I am what one might call a fan of the Final Fantasy games. I've played most of the main games. I am not a diehard fan though - I believe that Final Fantasy VI is probably the only Final Fantasy game that is good without qualifications. I see all the problems that people have ever had with the series. I fully adore FFX, but I'll gladly join the chorus of people saying that the design of Tidus is laughable, and the laughing scene is straight from hell.
 
With all that in mind, I was completely turned off from buying FFXIII after the response it had from people. Other games in the series got "Yay!" responses from fans and "Meh" responses from others, FFXIII got a collective "Boo!". Time has passed since then, the game was available to me for basically nothing, so whatever, I'll give it a shot. If I find it disgusting I don't lose anything but shelf space and sandwhich money.
 
So what's the bad shit people are saying about it?
 
Supposedly, the story of the game is incomprehensible. Everybody is saying words like L'cie and Fal'cie and Cocoon and Pulse and Gestalts and Eidolons and stuff, and that makes zero sense. The game takes 10-15 hours to get interesting gameplay wise, as it's all a long tutorial up to that point. I think Brad on the Bombcast said that he checked his playtime when he finally realized that the game might be sort of okay and it was 20+ hours.
 
So I put the game in and witnessed an intro where you aren't really explained anything. That's what Final Fantasy does though, remember how FFX starts? So does FFXIII do this for a longer time or something? All the funny words are here, "L'cie" is in every sentence, and the combat system consists of me hitting attack over and over again.
 
Once again, FFX did that as well at the start. 
 
Ugh...this boring nonsensical part just keeps on going. People are right, this is actually unplayable.
 
And then it suddenly clicked. I was fully on board with the story and the characters. I understand what the words L'cie and Fal'cie mean and why they're so important, the battle system had evolved itself to a point where I had a lot of fun with the battles, and I had even gotten a GAME OVER SCREEN one time. The characters were often punching each other in their faces and that's a very welcome twist to the happy-funtime world-saving-party I see in every other JRPG. 
 
My playtime at that point? 2 hours.
 
Considering that the point where it supposedly actually gets good is about18 hours away, it seems like this game is gonna end up totally awesome. So what the heck? This is a Final Fantasy-ass Final Fantasy game, what's the problem? If you don't like Final Fantasy, you shouldn't have bought this anyway, if you did like Final Fantasy before, where the fuck is the problem?

I love the opening post simply because it gives me faith that I might yet enjoy Final Fantasy XIII one day.
 
Not having given the game a chance yet, the only thing I like about the game at the moment is the battle theme. Blinded by Light is one of the best battle themes to date.

different strokes for different folks. i personally found the story dumb as shit, and the combat system sort of like a dumbed down atb. also: i don't think i could bear to hear snow talking about BEING A HERO GOTTA BE A HERO BABY any more. 

Just goes to show that X was also over-rated.

Just goes to show that X was also over-rated.

I really wanna give this game a try, I know it can't be as bad as people say it is. I might also be terribly mistaken, but usually you can't go too wrong with Squaresoft.

It's BORING. I guess if you like that sort of thing, then you'd like this one. The battles are OK, but really just boil down to attacking 'till you're hurt, heal, continue attacking, and maybe some debuffs on a bigger enemy. Just like every other modern JRPG. Aren't you tired of this formulaic bullshit? At least Persona has interesting characters; all you get with Final Fantasy are one-dimensional stereotypes with annoying voice-actors.

Most (if not all) of the characters in the game made me want to put my fist through the TV, and the poorly told story only made somewhat sense to me if I spent hours reading through logs in the pause menu. Again, seriously, who the fuck designed the Vanille character and thought that was a smart move? She made me cringe so many times I felt bad about playing the game.

However I did enjoy moments of the game, and I still spent 90 hours or so playing it. I wouldn't spend 90 hours on a game I didn't consider at least somewhat good.

EDIT: And I'm not comparing XIII to any of the other FF games since I've never been that big of a fan of the franchise. I just like RPGs.

The characters were annoying and it got boring incredibly fast.

Linear, No towns, No NPC's to talk to, no side-quests, no airships, few likeable characters, half assed plot, lots of instances of a guy showing up and then not being seen again until much later and he dies anyway so why should I care? No minigame and most importantly....
 
THE ONLY NUMBERED FF GAME NOT TO HAVE THE BATTLE FANFARE ON VICTORY, WHAT. WHERE. THEY. THINKING?! 
 
  

I found most of the characters to be really annoying, but other than that, I really liked it.

Bad game is bad, you can repost this blog every month blaming the people instead of the game, doesn't make the bad game better. The things XIII-2 marks to improve are SE acknowledging failures in the first game. But whatever, its not illegal to like shit. Pretty sure you made this same stupid blog about DA2 after playing the demo 15 minutes or something. You just like gutshooting then proclaiming all haters are objectively wrong. That's the 3 wheeler you roll onto the playground with yo, and that's fine. 
Thing is, if someone came in here saying they played a game for 2 hours then started shitting on it, everyone would call them on their shit. Not sure why you think you get a free pass on snap judgements just because you're an apologist.

I wouldn't say its a bad game just an okay game due to in most part with what you said that the game has 20+ hours of tutorial. If you need more than 10 minutes of gameplay time to explain the mechanics in a jrpg(or any genre for that matter), you have done something wrong. Like others, I also have a problem with the story of FFXIII. The story of FFXIII has the same problem FFXII did, a convoluted story that isn't told well. Sure I get it you're trying to save the world but why should I care this time around. I didn't beat it but I did get to the part where it does open up but by the time that happen I was fed up with trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

@XII_Sniper said:

Just goes to show that X was also over-rated.

Pretty much this. If you are out there saying that XIII sucks and X is incredibly amazing you need to play X again.

It wasn't really a bad game or anything, it just didn't sustain my interest for very long.

@Zabant said:

Linear, No towns, No NPC's to talk to, no side-quests, no airships, few likeable characters, half assed plot, lots of instances of a guy showing up and then not being seen again until much later and he dies anyway so why should I care? No minigame and most importantly....

THE ONLY NUMBERED FF GAME NOT TO HAVE THE BATTLE FANFARE ON VICTORY, WHAT. WHERE. THEY. THINKING?!

Ha! You're totally right.

...but I still liked it. D=

FFX was amazing when I was 12, I guess XIII would've been the bomb too. I can look back and laugh at the stuff I found so great about X but I find it really hard to stomach Squeenix stories now.

I never liked the ATB system so the one thing I still like about X is the combat, XIII's system was close to my least favorite thing in the world.

Didn't offer me anything. If you like it, great, I'm not on some crusade against it. I wanted to like it, even blew my money on a collector's edition.

Bad game is bad, you can repost this blog every month blaming the people instead of the game, doesn't make the bad game better. The things XIII-2 marks to improve are SE acknowledging failures in the first game. But whatever, its not illegal to like shit.

@ryanwho said:

Bad game is bad, you can repost this blog every month blaming the people instead of the game, doesn't make the bad game better. The things XIII-2 marks to improve are SE acknowledging failures in the first game. But whatever, its not illegal to like shit. Pretty sure you made this same stupid blog about DA2 after playing the demo 15 minutes or something. You just like gutshooting then proclaiming all haters are objectively wrong. That's the 3 wheeler you roll onto the playground with yo, and that's fine. Thing is, if someone came in here saying they played a game for 2 hours then started shitting on it, everyone would call them on their shit. Not sure why you think you get a free pass on snap judgements just because you're an apologist.

Oh snap!

The Last Remnant was better than FF XIII.

I thought that both X and XIII were just okay. XII was the shit.

The first few hours, actually. Stick through it all (especially when you're piloting a robot and killing things in one hit à la Earthbound), and you'll actually find a good game.

The Last Remnant was better than FF XIII.

I'm with you. I just enjoyed the whole game. Yes, Vanille and Snow are very annoying at times, Vanille particularly is rather poorly voice-acted.

BUT the combat was enjoyable through and through, the rest of the characters were well voiced, and more importantly, were well written. I really liked Lightning, she was very reminiscent of Cloud from FFVII. The linearity (and make no mistake, the game is very linear) never bothered me once!

A lot of criticisms were to do with what Final Fantasy XIII lacked compared to other entries in the series (lack of an open world etc etc) How are they valid criticisms? It's not like the game was designed for them. The reason things like the traditional battle system, or an open, expansive world were not in the game is the same reason there was no shooting in Flower. People discredited the game based on their preconceptions, not the actual quality of the game.

PHEW

@babblinmule said:

@ryanwho said:

Bad game is bad, you can repost this blog every month blaming the people instead of the game, doesn't make the bad game better. The things XIII-2 marks to improve are SE acknowledging failures in the first game. But whatever, its not illegal to like shit.

I've been basically been skipping every comment youve made for the last 2 months in the hope that you would change. I decide to buck the trend and read your comment, and would you look at that; youre STILL doing your darndest to be a dick towards everything. For the love of the god, would you PLEASE realise that other people have different, possibly even valid, opinions... ______________________ But on topic - I think it took me a little longer (6 - 8 hours I think), but yeah, eventually everything just sorta clicked with me. Like most JRPG's, youve just gotta bare with it until it all starts to come together. I was slightly pissed that there were no towns, but hey ho, I guess you can't have everything in life.

Regardless of his tone, debating opinion is the point of message boards. Your bolded sentence, which is often repeated throughout these boards, is useless towards discussion because it pretty much nips it in the bud regardless of topic. We come and talk about our different opinions to debate the merits of them.

Looking through the vitriol, he makes a valid point. The OP makes a long winded judgement on the game even though he/she's only played it for a few hours. If he/she had gone in the other direction and claimed that the game was terrible, most posters would be against him/her. If he/she likes the game there's nothing wrong with that, but trying to start an in depth discussion about the merits of other's opinions without having the whole game under his/her belt doesn't make a lot of sense.

Pretty sure you made this same stupid blog about DA2 after playing the demo 15 minutes or something. You just like gutshooting then proclaiming all haters are objectively wrong.

A lot of criticisms were to do with what Final Fantasy XIII lacked compared to other entries in the series (lack of an open world etc etc) How are they valid criticisms? It's not like the game was designed for them. The reason things like the traditional battle system, or an open, expansive world were not in the game is the same reason there was no shooting in Flower. People discredited the game based on their preconceptions, not the actual quality of the game.

PHEW

For me, the biggest problem with FFXIII is that it is incredibly linear. Now, I don't expect a Final Fantasy to play like an open world RPG, but in past games, you had little deviations from the main story that you could explore. I felt like I was running down a hallway for 90% of the game. You only have a chance to explore about 25 hours into FFXIII when you get to this gigantic field (think Calm Lands from FFX) where you can find treasure and attack monsters to your hearts content. However, this area seems designed to visit after you complete the main quest as most of the enemies can kill you in a single hit at that point in the game. But by that point, I was so turned off by the lackluster storyline and repetitive battles that I had no interest in playing after the credits rolled. In contrast, I doubled my FFX playtime from all of the post story stuff I did.

@ryanwho said:

@JackG100 said:

The Last Remnant was better than FF XIII.

Last Remnant on PC is so close to being great instead of insanely broken. Man, if they didn't lock out the ability to easily mod that game, someone could have made a few small tweaks and fixed it. 13 was nowhere near being a few small tweaks away from being fixed. So I concur.

I think they both become boring after a while, but while FFXIIIs extremely linear design and boring combatsystem make me fall asleep after 15 minutes of playing The Last Remnant takes about 30. They both look fairly good though.

Not that there's a single Final Fantasy-game I consider great, jRPGs just aint my style. Unless it's a persona-game.

2 hours is hardly enough time to give a good critique of Final Fantasy XIII imo. There are some things to the story and combat that you still have to see to really say whether you liked this game. That and of course, the prolonged linearity might not be your cup of tea.

The bigger criticisms to the story come more from the fact that you have to sift through menus to get a better understanding of the story later on, and most of the cast are really hard to get into. The story isn't as incomprehensible as most critics put it, even if you look at other JRPGs.

Really with this game its all about expectation. People expect a certain non-linearity with this game due to its legacy, and well FFXIII didn't deliver on that regard. FFXIII a pretty good JRPG when taken for what it is. Play through it some more though, it will become more evident what people complain about as you progress through the story.

I loved  Final Fantasy XIII. One of the best combat systems in an FF game in my opinion.

I have never played FF13, don't know too much about anything but I'm gonna post and give you all my two pennies worth anyway.

STFU this game may be both good and bad. I don't know, but my opinion is valid.

Also FF is an extremely long series. It has gone through multiple transitions and transformations, a quality which is at the heart of the FF brand, that is to say every game will be different. Some you like and some you won't. FF is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get, just be glad it ain't the nasty Coffee Cream that is FFX-2. No one likes Coffee Cream, get out of my chocolate boxes.

2 hours is hardly enough time to give a good critique of Final Fantasy XIII imo. There are some things to the story and combat that you still have to see to really say whether you liked this game. That and of course, the prolonged linearity might not be your cup of tea.

@ryanwho: That may be true, but it doesn't (at least in my eyes) make those criticisms I mentioned any more justified. If it were called Final Fantasy X Cool Boarders 2 instead of Final Fantasy XIII I suspect reviews would have been more positive overall - apart from the totally incongruous title, of course. It may be an unfortunate truth when it comes to consumers, but I would have hoped that reviewers would be more objective. Brad especially discredited the game based on things he was expecting to happen over it's duration that never happened.

Decided to give it a second chance recently myself. It's not a bad game, in fact I rather like the combat system.

But by far it's biggest issue is that they over do the emotional scenes. Now past Final Fantasy games have done emotion but haven't thrown in down your neck ever couple of minutes. That said, I'm rather enjoying it still.

@Ventilaator: Didn't think about it like that :P After thinking about the beginning a bit, kinda have to mostly agree with your opinion on that it aint that bad at first. The big thing that grated me is when the game gives you a party of two throughout the intro. That battle system becomes so great when you have a party of three but somehow feels awful with two for some reason.

The problem with FFXIII is the story: We are given no real reason to care about Cocoon or Pulse. The only real characters given ANY depth in the game are your party members, and even then there's not much to talk about them. The menus do give some fanciful description of the world, but even then it doesn't explain very much and it's hard to care about a world when the only "character" its been given has been through what is essentially a wikipedia article.

I found Cocoon to be boring, dull, far too linear and lifeless. Yes it was "Colourful" but colours by themselves don't cut it. Pulse was wide and big, but populated entirely by monsters. The worlds had no real character - I couldn't care about saving the world, when the world itself was so dull.

Also, the story is pretty damn shallow, and when you get to the end of it, illogical. So the good guys are supposed to do action X (called X because I don't want to spoil anything). The bad guy wants them to do Action X. Doing Action X will precisely lead to the worst possible thing occurring. What do the characters do? PROCEED TO DO ACTION X, ALL THE WHILE SHOUTING ABOUT HOW THEY ARE DEFYING THE BAD GUY AND FORGING THEIR "OWN" DESTINY. It's like if the bad guy said 'Pick up that box", and the main protagonist said "I'll decide my future, I'll fight for freedom and all that good-stuff" and then proceeds to pick up the box anyway.

The only real meat given to the plot is through the conversations given by the party members. These, frankly, are repetitive. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again they'll spout the same stuff about how miserable they are, how they don't want to be L'cie, how they need to "move on". Snow will repeatedly shout "Serah!" more times than you can count, Lightning will get all sour for no real reason, Hope will constantly splutter and wheeze and make little gasping noises, Vanille will act like a dimwit, Fang will contribute almost nothing and Sazh will continue to be the only remotely likeable, mature, sane character out of the entire cast.

The enemies are given almost no screen time either. There's 3 or so main enemies and they've got about one or two cutscenes each. Their motives are either illogical or unclear or shallow.

The cardinal sin of FFXIII is the fact that the world of Cocoon is boring. Absolutely boring. There's nothing to do it in other than to move forward and fight monsters. What little "sidequests' there are, are just "Kill this monster here". Upgrading weapons and armour is pointlessly, needlessly dragged out and doesn't do much. And the characters and their conversations are BORING. They just move down paths and attack things. They barely develop or grow at all - Hope DOES get less whiny and Lightning eventually decides to be a little bit less of a sour-puss, but aside from that, no development. CGI cutscenes are less about showing really emotional moments and are more about vomiting colour at the screen.

I play FF games for the world and the characters. FFXIII's worlds are sterile, quiet and boring. Colourful to be sure, but boring. There's no one to talk to. The main characters themselves don't have much of substance to say. Also, the emotional elements of the story are mishandled. Of what few NPCs there are, there is supposed to be one you care about saving. The thing is, the "bad" thing happens to the NPC before the game decides to explain the backstory of said NPC. So the emotional weight of the "bad thing" that happens has been completely removed. You can't care that a particular character got turned all crystally, when the game hasn't yet given you a reason to care, and when it finally does, it loses all weight because you've already shown them being turned into a crystal. You can't turn the NPC into a Crystal at almost the very beginning of the game and expect the audience to give a shit, when you only give the NPC-turned-crystal a backstory MANY MANY MANY HOURS LATER! It's like if I began a film showing the love interest being shot, and then only decide to show anything of substance about the character 50 minutes later!

I freaking LOVED Final Fantasy VIII, IX and X. IX in particular is my second favourite game of all time. OF ALL TIME. FFXIII is the complete and polar opposite of nearly every FF game that has ever come before it. If it didn't have Chocobos in it, or summons, you wouldn't even know it was an FF game.

I thought that both X and XIII were just okay. XII was shit.

I think the game is good, but it's easy to sum up what's wrong with the game.
 

1. No towns (don't bitch at me about this, it literally made every single environment feel exactly the same)
2. 20 hour tutorial before the full battle experience is unlocked
3. Vanille (although she is the obligatory FF girl who is a total pain in the ass, her accent was what pissed me off the most. The non-Australian VA for Yun Fang did a better job than Vanille's Aussie VA to play characters that are [I'm assuming] supposed to speak/be Australian)
   

I thought XIII was one of the worst RPG's I've ever played. But I also wasn't a fan of X.

As someone who has been playing it a ton recently, I can say that its biggest issue is its linearity and lack of variety in things to do. The battle system stopped being exciting after the first 10 hours or so, and now fighting just seems more like a chore than anything really.

The story isn't difficulty to comprehend at all. As far as the "first 20 hours is a tutorial" thing, I don't think that's true. The game just takes forever to roll out features. I wasn't able to change the party leader until I was 25 hours into the game. I didn't reach the part of the game where it finally opens up until 30 hours.

The whole thing just seems unnecessarily long. Every level is literally one giant corridor.

Right now the only thing compelling me to finish the game is the story and characters. I care about both of those and it's disappointing that I have to go through millions of identical fights to get to each cutscene. I found a website a few weeks ago with every cutscene in the game and almost considered experiencing the story that way because I wouldn't have to spend hours and hours and hours fighting the same enemies over and over again. But ultimately I decided that seeing the ending for myself would be more satisfying.

Played about two hours worth. Hated the characters, their problems, their hairstyles and their inability to go in a direction other than forward. Would not be surprised to see Joel Schumacher given credit as a consultant.

If its the one im thinking of (damn you to hell numbered sequels, I can't tell any of you apart)

The entire first half of the game, which is a really long time, felt like a tutorial.

Once you get out of this "tutorial mode" it was pretty awesome though.

As someone else said, the villains, first and foremost, are given basically no screen time at all. If I recall correctly the antagonists are usually given just a cutscene or two before you end up fighting them, and before you meet them you usually know absolutely nothing about them. How am I supposed to want to kill the bad guys when I never ever see the bad guys or know who they are? It's a recipe for making the game dreadfully boring and having absolutely no attachment to that world.
 
The combat was a mash-X fest because it moved too quickly to actually carefully plan anything unless you turned the speed down from the default. There's no reason why I can't switch party members I control in battle, since I can switch the character I control out of battle. The role-switching mechanic in combat was so absurd and restrictive that it felt like it was something they added in at the last minute. Why can't Medic attack? I know it wouldn't be strong, but why can't  I at least do something except spam cures over and over again as the default action? The Medic is actually incapable of a physical attack? Fuck you. The roles in combat felt like they were given no thought whatsoever and added totally last minute to feel like there was more to that game than there was.
 
And the Crystarium system, oh my God. What a big fat lie that entire system was from the beginning. SE was basically all "HEY GUYS, IT'S LIKE THE SPHERE GRID, YOU LIKED THAT, RIGHT?" Yes. I did like that. I liked that because it gave me customization and I could actually alter my character any way I wanted to on one big grid. The Crystarium system is just a straight line in each individual role, with a couple diverging paths here and there, but having a skill and attribute upgrading system without any customization whatsoever makes the entire Crystarium pointless. It could've just automatically moved along the crystarium grid with each level, and I never would've noticed. To compare the Crystarium system to the sphere grid is total fucking insult to the greatness that was the sphere grid.
 
That's kind of the problem with FFXIII. Everything about that game was scaled back to a very empty and simplistic level, and then it feels like they decided, "Uh, okay. We need to do something about this." and then they added fake customization. Fake actual battle controls. Everything about that game basically plays itself. FFXIII was a game essentially on auto-pilot. The game even decides what the most effective spell or ability would be given the situation at any given moment in battle for you.  You can't even use the characters you yourself want for about 20 hours (it was nearly 25, for me) into the game, and though this is couched in supposed story reasons, I still felt even more completely out of any control of this supposed RPG.
 
All that keeps FFXIII from actually playing itself are you moving up with the analog stick when out of battle, holding down the X button on the crystarium grid while it advances in it's predetermined lines, and pressing x to use what the computer decides are the most effective attacks.
 
I really dislike it when people try to point to FFX, a game that alot of people consider the last good FF game, or the last FF game they truly liked (as I do), but 13 isn't like FFX at all. 
 
There were towns in FFX, there were not towns in FFXIII. 
You could travel on the overworld in FFX to go places, sometimes secret places, and explore where you wanted to. You are essentially in a tube throughout FFXIII. 
The combat system in FFX was infinitely more strategic than FFXIII, which was a total mash fest, as opposed to FFX agility-based turn system where you could switch around characters and equipment as you like. 
Summons in FFX were actually worthwhile combat characters, as opposed to the utterly fucking useless wastes of time they are in FFXIII.
There were more optional areas in X than in 13 by far, as 13's only set of sidequests seemed to boil down to "Hey, go here and kill something and then you can go somewhere else to kill something!"
Villains are actually given screen time in FFX and there are meaningful plot twists.
The skill and upgrade system in FFX in the sphere grid is infinitely more customizable and open than the crystarium system, which is basically a "hold the X button to spend experience until you're done" system.
There are minigames in FFX, there are none in FFXIII. 
Weapon upgrading in FFX is far deeper than in FFXIII, as X allows you to mix and match different stat and effect boosts (for an actual graphics change in battle for the look at the weapons) and XIII allows you to just collect a bunch of random materials to level up equipment a couple times and usually with just one additional effect on it when you're done.
 
I find it highly offensive that you compare XIII to X. FFX is a categorically superior game. FFXIII is an art asset display with no depth.

It's one of my favorite games released in recent years.

@FourWude: many people, including me, like FFX-2. I like it much more than FFX in fact

@FourWude: many people, including me, like FFX-2. I like it much more than FFX in fact