There is a trend in forum posts about this game that really annoys me, when ever this game comes up people say something along the lines of "this game was hated by all and tarnished the final fantasy name," that is not what happened. Critics gave the game average scores while the gaming community was divided, the general impression I got was that this game had problems but was alright besides that. The problem was that final fantasy 14, a game that was actually universally agreed to be awful, came out the same year and people sort of lumped the two games together.

I remember how I received it. IT FUCKING SUCKS.

Don't worry, I'll remember.

I remember everyone thinking it was really disappointing but okay. Internet does not accept okay from franchises like Final Fantasy.

games with hype surrounding them tend to get a score boost around the time of release. Look at every Rockstar games, or COD game for that matter. A lot of game journalists are afraid of pissing people off, or don't look past the hype, and review a game accordingly. In general, time gives people's opinions more time to ferment.

@kashif1 said:

There is a trend in forum posts about this game that really annoys me, when ever this game comes up people say something along the lines of "this game was hated by all and tarnished the final fantasy name," that is not what happened. Critics gave the game average scores while the gaming community was divided, the general impression I got was that this game had problems but was alright besides that. The problem was that final fantasy 14, a game that was actually universally agreed to be awful, came out the same year and people sort of lumped the two games together.

I can only speak for myself but it is irrelevant to me how the game was received by critics. I dislike the game. That's enough for me.

It's called hype-blindness, you give a game a great score, but within weeks, it's ok to hate the game for all of it's faults. Very few reviewers have the spine to weather the hatred of the really bad FF fans, I've been there, and give a game a score it deserves.

How critics receive the game means nothing, it's how people talk about it in the long run that reflects on it's legacy. Besides, it's Square Enix, the series is considered the pinnacle of the JRPG, and they've turned it into another pretentious series that's more movie than game. XIV was just the huge mistake, XIII wasn't even the beginning of the downturn, it was just the point where people showed they weren't into the new style and direction, they didn't like what they experienced, and that's why people don't like it.

I'm just sick of the people going "Final Fantasy is dead man... I wish it was like the old games" Apparently they aren't... people also forget XIII sold like gangbusters and XIII-2 didn't do too bad for itself either.

I don't care about scores or whatever, I didn't like the game at all.

I just want them to hurry up and finish up Versus XIII.  

I don't want to play a Final Fantasy game(unless it is tactics) period. You can't go back to the good old FF games since they don't hold up as well as people think they do. FF13 was a poorly paced game and I couldn't play it after 20 hours. The franchise is mostly dead to me unless they convince me that I should care.

I played the first 4 hours of Final Fantasy XIII and I thought it was pretty shit, to be honest.

@BraveToaster said:

I don't care about scores or whatever, I didn't like the game at all.

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@JasonR86 said:

@kashif1 said:

There is a trend in forum posts about this game that really annoys me, when ever this game comes up people say something along the lines of "this game was hated by all and tarnished the final fantasy name," that is not what happened. Critics gave the game average scores while the gaming community was divided, the general impression I got was that this game had problems but was alright besides that. The problem was that final fantasy 14, a game that was actually universally agreed to be awful, came out the same year and people sort of lumped the two games together.

I can only speak for myself but it is irrelevant to me how the game was received by critics. I dislike the game. That's enough for me.

Thats fair, but please don't pretend that everyone did.

@kashif1 said:

@JasonR86 said:

@kashif1 said:

There is a trend in forum posts about this game that really annoys me, when ever this game comes up people say something along the lines of "this game was hated by all and tarnished the final fantasy name," that is not what happened. Critics gave the game average scores while the gaming community was divided, the general impression I got was that this game had problems but was alright besides that. The problem was that final fantasy 14, a game that was actually universally agreed to be awful, came out the same year and people sort of lumped the two games together.

I can only speak for myself but it is irrelevant to me how the game was received by critics. I dislike the game. That's enough for me.

Thats fair, but please don't pretend that everyone did.

My prior comment explicitly states that I don't.

I still say FF13 is a great game.

@ImmortalSaiyan said:

I still say FF13 is a great game.

It is.

I've beaten it twice and liked it quite a bit. I thought the battle system was awesome. My first FF game was 10, though, so I don't have any nostalgia for the way the games used to be.

Yup, no problem.

I don't really care what other people thought about it, I played it on release and I thought it was boring. Had nothing to do with FF 14.
My opinion is my own.

Yeah, people blow the suckyness of that game way out of proportion. FFXIII had a lot of flaws, but really I could take all of its flaws and apply them to the beloved FFX.

@Demoskinos said:

I'm just sick of the people going "Final Fantasy is dead man... I wish it was like the old games" Apparently they aren't... people also forget XIII sold like gangbusters and XIII-2 didn't do too bad for itself either.

People also forget that every entry in the series is pretty different from the previous. Just because FFXIII may "suck" doesn't mean FFXV will have to. You ask around and people have the games in this series they love and the games they hate.

@Phatmac said:

I don't want to play a Final Fantasy game(unless it is tactics) period. You can't go back to the good old FF games since they don't hold up as well as people think they do. FF13 was a poorly paced game and I couldn't play it after 20 hours. The franchise is mostly dead to me unless they convince me that I should care.

Which ones don't hold up? I played almost all of them in the past 6 years and they seemed fine, even rereleases of the NES games. The 16 bit style also has its charms. I just played FFXII and FFIX over the summer and apart from pacing near the end of IX I liked them.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes when it came out. Now apparently everybody has to point out how much it sucks. Even though Temple of Doom was infinitely more annoying.

what people need to do is see FF13-2 as it's own game and not tarnish it with the same brush they do 13.

13 was pretty mediocre, but 13-2 fixed a lot of the problems and the story was more entertaining (I'm not going to say better because it wasn't, but!)

I remember giving up on it because I hated playing it.

I played it just recently and thought it was ok. I can see why fans of the series would be disappointed in it but it was hardly the worst game of the universe.

@Nottle: That is my main thing that pisses me off. People have this dumb preconceived notion that there has to be a over world... that there have to be towns... blah blah blah. No, there don't just because that was a thing that was in other games doesn't mean that same vision HAS to apply to future games. People yearn for "the same" and then would bitch and moan when FF turned into Call of Duty and was just another turn based JRPG in a different fucking wrapper.

XIII has its failings it could have been paced better and stuff like your leader dying = Game over was insanely stupid. However, I applaud Squarenix for attempting to do something different even if its not what everyone wanted. They are at least trying with the franchise. Which is more than I can say for a lot of games in general these days that all rely on a lot of the same tropes. But hey...video game fans not knowing what the fuck they want isn't new. Look at inFamous 2 and all the incessant bitching about Cole's design.

Whether it's great or it sucks, it's gonna be okay. I don't think a game from over 2 years ago is on a lot of people's minds.

@PrivateIronTFU: people seem to think surviving an explosion in a lead lined refrigerator is more ridiculous than pulling a mans heart out of his chest

why does it matter what scores it got; also why does it matter what people on forums are saying, when have people on forums ever mattered.

When it first came out I was a lot more positive towards it. Once I'd beaten it and removed myself from the hype I'd built up, and was able to judge the experience in hindsight, the further away from it I got the more sour I felt towards it. Eventually this culminated in me doing a second playthrough to try and judge it now that it wasn't "The New fuckingFinal Fantasy" that I'd been waiting for years to play. After playing through it again I was able to see a lot more of the problems. Maybe a lot of people went through something similar to me and that's why there's such a disconnect between the current opinion of the game and it's initial release.

I liked the back half and I thought the combat was better than it had been in 15 years.

Those first 6 hours are pretty much insufferable, though.

Oh, you don't need to remind me how it was received. I was there! I played it! It was received by me!

IT WAS POOR

I'm just sick of the people going "Final Fantasy is dead man... I wish it was like the old games" Apparently they aren't... people also forget XIII sold like gangbusters and XIII-2 didn't do too bad for itself either.

@Demoskinos said:

@Nottle: That is my main thing that pisses me off. People have this dumb preconceived notion that there has to be a over world... that there have to be towns... blah blah blah. No, there don't just because that was a thing that was in other games doesn't mean that same vision HAS to apply to future games. People yearn for "the same" and then would bitch and moan when FF turned into Call of Duty and was just another turn based JRPG in a different fucking wrapper.

XIII has its failings it could have been paced better and stuff like your leader dying = Game over was insanely stupid. However, I applaud Squarenix for attempting to do something different even if its not what everyone wanted. They are at least trying with the franchise. Which is more than I can say for a lot of games in general these days that all rely on a lot of the same tropes. But hey...video game fans not knowing what the fuck they want isn't new. Look at inFamous 2 and all the incessant bitching about Cole's design.

People weren't bitching about no towns and no over world because it was different, they were bitching because it meant there was nothing to do in the game except walk forward, watch cutscene, fight, save, repeat. Also I think everything you said about games relying on the same tropes applies to XIII, because while they did change up the battle system, everything about the characters and story felt very familiar, and in a game like Final Fantasy that's arguably just as important as the gameplay.

Saying that the reception of XIV somehow affected people's perception of XIII is stretching it.. quite a bit. People tend to be dramatic, I didn't enjoy the 20 hours I spent with it at all and have no hopes for the franchise to pull me back in at this point and that's fine.

ptooey

I haven't learned how I feel about this game yet. I haven't gotten to that tutorial yet.

Never forget.

@TechHits said:

why does it matter what scores it got; also why does it matter what people on forums are saying, when have people on forums ever mattered.

Mass Effect 3 and operation Rainfall?

@Hunter5024: I know its not as bad as it is in 13, but in some of earlier games "open world" still felt very go from point A to B with little reason to explore until 96% into the game, even if you had a big world to travel via airship. I'll also be honest, I had a hard time making heads or tails with the story in FFXIII, but I'd say the same thing about FFX. These games need a clearer/more interesting villain (or protagonist in some cases.)

@Nottle: I do think a lot of the problems people had with this game evolved out of 10. People tend to underestimate how these games relate to one another. There's definitely a consistent thread of logic to how the systems, stories, and characters evolved from 6 to 7 to 8 to 10 to 13. However I would say that 13 definitely exacerbated the problems introduced in 10, by distilling the RPG formula even further. Totally agree about the villain, as far as I'm concerned this should be the number one priority in 15, it's what saved 13-2 in my eyes.

I haven't really liked a main series Final Fantasy game since 9. 4 Warriors of Light on the DS was really awesome though.

The sales are reasonable which is justification enough. I hope they are working on something new while they churn out these sequels though.

@Nottle: People will bitch that they're doing the same thing if they make another FF game in that style. I'd just like something new that has the same reverence in story and characters as previous FF games did.

I don't think anyone lumped FF13 and FF14 together. If anything FF14 made FF13 look better.

I think all Final Fantasy games and 99% of JRPGs in general are utter turds anyway, so yay!

I remember now.

@Tim_the_Corsair said:

I think all Final Fantasy games and 99% of JRPGs in general are utter turds anyway, so yay!

What makes you say that? I can't speak for 99% of JRPGs, as I haven't played that many, but most of the Final Fantasy games range from decent to good from my experience. FFXIII had its flaws, certainly enough to have strong negative feelings depending on your priorities. Otherwise, I feel that Final Fantasy has maintained a high standard of quality for the most part.

@Tim_the_Corsair said:

I think all Final Fantasy games and 99% of JRPGs in general are utter turds anyway, so yay!

What makes you say that? I can't speak for 99% of JRPGs, as I haven't played that many, but most of the Final Fantasy games range from decent to good from my experience. FFXIII had its flaws, certainly enough to have strong negative feelings depending on your priorities. Otherwise, I feel that Final Fantasy has maintained a high standard of quality for the most part.

i remember it was recieved as not living up to the high final fantasy standards

@Hunter5024 said:

@Nottle: I do think a lot of the problems people had with this game evolved out of 10. People tend to underestimate how these games relate to one another. There's definitely a consistent thread of logic to how the systems, stories, and characters evolved from 6 to 7 to 8 to 10 to 13. However I would say that 13 definitely exacerbated the problems introduced in 10, by distilling the RPG formula even further. Totally agree about the villain, as far as I'm concerned this should be the number one priority in 15, it's what saved 13-2 in my eyes.

I can definitely see it going from 6 with the magicite to 7 with the materia and 10's sphere grid to 13's crystarium. But I haven't played much FF8, it had the weird draw system with assigning the GF's to your stats. I don't see how that relates to 7 or 10.

Indeed there is a thread of logic from each game of the series, even FF9 and 12, this isn't a bad thing either, it sometime allowed them to focus on neat ideas. It allowed the games to be distinct rather than the exact same.

For me X and Xiii are equal in the ways they are good and bad.

I know some people don't like Sephiroth very much, but before fan dumb, and the sequels, Sephiroth was a pretty decent villain. He looked distinct, he could be badass, he had motivations and screwed over the party in some major ways. Same could be said for Kefka, Ultimecia, Kuja, and Golbez. Also I can still remember the lesser villains like Seifer, Rude, Reno, Hojo, Queen Brahne, Beatrix, Raijin, Fujin, Ultros, and Siegfried. I can't say the same thing about the king pope guy from 13... he was a bird at some point or the lady with the glasses or the guy with the white hair and sword, he had a scene with Snow. Riveting.

@Phatmac: Agreed.

I just realized that I can't remember for the life of me who was the main villain in FF13. Was there one?