Why FFXIII is a GOOD game

Meh, in my opinion this game would be great if it didn't bear the name "Final Fantasy". I believe the same thing was said in another thread by someone but I agree with them that this game would have been amazing if it didn't carry the FF title. FF fans look for quality in their games and FFXIII kinda ignored what the fans wanted and tried to please outsiders of the series.

I thought the story was a bit predictable and bland. It was WAY too short of a game for me. I mean I breezed right through and before I knew it was was on chapter 13 going "WTF THAT CAN'T BE THE FINAL BOSS! O__O". I also hated that the game is basically linear all the way through. Even most of pulse is just a big tunnel you have to run through. I really wanted to like this game when it came out but I just couldn't because of things like the noisy ass treasure chest floating things that just screamed "HERE I AM COME FIND ME!!!!!" uhm treasure is supposed to be hidden and found, not out in the open. Heck they didn't even look like treasure chests and were scattered throughout cocoon and pulse and by who????

Basically this was something I found lazy seeing as such lengths went into the battle system and graphics which I'm happy to say the graphics were great. Another thing that really had me disliking the game though was the lack of traditional ff towns . I'm just marking this up as laziness all the way. As well as the way they just shoved all of the stores into a small floating thing that allows you to save and upgrade by god knows how. I absolutely hated the shops in this game with a passion. Since I never went to a shop because I was piss poor throughout the game they were pointless, much like the Datalog whos info could have been included or explained more throughout the game for those who needed it(I didn't need or use the datalog at all). It seems like another case of "Oh lets just dump all that here for the player."

It's little things like that which prevented me from liking the game as much as I wanted to. I wanted to love the recycled enemies, but fighting a stronger enemy with a slightly different color just doesn't cut it. For all the years I was waiting for FF13 it just reeked of laziness to me and never before have I bought an FF game and experienced this. Sure the game is PURDY after I walk down the countless tunnels and fight the differently hued monsters from the last stage and sure the battle system of mashing x and switching with the L and R buttons provided countless hours of more PURDINESS...but it felt as if this game relied on it's looks to get ahead which kinda resulted in it's downfall for me.

I really had high hopes for this game like a lot of FF fans but it was a pretty big letdown for me. That's why I just can't see too many right things with this game. Despite it looking good and having decent music and a nice fast paced battle system I wasn't too impressed.
 
Even though I haven't completed the game(life kind of jumped up and bit me in the ass a year ago, so.. lol), I love the game. It's the first Final Fantasy game since IX came out in which I can relate to a good majority of the characters-- the storyline is excellent, the graphics are gorgeous, and I actually prefer the battle system in this game over previous games..

It's also nice to have female heroines that aren't sexist stereotypes for once.
 
I'd say that overall the only aspect of the game that impressed me was the graphics.

The developers tried something new in terms of action focused gameplay, but if this is an indication of the future of FF games then I'm afraid I'll be sticking to replaying the earlier FF titles.
 
Haha, I have to disagree. Sorry. I thought that the characters where extremely over-dramatic, annoying and made of cheese. The fact that it had no towns, was extremely linear, and had repetitive battles makes it a terrible Final Fantasy game, in my opinion a good Final Fantasy game would have these things, FF13 didn't have them.
Also the main character Lighting, was a cold-heated cow. I know she's not a 'damsel in distress ' but I would rather have one, than somebody who doesn't give a crap about other people. FF13 had terrible characters, no towns, was terribly linear, and apart from the graphics it looked like SE put no effort in the game whatsoever. I stopped playing from the fifth or seventh chapter, so yeah I highly disagree about FF13 being a good FF, a example of a good FF would be IV, VI , VII and IX. :mokken:
 
FFXIII gets the 'not terrible, but not good either' accolade from me. I can list as many reasons as I want for why I did not like FFXIII, but I'll just be repeating myself again. For a change, I'll say what was actually good about FFXIII.

+ Battle speed - okay yes, it's nothing like that level of rapid kickassery that was seen in the very first E3 trailer, but FFXIII's battles are still really quick compared to the older games. Playing FFVIII and FFIX again now, they seem painfully slow compared to FFXIII's battles and if they can somehow incorporate what FFXII did with FFXIII's speed and stick in some deep enough strategy rather than a simple mash of an "Auto-Battle" button in a future game, then that would be a winner in my view.

+ Some bits of the storyline - It started off on a promising note for me. The whole anti-government thing and running away from them as fugitives was admittedly an interesting idea to follow, even if it meant depriving the game of towns to explore in. I would say up until Chapter 9 was the storyline rather entertaining for me, heck - even decent. The dramatic scene in Nautilus for example, is still one of FFXIII's major hallmarks in my opinion.

+ Sazh and his Chocobo, Fang etc. Sazh was pretty much a breath of fresh air for me in comparison to the tried-and-tested old archetypes of Snow and Vanille. It surprised me that SE could pull off such a character as I really did enjoy the dialogue (and the paralinguistic expressions) that he gave out. As for his Chocobo well, it may have been a ridiculous idea, but it did practically save him in one part of the story. Fang - what can I say? I really did love her as a character, particularly in her debut. Definitely one of the more interesting female characters in the series.

+ Paradigm Shift. I thought that was a pretty good mechanic (despite having to sort out the combination of your roles so often now and again) and it was a much better mechanic than FFX-2's silly Dresspheres system.

+ Visuals. Normally I wouldn't give a crap about the visuals if they cause a compromise in the gameplay department (which I suspect was what happened with this game), but I have to admit that the game was pretty, except for those moments where the locations are dark and weird (e.g. Hanging Edge) and where you come across bosses that have designs so detailed and meticulous that they look so fugly. You could actually look at the graphics and say that you were playing an HD FF game.
 
I realised that although I am alright with this game, I often always say bad things about it. So now let me list down the things that apparently make this game enjoyable for me.

Note: I am resisting myself to say the bad things, like battle system, lack of freedom, etc etc, because it is a 'why FFXIII is a GOOD game' thread.

1. Graphics and design
nothing much to say. Pretty graphics = epic

2. Music
although not as good as Uematsu, Hamauzu managed to compose decent tracks like Serah's theme, Vanille's theme, Blinded by light, etc

3. because it's a final fantasy game...
I mean, as a final fantasy fan, I have very low expectations for final fantasy games. As long as the game bears the title, I will most probably like it.

4. half-decent storyline
what can I say? It's quite interesting, but I feel that it lacks some magic compared to the older FFs.

there's really nothing much. I guess the third reason is the major one...

Hopefully I can find more reasons to like FFXIII-2 when it comes out.
 
Wow. I'm surprised at how popular this thread was. Anyways, I regret that I didn't check the thread earlier so I could comment on some of the interesting points made. Here's my view on some of the complaints people have made.

Town/Shops: I agree. I missed the towns/shops. But in case you haven't noticed, Final Fantasy has been moving away from this since FFX. It all started with the loss of the world map area. So, it's one of those things I just sort of accept as no longer being a part of FF games. They said they're going to change that with FFXIIIVersus. We'll see.

Gameplay: The ONLY uninvolved and monotonous part of the gameplay was the corridor exploration. The actual battle gameplay was FANTASTIC. Those of you saying that it was nothing but mashing x and didn't have any involvement aren't considering the amount of time they spend outside of battling, setting up their paradigms. THAT is part of the battle gameplay. It's called strategy, and that's what SE wants to put into their games. Those of you who still thought it was still super easy to set up paradigms never battled the Long Gui at the end of the game. Or if they did, they pussed out and looked up strategies in a guide online. It took me hours to come up with a consistent strategy to farm Adamantoises let alone kill one of the Long Gui. That was enjoyable, gameplay related fun.
 
strifehart said:
The actual battle gameplay was FANTASTIC. Those of you saying that it was nothing but mashing x and didn't have any involvement aren't considering the amount of time they spend outside of battling, setting up their paradigms. THAT is part of the battle gameplay. It's called strategy, and that's what SE wants to put into their games.
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I'm a little neutral on the battle system, I like that it's a bit fast-paced but I also don't see quite the same strategy as I might expect.

But I disagree on spending hours preparing for battle as being fun. I think it's a bad gameplay element.
 
Sol Blade said:
I'm a little neutral on the battle system, I like that it's a bit fast-paced but I also don't see quite the same strategy as I might expect.

But I disagree on spending hours preparing for battle as being fun. I think it's a bad gameplay element.
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I disagree....The paradigm shift element was in my opinion the best element to the battle. Like strifehart the paradigm shift outside the battle had me thinking a lot.

This is unlike nearly all the other FF games......When I go for a battle in X or VII I almost never prepare for it.......and nearly each enemy in FFXIII requires a different strategy to beat.
 
o0PinkSquid0o said:
I'm sorry but all that is your opinion... I actually think the Plot, Characters and Game Play were terrible.
I really didn't notice too much character development either D:

The music was ok besides the battle music which was repetitive, and the graphics were good but overall the game was bad
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couldnt have put it better myself. the game is awful and a travesty to the final fantasy name.
 
themoogle22 said:
couldnt have put it better myself. the game is awful and a travesty to the final fantasy name.
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Thanks for putting together that well thought out post. I appreciate all the support you put behind the formulation of your opinion. SARCASM!

Moving on, strategy is an important element to FF games. And I agree that in comparison to earlier FF games, XIII adds a lot in "outside-of-battle" battle gameplay. Without that element, you never really have to think about battles. It's just fight fight fight occasional heal magic and possible summon to finish the battle. I remember when I played through FFVII, i spent most of my time just using physical attacks. If I couldn't beat a boss, I'd go grind for a while and then show up more powerful and attack him to death again.
 
_Symphonia said:
Haha, I have to disagree. Sorry. I thought that the characters where extremely over-dramatic, annoying and made of cheese. The fact that it had no towns, was extremely linear, and had repetitive battles makes it a terrible Final Fantasy game, in my opinion a good Final Fantasy game would have these things, FF13 didn't have them.
Also the main character Lighting, was a cold-heated cow. I know she's not a 'damsel in distress ' but I would rather have one, than somebody who doesn't give a crap about other people. FF13 had terrible characters, no towns, was terribly linear, and apart from the graphics it looked like SE put no effort in the game whatsoever.
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THAT'S JUST SO WRONG! :ness:

Only two characters was over-dramatic......Yes Vanille and Snow :-)rage:),but apart from the main storyline you don't even need them in your party. But you can't just say this game is awful when only 1/100 characters are bad. And also Lightning is not a "cold-heated cow" :rage: I think she's more cool then cold,she just doesn't talk much which doesn't make her cold and neither does
punching Snow
cause who wouldn't punch him?......She's just a straight-forward person......And she may not of gave a crap about people,but so didn't Cloud and Squall and they weren't met with bad reactions from people.And also like Cloud and Squall she develops throughout the game and does start showing some sympathy.

I can't complain about the linearity and absence of towns, because I did hate it......But I thought that the visuals and story compensated for it. :)
 
i got to say i think the storyline for final fantasy XIII is amazing.. it got me hooked from the start... the only problem i have is that the battle system is a bit on the 'easy' side in the early stages of the game.... for example, i can play Final Fantasy XIII While talking to my sister or even to yesterday, i was typing a post on here while playing Final Fantasy XIII :D
 
Since people seem to be on the subject of the battle system; it was awful. Once the enemies had been scanned fully all you had to do was button mash the "x" button until you won the battle and for the majority of the monsters you could button mash beforehand anyway. There was nothing complex about the battle system. I found the paradigm system to be underdeveloped too, very little strategic planning was needed even before the hardest missions, apart from the paradigms you were FORCED to have the first half of the game you could essentially finish the last half of the game and all of the missions with the same 4-6 paradigms.
 
Mercurial said:
Since people seem to be on the subject of the battle system; it was awful. Once the enemies had been scanned fully all you had to do was button mash the "x" button until you won the battle and for the majority of the monsters you could button mash beforehand anyway. There was nothing complex about the battle system. I found the paradigm system to be underdeveloped too, very little strategic planning was needed even before the hardest missions, apart from the paradigms you were FORCED to have the first half of the game you could essentially finish the last half of the game and all of the missions with the same 4-6 paradigms.
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Be honest now, did you fight the Long Gui? Did you 5 star all the missions? And did you do all of it WITHOUT a guide to figure out your paradigms?
 
This game, no matter how you put it, was bad. Just bad and bad and bad and bad.

As many posters before me have noted, the battle system was "mash x to win". The paradigms, I'll admit, were fun... for the first 3 chapters, then I had the four I'd be using for the rest of the game and that was done with.

The story was conveluted, over-dramatic, and for some reason Square needlessly created words to define things. Even if I would have liked the story, the characters were cliche and boring and that threw me off even more.

I really wanted to like it, I did, but it just wasn't good at all. The only thing it has in its corner is graphics and Square's been relying on graphics too much recently anyway. Style over substance.
 
It was beautiful (graphic-wise), great music, in the end decent gameplay (though frustrating) and loved the Eidolons, though I could not help feeling they were slightly useless. It's hard to say it was straight up good, but it was satisfactory. I can't say I liked the characters much, but at least they weren't so boring.
 
@DuesExLamina That was just the story....If you had taken part in missions,then you'd be using a lot more paradigms,like strifehart said tryna do missions and killing of the long gui does require a lot of thinking.

And also I don't think I used four paradigms for most parts of the game,sure I had favourite ones.....But I kept on switchng so I could get a better rating in battle,for spoils.
 
But see $$DarkShadow$$, there was nothing that made me want to do any of that because I was completely unimpressed with the game. With games I like, I want to finish the extra stuff, in FFVII I sat for hours upon hours breeding Chocobos just so that I could get the Knights of the Round materia because I enjoyed the game. With XIII I considered it an accomplishment that I even finished the game, much less got 100% complete.
 
I agree with the title of the thread- 13 is a good game period. It is not any better than that, and in an FF title my expectations are higher than just "good."
 
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