Ffxiii Wasnt Good

Not sure if was posted in thread but FFXIII-2 got 40/40 from famitsu and it is looking like a good game. I'll be picking it up.

I don't even know where to start.

Characters were one dimensional. What happened after Snow and Hope's conflict was resolved? NOTHING. Hope just stopped hating Snow. That's. It.

Plotline wasn't clever at all.
The system for fighting itself I have no real conflict with, other than the fact that it didn't scale very well. Then again, when you've got a game that "needs" to hit 99,999 damage, but you've only got so much content to expand on, I can see why. The level design however was probably one of the worst things I've ever seen. Large, unoccupied, impractical areas on airships, and the city, and the final citadel, with no true puzzles like in the old games. Boring, unimaginative, and holy ***for the last time, pretty graphics does not make a better game.

It was horrible. Game designers knew better in the SNES age. FFXIII suffers from the same affliction as Castlevania: Simon's Quest, it tried to extend its hours by adding large areas with slow walking speed that you had to double-back through often, in order to extend playtime. The only area that had any freedom was Pulse, and seriously? Pulse? The first area with freedom is the last? And the strongest enemies are just turtles with huge amounts of HP? It was not difficult, it was arduous.

That is a fair point, the big bosses were arduous. It had an almost Metal Gear Solid tactic to it where you could break down any tough mob with a set routine of attacks over and over. Also, I'll be the first person to admit that good graphics do not make a good game, but when I'm rating games, if the graphics are absolutely stunning (for their time obviously) and I mean absolutely stunning then I will take note of that, but only if they contribute to the feel of the game, and in this case they were.

Regarding your complaint about recurring boss. How many times do you fight Jenova in FF7? How many time do you fight Kuja in FF9? A recurring villain has nothing to do with a bad plotline... And if memory serves me correctly, you fight the final boss at the end only. If you are talking about Barthandalus, you don't fight him until halfway through the game...

They stopped hating each other, went on to respect each other, and eventually Snow is almost like a father type role model for Hope. What do you want them to do? Suddenly hate each other again?


The last boss was not the first... I don't know what you're talking about. And it's not even the same fight... just the same music.

Bart v1 is a multi stage fight with multiple targets and you have to stop Destrudo in the second stage.

EDIT: Should also mention this is the first boss fight where you are punished for playing conservatively, which screwed me up initially.

Bart v2 is all about coping with status effects and killing him before time runs out.

Bart v3 is a pretty standard boss fight.

Just because it's the same enemy doesn't mean it's the same fight.


It doesn't scale well howso?


Personal taste there. I liked the areas a lot, especially Pulse and Orphan's Cradle.


What area do you have to double-back through?


Are we conveniently ignoring all of the marks and such? Try killing some of those before maximum stats and you'll find they can be quite challenging. Or did you just Death spam your way through Neochu etc?

I think the thing that got to me most was the over indulgence of eye candy and cheesy action ploys and stunts.
For the same reason I dislike recent Call of Duty games, they feel like an over glorified replica of a terrible balls to the wall 80s action film. If you liked that stuff to begin with then it's understandable why it would be a gamer's wet dream come true; but for others that found the laughable in the first place, it's alienating and silly.

The trainwreck scene in the very beginning with the matrix scorpion thingy and the rocket launcher just made me want to throw down the controller and leave as if I sat through half an hour of a new Adam Sandler film.



{Thanks for the offer, but I'll have to pass.}

Well the opening of FFXIII is the opening of VII, Lightning and Sazh (Cloud and Barret) are on a train and the first boss is a scorpion.

Gameplay/story is more important than illusions or anything silly like that.

As for CoD, I couldn't care less about what people think about it, whether it feels like a "replica of an action film" or whatever - it has good gameplay and that is all I care about. FF13 has good gameplay/story - I don't care whether it's supposed to be Transcendental Final Fantasy 7/8/9 copy 13 or whatever. It's good so I judge it on its own merits.

It looks like you're trying to find reasons to hate games... that means you have less fun in the long run :(

At least it's a little more believable that mechanical guards and sentries would take on form of a scorpion than some random encounter through a train track on cocoon that showed up on the drop of a hat from your pending escape.

I'm not making reasons, these are reasons I've found.

It's explained in the Gapra Whitewood why many of the enemy mechanised units resemble animals.

The game is actually very consistent if you indulge yourself in the lore instead of being critical >:O

I need to get to a certain point in the game in order to justify and dismiss what was already rather ridiculous to begin with?
I hate being judgmental so early and not seeing things through, but I shouldn't have to give a wide gap of leeway to give the benefit of the doubt in order to believe or justify something that is dubious and silly upon first impressions.

I'm all for things left to the imagination but how it's presented is what justifies that to begin with. Otherwise yes, I will dismiss it rather quickly.

The whole "retelling a story" is a narrative technique (notably also used in FFX but obviously somewhat different as you "event => event =>" instead of "event =>" like in 13) whereby you are presented with a significant event immediately with justification given for it and the circumstances surrounding it as you progress through the game.

I don't see how the first scene is ridiculous in the slightest, and you are the only person I have ever encountered who has a problem with it. I think you need to suspend your disbelief a bit (as you should with ALL fictional media) or else you simply won't enjoy it.

It is all consistently justified so it's not like they are just throwing things in for the "wow factor".

I dunno, something about FFXIII just feels cheap and shallow.
Like it's some flashy explosion of brightness and color with attitude that ultimately lacks substance therein, both personal and atmospherically.
I couldn't get into it.

It doesn't sound like you gave it a chance at all. You're so eager to dismiss it as shallow!

That's not to say I didn't give it a chance. It simply failed to meet any expectations out of an FF title that would suit my needs of enjoyment. I'm not gonna force myself to continue playing it just so I can salvage dregs of information that justify the torture from the very beginning.

Strangely 12 had the complete opposite problem.
Everything up until the end was amazing, then I was greeted my the most underwhelming climaxes ever :/

First nail in the coffin for me was when I saw the full lineup of characters, and half of them have vomit-colored hair.

Second was learning that Lightning was just a female Cloud, with vomit-colored hair.

Third was when I saw a cutscene from the game from a Youtube video, and noticed it was pretty much the exact same thing as the motorcycle chase scene from Advent Children.

Fourth was Haseyo showing me the "best song" in the game, and it was awful.

Fifth was reading the GameInformer review about the game's characters all being painfully annoying.

The Sixth and final nail was when I played it myself.


FFXIII was an insult not only to the Final Fantasy legacy, but to anyone that was a fan of the series in the first place. The fact that in my opinion the only redeeming quality about the game was that fighting those Adamantoises was kinda cool, should say enough about it being a disgrace to Final Fantasy and all Japanese RPGs in general.

i find it strangely amazing at the lengths people keep going to to prove to others that XIII WAS a good game, and that XIII WAS a bad game. personally i loved the game, i can also see many flaws with it but i still enjoyed it. does that mean you should like it? no. does that mean i should force you to like it? no, just like how people should stop preaching to others why it was terrible and everyone should hate it.

sorry, I'm sounding like I'm lashing at both sides, but i've seen this same topic over and over its just irritating. the fact of the matter was the game was different, it was new, it was very successful. it had very high sales and great scores from reviews. did it get all 10/10 like everyone wanted? nope, but it also didn't get the 3/10 that people are acting like it should have. saying the game was terrible in all these regards is unfair to the creators and the fans. obviously there are people that loved these aspects that you hate, so live and let live.

the game was a success, especially in Japan. that really can't be denied, you can say "just cause it sold a lot doesn't mean it was good", and my comeback will be "just because it sold a lot, doesn't mean you have to approve of it." instead complaining over and over that you hated a game, and that "it wasn't good", sell it/burn it/do whatever you want with it and find something else to play. and let the people that do enjoy it, do just that.

okay... /rageoff ...back to paper work

I just rewatched the first cutscene to try to see what you were talking about but it all seems perfectly reasonable.



There's a youtube link if you want to point out any bits which seemed ridiculous... government train carrying what are seen as dangerous people away from civilisation is hijacked, nearby defence forces attack the hijackers. I don't see why this is unrealistic at all? You see three instances of biomechanical weapons too so it's not like "oh, random scorpion robot" - you can see they have biomechanical versions of dogs and wyverns too.


And this is what is known as entering the game with considerable bias. 99% of people who seem to dislike it enter it with considerable bias (or love 12 which is the polar opposite, and which I disliked strongly).

I think FF13 is a lot better than many FFs, but then I don't hold FFs as the perfect pinnacle of gaming serieses either.

wow so much hate, FF13 was a good game, i can't see how anyone can deny it, sure you may think there were some bad parts, and it may not have been what you expected from a final fantasy game, but calling it an inult to all japanese rpgs in general is just wrong. period.

The reason is because people slander it ridiculously often for very silly reasons. If I see one more person slandering it then stating at the end "I NEVER UNDERSTOOD WHAT A l'CIE ETC WAS" then I'm going to facepalm.

I reallllllly tried to like 13 because the trailers were awesome and I never go in expecting a lot (so as to not be disappointed) but I just found the characters sooo very annoying. It's like they were all a kind of anime stereotype (well it is a jrpg...) and it really bugged me :/ Didn't really enjoy the music either, I don't remember a single song from the game. Something I've always liked in an FF is exploration and this had almost none of it until really late in the game and all the maps suckedddd :X You're free to disagree but I'm not changing my mind about 13, I tried to like it but it just wasn't for me.

Only characters I liked were Sazh, Fang and Lightning (a bit). The rest were annoying (GOD Vanille was ***).

Okay, this is very very generalized but for anyone that has played FF4-9 and has played other Squaresoft titles like Xenogears, Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, etc. etc.
You can see the blatant decline in general quality, substance and content available therein.

It's not something that can be explained well in words or presented in a case. It's something you simply notice after having an experience with previous titles for over a decade.

Nostalgia glasses?

Of course you're going to like games you played first more than ones you played after. Can you remember when you first got into movies or music or whatever and everything was amazing? Or those first levels in FFXI or such? Do you still get the feeling in other games?

9 is my favorite but I really enjoyed 10, had a good turn-based fighting system and the characters were good (though badly voiced in some parts). 12 had a great world but the characters chosen weren't exactly good and if they had changed the story a bit to make them relevant it might have been much better.

The point is not my standing on first enjoying or appreciating the media from the beginning and retaining those expectations, it's literally noticing bit by bit the decline of quality and content therein. You can use nostalgia as your excuse as much as you want, but it won't stop me from noticing blatant shortcomings and therefore not enjoying the new things as much as I did the old.

That's why you have to take into consideration that the current trend of RPGs have been completely redesigned compared to those incredible games of old. Comparing them with the new generation RPGs is like apples and oranges.

The way I see it, the market simply expanded. Older JRPGs had their own niche of fans in the west, and over time SE caught on to the success of other western influenced games and changed the direction as they saw fit to expand their target audience and thus more profit.
It also helped that the title alone would be "the closer" as far as guaranteeing sales.

Some welcome the approach, some feel alienated by it. I'm unfortunately amongst the latter.

just watch by the time we get to ff17 if we get that far its going to play like mario......

Are cutscenes better or worse nowadays than back then?

Are scripts better or worse nowadays than back then (especially translation...)?

Are soundtracks better or worse nowadays than back then? We'll speak strictly in terms of objective sound quality since the rest is subjective.

Are graphics better or worse nowadays than back then?

It seems standards are actually increasing rather than decreasing.

All your examples are on the most superficial level though.
Just because things were two dimensional, or were composed of MIDI track doesn't degrade the quality therein. It simply matters based on the content and how it's presented. If there is no content to present, or the content is crappy, or even if the content is good and presented in a poor manner then it will affect how others perceive and play the game.

Let's take Star Wars for example.
When George Lucas made Episode 1-3, it was rather blatant how poorly executed and poorly written the whole thing was despite the grandeur of special effects, impressive orchestrated score and impressive cast of characters.