One Man Plays Final Fantasy XIII

[Runa216]

BasilZero said:

I just finished Final Fantasy XIII couple of minutes ago and have posted my opinions on another thread but will post here as well:

Pros
 8 of them

Cons

13 of them

Using my own style of reviewing/scoring games I have come up with a score for Final Fantasy XIII on the Playstation 3: 8.8/10

This...how does this work?  8 pros and 13 cons yet you give it an 8.8?  I'm just not following this logic. 

As for the battle system, yes it's different, but it's different in a bad way.  There's no depth (pick a paradigm, let the characters fight for you), there's no customization (no weapon/armor stuff, no stats to tinker with, only one weapon and one accessory), linear level growth (very little option to pick and chose abilities to learn, only able to chose what job you advance), punishment for things beyond your control resulting in unavoidably death (instant kill moves killing your party leader, death while in the paradigm shift animation).  It's all style, no substance.There is some timing to it all, but it requires precognition on the player's part, or a tedius trial and error gameplay method.  

different is good, this is a bad different when it comes to gameplay. that's not even discussing an almost absolute lack of exploration, lack of sidequests, lack of....anything.  it's pretty, the cutscenes are nice, but there's almost nothing to the game at all.  if I was to play through the game once again, it'd be the exact same experience since I can't control who's in my party, I can't explore, I can't try different character builds, I can't play any minigames, there are no side quests at all until chapter 11...

And why would I want to when the plot is poorly told, the characters bland, and the villain forgettable?