Hmmm that review confirms a few of my fears. Namely that the environments are sort of badly planned. A lot of the screens, while pretty impressive, nevertheless made the environments seem like big, bland expanses with things of interest sort of plopped here and there really conspicuously. There's an image of the Dead Dunes that exemplifies this. I don't care about graphical quality, but the quality of the design is kind of important.
The side quests sound similarly mundane to XIII-2's. So many of the sidequests in that game felt like the kinds of challenges you'd make in the park creator in a Tony Hawk game.
I thought the story in XIII-2 had some really strong points. The showdown at the end was really well executed, and despite the fact that the convolution of the plot sometimes made it difficult to really know what was at stake, the end game still managed to be really powerful. What I can't gather then from any of the reviews and impressions is whether LR's narrative has similar "good moments" or whether it's just a mess through and through.
It also seems like Lightning's become less of a character or a person and more of a sex-object, not to mention that any nuance in the script seems to have been replaced with action-hero one-liners that most western games are pretty intolerable because of.
Finally, I can't really ascertain from the reviews and impressions whether or not the doomsday clock is frustrating or not really much of an issue. How you cope with it seems to depend on how you play.
I feel sort of obliged to play this game eventually, but I might just stick with the soundtrack until the actual game's going cheap. Actually, the thing I'm looking forward to most is the soundtrack.
Nevertheless, I kind of feel that if you want this game to fail, you shouldn't really be reviewing it. I think wanting a game to fail and reviewing it is fine if that game ought to fail (perhaps it's horrendously sexist or racist, or just distasteful in general), but I don't necessarily think LR is one of those games. FF games have always been about doing and trying new things, and even if those new things don't turn out to be that good, I still think the effort should be appreciated. It's very unusual to see a triple-A company experiment or migrate outside of comfort zones. It goes without saying then that such conservatism is not a good thing - it's only practiced for the sake of profit, not creativity.
One last thing: people complaining about Ali Hillis' voice work should really be directing the blame towards the directors, not Hillis herself - we already know she's talented enough. Good direction plays a huge part in the quality of a performance.
