The countdown for the wait of another long developed game is over, and that is Final Fantasy XIII.
The game features 6 main characters, the cover girl of the game, Lightning, seems to share spotlights with her comrades as leading character that sometimes she is overshadowed. Perhaps this is really the design of the game.
The story at the first part of the game will really leave you feel an outcast of the Final Fantasy XIII world. But as you go deeper in the game, the more you'll understand and discover the deepness of the story on which makes it a lot interesting.
The graphics of the game is the best at its genre. You barely notice any aliasing issue throughout the game. the facial modeling of all characters are excellent but the toll for this is that some body parts of the characters are at low-polygon modeling. Environments are brilliant as always just like typical Final Fantasy games
The gameplay has been the main issue of this game. Final Fantasy series has been known to be an open-world game, on where you can go to multiple towns, access secret areas in the world map, talk to some people for some side quests.
But in this game, you will be disappointed, there is totally no world map running around, lack of side quests, lack of total freedom unlike in the previous installment. The gameplay is linear, literally, the map that you'll be running is designed "straight". The game lacks sidequests, worse is that it only appears way later in the game. One of the biggest change made is that the level-up system was removed and reaplaced with skill points system on which you acquire after every battle on which you can spend to acquire new attributes to each of your characters which feels somewhat welcoming as this also leads you to execute battles more strategical. The new battle system is an excellent feature of the game, you only control the leader in a party that is composed of 3 party members. Your other 2 members are controlled by ai on which makes moves accordingly on what role you set them. There are 5 types of role available in the game, but in the early part of the game, your characters will only have 1 or 2 roles each, but later in the game they will acquire more roles. Commando is a role that is focused on making damage on the enemy, Ravager is focused on raising your chain combo or damage multiplier but doesn't produce damage as strong as the Commando. Saboteur role is focused on weakening your enemies by putting status ailments and lowering attributes. Synergy is performing the opposite of exact opposite of Saboteur. Sentinel role is focused on greatly improving your defensive capabilites and the Medic simply cures your party members. Reward system is introduced to the game, as it shows you how efficient you performed in your battles.
In summary, Final Fantasy XIII still has depth on story and an excellent new battle system despite the subtraction of the features previous Final Fantasy Installments have. Its a game that will give you around 40 - 50 hours of story gameplay.
Kazuyuki Shindo, who worked on games including Legend of Mana, Final Fantasy XIII, and SaGa: Emerald Beyond, has left Square Enix.
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Alex Donaldson: "Hindsight is a hell of a thing, however, and in the years since Final Fantasy XIII, my respect for the decisions its developers made has skyrocketed. In the two Final Fantasy titles since we see both the brilliance and the folly in alternative approaches - and in Final Fantasy VII Remake, we get a more nuanced understanding of what FF13 was trying to accomplish from many of the same development leads."
FFXIII is actually one of the best Final Fantasy games.
I also sort of was disappointed at the time, never as much as the bandwagon. But really all the fantastic 3D rendered cutscenes and I actually liked the characters and the story though convoluted was actually fantastic and the ending was extremely emotional. So much budget and time were put into that game Square had such big plans, I actually have always felt kind of bad for how things played out.
I have been thinking for years how great it would be to get all three games on one disk for PS4 or 5.
Gotta take off the nostalgia glasses. It's the worst FF. Shiva as a bike, I mean come on.
Shiva as a bike is strange but saying FFXIII is the worst FF is not at all a fact, that's simply your opinion.
When I got my series X a year ago, I bought FF13 for nostalgia reasons but ended up being disappointed. When I first played it around the time it launched, I didn't have a lot of experience with final fantasy games, so I enjoyed it. Fast forward to when I played it again, I found that the game had many unnecessary filler moments instead of just giving us meaningful content.
The game is also very linear and a quote on the article said it best. "It is like a sewage pipe that leads to the ocean until it opens up on Grand Pulse."
The story didn't make much sense either and I believe it is my mistake as I played the FF7 remake on PS5 prior which is a night and day difference in terms of pacing, storytelling and likeable characters even though cloud is aloof.
Probably was a mistake to play any of the golden era FFs first (e.g. FF6 through FF10), it makes it harder to enjoy some of the FFs that aren't as good. I think FF12 was where major issues with the series started becoming apparent, and it just got worse from there.
I didn't really care for it that much, the only saving grace was that it had a better story than 15 (overall it was better than 15) and possibly 12, and even then, you had to read some of it through primers, like reading a book. Plus the battle system was reasonably fun for what it was, even if it was more the spectacle that was exciting for me (e.g. summoning). And to be fair, the 13 trilogy got better with every games, I still don't like Snow though.
Ff13 is only good if you haven't played a ff before, or any other games that are decent for that matter.
It is in fact no way the best Final Fantasy game, it's one of the worst
Linear corridors, Cutscene, Fight, Cutscene...rinse and repeat
Dialogue and characters are pretty bad, especially Lightning as the main FF hero, they literally said they tried to make a "Female Cloud" and they failed.
Story was pretty awful
I could go on
I think the only alright thing that came from the game was the music.
That's not a fact that's your personal opinion. The game sold 11 million copies between its 2009 release up until 2014 including critically reviewed as an 8 out of 10 or an 80 out of 100. The game does have some issues but it's not at all a fact as one of the worst FF games.
i liked the game alot but i didnt like how they handled the terminology.
i dont mind reading data logs but it had soo many.
but i always loved the music and how it looked. the battle system wasnt too bad either.
but i like 13-2 more :)
i still dont understand why we never got a remaster of the trilogy
Xbox kinda did. Besides the video files of course which are still best on PS3 due to bluray.
XIII is a pretty solid game, but XIII-2 is WAY better. XIII-2 was one of the few games I decided to go for a Platinum trophy in, early on. Had so much fun the entire way through getting it too!
I hated this to when it released. I haven't much liked a ff game since ff10 as much , aside from ff7remake. I decided to give it another shot on my series x since it's not on a current ps and was liking it quite a bit(just takes me some time to get over things ) until star ocean 2 remake came out I was all over that.
Square should definitely remaster it or something for ps4 ps5
I tried really hard to like this game as I'm a fan of the previous installments and yes I did play roughly over 30hrs, but still couldn't commit myself to finish it. SE pretty much discarded or altered many elements that made Final Fantasy charming presumably to engage newcomers to try it out. I agree with your review except that I'd knock a few more pts for the cons. If this game wasn't titled Final Fantasy I would most likely give it a higher score considering where I left off. I honestly feel like SE cheated on this one and slapped Final Fantasy for a title name and I was just dumb enough to get caught by the bait.
Honestly don't think this is a bad game, just not a good Final Fantasy game.
All the "main characters" are more like "side characters".
From Wikipedia
MAIN CHARACTER: whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to share the most empathy.