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

[Epona]

I have tons of issues with it, but my biggest issue is the combat.

Auto-attack selects the best possible moves in your selected paradigm, all you have to do is mash auto-attack until the enemy is dead. Selecting abilities is pointless since auto-attack selects the best ones for you, you will only use abilities for:
A) Using raise because auto-attack will not use raise unless your parties health is all green.
B) Character special moves you get NEAR THE END OF THE GAME!

The combat is easily the slowest, dumbed down and pathetic battle systems in the history of the franchise (thank fuck FF13-2 made it faster and more enjoyable)

On the other hand, I loved Sazh (one of my favorite Final Fantasy characters ever) and Lightning (she was pretty bad-ass) the graphics and music are amazing and the transformers/summons thing kicked ass! The voice acting was excellent (Even though Vanille made me want to stab her)

If you think FF13 combat was slow, you need to go play FF9.

Pff, Final Fantasy 9 was actually good and you actually have to choose your moves, not hammer the auto-attack button.

Incidentally, Final Fantasy 9 is my favorite game of all time.

Your last sentence wasn't needed, your bias was obvious before that.

Anyway, if you can't see that the combat in FF13 is faster than the combat in FF9 then you need a stopwatch.

Ok, how about I replace slow with boring? Would that be better, Final Fantasy 13's combat was boring, hammering auto-attack was boring.

Not to mention the crystarium and weapon upgrade systems were horrible.

Also, it's not bias to enjoy a game more than another.

Boring would be the best way for YOU to describe it because that is subjective. Final Fantasy 9 had no 5 second battles. Hell, it took Final Fantasy 9 more than 5 seconds to load a battle.

Yeah the Crystarium kinda sucked and the weapon upgrade system was just dumb.

Yes, you can be biased in favor of one game over another. There's nothing wrong with it.

I did like the seamless transition into combat, but everything else fell very flat for me, the party members are smart enough to remember an enemies weakness and auto-attack will select the most effective ability of any paradigm, I get what they were trying to do, only problem is the fact that this gives the player little participation in combat other than mashing the A/X button and switching paradigms.

I also hated how long some of the battles took solely because they had high HP (I'm looking at you Barthandelus)

Oh well, it's all subjective anyways. I liked FF13-2 strangely enough.

I liked 13-2 too but not as much as 13. I have played through 13 a few times and only played through 13-2 once so maybe it will grow on me in time. I do think the music in 13 was far better than the music in 13-2. I don't think that opinion will ever change.

Also, in 13 casting Libra helped the AI learn the enemy weaknesses faster. You could use it or choose not to. In 13-2 Libra is all but gone, a few Librascopes exist in the whole game. That was a step back in my opinion.

 

[Dr. Cakey]

Damn it, I wanted to be the one to post the JonTron video!

I like to discuss FF even though I've never played any of the games because I enjoy trumpeting to the world that I'm a f***ing idiot.

Since I received FF13 via LP (in fact it was got me into LPs), and said LPer edited out minor battles, I got to experience the game with most of the fat trimmed off.

Even then, the story is not particularly well-paced, all though it does do a decent job of supplying new events during its cutscenes in order to keep the story moving. I'm not gonna lie, I liked the characters a lot, particularly the relationships created between them. It quickly becomes apparent that these characters fighting with each other is infinitely more interesting than the actual plot. And then, of course, I realize this probably would just be irritating for someone playing the game, since such cutscenes (which can be surprisingly emotional) have nothing to do with the game, whereas fighting the robotic demon the pope just turned into is at least plot-relevant.

The "it opens up" at the ten thousand hour mark I assume is refreshing, but it's meaningless in terms of the narrative. If you imagine the game as one line from beginning to end (not that hard to imagine lolololol*shot*), then Gran Pulse is a hole right before the endgame that you have to climb out of. A line is progression, climbing out of a hole is not.

That's nothing about the quality of the region itself, only that it destroys whatever shreds of narrative flow the game might have had.

Essentially, it's clear that whoever Square has working on anything 13-related doesn't know how to make games and doesn't know how to make movies, either. While individual pieces might or might not work, the combination of them is what ultimately dooms the whole.

Then 13-2 happened, and I blacked out for that. I remember a giant tomato that was going to trigger the apocalypse, but I'm pretty sure that was just a fever-dream.

 

[Brad Calkins]

I didn't get far at all and I don't intend to go back, but for one thing most of the play time was spent in cutscenes, second when you did play, you didn't actually do anything, all the areas were linear to the point that they may as well have just set you auto-run, and every fight can be won just by setting it to auto.

 

[Catfood220]

I put up with the linear corridors, the boring combat, the horrible characters and the retarded levelling system until I reached the planet (I forget what its called) where the game finally goes, "there you go, go have fun in our boring as fuck open world bit" and I realized something.

I realized that I no longer cared, I switched off the game, deleted the data from my console and sold the game. I have just one regret and that is that I played the fucking game for so long.

The only redeeming thing in this game and people are probably going to shout at me for this, was Vanille. She was my bright shining beacon in a game that was doing its best to make me hate it and a bunch of horrible, unlikable characters that would not stop whinging.

 

[Windcaler]

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 can only express my experience with it and my problem with the game was how badly presented it was and its horrible pacing. I like to draw a contrast between previous final fantasies when I mention how it started and for this one Im going to use FF4

FF4 opening: It begins with 5 airships flying north then goes into one of them with the commander Cecil (you) and several soldiers. They simply say they will be arriving at Baron soon. Then they essentially tell the tale of how the Red wings (Baron's airship force) stole a crystal from a town of mages and how Cecil and his soldiers are bothered by it. Still Cecil mentions that it was necessary for the safety of their country. Once the crystal is handed over Cecil questionst he kings motives but is relieved of his command and sent off on another mission. Thats essentially the first cutscene of the game

FF13 opening: It begins with a train going through rails through the countryside. Then the two characters involved are sitting calmly. Then out of nowhere the train hits a force field thing and a huge fight breaks out. For nearly five minutes all you see is this massive firefight aboard the train as the characters free the people on there and they move into a massive city. By the end of the cutscence (both before and after the boss fight) we learn nothing about the characters. Not their names, not their motivations, the only thing we learn is the girl was a soldier and they are l'Cie (which isnt explained within the first 20 hours of the game). They also hint at something called Sanctum and the purge but they dont explain what those things are

Now the problem with the FF13 cutscene is there are to many questions left untouched. They dont try to answer a thing about the characters, what the train incident was about, where they are, what Sanctum l'cie, or the purge is. Its just a complete mess and the game is pretty much like that for the first 20 hours (when I gave up on it). Ive always gone to Final fantasy games for a dose of story and good character interection but FF13 had a poorly told story and poor character interaction/growth

 

[SousukeSeg]

Many people seem to hate the gameplay the most, which I can say they can be right, I'm not that big on jrpgs much less final fantasy, believe it or not XIII was my first FF game, so it wasn't too bad I guess, just not what I expect being a western rpg fan but then again these days how CAN we categories wrpgs, let's face it if we were to tell people in the Baldur's Gate and Fallout era that Mass Effect in an rpg they'd tell us to get our brains checked.

But then again I've excused passed games for their lack of good gameplay (by design not buggy) because other aspects made up for it, but FFXIII didn't have much compensation, it was pretty yes we all like pretty but so are most of the girls I meet in bars, you need more then just looks darling, ironically for a game with sooooooooo much cutscenes it still needed more, how can I care for the characters and their story if I never get to know them especially when the game is trying to pass off 6 main characters at once, in these cases most people will just pick one they can relate too and shun the rest or worse hate all of them.

We need reasons to like the characters, that's why most games, movies or books have one main, so we can spend most of our time with them, get to know them and eventually like them even if we can't relate to them, spend too little with one then move without warning to another and so on how are we to invest any emotion in them?

Lighting was really bland but we got hints that there is more to her being an overprotective big sister but we never got to experience her growth, however from the stuff I've seen in the XIII-2 trailers she grew up from blandness to Valkyrie-type goddess off-screen, really Square? unless you make a game that shows how she did that, how can we... oh... I guess you are doing that... dear lord.

Snow was bland and one-dimensional during the entire game, he had reasons, stuck by them and never matured.

Hope was a week mommy's boy with some father issues but he got over them way to quickly, unless you have someone to kick the emo out of you, you can't just grow a pair overnight, there was some interesting albeit freaky "shota"-relationship between him and Lightning, but that could have just been me trying to add some spice to the blandness.

Sazh was nice, i liked him he was and actual adult and parent, he didn't need growth, he was there in the group to help the younger ones out get them over their problems as any responsible father figure should.

Vanille....... I can't do her justice, I don't think anyone can, I guess you could call her a self-appointed "little girl" who's trying to mask her sadness and guilt with laughter but I'm being generous.

Fang might have been a good character, but... she doesn't do anything, she gets introduced so late by the time they get to the open-world part of the game she just doesn't have any role other then the mysterious girl-lady from a different time/world, but we already had Vanille for that! or was that too much for the sugar-addicted nut.

 

[Adon Cabre]

Final Fantasy 13 is a linear adventure with particularly restrictive combat mechanics and a limited world platform. Any depth in characters is washed out with melodrama -- and there's no shortage of pathetic soliloquies and dialogue.

They are ambitious. They created a universe, a philosophy and mythology with theological strings that tie into a government led conspiracy -- most fantasy writers aren't as far-reaching. The only problem is that we can't interact with this world.

Another problem is the weapons upgrading system. Whereas other Final Fantasies used mini-games as a fun way to upgrade them, here you just grind it out.

 

[Rastien]

Having played final fantasy up to X-2 (the combat system was pretty good in X-2 in all fairness)

I found FF13 depressing :/ i played it for a good 6 hours and found mashing auto got me through pretty much all the fights. I like JRPGs for the combat systems and from what i have been told and read 34+ hours in the training wheels come off the combat system. Sorry but fuck that... i don't want to have to sit through a painful story with dis likable shit head characters and on top of that the "combat" felt more like a time sink than something i actively took a part in.

 

[Space Spoons]

I wrote at length on this subject once, so I'm just going to copy-paste it here:

Let me start by saying that I absolutely love the art of Final Fantasy XIII. The characters, enemies and locations are all designed so well, and it's an absolute joy to look at. The characters are very compelling (particularly Lightning and Sazh). The sound design and dialogue are also very good, and the story, while a little bit difficult to follow, is passable.

I've heard complaints before that FFXIII is very linear, but I don't think that's a fair argument. It's true that there are no towns, and each part of the game is really a progression from point A to point B, but that's true of EVERY Final Fantasy; the other games just dress it up a little so it doesn't seem so straightforward when there is, in fact, only one way for you to go. I didn't have a problem with FFXIII choosing not to beat around the bush. In a way, it was refreshing.

But in my opinion, Final Fantasy XIII suffers from some of the problems that dragged down FFXII. Specifically, the combat system is designed to take control away from the player, a mechanic I've been against since it first became a trend. The Paradigm System is certainly a step-up from whatever mess FFXII was trying for- it's almost like a miniature Job Class system, and the ability to switch on the fly is most welcome. The problem is that despite this fluidity and degree of customization, you still aren't allowed full control of your party, and more often than not, it can result in your death.

I might be alone in thinking this, but if FFXIII had just gone back to the classic ATB turn-based system, it would have been the best Final Fantasy since VII. Because it did not, I feel nothing but contempt for it. It's not even that it's a bad game, because it's not, really; there are worse Final Fantasies out there. It's that it should have been good, and that so many aspects of it are great. It just feels like an absolute waste.