Well here is my problem where FF XIII was nowhere as bad as certain reviewer's made out I can't help but feel that S.E definately watered down the series just to try and appela to more people, and to be honest I think it's losing a couple of their original JRPG enthusiast just for that act, so here is what FF XIII did wrong
1. The story was too simple and predictable - you remember FF7 and FF8 and how complicated they was yes, well I found that FF13 was simplay too easy to understand really, you had a focus where you had sarah said your mission was to save cocoon, then we found out about becoming ragnarock far too early, they should have done so much more than this!!
2. Character development was very poor - apart from finding about vanille and fang and hope the swhole story really did not progress our characters much in any way other than abities they could perform in battle.
3. Exploration was very limted right up to chapter 10, when you hit pulse it was good because it opened up, but once you complete the game the side missions feel so tacked on and you feel like you are mindlesly grinding for no reason at all.
4. The amount of towns was horribly reduced, even FFX had more towns depite it's linerarity, and interactinon with NPC's was not very good either, it really did not feel like they actually fit into the game and they was splaced there just for scenery.
Of course there are things which was done right such as gameply, the cgi and the beautiful graphics, but when I play on FF6-FFX I have to cry just to see how much they basically have taken away from us...
I would give FF13 a 8/10 but only because the end of the game saved it and sidequests extend the game, even if they are very repetitive. Right now I hope Nomura gets to develop FFVs13 the way he wants to we need something to put life back into the franchise, as I feel liek at this rate FF will wither, and people will move on to something new like the last story (headed by original creator of FF, which looks looks far more innovative right now)
