It wasn't good then, and it's still not good now.
-largely unremarkable cast with terrible and forgettable "antagonists"
-complete mess of a story filled with plot holes and inconsistent nonsense, including a betrayal that wasn't at all foreshadowed, yet Lightning somehow predicted in spite of not observing anything that would've led her to expect it either
-a world that's nothing more than pretty wallpaper rather than anything properly realized that actually makes you care about saving it (yeah, there's more of a point to towns than the ridiculously reductionist notion that they only serve as places to restock)
-completely railroaded progression and exploration leaving you with absolutely nothing to do but fight, as much of a tube as it's been derided for being
-treats you like such an idiot that it won't even let you choose your own party until Ch. 9 out of
13
-Eidolon battles with illogical solutions, with the arrivals of said Eidolons making even less sense within the context of the story
-the point in Ch. 11 where the game supposedly "gets good" is just more of the same, minus the tube, taking 20+ hours to introduce an area that had an equivalent (down to the same initials) that was more competently realized and introduced in less than five in Xenoblade
-constantly directing players to a bloated database for the context and exposition that the game's narrative was too rushed and lazy to weave in properly, with the summary for the start of Ch. 12 being completely at odds with what was actually shown to you
-ADHD-addled combat system that starts out as something not too bad, then gets dull and repetitive as it revolves around getting enemies to stagger as quickly as possible while toggling between paradigms without any real sense of control of the party as you're basically just "coaching" them, all with the completely preposterous condition of Game Over upon death of the leader that's at no point rationalized, said combat system faring even worse thanks to sticking you with only two party members for more than half of the game when it was clearly designed for three
-terrible final boss that relies on not getting one-shot by a lucky instant death attack if you don't want to start it all over again, which you can't protect your leader from fully anyway
There was decent music, but the OST overall wasn't something that left the same impression on me as Uematsu's work, all while continuing the trend of Toriyama being allergic to including the FF victory fanfare in anything he directs (something that the equally unconventional yet actually good FFXII and even a side-game like Type-0 managed to get right). It was pretty, yes, but what of it? As said, it was wallpaper rather than anything that gave the impression of a world that lived and breathed. The best section of the game for me in respect to atmosphere and implementation was (late game spoilers)
, which also had what I considered one of the best tracks in the game accompanying it.
It was not a game that removed the "padding" of an RPG (especially not if you're actually playing it for its combat, which means you're going to be doing a
lot of grinding anyway before it opens up), it was a game that removed the substance expected to be in one. In every way the antithesis of FFXII.
