How in the holy fuck did this make it into the final game. They take away your weapons, warping, magic, and party members. You can't sprint. There's awful stealth. About 30 jump "scares" that are the same two things every time. You're fetching keycards. It lasts like two fucking hours. The whole slog feels it's out of a PS2 game and antithetical to the rest of the game, which would all be fine if it were 10 minutes and not two hours.

I feel like I should mention the completely useless information that Prompto is an MP, but there was absolutely no context, meaning, or consequences to that reveal. Maybe I'm not paying attention, but that kind of describes the whole story for me. Did this kill the game for anyone else?

It didn't kill the game for me, but yeah I agree it's a pretty damn terrible part of the game. I actually feel the story was kind of rushed towards the end, and then they pad that part out for some reason.. All in all after beating the game, I'm feeling extremely mixed on it, parts of it are very enjoyable but man there are some big problems with the game overall.

Yes, that's when I realised I actually hated that game - and I don't use that word lightly. You can see more opinions on the endgame here, once you are finished or don't care about the spoilers for the rest of the game.

I liked that part of the game but it certainly lasted way to long. It didn't kill the game for me and I still like it quite a lot but I really wish that chapter didn't last as long as it did. As far as the Prompto thing goes, it just falls into the same pile of things that felt like their expiation got cut from the game.

I really want a postmortem for this game. I need to know what the hell happened with this game.

It lasted a little long but I never really stealthed through it I just used the holy dodge to do damage so I didn't have to worry about the stealth.

That sounds like it would be genuinely fascinating especially when you consider that they scrapped the first iteration of this game for this. What the fuck was wrong with that version of the game that they would be happier to release this instead?

In any, looks like they're fixing this chapter among other things:

—Short-Term Goals

First, we will further increase the gameplay satisfaction level of Chapter 13. For that reason, we have already started work on many enhancements, such as significantly enhancing the power of ring magic and so on. We will announce details on these enhancements and when we plan to offer this update at a later time.

Gematsu has the full story over here with much more info if you wanna check it out.

Honestly, if the proceeding two chapters weren't so great the game would be below 13 in my rankings because of it. It really is that bad.

What in gods name were they thinking? The fight with Ravus at the end was good but Jesus Christ. It was something I'd expect from a shitty horror game on steam, not one of gamings most treasured franchises. Somehow they trumped themselves after the mess that was the Leviathan fight and the chapters after.

Im honestly still in shock that this is what they managed to create after all these years?

It's just too long. If it were cut in half I'd be fine with it. I was actually digging it in the early goings, because it was something different. Then I kept saying "oh it'll probably end right about now right?" And then it just kept going and going.

Also this is totally the way to go. If you forgo stealth and just Holy spam your way through it's not nearly as bad.

@babychoochoo: The sad thing is, being underpowered was the least of chapter 13's issues. If anything, it was the end result of all the proceeding chapters choppiness and poor design. "Fixing" chapter 13 would be nice but sadly won't solve anything in the grand scheme of things. I feel they need to just cut their losses and move on from this game.

Thankfully the open world is great otherwise I'd be worried for FF16 and Squeenix.

@mikachops: Oh, I totally agree, but I find an odd sort of comfort in them realizing that that chapter sucks and they're trying to do something...anything to make it better.

Also, I'm surprised to see people were not a fan of the Levi fight. I thought it was bad too (especially the first half before it turns into Dragonball where they just sorta throw you up against it and sorta shrug their shoulders at you like "you'll figure this shit out") but I figured it'd be something the internet would rave about, claiming it to be one of the best moments in the series.

The Ravus fight was cool, but only in terms of gameplay. I'm beginning to sound like a broken recored, but my main complaint about it was one of my main complaints about almost everyone and everything in that game. I spent that entire fight screaming, "I STILL DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU, GUY WHO HAS BEEN IN THIS GAME FOR ALL OF 1 1/2 CUTSCENES!"

I tanked the hits and used the big AoE spell to get though most of that chapter. Forgoing stealth is totally the way to go in that chapter.

Chapter 13 is not great. Everything about that chapter fell completely flat on its face but the biggest problem is the game deciding it needs to pick up nearly everything bad from an older-day Resident Evil game with multiple kinds of the same jump scare, fighting an awful camera while fighting with enemies, and a sizable amount of backtracking required to progress. I was hoping that Noctis would just pick up an assault rifle from one of the many armories I saw on my way to the top and the game just turned into Gears of War for a bit instead. I also shrugged at every major plot reveal. Prompto's secret reveal is kind of goofy and it had literally no impact other than "he can open doors in this dungeon". The Revas fight is take-it-or-leave-it because he had little characterization other than "Well, he's Luna's brother and he doesn't think you're fit to be King of Lucis until you prove it to him, so...". What I disliked most is when Ardyn reveals who he truly is- I kind of felt that for something so important it should've had a Kojima-style 10 minute cutscene explaining his origin in-depth, complete with pre-recorded footage of nukes and rockets from the 80's. Then again, at the time I didn't really care because I was glad that long slog through that area was over. As of this post I'm at chapter 14 so maybe I get to see more about Ardyn's character later on: He could use it given his role in the game.

I think your slander of PS2 games is highly unwarranted.

I liked that it answered general questions I had about Ardyn and the Empire. The gameplay was pretty bad but then I sucked a giant into a black hole and that was pretty cool. The black hole effect really is impressive. If I had any serious complaints it would be that it was too long and that the Prompto reveal made no sense and fell completely flat. No deal breakers though.

So after all the hubbub about this chapter I finally played it tonight and I must say I didn't find it bad in fact I liked what they "tried" to do. To have a whole chapter be a survivor horror game is interesting on paper but clearly they didn't execute it well or else more people would have enjoyed it. I will admit it did dragged on for far too long.

A few things that might have helped in my enjoyment of the chapter, I didn't stealth (the assault the base stealth missions were terrible, so I was not going to do that again), I ignored life drain (death) is it was weak, and spammed either holy or void. I was also level 99. So I could take most hits and keep trucking. And yeah the Promoto reavel makes no sense (especially if you watch Brotherhood as in his flahback there were no hints at that nor anywhere in this game). Then again Ardyn's reveal at the end of the chapter was stupid, Ravus storyline is convuluted (moreso if you watched Kingsglaive), hell the whole game's storyline from the Altassian chapter and onward just takes a nose dive.

But yeah that's my opinion on that chapter. The chapter I had hated tho was 10. Where you need to slow down for Ignis or get yelled at and everyone is being insufferable to one another.

From Chapter 9 forward, the pacing of the game gets really weird. It almost seems like they wanted to flesh out the imperial country (or countries) and Tenebrae but just never got to it. To me it feels like they had Chapters 1-9 completed and then they also completed the end of the game, and some big honcho at SE said 'yeah...we need this out in 2016,not 2018' and they just decided "let's put a train in that will hurry things to the end" . Given 2 more years , I think you would of seen another large landmass area for the empire. With that, I don't think the second half would of seemed so crazy.

I would of liked to seen Noctis dwell on Lunafreya's death more. . . Chapter 13 could of used more explanation around the Emperor,Ravus, and Prompto's background. Check the official guide for his lineage. Though I did like how Chapter 14 starts with Noctis 10 years older and in isolation. My interpretation is that it took him 10 years to come to terms that he needs to die in order to save the world. And also accept that everyone but him knew that was the path of the chosen. It's an interesting concept.

It's a bad chapter but the internet really made it out to be a much bigger gremlin than it turned out to be. The most damning thing about it is just that it was so terribly long and drawn out. Like forget the ring magic buffs or whatever they plan on doing just cut out a few of those floors.

I didn't hate it too much, but the length was an issue, along with the daemon dropping in every ten minutes.

It was my first Final Fantasy game and I still love it 97 hours later.

So I'm part way through the chapter and so far it's....fine? I think it has to do with me being totally over-leveled though (I'm 61 and the game recommends 38). I'm not even bothering with stealth, just using the dodge-damage to kill everything because I took the ability that grants me MP if I dodge well enough.

Just wondering if I should wait to play that chapter until after that patch ( who knows when that's going to be)?

@deathshroud: Meh, try your luck. Some people hate it. Some people are fine with it. You might be in the latter for all you know.

@deathshroud: its just a bit boring because of the length. I was reading news reports saying it was difficult? its not if you just use the ring to suck them into a vortex, ends fights in seconds ( L1+triangle, i think).

It's worse than the rest of the game (aside from Costlemark) but not really terrible or anything; it's mostly just kind of tedious; if they took the same concepts and tightened them down to like a 30-45 minute section that focused on using the ring in interesting ways it could've been good. I think that something like Tomb of the Giants is probably worse overall in terms of dumb design decisions, and that's not even the worst zone in Dark Souls (which is admittedly still a better game though perhaps not by a massive margin). If they let you fight infinitely at the end vs the demons and they got progressively harder up to like the hardest enemies in the game that would be pretty sweet though (I was level 80).

The gameplay of it didn't really bug me at all. It changed up things from the rest of the game, which is always welcome to me. What did annoy the shit out of me though, was they spent a good amount of the game hinting at the imperial capital, which had me wondering what the city was like and wanting to go there. Then we get there and proceed to spend the entire time inside a bland military base without so much as a window to see the actual environment of the thing

Like a lot of people said, I think the sheer length of the sequence is its worst feature. I didn't mind Ch. 13 I guess, but it certainly wasn't good. Will be interesting to see how SquareEnix plans to "fix" it. I heard they may buff the ring but like Maxi said, the screen-clearing ring spell makes things pretty manageable already? Maybe they'll just chop a few floors off the whole thing?

I never had too much trouble with chapter 13, i feel it did a good job making you feel powerless and weak. And the later parts of chapter 13 where you are running away from the giant red imp really make you feel relieved that you are reunited with your friends.

However, the only problem is that the whole set up is unclear. As much as i love Ardyn as a character/villain, how did he easily disable Noctis' power? Also the fact that you can still spam your healing items takes alway the sense of desperation. Maybe for Hard mode down the line chapter 13 would have item disabled too so you really feel desperate.

Overall, I rushed through it in like an hour. Its not the best of what SE has done but certainly it wasnt boring. But i do think its a necessary evil to show the degredation of humanity in the world and how its not all fun and games anymore in Lucis.

After finishing Chapter 13, my only real reaction was "this is what people were flipping their shit over?"

Was it too drawn out? Sure.

Game ruining? Y'all crazy.

Not a fan of this chapter and not a fan of how the whole Luna storyline is handled. The story is pretty bad and I did watch the anime and movie.

At least we got some solid Florence + The Machine tracks out of this game. I really soured on this game after chapter 9, I was liking it a lot too.

I'm a little late to the party as just got through it. That said:

What a waste.

I think there are some cool ideas in there, particularly some of the environmental story telling and design, like how the Emperor's robes are empty, so you know he's been demonized. But all of it is wasted with piss-poor story telling and being twice as long as it should have been. The open-world part of the game, while enjoyable from a gameplay perspective, didn't do nearly enough heavy lifting on the story front to lay the groundwork. To whit:

1. The whole Prompto MT thing comes completely out of left field. It was never established, mentioned, or even freaking implied that he an orphan and had an unknown barcode on his arm. It was the solution to a mystery the player didn't even know existed. The way they had the party act like it isn't any big deal, followed by Prompto's surprised look almost has me thinking this was some badly executed meta-joke by the devs. Like, "yeah, we know this is absurdly bad."

2. The Ravus-monster should have had more impact than it did. Cool design, but the game completely failed to establish him as any kind of meaningful character. He variably shuffled back and forth between stone-cold killer, caring for his sister, and begin some kind of tragic anti-hero, but the game never settled on which. Part of this is that they also completely failed to establish Luna as a meaningful character.

3. Ditto with the Emperor monster. Both unimpressive as a monster, and completely forgotten about as a character after the cutscene in like, Chapter 3.

4. They seemed to have forgotten that they needed to actually explain the demons, so you get a bunch of notes. NOTES. They couldn't even be arsed to provided freaking audio-logs. The hell of it is, it's sort of neat survival-horror idea you don't see very much in Final Fantasy games. They needed to lean harder into the horror of people getting painfully transformed by black hell-goo.

5. Maybe some of that shit with Ardyn should have been put before the very tail end of the game? I honestly don't see what people are on about with him being a great villain. Beyond having a voice actor who does a really good "Evil British Guy (™)," I don't see what the fuss is about. Granted, he's creepy as hell when he goes full demon. Then you kill him. Lame.

There's a whole lot more than that that could go into as well. Plus, it feels like this should have been the dungeon at the mid-way point of the game, not right at the end. Honestly, I got the World of Ruin, thought it was really cool and moody for about 5 minutes, and then was supremely disappointed when I realized I wouldn't get to explore any of it.