In between bursts of playing Persona 4 and Catherine and almost spending $300 on a sealed copy of Revelations: Persona because I'm an idiot, I've put over 10 hours into Final Fantasy XIII in a desperate attempt at finally finishing the game.

I got it about a month after it came out and put 20 hours into it before hitting a brick wall that I could not pass. That brick wall was the boss fight Barthandelus (1st encounter), a fight I had no hope of conquering because my party was critically underleveled. So I went on a hiatus and returned several months later. I decided to start a new game.

38 hours of game time later, I'm at the end of Chapter 11 and I have to fight Barthandelus again. Fun! Accept this time he has over 3,000,000 HP. Nice! I decided right then and there to get the fight over with instead of calling it a day so I wouldn't have to do it tomorrow. With my official strategy guide in hand (yes, I still buy strategy guides) I charged forth... and died after spending 20+ minutes fighting him because he cast Doom on me, an incurable status ailment that causes instant death after a few minutes.

This total failure got me thinking about the time I've spent with this game. I quit to the main menu and added up the hours from my two saves (I still had the save from my first playthrough). 20 + 38 + the minutes (which exceeded 60) = 59 hours. 59 hours spent playing Final Fantasy XIII.

I thought about how many of those hours I was actually enjoying. I'd say about 15, maybe 20. 15-20 hours of fun, everything else... something else. Boredom, frustration, exhaustion. I don't even know at this point. I've kinda spent 59 hours waiting for this game to become amazing, and it hasn't yet. The only reason I continue throwing myself at it is because I care about the story and the characters and I want to see it all end. I've put 59 hours into this. How is it going to feel if I officially give up?

But then again, how will I feel when I find myself continuing to waste my time, throwing myself at these boss fights and boring enemy encounters?

As I type this I have a website bookmarked that has every cutscene in the game available for people to watch (including all the cutscenes from the Japanese version). I've considered seeing the end to this story that way, but that would be cheap. All those hours would effectively be wasted. But on the other end of the spectrum, finishing the game myself would mean wasting even more hours.

I'm stuck in between these two decisions. I feel like I should not let my efforts go to waste, but I don't want to continue playing either when I can just see the whole story online. I'm just not really enjoying this game anymore. The enemy encounters are getting longer and longer, and consist of my party just throwing ourselves at enemies until they Stagger, and then continuing to throw ourselves at them until they're dead.

I feel bad because the parts of this game that are good, are kind of amazing. The whole presentation is just astounding. Voice acting, visuals, everything. Hope's random monologues sometimes weird me out, but whatever. The CGI cutscenes specifically look mind blowing. Every game ever made looks like complete garbage compared to these cutscenes.

I want to see the end of this story, but I really kinda don't want to play it anymore.

I do, but I don't.

Do.

Don't.

Ugh, this game. Maaaan....... this game. But hey, Laura Bailey is in it, so I guess that's a big enough motivator to finish this thing.

In between bursts of playing Persona 4 and Catherine and almost spending $300 on a sealed copy of Revelations: Persona because I'm an idiot, I've put over 10 hours into Final Fantasy XIII in a desperate attempt at finally finishing the game.

I got it about a month after it came out and put 20 hours into it before hitting a brick wall that I could not pass. That brick wall was the boss fight Barthandelus (1st encounter), a fight I had no hope of conquering because my party was critically underleveled. So I went on a hiatus and returned several months later. I decided to start a new game.

38 hours of game time later, I'm at the end of Chapter 11 and I have to fight Barthandelus again. Fun! Accept this time he has over 3,000,000 HP. Nice! I decided right then and there to get the fight over with instead of calling it a day so I wouldn't have to do it tomorrow. With my official strategy guide in hand (yes, I still buy strategy guides) I charged forth... and died after spending 20+ minutes fighting him because he cast Doom on me, an incurable status ailment that causes instant death after a few minutes.

This total failure got me thinking about the time I've spent with this game. I quit to the main menu and added up the hours from my two saves (I still had the save from my first playthrough). 20 + 38 + the minutes (which exceeded 60) = 59 hours. 59 hours spent playing Final Fantasy XIII.

I thought about how many of those hours I was actually enjoying. I'd say about 15, maybe 20. 15-20 hours of fun, everything else... something else. Boredom, frustration, exhaustion. I don't even know at this point. I've kinda spent 59 hours waiting for this game to become amazing, and it hasn't yet. The only reason I continue throwing myself at it is because I care about the story and the characters and I want to see it all end. I've put 59 hours into this. How is it going to feel if I officially give up?

But then again, how will I feel when I find myself continuing to waste my time, throwing myself at these boss fights and boring enemy encounters?

As I type this I have a website bookmarked that has every cutscene in the game available for people to watch (including all the cutscenes from the Japanese version). I've considered seeing the end to this story that way, but that would be cheap. All those hours would effectively be wasted. But on the other end of the spectrum, finishing the game myself would mean wasting even more hours.

I'm stuck in between these two decisions. I feel like I should not let my efforts go to waste, but I don't want to continue playing either when I can just see the whole story online. I'm just not really enjoying this game anymore. The enemy encounters are getting longer and longer, and consist of my party just throwing ourselves at enemies until they Stagger, and then continuing to throw ourselves at them until they're dead.

I feel bad because the parts of this game that are good, are kind of amazing. The whole presentation is just astounding. Voice acting, visuals, everything. Hope's random monologues sometimes weird me out, but whatever. The CGI cutscenes specifically look mind blowing. Every game ever made looks like complete garbage compared to these cutscenes.

I want to see the end of this story, but I really kinda don't want to play it anymore.

I do, but I don't.

Do.

Don't.

Ugh, this game. Maaaan....... this game. But hey, Laura Bailey is in it, so I guess that's a big enough motivator to finish this thing.

Games that are this polarizing often interest me the most, and I've been thinking of borrowing this game from a friend for a while now. I've never actually played a Final Fantasy game other than a couple hours each of 3 and 4, so it's kind of exciting, and what I've heard people say about the story makes no sense so I'm interested in figuring out if it will actually make any more sense after playing the game. 
 
And of course, Laura Bailey is the definitive factor in my decision to play it. If I were you, I'd try to beat it, while remembering the wise words an old American friend once told me: GET CHANCE AND LUCK! 
  

What the crap? You've put that much time into it? Just finish the game already. Get it over with. You don't want to put it off forever and completely forget about it.

Make sure you finish that game. It may be a pain in the ass during a few segments of the game but I enjoyed most of it and as the credits started rolling I felt satisfied. It may not be your traditional FF game, but it's really worth seeing all the way through.

...and almost spending $300 on a sealed copy of Revelations: Persona because I'm an idiot.

Almost meaning you didn't buy it?

I forget my playtime on FFXIII, and the reason I stopped playing it. I'll dare myself to find out at some point in the near future.

I liked FF13. That is all.

you can always be a not-champ and quit, leaving yourself to watch the story on youtube.  
 
actually, no. don't do that. that's never an option. don't give up, nathan! your experience sounds like me trying to play through any RPG ever. it's never any fun. only frustration at the fact that this one boss has like 62 000 000 health and i die after wasting like 45 minutes trying to beat him.  
 
after that, it's just like fuck this game. 

300 for Revelations?  You're manlier than I, friend.
 
Edit:  Oh yes!  Keep pushing!  The last couple of chapters are 'bleh' at best, but beat it then drop it.

I clocked in at 66 hours for the time it took me to beat FFXIII. I enjoyed every bit of it. 
Glad to see you're pushing yourself to finish it though.

@ESREVER said:

I clocked in at 66 hours for the time it took me to beat FFXIII. I enjoyed every bit of it. Glad to see you're pushing yourself to finish it though.

I clocked in roughly the same amount of time and felt the same way. The bosses in FFXIII can be brutal. I ran into the Doom counter on that boss myself. I just had to push at it until I could take him down. In the end, I felt that it was all worth it.

It took me a year to finish the game. A year. 
 
It was totally worth it, loved the game, manly tears came out from my eyes.

Are you trying to get ultimate gear from Adamantoises or something?

Are you trying to get ultimate gear from Adamantoises or something?

You should stop playing.

At the point you're at, I would say beat it. You're at the cusp of getting to the climax of that game imo. I will say this though, depending on how underleveled you are you might need to go on some more grinding sessions in some bosses in the future.

I'm torn between telling you to finish it, because you're so close and worked through such a pile of shit to get there, and telling you to leave it, as the sum of your efforts ends in being a big, stinking, fat, rage inducing, nothing. I clocked 65 and a bit hours on that game, and it really, really wasn't worth it, but I played a trick on my brain, telling myself it was going to get better, and playing in short bursts. 
 
As payback for lying to it, my brain has decided to stop necessary bodily functions, mostly excretory...until I atone for my heinous crime...*sigh* I should have quit while I had the chance.
 
That could be you too, I'm just sayin' :D

I say stop, what are you getting out of it if you're not being entertained?

@G3RHRT said:

I say stop, what are you getting out of it if you're not being entertained?

I'm enjoying the story and the characters but that's about it.

That's to be expected. It's a Final Fantasy game after all.

Barthandelus is really not that difficult at all... and trust me 59 hours over two different playthroughs isn't much. I completed the game at around 70 hours (main storyline only) and since I'm a sucker for post game challenges that took my time to 149 hours. That's an S-Rank.

I felt the exact same way when I was playing FFXIII.

It's always struck me as super weird that the real meat of that game is nearly at the end and is almost entirely optional. Once I had arrived on Pulse, I was so ready for that game to be over that I just skipped every piece of optional content there and got on with finishing the game and thus skipped over what was probably the most interesting part of that game mechanically.

I can't tell what would spur the developers to design a game that is suffocatingly linear for 10 chapters and then is abruptly open-ended for only 1 chapter afterwards. It's either that they designed the whole game to be that open and figured the game would never come out if they designed the other 12 chapters in that manner, or they realized the game was super linear and to add some variety they put in the weird, MMO-like chapter at the only point in the story it made sense.

This is the part where I say I got a platinum trophy, and that my final play-time was almost in the triple digits.

@Progn0sticator: You can return to Gran Pulse after the game ends I think, but I have no desire to do any of those side missions, since all of them involve killing monsters (which I am sick of).

Nate, just stop. You don't need to beat it.

If your enjoying the characters and story you should finish the game, you'll feel better about accomplishing it rather than taking the easy way out and just watching videos online.  Also this was probably the easiest FF I've ever played so I don't understand how your getting stuck on boss fights.  Just keep leveling up your characters and upgrading their weapons and you'll be fine.

Also, I should mention that everyone in my party (Lightning + Hope + Fang) is at level 4 with each of their main roles, which is the highest I can go right now. So I really can't grind anywhere and get something out of it.

Watch all the cut scenes/boss fight on YouTube and move on.

@natetodamax said:

@Progn0sticator: You can return to Gran Pulse after the game ends I think, but I have no desire to do any of those side missions, since all of them involve killing monsters (which I am sick of).

Exactly. Even if I could return to them, by the time at which all of Gran Pulse was introduced to me, I was so tired of that part of the game I just wanted to burn through it as quick as possible.

You shouldn't die to Doom ever, and if you do, it means you have been extremely defensive so I have some questions:

• Do you use buffs and debuffs? Each provide a 40% bonus, so use them. It's been a long time so I don't remember if Hope first gets his offensive buffs much later, and in that case you might want to something more offensive such as Lightning/Sazh/Vanille or Fang/Sazh/Vanille.
• How many ravagers do you use in your offensive setup? The answer should be 2. Or even 3 if you have the setup and enough paradigms, so you can swap between 3 ravagers and 2 ravagers + 1 commando.

I already told you this on Twitter, but status affecting spells are necessary. Buffs and debuffs. Saboteur and Synergist. Your life will be much easier with them. 
 
You should try and finish the game. The ending's worth it.

@natetodamax said:

@Grissefar I didn't do any buffs or debuffs during the fight because the guide didn't mention it, and I haven't had any issues with the guide yet so I went along with that. I use Mystic Tower (RAV + RAV + SEN) to stagger him and then I either use that or Delta Attack (COM + RAV + SEN). When Fang is a sentinel the entire time Lightning and Hope nearly take any damage at all. Lightning seems to do a bit more damage as a commando than a ravager.

That's just wrong. As wrong as it can be, and I doubt the guide told you to play that way, and if it did, you should throw it out the window. Have your dog take a shit on it. It's no wonder why you don't enjoy the game and keep failing, with that setup. First rule of thumb is: never use SEN. Only on specific end-game missions will you need it. So, this is how you should roll in most situations (may vary a bit depending on your setup)

RAV/RAV/COM - For staggering

RAV/COM/COM - Damage once the enemy is staggered

COM/SYN/SAB - For applying buffs/debuffs in the beginning of the fight and once they run out.

MED/RAV/COM - For light healing, while you keep staggering

MED/MED/COM - Powerful healing for dangerous situations. Depending on your setup, it can be MED/COM/SEN or MED/MED/SEN too, I guess.

The last one is up to you. It could be something like RAV/COM/SAB for reapplying debuffs without having to pull in a Synergist.

@Grissefar: I'll probably try that when I attempt the boss fight again. Not sure when that will be, but hopefully soon.

Yeah, buffs and debuffs are absolutely necessary in the tougher fights in this game. If you're ignoring them completely you'll never stand a chance.

@Juno500 said:

Yeah, buffs and debuffs are absolutely necessary in the tougher fights in this game. If you're ignoring them completely you'll never stand a chance.

There is especially one spell that makes the last boss a cakewalk!

I was at 59 hours today and I finally decided to skip all the optional battles to so that I could finish this game up in a couple of more hours.

Can you really be underleveled to beat the game? Forced to re-roll a game save from any previous point just seems tedious to me, especially when you are talking about an RPG game.

I'm kinda in the same boat. I got stuck at the end of chapter 11 for MONTHS and never bothered playing the game again. I started playing again about a week ago and now I'm up to the final chapter, but I'm stuck farming for gil. No, I cannot think of anything more tedious. It is made all the more frustrating by the fact that even with the Collector's Catalog, half the time I do not get the drops I need and it just feels like wasted time. The whole upgrade mechanic is such a timesink.

I remember my girlfriend telling me that in the official guide, at a point in the game, it tells you to "Grind and level up" 
 
Can anyone confirm/deny this?

I played XII for 300 hours and watched my girlfriend play it for 130 so 60 hours for XIII seems like a short game. Shit, I even have a list of 47 games that I played for over 50 hours that I haven't updated in a year.

I'm at 48 hours and i'm just at the beginning of ch 13 but i'm going back to Gran Pulse so it'll probably be another 10 hours until i finish.

You're pretty close to the end, I say keep going, because the end pays off in a big way (I thought).

This happened to me in FFX with Yunalesca and I just watched a walkthrough to finish the story.
 
I'm 6 hours in to FFXIII and am really enjoying it so far but if I do hit a wall like that I will watch this.
 
Yic17

Played it till right before the very end, then my friend told me to grind more because there was no way I would be able to beat the final boss. 
 
So I said fuck it, sold the game, and made my friend selling his copy as well.

I popped the canopy at the 24 hour mark. I would say that you've invested too much time to just quit now. If you had asked this question 30 hours ago, the answer would be different.