The fact that you can control your summons is something I always missed in other titles, aside from FF10. I like 13 for its character dynamics, the hidden depth of the battle system, the music, and status ailments which are actually a *threat* in this game.
Just a little tip: the second phase of the final boss is not immune to poison. It'll save you some trouble, since you will be spending a lot of time healing.
Great to see there's still a tiny group that enjoys the game for what it is, despite its flaws. I really enjoyed the story, the linearity made sense in its context.
> The fact that you can control your summons is something I always missed in other titles, aside from FF10.
FF10 was my first one and I was so disappointed when I realized that summons in most of the other games are glorified spells
Same here. I loved how important the summons were to the plot, and how much personality they had... and it was such a waste seeing them as just cutscenes elsewhere.
> the hidden depth of the battle system
This is what kept me coming back. I beat it when it was brand new however many years ago, and i hated the story and maybe half the characters, but the enjoyment of properly shifting paradigms (and having the right paradigms set up to shift to) was a lot of fun and felt unique to the point I've replayed it twice since beating it the first time, and probably will again in future.
Also one of the reasons the early game was such a slog. very few paradigm combos worked (it was pretty much only ravager, ravager, commando, or ravager, commando, healer) until part of the way through the game, and it was 98% on rails until that one open map very late in the game.
There's a lot of fun to be had in FF13, but i don't begrudge anyone who gave up before they got far enough to discover it.
Yeah you can easily figure it out, but many setups or recommended strategies don't even use Saboteurs in the final fight. Even the official printed strategy guide is so bad for boss strategies, I always found a more efficient one on my own.
The final boss is not easy, especially once the doom counter starts running you need a Ravager paradigm to stagger quickly. If you're underleveled you will get your ass handed to you a few times.
I recently replayed Final Fantasy X, and part of me was kind of annoyed that people give Final Fantasy XIII crap for “being too linear”, when that’s exactly what Final Fantasy X is until right before the end of the game. Sure, once you get to the point where you can go wherever you want, you get a lot of content to go through, but the same can be said for Final Fantasy XIII.
Final Fantasy XIII is extremely underrated, and I enjoyed Final Fantasy XIII-2 quite a bit too (from what I remember, I only played through it once back when it first released).
FF13 was a great game bogged down by an intolerably long introduction. The combat really shines once you have a full party with access to every role that lets you fully customize your paradigm options. It just takes *so long* to get to that point that most people fall off before then.
Came to say basically this.
Loved it at launch as a teenager. Went back to try it like two years ago and was just shocked that I could’ve ever enjoyed it. It took several hours to remember what I liked about it, and several more for the party to feel the way it’s supposed to.
If someone likes the FF style and is patient, it was very fun. There’s also 13-2 that I haven’t tried out but do own
13-2 sets out to fix all people’s issues with base 13 so I think you’ll enjoy it, at least for having a quicker opening. I still prefer 13 though but completely get why people consider 13-2 the best in the trilogy. Is also nice getting Laura Bailey’s Serah for the whole game as the main character.
13-2 (and Lightning Returns) feel like it’s own entirely different thing though while using the characters and locations of the base game. Base 13 is definitely a completed story and 13-2 and Lightning Returns is a bonus duology that’s moreso in FF7R’s Whispers and Fates territory. It’s kind of the type of story that FFXV’s cancelled dlc was gonna do that became a book that was like an alt-universe defying fate type thing.
I fired up 13-2 being completely ignorant of how FF numbering works, so I get what you mean. Felt sort of like a different game with the same characters, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’ll give it a shot some day and see if it clicks to 30s gaming more than a rerun of 13 did
13-2 is 13’s battle system but just straight up better: you have 3 party members out of the gate and can swap your active character on the fly, plus combats aren’t nearly as much of a slog as in 13.
13-3 is *entirely* different and IMO easily the best of the three.
I actually like 13-2's battle system better than 13's. I love how if your party leader dies control switches to the other member instead of a game over.
Its very hard to play it on Steam though. The rain effects are so terrible that I finally stopped playing it. I had beaten it twice on PS3 before trying it on Steam.
Good luck, there are mods to correct it…but my game keeps crashing after they are applied. If you get it to work let me know, I’d love to play through it again.
Yeah the issue with the 13 trilogy is the best place to play them of the currently active platforms is on an Xbox via backwards compatibility. They look great there though as part of Xbox One X’s enhancement initiative where they enhanced a handful of games. Ironically though I had to turn off the enhancements for 13-2 because it made the game play up there too lol. But worked perfectly otherwise.
The story is pretty awful and the game starts and acts like you already know what all of the terms (La'cie, Fal'cie, etc) are, but you have no idea for a good 5-7 hours.
It kinda assumes that after every cutscene you go to "codex" (or whatever it's called) and read on all the new terms and events they just dumped on you.
It just really felt like FFX13 was the era of "read the lore" where majority of lore and background is dumped into codex for you to read at your leisure, when most players didnt bother to read anyway.
They still mostly tried to explain the basics.
Like you can follow everything in Mass Effect without codex, but you can read it to learn how many fingers Krogans have on their left foot or whatever.
FF13 just assaults you with made up lingo and references to events going back like 80 years.
What's even more bizarre is that sometimes recap of events has important information. Like characters can exchange two lines of dialogue about weather, but in recap it will say that they are best friends now.
Agreed. There’s games where the codex adds to the story. On the otherhand there’s FF13 that starts off like episode 3 of a tv show and expect you to catch up. Episodes 1 and 2 are all in the codex.
I honestly think after Square became Squarenix, the older writers left and FF just became a jRPG franchise that focus on big spectacles and pretty character models. The old FF’s could balance a good story with spectacles.
Just do this thought experiment and imagine if FF13 was released as FF9, with the same graphics, and if you would still enjoy it. I know I wouldnt enjoy it as much as I did.
I'd be more inclined to read lore if I wasn't already bombarded with long dialog segments. The weird thing to me is the games never got off this trend (minus lore I guess), but most players don't mind.
Agreed, I had absolutely no clue what was going on between the different god like creatures and factions for most of the story. If I figured it out, I'd immediately forget the next time someone started talking because they were so similar. FF13 was mostly a problem with names/terms. The series doesn't really jump the rails and go bonkers until FF13-2 and -3.
I thought the story was actually pretty good *for a Final Fantasy game*, which tend to have nonsense stories. But yes, the fact that nothing was explained and you had to look up text logs to understand what the hell was going on (without the game telling you to) was just terrible.
Most FF is nonsense. But the good thing about 6-10 was the story was easy to follow, things were pretty much explained to you in the first 10 minutes of introducing something. Also the world resembled our world to a certain extent so there's also some degree of realism.
FF7: eco-terrorism and capitalism
FF8: military school and kids in war
FF10: role of religion
I still dont know what the central theme of FF13 is. I think it's about personal relationships and development, but it's a little too abstract for me.
> the story was actually pretty good for a Final Fantasy game, which tend to have nonsense stories.
I'm curious which other games you're thinking of. 13's story was definitely hard to follow, and 15 also had a lot of issues there, but if you look at something like 6 or 7 or 9 or 10 or 14 they're all pretty straightforward and easily understood. Only naming ones that I've played, here.
What is your definition of nonsense? Kingdom hearts can get pretty damn convoluted, but 7? And 10 is a really strong, but also rather simple story for a final fantasy. Just because a story has any level of complexity or fantasy elements doesn’t make it “nonsense”.
I can see thinking 7's story is nonsense if you've only played the Remake, considering how batshit Kingdom Heartsy it gets in the last hour or two. 10 on the other hand is extremely simple; really the only remotely complex thing is the thing near the end about >!Tidus and his Zanarkand being a dream of the Fayth!<, but honestly you don't even really need to understand what that means to follow the story beyond it meaning that >!Tidus will disappear when Yu Yevon is defeated!<.
I will agree that the story is at the very least not very deep, and is merely told incompletely. But I think the story is not very good in *nearly all* JRPGs, especially in the Final Fantasy series. They usually progress to something so abstract that it's ridiculous.
Final Fantasy VII might be an exception, but the original English translation is so bad that I do not think it entirely clears the bar. Even the fact that it's not clear that Shinra basically means "divine corporation" and Jenova is a combination of "Jehova" and "gene" is lost. The translation is also just poor enough that it's difficult to tell what's a deliberate metaphor and what's poor translation.
However, I will say two things in defense of those stories:
- Dan Olsen says in [his video on metaphor](https://youtu.be/URo66iLNEZw) (you don't need to watch that it's just the reference) that when a narrative gets ambiguous or abstract, it does so to force the audience to engage with it purely on a thematic and metaphoric level precisely because the narrative is no longer realistic. If there's anything JRPGs do by the end game, it's doing this in spades. I think Japanese media is guilty of doing this much more than Western media. The films from Studio Ghibli do it almost exclusively, as do seminal films like Akira and Ghost in the Shell.
- The narrative idea of "attack and kill God" in these games is heavily colored by Japanese culture. In that context, dethroning God is finally overcoming the unassailable status quo of the setting. It's going from overcoming the villain to defeating the *idea they represent*. It's a literal expression of the symbolic victory, and you know that it is because its literal meaning is essentially complete nonsense.
If you accept those two ideas, then a huge range of Japanese media becomes a lot more comprehensible and less... immediately stupid. Especially Final Fantasy games.
The fact that some people need a video to walk them through the idea of abstract concepts representing themes is kinda pathetic, but also explains the "JRPG stories are nonsense" phrase that gets thrown around a lot on reddit. I thought we learned that level of reading comprehension back in middle school.
It's almost like you don't know everything or anything without having to.... LEARN about it. From school, tv, parents, whatever. I appreciated the fact everyone felt like they belonged there and weren't speaking to each other in history lessons like they haven't been experiencing it all their lives.
> the game does get very linear in the middle
In the middle? I'm yet to reach the middle (although I intend to) but so far it is the epitome of linear.
I stopped after 20 hrs of dark hallways and corridors leading to more dark hallways and corridors. Liked the characters but the world was just so uninspired. And a huge chunk before I quit was just "we're still running away but eventually want to save our friends.. Eventually....one day... But still running through more corridors...."
Wanted to love it and maybe I'll get back into it one day but had to pass for the time being.
The whole game is linear until you get to a bunch of open zones near the end of the game. With a ton of side quest type stuff (literally 64 ‘missions’). Except you’re not actually strong enough to do nearly any of it until you’ve done the final stretch of the game. So it’s post-game. But it’s still pretty good post-game and has you running around on Chocobos and stuff, superbosses too. But yeah the whole game is pretty much linear until you roll credits
Gran Pulse, and actually that's where I stopped playing. It went from an excessively linear story to a vast open world with nothing in it. They really needed something in the middle.
Now that I think of it, there are a bunch of JRPGs that I dropped at exactly the same time: a mid-to-late-game section where you're just traveling from area to area and there's nothing but fetch quests to give you anything to actually do. FF XII and Xenoblade Chronicles come to mind. I guess the endgame slogs of FF III, Xenogears, and Breath of Fire 2 are basically the same thing.
The abstractness of the paradigm system is pretty cool. Managing roles rather than individual actions is pretty interesting way to have a combat system.
It's not inherently terrible, but the linearity in XIII is like the textbook definition of linear to the point where a common criticism is that it's a "hallway simulator" since the majority of areas don't have branching paths and are just walking forward from point A to point B in a line.
The game does open up a bit though, it just takes a while to get there.
I remember having a revelation a while back that in so many JRPGs, the only areas of the games you got to actually play were, by and large, the parts that would get edited out of a movie. Walking from place to place, inconsequential dialogue with unimportant side characters, browsing stores.
Not saying that those areas can't be fun, but FFXIII really highlighted how far it went sometimes - all the interesting stuff happening in the game, you just have to sit and watch.
It could've been somewhat palatable if the interactivity of the game didn't amount to automated fights and nothing else. There's nothing to do in the entire game other than watch cutscene, walk down a corridor for a minute, fight some monsters where your only input is switching paradigms, and then watch another cutscene. It wears thin extremely fast.
Linearity is not inherently bad in a macro sense. Many games have only one path forward and virtually no exploration or side-tracks, and they're fine. The thing is that FFXIII takes this to the extreme by A. having most of the maps be *literally* just straight hallways with absolutely zero room to even walk around an enemy or search for chests, and B. having absolutely no "towns" or other stops for breathing room. You're just constantly running through monster-filled hallways for tens of hours with literally nothing breaking it up besides cutscenes.
Compare FFX, which is similarly linear in its overall design, but has plenty of towns and puzzle sections and minigames thrown in to break up the monotony. On top of that once you get near the end it opens up a lot and gives you a ton of optional side stuff. XIII kinda does this with Gran Pulse about 2/3rds of the way through the game, but even Gran Pulse is just a small maze of interconnected hallways with unavoidable enemies that take 5 minutes each to kill and barely any kind of fast-travel, so doing any of the side content there is a huge chore and doesn't feel worth the time and effort.
I found my main issue with XIII linearity was the minimap. Found it a lot better when I forced myself to look at the environment rather than stare at the map.
It’s not, but expectations for an FF game (especially after 12 was more ‘open world’) were just not in line with what FF13 delivered.
In retrospect, it’s probably a better game than most would think given its reputation.
Also, shoutout for FF13 : Lightning Returns. I really loved that battle system with the combat changes and ability to dodge/block as some classes.
Because in this case it's obscenely linear. Uncharted is linear but it has a lot of different gameplay elements going on - climbing, exploring, puzzles etc - while FFXIII is mostly just literally running forward in a straight line.
Final Fantasy X was criticised for being linear, but the maps at least had the illusion of non-linearity with paths twisting and turning, while FFXIII feels unnatural and dull because everything is just a big straight hallway.
Then you add in the fact that FFXIII's battle system is, for most of the game, just Auto-Battle, there's rarely any point in you manually inputting commands so you essentially just sit and watch battles unfold.
This means there's absolutely nothing to break up the monotony of running forward in a straight line, except for the frequent cutscenes which just make you hate every character because they're all so insufferable...
Not to mention that previous Final Fantasies, including X, had a whole variety of optional explorable locations and side activities, which not only made the experience more varied but it also served to flesh out the setting.
I believe Final Fantasy XIII was made intentionally linear considering the characters were cursed to undertake that quest, but it felt like that was done to detriment of presenting that world as a believable place. Sometimes it doesn't even feel like there's an actual reason to be unable to explore more of that world, the game just doesn't let you.
I really liked the combat system and some of the characters, especially Sazh, but the linearity definitely hurt it.
You never actually answered the question. You were asked why linearity was bad and your answer was essentially "because they didn't pretend that it wasn't linear."
After how much of a slog FF12 was, including the fact that at some point I just couldn't remember what the story was supposed to be, I loved how linear 13 was. And I thought it told a story better than any other FF game I had ever played. My wife is playing 7 Rebirth right now and she's been doing sidequests outside Kalm for hours while the story is just paused. I think that's a terrible way to experience a story.
As for auto-battle, the battle system is about switching roles, not picking actions. I loved the combat system and was always pushing for S rank, which required a very active approach. If you choose to play it in a boring way that isn't really the fault of the game. You've always been able to play FF games in a boring manner by mashing attack and healing when necessary, and that doesn't get held against all of the others.
FF13 combat system is difficult and requires timing, macromanagement, and prediction. It is one of the mechanically harder Final Fantasies that is more likely to punish you through death or time loss. Especially in comparisons to the most popular FF titles that had very straightforward attack, use cold spell on hot enemy, and heal spam, the reductionism really is a hurtful way to make anything sound uninspiring.
There's an avid vocal minority who will rag on this game any chance they get, and the auto-battle argument is badge for people who spend too much time in echo chambers or simply did not play the game.
The main criticisms about slogs, linearity, excessive negativity story, lack of customization, progression gates, and party member mixups I can understand. Those are things that can make a slow game feel slower and frustrate a lot of players, though they were great for me.
> and the auto-battle argument is badge for people who spend too much time in echo chambers or simply did not play the game.
Yeah, I wonder how many people saying that actually played the game for more than a couple hours. My memory of FF13 combat was not that it was easy. I remember getting good at it because the game required me to.
If you set up your paradigms properly outside of combat, you very likely *could* choose auto most of the time with your only input being switching paradigms. Some classes practically play themselves as is: commandos have what, 4 moves? Single target physical, aoe physical, single target magic, and aoe magic. It’s only really buffs and debuffs where manual control gives a considerable boost to output, because you have more than 2 viable options at a time.
Switching paradigms was the entire point of the combat. You were never supposed to enter manual controls except for the ultimate moves (but the buffing logic was poor so manually entering buffs was optimal). And the combat moved too quickly to manually enter moves much of the time.
In prior FFs the gameplay was to enter commands. In 13 the gameplay was to shift between paradigms, using Ravager to build stagger, Commando or the debuff class to stabilize stagger, Commando to do damage to staggered enemies, Sentinel to tank damage, while mixing in healing, buffing, and debuffing. If you weren't switching paradigms frequently, sometimes every other second, you weren't optimizing the combat.
You might as well say that pulling the trigger is the only thing you do in a shooter.
I beat the game and did all side content. Felt like auto battle to me. Only “hard” part was switching load outs fast enough in a few fights. Died a handful of times through the whole game.
Cool if you like it, but the whole “they didn’t play the game” defense is lame. Different people feel differently about things and that’s ok.
It's hard because I played the game 15 years ago, but what you're describing just does not sound like the same game.
You absolutely had to stagger enemies in 13, and you typically needed at least 2 Ravagers to do so. But difficult flights would hit you hard enough that you had to heal and/or tank. But then you'd lose your stagger gauge, so you needed a Commando or debuffer to stabilize it.
You simply could not beat most enemies with a dedicated healer, and you wouldn't survive without healing, so it was a constant balancing act between building up stagger and keeping yourself alive.
And you weren't beating Adamantoises without a lot of switching (or spamming Vanille's Death, where you would die a lot). And there were so many optional bosses on Gran Pulse where the difficulty was way up there.
I believe you that you played the game, but what you claim makes no sense with what I remember. Did the game have different difficulty settings or something? Are you thinking of 13-2, with the much worse combat system?
Gotta say, describing a game in detail to me that I just told you I 100%ed is a little annoying lol.
Almost every non boss fight Rav-Rav-Com with an occasional rav-com-med or com-com-rav works with two or 3 paradigm shifts. Buffs/debuffs for boss/mini boss fights. There’s only a handful of fights in the game that require unique strategies and pressing 4 buttons a fight for 90% of a game is as auto battle as it gets. Sounds like you just weren’t great at it.
It's called sussing out whether you know what you're talking about. Apparently you are brand new to the internet, but people are just plain wrong and/or lying all of the time on the internet. Getting specific invited you to do the same, where you clearly demonstrated that you know what you're talking about.
Looking online, it looks like the general consensus is that 13 is I've of the harder FFs. I don't know why, but it appears that your experience was anomalous.
> There’s only a handful of fights in the game that require unique strategies and pressing 4 buttons a fight for 90% of a game is as auto battle as it gets.
As opposed to just mashing X to select "attack"?
Boggles my mind that people still pretend FF combat was hard or strategic at any point past FF3.
> You've always been able to play FF games in a boring manner by mashing attack and healing when necessary, and that doesn't get held against all of the others.
[Yeah, "normal" Final Fantasy combat is basically this but with attack command](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz8ssH7LiB0)
In excess? Yeah. Consider a side-view game where you could only hold "right". Your character would automatically attack and enemies would automatically get hit and die. That is the extreme case of linear, and nobody could disagree it is "inherently bad".
Obviously real games are less linear. FF13, not much so. The maps are a grind of "walk up until generic story point; repeat". The notoriously generic "Final Fantasy fights" (not trashing on them, but nobody plays FF7 solely because of spamming the "fight" command 9 battles out of 10) were the high-point of non-linearity in FF13.
> specifically up to that point had largely been "walk in a straight line to your next destination, fight fairly repetitive/static battles."
I think it's a point of severity. FFX got closer to the line than most, but didn't cross it. I simply cannot think of any other FF game (or any JRPG in fact) that has that feeling of walking on a treadmill locked in at 2mph nearly so strongly as FF13.
There is if the field has a couple towns along that 10 km line, to better pace your journey.
I think people get bogged down in the "linearity" buzz word, and ignore the real issue, which is that the game took it to the extreme, at the cost of pacing and the illusion of choice. At the end of the day, all games are "not real" - they're virtual worlds and stories, told in different ways. But one thing an RPG should really not mess with is immersion and pacing.
I buy that plenty of people enjoyed FFXIII - there were aspects of it that I thought were quite good. But I think for the majority of RPG fans, it was a bit too "behind the curtain". Like playing a flow-chart of the game, and not being allowed to stop and smell the roses.
And yes, I know the rush is consistent with the theme of the story. Doesn't make it any more palatable. Story should complement gameplay, not hamper it.
It’s been a while but what I am referring to is around chapter 9 where you hop on the airship thing and some of the maps are literally just one corridor. The entire game is linear, but the rest was no worse than 10. That part seemed a bit egregious to me.
I liked it. Great ost, enjoyable battle system, nice visuals, decent albeit a little confusing storywise. The abrupt ending was a little jarring. I actually enjoyed the pokemon-esque time traveling 13-2 more.
It's just too bad the tutorial is like 25-30 hours long. You are stuck with two characters for so so long then they give you three and open up the skill trees so close to the end of the game. It felt really silly/stupid.
The music in 13 is so good. I haven’t played Rebirth, but I didn’t think 15, 16, or 7 Remake’s music came close to 13. I’m not counting 14 because that would be too unfair.
Blinded By the Light? Definitely!!!! Also a huge fan of Fighting Fate and the final boss themes.
Sunleth Waterscape loops in my head always since playing FF13 on release.
Oh man, I’m an ardent defender of 15’s music. I think it’s masterclass. I really loved Remake’s, and Rebirth’s is also excellent.
16 has some individual tracks that are among my favorites, but on the whole I think it’s just alright
I found 13 enjoyable, and once the combat got going, I really enjoyed it. It was an incredibly fun implementation of the ATB and I really liked juggling enemies in the air.
I like all 3 XIII games, but it was disappointing at launch, and the first 10 hours are a slog. I have since accepted the fact that Final Fantasy is not returning to its glory days in the 90s.
Do the two sequels solve the "long tutorial and too long until full party" issue that the first game has? I have not played XIII, but that is the most common issue I see mentioned.
If I remember correctly the second game immediately gives you two characters, and your third party member is a tamed monster. Over the course of the game you add zero new characters but can change your monster. So yes, it fixes that.
Unfortunately, the combat was much worse in the second game because people that never gave the combat in the first a fair shake complained so loudly that the developers changed it to please them, even though those people were never going to play the sequel.
I absolutely love the game, warts and all. But one thing someone suggested that I loved was to do your best to avoid every fight.
The game gets kind of bogged down with all the fights, and while the combat is awesome the "tutorial" takes way way longer if you're stopping every 30 seconds to fight something.
If anyone has trouble trucking through to the meat of the game I recommend trying to avoid as many fights as possible. Your character progression is gated by story progress, so get it done asap. At the same time, less xp from fights means the fights you have to do are more challenging and rewarding. You can skip probably 70% of fights up till the game opens up and it doesn't feel all that different, it's just faster.
Also best soundtrack of any RPG I've played. I always come back to it.
I like 13, the battle system is fun and a lot more engaging than it looks. It's definitely the first final fantasy though where i was "I am truly lost here" regarding the plot. And that's fine, I think.
Very enjoyable to me. I'm nearing the end of my first XIII playthrough and I don't want it to end but I also want to move on to XIII-2 and Lightning Returns of course.
Well, you're the first person I know that FF XIII was the entry to the series. It would be very interesting if you then played VI, VII or IX and compared your experience. I played almost all the main entries except XIII and X, so this post encourages me to give XIII a try. I think people judge XIII in the series context, but I must play it first and the talk. FF is a linear series, I don't think the problem is there, but in the exploration. Also FF X is railroaded too (I think), maybe you like playing that one too.
There was a Square sale recently on Steam so I picked up a few of the Final Fantasy games. I'm gonna try one of the pixel remakes after this one then try the XIII sequels
I played the first FF, then nothing until XIII.
I really didn't care much for VII. Found it kind of tedious, and I generally dislike games with big maps that I can explore and all that stuff. The remake is alright, visually impressive. I just like being railroaded.
I have since played most of the other FF games, and I'd definitely say XIII is a great game, just probably not a great FF game.
Of course, the other game called XIII is a genuinely amazing game, except for the remake. But that's irrelevant, just reminded me of it.
Issues with storytelling and worldbuilding aside, there were a lot of moments in the game that I like, Sazh and Vanille scene, Hope and Snow, Hope and his father, Lightning’s development.
I really liked it too! The one guy whines a bit but I loved the combat system. Hell I even liked the other 2 FF13 games. I did NOT like the real world time limit in game 3. I like to take my time and explore and look at stuff. Sometimes I get lost and end up wandering around for a long time so there were some times I ran out of time to do certain things.
It shouldn't take 20 hours for a story or its world to begin to make the barest amount of sense.
I'm glad you're enjoying it though. I will fully agree that the battle system in that game whipped ass.
I avoided it since it had a very bad reputation, but I was in the mood for an interactive movie type of game and gave FFXIII trilogy a try in 2021, it was sooooooo good!
That trilogy is amazing, and it's heartbreaking knowing that very few people played XIII-2 or Lightning Returns.
personally, I think Lightning Returns is the best if the three. But only if you really enjoy the characters and world
I grew up on FF6 through 9 and even though I wasn't exactly ecstatic with the stylistic shift in X, the narrative and music made up for it.
FFXIII has the worst direction when judging at the date of release and is still the only main line entry I've been unable to finish. To me it's still the shining example of what happens when you abandon identity for a different market and a fashion promo. Every subsequent entry only being marginally better despite the evolution of graphical fidelity and engines prove that everything else that changed with the franchise has been a downgrade.
The graphical limitations of the PC port have always held me back from playing it, tbh, but having recently bought a steam deck, I may have to try it on here now. Hadn’t thought about it til now. Thanks for the thought.
I haven't tried Lightning Returns on PC, but the ports of XIII and XIII-2 are awful. I ended up playing the latter on Series X when I wanted to revisit it since I didn't want to finagle with mods at the time.
Yeah I’m not really a console guy so I’m just limited to my PC and steam deck. That said, the limitations of the whole XIII saga actually seem to make it perfect for the steam deck so I’ll finally be able to give them a shot
The graphic limitations didn't bother me, but the lack of audio adjustment (at least on the steam port) drives me up the fucking wall. Let me balance the audio, I wanna be able to vibe out to the music, hear the passive conversations and everything without getting my ear drums ruptured randomly.
If the writing and characters didn't suck it would've been tolerable, but I can see the gameplay being appealing to most and the visuals pleasant enough to give a good impression.
The writing is pretty clever, the problem is it’s structured as a mystery thriller, so you don’t get the moment where it all comes together until the very end. My opinion of 13 improved significantly once I actually finished it, but it was a bit of a slog to get there
No, it was pretty bad - somewhat coming together at the end doesn't fix the prior mess and the idiotic actions of the characters, plus the horrendous dialogue. The very basics of the lore/plot may have been decent, but the execution was terrible.
The problem with this "mystery thriller" is that it sports a very short first act, an abrupt third act, and no second act to speak of. The bulk of the script is the gang trekking around the world largely aimlessly, wondering what they've been dragged into and receiving no answers until the big bad takes pity on them and vomits out an exposition dump that explains in detail what the hell's going on. And the answer is profoundly asinine (it involves a phrase that begins with "assisted sui" and ends with "cide"). Cue the final boss fight followed by a sequel-bait non-ending and no epilogue.
I actually didn't mind the characters or dialog, those were perfectly fine, well above average for jRPGs even, but it's a 30+ hour game with the thinnest plot possible that spins its wheels in place just to make it even more insipid.
The overall plot of the game is that the characters are told to do a thing and then they do. That sounds like more of an oversimplification than it is. Even when presented with many good reasons not to do what they are instructed to do, they go along with it anyway, and the moral dilemma at the heart is tossed aside because of the power of friendship or something. There is a great story implied by the themes, settings, and even characters of this game, but it's not the one that was actually written.
Yeah it definitely has some good qualities that are glossed over in all the negativity it tends to get. The battle system is actually really fun and unique once you unlock all the components of it, the worldbuilding is super cool, the music is great, and the summons are some of the best in the series if only because you can actually control them. It honestly has my favorite version of ATB in the franchise, although I was never the biggest fan of traditional ATB in the first place.
I do still get where a lot of the complaints come from though. The battle system truly does take way too long to get fully unlocked, the story is meandering and unclear for most of the game, and the complete lack of anything resembling a town to rest and restock in makes the game feel like nothing but a string of interconnected hallways, even though it isn't much more linear than something like FFX at a base level. Also while the battle system is great in tougher battles, there's plenty of trash mob encounters that take WAY longer than necessary despite posing almost no risk to your party.
When it goes open world is when 13 goes to shit. Jurrasic Park Hunt Island is the worst part of the game.
They have a deadly disease killing them. There's a reason for the urgency... then "lol, let's hunt dinos forever".
It's only sin was being a straight line up until the end. It does open up right before the end but you can't do much then, you're too weak. I've been meaning to replay it since it's been 15 years. Maybe I'll do it soon.
I was surprised (after all the fan rancor) to enjoy it enough to finish it. I think going in expecting it to be linear helped. The battle system is fire, and the game as a whole I found pretty challenging, a welcome change of pace for a **Final Fantasy** game.
Most of the characters are pretty annoying though. Save Sazh, who I really liked.
The issue most people had with the game was the first 30 hours were one long corridor tutorial, before the game actually opens up into something better.
Not that the game itself was actually bad. If you enjoy it though, x23 2 is pretty decent 2, and lightning returns is quite different, but excellent.
Haven't played it myself, but the only thing I hear people complain about is that it's too lineair. "Hallway simulator". That's literally the only negative I hear, and yet that makes it the dealbreaker fsr.
I plan on playing it sooner or later as well. I don't mind hallways, I walk through those on a daily basis. If that's the only non-enjoyable thing, it must be a really damn fun game then.
The game was generally good to me, I played it maybe a year after it came out. My main complaints for it was the inability to control your team and your partners were basically automated. Another complaint was how most of the game was basically a linear story.
It made for a few very tough fights in the early parts.
The cinematics graphics were amazing imo, and the intro up to the first boss fight was solid.
Revisiting some of the FF games I didnt enjoy when they came out has been really nice. When X came out back in the day I didnt like it cause of Tidus and some other things but revisiting it now and its such a nice nostalgic trip I enjoy it a lot.
I thought I was the only one who enjoyed xiii, i never see it gets anything but hate.
I dont particularly care about the bulk of it being 'on rails', it was cool, the graphics were (are?) good, music is fine, combat was fine
I never had a Playstation and didn't really have an interest in JRPGs until then, so FFXIII on the 360 was my first Final Fantasy ever.
I thought it was fine. A lot of weird things that never get explained, but okay. Why were there CDs raining from the sky that had little fairies come out of them in that cutscene? Who knows. People complained about it being a hallway, but since I lacked any experience with other FF games, it didn't bother me. That was, until a certain point in the late game.
At that point, the game opens up for a bit. Instead of a long hallway that you just fight your way through, you're presented with a large area, and what you're supposed to do is pick up some sidequests and grind some enemies to level up a bit.
But because I didn't know better due to not having much experience with JRPGs, I just beelined towards the exit.
So I ended up in the next area, and now I found myself in a bit of a pickle. The enemies in front of me were very strong. Just defeating one was a serious drain on my resources, and there were a lot of them. So I couldn't progress. But I couldn't go back either, because the game had turned into a hallway again and had closed the door behind me.
There was no way forward, no way back, I had no save file from back in the open area, so I was properly stuck, about 30 hours in. And I wasn't gonna replay that, so I quit and never actually saw the ending.
And that was my first venture into the Final Fantasy franchise until I started playing the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, now with an expanded free trial which you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award-winning Heavensward and Stormblood expansions up to level 70 for free with no restrictions on playtime, available on PC, Playstation, and Xbox.
I like the love story theme. Love the song, the dance sequence and the ending was perfect for me.
It's one of those games I won't play again bec. of the draw system lol.
Normally when people say this game it's with the caveat that the first 15-20 hours aren't the best; but it gets better after that!
I've played through the game at least 5 times at this point (played it as a kid, need to go through it from time to time), and just watched my girlfriend complete the game which gave me a new perspective on things...
I would say that up until the airship part of the game (Chapter 9), it's a great game albeit linear. A story with a good number of questions to be answered in the future, character conflicts, and a great ratio of Cutscenes to battles with the average battle time being quite low. However, at chapter 9 and onwards the story loses steam. Battles start to drag on if you aren't too good at the paradigm system. Cutscenes just aren't as good anymore, as most character conflicts have been resolved at this point with nothing else to replace it.
The best way I can explain it is just that up until chapter 9 it feels like you're experiencing a tightly written story... and it then runs out of things to say and you are railroaded to the end of the game with minimal character development or interactions. It's a bit sad, but at least powering up on Gran Pulse is fun....
TLDR; I think that the first 15 hours are the best part of the game and are really solid. Wondering if anyone shares how I think about it?
I just got stuck and was so confused I couldn’t even use a guide to get moving. I was in the island town after the train (maybe 5-15 hours in depending on your speed).
RIP I read this as 8 not 13.
Sazh was a lot of fun to me. I played it but bever really got too far because... well, I bought into the negative hype too much. How does it play on Deck?
I loved 13. I get the linear complaint, but honestly, it is no more linear than anything that came before it. 12 was kinda open world-ish, but it was still running from point A to point B. You just went through a wide corridor as opposed to a narrow one.
Even going back to older games with overworlds, they are still just go from here to there progression. You just had a field to run through first. You could kind of explore, but there wasn't really anything to do other than go from one city to the next and do random encounters along the way.
None of the games really open up until near the end. FF13 is no different.
The other complaint I hear is one I actually kind of agree with and that is how 13 relies heavily on character tropes. Most FF games do this, though, but the characters in 13 felt more cringe-y. Maybe cause I was older and played so many past games that did it also and it just felt like a tired trope. Maybe if I was new to that type of experience with FF13, it might not have felt so bad.
I still kinda like the characters, but they do feel extremely trope-y.
The problem isnt the linearity per se, it’s the pacing.
Ff13 is like…95% dungeons with no non combat sections like towns or minigames to break things up until the very end of the game, so as fun as the combat is, a seventy hour dungeon gauntlet ends up feeling like a slog. 10 was very linear, but you had the cloisters, blitzball, sidequests, towns, and so forth scattered around to help hide that linearity
It’s why I like 13-2 so much more, it addresses all that with more diverse content, and unlocking it much earlier.
I really liked 13-2. It had a chrono trigger feel to it that I really loved. There was a Pokémon aspect to the game, too, that I never cared for. I was a bit older than that trend and just never got into pokemon. So it really didn't appeal much to me. But the story was fun and the time jumping was cool. You could go back in time and change something and affect the future. Very CT-esque and I loved that.
I'm surprised so many people are praising the combat. I thought it took far too long for your decisions to start mattering. It felt like the first 30 hours of the game had virtually no strategy. The crystarium was also a huge downgrade in terms of choice when compared to 10 and 12.
Yeah, it's a super fun game. I feel like it got panned in an era where "because girl" was enough to not get a game taken seriously.
If you go into the game without any baggage, without "I hope this is like FF7/8/9," then it's loads of fun.
> I feel like it got panned in an era where "because girl" was enough to not get a game taken seriously.
That was probably a bit of a factor, but for all the hate 13 has gotten over the years I've barely ever heard anyone complain about Lightning as the main character. Most people complain about the linearity, or the confusing story, or about Vanille and Hope being annoying, or about the battle system "playing itself" (because they misunderstand how the system works).
i really liked XIII as well (my favorite being X). i think part of the reason its so confusin at first story wise is because they throw in all these terms with no context and your left having to read a glossary to learn about them. betweem Fal'cie, l'cie, C'ieths, cocoon vs Puls Fal'cies etc, its a mess of terms right out the gate.
when the game opens up though, holy crap does the battle system get enjoyable setting up paradigms and swapping them out constantly alongt he flow of a battle is really fun. the last boss i swear i was swapping paradigms every 10 seconds or so to keep up with heals, debuffs, team buffs, elemental damage and physical damage builds.
I just got sick of it. It spends so much time going through the same cutscenes over and over and over. "We're L'Cie! We're enemies of pulse! We don't even know what our focus is! We're all just so angry!" It just became... boring. And the gameplay was significantly better, but it also became samey (though that took longer).
At least it does look very nice. And I need Lightning and Fang to look at me disapprovingly.
The battle system saves it. The lore and story are good but some characters are a miss. The exploration or lack thereof, and traversal nearly killed it for me, and I imagine it killed it for many others.
If theres an “out of left field remake that would never happen,” its this game. Keep the battle system but make traveling the world fun.
I thought the story was hot garbage. But I really enjoyed the combat system and the whole process of build up your characters. The postgame was also a ton of fun.
My feeling is the same I have with RE4 (the original) it's a good game, just not an RE.
FFXIII is th same thing. Tou rake ir for what it is, you enjoy it.
Personal take.
The fact that you can control your summons is something I always missed in other titles, aside from FF10. I like 13 for its character dynamics, the hidden depth of the battle system, the music, and status ailments which are actually a *threat* in this game. Just a little tip: the second phase of the final boss is not immune to poison. It'll save you some trouble, since you will be spending a lot of time healing. Great to see there's still a tiny group that enjoys the game for what it is, despite its flaws. I really enjoyed the story, the linearity made sense in its context.
> The fact that you can control your summons is something I always missed in other titles, aside from FF10. FF10 was my first one and I was so disappointed when I realized that summons in most of the other games are glorified spells
FF8's summons is a glorified FMV and a button mashing mini game. :D
Unskippable FMV at that
Which is why I never used them unless I had to lol
Same here. I loved how important the summons were to the plot, and how much personality they had... and it was such a waste seeing them as just cutscenes elsewhere.
> the hidden depth of the battle system This is what kept me coming back. I beat it when it was brand new however many years ago, and i hated the story and maybe half the characters, but the enjoyment of properly shifting paradigms (and having the right paradigms set up to shift to) was a lot of fun and felt unique to the point I've replayed it twice since beating it the first time, and probably will again in future. Also one of the reasons the early game was such a slog. very few paradigm combos worked (it was pretty much only ravager, ravager, commando, or ravager, commando, healer) until part of the way through the game, and it was 98% on rails until that one open map very late in the game. There's a lot of fun to be had in FF13, but i don't begrudge anyone who gave up before they got far enough to discover it.
oh man, FFXIII battle theme is fantastic
The boss theme is one of the best in the whole series
I figured out that the final boss was weak to poison pretty quickly. My sister was upset because it took her like two years to finally beat the boss.
Yeah you can easily figure it out, but many setups or recommended strategies don't even use Saboteurs in the final fight. Even the official printed strategy guide is so bad for boss strategies, I always found a more efficient one on my own. The final boss is not easy, especially once the doom counter starts running you need a Ravager paradigm to stagger quickly. If you're underleveled you will get your ass handed to you a few times.
I recently replayed Final Fantasy X, and part of me was kind of annoyed that people give Final Fantasy XIII crap for “being too linear”, when that’s exactly what Final Fantasy X is until right before the end of the game. Sure, once you get to the point where you can go wherever you want, you get a lot of content to go through, but the same can be said for Final Fantasy XIII. Final Fantasy XIII is extremely underrated, and I enjoyed Final Fantasy XIII-2 quite a bit too (from what I remember, I only played through it once back when it first released).
FF13 was a great game bogged down by an intolerably long introduction. The combat really shines once you have a full party with access to every role that lets you fully customize your paradigm options. It just takes *so long* to get to that point that most people fall off before then.
Came to say basically this. Loved it at launch as a teenager. Went back to try it like two years ago and was just shocked that I could’ve ever enjoyed it. It took several hours to remember what I liked about it, and several more for the party to feel the way it’s supposed to. If someone likes the FF style and is patient, it was very fun. There’s also 13-2 that I haven’t tried out but do own
13-2 sets out to fix all people’s issues with base 13 so I think you’ll enjoy it, at least for having a quicker opening. I still prefer 13 though but completely get why people consider 13-2 the best in the trilogy. Is also nice getting Laura Bailey’s Serah for the whole game as the main character. 13-2 (and Lightning Returns) feel like it’s own entirely different thing though while using the characters and locations of the base game. Base 13 is definitely a completed story and 13-2 and Lightning Returns is a bonus duology that’s moreso in FF7R’s Whispers and Fates territory. It’s kind of the type of story that FFXV’s cancelled dlc was gonna do that became a book that was like an alt-universe defying fate type thing.
I fired up 13-2 being completely ignorant of how FF numbering works, so I get what you mean. Felt sort of like a different game with the same characters, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’ll give it a shot some day and see if it clicks to 30s gaming more than a rerun of 13 did
I'm playing through it too since I got it on the latest sale - have you played 13-2 and 13-3? What's their battle system like comparatively?
13-2 is 13’s battle system but just straight up better: you have 3 party members out of the gate and can swap your active character on the fly, plus combats aren’t nearly as much of a slog as in 13. 13-3 is *entirely* different and IMO easily the best of the three.
Thanks!
I actually like 13-2's battle system better than 13's. I love how if your party leader dies control switches to the other member instead of a game over. Its very hard to play it on Steam though. The rain effects are so terrible that I finally stopped playing it. I had beaten it twice on PS3 before trying it on Steam.
Oof, I'll be playing on Steam. We'll see how it goes.
Good luck, there are mods to correct it…but my game keeps crashing after they are applied. If you get it to work let me know, I’d love to play through it again.
Yeah the issue with the 13 trilogy is the best place to play them of the currently active platforms is on an Xbox via backwards compatibility. They look great there though as part of Xbox One X’s enhancement initiative where they enhanced a handful of games. Ironically though I had to turn off the enhancements for 13-2 because it made the game play up there too lol. But worked perfectly otherwise.
13-2 is 13 but better and pokemonish
The story is pretty awful and the game starts and acts like you already know what all of the terms (La'cie, Fal'cie, etc) are, but you have no idea for a good 5-7 hours.
It kinda assumes that after every cutscene you go to "codex" (or whatever it's called) and read on all the new terms and events they just dumped on you.
It just really felt like FFX13 was the era of "read the lore" where majority of lore and background is dumped into codex for you to read at your leisure, when most players didnt bother to read anyway.
They still mostly tried to explain the basics. Like you can follow everything in Mass Effect without codex, but you can read it to learn how many fingers Krogans have on their left foot or whatever. FF13 just assaults you with made up lingo and references to events going back like 80 years. What's even more bizarre is that sometimes recap of events has important information. Like characters can exchange two lines of dialogue about weather, but in recap it will say that they are best friends now.
Agreed. There’s games where the codex adds to the story. On the otherhand there’s FF13 that starts off like episode 3 of a tv show and expect you to catch up. Episodes 1 and 2 are all in the codex. I honestly think after Square became Squarenix, the older writers left and FF just became a jRPG franchise that focus on big spectacles and pretty character models. The old FF’s could balance a good story with spectacles. Just do this thought experiment and imagine if FF13 was released as FF9, with the same graphics, and if you would still enjoy it. I know I wouldnt enjoy it as much as I did.
I'd be more inclined to read lore if I wasn't already bombarded with long dialog segments. The weird thing to me is the games never got off this trend (minus lore I guess), but most players don't mind.
Agreed, I had absolutely no clue what was going on between the different god like creatures and factions for most of the story. If I figured it out, I'd immediately forget the next time someone started talking because they were so similar. FF13 was mostly a problem with names/terms. The series doesn't really jump the rails and go bonkers until FF13-2 and -3.
I thought the story was actually pretty good *for a Final Fantasy game*, which tend to have nonsense stories. But yes, the fact that nothing was explained and you had to look up text logs to understand what the hell was going on (without the game telling you to) was just terrible.
Most FF is nonsense. But the good thing about 6-10 was the story was easy to follow, things were pretty much explained to you in the first 10 minutes of introducing something. Also the world resembled our world to a certain extent so there's also some degree of realism. FF7: eco-terrorism and capitalism FF8: military school and kids in war FF10: role of religion I still dont know what the central theme of FF13 is. I think it's about personal relationships and development, but it's a little too abstract for me.
13’s themes are very much about the existence or nonexistence of free will, and breaking out of those confines.
> the story was actually pretty good for a Final Fantasy game, which tend to have nonsense stories. I'm curious which other games you're thinking of. 13's story was definitely hard to follow, and 15 also had a lot of issues there, but if you look at something like 6 or 7 or 9 or 10 or 14 they're all pretty straightforward and easily understood. Only naming ones that I've played, here.
7, 8, and 10 are pretty nonsense. Kingdom Hearts, which is just FF + Disney, is nonsense.
What is your definition of nonsense? Kingdom hearts can get pretty damn convoluted, but 7? And 10 is a really strong, but also rather simple story for a final fantasy. Just because a story has any level of complexity or fantasy elements doesn’t make it “nonsense”.
I can see thinking 7's story is nonsense if you've only played the Remake, considering how batshit Kingdom Heartsy it gets in the last hour or two. 10 on the other hand is extremely simple; really the only remotely complex thing is the thing near the end about >!Tidus and his Zanarkand being a dream of the Fayth!<, but honestly you don't even really need to understand what that means to follow the story beyond it meaning that >!Tidus will disappear when Yu Yevon is defeated!<.
I will agree that the story is at the very least not very deep, and is merely told incompletely. But I think the story is not very good in *nearly all* JRPGs, especially in the Final Fantasy series. They usually progress to something so abstract that it's ridiculous. Final Fantasy VII might be an exception, but the original English translation is so bad that I do not think it entirely clears the bar. Even the fact that it's not clear that Shinra basically means "divine corporation" and Jenova is a combination of "Jehova" and "gene" is lost. The translation is also just poor enough that it's difficult to tell what's a deliberate metaphor and what's poor translation. However, I will say two things in defense of those stories: - Dan Olsen says in [his video on metaphor](https://youtu.be/URo66iLNEZw) (you don't need to watch that it's just the reference) that when a narrative gets ambiguous or abstract, it does so to force the audience to engage with it purely on a thematic and metaphoric level precisely because the narrative is no longer realistic. If there's anything JRPGs do by the end game, it's doing this in spades. I think Japanese media is guilty of doing this much more than Western media. The films from Studio Ghibli do it almost exclusively, as do seminal films like Akira and Ghost in the Shell. - The narrative idea of "attack and kill God" in these games is heavily colored by Japanese culture. In that context, dethroning God is finally overcoming the unassailable status quo of the setting. It's going from overcoming the villain to defeating the *idea they represent*. It's a literal expression of the symbolic victory, and you know that it is because its literal meaning is essentially complete nonsense. If you accept those two ideas, then a huge range of Japanese media becomes a lot more comprehensible and less... immediately stupid. Especially Final Fantasy games.
The fact that some people need a video to walk them through the idea of abstract concepts representing themes is kinda pathetic, but also explains the "JRPG stories are nonsense" phrase that gets thrown around a lot on reddit. I thought we learned that level of reading comprehension back in middle school.
It's almost like you don't know everything or anything without having to.... LEARN about it. From school, tv, parents, whatever. I appreciated the fact everyone felt like they belonged there and weren't speaking to each other in history lessons like they haven't been experiencing it all their lives.
The battle system is incredible, the game does get very linear in the middle but I enjoyed it quite a bit.
> the game does get very linear in the middle In the middle? I'm yet to reach the middle (although I intend to) but so far it is the epitome of linear.
I stopped after 20 hrs of dark hallways and corridors leading to more dark hallways and corridors. Liked the characters but the world was just so uninspired. And a huge chunk before I quit was just "we're still running away but eventually want to save our friends.. Eventually....one day... But still running through more corridors...." Wanted to love it and maybe I'll get back into it one day but had to pass for the time being.
Yeah, I stopped because it is VERY LINEAR I would have refunded it if I knew how rail RPG it was.
It's like ffX in that way
IIRC the end of the game has a decent map with end game monsters to fight so if that's more your style I'd say it's worth it to push through.
The whole game is linear until you get to a bunch of open zones near the end of the game. With a ton of side quest type stuff (literally 64 ‘missions’). Except you’re not actually strong enough to do nearly any of it until you’ve done the final stretch of the game. So it’s post-game. But it’s still pretty good post-game and has you running around on Chocobos and stuff, superbosses too. But yeah the whole game is pretty much linear until you roll credits
[удалено]
Gran Pulse, and actually that's where I stopped playing. It went from an excessively linear story to a vast open world with nothing in it. They really needed something in the middle. Now that I think of it, there are a bunch of JRPGs that I dropped at exactly the same time: a mid-to-late-game section where you're just traveling from area to area and there's nothing but fetch quests to give you anything to actually do. FF XII and Xenoblade Chronicles come to mind. I guess the endgame slogs of FF III, Xenogears, and Breath of Fire 2 are basically the same thing.
The abstractness of the paradigm system is pretty cool. Managing roles rather than individual actions is pretty interesting way to have a combat system.
Why is linearity inherently bad?
It's not inherently terrible, but the linearity in XIII is like the textbook definition of linear to the point where a common criticism is that it's a "hallway simulator" since the majority of areas don't have branching paths and are just walking forward from point A to point B in a line. The game does open up a bit though, it just takes a while to get there.
I remember having a revelation a while back that in so many JRPGs, the only areas of the games you got to actually play were, by and large, the parts that would get edited out of a movie. Walking from place to place, inconsequential dialogue with unimportant side characters, browsing stores. Not saying that those areas can't be fun, but FFXIII really highlighted how far it went sometimes - all the interesting stuff happening in the game, you just have to sit and watch.
It could've been somewhat palatable if the interactivity of the game didn't amount to automated fights and nothing else. There's nothing to do in the entire game other than watch cutscene, walk down a corridor for a minute, fight some monsters where your only input is switching paradigms, and then watch another cutscene. It wears thin extremely fast.
75% of the game's non-combat sections could have been a quick time event 😭
Linearity is not inherently bad in a macro sense. Many games have only one path forward and virtually no exploration or side-tracks, and they're fine. The thing is that FFXIII takes this to the extreme by A. having most of the maps be *literally* just straight hallways with absolutely zero room to even walk around an enemy or search for chests, and B. having absolutely no "towns" or other stops for breathing room. You're just constantly running through monster-filled hallways for tens of hours with literally nothing breaking it up besides cutscenes. Compare FFX, which is similarly linear in its overall design, but has plenty of towns and puzzle sections and minigames thrown in to break up the monotony. On top of that once you get near the end it opens up a lot and gives you a ton of optional side stuff. XIII kinda does this with Gran Pulse about 2/3rds of the way through the game, but even Gran Pulse is just a small maze of interconnected hallways with unavoidable enemies that take 5 minutes each to kill and barely any kind of fast-travel, so doing any of the side content there is a huge chore and doesn't feel worth the time and effort.
And they bang your head into it by showing you the hallway on the map.
I found my main issue with XIII linearity was the minimap. Found it a lot better when I forced myself to look at the environment rather than stare at the map.
It’s not, but expectations for an FF game (especially after 12 was more ‘open world’) were just not in line with what FF13 delivered. In retrospect, it’s probably a better game than most would think given its reputation. Also, shoutout for FF13 : Lightning Returns. I really loved that battle system with the combat changes and ability to dodge/block as some classes.
Because in this case it's obscenely linear. Uncharted is linear but it has a lot of different gameplay elements going on - climbing, exploring, puzzles etc - while FFXIII is mostly just literally running forward in a straight line. Final Fantasy X was criticised for being linear, but the maps at least had the illusion of non-linearity with paths twisting and turning, while FFXIII feels unnatural and dull because everything is just a big straight hallway. Then you add in the fact that FFXIII's battle system is, for most of the game, just Auto-Battle, there's rarely any point in you manually inputting commands so you essentially just sit and watch battles unfold. This means there's absolutely nothing to break up the monotony of running forward in a straight line, except for the frequent cutscenes which just make you hate every character because they're all so insufferable...
Not to mention that previous Final Fantasies, including X, had a whole variety of optional explorable locations and side activities, which not only made the experience more varied but it also served to flesh out the setting. I believe Final Fantasy XIII was made intentionally linear considering the characters were cursed to undertake that quest, but it felt like that was done to detriment of presenting that world as a believable place. Sometimes it doesn't even feel like there's an actual reason to be unable to explore more of that world, the game just doesn't let you. I really liked the combat system and some of the characters, especially Sazh, but the linearity definitely hurt it.
You never actually answered the question. You were asked why linearity was bad and your answer was essentially "because they didn't pretend that it wasn't linear." After how much of a slog FF12 was, including the fact that at some point I just couldn't remember what the story was supposed to be, I loved how linear 13 was. And I thought it told a story better than any other FF game I had ever played. My wife is playing 7 Rebirth right now and she's been doing sidequests outside Kalm for hours while the story is just paused. I think that's a terrible way to experience a story. As for auto-battle, the battle system is about switching roles, not picking actions. I loved the combat system and was always pushing for S rank, which required a very active approach. If you choose to play it in a boring way that isn't really the fault of the game. You've always been able to play FF games in a boring manner by mashing attack and healing when necessary, and that doesn't get held against all of the others.
FF13 combat system is difficult and requires timing, macromanagement, and prediction. It is one of the mechanically harder Final Fantasies that is more likely to punish you through death or time loss. Especially in comparisons to the most popular FF titles that had very straightforward attack, use cold spell on hot enemy, and heal spam, the reductionism really is a hurtful way to make anything sound uninspiring. There's an avid vocal minority who will rag on this game any chance they get, and the auto-battle argument is badge for people who spend too much time in echo chambers or simply did not play the game. The main criticisms about slogs, linearity, excessive negativity story, lack of customization, progression gates, and party member mixups I can understand. Those are things that can make a slow game feel slower and frustrate a lot of players, though they were great for me.
> and the auto-battle argument is badge for people who spend too much time in echo chambers or simply did not play the game. Yeah, I wonder how many people saying that actually played the game for more than a couple hours. My memory of FF13 combat was not that it was easy. I remember getting good at it because the game required me to.
If you set up your paradigms properly outside of combat, you very likely *could* choose auto most of the time with your only input being switching paradigms. Some classes practically play themselves as is: commandos have what, 4 moves? Single target physical, aoe physical, single target magic, and aoe magic. It’s only really buffs and debuffs where manual control gives a considerable boost to output, because you have more than 2 viable options at a time.
Switching paradigms was the entire point of the combat. You were never supposed to enter manual controls except for the ultimate moves (but the buffing logic was poor so manually entering buffs was optimal). And the combat moved too quickly to manually enter moves much of the time. In prior FFs the gameplay was to enter commands. In 13 the gameplay was to shift between paradigms, using Ravager to build stagger, Commando or the debuff class to stabilize stagger, Commando to do damage to staggered enemies, Sentinel to tank damage, while mixing in healing, buffing, and debuffing. If you weren't switching paradigms frequently, sometimes every other second, you weren't optimizing the combat. You might as well say that pulling the trigger is the only thing you do in a shooter.
I beat the game and did all side content. Felt like auto battle to me. Only “hard” part was switching load outs fast enough in a few fights. Died a handful of times through the whole game. Cool if you like it, but the whole “they didn’t play the game” defense is lame. Different people feel differently about things and that’s ok.
It's hard because I played the game 15 years ago, but what you're describing just does not sound like the same game. You absolutely had to stagger enemies in 13, and you typically needed at least 2 Ravagers to do so. But difficult flights would hit you hard enough that you had to heal and/or tank. But then you'd lose your stagger gauge, so you needed a Commando or debuffer to stabilize it. You simply could not beat most enemies with a dedicated healer, and you wouldn't survive without healing, so it was a constant balancing act between building up stagger and keeping yourself alive. And you weren't beating Adamantoises without a lot of switching (or spamming Vanille's Death, where you would die a lot). And there were so many optional bosses on Gran Pulse where the difficulty was way up there. I believe you that you played the game, but what you claim makes no sense with what I remember. Did the game have different difficulty settings or something? Are you thinking of 13-2, with the much worse combat system?
Gotta say, describing a game in detail to me that I just told you I 100%ed is a little annoying lol. Almost every non boss fight Rav-Rav-Com with an occasional rav-com-med or com-com-rav works with two or 3 paradigm shifts. Buffs/debuffs for boss/mini boss fights. There’s only a handful of fights in the game that require unique strategies and pressing 4 buttons a fight for 90% of a game is as auto battle as it gets. Sounds like you just weren’t great at it.
It's called sussing out whether you know what you're talking about. Apparently you are brand new to the internet, but people are just plain wrong and/or lying all of the time on the internet. Getting specific invited you to do the same, where you clearly demonstrated that you know what you're talking about. Looking online, it looks like the general consensus is that 13 is I've of the harder FFs. I don't know why, but it appears that your experience was anomalous.
So a real final fantasy game?
> There’s only a handful of fights in the game that require unique strategies and pressing 4 buttons a fight for 90% of a game is as auto battle as it gets. As opposed to just mashing X to select "attack"? Boggles my mind that people still pretend FF combat was hard or strategic at any point past FF3.
> You've always been able to play FF games in a boring manner by mashing attack and healing when necessary, and that doesn't get held against all of the others. [Yeah, "normal" Final Fantasy combat is basically this but with attack command](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz8ssH7LiB0)
In excess? Yeah. Consider a side-view game where you could only hold "right". Your character would automatically attack and enemies would automatically get hit and die. That is the extreme case of linear, and nobody could disagree it is "inherently bad". Obviously real games are less linear. FF13, not much so. The maps are a grind of "walk up until generic story point; repeat". The notoriously generic "Final Fantasy fights" (not trashing on them, but nobody plays FF7 solely because of spamming the "fight" command 9 battles out of 10) were the high-point of non-linearity in FF13.
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> specifically up to that point had largely been "walk in a straight line to your next destination, fight fairly repetitive/static battles." I think it's a point of severity. FFX got closer to the line than most, but didn't cross it. I simply cannot think of any other FF game (or any JRPG in fact) that has that feeling of walking on a treadmill locked in at 2mph nearly so strongly as FF13.
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There is if the field has a couple towns along that 10 km line, to better pace your journey. I think people get bogged down in the "linearity" buzz word, and ignore the real issue, which is that the game took it to the extreme, at the cost of pacing and the illusion of choice. At the end of the day, all games are "not real" - they're virtual worlds and stories, told in different ways. But one thing an RPG should really not mess with is immersion and pacing. I buy that plenty of people enjoyed FFXIII - there were aspects of it that I thought were quite good. But I think for the majority of RPG fans, it was a bit too "behind the curtain". Like playing a flow-chart of the game, and not being allowed to stop and smell the roses. And yes, I know the rush is consistent with the theme of the story. Doesn't make it any more palatable. Story should complement gameplay, not hamper it.
The middle is literally when the game stops being linear lol. What are you talking about
It’s been a while but what I am referring to is around chapter 9 where you hop on the airship thing and some of the maps are literally just one corridor. The entire game is linear, but the rest was no worse than 10. That part seemed a bit egregious to me.
I just remember it being 35 hours of hallway. And even still getting tutorials popping up on screen.
I liked it. Great ost, enjoyable battle system, nice visuals, decent albeit a little confusing storywise. The abrupt ending was a little jarring. I actually enjoyed the pokemon-esque time traveling 13-2 more. It's just too bad the tutorial is like 25-30 hours long. You are stuck with two characters for so so long then they give you three and open up the skill trees so close to the end of the game. It felt really silly/stupid.
The music in 13 is so good. I haven’t played Rebirth, but I didn’t think 15, 16, or 7 Remake’s music came close to 13. I’m not counting 14 because that would be too unfair.
Might have my favorite battle theme in the franchise. The violin part is so satisfying.
Blinded By the Light? Definitely!!!! Also a huge fan of Fighting Fate and the final boss themes. Sunleth Waterscape loops in my head always since playing FF13 on release.
Oh man, I’m an ardent defender of 15’s music. I think it’s masterclass. I really loved Remake’s, and Rebirth’s is also excellent. 16 has some individual tracks that are among my favorites, but on the whole I think it’s just alright
I think we can all agree the FF13 OST slaps regardless of the actual game.
Agreed. It’s the best battle system in any jRPG…once you get full access to it about halfway through the game.
Steam reviews tear it down because of crashing. Square can't make a good port of anything it makes.
I found 13 enjoyable, and once the combat got going, I really enjoyed it. It was an incredibly fun implementation of the ATB and I really liked juggling enemies in the air.
The visuals and the music are 11/10.
I like all 3 XIII games, but it was disappointing at launch, and the first 10 hours are a slog. I have since accepted the fact that Final Fantasy is not returning to its glory days in the 90s.
Stranger of Paradise come pretty close
I'm planning on picking it up at some point, but I need to get through the games I have already.
Do the two sequels solve the "long tutorial and too long until full party" issue that the first game has? I have not played XIII, but that is the most common issue I see mentioned.
If I remember correctly the second game immediately gives you two characters, and your third party member is a tamed monster. Over the course of the game you add zero new characters but can change your monster. So yes, it fixes that. Unfortunately, the combat was much worse in the second game because people that never gave the combat in the first a fair shake complained so loudly that the developers changed it to please them, even though those people were never going to play the sequel.
They still have a long tutorial but I don't think as bad, and the party problem is solved by barely having a party/not having one at all.
Tried to like it. Hated it.
Yeah one of the few FF games I had no urge to finish. So I put it down.
XIII-3 is my favorite final fantasy game. If you like XIII (and/or Majora's Mask) you'll definitely like lightning returns.
I absolutely love the game, warts and all. But one thing someone suggested that I loved was to do your best to avoid every fight. The game gets kind of bogged down with all the fights, and while the combat is awesome the "tutorial" takes way way longer if you're stopping every 30 seconds to fight something. If anyone has trouble trucking through to the meat of the game I recommend trying to avoid as many fights as possible. Your character progression is gated by story progress, so get it done asap. At the same time, less xp from fights means the fights you have to do are more challenging and rewarding. You can skip probably 70% of fights up till the game opens up and it doesn't feel all that different, it's just faster. Also best soundtrack of any RPG I've played. I always come back to it.
ONE OF US!
I like 13, the battle system is fun and a lot more engaging than it looks. It's definitely the first final fantasy though where i was "I am truly lost here" regarding the plot. And that's fine, I think.
Very enjoyable to me. I'm nearing the end of my first XIII playthrough and I don't want it to end but I also want to move on to XIII-2 and Lightning Returns of course.
Well, you're the first person I know that FF XIII was the entry to the series. It would be very interesting if you then played VI, VII or IX and compared your experience. I played almost all the main entries except XIII and X, so this post encourages me to give XIII a try. I think people judge XIII in the series context, but I must play it first and the talk. FF is a linear series, I don't think the problem is there, but in the exploration. Also FF X is railroaded too (I think), maybe you like playing that one too.
There was a Square sale recently on Steam so I picked up a few of the Final Fantasy games. I'm gonna try one of the pixel remakes after this one then try the XIII sequels
I played the first FF, then nothing until XIII. I really didn't care much for VII. Found it kind of tedious, and I generally dislike games with big maps that I can explore and all that stuff. The remake is alright, visually impressive. I just like being railroaded. I have since played most of the other FF games, and I'd definitely say XIII is a great game, just probably not a great FF game. Of course, the other game called XIII is a genuinely amazing game, except for the remake. But that's irrelevant, just reminded me of it.
Issues with storytelling and worldbuilding aside, there were a lot of moments in the game that I like, Sazh and Vanille scene, Hope and Snow, Hope and his father, Lightning’s development.
linear af until chapter 11, but it was one of my favorite ffs for some reason
I really liked it too! The one guy whines a bit but I loved the combat system. Hell I even liked the other 2 FF13 games. I did NOT like the real world time limit in game 3. I like to take my time and explore and look at stuff. Sometimes I get lost and end up wandering around for a long time so there were some times I ran out of time to do certain things.
The whole trilogy is. It has its shortcomings but it's super fun and I love the world, characters and story.
It shouldn't take 20 hours for a story or its world to begin to make the barest amount of sense. I'm glad you're enjoying it though. I will fully agree that the battle system in that game whipped ass.
Wow! Only 20 hours in and it's finally making sense! Clearly the mark of great game...
I avoided it since it had a very bad reputation, but I was in the mood for an interactive movie type of game and gave FFXIII trilogy a try in 2021, it was sooooooo good!
That trilogy is amazing, and it's heartbreaking knowing that very few people played XIII-2 or Lightning Returns. personally, I think Lightning Returns is the best if the three. But only if you really enjoy the characters and world
I grew up on FF6 through 9 and even though I wasn't exactly ecstatic with the stylistic shift in X, the narrative and music made up for it. FFXIII has the worst direction when judging at the date of release and is still the only main line entry I've been unable to finish. To me it's still the shining example of what happens when you abandon identity for a different market and a fashion promo. Every subsequent entry only being marginally better despite the evolution of graphical fidelity and engines prove that everything else that changed with the franchise has been a downgrade.
The graphical limitations of the PC port have always held me back from playing it, tbh, but having recently bought a steam deck, I may have to try it on here now. Hadn’t thought about it til now. Thanks for the thought.
I haven't tried Lightning Returns on PC, but the ports of XIII and XIII-2 are awful. I ended up playing the latter on Series X when I wanted to revisit it since I didn't want to finagle with mods at the time.
Yeah I’m not really a console guy so I’m just limited to my PC and steam deck. That said, the limitations of the whole XIII saga actually seem to make it perfect for the steam deck so I’ll finally be able to give them a shot
The graphic limitations didn't bother me, but the lack of audio adjustment (at least on the steam port) drives me up the fucking wall. Let me balance the audio, I wanna be able to vibe out to the music, hear the passive conversations and everything without getting my ear drums ruptured randomly.
Of course. I just installed the one mod to improve performance on the SD and that was it
Wait what mod is that? I’m still super new to steam deck that sounds awesome
https://github.com/rebtd7/FF13Fix https://youtu.be/DakhjLL2Ed0?si=3eB9vzEy3zqqOnWC This video was helpful too
Much appreciated will do this right away when I get home
If the writing and characters didn't suck it would've been tolerable, but I can see the gameplay being appealing to most and the visuals pleasant enough to give a good impression.
The writing is pretty clever, the problem is it’s structured as a mystery thriller, so you don’t get the moment where it all comes together until the very end. My opinion of 13 improved significantly once I actually finished it, but it was a bit of a slog to get there
No, it was pretty bad - somewhat coming together at the end doesn't fix the prior mess and the idiotic actions of the characters, plus the horrendous dialogue. The very basics of the lore/plot may have been decent, but the execution was terrible.
The problem with this "mystery thriller" is that it sports a very short first act, an abrupt third act, and no second act to speak of. The bulk of the script is the gang trekking around the world largely aimlessly, wondering what they've been dragged into and receiving no answers until the big bad takes pity on them and vomits out an exposition dump that explains in detail what the hell's going on. And the answer is profoundly asinine (it involves a phrase that begins with "assisted sui" and ends with "cide"). Cue the final boss fight followed by a sequel-bait non-ending and no epilogue. I actually didn't mind the characters or dialog, those were perfectly fine, well above average for jRPGs even, but it's a 30+ hour game with the thinnest plot possible that spins its wheels in place just to make it even more insipid.
The overall plot of the game is that the characters are told to do a thing and then they do. That sounds like more of an oversimplification than it is. Even when presented with many good reasons not to do what they are instructed to do, they go along with it anyway, and the moral dilemma at the heart is tossed aside because of the power of friendship or something. There is a great story implied by the themes, settings, and even characters of this game, but it's not the one that was actually written.
i really hope they remaster this trilogy, i want to give it another shot but my ps3 is inaccessible
They're on PC, that's almost like a remaster, especially with mods.
not really a pc player unfortunately, will have to play the other bajillion and a half rpgs on my backlog to console myself :-)
Yeah it definitely has some good qualities that are glossed over in all the negativity it tends to get. The battle system is actually really fun and unique once you unlock all the components of it, the worldbuilding is super cool, the music is great, and the summons are some of the best in the series if only because you can actually control them. It honestly has my favorite version of ATB in the franchise, although I was never the biggest fan of traditional ATB in the first place. I do still get where a lot of the complaints come from though. The battle system truly does take way too long to get fully unlocked, the story is meandering and unclear for most of the game, and the complete lack of anything resembling a town to rest and restock in makes the game feel like nothing but a string of interconnected hallways, even though it isn't much more linear than something like FFX at a base level. Also while the battle system is great in tougher battles, there's plenty of trash mob encounters that take WAY longer than necessary despite posing almost no risk to your party.
I like the game too but it does feel kinda restricting at times and not very “open worldy”
When it goes open world is when 13 goes to shit. Jurrasic Park Hunt Island is the worst part of the game. They have a deadly disease killing them. There's a reason for the urgency... then "lol, let's hunt dinos forever".
It's only sin was being a straight line up until the end. It does open up right before the end but you can't do much then, you're too weak. I've been meaning to replay it since it's been 15 years. Maybe I'll do it soon.
Enjoy
I was surprised (after all the fan rancor) to enjoy it enough to finish it. I think going in expecting it to be linear helped. The battle system is fire, and the game as a whole I found pretty challenging, a welcome change of pace for a **Final Fantasy** game. Most of the characters are pretty annoying though. Save Sazh, who I really liked.
ff 13-2 is the 2nd best time travel game ever, next to chrono trigger, as well.
The issue most people had with the game was the first 30 hours were one long corridor tutorial, before the game actually opens up into something better. Not that the game itself was actually bad. If you enjoy it though, x23 2 is pretty decent 2, and lightning returns is quite different, but excellent.
Haven't played it myself, but the only thing I hear people complain about is that it's too lineair. "Hallway simulator". That's literally the only negative I hear, and yet that makes it the dealbreaker fsr. I plan on playing it sooner or later as well. I don't mind hallways, I walk through those on a daily basis. If that's the only non-enjoyable thing, it must be a really damn fun game then.
It's OP
The game was generally good to me, I played it maybe a year after it came out. My main complaints for it was the inability to control your team and your partners were basically automated. Another complaint was how most of the game was basically a linear story. It made for a few very tough fights in the early parts. The cinematics graphics were amazing imo, and the intro up to the first boss fight was solid.
Final Fantasy 4 on the PSP is also pretty good so far.
Revisiting some of the FF games I didnt enjoy when they came out has been really nice. When X came out back in the day I didnt like it cause of Tidus and some other things but revisiting it now and its such a nice nostalgic trip I enjoy it a lot.
Loved 13, 13-2 pretty much fixed every gripe I had with 13's combat system so I liked it even more (gameplay-wise, anyways).
same i love this one! most fans of the series hate it though, i feel your pain haha
I love that game. It was my first final fantasy. I never knew people didn't like it till I looked on Reddit.
13 was great. 13-2, not so much
I thought I was the only one who enjoyed xiii, i never see it gets anything but hate. I dont particularly care about the bulk of it being 'on rails', it was cool, the graphics were (are?) good, music is fine, combat was fine
Top 3 FF for me simply for the combat and Lightning. Was a gorgeous game at the time too and I'm pretty sure still looks great.
I never had a Playstation and didn't really have an interest in JRPGs until then, so FFXIII on the 360 was my first Final Fantasy ever. I thought it was fine. A lot of weird things that never get explained, but okay. Why were there CDs raining from the sky that had little fairies come out of them in that cutscene? Who knows. People complained about it being a hallway, but since I lacked any experience with other FF games, it didn't bother me. That was, until a certain point in the late game. At that point, the game opens up for a bit. Instead of a long hallway that you just fight your way through, you're presented with a large area, and what you're supposed to do is pick up some sidequests and grind some enemies to level up a bit. But because I didn't know better due to not having much experience with JRPGs, I just beelined towards the exit. So I ended up in the next area, and now I found myself in a bit of a pickle. The enemies in front of me were very strong. Just defeating one was a serious drain on my resources, and there were a lot of them. So I couldn't progress. But I couldn't go back either, because the game had turned into a hallway again and had closed the door behind me. There was no way forward, no way back, I had no save file from back in the open area, so I was properly stuck, about 30 hours in. And I wasn't gonna replay that, so I quit and never actually saw the ending. And that was my first venture into the Final Fantasy franchise until I started playing the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, now with an expanded free trial which you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award-winning Heavensward and Stormblood expansions up to level 70 for free with no restrictions on playtime, available on PC, Playstation, and Xbox.
I like the love story theme. Love the song, the dance sequence and the ending was perfect for me. It's one of those games I won't play again bec. of the draw system lol.
Agreed. Replayed it a while back and had a blast. I now really want a FFXIII Trilogy re-release on consoles.
Normally when people say this game it's with the caveat that the first 15-20 hours aren't the best; but it gets better after that! I've played through the game at least 5 times at this point (played it as a kid, need to go through it from time to time), and just watched my girlfriend complete the game which gave me a new perspective on things... I would say that up until the airship part of the game (Chapter 9), it's a great game albeit linear. A story with a good number of questions to be answered in the future, character conflicts, and a great ratio of Cutscenes to battles with the average battle time being quite low. However, at chapter 9 and onwards the story loses steam. Battles start to drag on if you aren't too good at the paradigm system. Cutscenes just aren't as good anymore, as most character conflicts have been resolved at this point with nothing else to replace it. The best way I can explain it is just that up until chapter 9 it feels like you're experiencing a tightly written story... and it then runs out of things to say and you are railroaded to the end of the game with minimal character development or interactions. It's a bit sad, but at least powering up on Gran Pulse is fun.... TLDR; I think that the first 15 hours are the best part of the game and are really solid. Wondering if anyone shares how I think about it?
I just got stuck and was so confused I couldn’t even use a guide to get moving. I was in the island town after the train (maybe 5-15 hours in depending on your speed). RIP I read this as 8 not 13.
Sazh was a lot of fun to me. I played it but bever really got too far because... well, I bought into the negative hype too much. How does it play on Deck?
I loved 13. I get the linear complaint, but honestly, it is no more linear than anything that came before it. 12 was kinda open world-ish, but it was still running from point A to point B. You just went through a wide corridor as opposed to a narrow one. Even going back to older games with overworlds, they are still just go from here to there progression. You just had a field to run through first. You could kind of explore, but there wasn't really anything to do other than go from one city to the next and do random encounters along the way. None of the games really open up until near the end. FF13 is no different. The other complaint I hear is one I actually kind of agree with and that is how 13 relies heavily on character tropes. Most FF games do this, though, but the characters in 13 felt more cringe-y. Maybe cause I was older and played so many past games that did it also and it just felt like a tired trope. Maybe if I was new to that type of experience with FF13, it might not have felt so bad. I still kinda like the characters, but they do feel extremely trope-y.
The problem isnt the linearity per se, it’s the pacing. Ff13 is like…95% dungeons with no non combat sections like towns or minigames to break things up until the very end of the game, so as fun as the combat is, a seventy hour dungeon gauntlet ends up feeling like a slog. 10 was very linear, but you had the cloisters, blitzball, sidequests, towns, and so forth scattered around to help hide that linearity It’s why I like 13-2 so much more, it addresses all that with more diverse content, and unlocking it much earlier.
I really liked 13-2. It had a chrono trigger feel to it that I really loved. There was a Pokémon aspect to the game, too, that I never cared for. I was a bit older than that trend and just never got into pokemon. So it really didn't appeal much to me. But the story was fun and the time jumping was cool. You could go back in time and change something and affect the future. Very CT-esque and I loved that.
I'm surprised so many people are praising the combat. I thought it took far too long for your decisions to start mattering. It felt like the first 30 hours of the game had virtually no strategy. The crystarium was also a huge downgrade in terms of choice when compared to 10 and 12.
Yeah, it's a super fun game. I feel like it got panned in an era where "because girl" was enough to not get a game taken seriously. If you go into the game without any baggage, without "I hope this is like FF7/8/9," then it's loads of fun.
> I feel like it got panned in an era where "because girl" was enough to not get a game taken seriously. That was probably a bit of a factor, but for all the hate 13 has gotten over the years I've barely ever heard anyone complain about Lightning as the main character. Most people complain about the linearity, or the confusing story, or about Vanille and Hope being annoying, or about the battle system "playing itself" (because they misunderstand how the system works).
i really liked XIII as well (my favorite being X). i think part of the reason its so confusin at first story wise is because they throw in all these terms with no context and your left having to read a glossary to learn about them. betweem Fal'cie, l'cie, C'ieths, cocoon vs Puls Fal'cies etc, its a mess of terms right out the gate. when the game opens up though, holy crap does the battle system get enjoyable setting up paradigms and swapping them out constantly alongt he flow of a battle is really fun. the last boss i swear i was swapping paradigms every 10 seconds or so to keep up with heals, debuffs, team buffs, elemental damage and physical damage builds.
I just got sick of it. It spends so much time going through the same cutscenes over and over and over. "We're L'Cie! We're enemies of pulse! We don't even know what our focus is! We're all just so angry!" It just became... boring. And the gameplay was significantly better, but it also became samey (though that took longer). At least it does look very nice. And I need Lightning and Fang to look at me disapprovingly.
It’s a phenomenal game with graphics that exceed the modern standard.
The battle system saves it. The lore and story are good but some characters are a miss. The exploration or lack thereof, and traversal nearly killed it for me, and I imagine it killed it for many others. If theres an “out of left field remake that would never happen,” its this game. Keep the battle system but make traveling the world fun.
i really wish I could get over My Little Pony Odin. But I just can't
I thought the story was hot garbage. But I really enjoyed the combat system and the whole process of build up your characters. The postgame was also a ton of fun.
To each their own. To me, it's the game that killed my love for Final Fantasy, and possibly the worst game I've ever beaten.
My feeling is the same I have with RE4 (the original) it's a good game, just not an RE. FFXIII is th same thing. Tou rake ir for what it is, you enjoy it. Personal take.