Final Fantasy XIII-2 gets 5.4 on Gamrreview - how is that possible?

[Runa216]

Well that was a lot of fun to read.

First, let me clarify some things:

1 - No, I was not asked to do the review. When I mentioned 'shitpile' in an edited post (yes, I did say that, no it was not an acceptable descriptor), it was simply that nobody else on the team wanted to review it because Final Fantasy XIII was a huge disappointment. as I said, I was the only one interested in playing XIII-2; I stated in the review that one stain on an otherwise exemplary record was not enough to deter me.

2 - While I hated FFXIII, the promises made and the pre-release material made me think that a lot of the issues would be fixed, so I was actually legitimately excited to give this game a shot. I went in with a hopeful yet open mind, and make no mistake, I was blown away by the opening 5 hours, and I was thoroughly enjoying the first half of the game.

3 - I did not give it a low score to get hits or to troll, I gave it that score because that's what my impression was. I didn't actually decide on a score until I'd written the review and took some time to reflect on my overall experience. The second half of the game disappointed me so much that had I not taken the time to balance out the score with the things I did like, it'd have likely gotten a 3 or 4....but I remembered all the things I liked and how much I enjoyed the first half and it balanced out to a 5.

As a reviewer it is my job to explain what you can expect with the game, the features, the gameplay, the mechanics, value, graphics, etc. There are many things that need to be considered when writing a review, and laying out the expectations is half of the review, the other half is weighing the good and the bad. Being truly objective with something like this is near impossible, but it's a reviewer's job to give the community an idea of what to expect by chronicling their own experiences and opinions.

And as a reader, you should all learn how to filter out what you read and weight what I've said against your own values. I didn't like the battle system and my review reflected that, but if you liked XIII's battle system, it really shouldn't be too hard to figure out that my criticism of that aspect of the game is not important to you. On the flipside, others who felt the same way I did about XIII's battle system could very well take what I say to heart as something they likely wouldn't enjoy. I laid out all my chips so people knew where I was coming from (didn't like 13, felt it had some flaws, wanted to give it a chance, etc), so it shouldn't be hard to compare my review with your own values and come to a logical conclusion based on that.

Personally, I think this review would have been much better without a score to accompany it because then you could form your own opinion instead of using that as a gauge, since not everyone has an identical meaning for numbers. I, for instance, feel a 5 is decent, not good but not bad either, pretty neutral. Others (and most in gaming journalism for that matter) feel that 'decent' is a 6 or 7. I think that, since the good was balanced out with the bad (with a slight err towards positive thanks to the pretty graphics and added features), a 5.4 is precisely correct in basically every way.

Again, if I Was letting my bias get the better of me, I'd have been much harsher, instead I delivered a review that was equally positive and negative.

If anyone wants me to elaborate on how I came to my score, I'd be glad to explain in great detail what went into deciding the numbers for each category and how I weighed each category to get my final score.