I've come down to the final thoughts of the final "Final Fantasy" in my lineup of playing through the series.
(I'll write up a quick news post later about my plans for future FF titles.)
Without further ado...
Final Fantasy XIII - Final Thoughts
As per my usual standards, let's throw down my in-game stats.
Game Stats
Time Played - 58 Hours
Character Stats & Role Levels
- Lightning
- Commando Lvl 4, Ravager Lvl 4, Medic Lvl 4
- HP: 6660, Strength: 1344, Magic: 1134
- Hope
- Ravager Lvl 4, Synergist Lvl 4, Medic Lvl 4
- HP: 4965, Strength: 940, Magic: 1589
- Fang
- Commando Lvl 4, Sentinel Lvl 4, Saboteur Lvl 4
- HP: 6935, Strength: 1759, Magic: 847
- Sazh
- Commando Lvl 4, Ravager Lvl 4, Synergist Lvl 4
- HP: 7275, Strength: 783, Magic: 597
- Vanille
- Ravager Lvl 4, Saboteur Lvl 4, Medic Lvl 4
- HP: 6195, Strength: 894, Magic: 1194
- Snow
- Commando Lvl 4, Ravager Lvl 4, Sentinel Lvl 4
- HP: 8140, Strength: 1206, Magic: 816
Missions Completed - 26 of 64.
OOooooh yeaaaah! I've finally done it! Final Fantasy XIII is over, and with that (and current timing), there are no more entries in the main Final Fantasy series. My first journey is officially complete. Now, with that being said, it's time to take a look back over Final Fantasy XIII. You might think you know my opinion of it from how negatively I talked about it, but I promise that I plan to judge it as fairly as possible. That's going to be hard since I never truly loved it, but it had its moments.
As per the usual agenda, I'm going to rate the game based on Aesthetics, Gameplay, Story, and Characters. Each part will come with the pros and cons, and then I'll wrap it up with a final thoughts of my Final Thoughts. No point lollygagging here though. Let's get to the real meat of this post with... AESTHETICS!
(I get pretty wordy in this review. If you're interested in seeing the results without having to read it all, just go down until you see big bold letters saying SUMMARY. Otherwise, do read on.)
OOooooh yeaaaah! I've finally done it! Final Fantasy XIII is over, and with that (and current timing), there are no more entries in the main Final Fantasy series. My first journey is officially complete. Now, with that being said, it's time to take a look back over Final Fantasy XIII. You might think you know my opinion of it from how negatively I talked about it, but I promise that I plan to judge it as fairly as possible. That's going to be hard since I never truly loved it, but it had its moments.
As per the usual agenda, I'm going to rate the game based on Aesthetics, Gameplay, Story, and Characters. Each part will come with the pros and cons, and then I'll wrap it up with a final thoughts of my Final Thoughts. No point lollygagging here though. Let's get to the real meat of this post with... AESTHETICS!
(I get pretty wordy in this review. If you're interested in seeing the results without having to read it all, just go down until you see big bold letters saying SUMMARY. Otherwise, do read on.)
When it comes to the "aesthetics" of a game, Final Fantasy has almost always brought the best to the table in one way, another, or just all around! Even the older titles have many songs and cutscenes that hold up even today. Keeping that in mind, XIII has come to the table with a large quota to meet. Would I say it meets the standards? I'd say it met the standards, but it wasn't quite perfect.
The general graphics are all shiny and pretty, so it didn't really drop the ball there. However, there's really not that much to see in the game. However, I'd say the real quality is the cutscenes. Every cutscene attempts to (and generally does) top the previous one. So all-in-all, the visuals pretty much get a pass. If there was anything I truly didn't like visually, it's the character designs, but I'll cover that more when I talk directly about the characters. Yeah, I'm being a bit short and sweet about the graphics, but there's really nothing to go on and on about. It's a good looking game, but the visuals were never like "I WISH TO EXAMINE THE SCENERY FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE!" Of course, I'm not quite done yet because this is aesthetics! I still need to cover the sound and music of FFXIII.
Once again, we hit upon a topic for Final Fantasy that always makes it stand out. What's that you ask? I'm talking about the music! In most cases in FFXIII, the music is perfectly written for the scene it is put into. The music is pretty good, and it generally fits the scenario it is placed into. The entire series is well known for the great and emotion grabbing music that sticks with you long after you hear it. However, I never quite feel that way with the soundtrack of FFXII. None of the music sits in my mind and makes me feel like I want to listen to it over and over. True, it could be I didn't enjoy it because I didn't love the game, but none of the music ever really touched me. There's a good song here and there, so I'm not denying the music. It's good but never what I call it great. Thus... It kinda just sticks with the idea of "passing grade."
And that covers my opinion of the aesthetics, none of it is necessarily bad in any way, but nothing ever really came out and wowed me. The cutscenes are the best part of it all, and I'll admit they're pretty amazing looking. Beyond that, I've got nothing overly positive or overly negative to say. And yet again, I use the term "passing grade." With the aesthetics covered, I figure it's time to move onwards into the gameplay. I'm going to warn you... It isn't going to come out pretty.
At the very end of the day, I'd say that great gameplay can rescue a game from the depths of horrible. I could honestly look past graphics, story, and characters for gameplay. Gameplay is the reason so many old games are still well loved! For Final Fantasy XIII, the gameplay is a mix of good and bad pieces from previous titles. This will be a hurricane of good and bad as you travel through the next couple of paragraphs so... You have been warned!
If I were to describe it to someone who played previous FF titles and not this one, this is what I would say. "It's like someone took X-2 and updated it." That is what it was. FFXIII was an updated battle system of X-2. It's a fast-paced Active Time Battle, but you change the bar to equal the number of actions you can take rather than loading up a bar for a single turn. The dressphere and the Paradigm selection of "What's my job" is exactly the same. On top of all that, they threw in the idea of "Stagger" to basically just add a win element to battles. At many times, the Stagger works very well, but by the end of the game, it felt like just an easy button to designing battles. (You could argue with me that there's a strategy to some staggers, but it's fairly nonexistent.)
"How do they beat this guy!?!"
"Just stagger him and he falls over."
"BRILLIANT!"
However, in this day and age of gaming, this is probably the only battle system that you're going to convince softcore gamers to play. Battles, outside of a bosses and a few tricky battles, will generally only last a minute or two at best. The battles are generally fast pace and don't last so long as to feel annoying (again, outside of bosses and tricky enemies). It's nice that the small enemies don't take very long to beat, so encounters don't feel like annoyances nearly as much (mostly). So all-in-all, the battles really work for the game.
There are still a lot of little problems I have with the battles. I've spent enough time just going over the Stagger Effect, so I figure I'm going to shorten it a bit here. Instead of going into a rant, I'm going to just make a simple list!
Paradigms and the Classes in FFXIII are fairly well done as well. It allows you to customize your team quite a bit, and the switching in battle whenever you need to does work. Paradigms allow you to go with pretty much whatever strategy you want to employ. The classes are fairly core ideas too, so you get just about everything with only six classes. Then again, I'm kinda disappointed that there's no way to have an in between class. Characters can only be strictly one thing at a time. Even beyond that, the game has each character set up with three "main" classes. Sure, you can spend your time giving everybody all the classes, but that's a lot of hours just to give (examples) Lightning the Synergist class or Hope the Commando class. I'd say it isn't worth it unless you want to get more time out of the game.
The story! Let's be honest. If you are playing any RPG, there's like a pretty good chance you're doing it for the story above all things. There's a couple RPGs that focus more on fighting and battles, but with Final Fantasy, the story is generally the biggest experience you get out of it. You enjoy the plot of what happens and all the twists in turns for the lovable/unlovable characters! (I've separated the characters from the story for rating because sometimes the story outshines the characters or vice versa.)
Now, would I say the plot of FFXIII was the best one yet? No, I would not. Was it great? I'd probably still decline. Was it good? Before it was all said and done, I'd say it was decent. I enjoyed parts of the story, and there are a lot of good ideas contained inside.
I'd say the overall theme to the game is defying fate or beating destiny. Something along those lines, and it's not a bad theme! The setting is basically a xenophobic society that's been taken care of by these godlike creatures, and nobody really seems to question it. They just take, take, take and few seem to truly question it. It's a good idea. The l'Cie and fal'Cie relationship is another interesting idea. The whole idea of these nigh limitless god-like beings relying on the mortal men is ironic at least! It's the basic thought that "man is the most powerful creature because they can accomplish anything!" Everything about the story in general? Pretty good collection of ideas, but the problem I feel with it is most of these ideas have been done before. They've been done before and in better ways.
The group comes from all over, and they're united through a horrible twist of fate. They venture around unsure if they should do what they're told or rise against it. (To be fair, some immediately go one way while the rest do another.) They go all around Cocoon trying to not get caught/overthrow the government/deal with their feelings. Then they unite with a rogue military group to deal with the government! But that group turns them in, but then they learn that they're puppets the entire time. This was a surprise, and it was like "GASP!" to hear. Unfortunately, the group kept playing right into his hands. Not even in a surprising way! They do almost exactly what Bart-y wants them to. Although to be fair, they don't really have many other choices when it comes around to it. Then there is the whole "Maker" thing that only gets mentioned a couple times. I wish they had gone into a bit more detail on that, but I guess the fact we didn't see him means the group succeeded. Overall, there are a lot of ideas I've seen done better... EVEN IN PREVIOUS FF GAMES!
I can't say that I ever loved the story, but I enjoyed portions of it at least. The ending was good as far as I'm concerned though, and it actually closed up most of the details. It closed them in a way that sequels could really only say "Well what happened next?" (Basically just adding to the sorrow of "I'm planning to play XIII-2 after this...") The rest of the game was never really anything to get excited about though. Each of the character's has some problem they have, but then they work through it. (I'll cover that more later.) They succeed in completing their goals without screwing over the world.
If I had one true complaint here, it'd involve the datalogs system. Often times, the game would love out important details during the story that either felt fairly vital to the story OR kinda important details to help paint the picture. As a person, I can only read so much into the subtle hints given throughout. However, some of the things left unsaid weren't even remotely hinted at. The only way you could know about them would be through the datalogs. That just doesn't cut it. I liked the idea of the datalog, but the part where it contains more of the story than the actual story is bull shit. SO IMPROVE THE DATALOGS IDEA SQUARE!
Another honorable mention goes out to FFXIII's scenes. The game had more scenes than actual gameplay sometimes. You'd go anywhere from two to a dozen battles, and the characters would have a scene. True, a good portion of these were to advance the story, but at one point, the scenes just happened too often. It's like the game felt I needed constant breaks from all that tiresome action. It also seems that I needed a little reminder of what our group's goal was....EVERY TEN MINUTES.
"We're l'Cie! Enemies of Cocoon!" "We are going to stop the fal'Cie!" "We gotta stop the fal'Cie." "Serah would want us to save Cocoon." "We're here to stop the fal'Cie and save Cocoon." "We're going to stop Orphan and save Cocoon." "This is for us and to save ourselves." "We gotta figure out how to get out of our Focus." "Focus this." "Focus THAT." "OUR FOCUS!" "WE ARE L'CIE!" /end overdramatization but really not by much
We don't need a cutscene or scene every ten to twenty minutes. Just cut it down and let the character's just talk out loud or something like the old days. I really don't have anything else to add here, so I guess I should wrap up the story section.
So in summary, I have nothing really for the story, and there's really nothing against it either. There's a lot of good ideas and story concepts contained within, but many of them feel like things I've seen done better. The datalogs are terribly done. The story should contain all of the story elements, and the datalog should basically just be a journal you can look over to remember what happened. You could make it even better if the datalog contained all kinds of information apart from the story, enemies, and characters. (I don't want to go into a rant here, but basically, do what Mass Effect did by exploring and explaining all sorts of things in the FFXIII universe.) Finally, we don't need a scene every ten minutes to remind me of something that the last scene just said ten minutes ago.
All in all, I could get behind the story if I actually liked the characters. That brings me to the final section of the review process, Characters. This is also the section where most of my dislike stems from. Be prepared for a lot of hatred up ahead!
Now, in the beginning, a lot of old RPGs didn't have much for characters. I'd go so far as to say that Final Fantasy didn't really get hardcore into characters until FFIV. Once it reached that point, characters became more important with names and backstories and all kinds of cool stuff. There were always the good characters (Cecil, Bartz, Terra and 2/3rds of the FFVI crew, Red XIII, Squall, Vivi, and the whole cast of FFIX... In my opinion of course). Then they generally have the bad characters. (That least 1/3rd of the FFVI group that didn't get much attention, most of the cast of FFVII, Squall again somehow, Quina, everybody in FFX minus maybe Yuna and Rikku, lots of the extras in FFXII) Unfortunately, my opinion on the FFXIII crew is that they're all bad.
I'm going to try and go into detail of why I think they're bad here. Each character will get a few sentences, and then I'll try to come around and say something good about someone. Let's be honest though... I really can't think of anything positive to say about them. I'm going to attempt to anyways! ONWARDS!
Let's start with our cover girl, Lightning. She's got "issues". Her sister is a l'Cie, and now her sister wants to marry a scruffy hobo (Snow). Then said sister is turned into a crystal, and Lightning blames Snow. Lightning spends the first half of the game overly angry and moody. This isn't a fun or interested character. On top of that, when she talks, her voice is deep to sound emotional, but it tends to give her an emotional-less feeling. She improves throughout the game, but that's also half the point of her. Even when she does improve, I just never really got to like her. Positive side to all this? She does improve, so I guess that's something
Snow... Character design alone makes me hate him. (Check out this link under V. Fire the person who does costume design.) And thinking about it now? That's probably where most of my hate is directed. I don't really hate Snow, but there's nothing about him that makes me like him. He's not a very deep person, and he's just the group's knight. "I WILL SAVE SERAH AND COCOON!" "How?" ". . .SOMEHOW!" I guess the positive here is that he could have been much worse, but that damn scarf in his pants! SCREW THAT HOBO LOOK!
The first time you meet Hope, you can pretty much already sigh in disgust and annoyance. The kid is all SNOW KILLED MY MOM! Although Snow did not kill his Mom. His mom died trying to save him (which he never seemed to get), and Snow just happened to be present. However, at best, Snow is only indirectly responsible for her death. So shouldn't Hope be blaming so much more than him? I guess Snow is the easy target here. Hope's character goes from SAD to ANGER to REVENGE to suddenly I'm smarter now and learning. I guess everybody in this game has to upgrade from stupid status to learned status. Starting to see a trend here... Oh right, good thing about Hope? By the end of the game, he's one of the better characters I guess. I'd rank him above Snow and Lightning.
Sazh is the token black guy for this game. He's also the old guy, and he tends to be the comedy relief on top of it all. Personally, I'm surprised that he didn't start saying something about "pitying the fool" or some other token black guy phrase. If we are aiming at deepness, he's probably the winner here. He doesn't talk about it initially, but he has problems prior to the l'Cie thing. He also reveals having quite a bit of knowledge about the ordeal. Comparative to everybody else? He's almost the star attraction! Or he would be... If not for the baby chocobo. Seriously, that one little thing kinda ruins his image for me. I feel like they could/should have done something else here. It ruins him. It's not funny or entertaining. It's a lame plot device. Enough Sazh though!
Vanille. I just.... She's high-pitched, too-happy annoyingness. Everytime she talks I want to slap her face off of her face. If you can get past that? Honestly, she's a horrible person. Despite trying to cheer everybody up, she's constantly lying and such. Also, her "twist" is pretty dang easy to pin down. Waay before she reveals it, I already had it figured out. Her outfit alone really stood out compared to everybody else... Maybe I just read too much into things. Beyond her looking and sounding annoying, she also does these fun narrator monologue bits throughout the game It's just.... It's adding insult to injury. I don't really see the need for the narration bits at all. The positive side to Vanille? I'd say there isn't one. She does improve by the end of the game, but she's still annoying. Easily the character I hate the most.
Final character time! It's FANG! I don't get if Fang and Vanille are sisters, lovers, or "sisters" in a way that's not blood-related but yeah. Either way, she's not so bad either I guess. I don't get the Australian style accent going on, but she seems to be the most straightforward of the group. (THANK YOU!) She's the only one who is all "What is wrong with you guys? We should do things for ourselves! I'm going to protect Vanille" or whatever. Of course, this makes her the most selfish. Heck, she becomes Ragnarok in the end to destroy Orphan and therefore destroy Cocoon. This is last minute stuff too! I already listed a good thing about her. She's the most straightforward in the group. She doesn't believe they will succeed and doesn't see why they should save everybody else. She's the pessimist, and I'm done with that.
Now... If I were to arrange them in order of "Least dislike to most dislike", it'd go something like this. (1 is tolerable while 6 is hate.)
That ended up turning into a massive rant, so I do apologize. If I were to be brief yet sum it all up about the characters, it goes like this. They're not the most likable cast in the series. Far from it, I'd probably say they could be last place in a contest between the groups. However, by the end of the game, five of the six people vastly improve over what they were, so they have that going for them. The character growth does exist, but it's hidden behind some pretty annoying characters with moments of blargh.
If I had to give a mentionable name here... I'd honestly say Rosch was definitely one of the best NPCs in the game, and I'd go so far as to say he's better than the actual party. You meet the guy only a few times in the game, but he shows himself to be a good guy. He doesn't like the situation more than anyone else, but he follows orders and goes through. His first and second appearance wasn't too impressive, but when you meet him near the end, I dunno... I just liked where his character went. He admits to knowing the truth but claims he did it for the people. He did what he believed was best, and he even makes amends! He asks that the remaining PSICOM people evacuate Cocoon, and then he even buys the group time by sacrificing himself. (Considering he survived so much before, I was questioning if he would somehow survive this.) Either way, I liked his character and design. He'd be #1 if I put him in the list up above.
I'd also have liked to see more direct fal'Cie involvement in this. Most of the time, you literally just gave them a passing glance and then walked by. Bart-y was the only one who got much screen time, and even then, he's the bad guy. He had to get screentime, or the bad guy would have been the intangible idea of "destiny". You pass by so many fal'Cie, and yet you get no interactions outside of the datalog telling you who is who. Kinda disappointing if you ask me...
Thus, in the end, I didn't really like the characters, but I'm willing to admit that they did all grow somewhat. I'm going to say "meh" for this section because I can't in good nature fail it simply because I don't like the characters. Anyways, someone out there is bound to like the characters. It's definitely not me, but someone out there does...
I've wasted enough of your time with my review, so let's get this wrapped up with...
~May the Crystals Guide Me~
The general graphics are all shiny and pretty, so it didn't really drop the ball there. However, there's really not that much to see in the game. However, I'd say the real quality is the cutscenes. Every cutscene attempts to (and generally does) top the previous one. So all-in-all, the visuals pretty much get a pass. If there was anything I truly didn't like visually, it's the character designs, but I'll cover that more when I talk directly about the characters. Yeah, I'm being a bit short and sweet about the graphics, but there's really nothing to go on and on about. It's a good looking game, but the visuals were never like "I WISH TO EXAMINE THE SCENERY FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE!" Of course, I'm not quite done yet because this is aesthetics! I still need to cover the sound and music of FFXIII.
Once again, we hit upon a topic for Final Fantasy that always makes it stand out. What's that you ask? I'm talking about the music! In most cases in FFXIII, the music is perfectly written for the scene it is put into. The music is pretty good, and it generally fits the scenario it is placed into. The entire series is well known for the great and emotion grabbing music that sticks with you long after you hear it. However, I never quite feel that way with the soundtrack of FFXII. None of the music sits in my mind and makes me feel like I want to listen to it over and over. True, it could be I didn't enjoy it because I didn't love the game, but none of the music ever really touched me. There's a good song here and there, so I'm not denying the music. It's good but never what I call it great. Thus... It kinda just sticks with the idea of "passing grade."
And that covers my opinion of the aesthetics, none of it is necessarily bad in any way, but nothing ever really came out and wowed me. The cutscenes are the best part of it all, and I'll admit they're pretty amazing looking. Beyond that, I've got nothing overly positive or overly negative to say. And yet again, I use the term "passing grade." With the aesthetics covered, I figure it's time to move onwards into the gameplay. I'm going to warn you... It isn't going to come out pretty.
At the very end of the day, I'd say that great gameplay can rescue a game from the depths of horrible. I could honestly look past graphics, story, and characters for gameplay. Gameplay is the reason so many old games are still well loved! For Final Fantasy XIII, the gameplay is a mix of good and bad pieces from previous titles. This will be a hurricane of good and bad as you travel through the next couple of paragraphs so... You have been warned!
If I were to describe it to someone who played previous FF titles and not this one, this is what I would say. "It's like someone took X-2 and updated it." That is what it was. FFXIII was an updated battle system of X-2. It's a fast-paced Active Time Battle, but you change the bar to equal the number of actions you can take rather than loading up a bar for a single turn. The dressphere and the Paradigm selection of "What's my job" is exactly the same. On top of all that, they threw in the idea of "Stagger" to basically just add a win element to battles. At many times, the Stagger works very well, but by the end of the game, it felt like just an easy button to designing battles. (You could argue with me that there's a strategy to some staggers, but it's fairly nonexistent.)
"How do they beat this guy!?!"
"Just stagger him and he falls over."
"BRILLIANT!"
However, in this day and age of gaming, this is probably the only battle system that you're going to convince softcore gamers to play. Battles, outside of a bosses and a few tricky battles, will generally only last a minute or two at best. The battles are generally fast pace and don't last so long as to feel annoying (again, outside of bosses and tricky enemies). It's nice that the small enemies don't take very long to beat, so encounters don't feel like annoyances nearly as much (mostly). So all-in-all, the battles really work for the game.
There are still a lot of little problems I have with the battles. I've spent enough time just going over the Stagger Effect, so I figure I'm going to shorten it a bit here. Instead of going into a rant, I'm going to just make a simple list!
- Auto command works too well. Makes manual input almost pointless.
- AI works well for companions, but they sometimes do stupid stuff.
- Main character KO = Game Over = NOT COOL
- Eidolons are neat to use, but I never really NEEDED to use them.
- Eidolon battles are story battles yet they are the most difficult and frustrating battles in the game.
And that's the short version of complaints. I'd say the good and bad generally cancel one another out, but then again, I haven't covered the "leveling" or Paradigm system yet...
Now, I have two parts I feel I still need to cover with the game, but I'm not wanting to expand the "Game" section a whole lot more. Therefore, I'm going to try and keep these next couple parts pretty simple. First I'll do a quick burst of the leveling system, and then I'll follow up with the exploring aspect of the game.
LEVEL UP!... Is not a term that is in this game. I don't know who thinks that throwing out tangible levels is a good idea, but you should slap that person in the face RIGHT NOW SQUARE! The Crystarium is just a re-imagining of the Sphere Grid, but instead of multiple paths all in one map, you have multiple maps with only a single path... Basically they just flipped it around.
Thus it brings the same problem that the Sphere Grid sorta had. You never truly know if you are powerful enough to move on, or if you should take more time and gain more crystal stuff. Although to b fair, based on where you are, you are limited to how far you can level. FFX never limited you, but you would start gaining less Sphere Levels. So long explanation simplified? I don't like the Crystarium at all. It's just the Sphere Grid in disguise.
Before I forget, I do have a special mention for the weapon system. It's an interesting thought, but it sucks so much balls. Why? When I first saw it, I was expecting something like FFVIII, but then it ended up being NOTHING like that. All it came down to was this. Organic items (like parts from creatures) boosted the weapon's/accessories's multiplier. Then you used mechanical items (robot parts or scrap metal stuffs) to gain crazy amounts of experience. It could have worked okay, but there were a lot of weapons gained throughout the game, and leveling early on was fairly pointless, especially if you found a weapon you liked more later. Getting ultimate weapons in the game involves hundreds of items to level your weapons up, and then you need a 2 million Gil item to level it to Ultimate. Screw that. All-in-all, it's not an enjoyable level up system.
Now we're going to wrap up the Game section with my thoughts on Exploration! There really isn't any. /end thoughts
Now, in all seriousness, what I said isn't very far from the truth. Most of the game is, for the lack of a better term, a big hallway. It's a very pretty hallway, and at times, I did admire and enjoy the hallway. However, this doesn't change the fact that the game has basically no exploration until the last couple hours. Even then, you can really only do so much exploration. I'd rather have a world map scenario. I realize that's not necessarily much better (since you often follow a path), but I don't like that I can see the walls in this hallway. You might argue that FFX was just one long hallway, but at least you gained the ability to go wherever you wanted in that hallway! So what I'm saying here is that I don't like it....Not at all.
By the time you can do any real exploration, you're down on Pulse and basically already 90% done with the game. To add insult to injury, side quests are fairly nonexistent. The only "side quests" you get are monster missions, and those only come near the end of the game. There's a few minor side quests (like fixing robodog) but I'd go so far as to say they don't really count. Not much more to add here, so I best get on with the review.
Basically, I mentioned these two parts because I was disappointed with them. To summarize the gameplay up? It's a bad mixture of older Final Fantasy titles, but it honestly fails to do it nearly as well as the previous titles. The battles aren't too bad, and they shine out compared to the rest of the gameplay. If I had to give it a "pass or fail" right now, I'd honestly just say "fail" because a lot of problems overshadow what could have been great. However, I'll have a final wrap up at the very end. (Somewhere down below...) Final Fantasy XIII only has two more spots to try and win me back. Can it do it? You'll just have to read on and see. Next up is...
LEVEL UP!... Is not a term that is in this game. I don't know who thinks that throwing out tangible levels is a good idea, but you should slap that person in the face RIGHT NOW SQUARE! The Crystarium is just a re-imagining of the Sphere Grid, but instead of multiple paths all in one map, you have multiple maps with only a single path... Basically they just flipped it around.
Thus it brings the same problem that the Sphere Grid sorta had. You never truly know if you are powerful enough to move on, or if you should take more time and gain more crystal stuff. Although to b fair, based on where you are, you are limited to how far you can level. FFX never limited you, but you would start gaining less Sphere Levels. So long explanation simplified? I don't like the Crystarium at all. It's just the Sphere Grid in disguise.
Before I forget, I do have a special mention for the weapon system. It's an interesting thought, but it sucks so much balls. Why? When I first saw it, I was expecting something like FFVIII, but then it ended up being NOTHING like that. All it came down to was this. Organic items (like parts from creatures) boosted the weapon's/accessories's multiplier. Then you used mechanical items (robot parts or scrap metal stuffs) to gain crazy amounts of experience. It could have worked okay, but there were a lot of weapons gained throughout the game, and leveling early on was fairly pointless, especially if you found a weapon you liked more later. Getting ultimate weapons in the game involves hundreds of items to level your weapons up, and then you need a 2 million Gil item to level it to Ultimate. Screw that. All-in-all, it's not an enjoyable level up system.
Now we're going to wrap up the Game section with my thoughts on Exploration! There really isn't any. /end thoughts
Now, in all seriousness, what I said isn't very far from the truth. Most of the game is, for the lack of a better term, a big hallway. It's a very pretty hallway, and at times, I did admire and enjoy the hallway. However, this doesn't change the fact that the game has basically no exploration until the last couple hours. Even then, you can really only do so much exploration. I'd rather have a world map scenario. I realize that's not necessarily much better (since you often follow a path), but I don't like that I can see the walls in this hallway. You might argue that FFX was just one long hallway, but at least you gained the ability to go wherever you wanted in that hallway! So what I'm saying here is that I don't like it....Not at all.
By the time you can do any real exploration, you're down on Pulse and basically already 90% done with the game. To add insult to injury, side quests are fairly nonexistent. The only "side quests" you get are monster missions, and those only come near the end of the game. There's a few minor side quests (like fixing robodog) but I'd go so far as to say they don't really count. Not much more to add here, so I best get on with the review.
Basically, I mentioned these two parts because I was disappointed with them. To summarize the gameplay up? It's a bad mixture of older Final Fantasy titles, but it honestly fails to do it nearly as well as the previous titles. The battles aren't too bad, and they shine out compared to the rest of the gameplay. If I had to give it a "pass or fail" right now, I'd honestly just say "fail" because a lot of problems overshadow what could have been great. However, I'll have a final wrap up at the very end. (Somewhere down below...) Final Fantasy XIII only has two more spots to try and win me back. Can it do it? You'll just have to read on and see. Next up is...
Now, would I say the plot of FFXIII was the best one yet? No, I would not. Was it great? I'd probably still decline. Was it good? Before it was all said and done, I'd say it was decent. I enjoyed parts of the story, and there are a lot of good ideas contained inside.
I'd say the overall theme to the game is defying fate or beating destiny. Something along those lines, and it's not a bad theme! The setting is basically a xenophobic society that's been taken care of by these godlike creatures, and nobody really seems to question it. They just take, take, take and few seem to truly question it. It's a good idea. The l'Cie and fal'Cie relationship is another interesting idea. The whole idea of these nigh limitless god-like beings relying on the mortal men is ironic at least! It's the basic thought that "man is the most powerful creature because they can accomplish anything!" Everything about the story in general? Pretty good collection of ideas, but the problem I feel with it is most of these ideas have been done before. They've been done before and in better ways.
The group comes from all over, and they're united through a horrible twist of fate. They venture around unsure if they should do what they're told or rise against it. (To be fair, some immediately go one way while the rest do another.) They go all around Cocoon trying to not get caught/overthrow the government/deal with their feelings. Then they unite with a rogue military group to deal with the government! But that group turns them in, but then they learn that they're puppets the entire time. This was a surprise, and it was like "GASP!" to hear. Unfortunately, the group kept playing right into his hands. Not even in a surprising way! They do almost exactly what Bart-y wants them to. Although to be fair, they don't really have many other choices when it comes around to it. Then there is the whole "Maker" thing that only gets mentioned a couple times. I wish they had gone into a bit more detail on that, but I guess the fact we didn't see him means the group succeeded. Overall, there are a lot of ideas I've seen done better... EVEN IN PREVIOUS FF GAMES!
I can't say that I ever loved the story, but I enjoyed portions of it at least. The ending was good as far as I'm concerned though, and it actually closed up most of the details. It closed them in a way that sequels could really only say "Well what happened next?" (Basically just adding to the sorrow of "I'm planning to play XIII-2 after this...") The rest of the game was never really anything to get excited about though. Each of the character's has some problem they have, but then they work through it. (I'll cover that more later.) They succeed in completing their goals without screwing over the world.
If I had one true complaint here, it'd involve the datalogs system. Often times, the game would love out important details during the story that either felt fairly vital to the story OR kinda important details to help paint the picture. As a person, I can only read so much into the subtle hints given throughout. However, some of the things left unsaid weren't even remotely hinted at. The only way you could know about them would be through the datalogs. That just doesn't cut it. I liked the idea of the datalog, but the part where it contains more of the story than the actual story is bull shit. SO IMPROVE THE DATALOGS IDEA SQUARE!
Another honorable mention goes out to FFXIII's scenes. The game had more scenes than actual gameplay sometimes. You'd go anywhere from two to a dozen battles, and the characters would have a scene. True, a good portion of these were to advance the story, but at one point, the scenes just happened too often. It's like the game felt I needed constant breaks from all that tiresome action. It also seems that I needed a little reminder of what our group's goal was....EVERY TEN MINUTES.
"We're l'Cie! Enemies of Cocoon!" "We are going to stop the fal'Cie!" "We gotta stop the fal'Cie." "Serah would want us to save Cocoon." "We're here to stop the fal'Cie and save Cocoon." "We're going to stop Orphan and save Cocoon." "This is for us and to save ourselves." "We gotta figure out how to get out of our Focus." "Focus this." "Focus THAT." "OUR FOCUS!" "WE ARE L'CIE!" /end overdramatization but really not by much
We don't need a cutscene or scene every ten to twenty minutes. Just cut it down and let the character's just talk out loud or something like the old days. I really don't have anything else to add here, so I guess I should wrap up the story section.
So in summary, I have nothing really for the story, and there's really nothing against it either. There's a lot of good ideas and story concepts contained within, but many of them feel like things I've seen done better. The datalogs are terribly done. The story should contain all of the story elements, and the datalog should basically just be a journal you can look over to remember what happened. You could make it even better if the datalog contained all kinds of information apart from the story, enemies, and characters. (I don't want to go into a rant here, but basically, do what Mass Effect did by exploring and explaining all sorts of things in the FFXIII universe.) Finally, we don't need a scene every ten minutes to remind me of something that the last scene just said ten minutes ago.
All in all, I could get behind the story if I actually liked the characters. That brings me to the final section of the review process, Characters. This is also the section where most of my dislike stems from. Be prepared for a lot of hatred up ahead!
Now, in the beginning, a lot of old RPGs didn't have much for characters. I'd go so far as to say that Final Fantasy didn't really get hardcore into characters until FFIV. Once it reached that point, characters became more important with names and backstories and all kinds of cool stuff. There were always the good characters (Cecil, Bartz, Terra and 2/3rds of the FFVI crew, Red XIII, Squall, Vivi, and the whole cast of FFIX... In my opinion of course). Then they generally have the bad characters. (That least 1/3rd of the FFVI group that didn't get much attention, most of the cast of FFVII, Squall again somehow, Quina, everybody in FFX minus maybe Yuna and Rikku, lots of the extras in FFXII) Unfortunately, my opinion on the FFXIII crew is that they're all bad.
I'm going to try and go into detail of why I think they're bad here. Each character will get a few sentences, and then I'll try to come around and say something good about someone. Let's be honest though... I really can't think of anything positive to say about them. I'm going to attempt to anyways! ONWARDS!
WARNING! RANTING AHEAD!
Snow... Character design alone makes me hate him. (Check out this link under V. Fire the person who does costume design.) And thinking about it now? That's probably where most of my hate is directed. I don't really hate Snow, but there's nothing about him that makes me like him. He's not a very deep person, and he's just the group's knight. "I WILL SAVE SERAH AND COCOON!" "How?" ". . .SOMEHOW!" I guess the positive here is that he could have been much worse, but that damn scarf in his pants! SCREW THAT HOBO LOOK!
The first time you meet Hope, you can pretty much already sigh in disgust and annoyance. The kid is all SNOW KILLED MY MOM! Although Snow did not kill his Mom. His mom died trying to save him (which he never seemed to get), and Snow just happened to be present. However, at best, Snow is only indirectly responsible for her death. So shouldn't Hope be blaming so much more than him? I guess Snow is the easy target here. Hope's character goes from SAD to ANGER to REVENGE to suddenly I'm smarter now and learning. I guess everybody in this game has to upgrade from stupid status to learned status. Starting to see a trend here... Oh right, good thing about Hope? By the end of the game, he's one of the better characters I guess. I'd rank him above Snow and Lightning.
Sazh is the token black guy for this game. He's also the old guy, and he tends to be the comedy relief on top of it all. Personally, I'm surprised that he didn't start saying something about "pitying the fool" or some other token black guy phrase. If we are aiming at deepness, he's probably the winner here. He doesn't talk about it initially, but he has problems prior to the l'Cie thing. He also reveals having quite a bit of knowledge about the ordeal. Comparative to everybody else? He's almost the star attraction! Or he would be... If not for the baby chocobo. Seriously, that one little thing kinda ruins his image for me. I feel like they could/should have done something else here. It ruins him. It's not funny or entertaining. It's a lame plot device. Enough Sazh though!
Vanille. I just.... She's high-pitched, too-happy annoyingness. Everytime she talks I want to slap her face off of her face. If you can get past that? Honestly, she's a horrible person. Despite trying to cheer everybody up, she's constantly lying and such. Also, her "twist" is pretty dang easy to pin down. Waay before she reveals it, I already had it figured out. Her outfit alone really stood out compared to everybody else... Maybe I just read too much into things. Beyond her looking and sounding annoying, she also does these fun narrator monologue bits throughout the game It's just.... It's adding insult to injury. I don't really see the need for the narration bits at all. The positive side to Vanille? I'd say there isn't one. She does improve by the end of the game, but she's still annoying. Easily the character I hate the most.
Final character time! It's FANG! I don't get if Fang and Vanille are sisters, lovers, or "sisters" in a way that's not blood-related but yeah. Either way, she's not so bad either I guess. I don't get the Australian style accent going on, but she seems to be the most straightforward of the group. (THANK YOU!) She's the only one who is all "What is wrong with you guys? We should do things for ourselves! I'm going to protect Vanille" or whatever. Of course, this makes her the most selfish. Heck, she becomes Ragnarok in the end to destroy Orphan and therefore destroy Cocoon. This is last minute stuff too! I already listed a good thing about her. She's the most straightforward in the group. She doesn't believe they will succeed and doesn't see why they should save everybody else. She's the pessimist, and I'm done with that.
Now... If I were to arrange them in order of "Least dislike to most dislike", it'd go something like this. (1 is tolerable while 6 is hate.)
- Sazh
- Fang
- Hope
- Lightning
- Snow
- Vanille
And now I'm going to stop ranting and bring it back around to actual reviewing.
RANT ENDS
That ended up turning into a massive rant, so I do apologize. If I were to be brief yet sum it all up about the characters, it goes like this. They're not the most likable cast in the series. Far from it, I'd probably say they could be last place in a contest between the groups. However, by the end of the game, five of the six people vastly improve over what they were, so they have that going for them. The character growth does exist, but it's hidden behind some pretty annoying characters with moments of blargh.
If I had to give a mentionable name here... I'd honestly say Rosch was definitely one of the best NPCs in the game, and I'd go so far as to say he's better than the actual party. You meet the guy only a few times in the game, but he shows himself to be a good guy. He doesn't like the situation more than anyone else, but he follows orders and goes through. His first and second appearance wasn't too impressive, but when you meet him near the end, I dunno... I just liked where his character went. He admits to knowing the truth but claims he did it for the people. He did what he believed was best, and he even makes amends! He asks that the remaining PSICOM people evacuate Cocoon, and then he even buys the group time by sacrificing himself. (Considering he survived so much before, I was questioning if he would somehow survive this.) Either way, I liked his character and design. He'd be #1 if I put him in the list up above.
I'd also have liked to see more direct fal'Cie involvement in this. Most of the time, you literally just gave them a passing glance and then walked by. Bart-y was the only one who got much screen time, and even then, he's the bad guy. He had to get screentime, or the bad guy would have been the intangible idea of "destiny". You pass by so many fal'Cie, and yet you get no interactions outside of the datalog telling you who is who. Kinda disappointing if you ask me...
Thus, in the end, I didn't really like the characters, but I'm willing to admit that they did all grow somewhat. I'm going to say "meh" for this section because I can't in good nature fail it simply because I don't like the characters. Anyways, someone out there is bound to like the characters. It's definitely not me, but someone out there does...
I've wasted enough of your time with my review, so let's get this wrapped up with...
SUMMARY TIME!
Final Fantasy XIII was the hardest fought Final Fantasy since I began all of this. I've spent (out of game time) FOUR months trying to play through this game. I've hit many hiccups because of real life events and other games I wanted to play. For that, I do apologize. Admittedly though, I felt the game is kinda off-putting for more hardcore Final Fantasy fans. If you have been playing them from the beginning, I don't really see you loving this one. I'm probably making bad assumptions, but screw you! It's my review. As for the four categories at hand...
- AESTHETICS - It's a great looking game. Nobody will argue this. It's a good looking world and decent designs abound (not counting Snow of course). I never really got attached to the music, but there are a few good tracks in there. Overall, the aesthetics pass.
- GAMEPLAY - The gameplay is a lot of mixed feelings. The battles are probably the best part of this category. They're fast paced and they work. The stagger system works quite well, but it tends to get overused later on. Unfortunately, all this good press is accompanied by several things like: the pointless and overly hard story battles, a massive lack of exploration available, and another revision of the horrible Sphere Grid system. It'd be an okay system for a newbie, but as an RPG fan, I've got to say... It sucks. I'm going to have to fail the gameplay because too much drags down the otherwise fast-paced battles.
- STORY - The story contains a lot of good ideas all throughout, but they're all executed kinda poorly. I'd give the game more here, but the ideas they used were even done better in previous Final Fantasy titles. Regardless of my feelings on that though, I did enjoy the ending. Of course, I've enjoyed the ending to the last several games. The datalog kinda ruins the story at a few points though. On top of that, the game has waaaay too many scenes that go down. If they cut back on the scenes and improve the datalog, I could give this part a pass. I don't feel like it's a complete failure though, so I'm going to say "okay". No pass or fail here just... okay.
- CHARACTERS - I didn't really like the characters (if you couldn't tell from above), but I'll at least admit that they do all have character growth before the game ends. Rosch comes around to be my favorite character of the bunch though. Kinda wish the other fal'Cie (beyond Bart-y) had more inclusion in the game apart from background objects. Who knows! They could have been more bosses, or maybe they could have been thrown in as "interesting characters". This section comes down to what the last one was. I don't feel right failing the entire cast of characters because the main group didn't appeal to me. Therefore... They were all just okay.
So in summation, Final Fantasy XIII was just okay (at best). There was a moment here and there where I remotely enjoyed the game, but otherwise it felt like a big chore. You could go to say that I was "playing too many RPGs in a row" or something, and that very well could be true. However, I never got quite the same feeling here as I got with nearly every other game in the series (1 thru 10 mostly). I really wouldn't recommend it to anybody, but if I had to give a chance of recommendation...
For beginning RPG players? I could probably recommend it. It's the most up-to-date game in the series, and it's pretty easy to pick up and play. It'd be great for RPG-ers coming from an anime background. It's the Final Fantasy anime game! (Not Final Fantasy Unlimited... I'll save another day for that.)
Hardcore RPG people? I'd probably just tell you no. Go find a better RPG to play. There's a plethora of RPGs available at your disposal, and FFXIII just really isn't worth your time. It's one of the weaker stories in the series with one of the weaker casts to come along. You can do better. Even RPG aspects would tell you to throw this out! It's got nothing here for you. Turn back now.
So in the end, Final Fantasy XIII comes only to beginning/casual RPG-ers or huuuge Final Fantasy fans wanting a fix that isn't an older game. I wouldn't play it again, but someone out there is probably all open mouthed at what I'm saying right now, like I'm crazy or something. And I'm going to end the review right there because I've got nothing else to say about it.
I'd like to thank anybody who has stuck around to this point and read the review! More kudos to those who read the ENTIRE review! EVEN MORE KUDOS to people who have been following my blog even a portion of the way! This journey was more for me than anybody, but I'd be happy if someone generally enjoyed my endless talking here. At this point, I'm pretty much done with the journey.
I have a few loose ends to tie up (FFXIII-2 and Mystic Quest), but otherwise, I'm pretty much done. I figure to have both of those games knocked out within the next month or two. Once past that, I'm unsure if I should proceed straight to Dragon Quest or try to take a break. Better logic on my part would dictate a break, but I feel obligated to get started with Dragon Quest instead. Why? The sooner I start it, the sooner I get to enjoy another classic RPG series! Also because I really dilly-dallyed on getting THIS done, so I feel a compulsive need to push forward. I've said enough though!
Once again, I thank everybody for reading and sticking along with me during my looong period of too much RPG-ary. I'd like to thank my friends who supported me! (Andrew, Nick, and.... Other people that I can't think of!) Also thanks to my friends who ragged on me for doing this. (Pretty much anybody not under column A.) It's been a pleasure doing business with you guys, and you should expect a new post soon. YESSSS! VERY SOON! (Within the week)
~May the Crystals Guide Me~
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