Final Fantasy XIII really does have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. The characters are poorly designed, idiotic, bland, annoying and completely unoriginal. Sazh is Barret (stereotypical, gun wielding black man who's main inspiration & motive is their child). Snow is Zell but somehow even more obnoxious. Fang is Freya. Lightning is Squall/Cloud (as in the angsty bitch that cloud has become, not the smug badass he originally was). Serah is a Mary Sue. I would say Vanille is Rikku (who, in turn, is Selphie), but it needs to be said that Vanille is by far the worst incarnation of the ditsy annoying bitch archetype I've ever seen. The combat is truly horrendous, one of the worst systems ever conceived, if not THE worst. The summon system sucks. The equipment system sucks. The linearity sucks. The pacing sucks. The crystarium really, really sucks. None of the music has that same energy as the older titles (entirely due to the fact that Nobuo Uematsu wasn't involved). The story isn't the worst, but it's far from capable of carrying the game on it's own. I can go into more detail if you want.

Let's start with my most hated aspect; the combat. It plays itself. It's built for god damn idiots.

You can only control one character for no real reason, and the game ends if they die. So you'd think the other characters would prioritize your health, right? Well it just so happens that the AI is monumentally really cool. The Medic AI most of all. Medic is possibly the most important role since it's the only one who can really pull you out when shit hits the fan, and it's in the hands of an AI I can't tell what to do. This is a gargantuan defect in the battle system, and to be honest it's really the only one that breaks the game.

Most bosses have at least one immensely powerful attack that can send your whole team into critical health. Unless your leader just happens to have the lowest HP you're already firetrucked though, since medics will only ever target the character closest to death and more often than not results in the leader being killed by the next attack. Why the actual firetruck is it programmed this way if you get a game over when the leader dies? Because of that you should ALWAYS have top priority, at least when your health is low enough to be wiped out by any attack.

Then there's the raise ability. Why did they even bother? If you die your medic can't revive you, and if he dies well obviously he can't revive himself either. So this ability is only there for this ignorant pansy firetruck of a third character who always gets priority over the one person who actually firetrucking matters: the player. Furthermore they will never even cast raise unless both remaining characters are at 100% health, and it never uses esuna (gets rid of status ailments) unless you're at full health either. So if you're firetrucking poisoned instead of curing you then healing they just firetrucking repeatedly cast cure to no end. Bizarre.

Sadly it's not just the medics that are bloody stupid though. When you have another commando they ALWAYS attack whatever I'm not targeting. This is clearly intended and easy to work around, but why the bloody firetruck can't I decide whether to focus fire or spread out? All it would take is one button. The battle system constantly reminds you that you're not allowed to decide how you want to play the game.

Ravagers force you to cast Libra to let the AI know how to not be a really cool mess, as they will go through every single spell they have in order to find out which does the most damage before focusing on it. This would be alright if not for the fact that the enemy's weakness is blatantly obvious 90% of the time. If I was in control I wouldn't need to cast Fire on the flame demon 6 times to deduce whether it's effective or not. Even when you do get the enemy staggered the AI still doesn't cease to be firetrucking stupid. I'm obviously going to want to use launch or aeroga(however it's spelt) to render them defenceless, but the AI will outright refuse to do so most of the time, always picking that moment to cast ruin instead of attacking or a different spell.

Saboteur is one of the most frustrating. I'm obviously going to want to cast daze or pain whenever they're available, but of course the AI think's it's a better idea to decrease it's attack power rather than disabling it's firetrucking attack entirely. Sabs are also the only class other than commando who can keep the enemy's stagger bar up, so it would be also be nice to use a combination of MED/SYN/SAB or something similar when I'm hurt, to heal, buff and debuff at once while still keeping the enemy's stagger up. Sadly, once the debuffs are all active the Sab decides to sit and do nothing rather than keeping the enemy staggered regardless. Many, many stagger bars were lost thanks to this.

I really don't know what the firetruck they were thinking when designing the Synergist, considering it's possibly the easiest class to not firetruck up stupendously. For some unholy reson the Synergist always buffs the 3rd party member first (i.e not you), then the leader, then himself. WHY? It doesn't firetrucking matter if dipshit #3 dies, the game ends if I die and the synergists themselves (Sazh and especially Hope) have by far the lowest HP and die very easily if not buffed.

On top of the AI being brain dead every single battle plays out identically, starting with a commando or saboteur with two ravagers, stagger, go all out. Take damage, just switch to medic. Tough enemy? Just buff yourself first. No variety or strategy required beyond the first few bosses. To make it even worse several bosses have millions upon millions of HP and drag on forever. Considering the commando is the only class that moves, that's a long ass time to sit watching a few characters grunt and flail their arms about. Especially when the boss is likely to target your leader with a cheap one-shot-kill attack at any moment. Which happens a lot.

The summon system couldn't possibly be any more bland. Why not keep FFX's system? X's was superior in just about every way, X's Aeons were directly controlled by the player and had their own abilities, limit breaks and improvable levels/stats. Each new Aeon felt like a new character and a valuable asset to the team. XIII's eidolons are almost useless entirely and were barely explained (story-wise). They provided little more than an annoying boss battle. Plus the transforming vehicle thing was really, really firetrucking dumb.

The equipment system. In the other games it was just a case of getting the next best weapon(although in X weapons were defined by their special abilities and had identical damage output for the most part, another reason they should have kept X's formula), but the armor you found generally had unique uses and would aid you against specific enemies. In XIII the vast majority of accessories are completely useless, and each character's starting weapon was their best as it was generally the most balanced and focused on the characters main strengths, whereas the rest of the weapons focused on one area and was severely crippled in others making it pretty damn useless if you actually plan on getting anywhere. The upgrade system was dull, why not just level the weapon I'm using instead of making me collect and convert materials to do the same thing? Not a huge problem, but a problem nonetheless.

Oh god the Linearity. When FFX came out it was the most linear game in the series, but it still had splitting paths, open areas and varied environments with the (beautiful) scenery changing every couple of hours at least. XIII on the other hand is a single, straight path from A to B in the same repetitive, grey hallways with the odd "hidden" chest here and there.

It's not just the poor level design either, the monsters you face and the battles themselves are already set in stone, even the crystarium is linear and limits how strong you can get in an attempt to stay challenging. What the hell kind of RPG has a linear skill tree? For most of the game you aren't even allowed to choose your party.

The Crystarium offered so little choice it may as well not even be there, we would be better off with just a notification every now and then saying you have unlocked such and such an ability. Setting up materia was one of the better things of VII, and customization is pretty much a requirement of RPGs. As much as I disliked the sphere grid it at least let you develop your characters however you want. Also it shouldn't have been 3D, it just made what was practically a straight line needlessly hard to navigate

No towns or NPCs either. A lot of people say "Well they're on the run, the couldn't walk through a town" but that's bullshit. Part of VI and disc 1 on IX had you on the run, but you could still explore towns because they characters weren't firetrucking stupid and stayed subtle. If XIII's cast of twats didn't insist on displaying their L'Cie brands so prominently they could have easily explored some villages and the residents would be none the wiser. They could have even turned it into a sort of minigame with a dialogue system where you can be found out by asking the NPCs shitty questions or something.

The pacing. So much time is spent endlessly slaughtering the same soldiers over and over. The first ~25 hours consist of running down the same hallways and hardly anything substantial happens plot-wise until you fight Barthandelus, and afterwards there's a little under 10 hours of the characters being unsure of what to do next and end up just wandering about and not doing anything in particular. The characters actions and motives never have any weight behind them. One early part in a forest with Lightning & Hope in particular made me want to bang my head against the wall. The same copy/pasted level just went on and on with several cutscenes explaining that Hope is an angsty bitch and Lightning is indecisive. I don't give a bloody firetruck, just do something already.

Hope absolutely refused to confront Snow about his mother's death for no reason other than to pad out the game. Constantly collapsing to the ground to whine and moan. I somehow forgot to mention him before, but Hope is an irredeemably bad character, easily one of the worst in the series. Now that I think about it, all 6 main characters have little to no backstory either. It flashed back to the 13 days way too often and tried too hard to build up an overall uninteresting coincidence(all characters being in the same place 13 days prior to meeting) with needlessly long and complex cutscenes.

It would have been infinitely better if the cutscenes were implemented into the gameplay somehow, as they are they're dull, monotonous, always needlessly long and rarely actually meaningful or important. Most of the villains are thrown in from out of the blue too, why the hell weren't these people introduced a few hours ago when absolutely nothing was happening? They could've at least tried harder to give us some direction.

So yeah, Final Fantasy XIII is a horrible game in every aspect. Rant over.

I actually thought it was an alright game. o.o

Yeaanahh^^

Though I didn't have it for long, XIII wasn't that bad of a game. It didn't meet my expectations of Final Fantasy XII material, but it was OK. 

I'm currently playing FF13 for the first time (only got it this Xmas) and I like the crystalarium.. I do feel the games very linear, moving from open world games where you can travel where you want to a game where no intuition is required since you literally just have to move forward to progress highlighted the linear aspect of it to me, some of the characters are annoying (I find lightning annoying, found it rude and sexist when she punched snow, cause obviously he wasn't gonna hit a girl, specially his fiancees sister, I thought hope should hurry up and confront snow instead of being so mellow dramatic and vanilles accent annoys me. I love sazh though)

Most games these days are about graphics though and not real gameplay. So far though I'm enjoying the game, even though its repetitive.

Well, I was planning on getting it and all these arguments have made me want it even more.

 

 

Jackho, you have described most of the things that frustrated me from FFXIII, I could forgive the dumb characters and the linear story 

if the gameplay were a little more challenging,he cristaryum was just pointless, and the status, come on, just HP and MP to level up, I felt like in kindergarten.

 

Anyway I wouldn't say is the worst game, rather is the most disappointing Final Fantasy I ever played (and I played the ffX-2 that's much saying)

Fool. I liked FFXIII

Did you create this topic just to argue with everyone?

Everyone has the right to have an opinion, you too. But even if someone's opinion differs from yours, you do not have the right to claim, that his opinion is wrong.

You're talking like everything you say is an absolute fact, not an opinion.

I didn't come here to argue, Im just saying how I feel about this. Have a nice day!

Jackho, you have described most of the things that frustrated me from FFXIII, I could forgive the dumb characters and the linear story 

if the gameplay were a little more challenging,he cristaryum was just pointless, and the status, come on, just HP and MP to level up, I felt like in kindergarten.

 

Anyway I wouldn't say is the worst game, rather is the most disappointing Final Fantasy I ever played (and I played the ffX-2 that's much saying)

 

This is why I feel like Final Fantasy 13 is more of a beginner's entry game to the series. It basically holds your hand all the way through. It's like Mystic Quest for the SNES. A FF game for newbies. 

 

FF X started out easy too, but then it got hard and near unforgiving near the end. It was more balanced. FF XIII just never lets you off the training wheels.

Edited January 6, 201312 yr by axele

This is why I feel like Final Fantasy 13 is more of a beginner's entry game to the series. It basically holds your hand all the way through. It's like Mystic Quest for the SNES. A FF game for newbies. 

 

FF X started out easy too, but then it got hard and near unforgiving near the end. It was more balanced. FF XIII just never lets you off the training wheels.

 

Exactly!, it is a FF for newbies.

 

I been thinking that the biggest problem with the game was call it Final Fantasy, If Squarenix would have called it otherwise, instead of FFXIII,I could overlook it was so disappointing.

 

They could have started another rpg game series to be developed in the same world, at different ages (with diferent characters please), but without having to add a XIII in the name, but I guess it's too late for that (they're still working in FFXIIIversus -_-). 

^ Agree

 

If it was called " Orphan " or something like that, then maybe it wouldn't be so bad. But the FF name sells, so that's why they most likely didn't do it. Because FF = money for the company. c;

 

lolol Versus is just a urban legend like the loch ness monster. The internet made it up. lol jks. But it sure feels like one.

Edited January 8, 201312 yr by axele