Beat it.
Before FF13 was released I was skeptical. I had my criticisms, and despite this I was still excited to play it. Enough that I imported Advent Children blu ray just to get a sneak peak and even managed to get in a few hours of the Japanese version. I lowered my expectations tremendously because I knew this wouldn't be my type of FF from the get go, and I went in optimistic that I'd get some enjoyment out of it, and...I'd guess I'd have to say I did, to some degree, but that doesn't mean I don't really my problems with the game. In fact, I think there's a lot of problems with FF13.
But there's a bit of good in it too:
+ The presentation is really out of this world. It doesn't really mean much, but FF13 is easily the best looking rpg of this console generation, Japanese or otherwise. It's well animated, and it's such a sight to behold.
+ The combat is fast, which is a definite plus. Although I feel the game stripped many features from the 10-2 battle system, it's still a joy to play an (slightly) evolved version of my favorite FF battle system.
+ I really like having the option to retry fights. Other rpgs should have this option. If you die on a fight, you're teleported right outside the vicinity of the fight upon picking "retry". This makes wading through old territory and backtracking a non-issue. In fact, I have to tip my hat to the makers of the game for making such a convenient rpg in general: saves are frequent and a shop (should you ever need one) is always a stone throws away.
+ Paradigms. I like the idea of paradigms a lot, as they can give the combat a situational strategic edge. Although the customization of paradigms is sparse (more on this below) they really make the battle system. Some of the later fights are a real blast solely due to paradigms.
+ Some of the later fights, particularly chapter 12 boss are really fun and sometimes require a bit more than simply clicking rav/rav/com or med/med/sen. Sometimes.
+ One of the best things about FF12 was its balance of skills and abilities. Almost no ability was really pointless or useless or a waste of space aside from low level magic spells such as vanilla spells: cure, fire, thunder, lightning, you know the drill. This made for the first time since arguably the nes days that buffing and debuffing a legit (and often required) strategy against some of the stronger foes, adding a complexity to FF battles that was never seen in 3d before. FF13 takes it even further. Due to the AP system low level magic like cure and fire are actually useful in the final dungeon. More of this, please.
+ Juggling enemies is cool.
+ Get out of my house and worst birthday ever.
- The game's structure is not really my thing. I really don't mind linearity, as FF10 is linear, and even though FF10 is one of my least favorite FF's at this point, FF10 knows a thing or two about variety. You see, variety is one of the most important features in an rpg. You're always doing the same thing: fighting similar looking enemies, employing the same battle strategies with little difference and more for more than 40 hours. The reason the town -> dungeon -> town -> dungeon formula
exists is because of this fact. Without, the game's would be boring. That's not to say that this structure should be employed to all rpgs, because that'd be a crock, but the kicker here is that there have been quite a few rpgs - specifically jrpgs - that employed a similar story and game structure as FF13 and do it far better, with less bloat and less bullshit. Vagrant Story and Breath of Fire: Dragon Quest are prime examples of such cases: hardly any towns to speak of, linear caverns and hallways make up the majority of the level's design but in its place are some of the deepest rpg systems found on a console. Not only does this structure harm FF13's gameplay it also hurts the story in the way of...
- bad pacing. Sometimes I'd like FF13, sometimes I'd fall asleep when playing it. Some chapters are really good (chapters 3, 6, 7, 8, the beginning section of 11 to be exact) but, others are complete joy suckers. They are absolutely boring and either devoid of challenge or devoid of any variation to speak of. In many ways this game is all over the place. This issue could be fixed if the game were 15-20 hours as opposed to 40-50. Hey, Vagrant Story and Dragon Quarter did it, and they
benefited from this by emphasizing replayability. These games knew their strengths and weaknesses and acted upon that. FF13 doesn't.
- To further expound upon my point, the main issue here is a distinct lack of level or dungeon design. In FF13, you are either in a hallway or a corridor or both. Go to a city called Palompolom? Expect walk a linear path! This wouldn't be so bad if the game designers gave players diversions, or some form of actually competent dungeon design to offset this. But they didn't.
You know, Square Enix could have single handedly quelled the naysayers cycism is they didn't wait until you were 25 hours into the story to actually do some side missions. Chapter 4 is where marks should have been included. Even if it's the just more battling, it's
something, and as someone who throughly enjoyed chapter 11's first half this would have been ideal. Why couldn't they set us up with, I don't know, at least 3-4 big areas like Pulse so players don't get bored?
Why is about every single aspect of the gameplay that isn't the battle underdeveloped and uninspired? They could have made some of the best dungeons in the series here with this formula. After all, it's one big dungeon crawl. For example, at Skyleth Waterscape or whatever, you can control the weather but the only thing it does is change what monsters you fight. Did the development team just turn this game in half finished? You could have created a whole slew of interesting gameplay devices with that
one gimmick: allow certain marks to be found only in certain weather, make certain areas unreachable without certain weather patterns, how does weather affect battle, how does it affect terrain? Instead, they opted to merely make the weather change what monsters you fight. Whoopy. That is so creative.
This is the bulk of the problem with FF13's gameplay. Outside of battle, it is an uninspired heap of a mess filled with features that add very little to, well, anything. Remember chasing the chicobo at Nautilus? What was the point of that? They opted to do that instead of let the player soak in Nautilus? Or the part where you control the robot with Hope in chapter 4? Once again, another random gameplay idea that turns into just that: another random gameplay idea rather than a legitimate gameplay
concept that would be fun to play. It is clear from my 50 hours with FF13 that the majority of the time spent developing the game was with the engine. This is why you shouldn't have bothered with making a new engine, S-E, as the overall game feels irrefutably incomplete. For all the guff FF12 gets for feeling incomplete, I'm amazed at the amount of passes FF13 gets. Probably because FF12's story was incomplete, while FF13's gameplay feels incomplete: two complete opposites.
- You know, for a game that relies on ai so much, you'd think they'd let you customize your ai. I don't know how many times I was waiting for a character to be revived by the ai but the game didn't do it. Or when I wanted protect but the ai would cast an anti-fire spell. At first, there's little problem, but the more you play the more this problem becomes exposed.
- After reading import impressions and seeing things such as,"Hardest 3d FF" "Hardest FF" and more, I expected more from the difficulty, especially since battles are the only thing going for FF13, thus making them the main focal point. This is not the case. Throughout 95% of my time with FF13, using the same strategy I used before worked majority of the time. Rav/rav/com, com/com/rav, med/med/sen, /sen/sab/sab and you have the bulk of my FF13 strategies. The majority of the game is mindless in terms of battle, five stars are earned effortlessly, and considering this is the highlight of the game this can be a major issue at times. I even found all of the marks I faced (a good twenty or so) to be devoid of strategy or difficulty as well. And while there are some interesting fights, they come few and far between and aren't enough to save the game, which is disappointing considering the bare essentials of the game (the battle system speed, the ap system, the paradigms, the paradigm shifts) all had the potential to make up one of the best FF battle systems. The end result is a system that is all flash, little substance. Of course, the same could be said for previous FF games, but those games aren't over-glorified dungeon crawlers, hence the increased standards when it comes to games of this type.
- My biggest issue I take with the game is the story and narrative. I really don't like it. In fact, I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say it's among the worst in the series. Intentions are vague (and in many cases underdeveloped), goals are constantly tossed aside for new goals and more. Frankly, the story is in many ways flat out insulting, but what's more curious is the way they presented it. Almost all details of the game are obscured inside the datalog that is constantly updated after every cutscene. Thing is, most of the important details are within the datalog, and that's not helping matters. It's like going to the local theater to see Oedipus Rex with live actors, only for snippets of dialogue to be said sporadically and the only way to unravel this cluster fuck of a story? The cliff notes manual they handed to you at the door.
FF13's story premise is really interesting:
A group of people are branded as traitors, and the only way to save themselves is to destroy the world. It's an interesting premise; great in fact. But FF13's way of storytelling makes such a tale a chore to take in. It constantly introduces mature themes, themes such as genocide, war, destiny, and it answers each of these themes with something you'd see in an afternoon school tv special for kids: what was originally a story about destroying Cocoon and trying to find out how to get rid of their brands turns into a joyous walk in the park from one destination to the next with zero exposition. I have no clue why I am going to half of the locations in the game; Vanille witnesses genocide first hand in the beginning of the game and yet acts like nothing happened and it's all sunshine and rainbows; Snow's gaggle of penis munchers called Nora say they're heroes and want to save people being purged, but always end up saying cheeseball lines such as,"No one can beat Nora!" or "Aren't you supposed to save her, HERO?". It all comes out like a fucking shounen manga like Naruto, except that there was a time when Naruto was good and it sure as heck was better written than this.
Character motivations are lopsided, particularly the villains. They are all caricatures to the end. They're merely villains doing "bad" shit, except in this case, they're the good guys I guess. They continue to chase our crew of bad doers and are about as charismatic as a brick wall. Hey, remember Jihl? She was such a great character wasn't she? Or the silver haired fruitcake you fuck up multiple times. These villains are all about one thing and one thing only: "L'cie must die!". And don't get me on the main villain. What a crock.
So there's about zero attachment to the villains. They aren't interesting, they aren't menacing, they aren't conniving, they're not even smart! They just do shit just to do shit.
This further extends to the main cast. I like only a helpful of characters in FF13. In the beginning I liked Lightning and Sazh, but as the game continued on Hope started to grow a spine and became another good character. But somewhere along the game, almost all character development ceases to exist. Sazh, who used to be the straight man of the party turns into stale comedy relief. Hope, who grew a spine, always has to say a speech every time the party gets down. Lightning grunts, apologizes, and continues her way. Snow clenches his fist and punches air or punches his palm. AGAIN. Vanille has to act like a kook in this scene, she's not psychotic AT ALL, no sir. And Fang is just boring.
The more I played, the less I was able to separate it from other jrpg series like Tales games, or even Star Ocean games. Because at this point, you can't claim to be an FF fan and try to act like FF is superior to Tales due to the story because this game has proved it's just about the same shit.
- The dialogue. It is terrible. "Mom's are tough!""Didn't you say you were gonna save her HERO?","Heroes don't die!"," Wishing and praying won't do anything, all I can do now is dream!","Ciao!". Ad infinitum.
And to think we had dialogue like this in the last game:
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- The most damning thing for this game I can think of is the complete lack of world in general. Cocoon lacks an air of magic and mystery and adventure and wow. In FF10, we know everything about Spira's culture: their religion, their hopes, their dreams, their fears, their political system, their hobbies, how they live life in general. Every single aspect of FF10's story lends to the gameplay. The monsters you fight in FF10 are sin spawn or those who have turned into monsters without having been sent. In FF13, you fight a bunch of boring robots.
I can think of a whole slew of things that captured my imagination in FF1-12, but I can't think of a damned thing in FF13. One thing games get right is immersion and the genre that does this best are rpgs: you become transfixed with the world, and the world becomes the story, not the shitty written cutscenes that make up the bulk of the game. In FF7, litter is piled up in the streets in Midgar. Locations are poor, people aren't living a good life and you can see this through the those low resolution backgrounds that tell us a story, a story without words. This is why towns are so damn important beyond serving as a source for variety for the traditional rpg, they create a believable world. FF13's world is far from believable, in fact, the details are so confusing that it's not known whether Cocoon is a planet and Pulse is another planet or if they're both on the same planet and just in different parts of the world. Small details are often the biggest details, and towns and locales contain these aspects that are very important to rpg story-telling.
These worlds are supposed to entice the player, right? That sense of adventure, traveling over planes and mountains, finding new things and seeing new sights. That is the backbone of a console role playing game.
Things like this seem small, but they help make the player
care. I want to save the world after seeing the lowest pits of Midgar.
When you arrive in Alexandria again in FF9 on disc three, you find the city being torn apart in a gruesome battle. You actually want to save the place because you've been there before. It feels familiar and you want to help in any way possible because you've been down these streets at the beginning of the game.
This is why storytelling in the gaming medium is unique. You can't explore a new world or open up a treasure chest when reading a book or watching a movie. But you can in video games. By making FF13 a game that's lacking these aspects - however some of the FF fanbase has convinced themselves that it's pure filler - FF has clearly lost its magic.
This is what Final Fantasy boils down to for me: imagination and crazy worlds I think are cool. FF13's cold and uninspired world lacks that spark and that is the biggest offense the game could make. They had the right idea with Oerba, but that ended up feeling like another dungeon due to the (pointless) inclusion of monsters to fight. Suffice to say, in FF13, that magic is gone but if it makes the people who want more cutscenes shoved down their throats happy, I guess the guys at Square have done their job.
- And that one distinction separates those who love FF13 and those who really just aren't fans of it: the emphasis on story. Me, my favorite Final Fantasy's are 5, 6, 8, Tactics, and 10-2. All of these games place an emphasis on freedom, exploration, and customization. They are story-based, but not to the point where the story dictates how I should I play. I'm free to make only Terra and Celise be the only mages in FF6 as everyone else relies on their main roles. I can make RedXIII only deal with summon/enemy skill material as he's an animal and such skills are befitting an animal. I can craft my own custom roles and custom jobs out of thin air using merely my imagination in these games because the game does not restrict how I choose to play it.
In FF13 it's the complete opposite. The story dictates everything: when you can do sidequests, when you get a full party, when your crystarium can level up, when you can off spec roles if you choose to. The whole game holds the players hand like a mother and her infant. So naturally, FF13 is opposite to my tastes and opposites rarely attract. That said, I'm fine if that's your style of game. It's just not.
- The emphasis on story and lack of options until 20-25 hours make this game clearly have the worst replay value in the series. I've beaten it once and I have no desire to ever play it again. This is the person who replayed every FF for three years up until the release of FF13, so you can tell that replaying these games is important to me because I always do something different: a low level game in FF8, for instance. Or giving my jobs in FF5 limitations. Unless you want to replay for story that's usually the only reason TO replay these games: to do something different. But how can you do something different when everything is decided for you?
- Crystarium is a dud and not interesting. I'm sick of boards. The fact that Crystarium is just a rip off of the sphere grid makes it even more disappointing.
- Equipment upgrade system is half assed, poorly polished, and not creative or fun in the least. In a word, it is awful.
You know, I'm real hard on Final Fantasy. At one point in time I would have said it was my favorite gaming series, but now it's nigh unrecognizable because elements of things I liked aren't even prominent or even important anymore.
But that's cool, because this is just FF13. I have far more faith in Versus to be that next gen FF I was craving, but FF13 certainly was not it. I don't think it's a stretch to say that, I've never felt this way about an FF after beating it. It did not feel rewarding and I did not bother to watch the credits. This is easily my least favorite Final Fantasy. That's not to say it's the worst, because I think FF2 is arguably a worst FF, but as a
game I respect some of the revolutionary ideas it was going for so I have to put it above FF13.
FF13 had potential, but the end result was a mediocre, sloppily put together product and Square Enix can do better than this to slap the FF name on the box. Of the past four years since the release of FF12, FF has taken a total step back. I feel that Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Mass Effect 1, Dragon Age, Etrian Odyssey, Devil Survivor, Tales of Vesperia, Raidou 2, and especially Mass Effect 2, Persona 3/4, Valkyrie Profile 2, Valkyrie Chronicles and Demon's Souls are far better games. That's almost every rpg I have played since the release of FF12, not including FF remakes.
FF is better than this.
If I were to rate it, I'd give it a 6/10. No more, no less. Let's see what you can do with Versus, S-E, because 13 has only left this FF fanboy lacking in faith. Enjoyable, to a degree, but certainly not worth 60 bones and definitely not worth 4 years of waiting. I don't hate it, but I certainly don't love it either, it's middle of the road.
