Why so much hate for this game?

Eh, I just didn't like that approach. For whatever reason, if a game is meant to let you have 3 party characters I want to have 3 party characters as soon as possible. Maybe if a game was able to have 5 party characters but limited you to 3 or 4 it wouldn't bother me so much, since 3 still allows for a good range of tactics and some variety, but 2 just strikes me as being a bit too stunted.

As for the paradigm roles and character building, different people are bound to play the game in different ways. Once I had my full party available, I spent the vast majority of the game rolling with a team of Lightning/Fang/Hope, and developed the other characters on the side. I never even came close to maxing the crystarium completely out for any of the characters; I just played the game at my own pace and moved on from Pulse when I felt that I was ready for the rest of it. Other people would be more inclined to max out every character and would be happy with a party compose of jacks-of-all-trades, or who would try goofy things like trying to make Vanille the party's best sentinel.

Again it's a personal issue, but I just prefer that in the end, if you level them all up to the max, that the characters still wind up unique in some way. Even if I never get anywhere close to the theoretical point where they are maxed out in everything, the idea that I could get to that point bugs me a bit. It also doesn't really encourage me to play deep into that game. That's just a weird peccadillo I have regarding rpgs.

I guess both these issues come down to making me feel limited in my options. For the first 20 hours of the game I couldn't choose my own party, I didn't have much in the way of choice regarding how to build my characters, and I only had one path to go. It was limiting and I didn't appreciate it for those reasons. I did appreciate it for others, but they weren't strong enough to keep me playing all the way to the end.

It really does help explain a lot.

I never really had a problem with the two-person parties, but then again, that's just my preference, as well. Agree to disagree and all that.

I do think that the characters are a bit more diverse than you perhaps give them credit for, though. Each has a different Eidolon, limit break and weapon style, and your experience in these regards is largely dictated by who your party leader is. So the game does provide some measure of encouragement to switch things up. If you do go the route of maxing everyone out in every role, then it comes down to personal preference of character and battle minutiae than anything else.

It's just a shame that Eidolons have, and this is being generous, niche uses, for how much the game hypes them up. If ever there was a "this other FF game did this better" moment with FFXIII, it would be with the Eidolons. Aside from healing the party when you're in a pinch, they're borderline useless in your average fight.

I'm with the naysayers on this one.

Final Fantasy XIII was a gorgeous, sometimes briefly fun, mostly forgettable mess.

The characters run the gamut from useless to annoying to useless and annoying and just generally lack, well, character. They were one and all one-trick-pony, anime-clichés. Lightning is perhaps the most forgettable FF protagonist of all time. The only motivation anyone in the game has is "I want to protect/hurt person X who otherwise barely features in the plot".

The graphics are gorgeous, but it's look, don't touch! I remember a time when FF games had secrets in them. Oh hey, there's an elixir in that clock. In FFXIII, you don't talk to NPCs, you don't shop in shops, you don't interact with anything at all except for the odd floating ball or monster. Everything's just so sterile, it feels like a tech demo.

The combat is good and does require strategy now and again; however, most battles do boil down to stagger with ravagers, kill with commandos. Props to the tougher fights where buffs were a necessity as well as swapping in the occasional sentinel and medic, but those were unfortunately rare.

The postgame content was bullshit mindless (or in the case of the super-hard giant turtle things - precarious and frustrating due to frequency of death - ) grinding for rare drops because there's no other type of meaningful interaction in the game beyond swatting down enemies.

There is no mystery to be solved or bad guy to be taken down for most of the game. It's simply run from point A to point B because that's your only fucking choice to move the game forward. See: the first 20 to 30 hours of gameplay. Not only do the characters lack motivation, so do I. What the fuck was Snow's stupid rebellion rebelling against anyway? I don't think it's even ever explained. Forget bad plot, there is no plot.

Don't get me wrong, I played the game and actually enjoyed bits of it. I seem to be one of the few who actually thinks the ending was good. The graphics really are gorgeous and a contender for some of the best of the generation past. I made a brief stab at the postgame content hoping for a little more depth, some more meaningful interaction with this gorgeous, lifeless world. My patience quickly wore out and I dropped the game and forgot about it.

In retrospect, I feel like I played the whole thing in the hope that it would get better at some point. Not because I cared about any of the characters, or was interested in what was happening around them or was invested in the combat system or equipment upgrading (which was a tedious slog.) That to me was Final Fantasy XIII's ultimate failing.

While this is true, and I have played the game like this before thinking this was the best way to go, the reality is that because these chains take so long to execute it does not lead to a higher chain bonus over time. You will still be back to gaining your ATB faster and be pumping out more attacks to make the point of alternating your attacks needlessly drawn out. Not only that but if your character has a weapon or accessory that allows to gain ATB on hit, the faster you hit, the faster you gain per hit and the faster you're back to gaining ATB regularly.

Also, there are many things that Auto-Battle can't even do. Two examples I remember:

• Auto-Battle never selects an Ultimate skill, and
• Never uses Sazh's Blitz ability on enemies with large hitboxes, AKA never uses Sazh's Blitz to it's full potential.

Those are just two examples that I know of the top of my head from a few years ago.

Honeys you all played the franchise from the very begining correct?or not? there's no need to enter in a in depth analysis about FFXIII to show the reasons for its failure the evidences are right in front of you, god this is so hard to see? i just can't believe it...and i feel pity for those who have their bias and love to show their positive opinions about the game, opinions will never change facts.

I recall renting it back when blockbuster still existed and getting bored with it, from what I played I don't think it seemed terrible. I'm also not a big Final Fantasy fan so (Except for FF14 that game rocks) maybe my opinion is invalid due to that. I though the combat was interesting but started to wonder if it ever gets any deeper than me mashing auto attack, and the kid characters were super annoying and whiny. Lightning and the Black guy (Yeah whatever I don't know his name) seemed partially interesting, the snow guy looked like some douche from a shitty garage band though.

The characters, plot, pacing, voice acting and game world are all terrible. Some of the worst writing I've ever encountered in a game. Combat system is decent, but not enough to make it worth slogging through it.

How they set up the "open world" in Pulse was a joke. Like they went out of their way to make you have to walk all over the place even with the teleporters. And it was just so devoi of personality, talking rocks. And that's where the game "opens up"? Give me a break. Rest of the game is par for the course, Hope and Vanille are completely insufferable but the rest are fine really, which is a higher good to bad character ratio than most FF games. Bad guy is kinda goofy but again, par for the course. Its a decent 30 hour experience that they dragged out over 50 with overlong sequences of jogging around and tedious alchemy.

Troll necro threads yay!

I remember somewhat enjoying the game. But I don't have any specifically fond memories of it. More like a decent timewaster in whatever summer it came out.

What does that even mean? Why have old threads if people are going to chastise you if you respond to them? Would you prefer threads that deleted themselves after nobody views them for a certain amount of time? Personally I enjoy responding/reading these old threads because they can sometimes show you how opinion or perspective of an old game has shifted.

Anyway, from what I understand I was literally just a boss fight away from where the game opens up, but I got stuck on the boss and gave up. The story wasn't good enough to make me want to get through it; it was a great looking game but was far too drawn out and just wasn't very captivating.

@nick: It means the person who necro'd the thread did so to troll people. Read what was posted...

Thread should be locked, I dont see the benefit in re-hashing a four year old argument.

@nick:

Pretty much. Whether he was serious or trolling is almost irrelevant, that comment was just pointless and inflammatory.

Man I go so back and forth on this game. I know I liked it at the time, but I never enjoyed trying to replay it. And I can't even remember 90% of the story, character motivation or events really. Just utterly forgettable.

Perhaps it was just enjoyable as the graphical beast it was, and when the cinematic viewing was over so was the novelty. Oh well.

I didn't hate it but the story and characters weren't memorable. I'd give it a 3/5. I played 13-2 and would give that a 3/5 as well.

There are some reasons why I don't particularly like 13, but before I get into that, there is something that needs clarification: Final Fantasy games are very, very different from one another. They change so many things from one game to the next, they are barely part of the same genre. Because of that, people that play several of them tends to feel very strongly in favor or against any of those games, and being a fan of a Final Fantasy means a lot less about your position to other Final Fantasies than with other franchises...

That being said, there are some reasons why me, personally, didn't thought too highly of that game:

• Many of the characters are extremely unlikable. From the sunny hyperactive girl, to the emotionally shut down protagonist, to the crying teenager that likes to blame other people, they are not really endearing. Not that they have to be, but I felt I was enduring my time with them more than growing fond of them. The closest to a good, interesting character was the comic relief, and there is something to be said about the prospect of the stereotypical funny black guy with an Afro (that is also a bird's nest) being the most rounded person in your party.
• I didn't like the setting either. It had interesting stuff, but there were dozens of new concepts that everyone (but the player) was familiar with: Fal'Cie, L'Cie, Cie'th, Pulse, Coccon, Focus, Crystals, Orphan, Lindzei, Eidolons, stasis, Gestalt, etc, etc. It was dauntingly low concept... The characters in the game talk and talk about this like they were obvious truths (which they are, for them), but it sounds like alien language for the player. The first few hours, it was like I was in the middle of a franchise, without ever played the previous games. It is all clarified in an text-heavy, poorly organized encyclopedia, which is a pretty awful way to convey exposition.

EDIT: Now that I noticed how long the thread was necro'd from, I feel kind of bad for falling. Oh, well... my opinion still stands.

I found FF13 series to be a lazy, nonsensical, unengaging overly melodramatic, vacuous and boring mess that looked pretty.

I hated every single character in it except the afro dude, and the story was trash (from what i got through of it). By the time i made it to the "good part" i didn't want to play anymore.

Each FF are different? can you be more specific? the gameplay was always the same until FFX was released the only thing that really changed was the story and each game depicted a memorable tale for us, you're talking about opinions it's common for people to like certain games and dislike others that will never change, but there's something wrong with FFXIII the gamers who started to play this franchise from the very begining and enjoyed the typical JRPG gameplay elements like me have blatant reasons to strongly hate it, the game is a collection of hallways with monsters that provide a unending fighting spam and it's important to notice that is the ONLY thing you can do...that is unbearable for any JRPG gamer, and where are the other elements? exploration, free roam, quests, sidestories and minigames? the story is also a mess it's full of holes and the game barely explains anything in the end you have to read the ''chapters summary'' to have any idea of what's is going on,the characters have a poor background and they lack personality most of them whine all the time and that makes it more dificult to like any of them.

i like JRPGs, Dragon Quest, Persona, Legend of Heroes, all are my favorotes. I just never been a FF fan. Last game i actually liked was FF4. For FF13 the confusing story and cliche characters just totally throwing me off. Also in a way i think the 3D CGs is doing the series a disservice, they are just way too over the top for my personal taste. It's like they are designing the game for 10-15 year olds(FF10-2 anyone?), which is probably true. But i'm not that young anymore.

it was a bit of a perfect storm, I think. The game has shortcomings but isn't terrible by any stretch. It did come out at a time when "linear" was starting to become a dirty word in gaming and admittedly it was focusing on elements (story and characters, most notably) and making mistakes in those same areas.

I found it entertaining enough, but it's definitely worse than XII. Arguably, it's about on par with X and definitely better than X-2.

Hmm. Figured I would have made a post in this thread at some point. Guess not.

@hermes summed up a good chunk of it.

• I don't like the characters. This is one where an FF game can get a pass sometimes. Not everything in a game has to be perfect. You can have a "meh" story or characters as long as the rest of the game saves it.
• I don't like the setting. This can also kinda get a pass if the gameplay is good. All that jargon mentioned earlier is a great example. It's also dumb that I have to spend an hour reading through text stuff hidden in menus to even start to grasp at what is going on. Eh on all the weird futuristic sci-fi stuff.
• I don't like the combat. I like the classic turn based combat. I liked the small adjustments they would try to make within those parameters. And I liked FF12's combat as an evolution of it. Freedom of movement, seeing enemies in the world, while still based on characters taking turns performing actions via a menu and later on can be streamlined with the gambit system if so desired. I don't like how anyone can be anything at anytime. Where is the fun in building and honing a party to your specifications? This is where the classic FF job system comes in.
• I don't like the lack of an open world map. This started with FF10. Huuuuuuge let down. It's one of the flaws of FF12. Should be an overworld and various modes of transport. It was really cool getting a sense of the scale of the world and a location's proximity to other locations etc. And it was so fun just flying the airships around! I remember hitting that one open zone in 13 (that takes forever to get too) and being blown away. It was exactly like the Calm Lands in FF10. Why wasn't the whole game like this? Open areas. Creatures. Vegetation. A colorful environment. Beautiful vista.
• Where are the towns? Cities to explore and people to talk to. They did an amazing job with this in FF12. There was so much detail in the environment. Buying stuff from a computer node in 13? Give me a break.
• I don't like that the Summons were turned in Transformers. I preferred the classic system of summons. It started to go down hill with FF10 when it became pokemon battles. FF12 summons looked great but still kinda had this system. Ehhh.
• The music wasn't very good? I can't even remember it so it must have at least been forgettable.

I haven't played 13 since its release so I don't have all of my detailed complaints at the front of my mind.

There is just a lack of Final Fantasy signature elements that are traditionally carried over from game to game. The setting and characters would usually change. And the battle system was adjusted within the limits of turn-based combat. This probably became a problem as the market got saturated in RPGs and people felt it was formulaic. Now, there are almost no classic JRPGs around. Bravely Default was great (admittedly, I didn't get up to whatever point everyone complains about? I put about 80 hours into it and loved it.) It was such a classic FF game. Even something like Lost Odyssey from Mistwalker felt way more like a traditional FF game.

And then SE goes and makes multiple sequels. Blows my mind. I don't know what they are thinking. You look at FF14 ARR and that seems to be the only thing making good money for them. And it incorporates all these great elements of the FF games except for turn-based combat (its an MMO). Everything about it is classic. I don't care if its all fan service. Good, that is exactly what SE needs to do. Stop trying to follow market trends and make FF something that it never was and go back to making it like everyone knows and loved it. If they want to make a different style of RPG, go make a new IP.

Sadly, FF15 looks like its continuing down this path of drastic change. The gameplay looks nothing like a traditional Final Fantasy game. The character design looks like something from Advent Children. They are driving around in a weird Audi convertible. Teleporting around? Hack and slash fighting? Juggling? Weapons just changing/appearing in your hands?

I'm not saying something like 13 shouldn't exist it that it's a horrific game. It just doesn't feel or look very Final Fantasy. I'm baffled that they wouldn't just make it a new IP or make it a non-number game or why they would continue to make sequels.

I can only hope that FF16 will be a return to form assuming they bring Hiroyuki Ito back. They seemed to have a cycle of sorts between designers. He worked on FF4, FF5, FF6, FF9, FF12, FF Tactics. All the best, most classically signature games in the series IMO.

P.S. - As a note, FF9 is probably my favorite. I liked the characters, the battle/ability system, the fantasy style, the epic cutscenes and central usage of summons in the story, the music etc. I hold 12 as an example of an FF where the story was crappy (IMO) and some of the characters were cool and some were stupid annoying children.. but the gameplay and world were amazing. The sheer amount of content to do in it post-story.

It's on par with FFX? i respect your opinion however the story and gameplay of the two games says otherwise.

@cory_sthokely: I was actually never a fan of FFX for the same reasons as FFXIII gets crap from people. It was at the time the most linear FF ever, it didn't even have an overworld, it had some very annoying characters (I mean, come on), a lot of the game hinged on how gorgeous it looked, but the story was full of needlessly confusing and convoluted elements. At the time I found it to be worse than all three PSOne entries, and when FFXII came out I immediately found it way better, especially plot-wise.

One thing I admit is that FFX's combat system is very lean, classic and flexible. I could take or leave the sphere grid thing, but I liked fights in that game... but I think the same thing about FFXIII's combat, too.

The thing is, I'm not alone in this. I guess I'm cursed with a long memory, but at the time FFX came out, all this criticism wasn't extraordinary. A lot of people felt the same way. It was elevated to classic status later, for reasons I don't entirely understand but may have to do with people coming into the PS2 fresh without having owned a PSOne first. Now when I say this it sounds very controversial, but at the time I was on one half of a pretty even split, I felt.

I still have yet to play it, but it always seemed like a game I would enjoy despite what people are saying about it.

I don't understand why the people compare FFX with FFXIII the two games are nothing alike, FFX have many options for you to enjoy it Blitzball is one [if not the best] minigame in the franchise, FFXIII have any minigames? well if you want to consider the chocobo riding in Pulse a minigame then be my guest,equipment upgrades are deep and challeging it's nothing that bores the hell out of you like FFXIII, the sphere grid have branches to develop a distinct build for the characters and again there's nothing like that in FFXIII, the chrystarium is caped and linear if you want to upgrade roles that are not compatible with the character in question you have to spend a LOT of AP and that is extremely annoying, i don't agree with you about the story and i prefer to not talk about it that is your opinion and i will not change it, in other words FFX linearity have its limits even before you obtain the airship you can backtrack to certain places and FFXIII gave a new meaning for the word it's incredible how linear and limited the game truly is, like i said before FFXIII is a collection of hallways with cutscenes and fighting spams.

I didn't like anything about it really except for the world design that the artists did.
The characters range from uninteresting to annoying to grating. Its painfully linear. The combat system is completely uninteresting. Paradigm shifts and basically auto combat can resolve most of it. You can't get that brokenly powerful like in the other Final Fantasies that I really like.