Why all the hate on FF 13? (PS3 version if it matters)

[danintexas]

I bought this game near a month ago. It has sat on my shelf in the shrink wrap because of all the bad reviews from players I have read. So last night when I got home I said fuck it lets see what its like.

6 hours in to the game I am left wondering - Does this game drastically change after 6 hours in? Reason why I ask myself is this seriously has to be the best Final Fantasy I have played yet. Its so fast paced with decent characters and what so far is a rock solid story line.

I heard lots of complaints about keeping track of fal'cie vs l'cie thing. I will be the first to admit I am rather a slow guy. I always have to meet someone multiple times to recall their name. lol - I am not having any issue with it. Course I am also taking time to go through and read every word in the datapad. Helps in summarizing the story and filling in some of the gaps you may of missed.

So far this is shaping up to be my fav RPG of this gen. Does the game change that much later on?

 

[CrankyStorming]

I heard lots of complaints about keeping track of fal'cie vs l'cie thing. I will be the first to admit I am rather a slow guy. I always have to meet someone multiple times to recall their name. lol - I am not having any issue with it. Course I am also taking time to go through and read every word in the datapad. Helps in summarizing the story and filling in some of the gaps you may of missed.

As for the datapad, a truly good game shouldn't need one. Exposition should present itself throughout the game and be easy to grasp without having be searched for.

 

[WelshDanny]

It's a good game, and it looks fantastic, but I found that it just got quite boring and repetative after awhile. At least previous Final Fantasy games you could actually use specific spells and abilities with everyone.

Also, I consider myself a smart kind of guy and yes that Fal'Cie I'cie thing was a bit of a mind screw.

I last played the game about 6 months ago, got to a boss 30 hours in and just couldn't beat them. That's another annoying thing about the game, one wrong choice of Paradigm and the battle takes, SO much longer.

I'd rate it 7/10.

 

[JPH330]

Hey! We haven't had one of these threads in awhile now, have we?

OT: Something tells me this has a lot to do with Yahtzee's efforts to convince everyone that all JRPGs are shit. And it seems to be working.

 

[Pipotchi]

I got to about 17 hours in and gave up. I just found it really boring, I dont like reading the constant datapad entries, the fusion minigame was totally ignorable, no sense of exploration no towns to explore. Vanille was also mildy cretinous

Combat was fun but it should be when that is basiacally all there is.

I dont mind reading extra info in an Encyclopedia but it should be bonus iunfo not compulsory to understand the plot

 

[danintexas]

I guess I find the datapad stuff more a review and more stuff not really needed - just more about the world. I could see not ever having to use it. Sorry if I implied the game can be followed only because of the datapad.

 

[Weslebear]

I actually loved the first half of the game, which appears to be the least popular part, the combat was quick, mildly challenging and always entertaining whilst the (in my opinion) amazing story was throwing plot twists at you with perfect pacing.

Once it got to Chapter 11, however, where the game opens up to an almost free roam environment, it became so dull I traded it in almost instantly. I just don't see the appeal in grinding to fight more and more ridiculous enemies, which took all the fun from combat, previously one of the best points of the game for me. I would of forgiven this if the story had kept up throughout the chapter but this too had ground to a halt, with hours and hours of relentless enemy grind with little to no plot, which up to this point was possibly my favourite story line in almost any game.

Just for the parts I enjoyed it is one of my favourite games, alas thanks to the near end game sections, it will never be up there with the greats to me.

 

[DustyDrB]

I bought this game near a month ago. It has sat on my shelf in the shrink wrap because of all the bad reviews from players I have read. So last night when I got home I said fuck it lets see what its like.

Do you mean to tell me there was a chance you would have never played the game you bought because of the bad press you heard after you bought it?

 

[Wolf Devastator]

I resisted playing it for a long time, but here's my spin on it.

The RPG aspects are wayyy too streamlined for my liking. Every 'RPG' element put in there like using pieces to upgrade your weapons and the player upgrader thing (I can't remember the names of anything in the game, because they are overly ridiculous, even for a FF game). It just becomes 'work' because there is little to no strategy involved.

I think they dumbed down the battle system a little too much. I think it's definitely a step in the right direction, but maybe step back a little bit more to give us more options to strategize with.

The story makes no sense and I gave up following it. Maybe it makes sense later on, but when I can't even know who is bad and who is good then there are some problems.

There were some good story surrounding the characters themselves though, but some of them are ridiculous like Hope and Lightning's little sub-story.

So all in all it was a disappointment, all it did was make me want to continue playing Lost Odyssey, so at least it could be used as a stepping stone into good RPG's.

 

[Weslebear]

snip

I didn't feel lost myself I did a fair chunk of the section before realising I had stopped having fun along time ago. It was just that it was grindy filler to pad out the game length and added barely any story or interest at all for me.

 

[L4hlborg]

6 hours in to the game I am left wondering - Does this game drastically change after 6 hours in? Reason why I ask myself is this seriously has to be the best Final Fantasy I have played yet. Its so fast paced with decent characters and what so far is a rock solid story line.

So far this is shaping up to be my fav RPG of this gen. Does the game change that much later on?

I hated the game, but that seems to be because we have pretty basic differences in thinking. First, I hated the characters. Second, I found it extremely slow and the game spent a too long while in the same spot. Third, the story line was just plain confusing and meaningless angst.

On the other hand, you are ready to call a 50 hour tube walk a RPG. If you like Final Fantasies, Japan and tubes, this is the game for you. Not saying this as an insult, just explaining why some people have slightly different views of the topic.

 

[icyneesan]

It was a ok game, but it didn't live up to that wow and excitement I felt from FF games 1 through 10. Hell even 12 was a bit more exciting to me.

Overall I would have given it a 70% or C+. A Good game with some faults, but not really worth spending $60 on. Thank god for Video Rental places

 

[TehIrishSoap]

Its A JRPG What Do You Expect?
Sorry, But Me And JRPGS Get On Like George Bush And Bin Laden At A Dinner Party

 

[OtherSideofSky]

It's just boring. My immediate reaction upon trying it was to turn it off and play Shadow Hearts 2 again to remind myself what actual interesting and memorable characters, a well developed world and plot twists not ripped from a mediocre shonen series were. Ten hours later, that was still my opinion. Any game that takes more than ten hours to become enjoyable was clearly made my incompetent howler monkeys, unless it's doing something deliberate and meaningful with being un-enjoyable (like, for instance, the conversations in the film film Mr. Zhao). FFXIII was definitely not doing that. The mech design was alright though (I'm a bit bored of the aesthetics otherwise).

Its A JRPG What Do You Expect?
Sorry, But Me And JRPGS Get On Like George Bush And Bin Laden At A Dinner Party

What if the host was Dr. Uwe Boll?

 

[Flamma Man]

I heard lots of complaints about keeping track of fal'cie vs l'cie thing. I will be the first to admit I am rather a slow guy. I always have to meet someone multiple times to recall their name. lol - I am not having any issue with it. Course I am also taking time to go through and read every word in the datapad. Helps in summarizing the story and filling in some of the gaps you may of missed.

I am not having any issue with it. Course I am also taking time to go through and read every word in the datapad. Helps in summarizing the story and filling in some of the gaps you may of missed.

Course I am also taking time to go through and read every word in the datapad

That's shitty storytelling. It's like with Dune when everyone in the theater was handed a God damn brochure because if they didn't read it, nothing would make any sense to the audience.

If a story needs to tell you something important like: The characters' motivations, who the is bad guy or what the Hell is exactly going on.

The game needs to tell them up front and not just stick half of the plot in a God damn manual, this isn't the NES age, games can tell clear stories now.

Players should be able to play through it and understand the plot without having to read a manual for plot points.