Final Fantasy XIII disappointing?

[swyggi]

Mirson said:

Luney Tune said:

"Criticism of blockbuster RPG Final Fantasy XIII has rapidly mounted, with the initial observation that the game is almost comically linear giving way to a litany of further dissatisfactions, many quite unavoidable even for the game's many staunch defenders.

A digest of criticism from 2ch:

The whole game is completely linear until halfway through [approximately 20 hours].

There are hardly any towns.

The party is always fixed. The whole game just repeats the movie-battle sequence over and over [In fact the progression is closer to movie-run-battle-run-movie-boss-movie-run-battle…].

There are rather a lot of movies.

Moving around is like a long marathon.

You can't flee battles [You can't avoid most battles either as there is no sneaking past enemies, including weak ones].

The best tactic is almost always endlessly attacking. There is next to no strategy or skill involved.

The story is rubbish… [Spoilers omitted, but complaints centre on Snow's constant and cringe inducing insistence that he is a hero and will "protect" whatever it is the antagonists are menacing this time]

Ah, that's what I was looking for. Thank you. Those are the points that kind of worry me. I don't mind a lot of cutscenes as long as the story is good, but judging from the latest trailer, I don't think I'll like the story. Hope I'm wrong on that one.The endless attacking sucks; this is what I hated about FFX-2 and Super Robot Taisen on the DS. All you do is press the attack button, and that's it. Not fun at all.

The thing that upsets me the most is how linear the levels are. From looking at the maps and a few gameplay videos, all you do is travel in a straight line. And this last for 20 hours? Lame. It feels like a step backward from FFXII. The second half better be good in terms of exploration. I'm renting it.

Do not give in to their negative connotations.  Trust me, strategy is definitely involved; it's just that the battles are longer than any of the past regular FF battles.  While you may do a lot of the same things over and over again, the approach you take for battles must be smart in order to succeed.  You absolutely MUST change paradigms in battle.  The summons are also very useful, and IMO are made more useful in FF13 than in any other FF.  Why?  Because battles are tough and sometimes long, so using them to blow up your enemies has never been more satisfying. 

I saw one video of Bahamut doing megaflare and taking up over 170,000 hp!  The regular attacks the party was doing was about 5-15,000 hp damage.

You can avoid a lot of the battles too (they're overexaggerating).  Plus there are items that will allow you to get an instant pre emptive strike against enemies.  During a pre emptive attack you set each enemie's break meter to almost full, and you get an instant full ATB gauge.

 

They say the story is rubbish, but focus primarily on Snow.  That just tells us they focused on one person for far too much of the game, and could only consider him as the whole story.  

Besides, even if Snow is as bad as they say, it's good for the story.  You know why?  Because a story needs characters people don't like in order for it to move on and succeed in a variety of ways.

If every character was a badass, cool character then the story would never get anywhere.