Well Yahtzee you aren't missing very much.
42 hours in. And I still hate it. I started hating it at the 10 hour mark, but I started getting a feeling of crushing, disappointment at the 6 hour mark, mostly due to Vanille's voice acting.
I am a FF fan. Seriously. First one I played was FFIX. It was the REASON I got a PS2. I rented a PS2 and it came with FFIX and after the first hour of that, I immediately thought that I must buy a PS2 and I did (had to also buy a PS1 save card, something the guy at EB neglected to mention to me).
I have played every single Final Fantasy past FFIII retroactively. I have enjoyed every single one of them with the exception of X-2, which was not a Final Fantasy but a deranged 14 year old Japanese girl's Pop-music fantasy TV show. FFX was great, FFVII was good, FFVIII was great, FFXII was awesome.
But not FFXIII. I don't usually agree with you Yahtzee, but you picked perhaps the WORST FINAL FANTASY GAME ever.
How do I know it is the worst? Due to three things:
1) Lack of character dialog
2) Boring, extremely slow and shallow plot.
3) A shiny, barren, shallow, under-characterized world.
Let me explain point 1 - due to VOICE ACTING (not very GOOD voice acting at that), they had to take pruning shears to the dialog. And then, because of GWAFFIX and space considerations, they had to take even more of it out. The characters interact with each other far, far, far, far less than any other FF game, there are less characters as well and their "past" history only extends back about a week for 4 of the main characters, and the other two's lengthy past is never, ever explored in any great detail. That was crime number one - they gave us shallow, stereotypical characters and then removed the dialog which is supposed to endear us to said characters. But who cares when HAIR MOVES REALISTICALLY and LENS FLARES and SHINY SHINY SHINY SHINY!
Now for point 2 - for the first 15 hours of FFXIII..... not much happens. There's like, three or four plot events. The story is ACTUALLY criminally short and underdeveloped. Yes it takes about 45-50 hours to complete, or even 60 if you want to do the generic "Kill this monster" side-quests, but that's due to the developers padding it out with filler. There aren't actually that many events. There are 13 story chapters in FFXIII, and you'll breeze by the first 10 in under 20 hours. It was then that the developers realized, "hey, we forgot to make a decent story that lasts a decent amount of time! You know what that means! FILLER! In the form of POINTLESSLY large levels and needlessly grind-tastic character development. For the first 20 hours of the game you do not need to grind, so the plot moves along nicely. Then the developers realized, "hey, we're almost done with the almost non-existent plot, so we have to extend gameplay out for another 10 to 15 hours.... yeah, let's just design a long huge, dull, characterless area for the player to walk through".
I want you to do something for me - think back to previous Final Fantasy Games. Think back to FFX and FFIX and FFVIII and FFXII. In those games, the plot actually develops over the course of the first 10 hours. Events happen. Villains are introduced. Backstory and history is developed. Character and the lore of the worlds are established. In FFXIII? None of that. Throw you into a battle that they take AAAAGGGGEESSS to explain (so why would you care about the battle when you don't know what's going on), then they throw it retarded plot points and emotional outbursts, which is silly given the fact that the characters have known each other for about 4 days. Yes, that's right - characters complete their "emotional arc" after knowing each other for about 3 to 4 days. And that's stupid.
Now for point 3 - Cocoon and Pulse are empty, flashy, colorful but ultimately sterile worlds. The "history" of the place is very poorly explained in the datalog, and basically boils down to "COCOON HATES PULSE" repeated in about 20 entries. Snow's supporting team (with the incredibly stupid name NORA) are stock characters with no real personality. NPCs are dead and gone replaced by a dozen or so robots who you can't talk to directly.
Sorry Square, but you haven't given me a reason to care about Cocoon. Or even pulse for that matter. I'm in the middle of Chapter 11 going up that damn, boring tower, and I haven't even met anyone from Gran Pulse. So WHY SHOULD I CARE? ABOUT ANY OF IT?
70% of the appeal of FF games was their ability to pull me into a well-characterized world with NPCs I cared about, whose history I cared about, whose personality I cared about. FFX did this, FFIX did this, in fact, almost all of them did this. Not FFXIII. The world of Cocoon and Pulse are pretty but incredibly, painfully shallow and empty of anything but monsters and enemy mooks. There is ZERO emotional attachment to any of the characters.
For example - why should I care about Lightning? Her history is never fully explained. Okay, she has a sister she cares about. BIG WHOOP. But her personality is so wooden you could replace her with a cement block, a wooden board or even KEANU REEVES (with red hair) and I wouldn't have noticed. Her character is NEVER developed, other than the fact that she gets a bit less sour. She's not even that good a soldier - not special forces or anything like that, she was just a bloody metro cop for Christ's sake.
Snow? Brash arrogant hot head who shouts HERO ever bloody other line. His "character development" consists of him admitting that occasionally he can be an idiot. But then he carries on acting just like before.
Sazh? He's a cool character, the most likable of the bunch for sure, but his character never develops. At all. He doesn't change. But at least he's given a proper motivation and a very limited history.
Vanille? I can't stand that character. For reasons anyone with two working ears could discern.
Fang? Basically an Australia okka girl. Put a out-back hat on her and you've got the female equivalent to Hugh Jackman in that god-awful film "Australia".
The first 25 hours of FFXIII covers about just maybe a week in the time of the character's lives. For them to form such deep attachments is ludicrous. There are no real main villains for the first 26 hours, and then the guy you are supposed to hate just vanishes and doesn't speak to you for another 20 hours. So WHY SHOULD I CARE?
FFXIII - shiny, brilliantly flashy, empty, dull, under-characterized and stuffed with so much needless filler it will make you cry.
YES it looks good. YES the battle system is fun. But if GRAFFIX and hitting enemies over the head are what you love in an FF game, I'm sorry but then why aren't you calling Crysis the best game ever? That has pretty graphics and good gun shooty fun.
No, the heart of an FF game was its characters and its story. FFXIII's story looked good on paper, but they spent all their time on making it look real, instead of making it FEEL real.
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