Final Fantasy XIII

[sothis]

reasons why this game utterly fails:

1. no gold from battles (and extremely little found in the field)

2. total hand holding (no secret objects, etc)

3. essentially a linear dungeon crawler with 85 movies every hour - and just think, i thought xenosaga used to be bad!

4. you don't talk to npcs, they just mumble **** as you walk by

5. when you go to save, it defaults to a NEW SAVE SLOT rather than your most recent save. for this reason i have about 15 save games because i kept just using the one it landed on for quite some time (like, well, ANY GAME EVER does it?)

6. no more stores, and no more armor - just a 'store' option at save points

7. health replenishes after every battle (is your target audience 5 years old? they can't handle health management?)

8. i don't think i've ever had this many battle tutorials spread out over 4 hours of a game. protip: if you have to do this many tutorials, your gameplay is doing something wrong

9. the character poses in the menu are flat out ridiculous - was the goal to make the menu as laughable as possible?

10. save spots occur every 2 minutes or so. literally. so even if you die it doesn't really matter, since you likely saved recently. i again repeat the 'meant for 5 year olds' sentiment.

11. Hope is the most obnoxious emo whiner that's been in a game in a long time. SHUT THE **** UP

practically everything about this game isn't a final fantasy, nor is it an rpg meant for anyone older than elementary school students. calling this game an rpg is a gross misrepresentation - you dungeon crawl for 30 minutes through a linear track with no surprises (love games where you can explore around and find secret items/etc? not this one.), then watch several movies, then fight, then go to your next linear track. at least games like eternal sonata, which also are totally linear, still have somewhat hidden items and towns that you can relax and do a little bit of interesting stuff in.

i'm not a FF fangirl - in fact, i'm obsessive about dragon quest and tend to have zero excitement for new FF games and think they're generally overrated. still, i expect a certain baseline of content when i buy an rpg, and FF13 is no better (and actually WORSE, somehow) than games like Grandia in which towns are useless (don't worry, in FF, there's no towns at all! just areas where people hang out during your linear adventuring), and/or where all you do is fight **** endlessly.

i'm 8 hours in. i'll continue playing till i beat it, but jesus christ was this a disappointment to the nth degree. wtf were you thinking, square?

side note: i now know which game sites to never frequent again - calling FF13 a perfect 10 is just a ****ing joke. really?

[Lemur]

Originally Posted by sothis

side note: i now know which game sites to never frequent again - calling FF13 a perfect 10 is just a ****ing joke. really?

Listening to reviewers in the first place is usually a bad idea, Imo. Remember that F.E.A.R. scored consistent 10/10 from most places. >_<

I do, admittedly, usually agree with Kotaku when it does reviews, but otherwise I try to try a game before I buy it.

[sothis]

i actually didn't read any reviews before buying it, but after the fact seeing 8-10 scores is just laughable. if it was any other rpg i might do research first, but after 12 games i think it's fair to say there's a certain baseline of quality you can expect from a FF title. 13 i guess is the first to not hit that baseline. :/

[Omurqi]

This pretty much confirms my fears. The few reviews / blogposts I've read about it mocked it pretty badly, and with reason it seems. Too bad, as it really looked good.

[sothis]

just added a line item for Hope.

[Kenikki]

I'm still so getting it. To try it out for myself.

[sothis]

i dont blame you - even had i read bad reviews ahead of time i still would have gotten it, as i definitely have (had?) that baseline expectation about FF games - it totally should have been good :/

post here with what you think once you play it!

[Elindil]

dam i wanted to play it too...now im dissapointed

[Panta]

I was hoping to revive my desire for FF games, but after hearing this review I think I'll save my dollar. I was watching a friend play it yesterday and couldn't help but think, "this is a Final Fantasy game?"
Didn't play X, XI or XII (want to play X since I liked the characters in X-2 and it's met with rave fanbase) and I've only before played VII, VIII and IX (all of which I thoroughly enjoyed).

The main aspect I enjoyed in the FF games was towns! I loved walking around, searching for secrets, interacting with NPCs and relaxing. One thing about FFXIII I can vouch for is the cinematics; I expected nothing less from Square, but the gameplay just seems so mundane.

[Cetonis]

Probably around 15 hours or so in, and I am liking it so far, even though it is markedly different.

Though I'm certainly not a fan of super-linearity, the plot, battle system, ability system, etc. are good enough that I don't really mind that much. And I figure that, like with FFX, the non-linearity is going to come later on. (especially given a few of the things mentioned in the manual)