Final Fantasy XIII - A Beautiful Disaster
I hadn’t even played a single Final Fantasy coming into this generation, but the amazing trailers for Final Fantasy XIII, the information on it’s world and themes got me so interested; I became a Final Fantasy fan overnight. Thereafter I played Final Fantasy VI through an emulator, Final Fantasy XII, Final Fantasy IV on DS, Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII. Come Final Fantasy XIII launch day I had played most Final Fantasy games and was very hyped, now a year later after much thought, replaying and after almost platinuming the game I am ready to express my full thoughts; Final Fantasy XIII is a colossal disappointment, it’s a disaster, a very beautiful one though.
Gameplay:
The most important thing in any game is it’s gameplay, as this is a Japanese RPG I will be separating the gameplay and the battle system as the latter is such an important thing that is used more often than anything else in a Japanese RPG.
The gameplay in FFXIII; to be quite frank there isn’t much to talk about. Seventy percent of the game consists of running in a straight line from one point to the next to experience a new cut scene, there is no variety until a certain point in the game; Gran Pulse. Don’t be fooled though, instead of a straight line now you have empty fields full of enemies where you do nothing but fight, one welcome distraction is the Chocobo and a type of minigame that comes with them. The side quests are all hunts, there are no side quests apart from this.
The game has no towns, NPC’s or any such distractions. In an RPG these things are essential as they add a sense of immersion to the world, instead information one would usually explore for in a town is put into the datalog.
So overall what is there to say about FFXIII’s gameplay? It’s pretty atrocious, never has there been such a repetitive RPG.
2/10
Battle System:
For a game with nothing but fighting and moving forward the battle system has an unfair amount of weight put on it’s shoulders, and after a certain point those shoulders get tired and break.
I’ll put this out right now, the battle system is one of the most enjoyable ones I have experienced in an RPG, but after a certain point it gets very repetitive. The main crux behind the battle system is macro-management through roles; Commando (warrior using offensive weapons), Ravager (mage using offensive magic), Medic (Healer), Saboteur (Magic to cause debuffs on enemies), Synergist (magic to help buff up fellow team mates) and Sentinel (defender). You can have combination of these rules for your three team mates in what are called paradigms, the idea is that changing enemy types and situations on the battle field will have you changing the paradigm so it’s suited to the enemy you are fighting. In theory it’s great and it works great. The problem is for a lot of the game your only playing with two people, at this time the battle system becomes dull as it gets repetitive; although still quite enjoyable. Later on in the game you have three characters and options to switch party members, this is when the battle system clicks and becomes great. This greatness is short-lived as the remaining parts of the main story don’t pose a major challenge if you grind enough.
One disappointment is that the summons on the whole are useless.
Overall the battle system is great, but in a game where you do nothing but fight it’s hardly surprising that it gets repetitive. The other parts of this game along with the reluctance to open up the battle system earlier on bring the overall quality of the battles in the game down a tad.
9/10
Story:
As this is a JRPG, more specifically a Final Fantasy I am separating story and characters. The story in FFXIII is downright incomprehensible in parts and I only understood the ending after reading a help guide online to understand the story. It’s no surprise that Producer of FFXIII (Yoshinori Kitase) said one of the aims behind FFXIII-2 is to make gamers understand FFXIII’s story more.
The premise is about 6 characters, each with their own struggle who have become l’cie by accident and how they need to find a way to solve the dilemma of completing their focus (which is to destroy their homeland cocoon) or to reject it; if a focus is rejected they turn into monsters called C’ieth. The lore, ideas, setting of FFXIII is interesting and top notch, but the plot it’self is poor. The pacing is off, characters dialogues are awful and the plot does not utilise the amount of potential it had. To truly appreciate the setting you need to read the datalog which many gamers may skip, all that interesting information should have been integrated into the game.
Mid way through the game the plot self destructs, you don’t know whats going on and the ending is a major cop out. The plot is disappointing because it doesn’t live up to the world, setting and the ideas the world of Final Fantasy XIII gives us; it’s also a the great potential is locked away in the datalog. This is the perfect example of having a good premise but atrocious execution, still better a good premise full of potential but a bad plot rather than everything being bad.
6/10
Characters:
In FFXIII you need to be patient with the characters; each one is going through a difficult time in the game and then gets put into a situation they have grown up to fear deeply. Due to this we see bad sides of characters come up, good sides too, we see them arguing, we see them smiling. At the end of the day though apart from some instances the character development lacks for some of the characters.
Highlights include Lightning and Hope’s growing friendship as they each find the person they lost in each other and face their fears, same with Sazh and Vanille. Snow and Hope’s confrontations. Hope is a character that is developed particularly well, I could sympathise with his loss at the beginning of the game and grew attached to him through the game. Lightning has mediocre development, her interactions with Hope are the best part, part way through the game her character arc stops and she becomes pretty boring. Fang and Sazh I see as similar, both love someone dear and want to do anything for them, both are fun loving and characters you could see yourself having a beer with. Finally we come to Vanille, a rather annoying character with a weak characterisation.
Ultimately the cast of FFXIII was good if you let yourself open up to them, these aren’t people you may like from a first glance, but seeing their mental state at the time and empathizing with it ultimately I grew attached to most of the characters. Character development wise it’s not that great.
7/10
Music:
The soundtrack is very good, my favorite from this generation easily. The battle themes and the boss themes are incredible (Blinded by light, Will to fight), some of
the environment tracks are immersive and emotional too. Masashi Hamauzu did a great job.
One issue I felt the music had was that many times it felt like the scene the track plays in wasn’t suited to it, this made me thing that perhaps the tracks were made without taking into account the specific environment they were played in. Another issue was some melodies being reused in several tracks.
Overall it was a great soundtrack full of music that could tug at my heart strings (especially the track Memories Of Happier Days), however I can’t judge this based on the soundtrack alone, the placement of the songs is important to consider too.
8.5/10
Graphics/Art Design:
On a technical level the graphics are good, not amazing. Some areas in the game suffer from poor textures. Sometimes the character models and environment quality is pretty different.
The art style of the game is incredible, Isamu Kamikokuryo has outdone himself, the technical quality of the graphics left a bit to be desired but this was made up by the art style which results in FFXIII looking breathtaking in the end.
Pulse and Cocoon both had distinctive art styles which helped us see a good variety of environments in each style (however uninteractive and sterile the worlds were). One minor issue I had was the monster designs for many machine type enemies felt lackluster.
9/10
Overall:
Final Fantasy XIII is a bad RPG, it’s barely an RPG really. The game has design decisions that are terrible, this results in non existent gameplay. The battle system is good but the sheer weight thats put upon it’s shoulders makes it lose it’s luster. The plot is atrocious and nonsensical and it fills me with rage to see such great potential locked into a box and thrown off a cliff. The characters are on the whole good but not easy to get attached too and some suffer from low development. The music and graphics are great.
The game does not live up to it’s legacy of genre defining RPG’s at all.Yes Final Fantasy XIII is enjoyable on some levels but it has unforgivable issues present! One has to wonder how the developers thought they could get away with making such a featureless game.
The terrible design choices and plot completely overshadow the positives regarding the battle system and some of the characters, the music and graphics do make this game beautiful though.
Final Fantasy XIII is a beautiful disaster.
6.5/10 - Above Average to Ok
**NOTE -- The Final Score isn't an average of the section scores as clearly some sections will be more important than other to the overall quality of a game**
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 find it weird that you separate gameplay and battle system. Most of the time spent playing is in battle.
Honestly, I think that 2/10 for the "gameplay" is a bit harsh.
If you don't like the cinematic and linear approach of the game, you could give it a 5.
It's not that different from FFX.
I used summons to refill my life in a pinch. Comes in handy and adds some strategy. People hate on this games as corridor press x to win but i found it tough as nails later on, the one big huge boss on pulse before you come back was a bit**. I was dissapointed it didnt have real sidequests, npcs, and exploration throughout the game but man it was a quality game. I remember staying up til i beat the dam* summon and nearly waking up everyone in the apartment when i beat it. Loved the story and il get 13-2 day one.
I disagree with a lot of this. You may not of liked the gameplay and I understant that. But what I have a problem with is a 2 of 10. Thats an exaggeration. A 2 of 10 would be something that barely works In my opinion
i respectfully disagree with your score, i happened to like the game and would give it 8.5-9. but again thats just me you are entitled to your opinion.