So I have very recently finished this game, and for all the crap that people here at the escapist give it, I found it an extremely enjoyable experience.
The visuals were stunning, cut scenes especially, with the more action-packed ones keeping me at the edge of my seat. I also enjoyed the characterization, even if Sazh was a bit archetype-stereotyped. The gameplay was a bit tricky, what with not being able to maneuver your battle-group around, but I would rate it a lot higher than others on here would.
Could someone please explain to me why this was supposedly such a bad game?
[ul]
[li]It's got lousy exposition and plotting.[/li]
[li]The story doesn't flow very well.[/li]
[li]The Fal'cie don't make sense.[/li]
[li]The pacing is awful.[/li]
[li]The characters are obnoxious, whiney, and entitled.[/li]
[li]The combat system is stylish but incredibly shallow, depending on extreme twists of metagame logistics rather than concrete logic to develop the few twists it can produce.[/li]
[li]The auto-battle is too smart and eliminates the need for the player's attention.[/li]
[li]The advancement system's interface is annoying in the way it forces overly cumbersome interaction without presenting meaningful decisions, wasting the player's time with a menu when it may as well just level up classes as you use them.[/li]
[li]The environments are poorly designed, non-interactive, and lack detail.[/li]
[li]The visuals are inconsistent and jarring (wee, my tassles are blowing in the wind behind me! Except the direction of the wind apparently localizes itself and changes with my direction, because they're always blowing straight behind me no matter where I face!).[/li]
[li]The cutscenes are poorly directed, with many of them wasting the player's time with pointless events that add nothing to the plot and taking place in the same blank environments that random battles do.[/li]
[li]More than anything, it denies meaningful sense of exploration of its fantastic setting, which is a staple of the series that they got right for roughly a decade and a half.[/li]
[/ul]
Final Fantasy has worlds to explore with mini games, people to talk to, puzzles, little things here and there to interact with. XIII hardly offered much of that.
Final Fantasy must Prelude and Battle Fanfare. XIII didn't offer either at all. At least it managed to get the chocobo theme in.
Final Fantasy is Japanese, It had a perfectly fine theme song (not amazing but it did not need changing and Eternal Love was another song in the game that made the fireworks scene between Snow and Serah a million times better.) Leona Lewis did not enhance the experience at all. Part of the appeal of Final Fantasy is that it is Japanese, not a western game. I do not want it to become that. (I'm not saying Western games are bad. All I'm saying is that being Japanese makes it different and therefore makes it a unique and refreshing experience after playing a lot of Western games. We have enough of them as it is.) The change of certain names did not fit either. Example. The Healer role was changed to Medic in the english release. 'Fantasy' What is more fantasy? Healer (I get the image of someone that uses magic etc.) or Medic? (I picture the medic from Starcraft)
One of the characters real names (this isn't exactly about it not being Japanese but, more about the unnecessary (and stupid) changes to 'appeal' to english audiences)
Lightnings real names is Claire in the English version. Eclair in the Japanese version. Eclair in French can actually mean Lightning. Claire does not in any sense of the word. This change was stupid and made even less sense as well as not being faithful to the original intention behind the names.
Battle system that doesn't have 'auto battle'. Unfortunately the battle system relied too much on auto battle so even though there was an option to turn it off it made things too difficult to bother. I don't want the game to think for me. (the reason I let XII get away with its A.I. is that setting it up was a fun and the system it used was interesting and intricate. What I thought at least.) They sacrificed interesting more complex gameplay so that the characters could do flashy moves in battle that made the battles seem fast paced. If you time your self on an average battle in XIII and any of the previous ones. I think you'll find the battles go for about just as long as each other.
That's about all I can think of. Yes, I did enjoy it however it did not offer what I would consider a satisfactory experience that a Final Fantasy game should.
From what I've seen the major complains are 'The battle system makes it so you just mash 'X' to beat the game!', 'The whole game is a straight line!', aaaaaand 'HOPE SUX OMGBBFQ'
Which is kinda silly. Almost every game is linear now-a-days (Even the earlier FF games were. Aside from XII. But so many people complained about the openness in XII that it led to SE making XIII the way they did. You have noone to blame but the XII haters!)
Aaaaand most battle systems are like that. There's still an option to manually input commands, but the combat moves too quickly near the end of the game. Which is why the 'auto-battle' command is there. For that very reason.
Can't do anything about the Hope hate, though.
Oh, forgot one. People hate how nothing is explained outside of the database.
From what I've seen the major complains are 'The battle system makes it so you just mash 'X' to beat the game!', 'The whole game is a straight line!', aaaaaand 'HOPE SUX OMGBBFQ'
Which is kinda silly. Almost every game is linear now-a-days (Even the earlier FF games were. Aside from XII. But so many people complained about the openness in XII that it led to SE making XIII the way they did. You have noone to blame but the XII haters!)
Aaaaand most battle systems are like that. There's still an option to manually input commands, but the combat moves too quickly near the end of the game. Which is why the 'auto-battle' command is there. For that very reason.
Can't do anything about the Hope hate, though.
Oh, forgot one. People hate how nothing is explained outside of the database.
[ul]
[li]It's got lousy exposition and plotting.[/li]
[li]The story doesn't flow very well.[/li]
[li]The Fal'cie don't make sense.[/li]
[li]The pacing is awful.[/li]
[li]The characters are obnoxious, whiney, and entitled.[/li]
[li]The combat system is stylish but incredibly shallow, depending on extreme twists of metagame logistics rather than concrete logic to develop the few twists it can produce.[/li]
[li]The auto-battle is too smart and eliminates the need for the player's attention.[/li]
[li]The advancement system's interface is annoying in the way it forces overly cumbersome interaction without presenting meaningful decisions.[/li]
[li]The environments are poorly designed and non-interactive and lack detail.[/li]
[li]The visuals are inconsistent and jarring (wee, my tassles are blowing in the wind behind me! Except the direction of the wind apparently localizes itself and changes with my direction, because they're always blowing straight behind me no matter where I face!).[/li]
[li]The cutscenes are poorly directed, with many of them wasting the player's time with pointless events and taking place in the same blank environments that random battles do.[/li]
[li]More than anything, it denies meaningful sense of exploration of its fantastic setting, which is a staple of the series that they got right for roughly a decade and a half.[/li]
[/ul]
[ul]
[li]It's got lousy exposition and plotting.[/li]
[li]The story doesn't flow very well.[/li]
[li]The Fal'cie don't make sense.[/li]
[li]The pacing is awful.[/li]
[li]The characters are obnoxious, whiney, and entitled.[/li]
[li]The combat system is stylish but incredibly shallow, depending on extreme twists of metagame logistics rather than concrete logic to develop the few twists it can produce.[/li]
[li]The auto-battle is too smart and eliminates the need for the player's attention.[/li]
[li]The advancement system's interface is annoying in the way it forces overly cumbersome interaction without presenting meaningful decisions.[/li]
[li]The environments are poorly designed and non-interactive and lack detail.[/li]
[li]The visuals are inconsistent and jarring (wee, my tassles are blowing in the wind behind me! Except the direction of the wind apparently localizes itself and changes with my direction, because they're always blowing straight behind me no matter where I face!).[/li]
[li]The cutscenes are poorly directed, with many of them wasting the player's time with pointless events that add nothing to the plot and taking place in the same blank environments that random battles do.[/li]
[li]More than anything, it denies meaningful sense of exploration of its fantastic setting, which is a staple of the series that they got right for roughly a decade and a half.[/li]
[/ul]
From what I've seen the major complains are 'The battle system makes it so you just mash 'X' to beat the game!', 'The whole game is a straight line!', aaaaaand 'HOPE SUX OMGBBFQ'
Which is kinda silly. Almost every game is linear now-a-days (Even the earlier FF games were. Aside from XII. But so many people complained about the openness in XII that it led to SE making XIII the way they did. You have noone to blame but the XII haters!)
Aaaaand most battle systems are like that. There's still an option to manually input commands, but the combat moves too quickly near the end of the game. Which is why the 'auto-battle' command is there. For that very reason.
Can't do anything about the Hope hate, though.
Oh, forgot one. People hate how nothing is explained outside of the database.
While I do agree with you that most jrpg are linear (I'm doing a LP of Final Fantasy 5 and it's linear as balls in the dungeons). Most people want the open world feeling you get, like when you leave cocoon and explore that open field. Stuff like that is what people want, the towns being gone is another complaint people had which is fair cause the same really is just holding up on the joy stick for a good chunk of the game. For combat I never liked AI controlled combat (which is way I'm having a hard time dealing with four heroes of light even though the AI is smart to know what to use which spell for what). If I can just scan a monster and tap x over and over and change paradigms when needed and hit x over and over it's not an engaging combat system. You say most battle systems have auto battle, which is true but trying to not use it hurts you more then using it in game. Hope I have nothing to say, he wants revenge and he follows the guy he wants to kill and never does anything about it he was poorly done if you ask me but I don't hate him.
I just want to point out how funny it is to see these two posts back-to-back. This made my day.
To Furioso: For someone who cannot brain today, you raise a good point. The game teases a lot of things that are potentially interesting to interact with, then lets the player down by not opening them up. The new things it does add are either stuff you'd take for granted from the very start of any other game or features so abstract and weird that you honestly didn't ask for them and wouldn't if you knew that was how they were going to be executed, like the summoning system.
To Demonix: Why? If you don't want to provide a counter-argument, why did you quote me? All you're doing is re-presenting my points and letting them sit, which just means that everybody in this thread is going to see an entire WALL of my bullet points re-iterated for them. That doesn't really help your side of the debate or the OP's, does it?
[ul]
[li]It's got lousy exposition and plotting.[/li]
[li]The story doesn't flow very well.[/li]
[li]The Fal'cie don't make sense.[/li]
[li]The pacing is awful.[/li]
[li]The characters are obnoxious, whiney, and entitled.[/li]
[li]The combat system is stylish but incredibly shallow, depending on extreme twists of metagame logistics rather than concrete logic to develop the few twists it can produce.[/li]
[li]The auto-battle is too smart and eliminates the need for the player's attention.[/li]
[li]The advancement system's interface is annoying in the way it forces overly cumbersome interaction without presenting meaningful decisions.[/li]
[li]The environments are poorly designed and non-interactive and lack detail.[/li]
[li]The visuals are inconsistent and jarring (wee, my tassles are blowing in the wind behind me! Except the direction of the wind apparently localizes itself and changes with my direction, because they're always blowing straight behind me no matter where I face!).[/li]
[li]The cutscenes are poorly directed, with many of them wasting the player's time with pointless events that add nothing to the plot and taking place in the same blank environments that random battles do.[/li]
[li]More than anything, it denies meaningful sense of exploration of its fantastic setting, which is a staple of the series that they got right for roughly a decade and a half.[/li]
[/ul]
I as well. I got why the characters were there but it almost felt listless to me. 9, 10, 8, and 7 at least felt like there was purpose for where I was going and what I was doing. In 13 I didn't really get where I was or to what purpose I had there. This was also a problem with jumping between characters.
As far as characters go, I didn't empathize with them or even see them emote. I think thats why Hope comes off bad is that he is the only one who seemed to have emotions. I liked Sazh, but the rest felt like robots.
I don't hate the game, but I did leave it feeling a big fat meh to it.
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