There's no fish-out-of-water character that allows other characters to explain what's what, like in FF10.

The characters are dumb and stupid, and I hated them all, except maybe for black afro guy [sub]I can't remember his name[/sub].

 

[Brotha Desmond]

Just watch the zero punctuation video about it.

 

[Sylveria]

If you don't know the answer to this question, you're lazy since this argument has been had thousands of times in hundreds of places and you can't be bothered to look up any information at all, you're trolling, or you're a fanboy who's flame baiting.
If you are sincerely asking this question, which I kinda doubt, the game is available for less than $10... play it yourself and form your own opinion.

 

[Waaghpowa]

"It gets better after 10 hours" is part of the reason why I hated it. If it takes that long to get good, it's not going to be worth playing. Thing is, I got passed that 10 hour mark and it didn't get any better for me.

I wont bother getting into the issues of linearity and annoying as hell characters because it seems that people have already done that for me.

 

[Epona]

The first FFXIII, ignoring the triology I mean. Is it really that bad?

I'm not asking sarcastically or anything. I actually don't know. It'll be quite a while until I can afford one of the consoles needed to play it...but I kinda like the look of it. It seems very pretty, expressive, Lightning seems genuinely badass and interesting, the music is great...Is it the story?

I rarely see a clear answer that people have a consensus on. Is it that bad? What good sides are there? I'm asking as an old FF fan (note the avatar) and I never saw the big issue from the trailers and gameplay I've seen. I just want some info. I'm an under-informed neutral for now.

For me just felt like I was watching a movie, even the game play was very controlled and nothing like the strategic fights you would get in other Final Fantasies. I have heard tell of people beating some bosses/creatures by auto-attacking. You really do feel like you are playing a 60 hour tutorial.

As other people have said the game doesn't open until REALLY late on and even then it isn't that impressive. It's a linear corridor game for 90% of it and for me that just isn't Final Fantasy.

I have issues with some of the characters (oh god Vanille) but that could be seen as highly subjective so I won't mention it here.

I would only play it if you are interested in the sequel which is much more fun if not perfect.

Auto battle is how the game is played, all bosses are beat that way. Shifting paradigms is what it's all about and that all works out just fine. Of course, you aren't going to beat very many bosses without paradigm shifting so is it really any different than choosing Attack, Attack, Attack, Cure, Attack, Attack, Attack, Esuna, Cure, At....?

 

[Quicksilver_Phoenix]

The first FFXIII, ignoring the triology I mean. Is it really that bad?

I'm not asking sarcastically or anything. I actually don't know. It'll be quite a while until I can afford one of the consoles needed to play it...but I kinda like the look of it. It seems very pretty, expressive, Lightning seems genuinely badass and interesting, the music is great...Is it the story?

I rarely see a clear answer that people have a consensus on. Is it that bad? What good sides are there? I'm asking as an old FF fan (note the avatar) and I never saw the big issue from the trailers and gameplay I've seen. I just want some info. I'm an under-informed neutral for now.

I think a lot of the problem is that it's a very different game to the older FF games, and many long term fans didn't like the changes.

I went into FF XIII as my first FF game and I really enjoyed it. In fact, I thought that the open world bit at the end of the game was the worst part, as I hate random encounters and there's way too many side quests. Sure, the game had it's problems overall, but I still enjoyed it anyway.

Since then, i've actually started playing FFVII and it's certainly a very different kettle of fish, so I can see why fans of that game would be disappointed by the current fare.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

snip

Yes because you used to actually think about what abilities you used and when you used them...:|

 

[daibakuha]

It. Is. Linear.

And no, not the usual Final Fantasy-linear - In FF13 you might as well be strapped to a set of rails. After 25 hours or so you're finally allowed some mobillity, but by that time you'll already have gone bonkers.

The story makes no fucking sense, and I don't mean in the usual Final Fantasy way. The game starts off by throwing vague terms and words at you without ever explaining what the fuck it all means. There's no fish-out-of-water character that allows other characters to explain what's what, like in FF10.

The characters are dumb and stupid, and I hated them all, except maybe for black afro guy [sub]I can't remember his name[/sub].

It's like if you took the story and world from X, took out the audience POV and narration, and frontloaded all of the terms, places and enemies into the first 10 hours of the game. It makes zero sense and they expect you to know exactly what everything means. It's bad storytelling.