20 reasons why Final Fantasy XIII is not a good Final Fantasy game

The Welsh Paddy said:
Type-0 was originally meant to be FF Agito XIII. Now it doesn't have 'XIII' in the title, so I'm kinda assuming it's no longer part of the whole Fabula Nova Crysallis crap. I also heard that they're doing that with Versus as well. Apparently it's going to be the next numbered title. FF XV.

Apparently. :monster:
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One thing you might not have noticed is that the logo has changed a bit. It no longer says "XIII." The Fabula Nova Crystallis project was originally announced as Fabula Nova Crystallis Final Fantasy XIII, but the XIII is no longer there, neither in the name nor the logo. The reason for the name change, said Kitase, is that Final Fantasy Agito XIII was changed to Final Fantasy Type-0 but is still a member of the Fabula project, so having a XIII in the project name would have been an issue.

http://andriasang.com/comtou/ffxiii_and_fnc_interviews/
 
Big Casino said:
The idea of thinking up 20 reasons why it was shit kinda makes me think you thought about this game for waayyy too long. Especially if you hate it so :lew:
Itd be like me spending time to think about 20 reasons why i think Nicki Minaj is a plague on Music. But id rather just say shes pish. Thats what pops into my simple brain first.

I only have one reason FF13 was crap and that is.

It just was.
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I had more than enough time to think of all these things while endlessly fighting giant turtles.
 
chrisburr said:
Final Fantasy XIII is one of the greatest Final Fantasy games ever and number 3 behind I and III.

The Worst Final Fantasy is XII, good but not Great, Vayne was by far the most bland main villain ever, the majority of the villains are not main villain calibur.
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Probably never played 2, 4-11.

13 is the worst. Because at least 12 had heart though different style had the core elements of all the other final fantasy games.
 
I'm currently replaying this game on the ps3 and I'm already getting a bit irritated. Everyone hates the linearity of the game. It feels like all you do is walk down straight paths and get into quasi-autonomous battles. It's amazing what a few towns/a world map can do to break up the monotony of battling. Plus the fact that you have a level cap makes all the battles after a point feel pointless and it starts to become a poor action game.

I'm also not a fan of the story and I didn't particularly enjoy the fugitive aspect/motivation throughout the game. The fact that there are no towns and hence no hometowns for the characters within the game just detracts any charm it may have attained. A lot of people have said that Square have to 'progress' and they can't keep releasing the same game. I agree with that premise but at the same time the series has hallmark qualities that provide a basis for the adoration the series has received over the years and to just jettison that in some nonchalant fashion deeply irritates me as a long time fan.

Not 20 reasons but a few to start with.
 
I still haven't got this game... I got my finger burnt big time with all the idiotic 10/10 reviews for FF12, which was awful. An offline MMO for all intents.

I really should pick 13 up and I probably will, it's less than £10 over here brand new and was selling for that price a few weeks after its release. @_@ It's just, all the criticism puts me off and Lightning just looks the archetypical lady boy and the comments from the guys in charge at SE annoy me. Like how "Western reviews only diss it cos they don't get it" and so on which, just reeks of typical arrogance from that side of the world since Sony let all their success go to their heads. It's almost as if its a thing in Japan that once you get too successful you just get too cocky.

Buuuuut, I digress. I'm sure I'll pick it up, hopefully once 15 is out or something. I'm not sure I could handle a third 'eww' game after X-2 and XII to be honest.
 
What I find interesting is that you actually enjoyed Lightning, I have not gotten to enjoy her for a single second. I was not convinced that she was the only character that could actually be leader, because all other characters just didn't in exception of Snow, which really wasn't that great of a leader as you figure out in the first hour of the game.

I am so let down with the characters, I only like Sazh. Vanille is just so freaking annoying I avoid her like the plague. I've really been feeling like Final Fantasy reached its peak and XII is on the curve back down.

I really enjoy the graphics, but that's about it. I honestly enjoyed FFX-2 more than this one.
 
I have avoided posting in this thread. I don't know why I'm suddenly deciding to post now, when I've already dragged this game through the mud so many times already. But this time I will talk about the main underlying reason(s) why this game is wank instead of a bunch of smaller, often random and disjointed reasons. If anyone's not interested, kindly close this thread and get out.

The game's design from the very beginning meant FFXIII was destined to be an example of everything you should not do if you want to tell a good story in a video game. To tell a good story, the narrative has to show things to the audience; it has to communicate with them so the audience can gain a proper footing into your fictional universe - to properly understand your lore and the rules of things. It's called fucking world-building. In a video game, there are a myriad of ways that the developers can communicate with the player to give them this necessary foundation, and this can be down to game design itself. If it's not cutscenes, it can be through NPCs. It can be through your exploration of the world and experiencing what there is to see and do, the architecture, culture, behaviours of inhabitants. It can be through the abilities of your characters, the abilities of your enemies - heck, even the design of the enemies, so you get a good idea of what there is in terms of wildlife and manmade weapons in this world.

However, FFXIII doesn't seem to want to communicate with the player through its game design. What is FFXIII's game design? Communicating with the player through its cutscenes? But how well do the cutscenes convey necessary exposition to the player? Do you get the sense that the exposition you pull from the game is from cutscenes? No, of course not. After every fucking cutscene, the game TELLS you to read the datalog. Why would it do that when cutscenes are supposed to be one of the ways in which a game communicates to the player? The answer is, the cutscenes don't even do that a lot of the time. For the game to blatantly advise you to READ pages of crucial terms and information to fill in the vast void gaps that a player may undoubtedly have, that suggests that the cutscenes were only there because WOW! PRETTY THINGS!

This is not how you do world-building. You don't show meaningless things and then dump information piles on the player afterwards. It's no good when the narrative does not bother whatsoever to do what it should do while the player scrambles through pages trying to discern things and work out what the hell actually just happened or what that piece of drivel jargon meant. I know it's not hard to piece things together like this (I certainly had no real problems with it), but it is infuriating for something that calls itself an RPG. That destroys immersion when the player is left to rely on encyclopaedias, while cutscenes are relegated to flashy, pretty things, NPCs that don't even say anything to you, let alone convey little bits of useful information so they may as well not even be there, the game world is just one lifeless stretch of wallpaper after another, and so on.

Do you know what I think? I think FFXIII has more things in common with Uncharted than your typical RPG. What does Uncharted (and the myriad of triple-A titles that are trying to emulate its game design) have? It has lovely set pieces, linked to one another through linear story progression. You may be on a moving train one moment. The next, you are on a snowy Himalayas mountainside. Can you backtrack? No. And that's what the locations in Uncharted are like. They are action set pieces, designed to be seen and experienced only once, and then after that, they've served their purpose entirely.

In a good RPG, I want to return to places. I may feel a sense of nostalgia so I fancy a revisit. I want to see whether anything has changed since I was last there, and if so, how and what significance can I draw from that? I want the freedom to backtrack to places. FFXIII barely lets you do that. It only lets you go back to TWO places: one is a massive action set piece that you've already slogged through anyway, and the other is just a barren open stretch of plains that only give the illusion of life because of the wildlife that are just there to beat up. Supposing I want to, I can't go back to Nautilus? I can't go back to Palum? I can't go back to Bodhum? I know CONTEXTUALLY, the characters can't really do that, but those locations have no significance anymore. Like some earlier Uncharted levels, once they're slogged through with, that is that. Finito. No significance left while linear progression only lets you go forward one way.

Yeah, that's FFXIII's game design in a nutshell. It has more in common with a triple-A shooter/adventure game than an RPG. Its narrative does not bother trying to do its job. It tells the player rather than showing them. And when a game is telling and not showing, what do you not do? Have a game world that is frankly just baffling and weird. Cocoon is just weird. Half the time I have no idea where exactly we are in relation to another location and on precisely which part of Cocoon I am supposed to be on. Half the time I don't even know what I'm looking at. When your game world is just a set piece after another, why the fuck should I care about this world? I'm not immersed. I have met virtually NO NPC CHARACTER that makes me want to save this damn world.

And I'll throw in something else as well. When realism is brought up, people often say that realism should be thrown out of the window because this is FINAL FANTASY and we can afford to hold our suspension of disbelief. This is perhaps the case, but believability is another thing. You can throw all this fantastical stuff at me and I can believe it, so long as you bother making it well established and cohesive. When you start breaking rules: okay, why the fuck did Hope's mother die from a fall and Snow fucking survived that same drop and with virtually no injury done to him whatsoever? Am I supposed to believe also that he survived that MASSIVE fall after an explosion when he was saving Hope at the same time? You see why this is not believable, but I can believe fantasy concepts like a society administrated and kept together by a band of demigods?

Then we now have a whole fucking trilogy of these games. And guess what? They are ALSO doing a fucking shit job of telling a story. If it's not the handwaving of stupid things because time paradox, lolz!, it's how they've handled the whole Pulse, Cocoon, Etro, Bhunivelze thing. It's essentially the whole mythology thing. It's been done horribly. Your average player will not properly know about these Gods and their motivations. Your average player will not even be very familiar with them because they don't properly fucking appear (at least yet). Your average player will NOT have read the mythology that FFXIII is based on, so why should the player care about all this shit?
 
.Fleur said:
Supposing I want to, I can't go back to Nautilus? I can't go back to Palum? I can't go back to Bodhum? I know CONTEXTUALLY, the characters can't really do that, but those locations have no significance anymore.
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I agree with pretty much everything you said. One thing that I don't get is this though. Why does everyone say that it makes sense that you can't return to places because you're wanted by the government and are branded dangerous/traitors/whatever? If that's the case, why can you even go back to Edenhall but nowhere else? There is no good reason why the characters can't return anywhere. In FFX at the halfway point in the game they were all wanted traitors, everyone knew their faces, and yet they were able to go anywhere - it just meant they got into battles with soldiers. This is not hard to do. The whole 'it makes sense plot-wise' excuse is nonesense imo.
 
Sheechiibii said:
I agree with pretty much everything you said. One thing that I don't get is this though. Why does everyone say that it makes sense that you can't return to places because you're wanted by the government and are branded dangerous/traitors/whatever? If that's the case, why can you even go back to Edenhall but nowhere else? There is no good reason why the characters can't return anywhere. In FFX at the halfway point in the game they were all wanted traitors, everyone knew their faces, and yet they were able to go anywhere - it just meant they got into battles with soldiers. This is not hard to do. The whole 'it makes sense plot-wise' excuse is nonesense imo.
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Kind of not true with the international/pal version of X, as once you're wanted going back is going to get you faceplanted with a dark aeon no? Least I think they start showing up post-Bevelle so its around that time.
 
OdaNova said:
Kind of not true with the international/pal version of X, as once you're wanted going back is going to get you faceplanted with a dark aeon no? Least I think they start showing up post-Bevelle so its around that time.
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That's the version I have and you can still go pretty much anywhere, you just have to avoid the actual temples (like going into a temple, or speaking to priests), the whole world is still available for you to get to. Even if it wasn't, the Dark Aeons can be defeated, in FFXIII you don't get any options at all.
 
Sheechiibii said:
That's the version I have and you can still go pretty much anywhere, you just have to avoid the actual temples (like going into a temple, or speaking to priests), the whole world is still available for you to get to. Even if it wasn't, the Dark Aeons can be defeated, in FFXIII you don't get any options at all.
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Ah right, it's only mushroom rock road and Besaid that are Aeon locked I guess. True they can be defeated but I don't think most people expect them heh, my first memory of a dark aeon encounter is Valefore overdrive one hit ko'ing me... o_O
 
OdaNova said:
Ah right, it's only mushroom rock road and Besaid that are Aeon locked I guess. True they can be defeated but I don't think most people expect them heh, my first memory of a dark aeon encounter is Valefore overdrive one hit ko'ing me... o_O
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You need to put Auto- Life on your characters ASAP before she uses her overdrive. If you don't have that spell yet, you need to train more. The Dark Aeons are not too hard. All you need is some extra time and effort to level up or sphere up a little bit and they're a breeze. Or you could just pay a little certain samurai aeon to do the work for you.
 
Going off-topic. Anymore off-topic posts will be deleted. Thank you for your understanding =)
If you want to discuss about how to beat the dark aeons, feel free to do so in FFX Help Booth section.
 
I haven't been on this site in a while and I may be a little late to voice my opinion but I need to get my opinion out there. At the time I'm sure I expressed how much I disliked Final Fantasy XII. Looking back I now think the game is not as bad as I first thought. Although there are still some aspects of Final Fantasy XII that prevent it being close to my favourite Final Fantasy games, I've realised that the game had some good qualities that I either ignored or let what the game didn't do well over shadow those qualities. I mention this because my opinion for Final Fantasy XIII now may be a little different in a few years time but I've had this game for almost 3 years so I doubt it.

As someone who is a big fan of Final Fantasy, I bought Final Fantasy XIII before release, spending extra because I was that desperate to play it. I played the game for hours over a weekend but as the further I played through, the less I was enjoying it. I eventually reached about half way through chapter 10 before I stopped playing for a while. Some time after that our PS3 broke. We got a new one but it meant that I lost my current saves. I really couldn't be bothered going through all that again so I barely touched the game until summer last year when I played up until the first boss, then again I put the game aside until November when I became really determined to complete the game.

I haven't managed that yet but I'm getting there. I've currently arrived at Oerba (forgot what chapter that is) and I know I am near the end of the game so I thought I would share my opinions just now that I can be bothered to talk about the game. I doubt whatever happens later is going to make me suddenly love the game.

So yeah, I really dislike this game. Not just as a Final Fantasy game, as a game in general. The only thing that is pushing me on is my determination to complete this game because it is Final Fantasy. So here is the good and the bad. Mostly bad with a little good sprinkled in there.

First of all, the game kind of puts you in the middle of what is going on leaving you to look through the data entries to catch up to speed. My first time playing I was reading all of the entries but by my second attempt at the game I was not interested with it. The strange thing is at times I am confused at what is going on then at other times it is clear as day while the characters are struggling to understand. I'm not sure if this becomes fully clear at the end but I'm at the point now that I just don't care enough to fully understand it. Every cutscene is always very sad. Lighten up for god sake!

The characters are annoying and I think they all suffer from bi-polar disorder. I'm not sure if the voice acting is bad or they weren't helped by cheesy dialogue. It isn't just one or two, it's all of them! So far, Final Fantasy XII has been the best so far with the voice acting. I remember Final Fantasy X been fairly cheesy too (I can never forget that laughing scene! Especially when someone walked into the room and that's the only footage they saw of me playing that game.) but FFXIII took a huge step down from FFXII. I thought the pairing of Lightning and Hope early in the game was odd and awkward. I tolerated Lightning and Sazh at the beginning but Hope is such an awful character and his weak misplaced attempt of revenge named "Operation Nora". How long did that lkast again? Also, is it just me or was there some awkward sexual tension between Sazh and Vanille early in the game? Also I think the game lacked supportive characters to the main story. For example, FFVII had Sephiroth, Rufus, The Turks, Professor Hojo etc.

The game was too linear. I remember there was an area you go through while you are playing as Lightning and Hope (I believe Hope takes lead for a bit) and the path lights up or something to show you the direction to go (that's what the game tutorial said) but there was only one goddamn path to take and the game is like this pretty much all the way through with an exception in chapter 11 (I think) where you can wander in an open area and fight monsters. Also for most of the level designs, when you have seen the first section at the start then the rest of the level will pretty much be identical. There wasn't a lot of variety in level designs. It was go along a path, use elevator, stairs etc then rinse and repeat. The Crystarium was also simple and you could only progress through it so much until you beat a certain chapter then you could progress a little more. They may as well not bothered with the Crystarium and instead just give you the stat upgrades "Congratulations, you beat chapter 3 Lightning has now learned how to use attack.... 4 times! Also Hope has learned a summon, but you'll probably not use that since you will most probably not set him as lead."

I did not like the battle system at all (my complaints for battle system are similar of FFXII). I prefer to be in control and nothing is more annoying during a boss fight, your Medic only uses 1 Cure when your HP is less than 20% then uses 4 Cures when all your team's HP is 80%. Sometimes I had to shift to Medic to get my party fully healed quickly so I could focus on the enemy. The constant "X" bashing doesn't keep you engaged in the game when you are travelling through levels. The majority of the enemies are easy to beat although I think going into chapter 11 or 12 (when you enter Gran Pulse) the difficulty instantly changes. You were strolling through the game beating every enemy insight then all of a sudden I'm getting raped. By this point I was done with levelling my characters, I just wanted to get this game done and then shelf it so I just continued on and it seems I have slowly but surely began to catch up again. Pretty much all of the boss fights have had little to no relevance to the story. Also lack of sidequests with the exception of the Cie'th Stones in Gran Pulse. They game would probably be better as an interactive movie like Heavy Rain and just fill all the fights with QTE. That way I'm not always pressing "X" and I have to concentrate on the fights.

The only good aspects of the Final Fantasy XIII are the graphics, visuals and CGI. Even though the graphics were good, it's what we expect to see on PS3/X360 consoles. I really liked the CGI scenes which is one thing Final Fantasy has done well for so long. The music is decent. Not the best in a Final Fantasy game however I do love the main battle theme since I first heard it in the debut trailer.

Overall I am not enjoying this game and the only reason I am playing it is because it is Final Fantasy. Assuming that Final Fantasy XV gets made, I am most certainly will be getting it and I hope that it improves, but I will not get hyped up for it again since maybe that is why my opinion of the last 2 games have at first have been poor.

Rant over... for now. :)
 
You forgot the part about how the villian's motivation and plan made no god damned sense and the way the heroes got out of being L'Cie didn't make any god damned sense either.
 
RJFire said:
You forgot the part about how the villian's motivation and plan made no god damned sense and the way the heroes got out of being L'Cie didn't make any god damned sense either.
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Yeah, it is a wonder why the Fal'Cie think the world is so awful that it's best to kill everyone including themselves so the world can be born anew. I can't even remember whether that was ever adequately explained. Oh yeah, this is FFXIII. Silly me. They don't like explaining things very well.

And I concur with the part about the stupid plan. I know they said Sanctum Fal'Cie can't destroy Cocoon, but can't they ask a L'Cie to do it for them? I read that arbitrary plot device as: Fal'Cie cannot themselves directly inflict harm on the world that they were tasked with protecting and nourishing. So for FFXIII's plot to make any sense would be to assume that the Sanctum Fal'Cie are divinely forbidden to even make their own L'Cie do it, so they have to hope for a Pulse L'Cie to show up.

So then why did Barty bother going through all that trouble of discreetly aiding the L'Cie as they were trying to flee from PSICOM and to avoid getting killed? To make their lives so much of a living misery that they give up all hope and decide to destroy Orphan? Okay, but what if the L'Cie decide they would rather commit suicide to escape their miserable existence before the rationally genius thought pops into their head that they should instead destroy Cocoon? What if the L'Cie were a bunch of utilitarians? Barty and Orphan have proven that by torture and other forms of magical handwaving, a L'Cie can crack enough to turn into Ragnarok, so why did Barty not just cut out the middleman and use his authority to get the L'Cie directly to his front door so he can tell them straight what they have to do and thoroughly torture them into doing it when they don't immediately comply?

And why does Barty (presumably) authorise the Purge, how would he know that a band of adequate Pulse L'Cie would even pop up, seeing as PSICOM seemed so keen on just killing as many people as possible and destroy the Fal'Cie there and then? Did he plan for Lightning and company to be branded when Serah first found the Fal'Cie? Was he so forward-thinking that he knew all that would happen? Or was the branding of Lightning and company a lucky reward of chance that had it not have happened, could have ruined the "plan" before it even began?

Yeah, I concur. Whole plan of the villains was stupid. I'm hard pressed to even call it a plan. Jesus, who wrote this plot? Owait yeah, Toriyama.

As for the ending? Yup. We were all just as confused as you were. Turns out they never even explain it in FFXIII itself, but rather, they explain it in the sequel instead. A goddess did it because she's kind. And also stupid because that would mean fucking up everything in FFXIII-2. Way to go. These Final Fantasy gods and goddesses are morons.
 
Fleur said:
Yeah, it is a wonder why the Fal'Cie think the world is so awful that it's best to kill everyone including themselves so the world can be born anew. I can't even remember whether that was ever adequately explained. Oh yeah, this is FFXIII. Silly me. They don't like explaining things very well.

And I concur with the part about the stupid plan. I know they said Sanctum Fal'Cie can't destroy Cocoon, but can't they ask a L'Cie to do it for them? I read that arbitrary plot device as: Fal'Cie cannot themselves directly inflict harm on the world that they were tasked with protecting and nourishing. So for FFXIII's plot to make any sense would be to assume that the Sanctum Fal'Cie are divinely forbidden to even make their own L'Cie do it, so they have to hope for a Pulse L'Cie to show up.

So then why did Barty bother going through all that trouble of discreetly aiding the L'Cie as they were trying to flee from PSICOM and to avoid getting killed? To make their lives so much of a living misery that they give up all hope and decide to destroy Orphan? Okay, but what if the L'Cie decide they would rather commit suicide to escape their miserable existence before the rationally genius thought pops into their head that they should instead destroy Cocoon? What if the L'Cie were a bunch of utilitarians? Barty and Orphan have proven that by torture and other forms of magical handwaving, a L'Cie can crack enough to turn into Ragnarok, so why did Barty not just cut out the middleman and use his authority to get the L'Cie directly to his front door so he can tell them straight what they have to do and thoroughly torture them into doing it when they don't immediately comply?

And why does Barty (presumably) authorise the Purge, how would he know that a band of adequate Pulse L'Cie would even pop up, seeing as PSICOM seemed so keen on just killing as many people as possible and destroy the Fal'Cie there and then? Did he plan for Lightning and company to be branded when Serah first found the Fal'Cie? Was he so forward-thinking that he knew all that would happen? Or was the branding of Lightning and company a lucky reward of chance that had it not have happened, could have ruined the "plan" before it even began?

Yeah, I concur. Whole plan of the villains was stupid. I'm hard pressed to even call it a plan. Jesus, who wrote this plot? Owait yeah, Toriyama.

As for the ending? Yup. We were all just as confused as you were. Turns out they never even explain it in FFXIII itself, but rather, they explain it in the sequel instead. A goddess did it because she's kind. And also stupid because that would mean fucking up everything in FFXIII-2. Way to go. These Final Fantasy gods and goddesses are morons.
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It's pretty much an idiot plot all the way around with more holes in it then swiss cheese and a party full of characters who manage to be worse than Vaan and Penello. Except Sazh. Sazh was awesome.

FFXIII-2 did the best that could be done to rescue it while being a fairly decent game at he same time. Though they were kind of painted in a corner already.

I'm still looking forward to FFXIII-3 Lightning Returns
 
I just got the game this past weekend and I can see why people are upset about it. I just got to the part with the crystal sea, and so far.... the game had been going for 3 hours, and I was making progress, but virtually no story being told. Lots of mundane crap that could be merged and shortened... it's like playing Dragonball Z.

The game started out looking pretty cool, and I thought "Yes, this game is gonna be awesome," and now I'm thinking... this game COULD be awesome... but we'll see when I get to the end.

Oh, and there is one thing awesome about it. It DOES have a journal thing so if you load up the game, you won't forget what just happened or what to do... except the entries seem very redundant
 
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Its a good game, people are just upset about it because it isnt what they wanted in a game. Some people dont like change, some people embrace it, some people like it. Just gotta keep an open mind when playing it and remember that its a SEPERATE FF game, not one of a sequel. It is its own game, own plot/story/characters.
 
You're damn right we fans are pissed about XIII. Not only because we are passionate over the FF series, but also because, lets face it, Final Fantasy has been trash since X. And XIII didn't help that either. And I can say confidently that I speak for the majority of fans when I say all of this. XIII is in no way, shape, or form, a good game. It isn't. Anybody that has respect for the FF franchise can see that this game is a steaming heap of garbage.
Weak story, no villain, boring and dull characters, a shitty combat system that makes it to where you dont even need to look at the screen, the crystarium was a joke with no customization, no airship, no NPC's, and linear as absolute hell. Oh and don't even get me started on Lightning.... Sorry Square I'm not "picking up what you're putting down."
Say what you will about X being linear, but atleast you could travel places and interact with NPC's and indulge in some Blitzball.
XIII offered nothing at all. 65 missions? They were cake. I remember thinking Vorcingetorix would be difficult but in actual reality he wasn't.
XIII looked pretty and that's all.

 
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