Final Fantasy XIII is one of the worst games ever made.

[Jackho 8]

I have come to find that most who dislike the combat system was becuase they were unable to grasp it and use it enjoyingly.

 

Are you physically attempting to play with my nipples? I mean... are you just trolling or what? As I said in the OP, the combat is insultingly simple, it's specifically designed so that even the most really cool child could play it, everything is automatic and requires little thought or strategy. I see what they were going for, I really do, but it falls flat because of the clinically really cool AI and the sheer monotony of it all. If you really think that's due to a fault of mine then I.. just.. I.. don't know what the firetruck.

 

I completely disagree with your character analysis.

Lightning is not Cloud or Squall, the reason being is she doesn't whine half as much as Cloud does, nor is she as Emo as Squall was, and she would Kick both of there asses without breaking a sweat. 10x's the soldier either of them were.

Doesn't whine half as much as Cloud does? Sorry but have you ever actually played FFVII? Regardless; I should have made my point clearer in that I wasn't referring to the fact that she's simply a ripoff of Cloud/Squall, but that she has all the negative aspects of those characters with none of the good. (I really hate Squall and VIII in general, but he's the best example)

 

Cloud

-Smug, experienced soldier who initially comes across as cold and detached thanks to his traumatic experiences but genuinely cares about the people around him. He is driven primarily by a lust for revenge. With the help of a childhood friend he learns he does not need to hide his faults and becomes stronger because of it. Became progressively whinier as the series was expanded upon, but not unbearably so.

 

Squall

-Inexperienced but talented soldier trainee who initially comes across as cold and detached due to his childhood, he pushes others away when they try to get close and he doesn't care about what happens to them but over time gains the qualities of a leader and learns to depend on his comrades. Likes to whine about his shitty childhood at every available opportunity due to being an immense homosexual on the side.

 

Lightning

-Experienced soldier who initially comes across as cold and detached.. because she IS cold and detached, for no real reason. Doesn't care about the people around her, even when they work towards the same goal and genuinely wish to help. Driven solely by a lust for revenge. Doesn't change throughout the course of the story. Whines about her sister and how much she just hates life, fun and everything else at every available opportunity.

 

Language may offend someone, but this pic is very much relevant:

 

While Snow is anoying, with his ego and positive out look on everything, his character was ment to contradict that of Lightnings more serious and realistic demenor, which was very successfull.

Intentionally annoying is still annoying. Snow has zero depth, he has strong willpower and is so obsessed with serah he can't help but say her name every other sentence. That's it. Exactly like Zell, minus the serah.

 

Whil I was never particularly fond of Sazh, he did not have the confidence and strenth and courage that Baret had. He was a man with a goal but unsure how to enact it and even more so he teneded to run from it.

Alright, he's a more conserved, rational version of Barret. Happy? He's the closest thing to an interesting character in this game too.

 

Hope was meant to live up to his name. A teenage boy thrown into a situation that I am sure that you at his age would not have been able to remove yourself from the corner in the fetal position wetting your pants and crying for your mommy. Think of what you would do were you thrown into a rebelion and you watched your mother fall to her death....

Again, intentionally annoying is still very, very annoying. What I would have done is irrelevant, he's a poorly thought out character who exists solely to bitch and moan. Sure, they did what they meant to do with his character, but if I took a shit in your living room and told you I meant to do that, would that make it okay?

 

A better writer/director would have taken a step back, looked at hope and asked themselves "are people really going to like this character? Is he necessary? Does he have any redeeming qualities?" when they realized the answer was undoubtedly "no" they would've either changed his general attitude, rewritten or removed his character entirely. Think of how much better it would have been if Hope had the personality of, say, Zidane or even Vivi. Hope sucks.

 

Fang was just ment to be the bitch itching for a fight. And she fulfilled that there really wasnt any other side to her.

Vanille while I agree was also very anoying, was probably more indepth than you realize. She was the typical young girl who wanted everyone to like her so she lied and diseaved the others, and all we saw was the peppy perky positive lets have fun side, and we only got to glimps a tiny bit of the battle she must have been facing when she was prepared to let Sazh shoot her to repent for what she and Fang did to his son.

Funny you should say that when I say Fang as one of the few necessary characters. They needed a strong, stubborn and reckless contrast to Vanille in order to set most of the game's events in motion. Still a ripoff of Freya though, although in addition Fang seems to be perpetually menstruating. Vanille was one of the better characters plot-wise and I probably would have liked her had FFXIII been a book, but she is host to some of the worst writing and one of the most irritating voice actors I've ever heard, and so I stand by my previous comments.

 

Serah was barely in XIII and not really enough to see what her strengths and weaknesses are untill you play XIII-2 and Lightning's strength shows up in her.

I've played XIII-2 and I stand by my accusation.

 

As far as the linearity of the game, while I love exporing a world as much as the next, this games story of constantly being in motion and on the run made sense for a linear map.

Any of the other FFs would've made sense with a completely linear approach, they didn't do it because it firetrucking sucks. When I play any RPG let alone Final Fantasy I expect some degree of freedom and customization, XIII offers none of that in a well established franchise that always did.

 

The plot was anything but fluid, did you skip those paragraphs I wrote about the pacing throughout being thoroughly bollocks and on the run being a bullshit excuse for a lack of freedom?

 

The battle system was something exciting and new to figure out and I think if they had made it any different in the terms you are saying, would make our heroes too godlike, defeating the purpose of the usual FF theme of young ordinary Heroes defying un ordinary events.

So you're saying actually giving the player any sort of choice or challenge overpowers them, and that both buttfiretruckingly stupid AI and combat that plays itself is 'new' and 'exciting'? Jesus Christ that's horrifying, please tell me you will never, ever try to design a game. Ever.

 

While I can honestly say that I felt I was left wanting more from this FF game, I have said that about all the FF I have ever played, because if they ever came out with the perfect FF I would never need to play another ever again. I embrace every Final Fantasy game for what makes it different from the last, and look forward to the different ways they come up with in the future to enjoy the game!

What the hell kind of logic is that? FF games may be set in different worlds but there was always consistency with a few deviations (which they stuck with when they worked). FFX, at it's core formula, was the ultimate form of Final Fantasy combat and layout wise, Lost Odyssey is further proof of that. When I buy the next game in an established series I expect a similar experience, not something that's been completely and utterly butchered in every way humanly possible. It seriously feels like they were trying to give the fans the biggest middle finger in the world at times. If you're going to try something completely new and different, make a new firetrucking IP, don't firetruck up absolutely everything good about an existing one.

 

And XIII was amazing. The graphics alone were enough to fall in love with it, the amount of work and time that must have gone into this game (I mean look at how long it took to make!)

Holy shit you've got to jiggling my titties here. If you seriously believe this sentence then you my good sir are the epitome of everything wrong with the gaming industry today. It's sickening that after so much development time they still gave us such a flaming bag of ass, that they focused entirely on graphics and didn't care that they had created the most bland, uninteresting and lifeless RPG to date. It's engineered specifically for the sheep who'd rather sit and look at the pretty colors than partake in anything that requires any sort of thought or strategy, who can watch these uninteresting, poorly designed bullshitty excuses of characters who fit into the same narrow set of predicable archetypes, who can call this absolute load of firetrucking shit a masterpiece, who can eat up Square's maximum calibre dog shit and ask for more ignoring the fact that it has as much depth as the firetrucking Power Rangers solely because a name that used to have a decent reputation is attached.

 

I can honestly say the ones who dont like it just want a remake of VII which to me is boring, I have played VII already, bring on the new games!!!

No one mentioned FFVII, you could not possibly fathom the sheer amount of firetrucks I do not give about the possibility of an FFVII remake. Even if I did how the actual firetruck could that cloud (no pun intended) my judgement of an unrelated game? I want a new game as much as the next guy, trouble is I want something that's actually fun.

 

firetruck it. I have some faith in Versus, if it fails or takes any longer to release then Square is dead to me. Mistwalker is the JRPG genre's only hope from here on out.

[Dave 5,715]

While I've not played truly played through the game, prefering to simply watch the cutscenes (the one, great contribution Youtube has made to mankind), I'm inclined to agree with you on the characters. I find Lightning to be relatively uninspired, being something of an archtype rather than a fleshed out character, though this may be because the similiarities to Cloud and Squall are, as you say, very striking, and makes it even more difficult to picture her as unique. The primary irritation is that her detachment from others seems forced, in that every line of dialogue seems designed to emphasize that she's for serious. The response to this would be "Well, of course every line of dialogue seems like this. That's her character, and that's how she's going to talk." Perhaps, but the execution comes off as heavy-handed, rather than natural, and it felt like the game wanted to make us think she's badass, rather than just showing her actions and having us form that opinion for ourselves (and lest anyone think that this is necessarily anti-Lightning, this same kind of heavy-handed characterization is what prevented me from getting behind Cloud and Zidane for a good portion of their games).

 

The kicker for me, as I'm sure everyone here knows (and is sick to death of hearing about, no doubt) is the aesthetics in the character design. The environment they live in appears cold, industrial, and inhospitable, and yet no one seems dressed for the occasion, prefering to wear belly shirts, vests, and other hyper-stylized gear that is impractical. I don't think it's too much to ask for the character design to go hand in hand with the background. At the very least, provide a cultural context and purpose for the clothes so that I can take it seriously, rather than have it look like they're something out of a doodle-book photoshopped onto an out-of-context background. (Best FF example in the last decade for blending style with substance would be XII, as the clothing and design of the characters appear very much at home with the cultural context of the world around them. Another idea would to go the route of IX and make the overall aesthetic that of a cartoon, as it means you can get away with so much more in terms of realism).

[Sora96 17,256]

You are entitled to your opinion. But most people who play FF XIII love it.

[kalnet 1,198]

Its cinematically(not a word) a good game, but in terms of being a video game. Its just alright.

[chrisora2066 26]

I completly agree with you the gameplay was interesting for the first 20 minutes but then it just got completly boring and incredibly shite much like the story, characters and pretty much everything else in this game! Honestly with the characters they might as well have just called it "Final Fantasy VIII-2 with gender bent Squall and Pulp Fiction Barrett". The only real interesting conflict that ever caught my interest with these characters was the tension between Hope and Snow about Hopes mother but after 10 hours it leads to absolutly nothing! I'll admit its beautiful to look at the graphics... when your nearly finished the firetrucking game! But other then at that point all it is is dark, boring, desolate environments that are complete crap! I honestly tried to like this game. I really did but it was just so boring and lifeless sort of like Rikku's eyes in X-2 when she says "Monkey" but the game was just completly horrible and I don't see any of the appeal!

 

Also why the hell did they feel the need to make a sequal to XIII and generally waste time like by remaking X rather then make games people actually want! I mean I hate to say this but just finish Versus XIII and make KH3 already for firetrucks sake!

Edited June 22, 2012 by chrisora2066

[Jackho 8]

This is really cool. You didn't even mention that it was your own opinion, which could have made reading this all bearable. You just ranted to everyone that it was a horrible game without mentioning the possibility that other people have different opinions than you.

 

And that somehow wasn't already apparent? Are you unfamiliar with the concept of debate?

 

I have the game and love it as much as FFVII, if not, then better! Granted, you liked FFX ALOT more than XIII. That doesn't mean the rest of the world does. Stop comparing XIII to other games and play it with an open mind, and maybe you will find it enjoyable.

 

 

Yet another fantastic job at stating the obvious. As I said earlier I went into XIII with the same mindset as every FF before it. Final Fantasy XIII is a horrible game on it's own no matter how you look at it, if it didn't have the FF and Square names attached it would have been forgotten less then a month after release. The easiest way to get my point across is to compare it to other games in the series. Again, as I said earlier your logic is senseless, I expect consistency between titles in the same series, if they want to change absolutely everything they should release a new IP instead of forcing the changes onto the fans of a long since established franchise.

 

The characters won't seem that bad, and neither will the designing or gameplay.

No. Just no. It's a poorly designed game in every aspect no matter how I judge it. As an FF game it's horrible, as a standalone RPG it's horrible, as a story it's horrible.

 

Lightning is a pretty cool character, and so what if she is a bitch. She starts to warm up and be nicer to others as the game progresses. Hope is so cute, not annoying. He just lost his mother for god sake! How would you feel? Snow just lost the love of his life and is taking all the blame, and going through two whole worlds to save her. Vanille is trying to be positive through a time of darkness while Fang is looking for her, and Sazh's son has been taken from him. Of course they will all be upset! I enjoy the battle system of more than that of VII. The story is just as good as other FF's, and the graphics are the best in the series so far.

Way to simultaneously miss my point and then prove it. The characters are monotone with one defining characteristic each which never deviates throughout. I don't care that they were all depressed, what matters is that they're possibly the most bland and uninspired cast of any JRPG to date. I've said my part about the battle system already and slightly above average graphics are not a redeeming aspect of any game, which I disagree with too by the way, considering the game consisted mostly of drab copy/pasted corridors it was as uninspired as the rest of it. Final Fantasy IX on the PS1 is still a more visually appealing game to me since there was some actual imagination put into the world's design.

 

I'd like to see you create a game better than this in 3 years, the amount of time and hard work it took to make this game.

Give me the assets and I would gladly make a title more deserving of the FF name. Long development time isn't a good thing by the way, it shows that despite the obscenely long amount of time taken they had focused solely on looking good instead of trying to make it fun or engaging in any way. What's more it took five years (began in april 2004, first released in december 2009), not three. For reference IV took less than a year, VI took two years, VII took a little over three years, Tactics took two years, X took two years and IX only took one and a half years to develop, all of which are infinitely superior games which require stretegy to overcome, have large and diverse skill trees, open worlds (with the exception of X, which still had much more freedom than XIII), far more content and characters/worlds with some actual life, soul and inspiration behind them.

 

Oh, and, this is all just my opinion. You don't necessarily have to agree with me.

welp

[Snow 1,800]

Tl;dr You don't even know what the firetruck you're talking about. Final Fantasy 13 is nowhere near the originals, but it is still a pretty well done game. I hate when people bitch and moan that games these days aren't like the originals, but guess what: with todays gaming society we might not ever get a game like the originals again.

Final Fantasy 13 may not be the best game, but it is a game worthy of be the thrteenth entry in the franchise.

[Robbie the Wise 5,050]

OMG I just realized....... you don't have to play it lol

[Jackho 8]

Tl;dr You don't even know what the firetruck you're talking about. I hate when people bitch and moan that games these days aren't like the originals.

 

So you didn't bother to read my post yet feel you're entitled to claim I don't know what I'm talking about? How does that even work? For the fourth time I'll have to state: a consumer is entitled to expect consistency between titles in the same series, if they want to create something completely different there's absoluely no reason not to just create a new IP instead of forcing the changes onto the fans of an already established franchise. But never mind that, I wouldn't even care if it had been a kart racer as long as it had been fun or interesting to some degree and not the shittiest attempt at an RPG in the last decade.

Edited June 22, 2012 by Jackho

[hatok 6,413]

Nah. You shouldn't have made this your first impression. You should have built up some respect here, THEN unleashed this onto the masses.

The folks around here ADORE FF XIII. Often times it's the only FF they've actually played. Sometimes they're just watching the cutscenes on youtube.

Something else to keep in mind, most people here don't actually know about FF character, they know about how they're portrayed in KH. Which is badly.

If I'm perfectly honest, I was able to enjoy XIII for what it was. It's incredibly flawed, but it's still a functional game. There are certainly worse things out there.

I do find the stereotyping of characters to be kind of unfair though. Sazh is far less stereotypical than Barret, that's a matter of fact, I'm sorry. The rest is just your perspective, so I'll leave it at that. I do personally feel that Lightning has a decent, if not particularly captivating reason to be cold and detached. But honestly, Lightning barely factors into the plot. She's your typical bland protagonist that's supposed to make it easier for you to put yourself in her shoes (They failed in that regard if you ask me)

 

But I'm going to digress for a moment, to point something out. If you had though through this as carefully as you seem to want people to think, you would have noticed that the game DOES have redeeming qualities, just none that appeal to you. Instead of just blindly bashing the game, you should have focused your opinions into a more legitimate structure, and tried to make others see WHY the game is flawed (Though you won't have much luck with that here, the people on this forum, well... ADORE XIII)

 

One final thing. FINALLY! Another person on this forum who has actually played FF games besides XIII! We're sorely lacking in those! Welcome!

 

if they want to create something completely different there's absoluely no reason not to just create a new IP instead of forcing the changes onto the fans of an already established franchise.

 

The fact of the matter is, the game industry is a business. The easiest way to sell a new idea is to tape it to an existing franchise. Most people won't take a risk on a new IP when they can just buy another Final Fantasy game. And despite everything, it's only about sales here. If you want what you want, you need to find a way to show Square Enix it's profitable. Which is a hard thing to do, considering they're a big business, and you're one person but it's not impossible.

In the mean time, they have been some classic styled games, why not play those? Or just buy another remake of Final Fantasy IV

[dusk 910]

If you say that FF XIII is that bad, then you really don't want to play:

Captain Planet and Planeteers (NES)

So horrible garbage that it can pollute your brain... That game shouldn't even exist.. Every copy of it should be destroyed and it's ashes should be sended to space...

[hatok 6,413]

And this my friends is one of the main problems I have with a quarter of the Kingdom Hearts fanbase! Sure most of you are alright but to the ones who claim they know this and that about a franchise when they havn't even hit puberty yet are free to firetruck off and die! One other problem I have to say I have with the fanbase as a whole is the defence to it. I firetruckING LOVE Kingdom Hearts! But it does have its flaws and if some people can't accept the flaws and get all defensive if someone mentions it then they really should firetruck off from the internet! By the way just have to say Days has the worst gameplay in the series I don't care what people say its shit and every defense for the gameplay I've heard has been horrible as for the story thats pretty good!

 

Rant on the fanbase now over

 

You're 100% correct, but you legtimized yourself by coming off angry in your post. By staying calm, people can't just ignore you and laugh it off.

And yeah, Days controls HORRENDOUSLY.

[chrisora2066 26]

You're 100% correct, but you legtimized yourself by coming off angry in your post. By staying calm, people can't just ignore you and laugh it off.

And yeah, Days controls HORRENDOUSLY.

 

Fair enough. Also have to say COM gets too much hate(compared to Days at least). Honestly everyone I know properly when they hate on COM I show them how its done! Then they love the gameplay and I feel proud

[Emo/Yami 37]

 

I quoted this post just to take up lots of space.

 

 

I'm only quoting this post because it contains that block of text on the second page instead of the first. Anyway, I respect your opinion as it represents your individuality, but I just wanted to state that Final Fantasy XIII isn't the worse Final Fantasy game among the non-MMOs and how the AI behave is actually based on player skill and tendencies. I do own FFXIII and have completed the game. Every time I got in a battle the AI healed me when I needed to be healed and Esauna was always used first if a status ailment put me (the player) or a key ally in danger, then health was recovered.

[hatok 6,413]

Fair enough. Also have to say COM gets too much hate(compared to Days at least). Honestly everyone I know properly when they hate on COM I show them how its done! Then they love the gameplay and I feel proud

 

Are you me?

[chrisora2066 26]

Are you me?

 

Or are you me? 0.0

[Jackho 8]

Nah. You shouldn't have made this your first impression. You should have built up some respect here, THEN unleashed this onto the masses.

The folks around here ADORE FF XIII. Often times it's the only FF they've actually played. Sometimes they're just watching the cutscenes on youtube.

Something else to keep in mind, most people here don't actually know about FF character, they know about how they're portrayed in KH. Which is badly.

 

I really, really couldn't be arsed staying on this board long enough to be known, it wouldn't have changed the response in the slightest. I'm well aware of how infatuated this board is with FFXIII, that's exactly why I posted it here. I wanted at least one person to give me a good response, to counter my argument with something solid and not just blind fanboyism. This is inevitably going to offend someone but at this point I'm hardly going to care; kh13, and by extension the general KH community is (collectively) without a doubt one of the worst communities on the internet. Never before have I come across a community so chock full of mindless children, who obsess so much over franchises they know next to nothing about and in many cases haven't even played, who blindly worship a company who has repeatedly firetrucked them over harder than EA firetrucked the Bioware fanbase. It goes without saying that this doesn't apply to every one of you, far from it actually, but as always it only takes a few retards to ruin it for everyone. Take that as you will.

 

If you had though through this as carefully as you seem to want people to think, you would have noticed that the game DOES have redeeming qualities, just none that appeal to you.

Care to mention some? In the ~200 hours I spent on FFXIII I never once saw something that made me think "Yeah, that makes up for all the other bullshit".

[hatok 6,413]

Or are you me? 0.0

 

Both.

[chrisora2066 26]

Both.

 

Dun Dunn DUNNNNNN!!!! Anyway so yea COM was pretty good

[LightningXIII 310]

 

 

And that somehow wasn't already apparent? Are you unfamiliar with the concept of debate?

 

 

 

Yet another fantastic job at stating the obvious. As I said earlier I went into XIII with the same mindset as every FF before it. Final Fantasy XIII is a horrible game on it's own no matter how you look at it, if it didn't have the FF and Square names attached it would have been forgotten less then a month after release. The easiest way to get my point across is to compare it to other games in the series. Again, as I said earlier your logic is senseless, I expect consistency between titles in the same series, if they want to change absolutely everything they should release a new IP instead of forcing the changes onto the fans of a long since established franchise.

 

 

 

No. Just no. It's a poorly designed game in every aspect no matter how I judge it. As an FF game it's horrible, as a standalone RPG it's horrible, as a story it's horrible.

 

 

 

Way to simultaneously miss my point and then prove it. The characters are monotone with one defining characteristic each which never deviates throughout. I don't care that they were all depressed, what matters is that they're possibly the most bland and uninspired cast of any JRPG to date. I've said my part about the battle system already and slightly above average graphics are not a redeeming aspect of any game, which I disagree with too by the way, considering the game consisted mostly of drab copy/pasted corridors it was as uninspired as the rest of it. Final Fantasy IX on the PS1 is still a more visually appealing game to me since there was some actual imagination put into the world's design.

 

 

 

Give me the assets and I would gladly make a title more deserving of the FF name. Long development time isn't a good thing by the way, it shows that despite the obscenely long amount of time taken they had focused solely on looking good instead of trying to make it fun or engaging in any way. What's more it took five years (began in april 2004, first released in december 2009), not three. For reference IV took less than a year, VI took two years, VII took a little over three years, Tactics took two years, X took two years and IX only took one and a half years to develop, all of which are infinitely superior games which require stretegy to overcome, have large and diverse skill trees, open worlds (with the exception of X, which still had much more freedom than XIII), far more content and characters/worlds with some actual life, soul and inspiration behind them.

 

 

 

Derp.

 

As if you haven't already ranted enough.

[chrisora2066 26]

As if you haven't already ranted enough.

 

this is the most disappointing reply I have seen in the last decade

[hatok 6,413]

I really, really couldn't be arsed staying on this board long enough to be known, it wouldn't have changed the response in the slightest. I'm well aware of how infatuated this board is with FFXIII, that's exactly why I posted it here. I wanted at least one person to give me a good response, to counter my argument with something solid and not just blind fanboyism. This is inevitably going to offend someone but at this point I'm hardly going to care; kh13, and by extension the general KH community is (collectively) without a doubt one of the worst communities on the internet. Never before have I come across a community so chock full of mindless children, who obsess so much over franchises they know next to nothing about and in many cases haven't even played, who blindly worship a company who has repeatedly firetrucked them over harder than EA firetrucked the Bioware fanbase. It goes without saying that this doesn't apply to every one of you, far from it actually, but as always it only takes a few retards to ruin it for everyone. Take that as you will.

 

Care to mention some? In the ~200 hours I spent on FFXIII I never once saw something that made me think "Yeah, that makes up for all the other bullshit".

 

A redeeming quality doesn't have to make up for an entire game.

But anyways, you want a response? I'll do my best, comments in bold

 

Final Fantasy XIII really does have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. The characters are poorly designed This is purely your aesthetic tastes talking here, idioticNo please, don't actually explain, just use adjectives! I don't need any context! Honest!, bland Can't argue with that, annoying and completely unoriginal How is that?. Sazh is Barret (stereotypical, gun wielding black man who's main inspiration & motive is their child) No he's not. Snow is Zell but somehow even more obnoxiousSnow can be annoying because he's outgoing, but Zell was literally just there to annoy Squall. Fang is Freya What. No seriously. What. Besides using lances, they have nothing in common. Lightning is Squall/Cloud (as in the angsty bitch that cloud has become, not the smug badass he originally was Glad you actually know that about Cloud. I'm kind of sad most people don't). Serah is a Mary SueWhy? She barely even gets a cameo in the game, and isn't developed enough to actually have characteristics. Beyond that, everything you learn about her is from her sister and fiance. She provides a motive for two of the characters, but that doesn't make her a Mary Sure.... I would say Vanille is Rikku (who, in turn, is Selphie), but it needs to be said that Vanille is by far the worst incarnation of the ditsy annoying bitch archetype I've ever seen But that was intentional. You should know that. . The combat is truly horrendous, one of the worst systems ever conceived It could have been worse. At least you have to change paradigms. By no means is it an ideal battle system,, if not THE worst. The summon system sucksYeah. It really does. Then again, it sucks in VI as well. The thing is, it's not a main feature, it's entirely optional, and probably useful to some people (I used it once or twice when I needed a quick heal). The equipment system sucks It's the same equipment system in any other FF, just with levelling up. What's wrong with that? Sure, there are less equipment slots than in some FFs, but that's not a big deal (And makes more sense, considering the characters are clearly not wearing an iron vest or brigandine in the other games. The linearity sucks You know what sucks more? The ridiculous open endedness at the end of the game. I'd take more corridors over a fiel that takes tne minutes to traverse. Though it did have good atmosphere.. The pacing sucksThis one is just objectively wrong. The pacing is done well, simply because the crystarium growth is locked at a point where you'll be well matched against the bosses of the area. It never really gets unfair until the final boss, which is kind of a Final Fantasy tradition at this point.. The crystarium really, really sucks. None of the music has that same energy as the older titles (entirely due to the fact that Nobuo Uematsu wasn't involved I agree, I miss Uematsu, and I wish they ahd gone for someone like Yoko Shimomura instead, but the music is still perfectly good. One of the better parts of the game if you ask me. Tracks like the battle theme are perfectly memorable too.). The story isn't the worst, but it's far from capable of carrying the game on it's ownDepends on what you want from a game. Most people on this site are only concerned with the story of a game, and how they can ship new yaoi pairings. I can go into more detail if you wantPlease do. You need it.

Let's start with my most hated aspect; the combat. It plays itself Is there an auto paradigm option I missed? . It's built for god damn retards.Or people who can't decide if they want an action game or a turn based RPG.

You can only control one character for no real reason There's a pretty good reason. This combat system would NOT work if you could control everybody., and the game ends if they die Shocking. So you'd think the other characters would prioritize your health, right? Naw, I just switch to the salvation paradigm and have a healing orgy. Well it just so happens that the AI is monumentally awesome. Seems pretty good to me. Good enough to play the game for me. The Medic AI most of all. Medic is possibly the most important role since it's the only one who can really pull you out when shit hits the fan, and it's in the hands of an AI I can't tell what to do. I had no problems, but that's porbably because I used the slavation paradigm for all my healing nee This is a gargantuan defect in the battle system ​I thought you didn't like the game playing itself?, and to be honest it's really the only one that breaks the game. ​I thought the game had no redeeming qualities? If only one element of the combat is bad to you then...

Most bosses have at least one immensely powerful attack that can send your whole team into critical healthAnd these moves always function exactly like gravity spells in classic FF. They don't kill you, they reduce your health by a percentage.. Unless your leader just happens to have the lowest HP you're already firetrucked though Why were you playing as Vanille?, since medics will only ever target the character closest to death Unless you choose the medic role yourself, and manually choose who you want to heal. and more often than not results in the leader being killed by the next attack Unless you heal. Or use a Sentinel.. Why the actual firetruck is it programmed this way if you get a game over when the leader dies? Because of that you should ALWAYS have top priority, at least when your health is low enough to be wiped out by any attack. That would be a good idea. I wouldn't be surprised if there IS programming like that in the game, but it's too subtle to really be noticeable.

Then there's the raise ability. Why did they even bother? If you die your medic can't revive you, and if he dies well obviously he can't revive himself either.DSo switch to another medic and have him/her revive? Or just use a Pheonix down, it's what I do. So this ability is only there for this ignorant pansy firetruck of a third character who always gets priority over the one person who actually firetrucking matters: the player. Because those characters totally don't contribute anything. Like damage, or healing, or whatever.. Furthermore they will never even cast raise unless both remaining characters are at 100% health, and it never uses esuna (gets rid of status ailments) unless you're at full health either. Are you sure? I found that when I switched everybody to medics, my health was full, and status' were gone in a matter of seconds. So if you're firetrucking poisoned instead of curing you then healing they just firetrucking repeatedly cast cure to no end. So use an item. Bizarre.

Sadly it's not just the medics that are bloody stupid though. When you have another commando they ALWAYS attack whatever I'm not targeting. This is clearly intended and easy to work around, but why the bloody firetruck can't I decide whether to focus fire or spread out? All it would take is one button.I'm pretty sure you can set things up differently in a menu, or something. I dunno. Paradigms? My solution was to starget the enmy my allies were already targeting. The battle system constantly reminds you that you're not allowed to decide how you want to play the game.gExcept you seem to have been ignoring any options given to you.

Ravagers force you to cast Libra to let the AI know how to not be a awesome mess, as they will go through every single spell they have in order to find out which does the most damage before focusing on it.Sounds like a good idea. Smart AI even, because they'll eventually find all of the weaknesses, and you won't have to use Libra or a librascope. (Is there a libra spell in this game? I can't remember). This would be alright if not for the fact that the enemy's weakness is blatantly obvious 90% of the time. Considering the only potentially obvious enemy weakness should be bombs, and those tend to actually be tricks, I don't see why. If the weakness is obviously, switch to a ravager and use the obvious weakness on it. Thne the weakness will be revealed, and your party members will only use that type. If I was in control I wouldn't need to cast Fire on the flame demon 6 times to deduce whether it's effective or notnGotta call you out here. There is no enemy in this game that is as obvious a 'flame demon' unlike previosu FFs, which had clear elemental enemies.. Even when you do get the enemy staggered the AI still doesn't cease to be firetrucking stupid. I'm obviously going to want to use launch or aeroga(however it's spelt) to render them defenceless, but the AI will outright refuse to do so most of the time, always picking that moment to cast ruin instead of attacking or a different spell.The AI is programmed to maximize damage, not exploit weaknesses and such. That's your job. Though honestly, they tended to use those moves pretty frequently with me.

Saboteur is one of the most frustrating. I'm obviously going to want to cast daze or pain whenever they're available, but of course the AI think's it's a better idea to decrease it's attack power rather than disabling it's firetrucking attack entirely. This is because decreasing attack power is more likely than disabling it. The AI is conservative as a saboteur. It goes for the most likely move to succeed, the moves on to the next, rather than endlessly trying to use a move that has a 0.0% chance of success, even if it's better. That's simply because if it worked the way you want, Vanille would spend all of her tim spamming death on the enemy, most likely never succeeding. Sabs are also the only class other than commando who can keep the enemy's stagger bar up Besides a bunch of Ravagers, so it would be also be nice to use a combination of MED/SYN/SAB or something similar when I'm hurt, to heal, buff and debuff at once while still keeping the enemy's stagger up. That's not practical. That's the prupose of a commando. I use that paradigm a lot to give a quick shot in the arm, however. Sadly, once the debuffs are all active the Sab decides to sit and do nothing rather than keeping the enemy staggered regardless. Solution: Control the saboteur, have them manually spam a damagin move. Many, many stagger bars were lost thanks to this. Should have used a commando.

I really don't know what the firetruck they were thinking when designing the Synergist, considering it's possibly the easiest class to not firetruck up stupendously. For some unholy reson the Synergist always buffs the 3rd party member first (i.e not you), then the leader, then himself. WHY? Really? I never had that problem.I think the synergist prioritizes by which class you currently are, for example, I found that synergists tended to prioritize me when I was a medic. It doesn't firetrucking matter if dipshit #3 dies, the game ends if I die and the synergists themselves (Sazh and especially Hope) have by far the lowest HP and die very easily if not buffed. Simple excuse: the people in the game don't know that.

On top of the AI being brain dead every single battle plays out identically, starting with a commando or saboteur with two ravagers, stagger, go all out. Take damage, just switch to medic. That's not how I played at all. Tough enemy? Just buff yourself first. Tough enemies tended to benefit from a quick stagger as opposed to just attrition, IMO. No variety or strategy required beyond the first few bosses The variety comes from you, not the game. You want variety, then you should try something different.. To make it even worse several bosses have millions upon millions of HP and drag on foreverYou deal tens of thousands of damage at that point though, it's not that big of a deal.. Considering the commando is the only class that moves What, that's a long ass time to sit watching a few characters grunt and flail their arms about. And button mash. Don't forget that Especially when the boss is likely to target your leader with a cheap one-shot-kill That happens once. In the final boss. Don't try to act like that is a regular occurrence. Still cheap when it happens...attack at any moment. Which happens a lot.

The summon system couldn't possibly be any more bland. Why not keep FFX's system? Because this is a completely different game? X's was superior in just about every way X was also built around summoning..., X's Aeons were directly controlled by the player and had their own abilities, limit breaks and improvable levels/stats Yeah, was pretty cool. Each new Aeon felt like a new character and a valuable asset to the team ​Yes. meat shields that could each use an overdive while staving off death or my other, worse, characters.. XIII's eidolons are almost useless entirely and were barely explained (story-wise) Because they weren't the focus of the game, unlike X.. They provided little more than an annoying boss battle Thought they were pretty cool, . Plus the transforming vehicle thing was really, really firetrucking dumb. That's completely arbitrary. You may think that, others do not.

The equipment system. In the other games it was just a case of getting the next best weapon Woah, which FFs have YOU been paying? Literally the only FF I can think of that has anything like what you just said is IV. Then again, I'm not very familiar with I or II, and haven't played III at all. (although in X weapons were defined by their special abilities and had identical damage output for the most part, another reason they should have kept X's formula God I hated grinding for items to get good items to make good weapons in that game. I will NEVER bother to grind up 99 dark matters from Blitzball... at least, until that HD remake comes out.), but the armor you found generally had unique uses and would aid you against specific enemiesThe armour is is literally the same as the weapons, they jsut have different abilities open to you.. In XIII the vast majority of accessories are completely uselessI'd say they're more conditionally useful, like in classic FF. Status guards aren't necessarily in most situations (Besides the damn final boss) but they can come in handy. The rest are stat boosts, which are always good. , and each character's starting weapon was their best as it was generally the most balanced and focused on the characters main strengths That depends on your playstyle. Personally, I went for the slow and strong variants of my fighting characters., whereas the rest of the weapons focused on one area and was severely crippled in others making it pretty damn useless if you actually plan on getting anywhere . The upgrade system was dull, why not just level the weapon I'm using instead of making me collect and convert materials to do the same thing ​Because grinding. This game had an obsession with making everything in-universe make sense, which included not having human characters level up, and not having weapons simply level up. It's part of the context of the story.? Not a huge problem, but a problem nonetheless.

Oh god the Linearity. When FFX came out it was the most linear game in the series, but it still had splitting paths, open areas and varied environments with the (beautiful BWAHAHA! I'm sorry. FFX was many things, but most of it is ugly.) scenery changing every couple of hours at least. XIII on the other hand is a single, straight path from A to B in the same repetitive, grey hallways with the odd "hidden" chest here and there. The linearity is not what I was hoping fro, but it works perfectly well in this game. What with the modern setting and on the run theming. You can't really use the excuse that other characters in other FFs were on the run but could still visit towns and such, every other FF is set in a neo-medieval setting with widespread communication and surveillance is difficult (Besides perhaps FF VII. I dunno about counting VIII, but I guess I throw that in there as well)

It's not just the poor level design either Poor and linear are not the same, the monsters you face and the battles themselves are already set in stone ... what? The enemies you fight in any game. Ever. Are set in stone. Unless tehre's like a ... character generator or something., even the crystarium is linear and limits how strong you can get in an attempt to stay challenging Until the end. What the hell kind of RPG has a linear skill tree Lots of them? Games don't need a bunch of branching choices by default. That said, the crystarium is really just an inferior sphere grid.? For most of the game you aren't even allowed to choose your party.You can't do that at the start of most FF games. And honestly, I prefer that. Party management is busywork I can do without in a FF, where the plot tends to suffer dramatically when you aren't forced to have specific party members.

The Crystarium offered so little choice it may as well not even be there This is true, we would be better off with just a notification every now and then saying you have unlocked such and such an ability Again, true, except that the crystarium lets you decide which paradigm to focus on so.... Setting up materia was one of the better things of VII, and customization is pretty much a requirement of RPGs That's pretty silly. A game shouldn't be expected to be anything.. As much as I disliked the sphere grid what it at least let you develop your characters however you want. Also it shouldn't have been 3D, it just made what was practically a straight line needlessly hard to navigate How was that hard to navigate? Like, at all? It's a straight line! Well, six straight lines with a few twigs sticking out.

No towns or NPCs either There are plenty of NPCs. Do you even know what an NPC is?. A lot of people say "Well they're on the run, the couldn't walk through a town" but that's bullshit. Part of VI and disc 1 on IX had you on the run ​In medieval settings, but you could still explore towns because they characters weren't firetrucking stupid and stayed subtle. If XIII's cast of twats didn't insist on displaying their L'Cie brands so prominently they could have easily explored some villages and the residents would be none the wiser. They exist in an age where you cna take pictures and record video. People would actually recognize them, on account of their faces being shown on giant screens. Never mind that they DO visit towns, and it always ends badly for them, because they are swarming with guards who will capture them on sight... They could have even turned it into a sort of minigame with a dialogue system where you can be found out by asking the NPCs shitty questions or something. That actually sounds pretty cool, I'd have liked that.

Gonna take a quick aside to ask if you know the reason why towns aren't in XIII. Namely, that they couldn't figure out how to make high quality towns that still had regular interactivity. A purely technical problem.

The pacing. So much time is spent endlessly slaughtering the same soldiers over and over. So avoid them. The first ~25 hours consist of running down the same hallways and hardly anything substantial happens plot-wise until you fight Barthandelus Besides all the character development and plot, I presume?, and afterwards there's a little under 10 hours of the characters being unsure of what to do next and end up just wandering about and not doing anything in particular Woah, did you get suck or something? I was finished the main game at 33 hours.. The characters actions and motives never have any weight behind them That's pretty ambiguous, you should go tino mroe detail. One early part in a forest with Lightning & Hope in particular made me want to bang my head against the wall. The same copy/pasted level Oh yeah. 'copy/pasted' listen, don't mess with that part of the game, okay? There was a tonne of effort put into the actual areas you explore. You shouldn't be able to knock the artists and modelers of the game with something unfair like that. just went on and on with several cutscenes explaining that Hope is an angsty bitch Yeah, so angsty. I'll get back to you when your mom is killed for seemingly no reason. and Lightning is indecisive. I don't give a bloody firetruck, just do something already.

Hope absolutely refused to confront Snow about his mother's death for no reason other than to pad out the game Oh yeah, murder is EASY. Seriously, not every person can just face their problems. And this is kind of a major one. How would YOU handle being forced to be on the run with a person who is seemingly responsible for your mothers death?. Constantly collapsing to the ground to whine and moan. I somehow forgot to mention him before, but Hope is an irredeemably bad character Because he isn't quick to stab his problems away? You're not giving very compelling arguments here, honestly , easily one of the worst in the series. Now that I think about it, all 6 main characters have little to no backstory either Besides all the backstory, I presume. It flashed back to the 13 days way too often and tried too hard to build up an overall uninteresting coincidence(all characters being in the same place 13 days prior to meeting) with needlessly long and complex cutscenes. ​I don't see how the game suffered from its cutscenes. The plot would be worse without them, and you clearly don't want to be playing the game anyways.

It would have been infinitely better if the cutscenes were implemented into the gameplay somehowr why? No seriously, why does every game seem to think that being able to wander around during a cutscene automatically make it better?, as they are they're dull, monotonous, always needlessly long and rarely actually meaningful or important.And you'd prefer a needlessly long, dull, monotonous cutscne that you can walk around in? Most of the villains are thrown in from out of the blue too Besides what's her face, I'm pretty sure every other villain is introduced quite a ways before they actually properly confront the characters. , why the hell weren't these people introduced a few hours ago when absolutely nothing was happening? They could've at least tried harder to give us some direction. There was plenty of direction. Remember? This game is linear!

So yeah, Final Fantasy XIII is a horrible game in every aspect. Rant over.

Thank you for the somewhat confusing, contradictory, but overall quite accurate rant.

You do realize you basically just aked for every change that gets made in XIII-2, right?

[HarLea Quinn 26,501]

A redeeming quality doesn't have to make up for an entire game.

But anyways, you want a response? I'll do my best, comments in bold

 

 

You do realize you basically just aked for every change that gets made in XIII-2, right?

 

Stop making sense Hatok you'll hurt him XDDD

[chrisora2066 26]

A redeeming quality doesn't have to make up for an entire game.

But anyways, you want a response? I'll do my best, comments in bold

 

 

You do realize you basically just aked for every change that gets made in XIII-2, right?

 

the only thing I want to say is about your point in the crystarium where you said you could choose which paradigm to focus on... But heres the thing yes you could focus on which one you wanted but heres the thing... your only gonna end up focusing on whats relevent to each character I mean like with Lightning you'll ofcourse stay Commando, Ravenger and whatever and with Hope you'll stay Medic, Ravenger but you wouldn't make hope a Commando even if you have the option because thats not Hopes specialty. Thats essentially what he's really bad at. To put this in terms that would be better suited for the site that this is well... you wouldn't make someone like Goofy and give him tons of magic boosts because thats not he's specialty you'd make the Goof attack same with Donald you'd go for primarily magic same goes for Terra and Aqua but thats just nit pickin.

[hatok 6,413]

the only thing I want to say is about your point in the crystarium where you said you could choose which paradigm to focus on... But heres the thing yes you could focus on which one you wanted but heres the thing... your only gonna end up focusing on whats relevent to each character I mean like with Lightning you'll ofcourse stay Commando, Ravenger and whatever and with Hope you'll stay Medic, Ravenger but you wouldn't make hope a Commando even if you have the option because thats not Hopes specialty. Thats essentially what he's really bad at. To put this in terms that would be better suited for the site that this is well... you wouldn't make someone like Goofy and give him tons of magic boosts because thats not he's specialty you'd make the Goof attack same with Donald you'd go for primarily magic same goes for Terra and Aqua but thats just nit pickin.

 

Every character has three classes they are suited for, and three they are not. You still have to choose. You also need to balance them, since only making Lightning a commando isn't a very good idea, she's a perfectly good ravager, and a decent backup medic as well. Similarly, Hope is a great medic, and also an excellent ravager.

There are choices to be made.