That dissection is quite off the mark sometimes - we do get a bit of backstory for Sazh and Dahj later (why do Fantasy authors always need to make names incredibly hard to write?). But yeah, another bit of nonsense added in: "Dad, let's do something together!" - "OK, son, to the power station!" - "Yay!".
Spoilers below.
Sazh and his son were taking a trip to the local Fal'Cie power station. Why? I don't know. I know Sazh wanted to give his son a Chocobo chick afterwards, though. However, the station got attacked by the freshly reawakened Fang and Vanille, so the Fal'Cie made Dahj a L'Cie to protect itself. Why? It was a power station, there had to be people there more qualified than a six year old. Anyway, after the authorities had sealed off Palumpolum, the purge train was basically the only way out of there, and Sazh wanted to go looking for his son, who was in PSICOM captivity now. So he just volunteered for the Purge.
Which is another ass pull: The Purge was meant to be banishment from Cocoon (that it was murder was not known to the public). So if he hadn't been so extremely lucky to sit directly next to Lightning in the probably only train that got hit by that weird red thing in the beginning, he'd have gotten himself tossed off the freaking planet where the one person is he is looking for!
Apropos weird red thing: What was that? It didn't appear to be a planned occurrence, or else the guard wouldn't have chosen that moment for his round. But why would, say, NORA plant something like this? They had no way of knowing that a commando like Lightning would be aboard one of these trains. Or that she would not be cuffed at the feet.
That red thing is really a microcosm of what's wrong with the story: It's the first thing that happens, and it makes no sense: Why do these robes cuff everyone's hands but not their feet? And why don't they cuff their wearers to the chairs? If you want a prisoner transport, go all the way! Why has the guard that patrols the prisoners ('cause that's what they were at that point) a remote for uncuffing everyone? Why is uncuffing everyone achievable with a single button press? Two hand controls are something we figured out already, and FF13 looks pretty futuristic to me! And as far as I know, in prisons the guard with the keys never enters a prisoner's cell for the reason demonstrated in the opening cinematic.
But what really got me was the general smell of excrement on that story by the end that came from repeatedly pulling plot points from someone's arse. So the Fal'Cie are death seekers. Great. Why don't they just jump in front of a train and get it over with? Oh, they cannot self-terminate. But they apparently can recruit l'Cie to fight against other Fal'Cie, so why don't they just kill each other? The Fal'Cie want the party to kill Orphan. Great. Killing Orphan will shut down Cocoon, so it'll crash into Pulse, killing probably everyone on Cocoon. Even better. My party doesn't want that to happen. Now we're getting somewhere! But then my party proceeds to destroy Orphan anyway, who by the way puts up a real good fight (the cheater, but that's further down). Now, why would Orphan struggle if he wants to die? And why would my party fight him if they don't want him to die? And then Vanille and Fang transform into Ragnarok. Now the smell gets impenetrable: It was previously pointed out that they were the previous Ragnarok, but Ragnarok was supposed to be everyone's focus. So why do only Vanille and Fang transform? And then they somehow attract all the crystal dust from Pulse's surface and make it into a pillar. Can you say Deus ex Machina?
But even a crap story could have been forgiven if there actually was something of a game in this game somewhere. However, there was not: Gameplay consists of walking down a linear corridor and getting into fights. The fights are also all the same: Hit toughest hitter in the enemy team with COM/COM/COM for a round, then switch to RAV/RAV/RAV until staggered, then back to COM/COM/COM until dead. Throw in the occasional HLR/HLR/SEN for when your HP get low. Repeat until no enemy remains. I heard people complain of 5 minute fights everywhere, but I usually had 10 second fights, just curb stomping the enemies. And there is simply no joy to be gotten from doing the only thing you actually can do (walking down a linear corridor) and curb stomping every enemy along the way. There was no adversity to overcome here and no story to hold my interest. If I hadn't played it at a friend's house, I likely wouldn't have finished the game.
And then, in the final boss fight, the designers pull what is technically known as a dick move! Before that every enemy would telegraph its next attack by flashing the name on the screen, leaving you some time (sometimes very little, but still) to run for cover (i.e. switch to SEN/SEN/SEN) if need be. But the final boss has a move that does not get telegraphed, is extremely powerful and pauses the battle, so that once the animation has started, with no prior warning, you cannot switch paradigms. Hope you have enough HP to survive that one!
Apart from that, the game has two upgrade mechanics, both of which dysfunctional in their own ways: The Crystarium upgrade system is how you level up your characters, but it just makes you spend an inordinate amount of time advancing through another type of linear corridor. The only meaningful choice you can make during this is what class to spend your CP on. But during most of the game you only have 2 or 3 classes to choose from and more than enough CP to hit the ceiling in all of them. Then, later, when you have all 6 classes with all characters, choosing any class other than the 3 already advanced ones is simply not economical. So you just advance through those classes and hit the final ceiling just before the final boss fight. So this system is basically to easy. Unless you really want to upgrade every one of your characters to maximum, then it shares a trait with the other system.
The weapon upgrade system is unusable without Strategy Wiki. With it, you know what to invest and what not. But even then, I calculated that upgrading any weapon from starting point to maximum costs in the ballpark of 3.5 M Gil. I collected about 0.5 M Gil during the course of the entire game! And that's what you need to spend for a single weapon, and you have three people in your main battle party, and six over all! The biggest problem being Trapezohedrons. Those cost 2 M Gil each and you need one for each weapon you want to upgrade to tier 3. The only alternative is to beat up those huge monsters in the Archylte Steppe, who drop this item 1% of the time, so you need to kill on average 100 of those to get a single Trapezohedron. However, you can increase your chances by getting a certain item from a certain mission (called something's Catalog), upgrading that to a Collector's Catalog, and then get five stars in the fight against these monsters (meaning you have to be really fricking fast!) All of that together ups your chances to 10%, so you need to kill on average 10 of these guys to get a single trapezohedron. Since it doesn't sell so well, you still need another 1.5 M Gil for each weapon you want to upgrade to maximum. So this system is just _way_too_hard_!
Over all this game has nothing to engage me with and no noteworthy mechanics that could make it worth my while.
Spoilers below.
Sazh and his son were taking a trip to the local Fal'Cie power station. Why? I don't know. I know Sazh wanted to give his son a Chocobo chick afterwards, though. However, the station got attacked by the freshly reawakened Fang and Vanille, so the Fal'Cie made Dahj a L'Cie to protect itself. Why? It was a power station, there had to be people there more qualified than a six year old. Anyway, after the authorities had sealed off Palumpolum, the purge train was basically the only way out of there, and Sazh wanted to go looking for his son, who was in PSICOM captivity now. So he just volunteered for the Purge.
Which is another ass pull: The Purge was meant to be banishment from Cocoon (that it was murder was not known to the public). So if he hadn't been so extremely lucky to sit directly next to Lightning in the probably only train that got hit by that weird red thing in the beginning, he'd have gotten himself tossed off the freaking planet where the one person is he is looking for!
Apropos weird red thing: What was that? It didn't appear to be a planned occurrence, or else the guard wouldn't have chosen that moment for his round. But why would, say, NORA plant something like this? They had no way of knowing that a commando like Lightning would be aboard one of these trains. Or that she would not be cuffed at the feet.
That red thing is really a microcosm of what's wrong with the story: It's the first thing that happens, and it makes no sense: Why do these robes cuff everyone's hands but not their feet? And why don't they cuff their wearers to the chairs? If you want a prisoner transport, go all the way! Why has the guard that patrols the prisoners ('cause that's what they were at that point) a remote for uncuffing everyone? Why is uncuffing everyone achievable with a single button press? Two hand controls are something we figured out already, and FF13 looks pretty futuristic to me! And as far as I know, in prisons the guard with the keys never enters a prisoner's cell for the reason demonstrated in the opening cinematic.
But what really got me was the general smell of excrement on that story by the end that came from repeatedly pulling plot points from someone's arse. So the Fal'Cie are death seekers. Great. Why don't they just jump in front of a train and get it over with? Oh, they cannot self-terminate. But they apparently can recruit l'Cie to fight against other Fal'Cie, so why don't they just kill each other? The Fal'Cie want the party to kill Orphan. Great. Killing Orphan will shut down Cocoon, so it'll crash into Pulse, killing probably everyone on Cocoon. Even better. My party doesn't want that to happen. Now we're getting somewhere! But then my party proceeds to destroy Orphan anyway, who by the way puts up a real good fight (the cheater, but that's further down). Now, why would Orphan struggle if he wants to die? And why would my party fight him if they don't want him to die? And then Vanille and Fang transform into Ragnarok. Now the smell gets impenetrable: It was previously pointed out that they were the previous Ragnarok, but Ragnarok was supposed to be everyone's focus. So why do only Vanille and Fang transform? And then they somehow attract all the crystal dust from Pulse's surface and make it into a pillar. Can you say Deus ex Machina?
But even a crap story could have been forgiven if there actually was something of a game in this game somewhere. However, there was not: Gameplay consists of walking down a linear corridor and getting into fights. The fights are also all the same: Hit toughest hitter in the enemy team with COM/COM/COM for a round, then switch to RAV/RAV/RAV until staggered, then back to COM/COM/COM until dead. Throw in the occasional HLR/HLR/SEN for when your HP get low. Repeat until no enemy remains. I heard people complain of 5 minute fights everywhere, but I usually had 10 second fights, just curb stomping the enemies. And there is simply no joy to be gotten from doing the only thing you actually can do (walking down a linear corridor) and curb stomping every enemy along the way. There was no adversity to overcome here and no story to hold my interest. If I hadn't played it at a friend's house, I likely wouldn't have finished the game.
And then, in the final boss fight, the designers pull what is technically known as a dick move! Before that every enemy would telegraph its next attack by flashing the name on the screen, leaving you some time (sometimes very little, but still) to run for cover (i.e. switch to SEN/SEN/SEN) if need be. But the final boss has a move that does not get telegraphed, is extremely powerful and pauses the battle, so that once the animation has started, with no prior warning, you cannot switch paradigms. Hope you have enough HP to survive that one!
Apart from that, the game has two upgrade mechanics, both of which dysfunctional in their own ways: The Crystarium upgrade system is how you level up your characters, but it just makes you spend an inordinate amount of time advancing through another type of linear corridor. The only meaningful choice you can make during this is what class to spend your CP on. But during most of the game you only have 2 or 3 classes to choose from and more than enough CP to hit the ceiling in all of them. Then, later, when you have all 6 classes with all characters, choosing any class other than the 3 already advanced ones is simply not economical. So you just advance through those classes and hit the final ceiling just before the final boss fight. So this system is basically to easy. Unless you really want to upgrade every one of your characters to maximum, then it shares a trait with the other system.
The weapon upgrade system is unusable without Strategy Wiki. With it, you know what to invest and what not. But even then, I calculated that upgrading any weapon from starting point to maximum costs in the ballpark of 3.5 M Gil. I collected about 0.5 M Gil during the course of the entire game! And that's what you need to spend for a single weapon, and you have three people in your main battle party, and six over all! The biggest problem being Trapezohedrons. Those cost 2 M Gil each and you need one for each weapon you want to upgrade to tier 3. The only alternative is to beat up those huge monsters in the Archylte Steppe, who drop this item 1% of the time, so you need to kill on average 100 of those to get a single Trapezohedron. However, you can increase your chances by getting a certain item from a certain mission (called something's Catalog), upgrading that to a Collector's Catalog, and then get five stars in the fight against these monsters (meaning you have to be really fricking fast!) All of that together ups your chances to 10%, so you need to kill on average 10 of these guys to get a single trapezohedron. Since it doesn't sell so well, you still need another 1.5 M Gil for each weapon you want to upgrade to maximum. So this system is just _way_too_hard_!
Over all this game has nothing to engage me with and no noteworthy mechanics that could make it worth my while.
