Poll: What a Bore!

[ShaqLevick]

This very day I decided to start playing Final Fantasy XIII, and as many of you may have I came into it with soaring expectations. But this is what really happened, I began playing this turd at about 10 am this morning, and I swear to you I passed out roughly 10 times over the next 2 hours. Passed out after a healthy breakfast and all, due to nothing but severe boredom. In all honesty how can it take so long to craft a so called game when your goal is to do absolutely NOTHING! Open up with some soft music, introduce me to characters (most of which I care nothing about), and then we have a bloody auto battle. Then I suffer through a cut scene of which I care nothing about because I've been on bloody autopilot since I started. Oh I also forgot to add wake from my slumber...

If there's only one respective section of your game which can genuinely be considered a game then why wouldn't you make it in the slightest bit engaging?

So I ask my fellow Escapist members, what am I missing about this? Did you enjoy the game? Do you have any opinions either supportive or to the contrary?

Personally I've always been a fan of games, played a great deal of JRPGS (especially Squares offerings) back in their glory days. Thoroughly enjoyed many, I even like FFXII. But this game, well I just found this insufferable.

 

[Archindar]

I feel bad for you

 

[Camembert]

I think it was all right, but... I kind of had a break from playing it for a while (exams) and later had no desire to finish it. I hate the fact that the battles are rated based on how quickly you can finish them.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Hmm...I loved it. From the first minute to the last.

I loved the combat system, and loved the linearity. In fact, I loved it far more than I loved Mass Effect 2 or Dragon Age, recently.

A very fluid combat system that keeps you on your toes, and the game discourages grinding, too.

 

[Vampire cat]

Paint drying... What an amusing sport...

 

[Casual Shinji]

The battle system was pretty cool, the rest.....was not.

And for some strange reason, none of the women in this game had any hips.

 

[PureChaos]

i've not played it (and have no intention to) so can't really say

 

[Sassafrass]

Played it, enjoyed, currently trying to review it and failing horribly. ><

It was just good fun for me, I'm not sure why. But it must've been pressing my buttons as I didn't get bored with it at all.

 

[Facefaucet]

I did not hate the game, but I was disappointed. Maybe my expectations were too high. I waited for it to soar and it just floated. Not the worst ever, but in my opinion it did not live up to it's potential.

 

[child of lileth]

I never played it. I remember the day after it come out in Japan, everyone on forums kept saying stuff like, "It's the PS3's first great tunnel simulator."

I'm not much of a fan of the series past 6, and I don't like tunnel sims, so I stayed away from it.

 

[Abedeus]

Hmm...I loved it. From the first minute to the last.

I loved the combat system, and loved the linearity. In fact, I loved it far more than I loved Mass Effect 2 or Dragon Age, recently.

A very fluid combat system that keeps you on your toes, and the game discourages grinding, too.

I can't tell whether you are being ironic or not. If yes, stop it.

 

[ShaqLevick]

I never played it. I remember the day after it come out in Japan, everyone on forums kept saying stuff like, "It's the PS3's first great tunnel simulator."

I'm not much of a fan of the series past 6, and I don't like tunnel sims, so I stayed away from it.

Yes, I believe that answers all my questions. It is a tunnel simulator, and if only we could have put this train on rails I could have slept through the entire experience. You know as opposed to waking up to walk to the end of the corridor before boredom took me again.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Hmm...I loved it. From the first minute to the last.

I loved the combat system, and loved the linearity. In fact, I loved it far more than I loved Mass Effect 2 or Dragon Age, recently.

A very fluid combat system that keeps you on your toes, and the game discourages grinding, too.

I can't tell whether you are being ironic or not. If yes, stop it.

I'm not. I'm being honest here. I adore that game.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Hmm...I loved it. From the first minute to the last.

I loved the combat system, and loved the linearity. In fact, I loved it far more than I loved Mass Effect 2 or Dragon Age, recently.

A very fluid combat system that keeps you on your toes, and the game discourages grinding, too.

I can't tell whether you are being ironic or not. If yes, stop it.

I'm not. I'm being honest here. I adore that game.

I've played it for roughly 4 hours, and I have to say it gets bashed too much. YES, you are on autopilot until you exit the first zone. But then you get paradigm shifts and staggers included in your fighting system. Also, normal enemies later on can kill you, so they used the fact that the party autoheals after each fight to the game's credit. I thought it was gonna be too easy, but I was wrong.

The start is incredibly automated, gotta agree with that.

Keep on playing OP, the game doesn't require 20 hours play to reach the good part. If much later on, you still hate it, then yes, leave it.

The absolutely gorgeous menus don't hurt, either.

 

[ZephrC]

Well... it's the only JRPG from this console generation that I've managed to finish. The rest have just been way to boring and predictable.

FFXIII was just okay. The plot was awful, but it was pretty well written for such a stupid story, and I actually found the characters likable, which is getting rarer and rarer in JRPGs. The battle system was pretty okay as well. Not great, but it had its moments.

Honestly though, don't buy all this garbage about it magically getting good after twenty hours. It's still the same thing. Sure, the game starts out highlighting the character's bad sides and releases the battle system to you in a slow trickle, but there's no sudden moment where it just stops sucking. It gets better, but if you don't like it after five hours you probably never will.

 

[SnootyEnglishman]

I can say that before this I had never played a Final Fantasy game, then when i played i thought it was pretty cool and it was a good introduction for me.

 

[Tiswas]

It was an okish game. Nothing amazing but not terrible either.

I gave up when it came to the whole fight the same monster 5 billion times in order to get money to upgrade your weapons.

 

[Archindar]

Hmm...I loved it. From the first minute to the last.

I loved the combat system, and loved the linearity. In fact, I loved it far more than I loved Mass Effect 2 or Dragon Age, recently.

A very fluid combat system that keeps you on your toes, and the game discourages grinding, too.

I can't tell whether you are being ironic or not. If yes, stop it.

I'm not. I'm being honest here. I adore that game.

I've played it for roughly 4 hours, and I have to say it gets bashed too much. YES, you are on autopilot until you exit the first zone. But then you get paradigm shifts and staggers included in your fighting system. Also, normal enemies later on can kill you, so they used the fact that the party autoheals after each fight to the game's credit. I thought it was gonna be too easy, but I was wrong.

The start is incredibly automated, gotta agree with that.

Keep on playing OP, the game doesn't require 20 hours play to reach the good part. If much later on, you still hate it, then yes, leave it.

The absolutely gorgeous menus don't hurt, either.

Yeah, the presentation of the game in general is drop dead gorgeous and has a seamless, 'clean' feel to it.

What's more, as Gamesradar pointed out, it's pretty impressive that in this day and age and for a game of this complexity, bugs seem to be pretty hard pressed to be found. It's a highly polished game.

That is because the game had been in development for literally eons.
But a seemingly bug-free game is something every developer should strive to create.