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[z1ggy]

I would give it a 6/10.

Awesome visuals and OST. The battle system is good but lacks some sense of tactics (there's some fights in the game that are hard and you need to think what ar eyou doing, but they are a few sadly).

Most characters are forgettable...Snow starts being annoying but in the end i kinda like the guy. Fang is awesome. Lightning kinda vanish from the game in the second half...Vanille is terrible, worst character i ever meet in a rpg. The general design of characters is kinda awfull.

It feels like i was playing a J-Pop adventure instead of an rpg. I enjoyed some parts of the game tho.

 

[Sanctuary]

It's the worst thing ever to happen to the series if you don't count FF2. On its own, it's not a steaming pile of shit, but it doesn't deserve to have the Final Fantasy name associated with it. That's where all of the negativity comes from. It was the new "next-gen" Final Fantasy, and coming from FFX/FFXII it had a lot to live up to. And it failed in every single area aside from graphics.

Oh, and it easily had some of the most annoying and obnoxious characters in any of the Final Fantasy games.

 

[Kacho]

I disagree. I thought the combat system and graphics were the only good thing about Final Fantasy XIII. The characters and music were either terrible or forgettable. The pacing and level design were piss poor. The story was beyond awful. Taken as a whole, FFXIII was a bad game and a terrible FF game. A shame really.

 

[thewhitehawk]

I'll be honest with you guys, to me Final Fantasy XIII and its spinoffs are the culmination of all the emphasis of style vs substance. As an RPG it's shallow. You play nearly absolutely no role in how your character is built and acts and to pass through battles you have to follow predetermined patterns classes instead of managing actions between different classes.

The world building is non-existent, the lore is confusing convoluted and even if you dedicate yourself to learn every little piece of it there is it is still shallow and stupid, but you have to dig through the pretentious bibles of text to get there.

Op claims that on FFX you spent a lot time pressing X, selecting attack. What I'd like to know is what he did immensely different on Final Fantasy XIII in its over-10-hour "tutorial" because I really don't recall doing anything other than pressing X or cringing during the many cutscenes.

The only character with any semblance of character is Sazh, he seems to be the only character in the universe with any sense of place and of the absurdity of it all and just wants to basically survive, but I don't know if he can even be considered a good character by himself, or if he's just a better character by comparison or because he has a tiny adorable chocobo hiding in his hair.

Despite the wonderous HD graphics and wonderful art, it is wasted on what is an extremely linear progress route marred with invisible walls the likes we haven't seen in games since the early 2000s.

Then you have a completely unbalanced combat mechanic whereas if you start a battle in "stealth" you can beat it in less than a minute, and if you don't the same battle against the same enemies can take upwards of 10 minutes to finish against the very same enemies.

I struggled to reach the end of the game because I really wasn't enjoying it at all, but then came the cherry to put on top of it all. Someone at Square Enix decided it was a wonderful idea for you to gameover if the team's leader dies, which I hadn't realised since I had never had that happen until late game. I endured... and then they decided to put an enemy in the game that casts death on a team member and if he happens to cast it on the leader, it's gameover. Not only is that unfairly punishing but it's one of the most moronic design decisions I've ever seen in a Final Fantasy game. I took it out of my PS3's tray and never put it back since.

If you like Final Fantasy XIII I'm glad for you, but compared to what Final Fantasy used to be what it used to stand for, to me, it is the biggest thorn in the entire franchise and I would prefer if it had never existed, since apparently Squenix has learned very little since in the next main entry in the series they seem to only have replaced the corridors with a long road and the cast of annoying female characters and Sazh with a cast of J-Pop singers.

 

[Trigonometrize.]

I'd give it an 8. I loved the story of XIII. It wasn't confusing to me and it had me engaged all the way through. The battle system is ingenious and is more well utilized than a lot of other Final Fantasy games and their respective battle systems. To the people than argue it's simplistic and press x to win, if us two were to face a difficult boss with the XIII battle system I guarantee I will destroy you. After playing through the game a couple times it's apparent to me that there's a lot of depth and tricks to it. Linearity also never bothered me. It worked well with the narrative.

Characters are mostly bad though, and that's really where this game just crashes and burns. Hope, Vanille, the owl man, pretty much all side characters... terrible.

Also, the game is absolutely beautiful. Still the best looking PS3 game IMO.

 

[Kanann]

6/10

- too linear
- too much friendship is magic, that make characters and story stupid
- forced character's status/ability customization
- if you don't have interest to do side quests 80% of battle in this game are fixed strategy
- 0 replay value
- I'm not a fan of Hamauzu's musics, mix bag for me

 

[Jonm1010]

You aren't wrong, OP. The game might have been disappointing as a Final Fantasy game, and it did to some stuff wrong, but it's by no means a "bad" game.

I don't think people understand what "bad" games are anymore. It's time to pull out some PS2/Wii Shoverlware or some of the turds on XBLA so that people can understand the difference between "bad" and "I don't like thing".

I think the age of AAA games and ultra-informed customers fueled by immediate feedback through before release impressions, before release reviews, metacritic and GAF have made it hard to successfully sell shovelware anymore. Gamers are too informed and smart to fall for the old tricks.

At the same time it has made those truly original and groundbreaking games more hard to come by because companies want to stick to safe formulas that they know work. Square-Enix is one of the most guilty of these. Except even worse they over-respond to gaming fads or trends.

 

[Chizzanger]

I played the game for about 30 minutes and then realized the only thing I had done up until that part was hold up on the left thumbstick and press A. I promptly turned off my 360, and returned the game to my brother.

 

[Mackmannen]

Loved the endgame/side quest made the entire game for me the rest i didn't like that much. Also loved the adamantoise eden farming. My god they are big creatures and i feels so good when you take them down so fast after all your preparations.

 

[LegendofDragoonLives]

It was a good game but a poor final fantasy. The expectations are higher for FF. It was my first FF I ever beat. XIII-2 was the second. I can't finish the earlier ones for some reason. I keep trying and end up moving on to another game.

 

[Mass_Pincup]

I disagree. FFXIII was my first FF (except for Crisis core which I loved) because I was too young to buy FFX and when FFXII released I didn't have a PS2 anymore. It was the game that made me buy a PS3 in 2007. I didn't get past the fight with the "horse" because I wasn't having fun. It's the most disappointing game I ever played.

 

[jersoc]

I think gameplay wise, they got better as the sequels went on. I like that square at least takes risks in terms of gameplay though. if every FF was the same that shit would get old. I don't want every rpg to be turned based. that is slow and tiring. they should have just trusted their audience more and keep the mechanics open way, way earlier. we don't need hand holding here, devs.

 

[botty]

When did Square Enix become a C student?

 

[Scipio]

LOL no.

The characters are shit, the story is a mess, the gameplay's utter shit.

And that opening soundtrack isn't even that good.

A solid 3/10.

 

[Coffee Dog]

I will give the game some credit: Sazh was cool. He wasn't a stereotype like I feared, had good motivation that the player could actually feel some small bit of empathy for even if it was cliched, and was generally the only bright spot in an otherwise godawful cast.

Too bad it seemed the game never gave a shit about him, as all the focus was on Lightning (why) Snow (WHY) Hope (WHY) and Vanille (FUCKING WHY)

 

[genjiZERO]

Sure the gameplay and graphics are nice, but it's everything else that's shit. Since 10, the series has been overly focused on brooding teenagers, love stories and series cliches (I for one am sick of crystals). They need to go back to basics and write a simply and stripped down story.

 

[vicissitudes]

knowing that this is one of the biggest and most prolific gaming forums in the industry and then to come here and see someone describe Final Fantasy XIII's Gameplay: 10/10 completely un-ironically makes me weep.

we are all doomed. because fuck games with any real complexity lets just all buy the games that play themselves

Yeah, who would have thought that one of the biggest gaming forums can have someone who actually enjoys a battle system you don't?

Maybe a battle system doesn't need to be super-complex in order to be fun? Case in point, the Persona series?

I happen to prefer selecting "character X casts spells" and have the system cast them, versus having to manually enter in the command to cast each spell. In that sense, FFXIII and FFXII's battle systems were both fantastic.

For those who didn't like the battle system: did you like FFXII's?

 

[Chie Satonaka]

I don't think you understand that something can be shit without it being shovelware/big rigs/sonic 06 tier awful.

Nope, I understand that just fine.

It still doesn't change my statement. Ninjabread Man is a bad game. Final Fantasy XIII, regardless of how some people feel about it personally, is not objectvely bad in that sense.

I'm saying this as someone who recognizes the game is flawed, but feels the good outweighs the bad. My favorite game in the series is FFV.

Ultimately, I'm arguing semantics, but it bugs me to see how many people shit on the game for being "bad" when it really comes down to "I didn't like this this and this". They aren't the same thing.

Some people didn't like The Avengers. The Avengers is not a bad movie.

It's a Destiny-esque 3/5. Looks great, terrific combat, story is garbage, and it doesn't get good for about 20 hours.

I feel like this is a better assessment. If someone were to call it ultimately mediocre, I can't really argue that. I feel the same way about FFX and FFXII, and everyone loves those. :3

Spoiler

I actually really enjoyed the combat, though.

 

[Coffee Dog]

Yeah, who would have thought that one of the biggest gaming forums can have someone who actually enjoys a battle system you don't?

Maybe a battle system doesn't need to be super-complex in order to be fun? Case in point, the Persona series?

I happen to prefer selecting "character X casts spells" and have the system cast them, versus having to manually enter in the command to cast each spell. In that sense, FFXIII and FFXII's battle systems were both fantastic.

For those who didn't like the battle system: did you like FFXII's?

The Persona series has far, far more complex combat than this game. It's not the most complex jrpg around, no, but it does a whole lot more than this one.

 

[Tempesta di Fuoco]

So uh, the post complaining about "Press X to attack, repeat 1000 times" for FFX...It's really no different than Auto Attacking for FFXIII. In FFX and FFXIII, you can just mash the same thing over and over again, but the battles will take a lot longer and your attacks will be super ineffective if you don't have the right character or paradigm out.

FFXIII is pretty much the exact same game as FFX in terms of how it works. Except instead of switching out characters to be more effective with a certain enemy type, you switch out your paradigm with another one to be more effective.

Both games you can just mash and mash without doing either paradigm shifts or character switching, but you'll be far less effective in the end.

What makes FFX better, to me, is that mashing attack and not switching characters or skills/spells fucks you up far more than not switching Paradigm shifts and just mashing auto attacks in FFXIII. In FFXIII, I coasted through literally the first 11 or so chapters of FFXIII with mashing Auto-Attack and never changing my paradigm out of Diversity mode. Except when they force you to during those AWFUL Eidolon battles.

 

[Myriadis]

I agree with that. Count me in as one who enjoyed the game, even though it isn't close to my top 10s.

 

[Saiyan-Rox]

Chapter 11 is the worst part because it totally kills the momentum.

I still have nightmares over that boss........hour spending taking his health down then casts doom....I could cry.


Tbh the battle system in XII is a hell of alot worse than XIII's imo I remember getting XII on release day with the special edition hardbook guide. DIdn't even open the guide think I still have it somewhere sealed up because I couldn't get into it.

 

[Rising_Hei]

To me FFXIII is a game of contrast, 9/10 in some areas with 5/10 in others...
This game would have been awesome with a proper extended edition which fixed lots of its issues, SE had originally planed this but instead, they changed it to make crappy sequels c_c

 

[Digital-Hero]

The game is more of a 6.5 to 7.0 for me. The great musical score and decent graphics appear to cloud the judgment of others.

 

[Mman235]

Chapter 11 is the worst part because it totally kills the momentum.

It doesn't, though. At that point which I assume everyone is referring to when it "opens up," it's the same exact game only you can run around a big ass field but engage in the same exact gameplay you've been experiencing up until that point. There is no 20 hour tutorial. It's like other games how there are gradually more and more additions to the game mechanics as you go. The story and gameplay begins when the game does, not 20 hours in. At the 20-25 hour point you simply go to a new environment that is more open, but there are still similar, linear paths within that area and it doesn't really last that long unless you're doing sidequests, and after a little while you're back to more linear paths. There is no magic moment where the game becomes a good game. I thought the entire game was good, but when I got to the open environment I didn't feel this sensation of "oh my god everything about this game just got so much better!"

Heck I liked the game much more up to that point, at least you were learning new mechanics during that twenty hour build up. The moment you reach Pulse however you learned everything there is to know and the game basically says now start grinding for twenty hours because fuck you.

These; the game gets worse when you reach the pseudo-open grindfest, not better.

 

[deadcelledo]

The game isn't horrible, it definitely has good things (music, visuals) but it felt so disjointed, like the artist sat down and started creating concepts and then slap them all together, I still enjoyed it, but is not the kind of game I would play twice...

Spoiler

maybe when I build my pc

 

[Meowster]

A game that has little glitches, a competent battle system, great graphics, great music, and excellent production values at least gets a 6. A 5 is a playable game. XIII is playable and not glitchy. It's automatically a 5 and it's also a 6. Characters like Fang and Sazh bring it up to a 7. The storyline is very good but horrifically and sometimes brutally told.. which brings it to an 8. The lack of replayability makes it go down .5. Thus a 7.5.

OP is right. XIII is a well-made game, just disappointing. It's hatred is exaggerated and it getting two additional sequels makes it even more hated when it was a divisive game to begin with.

 

[Menchi]

I enjoyed FFXIII. I'd give it an 8'ish. It was a let down for a Final Fantasy, but still a great game with incredible production values. Just takes so long to get going.

 

[silvermember]

I would give it an 8/10.

I will say OP you are not going to convince a lot of people here though. I think FF13 is just a victim of the lack of many console/PC RPG combine with the realization that the FF series have progressed past their interest. I think most of the hate are from players that hate to realize the game series has progressed past their taste. And there are others that have never played the game and just feel like jumping on the hate train.

Except for some questionable character voices (vanille) and snow being a complete hero archetype, it is a good game.

 

[brandonh83]

These; the game gets worse when you reach the pseudo-open grindfest, not better.

I don't think it gets worse, I just think this idea that the game gets good after 20 hours makes zero sense. I do sort of think that since the game had a linear approach for so long that they should have maybe tried to find other ways to make that work better and stick with it instead of suddenly throwing you into a wide open space. I think that perhaps if they kept it linear but made it more fun and gave it better pacing that it would have worked much better than adding nothing more than a perceptive change later on. Pulse was more interesting than Cocoon but only because of the backstory, which justified why they went there, but Cocoon also had a more varied set of locales.

But yes, the problem with the linearity was the pacing and that they were clearly not confident in it. XIII-2 and Lightning Returns are much better games overall as they had a lot more focus and confidence.

 

[vicissitudes]

When did Square Enix become a C student?

Square Enix was never an A student for me. People act like other Final Fantasy games are amazing and 13 is terrible, and that's just not the case. All the ones I've played were flawed, but enjoyable, 13 perhaps a bit more flawed.

 

[Relaxed Muscle]

Here's my review of FF XIII.

- Linear as fuck

Dungeons are boring, with just a few branching prts with largely useless items. The worst of it, is the sensation you are on an endless track and you can never leave, even when the game opens, (that is nothing else that a big empty area in which you can only do stupid hunt subquests), you never get rid of that feeling. The structure of the game is incredibly rigid, moreso than FF X or even KH2, which is another of these infamous examples of SE trend of make everything a corridor.

- The story, and characters, has a lot of potential but is wasted

Yeah, a FF focused on it's characters is not a bad idea, instead of the typical "save the world" plot. It worked really well on TV shows, some of the best shows out there make special emphasis on it's characters above everything else. But XIII ends doing a very poor job out of it, I remember Toriyama an co. citing shows like Lost as an inspiration, but they couldn't reach what it made that show so great, specially in these earlier seasons.

All characters fell flat and they barely change, or change on a meaningful way. Lightning gets so much hate, partially, because she's barely nothing else than an angry bitch, we are show some more deep when she hangs with Hope (best part of the game), but the writters, never really flesh out her character, she just goes from angry bitch to slightly less angry bitch.

Other characters suffers from this as well, alongside that the relationships between them are handled awfully bad, that sequence between Snow and Hope is one of the worst of the game, but is just another example than if XIII had a decent writing staff it could have been pretty amazing, because the idea behind it "a character hating so much another character that he wants to kill him" could have led to very interesting scenarios.

- Endgame is a joke

Yeah, you want to get 100% of the game? Prepare to fight the SAME enemy 100k times. Because XIII designers were so smart than the only way to get the best weapons,money and exp, is fighting that "one enemy".

Oh did I tell you that the endgame consist of the SAME fucking hunts and one shitty dungeon?

XIII is really content starved, there's no minigames, no optional locations except one fucking dungeon, nothing and what's worst is not really worth the time.


That said, graphics are good, and the battle system is fun although is not fully exploited to it's maximum potential, like so many things with this game.

6/10


Edit: BTW all people complaining about Gambits on XII have to understand is OPTIONAL, you are letting to play the game by itself, because you want.

 

[Boogybro]

Play this in the background for maximum effect: FFXIII Opening

How about no.

The music is literally 1 of about 2 things I like about the whole game. Everything else is just streamlined nonsense and everything I dislike about the direction FF seems to have taken.

That being said, it's not garbage. I'd give it a solid 6/10.

 

[PseudoViper]

it's a solid A for effort I'll give it that

 

[Altairre]

I just couldn't get past the nothingness that were the first 20 hours or so. And then there is Vanille and oh god I hate that character so much.

 

[MikeE21286]

I actually pretty much agree with all your points

 

[computers putin']

Outside of the music and graphics I found it to be a genuinely bad game, 5/10

 

[Rising_Hei]

I just couldn't get past the nothingness that were the first 20 hours or so. And then there is Vanille and oh god I hate that character so much.

The dub doesn't help it to be honest, she isn't as annoying in japanese

 

[Tygamr]

I liked it quite a bit. Not my favorite FF game, but also not my least favorite. I'd give it an 8 overall- my biggest issues with it were some parts of the story and the dialouge that were either poorly written or tacky. It's a little off-putting when the game switches from a serious tone to a goofy lighthearted tone in an instant.

More exploration would have been nice, though to be honest, I wasn't too terribly upset by the lack of towns. Was just a little bit bummed. Gran Pulse was a little bit much though- suddenly the game opens up and just leaves you there to figure out what to do next. That, and there's a ton of side quests that would take so long to completely finish, that it isn't worth your time unless you play for very extended periods of time, or you only get new games a few tuimes a year.

Lot's of content isn't a bad thing per se, but I like to try and finish as many missions/quests as possible in games I play, and the amount of time Gran Pulse required was just too much. I mean, I did all of the side quests in Amalur- and that was fairly time consuming, but compared to FF XIII....

 

[iJudged]

Yep, what the other guy said.

 

[Dimmle]

Graphics, gameplay, music, story, world, and towns. The six pillars upon which all respectable GameFAQs user reviews are built.

In all seriousness, though, it does occasionally resemble a pretty good game. The problem is that it hamstrings its battle system for 30 hours by restricting interesting features and frequently limiting party size to 2 (which is not a fun dynamic). And its story is nonsense of the highest order, to the point where they had to create a whole new lexicon to describe the nonsense.

 

[Relaxed Muscle]

Play this in the background for maximum effect: FFXIII Opening

I remember putting the game on my 360, incredibly pumped, and watching this with goosbumps on my skin, terribly excited after waiting for the game so many years.

30 hours later I was wondering if I would have the strength to actually finish it.

 

[Claneko]

Hmmmm....I'm a biased Final Fantasy fan, but for XIII....yeah a 6/10 or 7/10 does sound about right. I don't hate it either OP. It's not a terrible game, and it has it's flaws, but I think it's far from the piece of trash most would have you believe. It's just another really divisive and different entry and I think a lot of the problems come from bad direction and a troubled development process. The whole game reeks of something much better that could have been, but wasn't and that's a shame.

I do think FFXIII-2 greatly improved on the gameplay style of XIII though. The story was dumb and the moogle was kind of silly and overacted, but the battle system felt more polished and there were more options overall. It just felt more "fun" to me even if the plot was terrible. Noel was actually a pretty good character though and likable and I thought Caius was a good antagonist.

I never did play Lightning Returns. For some reason the game just doesn't interest me at all. If they ever put it on PS Now I might give it a shot, but something about it didn't strike me as worth my time or money. Like FFXIII itself, I don't hate Lightning, but she isn't that great or interesting. I dislike Toriyama though. The guy doesn't write well, his direction is shitty, and he also appears to be batshit insane. Maybe somebody can post that vid of him talking about Lightning Returns. Gives me the creeps and the cringes.

 

[Jonm1010]

I would give it an 8/10.

I will say OP you are not going to convince a lot of people here though. I think FF13 is just a victim of the lack of many console/PC RPG combine with the realization that the FF series have progressed past their interest. I think most of the hate are from players that hate to realize the game series has progressed past their taste. And there are others that have never played the game and just feel like jumping on the hate train.

Except for some questionable character voices (vanille) and snow being a complete hero archetype, it is a good game.

I disagree with your bolded. Although I do think they exist. I think thats just an unfair way to try and dismiss peoples criticism of the game.

As someone that just got done criticizing Silent Hill fans for not embracing the likelihood of change to their precious franchise, there is a difference between being too rigid and unwilling to give a new vision of your favorite series a open-minded try and giving it a try and coming away concluding it wasn't very good.

 

[jacobeid]

I wouldn't have played the game for 50 hours in 2010 if I didn't enjoy myself.

 

[zashga]

I wouldn't give FF13 higher than a 5/10. Good graphics, OK music and combat, and a couple decent characters were all it had going for it. Everything else was hot garbage. The story and level design were insultingly bad.

At best, FF13 is half of a good game buried in dozens of hours of nonsensical filler.

 

[Chie Satonaka]

A game that has little glitches, a competent battle system, great graphics, great music, and excellent production values at least gets a 6. A 5 is a playable game. XIII is playable and not glitchy. It's automatically a 5 and it's also a 6. Characters like Fang and Sazh bring it up to a 7. The storyline is very good but horrifically and sometimes brutally told.. which brings it to an 8. The lack of replayability makes it go down .5. Thus a 7.5.

OP is right. XIII is a well-made game, just disappointing. It's hatred is exaggerated and it getting two additional sequels makes it even more hated when it was a divisive game to begin with.

I like this post, and agree with pretty much everything you said.

Spoiler

I liked the entire cast except for Hope.

 

[Seanspeed]

I didn't like the music in the game at all. Ranged from forgettable to annoying to downright offensive.

 

[Gorillaz]

I love the battle theme the most in the game. It wasn't terrible but just....ehh

 

[Kyzer]

8.5/10 for me. Kinda slow sometimes, almost totally linear world, lame story. But everything else is better than the final fantasies people love to talk about loving. The battle system was hands down the best of all the mainline titles so far (except XIV)


People saying 5? 6? Fucking really? You think its worse than mario party??? Or call of duty? Wtf?

People just love to hate it