USGamer - 4/5

Eurogamer - 8/10

Joystiq - 4/5

Dualshockers - 8/10

X-One - 8/10

Play UK - 8/10

RPG Fan - 79/100

Vandal.net - 7.8/10

Destructoid - 7.5/10

Press Start - 7/10

GamesTM - 7/10

IGN - 7/10

Polygon - 5.5/10

GameSpot - 5/10

Metro - 5/10

CVG - 5/10

EGM - 4.5/10

GamesRadar - 2.5/5

Game Revolution - 2/5

This is it. The end of the saga & it seems like a polarizing reception. Will you be picking this up on Day 1, Wait on a price drop ? or completely skip it? I will be waiting for a price drop.

According to Amazon, my copy should be arriving today. I'm really looking forward to it.

I'm really looking forward to it. Kinda surprised by the review scores so far, though.

Wow. What happened to this series? Both FF X and XII had a Metacritic score of 92.

My PS3 picked the worst possible time to break down with this and Dark Souls 2 coming out soon. I'll pick this up soon but I have no idea when I'll get a chance to play it.

Im not even going to bother getting upset or even caring about scores. The last two games were my GOTY of their respective years. I dont see how in a million years that I would not be anything but ecstatic about this game. Amazon order inbound. I'll buy any costume DLC that is up today as well.

Opinions are split on a game in the FFXIII series? Unheard of. I'm picking this up today. I'm tentatively excited to play it.

Scores don't really surprise, this series of FF games does seem to be a real hit or miss with a lot of people. For me the vanilla XIII's linearity for the most part hindered my enjoyment of it, but I am glad I finished it. I thought XIII-2 was excellent and even though I read reviews that said the story was confusing, I personally never found it to be that confusing at all.

I am looking forward to this regardless of some of the flaws I am reading about it. I enjoyed the demo and the series overall. Will be picking it up sometime this week when I actually have days off of work.

I did not know this until just now, but the game's Japanese voice track is also available for download and is free for the first two weeks if any of you are interested in it.

This can't be worst than the last half of Bravely Default so theres that, way worst story and writing tho.

Yeah, that's about what I expected, but who cares. I got my copy today and am enjoying the game quite a bit so far. (Still seriously despising "Hope", though.)

Thanks, that's very good to know, since I already fucking hate Lumina's voice acting.

Too hype to care, too busy trying to beat XIII-2 to give any shits, too excited to play dress-up to contain myself!

Not interested, like, at all. I'm really disliking the XIII trilogy and all its characters. I tried to complete XIII, but it lost me after 35 hours, which were mostly painful. I tried to give it another go with XIII-2, but I couldn't bear the main duo. Now, I couldn't be more happier to see them move away from that arc after this game.

Luckily for me, though, I just got Bravely Default. Now, THAT is a Final Fantasy game in my books.

Review scores mean roughly 0 of anything to me.

Can't wait.

What a season.

Frankly, FFXIII was always more interesting to me as a window into Square's internal development woes than as a narrative, so it's been fascinating to watch this trilogy stumble its way through this generation. I don't have anywhere near the disdain toward it that I did in 2010; even so, I am profoundly relieved that those teams will now be working on something else.

Long live Fabula Nova Crysalis.

@hailinel: Normally Id change it but having played two games already these characters sound a specific way to me now.

I actually had an alright time with 13 once it took the training wheels off.

I couldn't tolerate the first hour of 13-2.

Debating a purchase with myself.

So a collective "eh, it's alright." That sure isn't winning me over to this trilogy!

People who have actually played the game are saying that it's good.

The sheer inaccuracies present in all of the reviews (including Polygon's Phillip Kollar repeating an inaccuracy I mentioned in the comments of his first look at the game) make it really obvious that most of the people played it for about fifteen minutes before getting their asses kicked in.

I didn't like the characters in XIII. That killed the series for me.

Waiting and hoping that XV will turn out better.

Sounds like the Majora's Mask complaints/reviewers bitching about a game taking longer to review than expected. The blocking is almost certainly worse than the switching to sentinel system though; but game seems like it's fine.

@brodehouse: XIII-2 is a good game, though a lot of that is due to the superb combat system being almost the same as it was in the original. You just have to pick the dumbest response whenever you get the choice.

DIVISIVE. Anyway, for those who have already played it, is the story any good? I hear it's even more convoluted non sense with Lightning being even worst as a protagonist as she was in 13 but I kinda want an ending to that stupid story.

Honestly, better than I expected. I was going to pick it up this afternoon either way, though.

I know I will enjoy this game a lot, can't wait.

I'm excited!

when I have the money :(

@pyrodactyl: I dunno I never found the story hard to follow myself. You can easily enough pick up on all the jargon by paying attention and the motives of the characters are pretty obvious. Plenty of room to argue how good of a story it is I suppose but I never found it hard to follow.

Nothing in the reviews looks major enough to turn me off of this game, looking forward to getting it this Friday!

I didn't like the first one. I'd be back on board with turn-based combat instead of the active systems everyone uses now.

Will purchase when it comes plummeting down in price which should not take long.

Edit: Nevermind will be getting it this week.

I really should play these games. I didn't like XII one bit, and kinda got turned off the series, but I've not been fair given how different FF's can be from each other and maybe this marks a good time to see if they're up my alley.

@bigjeffrey: I found a new copy of XIII-2 for 30 bucks, like, a month after it came out, and that probably did better than this is going to do, so yeah.

Sounds like it plays well but the story is all sorts of divisive.

That sounds like Final Fantasy to me, and I've enjoyed my time with the other XIII games. I'm in.

Yeah. This certainly seems like the way to do it. I'm going into this game expecting it to be bad, so maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised? Something the bomb crew once said really applies to this game in my mind: sometimes you have to play bad or critically divisive games, or you'll be spoiled and not appreciate when something truly great comes around. That's probably why I'll pick this up later on (though if it's tragically awful, it'll be a lot of fun to play through with a bunch of people in the same room, like I did with XIII-2).

Wow. Chill the fuck out with the homophobic shit. Also stop caring about reviews.

I was going to buy it today ... but the money I had was used on other stuff :( so Im pretty bummed that I wont be able to play it yet.

How has he not been banned yet ?

Yup they make lightning even worse, also think the worst ending and apply it to this game.

I don't think that this is homophobic he is rather upset. And Honestly I think he is right. Western sites should not review Japanese games at all. Especially not from people who do not like Japanese games or their culture. I remember being total upset by the Yakuza 4 IGN review which gave the ame a 6.5 by comparing it to GTA and other western games or mocking the great story etc. Thee publications should not be allowed to review these games since they badmouthing them and therefore giving these games which actually should be supported a bad reputation and metacritic score.

Probably won't play it anytime soon but I have a feeling this game will do better with gamers than with reviewers. Either way I'm happy we can close the door on FFXIII and here's to FFXV being a return to form.

You can't release them over here and then line everyone up and be all "Okay guys be nice, seriously"

With how these games have tanked commercially, I'm going to wait til this one is in the bargain bin. Hate to do it, but I got burned on the other two. Bravely Default is scratching my JRPG grind itch anyhow.

There is a different between not liking anything Japanese from the beginning and being fair.

Man, a 7 from IGN is like a 3 from anywhere else...

You can't talk about being fair and then delegate who should and should not be able to review things.

If they're being released to this marketplace they need players of all sorts reviewing them since players of all sorts could be buying them.

They are trying to sell to westerners, why should westerners not be allowed to review it?

No one is saying that westerner should not being allowed to review it. People who do not like JRPGs in this case or Japanese games in general should not be allowed to review these games. Just like Sport guys should not be allowed to review Shooter for example. Another recent example was some Gran Turismo 6 review which criticized that you are driving in a circle all the time in car racing games. And her first sentence was something like "I think racing games are boring".

These were her words:

My first time on the track was a disaster. I hit the wall three times. I spent more time off the track than on it. I even wound up driving the wrong way at one point. My lack of digital driving skills is without question. Yet, here I am reviewing Gran Turismo 6, Polyphony Digital’s latest entry in its long-running “Real Driving Simulator” franchise.

"I’m not a racing fan and don’t get the appeal of driving around in circles without so much as a rocket launcher or turtle shell to break up the routine.

Yet somehow someone thought it was a good and fair idea to let her review such a game she does not even care one bit about. And this ended up on Metacritic as well.

For all those excited to finish the trilogy or otherwise really into it. I hope it's awesome. I'm just glad this puts us that much closer to FF15.

Ordered the collectors edition from the SE website. Really excited for it to arrive.