At the end, is FFXIII good enough or not?

[ZenfoldorVGI]

Soonerman said:
The game so far is meh. I've only played a few hours and the linearity is kind of annoying. Now, I realize that linearity is found in most FFs at the beginning. I'm just not used to this "behind the character" camera position. Funny cuz I'm also playing Dead Space and I feel the game is better with this camera view. Perhaps it is cuz Dead Space you have places to explore rather than going straight up?

Oh, and if you're old school RPGer you will not like the battle system.

I'm an old school RPG'r and I find the battle system deep and rewarding. No where nearly as deep and rewarding as XII though. I never really went in for nostalga, or the simplistic spreadsheet battles from days gone by. XIII is an evolution of those games, most certainly.

XII had the problem of being the anthesis of "user friendly," but any game that is THAT rewarding, isn't gonna be for everyone. I ended up feeling better about my XII team than I did about my epic'd rogue in WoW. XIII on the other hand, finds a good mix with its battle system. User friendly enough, but also relatively deep and challenging.

On a purley presentational level, XIII is a triumph. You won't find its match. The battle system is fun, and deep, if not as exciting as some previous entries. The story is also pretty interesting, and the vistas and landscapes are truely worth playing the game by themselves.

The bad bits really boil down to lack of variation in gameplay. Many of the old FF games are remembers as so great because they have tons of things to do in them. There are several parts of VII(for instance) which could be classified as their own game. Snowboarding, Chocobo Racing, Chocobo Breeding, ect. XIII lacks variation in its gameplay, and that is why a lot of people complain.

It's a great game.

I'd wager that if this game didn't have the FF name attached to it, it would garner a cult following, and be hailed by many, many people as the greatest game of this generation.

However, we expected a godlike game, because the game is called Final Fantasy. What we got was a great game. Some people might not like it, but hell, I hate LBP, but I still know it's great. You don't have to like things to understand why other people do.