Final Fantasy XIII

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?

sothis said:

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

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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.

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. :/

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.

just added a line item for Hope.

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

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!

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

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.

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)

according to a review i read, theres a small period of time when it's non linear, but then goes straight back to linear till the end.

Yeah, Gran Pulse. But 10 chapters before that? Hmm, nah. Think I'll just save up and wait on Alan Wake. In the meantime, Mass Effect 2 and the new Dragon Age expansion can keep me entertained or awhile.

I've only played it for a little while, dont mind the movie scenes. (Ha, I never playd XenoSaga but XenoGears was like..The Bible in a RPG form as far as nonstop f'ing reading goes). But ya so far the game isn't very impressive, thy tried for that fast pace battle sequence thing and that just made it pretty snore...the multiple, endless tutorials as welll. Far as FF games go, i'm not very impressed by it within the little time that i've played it, where as most have had me hooked within the first 30 minutes. Eh will try to finish the game in 2 days or so, so i can send it back (Gottta love GAmefly) intime to pickup God of War 3.

Zakiel said:

I can't think of anyway to phrase this acceptably, so I'll just post quotes from here, which has quotes from the Square team.

Suffice to say, the expectations of the majority differed from reality.

Though, I think that this "moving away from the classic RPG approach that is Dragon Quest" is going to be increasingly common.

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Dear Lord,

Please don't destory our beloved RPG genre.

Signed,
The collective masses.

Many game designers looking to enter the RPG genre should review past games like Dragon Quest, Morrowind and Fallout etc. and really delve into their gameplay. Instead of trying to "revolutionise" a pre-existing genre with impressive cinematics, just immerse me in a world that will help me see that world through the eyes of my character. Morrowind did that perfectly; no impressive graphics and cinematics were needed to accomplish more than what most RPG games, these days, have.

Anything by BethSoft and Bioware is exceptional, and it does it without the need for risque experimentation. Heck, even the older FF games managed it. So why change?

But... there's nothing really wrong with the story. I think it's great, anyway. There may be a lot of backlash over the linearity and the lack of certain conventions like towns and such, but with the plot, characters, battle system and customization it's more than making up for that imo. So what if it's not the next WA3, I'm enjoying it and that's all that ultimately matters to me :P

WA3? Say whaaaat!

Hmm, you have swayed me sir. I may get this. Then get a Playstation and FFVII and IX (it will inevitably make me want to play those FF games again).

Well, I was referring to WA3 in the sense of how non-linear it can be, actually forcing the player to go out and explore on their own at some points and encouraging it in general... which is clearly the polar opposite of XIII -.-' (Though WA3 is one of my favorite RPGs besides, in part due to that fact)

And if you have a PS3, (or maybe a psp as well?) you can download VII for probably-cheaper than it would be to track it down in physical form. IX is likely soon to come, since they did follow and do VIII a few months ago. Though I don't know if XIII will necessarily make you want to play them, as the gameplay is so different, and whatever it is that makes something "feel" like a FF game is pretty nebulous and probably varies from person to person.

Nah, I was actually asking what WA3 is? :P I am PS3-less. Had a PS2, then bought the first Xbox and sold it. Never got the PS3, but I'm thinking of now that some good titles have been released (Hard Rain, Metal Gear franshise (played 1+2)). So thanks for the heads up there.

I'm about 3 hrs in. And it's my first FF game to be completely truthful since I never owned a PS1 or PS2 as a kid. I'm enjoying it and I like the story. I want to send Hope into a very bad place. I'm so annoyed with him that my creativity for very bad things is over the extreme.

If you bought the PS3 version, there's a little paper that has a sign up for the FFIX beta. And the beta will be occuring on both the PC and PS3.

I'm honestly enjoying the game but.. big BUT here... it feels as if I'm watching a movie and not playing a game. Like there's a total of 10 minutes worth of game play and then a 10 minute video. I do like Lightning atm though, she's the best of the bunch and Sazh is getting better as a character. I'm really disappointed in the voice acting for Vanille though. Really disappointed. I wish there was an option to play this in Japanese audio with English subtitles because her sound is so annoying. Snow is an idiot through and through atm. I can't stand his current demeanor.

Hope.... is like Raki.. atm. His **** better clear up or I'll purposely kill him in every encounter.

Zakiel said:

WA3 = Wild Arms 3?

I don't understand your point. I thought it was mediocre myself.
Then again, the only Wild Arms I really liked was the first one.

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Yeah, Wild Arms 3 for the PS2. Off-topic, but to explain what I mean by encouraging exploration: (non-spoiler)