Jackho

Not if you go right in there with no grinding, celestial weapons or Quick Hit. But as I said I never had much of a problem with any of them.

The sphere grid thing is the only legitimate contradiction I could find and that's because I meant to say I disliked it *at first* as it just felt like you were following a straight line for most of the game with each character's development set in stone, but the crystarium took that to a whole new level. And no, I've never had much of a problem with final bosses in FF games. I think Jecht is the only one I lost to several times but that was more due to shitty tactics on my part than being genuinely difficult. Necron was a cakewalk, I don't think I've ever lost to him despite beating IX at least 4 times. I beat Orphan my first try which seemed to have been luck more than anything, and I don't remember much of IV but I beat it when I was 7 or 8 so it couldn't have been too bad.

Elaborate.

Yes and no. I absolutely hated the characters, the plot was batshit yet overall mediocre (but interesting enough to keep me going), the linearity sucked, the minigames absolutely sucked and the setting was interesting at first but ended up being contradictory and confusing. At it's core though, I consider it the ultimate Final Fantasy and by extension the ultimate JRPG. The CTB system is fantastic, the sphere grid is great, the Aeons were amazing, the equipment/ability system was awesome. If they had kept those elements FF would probably still be my favourite series. Lost Odyssey stuck with the CTB system and added the ring system to make it more interesting and I love it for that alone.

The CoD fanbase is chock full of screaming children and for the most part consists of people who don't try anything other than FPSs and don't bother other userbases, I find that preferable to a fanbase who obsesses over characters and games they know nothing about, though that's more so square's fault for being awesome and including often bastardized FF characters in KH. And I said ONE of the worst.

For future reference you should avoid replying in that manner again if possible, this is probably going to be bollocks to read. Went over the allowed number of quotes apparently so what should be quotes are in italics instead. "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!" It isn't. I think someone else mentioned it in this thread but the outfits are needlessly stylized (and in the case of Vanille at least, overly sexualized which is depressing since she's like 15 or something). They're supposed to stay discreet yet in any urban areas, like in nautilus park for example everyone's dressed fairly normally and vanille's prancing about in the open with her tribal outfit and fishing rod. I know outfit-wise FF has never been the most consistent series but this is just ridiculous, especially considering how realistic they tried to make it feel in other aspects. I was expecting the characters to change clothes at least once to throw off the search parties (when they stay in Hope's house would've been a good opportunity). "Fang is Freya What. No seriously. What. Besides using lances, they have nothing in common." firetruck, I meant to say Kimahri here (as in being overly protective to one char and a dick to the rest of the team) but I'll come clean and say she's not much like him either, and Sazh isn't much like Barret. I didn't put much thought into the character comparisons other than Lightning's as a sort of test to see if anyone else on this firetrucking board knew the series well enough to catch on. In truth I kind of liked Sazh and Fang, more so than the rest of the cast at least. "But that was intentional. You should know that." As I said before intentionally annoying is still very annoying. She was supposed to be irritating but she didn't need to be, if they had changed most of her dialogue to something more bearable she would've been much more likable and the plot wouldn't be affected. All they really needed was a better voice actor. "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.." Plot-wise the pacing is out the ass. You constantly get bogged down in exposition which is rarely relevant at all and cutscene after cutscene. I sat through the entire Metal Gear Solid franchise without ever complaining about the abundance of cutscenes, but this game seems to be specifically designed to piss me off. Most of what's important is pushed to one side in the log instead of relayed to you through the characters. Also I never mentioned the bosses or difficulty at all, but for reference I've played through the entire main series and most of the spinoffs and (save for the original NES trilogy) I've never had to grind and never had a problem with the final bosses, it was always the mid-game bosses that gave me the most trouble. I didn't have a problem with XIII's final boss or general difficulty either, mind. The only times I died was when either I decided to trust the AI or when my party changed and I didn't get a chance to set up paradigms beforehand. "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." Read a book instead then? Don't get me wrong if I were to make a list of my top 10 favorite games most if not all of them would be there mainly because of the story, but they all had the gameplay to back it up. Considering most games have poor writing (my favorite FFs being no exception) it's just daft to soldier through mediocre or outright bad gameplay for a decent plot. Whatever floats your boat I guess. Explains why Days is so popular I guess. "Or people who can't decide if they want an action game or a turn based RPG." Well they'd best keep searching because this game is neither of those nor a hybrid of either. It could hardly be considered action, more like a streamlined turn based system. Crisis Core or, you know, Kingdom Hearts would be more logical choices. "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.," It would. Slow down the enemy's ATB a little, ditch the paradigms and let the player command everyone and maybe alter/remove the stagger system. It would be pretty much identical to any other ATB system, but it would work. "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. " Which would be fine if that paradigm set wasn't unavailable for the vast majority of the game or the game actually let you choose who to control for most of it either. You have to keep in mind there's huge segments of the game where you have to rely on just one AI-controlled medic. If I could set up paradigms how I wanted there would be no problem, the AI's stupidity is only apparent when the game forces you to rely on it. "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..." Not sure what you're getting at with that first comment, but I said it's the only defect that BREAKS the game. Obviously there's countless other problems weighing it down but for the most part they don't stop it from being functional, they just stop it from being good. "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.. " Nope, they can kill you. All of the Barthandelus fights had one that could kill you, as well as several other bosses and even a few regular enemies. That's not the point though, even with just the gravity style attacks (which I thought were overused but whatever) the medic AI is a major problem. Unless your leader has the lowest health after the hit your medic isn't going to heal you first and you'll be killed by the next attack. They should ALWAYS prioritize the player's health. The only exception is when you have a sentinel, they'll heal them first regardless of the other character's health. For example if you're in critical health and your SEN is at half health the medic will still heal the sentinel first. How does this make any shred of sense? Sentinels are almost invincible, the game ends if you die. Why the firetruck would they prioritize the sentinel then? "Unless you choose the medic role yourself, and manually choose who you want to heal. " If they actually let you, sure. Considering only three characters can use the medic role and only two are good at it you'll be relying on the AI most of the time. "Because those characters totally don't contribute anything. Like damage, or healing, or whatever." You're completely missing the point again, the game ends if the leader dies and I'm absolutely firetrucked if my medic dies, so why does the third character, who is the least important, always get #1 priority and the most fail safe back up commands? This only really applies to the segments where you're stuck with one medic but it's a crippling flaw regardless. "I'm pretty sure you can set things up differently in a menu, or something. I dunno. " You can't. Like I said it's not a large flaw but there's absolutely no reason not to include a focus fire command. "Gotta 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." The flans are the most obvious answer but I can't blame Square for including those. I'm wondering how long it's been since you played this game, as the vast majority of enemy's weaknesses are almost immediately apparent, whether it's their aura, attacks or just general design (fish monsters, earth monsters, bird monsters etc.). I will say though it seemed to have the most non-elemental enemies of any FF in recent memory, mostly due to the abundance of human enemies. "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." Obviously I don't expect them to use a move that has 0 chance to hit, that's why I said WHEN AVAILABLE. Pain usually has a 20-30% chance of hitting when it's available, considering you have 5 ATB slots by then they're most likely going to hit at least once. I spent most of the last few hours playing as a saboteur which I quickly discovered was the most overpowered class as they rendered most enemies completely defenseless, up until then I usually had a saboteur in my party but when controlled by the AI they consistently done just two things (jack & shit). For the record Death is a full ATB command which can only be used by the player, not the AI. "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." It was extremely effective actually, once I had full control over my party I switched between that, COM/RAV/RAV and SAB/RAV/RAV along with a healing paradigm and mopped the floor with most bosses, including the optional ones. "That happens once. In the final boss. Don't try to act like that is a regular occurrence. Still cheap when it happens..." I didn't even realize it could happen during the final boss. I was more referring to the Barthandelus fights among a few others. "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 don't need to be the main focus to be explained. In VIII for example, they've got nothing to do with the plot but they're still explained (albeit poorly). I found it frustrating that eidolons seemed to be common knowledge in XIII but no one bothered to explain to the player. Then again I didn't bother to read through the log so it could well have been there. "​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." ...but that's exactly what does happen. The humans (l'cie, whatever) inexplicably get stronger, it's just through the crystarium instead of levels, license board or sphere grid which doesn't make any more sense. "BWAHAHA! I'm sorry. FFX was many things, but most of it is ugly." Dude what. Not as aesthetically pleasing as IX or XI but X looked great throughout, I'd say it easily looks better than XIII other than the archylte steppe and very few other locales. "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)" Yes it made sense, but there's no reason they couldn't have had some imagination and worked around that. You could've stealthily explored towns keeping out of sight of civillians, trying to blend into crowds or use disguises. It would've been something new and interesting. I honestly thought that was what was going to happen when Lightning & Hope first arrive in Hope's home town. Sure it wouldn't have been very FF-like but neither was anything else in this game so who gives a shit. "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." Can't say I knew that but I'm not quite sure what you mean there. "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." Yes, you can't do that at the *start* of most FF games, not for the entirety of the first two discs and a meaty chunk of the third. Of course I understand when the plot demands it or characters are split up it makes sense to be forced to use certain ones, but it's beyond frustrating when you have 4 or more people in your party anyway but can't change your battle team, or when you have two characters together and can't choose which you want to control. There's no reason for this. I understand too how you may want to let the game choose for you, but there's no reason not to let the player change it as they please afterwards. "we would be better off with just a notification every now and then saying you have unlocked such and such an ability Again, true, excpt that the crystarium lets you decide which paradigm to focus on so.... " It's not like there's much difference, the majority of the crystarium are just stat boosters and you're going to have it maxed out or close to it at the end of each chapter. They could have organised the abilities into once linear succession and it would play out identically. "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." I played through a good chunk of the game last night to refresh my memory, and that forest part in particular really was just copied & pasted. Sorry but it is. You run along an identical path with a samey background for hours upon hours on end. The art direction for the most part was good by all means, but some sections couldn't possibly be any more uninspired. "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?, " When did I mention wandering around during them? A huge portion of the cutscenes are just plain conversation back & forth, there's no reason that couldn't have happened while you were running along those straight paths, especially considering the other characters are actually present in the field, and all dialogue in the field is either meaningless or stating the obvious. Then there's for example the barthandelus fights which have loads of petty insults and statements along with a plot point or two before the battle, why not have this conversation during the fight? One thing that would be cool is if you had some options for what you wanted your current leader to say, which could affect your character's relationships and trust. You could even have that carry over into combat where if two of your characters end up with a strong dislike of each other they'll be less likely to heal eachother or something. "You do realize you basically just aked for every change that gets made in XIII-2, right?" Not every change, but although I still think it's shit XIII-2 is a major improvement combat-wise. Haven't played it enough to judge the rest of the game.

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".

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.

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. welp

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. 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: 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. Alright, he's a more conserved, rational version of Barret. Happy? He's the closest thing to an interesting character in this game too. 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. 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. I've played XIII-2 and I stand by my accusation. 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? 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. 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. 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. 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.

Let them be, this is hardly "bashing". As of yet I haven't even received anything close to a counter argument.

Much like the game, amiright? Whatever man, nice yaoi signature. And what exactly did you like about it? You're free to like the game of course, I've just been a huge FF fan all my life and am merely comparing it to the previous installments which I believe are vastly superior in every way and are much more deserving of XIII's praise, success and sequels.

Final Fantasy XIII really does have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. The characters are poorly designed, idiotic, bland, annoying and completely unoriginal. Sazh is Barret (stereotypical, gun wielding black man who's main inspiration & motive is their child). Snow is Zell but somehow even more obnoxious. Fang is Freya. Lightning is Squall/Cloud (as in the angsty bitch that cloud has become, not the smug badass he originally was). Serah is a Mary Sue. 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. The combat is truly horrendous, one of the worst systems ever conceived, if not THE worst. The summon system sucks. The equipment system sucks. The linearity sucks. The pacing sucks. 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). The story isn't the worst, but it's far from capable of carrying the game on it's own. I can go into more detail if you want. Let's start with my most hated aspect; the combat. It plays itself. It's built for god damn idiots. You can only control one character for no real reason, and the game ends if they die. So you'd think the other characters would prioritize your health, right? Well it just so happens that the AI is monumentally really cool. 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. This is a gargantuan defect in the battle system, and to be honest it's really the only one that breaks the game. Most bosses have at least one immensely powerful attack that can send your whole team into critical health. Unless your leader just happens to have the lowest HP you're already firetrucked though, since medics will only ever target the character closest to death and more often than not results in the leader being killed by the next attack. 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. 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. 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. 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. So if you're firetrucking poisoned instead of curing you then healing they just firetrucking repeatedly cast cure to no end. 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. The battle system constantly reminds you that you're not allowed to decide how you want to play the game. Ravagers force you to cast Libra to let the AI know how to not be a really cool 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. This would be alright if not for the fact that the enemy's weakness is blatantly obvious 90% of the time. 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 not. 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. 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. Sabs are also the only class other than commando who can keep the enemy's stagger bar up, 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. Sadly, once the debuffs are all active the Sab decides to sit and do nothing rather than keeping the enemy staggered regardless. Many, many stagger bars were lost thanks to this. 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? 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. 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. Tough enemy? Just buff yourself first. No variety or strategy required beyond the first few bosses. To make it even worse several bosses have millions upon millions of HP and drag on forever. Considering the commando is the only class that moves, that's a long ass time to sit watching a few characters grunt and flail their arms about. Especially when the boss is likely to target your leader with a cheap one-shot-kill attack at any moment. Which happens a lot. The summon system couldn't possibly be any more bland. Why not keep FFX's system? X's was superior in just about every way, X's Aeons were directly controlled by the player and had their own abilities, limit breaks and improvable levels/stats. Each new Aeon felt like a new character and a valuable asset to the team. XIII's eidolons are almost useless entirely and were barely explained (story-wise). They provided little more than an annoying boss battle. Plus the transforming vehicle thing was really, really firetrucking dumb. The equipment system. In the other games it was just a case of getting the next best weapon(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), but the armor you found generally had unique uses and would aid you against specific enemies. In XIII the vast majority of accessories are completely useless, and each character's starting weapon was their best as it was generally the most balanced and focused on the characters main strengths, 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? 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) 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. It's not just the poor level design either, the monsters you face and the battles themselves are already set in stone, even the crystarium is linear and limits how strong you can get in an attempt to stay challenging. What the hell kind of RPG has a linear skill tree? For most of the game you aren't even allowed to choose your party. The Crystarium offered so little choice it may as well not even be there, we would be better off with just a notification every now and then saying you have unlocked such and such an ability. Setting up materia was one of the better things of VII, and customization is pretty much a requirement of RPGs. As much as I disliked the sphere grid 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 No towns or NPCs either. 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, 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 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. The pacing. So much time is spent endlessly slaughtering the same soldiers over and over. The first ~25 hours consist of running down the same hallways and hardly anything substantial happens plot-wise until you fight Barthandelus, 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. The characters actions and motives never have any weight behind them. 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 just went on and on with several cutscenes explaining that Hope is an angsty bitch 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. Constantly collapsing to the ground to whine and moan. I somehow forgot to mention him before, but Hope is an irredeemably bad character, easily one of the worst in the series. Now that I think about it, all 6 main characters have little to no backstory either. 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. It would have been infinitely better if the cutscenes were implemented into the gameplay somehow, as they are they're dull, monotonous, always needlessly long and rarely actually meaningful or important. Most of the villains are thrown in from out of the blue too, 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. So yeah, Final Fantasy XIII is a horrible game in every aspect. Rant over.

The ending is definitely the strongest evidence of the Squall is dead theory. The vast majority of the visions/flashbacks are of disc 1, specifically of the arch and the area around it, where he was impaled. Plus he kind of spontaneously dies afterwards.

We don't need a FFVII remake. Why can't people appreciate the original for what it is instead of begging to experience it again with a no doubt bastardized battle system and most likely horrible voice acting? What's more an FFVII remake is their ace in the hole, the one game garaunteed to sell millions regardless of quality. They'll keep it for as long as possible until they either badly need it or interest begins to dwindle in FFVII. In reality though they're most likely going to either continue pumping out games in the horrible XIII franchise or continue rehashing the S/NES games.

It is indeed extremely awesome when Zell runs up to Squall at that point and tells him to go save Rinoa. Squall points out that he's the god damn leader, it's his responsibility to oversee and repel the invasion. It's his job to get the priorities straight and ensure the hundreds of students of Balamb are not harmed, it would be full on awesome to abandon his post to save one girl (whom he evidently has little to no attachment to at that point) and risk the dozens of lives that are in his hands. Since he seems to be the only character with a functioning brain he thinks it would make so much more sense to send someone else, like say one of the few dozen well trained magic wielding soldiers running around, or just call a bloody GF to do it. Zell's response? "Don't be so heartless". Then of course the rest of the team proceed to piss all over the chain of command and bully Squall into it, risking their job, home, lives and the lives of their allies just to save one girl whom they barely know, who could have easily been saved by anyone else in the vicinity and who, in any realistic scenario, would have been already dead by then. HOW ARE THESE RETARDS EVEN ALIVE. Squall being in charge in the first place was stupid. Cid founded SeeD and clearly took pride in his life's work, yet at the first sign of trouble he claims Squall's in charge and runs off. Real manly move there, Cid. The love story at that point was non-existent. Don't give me this BS about having feelings for eachother and not knowing it yet, Squall was openly a dick to Rinoa and didn't care about her in the slightest. Rinoa had no reason to take an interest in him, quite the opposite actually. But back to the Garden invasion, why didn't anyone call out GFs to help? The GFs raise so many questions alone. It is made clear that they are not only sentient, but can even talk too... so why do they help the main characters? What's in it for them? Where do they go when they're not summoned? Where did they come from in the first place and what exactly are they anyway? In VII summons were in materia and were simply a tool like the rest of the magic to be used by whoever had them. In IX they're sentient, immortal, worshipped godlike beings and choose to help Garnet defeat Bhrane/Kuja/Garland and stop them manipulating the souls of the dead. In X they're the spirits of the dead and chose to become Aeons to help summoners defeat Sin. But in VIII, although they play a vital role in the story and combat, they're just sort of... there. It had so much potential for a sidestory involving the GFs, or hell I'd be happy with just a short explanation of them, but we got nothing. On top of that though, why doesn't everyone use GFs? And futhermore, how do so many enemies use magic and other abilities if they DON'T have a GF junctioned? JUST WHAT THE HELL DOES IT MEAN TO "JUNCTION" YOURSELF TO SOMETHING? How does one go about "junctioning" 40 Bio spells to their sword? In Ultemicia's case she physically fused with Griever, but that's not what happens with Squall and co. Since you can draw GFs from enemies I assume they're stored inside you when not in use and so is magic, but then how did GFs originally come about? Did someone, somewhere order Ifrit to live in that cave or the Brothers to live in that tomb? Where's there masters? What happens when their carrier dies? How does one store magic spells within themselves? Is magic a finite resource? So then where do people get it? Are you born with it? SO MANY UNANSWERED QUESTIONS. At least VII explained what Materia was and how it's formed. I don't know how anyone can call such a convoluted, half-finished mess good, let alone the best game of all time. Bloody hell.