Why is FFVII Overhyped/Overrated and FFXIII Overhated?

[FinalxxSin]

This is something that I don't understand, and maybe somebody could clarify this for me. Yes, I understand the impact FFVII had on the industry when it came out. However, now and these days a lot of people talk the game up to be better than what it is. What I mean by that is that a good number of people ignore the flaws that are in the game, and only focus on the good. The opposite seems to be present with FFXIII. I understand the game has flaws, but a lot of people make it out as if the game has no pros once so ever. Is there some form of nostalgia and/or group think present here?

 

[Soulcorruptor]

If anything it's the over defense people give XIII, you said the game has it flaws correct? Well to the people that don't like it there is many more flaws with then there are pros to balance the scales. Let's look at the core ones of the game play issues since the core of peoples arguments I see for XIII are the graphics alone and a good portion of the people want to argue that is all that matters.

1. Character control, you only control one person at all times and have no control over the other two, while XII did dabble with this at least they gave us the gambit system to manipulate the AI into doing actions we wanted, in XIII there is no such thing.

2. The game over when the controlled character dies, you could very well have the AI able to cast life on you or use an item, but they did not program that in so having it where there are two npc's are still able to fling spells and perform actions it just ends. Now there are other games that do this but those that i've come across are more turn base like persona and SMT games where again turn based so there is no automatic AI control, in this sense it makes it easier to cope with an auto-death like this since it requires you more to plan out your actions, and not be dependent on an AI.

3. The story being told through a bulk of the data-logs. Instead of coming across something or someone able to actually explain things in a proper sense to understand the world or what's going on, the game forces you to read everything through a menu, this is just all in all poor skills on their part and a good deal of laziness.

4. Lack of open world. A good portion of this game was just confined and no real exploration and it was really a bunch of straight paths to run along. There wasn't a world map or a lot of places to really explore and try to find hidden things. It may have opened up in Grand Pulse but there wasn't a whole lot to truly explore and most quest came from those statues which got real tiring real quick. Also besides Grand Pulse you can't go back and visit previous areas.

You may also find people hating on it for the cast, and their lackluster of any development and personalities maybe even some of the music.

now let's look at VII in comparison.

You have full control of you party. It's not if the party leader dies the rest do your entire party needs to die. You get a whole world map to explore and towns and dungeons to explore, you can also go back to most of the places or get a second chance to visit a few and go back and acquire things you might have missed, very few are one and done spots. You get a more diverse party and see more growth with them as well. There are things explained to you by the game so you can understand what's going on, you don't have to read a menu to find out what's what.

 

[The Witch]

FFVII is Square Enix's highest selling game, it even beats out the last of us and the Uncharted series in sales--two games which are amazing. So I'm always curious about the flaws.

Is it the bad translations? The graphics?

As for FFXIII, the characters feel like cardboard. And I'm not used to that in FF games. Usually FF characters are so fleshed out and annoyingly "real", but for XIII, not so much. The story was all over the place and the writers didn't seem to have a grasp on what they wanted these characters to be. The overall story is pretty generic in regards to the "classic" FF titles, with the exception of the whole goddess thing. Which, by the way, making Lightning a god seemed forced.

The only two characters in XII trilogy that I remember actually being intrigued by was Sazh and Caius... and neither character is frequented enough to make me replay the game. But with VII, even characters I hate had me replaying the game so I could analyze them or figure them out. I might dislike Tifa as a character, but at least she makes me feel something. With Lightning, who is absolutely the most boring and the worst lead in the series, I can't even hate her because her character doesn't offer me anything real. She's just flat. Neither negative nor positive.

Personally, it was their obsession with Lightning that helped make this game so bad. They tried so hard for her to be THE bad ass of the series, creating her to be some kind of Terra-Cloud hybrid... but it's just not believable. She doesn't come off "cold" or "angsty" like Cloud did in VII or like a powerful "god" like Terra came off as, she just came off like a flat, emotionless piece of pretty CGI. Her character is so devastatingly non-existent that I wish she was annoying. But she's not even that. She's just unmemorable.

 

[ZaXo Ken'Ichi]

Hoooot damn, that wall of text Sorry 'bout that.

I will tell you right now what the problem is:

A: "My preferences are the right preferences."

Far too many people turn preferences into 'objective' facts that make an experience better or worse. Ever hear someone condemn a game as objectively terrible because they didn't feel they got enough content for the money they paid? Yeah, that's this sort of bias peeking its head out. Such a statement implies that the actual quality of the game increases as the price goes down... despite the game itself not changing. That perspective on value is entirely your own, and doesn't actually have anything to do with the game.

B: Refusing to see mechanics, design, and ideas for what they really are, instead opting to shroud everything in rhetoric.

It's all too common for people to inflate or downplay the impact of a mechanic or piece of design, simply because it brushes against their own sensibilities in a negative way. That's when you start hearing things like "That game would be better if it wasn't called Final Fantasy.", or other nonsensical statements which, again, very much rely on nothing more than your own opinions. What is "Final Fantasy enough" for you, might be the antitheses of Final Fantasy to others. And whether one likes a design philosophy or not has nothing to do with the quality of its implementation. But people don't see that.

Of course hive-mind mentality is part of it for some people, but that just makes the real issue worse. In reality, it all just comes down to people wanting their own opinions to be more universal than they really are. What we should be looking at is what the games themselves actually consist of, and how these pieces interact with each other.

As far as the games in question actually go, yes Final Fantasy VII is a bit overhyped. As you alluded to, it's not so much that the game isn't great, so much as that people like to ignore its problems because it's a classic. While it's my favorite game ever (tied with VIII and IX), it realistically has some terrible pacing when it comes to things like the relationship between Cloud and Aeris, it has absolutely horrendous localization, and the battle mechanics are highly unbalanced, leading to a lot of meaningless abilities and mechanics that could have been streamlined and improved for a much better experience. In many ways, it is a mess. But in many other ways, it's a masterpiece. It's a much more emotionally successful experience as far as realism goes, building an extraordinary world and some equally astonishing characters, the likes of which (not quality-wise, but writing-wise) I'd argue haven't been replicated in another video game. But when I can get through the entire game using nothing but Attack and Cure for 90% of it, and still end up having an easy time... you've got a problem.

As far as XIII is concerned, it is indeed overly despised. I don't want to pick on anyone here of course, but there have been several perfect examples of this laid out above me, which I can both use to prove my point, defend XIII, and compare it to VII. Keep in mind, I'm talking just XIII here, not the sequels.

1. The lack of character control is a 'bad thing'.

This statement might come up a few times, but as stated above, that's not really a criticism, so much as a statement of preference masquerading as criticism. Again, whether that's a bad thing comes down to how it effects gameplay. There is realistically nothing wrong with the idea of only controlling one character. While the ability to switch party leaders on the fly would have been a definite boon, the system is designed this way for a reason.

If you stop and think about it, XIII is freaking fast. You can have three characters using up to six attacks simultaneously, all while upwards of six enemies do the same thing. FFX-2 had a similar system, where attacks weren't actually taken in independent turns. But it was really easy to get overwhelmed in certain situations in X-2, because so much could be going on at once, and you had to sift through so many menus. But the reality is, most of this was nothing but minutia; you realistically know exactly what you want/need to do most of the time. It's rare that you're left with a real strategic conundrum in X-2 (and indeed most games in the series). As such, XIII -whether it suits your preferences or not- opted to simplify that minutia. Suddenly, you only control one character at a time, and you have an Auto-Battle button that's designed to input the "no shit" commands that would otherwise eat up tons of time.

Instead, the strategy in XIII's battles came from how you set up your Paradigms, when you chose to switch to them, and managing Stagger gauges. It's not a removal of strategic depth (as if there was tons in the previous games); it was a restructuring.

2. It is very true that ending the battle if your main character dies was just a bad decision. It doesn't add anything to the game, it logically doesn't make much sense, and it adds an unnecessary random element to battles. While a well prepared player will very rarely die unfairly due to something out of their control, it's often enough that it's not really okay. What's more, it often feels like things were unfairly random, even when they aren't. Enemies like the Adamantoise really showcase that feeling. It would have been smart to carry over the Gambit System from XII, which realistically should be in every single game with AI partners, from XIII to Resident Evil. That would've at least given players some way to prevent the (realistically super rare) chance that a party member does something stupid that gets you killed.

However, I feel this is a much bigger issue in games like Persona, mostly for one major reason... there's no option to retry. Atlus RPGs can be extraordinarily ruthless when it comes to chances to save, and they often ask you to spend insane amounts of time between saving. Some single bosses alone can last over an hour and a half. It's not fun to be element-ganked an hour deep into a dungeon, and to be sent back to the last save point. XIII not only allows immediate retries, but it always allows you the ability to run from normal encounters, or re-equip before bosses. Why? Because honestly, forcing players to retread large amounts of gameplay they've already done isn't fun. Punishments should always be engaging, and at very least, should never be exasperating.

3. The story isn't told through data-logs. It just isn't. I have never actually met someone in person who needed the data-logs to understand the main plot (outside of the crap with Orphan... that crap was jank). The game uses a cold opening as a way to try and immediately get players invested. The writing is intentionally designed to get you to understand things over time, as if you've been thrown into a new culture without knowing a single thing... because you have. Rather than using a Link/Tidus/Vaan style analog character who asks a bunch of questions to give us answers, the game trusts that if you're paying attention, you'll catch on. The difference between a L'Cie, a Cieth, and a Fal'Cie is super confusing at first, but practically impossible to forget once you know it. The problem I find is that the people who claim the data-log is required reading, are usually the people who got upset with the game, and checked out a few hours in. They didn't give it a fair chance. That's not always the case, but again, I've never actually met someone who didn't get the plot. It's pretty simple honestly... outside of Orphan. And this is coming from someone who did a video like a month ago that spent over 30 minutes tearing apart Kingdom Hearts for doing the exact same garbage that XIII gets accused of. Now the sequels to XIII -while I think they're better games overall- those are confusing messes.

Funny that VII doesn't seem to get the same accusations, despite it also being really confusing. The story itself is well thought out, but man, that translation effort ruins everything.

4. Being unable to visit previous areas in XIII is unfortunate, but it was a concession they chose to make for plot reasons. This is a large part of the reason they made these areas linear; they didn't want to give anyone the idea that they could 'explore that path later'. Regardless, there's one big knowledge bomb people always hate hearing... XIII isn't actually much more linear than most other games in the series. The reality is that the game took out the perceived freedom that was present in the other games; the world map. If you compare the maps in XIII, they're actually really similar in design to the maps of dungeons in the other games. They're largely linear pathways, broken up by branches that lead to dead ends, or wrap back around. Let's look at VII for the perfect example of how false the freedom usually is in these games.

You start the game in the Sector 1 Reactor. Your choice is pretty much to linger, or to go forward. After that, you're forced to go straight to Sector 7 Slums, and from there, to the Sector 5 Reactor. After that, you meet Aeris, and head to her place. You sneak out, she catches you, and you can only retread those few screens, or head to the Wall Market. Complete the Wall Market, get dumped into the sewers, head up the tower, lose Aeris, sneak into Shinra HQ, get chased out of Shinra HQ. Up to this point, it's been really linear. Outside of small side paths, there hasn't been much to do outside of just move forward. But now that you're on the world map, it must be different right?

Well, your choices as soon as you get out there are:

1. Run around like a chicken with your head cut off.

2. Try and fail to re-enter Midgar.

3. Head past Kalm to the Chocobo Ranch.

4. Head to Kalm.

Only heading to Kalm actually does anything for you. Going to the Chocobo Ranch leads to nothing. Heading past the Midgar Zolem through the Mythril Mine does nothing. Going to Fort Condor does nothing. And you will be forced to head back once you get to Junon, until you be a good boy and visit Kalm first. The game could've postponed the story about Sephiroth if you chose to skip Kalm. Add in some different pieces of dialogue, and have Cloud forced to explain himself in the ship on the way to Costa Del Sol. But nope. You only have one choice in the matter.

Sure, you can grind instead, and you can visit each of these areas before you're supposed to. But there are no meaningful interactions to be had. Your path is entirely linear; it just takes place in a giant open field, as well as dungeons. It's a false freedom. You get access to true freedom about 25 hours in, which is about the same time that you get it in XIII. In XIII, you have a multitude of new places to explore at this point. In most other games in the series, you have like three to five new places. Sure you can visit old places, but there's very rarely anything meaningful to do there. I'm not saying that this percieved freedom isn't worth anything; I personally think they should have found some way to retain it within XIII's structure. But it realistically doesn't add anything tangible to the experience. It can just as easily be used to immerse one player, as it can be used to create an incredibly tedious experience for another player. Just play Wild Arms to see exactly how this freedom can backfire for everyone who plays. Searching for the next area with that stupid radar sucks hard. In reality, most places in J-RPGs are one and done spots, because returning offers nothing but fresh nostalgia.

I suppose the biggest difference takes place in areas like the Wall Market. There really are no areas in XIII where you retread the same few 'screens' trying to solve a puzzle or move plot along. Again, this is justified by the fact that the characters are on the run. Not a justification that feels entirely fair to the player. But again, the game is hardly more linear than previous entries. It just doesn't pretend to be more open. How much that matters is up the individual and their experiences with the game.

Linearity allows for more precision and control. Where games like Elder Scrolls allow great freedom, they also have to really dumb down questlines and plots. Things need to be simple enough so that players can abandon them for forty hours while exploring, and not have to worry about being lost when they come back. Linearity affords detail, freedom affords choice. Neither is right or wrong inherently.

5. Whether the side quests on Gran Pulse were boring or not is another opinion. I personally found them -and the Hunts in XII- far more engaging than many of the side quests in the other games. They give me some backstory on Pulse, its way of life, and the truth about Pulse and Cocoon. But more importantly, they all support the main mechanics. You spend like 50% of your time in combat in these games. Everything you do mechanically is designed around combat. So why shouldn't side content also be that way? Does anyone actually like spending twenty minutes in a cheesy, broken arcade game about feeding a moogle, instead of fighting another unique monster or superboss? I'm not saying side quests that introduce new, isolated mechanics are a bad thing. But more often than not, they're poorly thought out, and poorly designed. They often don't control too well, or aren't balanced well. Meanwhile, combat encounters as side quests support the entire design of the game. Is fighting the Data versions of Organization XIII in KH2FM more fun? Or is completing the journal by redoing all of the Winnie the Pooh minigames more fun? Which makes you feel like you're accomplishing something, and which one leaves you wanting to get back to the main game?

6. Party diversity is about equal between both games. XIII's characters come off as flat for two reasons, neither of which are actual criticisms.

A. Melodrama. XIII is rather melodramatic. That's not a negative, just a way of writing. It went for a more 'romantic' vision of characterization, whereas VII went for a more realistic one.

B. Voice acting. When a game lacks voice acting, we tend to put a lot more of our own preferences into characters. As such, we often imagine them as being much better than they may actually be. But it also infuses part of ourselves into their quality. When voice acting is present, we put a lot less into the characters; it's a much more passive experience. That makes it remarkably easy to find personal issues we may have with them. "I don't like Vanille because she's annoying.", "I don't like Lightning because she's deadpan." "I love Sahz because he's happy-go-lucky.". A large part of the character is baked into the writing itself. But an equally large part comes out in the delivery. And when we're creating said delivery in our own minds, of course we're going to prefer it. It's exactly why character creation in narrative driven games can be so powerful; my Commander Shepard is the best Commander Shepard on the Citadel... that sort of thing

7. Finally, as far as points that have been made in this thread goes, there's Lighting. Most of what I have to say on that subject is already stated directly above. But I would like to add one thing here. The marketing for Lightning isn't Lightning. Just because Square pushed her as a badass 'icon', doesn't mean the game tried to do that (it didn't, by the way). Arguing that would be like arguing that Cloud in VII is a crybaby emo who does nothing but sulk. But that's simply not true. He's not like that at all in VII; he was turned into that for the Compilation stuff like Advent Children, and in other material like Kingdom Hearts. His character is a lot more nuanced than that. Lightning isn't near as nuanced as he is, but she's also not a cardboard wall of "bleh" either. She's an introverted soldier. Her writing could've been better for sure, but she is not her marketing.



There is so much more that's great about XIII's design that I haven't even touched upon here. I've taken to meticulously studying the FF series ever since XIII started getting the hate it did; as such, I've done the most reflection and comparison when dealing with XIII's design and structure (with VII ironically being the one I've taken the second deepest look at, followed by IX and XII). The systems in XIII -while not always utilized to their fullest unfortunately- offer a level of mechanical depth that the series had never seen up to that point, with FFX and XII being the only two games that really even got close. It's not even close to being the best game in the series, nor is it even close to being one of my favorites. But it truly is deserving of much more respect for the sheer amount of care that was taken toward making a well balanced game for once. Narratively the game doesn't quite fare as well, but it's nowhere near as bad as most people make it out to be. You want bad, play Star Ocean 4. You want bad, play practically any Compile Hearts or Tales game. You want bad, play Legend of Dragoon. XIII has a lot going for it, and -though the execution left quite a bit to be desired- so does every single other game in the series. None of them are perfect, and that's exactly why I'm glad that they're all so unique. So you don't like one Final Fantasy? There's always another one.

It's completely okay for people to hate or love any of these games for arbitrary reasons. But I think calling them objectively good or bad for arbitrary reasons is an entirely different matter.

 

[Cardinal Copia]

The one and only pro of FFXIII is Sazh. He's the only character in that entire trilogy of games that's worth a damn. I could forgive the linearity if the story was actually enticing and had me engaged and caring about the characters. Instead I couldn't care any less about them. The game sucks so much that it doesn't even have actual stores you walk into. Instead you buy them at a save point. LOL.
FF XIII is absolute trash imo.

 

[Soulcorruptor]

You say XIII is good compared to any Tales series game or even Legend of Dragoon, that is a huge pile of BS and extreme reach at best. You mentioned false sense of freedom when comparing it to the back tracking of FF VII. Let's look at it this way when you got to Aerith's house, going to the church and wall street, That was three areas you could travel between two of which were mini towns and had interaction with the npc's. XIII did not offer that, what you are defining as a false sense of freedom is just a bland attempt to say XIII is still good which it's not. That's not a false sense of freedom, you are not being trapped to only one area at a time and move forward to progress, you have multiple spots to explore and go back to then progress. It's shit for what it tried to do and what it did.



*Side note some of my rants and tangets may sound not well composed and all over just had a fight with my folks so not all mt thoughts are well put together, so fell free to pick apart how ya like.

 

[mothcorrupteth]

The single biggest reason I hate FFXIII is that you more or less cannot grind or customize characters.

Grinding. Yes, I realize you can sort of "grind," but it's highly cumbersome. Abilities can only be ground so far before you reach the end of the crystal tree and then you're capped. You can tweak stats through components and equipment, but it's chance whether you get a component that is highly effective for any particular piece of equipment, and you have to start all over on new equipment if you find a stat bonus you like better. The most complicated the process had ever gotten in the series prior to this was the Junction system (and we all know how a large chunk of the fans felt about that). I hated it. Part of the appeal of a jRPG to me is working hard to become overpowered. FFXIII kind of took a lot of that away from us.

Customization. I see the FF series to this point as falling into two styles: Fixed Growth and Customizability. With Fixed Growth entries (1, 4, 9), the characters are given very specific roles to play during battles, roles that often fit their place in the story. Vivi is a black mage, so naturally he's limited to black magic, and his level and skill progression is tweakable only within those parameters. Personally, I like this system better because it gives you incentives to play around with whom you put in your party. That's not to say I don't like Customizability, which you see in 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, and 12. Being able to build your characters however you want makes grinding less of a chore, because you have more to be excited about. Unfortunately, it also takes away from the characters, because the emotions you feel about them in battle are not tied to how they behave in the story.

What XIII did wrong was that it tried to do both Fixed Growth and Customizability, and it didn't do either very well. It gave you options about how to develop the Crystarium, but it set certain characters up to be more proficient at particular roles. Now, Fixed Growth games really only work well if there are 4 or 5 party members in battle, because the inflexibility of character roles limits your choices. Once you have your meat shield and your cleric in place, you have no extra space for the guy who drains stats, or the blue mage. FFXIII, of course, had only 3 members per party. So you made a beeline for particular parties, and you end up using the same 3 characters every time--once you even get that choice, of course. But for a Customizability game, it didn't work well either. There were branches in the Crystarium, but you didn't have to grind long to get them, so you really weren't building the characters in your own way. The only way to tweak them was equipment modification, and as I said before, it was clunky and difficult to stack exactly the way you wanted.

I like what FFXIII tried to achieve. I really do. I disagree with other haters in that I think the story concept was awesome, but I have to agree that it was needlessly complicated by Nomura's style of storytelling. I liked the idea of changing Jobs in the middle of battle, but the stunted growth tree and the fact that the whole battle more or less ran on autopilot made the potentially infinite strategy possibilities restricted and boring, especially given that you can't just hold down the accept button. At times the art design and music were almost as emotionally gripping as Rachmaninoff, but it was spoiled because I'd often look around at the scenery and have no idea what I was seeing. FFVII was, by comparison, a simple story with only one major complication; it more or less allowed you to build up abilities that were separable from the characters, giving you many options to mix and match, albeit not in battle (and you could hold down the accept button); and FFVII was edgy and dark and visually comprehensible without being mundane. As a 12-year-old obsessed with Star Wars, FFVII hit me as the next level of that, and even when I go back to it today I keep finding layers. When FFXIII came out, it struck me as just another tired iteration of the j-poppy garbage that was Advent Children​. Maybe it will age over time, the way FFV does once you appreciate the Job system. But I kind of doubt it.

 

[ZaXo Ken'Ichi]

You say XIII is good compared to any Tales series game or even Legend of Dragoon, that is a huge pile of BS and extreme reach at best. You mentioned false sense of freedom when comparing it to the back tracking of FF VII. Let's look at it this way when you got to Aerith's house, going to the church and wall street, That was three areas you could travel between two of which were mini towns and had interaction with the npc's. XIII did not offer that, what you are defining as a false sense of freedom is just a bland attempt to say XIII is still good which it's not. That's not a false sense of freedom, you are not being trapped to only one area at a time and move forward to progress, you have multiple spots to explore and go back to then progress. It's shit for what it tried to do and what it did.



*Side note some of my rants and tangets may sound not well composed and all over just had a fight with my folks so not all mt thoughts are well put together, so fell free to pick apart how ya like.

Well it is better. A lot better. LoD is a good idea, with some decent layers, and absolutely nothing to show for it. Terrible translation, some potentially interesting characters pulled down by generic tropes, broken mechanics. It's a game I genuinely enjoy playing. But it's not a very well made game. As for the Tales games, they're all basically the same thing. They don't take any risks. And every single story is just a generic RPG plot full of anime cliches. They're at best, mediocre, predictable, and boring. Passable, but not really notable.

As far as the freedom you're claiming exists in VII, that's not real freedom. It serves no purpose, and most of the time, doesn't even offer any context or world building. True freedom in games is something that creates meaningful interactions and engages the player. Being able to retread the screens around Aeris' house and talk to a few NPCs that have nothing notable to say isn't freedom. Just because Oblivion has dozens of characters in each town, doesn't mean it's full of great characters. Your interactions with 80% of them end up being nothing more than "Heard any rumors lately?", with them then directing you toward one of the small handful of people who actually have something interesting to say. Another example of false freedom and breadth; luckily, that's in a game that actually offers tangible freedom to the player. In game design, true freedom is that which offers meaningful and engaging choice. The freedom you're talking about it false freedom pedaled by marketers. Again, not a bad thing, but it doesn't actually offer you anything meaningful, particularly when retreading these spaces and talking to these NPCs offers you nothing interesting.

@mothcorrupteth

Now that I can agree with. One of the most useful tools when looking at a game, is to ask yourself both what does a choice take away from an experience, and what does a choice add to an experience. Limiting the player's ability to grind in XIII offered one benefit: It allowed players to see where they should be stat-wise in order to compete safely with the next boss. But the downsides were rather clear, in that it forced a 'one size fits all' difficulty level on everyone playing. But beyond that, it also limited anyone who wanted to spend more time in any given area.

What's worse -as you said- is that they then made the leveling extremely linear, but it wasn't automated. The jobs were important pre-Pulse, and once you get to Pulse, there were a few instances where allies had unique abilities, and you'd swap out for them. But most of the time, you spend the whole time with the same party. A problem with the customizable style of 'job' system, where everyone can be everything. But the game straddled the line between fixed jobs and free jobs and yet didn't really offer much of the benefits of either. I think it's honestly because they were so much more focused on actually making the in-combat mechanics deep, and didn't want to over-complicate everything else. Not that that can be used as an excuse, but I suppose it could give some insight into why decisions were made.

 

[FinalxxSin]

@ZaXo Ken'Ichi
I am still working on a response. There’s quite a bit to go through on your response, so sorry for the delay.

@Costello
The translations are a huge problem on an objective level. That’s not to say that FFVII becomes a poor game due to that, but it for sure doesn’t make it perfect like a good number of people make it out to be. I don’t feel like FFXIII’s story is all over the place, but given how it got told for a good portion of the game, I can understand your viewpoint to some extent. I find that interesting that you find Claire to be the most boring and worst lead in the series when she is a female hybrid version of Cloud and Squall pretty much. So are those characters also boring and poor leads? That’s ok that most of the cast didn’t appeal to you.

@Arya Stark
If there were actual stores that could be walked into, that would conflict with the story for multiple reasons.

@mothcorrupteth
I understand your outlook with the battle system somewhat. I do want to present a different viewpoint. Yes, FFXIII has mainly fixed growth, and I think it’s done well. The reason being is that characters have defined strengths and weaknesses, as you already mentioned. So while it seems that you stuck with 3 characters mainly, I used various combination of characters, and even had different leads. You made an example with Vivi being a Black Mage and it making sense in the game lore as well. In FFXIII, Hope and Vanille are crappy Sentinels, because one is a kid and the other looks to be naturally fragile. I’d expect Snow to be the best Sentinel given his physical appearance, as I would expect Claire to be a great damage dealer given her military-based background. These are things that are reflective in their roles. FFXIII’s roles could be broken down into primary and secondary. Every character has 3 good roles, and 3 they aren’t so great at. Maybe you dislike that each character isn’t a one role pony?
I’m actually glad levels were capped during the leveling experience. I have taken the over-powered route in other games, sometimes due to overestimating an upcoming boss, and I would destroy everything. Being a person that looks for a challenge in a game, I can’t say most storyline bosses in the FF games I played have given me that outside of FFXIII. I’m not too big of a fan of being able to YOLO my way through an RPG, despite doing it with some past games.

 

[mothcorrupteth]

@FinalxxSin

Yeah. For me, the grind is half the point. In high school, I was notorious among my gamer friends for having mastered several materia before leaving Junon for the first time. In the same playthrough, I had unlocked everybody's level 2 Limit Break before even leaving on the Sector 5 Reactor mission. It isn't the fact that I can blow away the next boss, nor even really so much the fact that I watch stats climb. It's more the reward of knowing how patient I can be. So you can imagine why FFXIII rubbed me the wrong way so badly.

And you hit the nail on the head. I do like the characters to be a "one job pony." I prefer either a rigid class system or one that is infinitely flexible to one that is trying to be in between, as FFXIII did. I can concede that the selection of Jobs that each character specialized in fit that character, but that is not quite what I'm talking about. Vivi isn't just someone whose physique and day job fits the mold of someone who might favor magic. He is a black mage. Kain is not just an adult capable with a spear; he is a dragoon in Baron's armed forces. Zidane is a thief, not someone with deft hands who acquires magical thief-y powers. Yang is a black belt, not a local dojo master who gets blessed with mutagenic ninja skills. FFXIII's approach with the fal'Cie granting these abilities just felt so Power Rangers (I have a similar complaint against FFV, but the Job system really is its saving grace). Does that make sense?

 

[FinalxxSin]

.....

Well sir/ma'am I don't have anything to add. I feel you gave a fair judgement on both titles, expressing pros and cons. I never thought of padded freedom, or freedom without substance, until you brought that to the table. That's a fairly valid point. Popular opinion will almost always carry a lot of weight with the outlook of a game. Sometimes it's so powerful it can have somebody try something out, or completely avoid it. I feel the fanbase could really use a lot more people such as yourself, but that would be an unrealistic wise of mine. I understand the reality is that many viewpoints will remain extreme one way or another without the usage of critical thinking. I don't have great objective viewing skills myself, but I feel i can at least be honest with somebody with a game from both aspects. It's unfortunate more people won't do that. I think it could make for a better informed gaming community imo.

...

I see. So you are focusing on the occupation itself for the characters, and not simply character traits that carry over to battle. That's understandable. I understand that the class roles execution was not of your preference with FFXIII. That's ok, I personally just couldn't view that as a flaw. I can chalk it up as a preference not being met on your end though.

Since you did mention grinding and flexibility, I do want to bring up a counter point real quick. Sometimes, having a cap be set at the same level for every character will create problems. Take for example FFX. The characters in the beginning are fairly unique battle wise, but as time goes by that uniqueness decreases significantly. For example, you would need Wakka to hit flying foes since they tended to have high evasion, and he would have higher accuracy. By the end game though, that becomes a moot point as everybody can end up having the same accuracy. With every character having the exact same base stats, the only thing left to judge on objectively is their limits/specials. Kimahri for example pales in comparison to the rest of the party members end game when it comes to that area. So now you have a fairly useless character, and you can take care of everything with 3 - 4 characters that do have good limits/specials. So now it's not a situation of having a party preference so much, but actually having some dead weight that you as a player no longer use.

For you, this may not be a problem. For me, it is. I feel every character should be useful with end game content, because that in turn can create more options. I feel FFXIII did a good job of that, hence why I continued to use all 6 characters. That for sure was not the case with FFX.

 

[mothcorrupteth]

Since you did mention grinding and flexibility, I do want to bring up a counter point real quick. Sometimes, having a cap be set at the same level for every character will create problems. Take for example FFX. The characters in the beginning are fairly unique battle wise, but as time goes by that uniqueness decreases significantly. For example, you would need Wakka to hit flying foes since they tended to have high evasion, and he would have higher accuracy. By the end game though, that becomes a moot point as everybody can end up having the same accuracy. With every character having the exact same base stats, the only thing left to judge on objectively is their limits/specials. Kimahri for example pales in comparison to the rest of the party members end game when it comes to that area. So now you have a fairly useless character, and you can take care of everything with 3 - 4 characters that do have good limits/specials. So now it's not a situation of having a party preference so much, but actually having some dead weight that you as a player no longer use.

For you, this may not be a problem. For me, it is. I feel every character should be useful with end game content, because that in turn can create more options. I feel FFXIII did a good job of that, hence why I continued to use all 6 characters. That for sure was not the case with FFX.

Oh no, I totally agree that it's a problem. Personally, FF7 is my favorite and I am a constant defender of FF2, but I'm big enough to admit that this was a flaw for both of them, just as it was for 3, 5, 8, and 12. And again, I think VII actually is the worst in this area because the main skill progression isn't even tied to particular characters. And FF6 and FF10 are the best of the Customizability titles because they do give you the sense that each character is unique at the beginning, even if by the end they all start to even out. And the temptation to build every character as multifunctional from the get-go leaves you with a very vanilla cast throughout the entirety of 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, and 12.In the end I have to admit to myself that the entries with restricted classes are generally the best gameplay in the series, with IX taking the lead. It doesn't mean I think the Customizability games are horrible (there are days where I just want to build up an über knight-mage hybrid); it just means I think they're weaker. What I have against XIII is that, by trying to be both, it didn't hit the sweet spot that draws either style to me and thus battles felt like a chore I had to do to get further along in the overly complicated story.

 

[Shaissa]

Ugh I can't stand when people say overhyped/overrated/overhated etc because there is no definition of what that really means. Just because something is popular and beloved doesn't mean it is automatically overrated/overhyped. FFVII is the perfect example. Yes it is the most beloved in the series by many fans, whether if it was someones first FF or even first RPG game or they just fell in love with the games story or character or whatever the reason is, doesn't mean it is overhyped. Do I sometimes get sick of hearing about FFVII being the best one? Sure, because I don't think it is, but how can you put an opinion on something like this, and argue it as fact? You really can't.

The proof I have is that FFVII left such a lasting impact that without it, I really don't know if there would have even been a "golden age" or a "boom" of JRPGs. I think FFVII really helped many companies realize there was a want for JRPGs around the world and not just in Japan and USA... I mean FFVII was the first one to be released in EU and AUS and the sales really drive the fact that FFVII really can be argued as one of the best selling JRPGs of all time. Like someone said earlier in the thread you can't count digital sales... or at least I don't of a real accurate way a company can give digital sales easily now, so who knows what FFVII really sold right now.

Now why is FFXIII overhated? This can be argued that it isn't, because again it is opinion on if you like it or hate it. I for one actually thought FFXIII was alright. I can see where people are coming from with the hatred though, I mean this was a big turn from what they were doing with the series...even arguably bigger changes than what they did with FFXII trying to make it more "open world" view of XII to what XIII did with only having one character to control and if they die you lose... That part was very annoying and I felt was a bad move.

Also where other have complained is it really did feel like a straight line, which I agree with... but that wasn't new in FF series, heck X was probably a much more straighter line than XIII... the difference if X had tiny spots along the way (before you got the airship) where it broke the story up a bit and let you do a little side quest, or Blitzball... XIII missed that completely, you physically were only doing the story. That is where the problem lied.

So really I can see where the hate comes from for XIII.. heck I see a lot of hate on FFVII...but mostly because people say it is "overrated." Really it comes to how you personally view each game and decide for yourself how you feel about them...

 

[FinalxxSin]

.....

If you had read my original post, you would have understood fully why I used the terms that I did.

 

[Shaissa]

If you had read my original post, you would have understood fully why I used the terms that I did.

I did read your original post. I still think they are words that are "over used" to describe games now days.

Also like I said, FFXIII hate is justified and FFVII love is justified. Problem is the "overhyped/overrated/underrated/whatever you wanna call it is all based on a theoretical opinion on how popular a game is versus how a certain individual likes the game. It seems you liked FFXIII and don't really understand why it got the hate it did, which others have explained and I agree with their hate although I did overall like the XIII. I also do see a lot of hate on FFVII which comes more from it being "overly popular" versus anything in the actual game for the time it was created.

 

[FinalxxSin]

.....

So are you telling me that you are completely fine with radical/extreme viewpoints that tip in one direction or another? If so, I am not going to agree with it because most of the time it's not even warranted.

 

[ZaXo Ken'Ichi]

I did read your original post. I still think they are words that are "over used" to describe games now days.

Also like I said, FFXIII hate is justified and FFVII love is justified. Problem is the "overhyped/overrated/underrated/whatever you wanna call it is all based on a theoretical opinion on how popular a game is versus how a certain individual likes the game. It seems you liked FFXIII and don't really understand why it got the hate it did, which others have explained and I agree with their hate although I did overall like the XIII. I also do see a lot of hate on FFVII which comes more from it being "overly popular" versus anything in the actual game for the time it was created.

I disagree. Yes, people do indeed overuse terms like overrated, underrated, etc. But they still hold value outside of opinion. When something is overrated, it implies that people choose to actively ignore objective issues in order to place the game on a pedestal. It means they'll say FFVII is a perfect game with no flaws, despite there being very clear aspects to it that are objectively not designed or implemented well.

And the opposite is true for things that are over-hated and such. People choose to take simple problems, or personal problems, and parade them around as both game breaking issues, and absolute fact respectively. It's the same idea behind things like slander, character assassination, etc.; people will purposefully ignore the positive aspects, and exaggerate the negatives (or create false negatives) as a way to destroy something they fundamentally disagree with. The amount of people I've seen say that XIII is an absolute horrendous piece of garbage, who may never have even played that game, a Final Fantasy, or even a J-RPG is staggering. Why does that occur? Because people choose to blow things out of proportion, as if it's there mission to destroy the game. Then the rest of the more casual observers adopt those ideals through a 'oh, it must be true because it's said a lot' attitude, and the game is officially dead. It doesn't matter what good it offered, it's officially irredeemable garbage.

So I think such terms have very real meaning. The differentiating factor comes down to whether the things the person (people) are saying are over/undervalued, or exaggerated in terms of the actual experience. If an action game runs at 60fps consistently, other than maybe one or two single frame drops during each level, that's objectively some fine performance. Someone who over-hates it would say that's terrible, and there should be no drops at all. Meanwhile, if the game is aiming for 60fps, and rarely gets above 15-20, that's objectively poor performance. Someone who overhypes the game would say that this doesn't have any ill effects on the gameplay, or that you should 'buck up' and learn to deal with it. Overhype, overrated, underrated, etc... they all have uses (though they are massively overused, lol). Their use sits squarely in describing the act of over-inflating, lying about, or ignoring information to suit a desired outcome.

 

[Guernsey]

You do have a point as those terms to tend to be overused especially when describing very subjective things.

 

[flybypie]

The people who dislike FFXIII cannot stand the fact that was a hugely-popular game and very successful for Square Enix.

Thus they have to devote their lives to making life hell for anyone who has actually played the games, so they can terrorize away anyone who isn't part of their circlejerk.