VGChartz Ranking Game - Final Fantasy XIII - We're back!

[Kresnik]

7/10.

I have played ~ 30 hours so far.

Positives:

+ Music is great.
+ Battles are kept interesting, and I enjoy how the system keeps evolving.
+ Lightning and Sazh are good characters, Fang is alright.
+ Graphics are amazing.

Negatives:
- The story just isn't up to much. It feels small in scale and quite boring, especially compared to early FF games.
- I am 30 hours in and the game is still linear as hell. I hated linearity in FF X, I hate it even more here.
- The game is gorgeous, but I rarely - if ever - see it. I spend more time looking at the mini-map trying to spot a side-path which might have a treasure in than I do looking at the scenery.
- Snow, Vanille & Hope are awful characters. Hope especially is completely two-dimensional, even after his confrontation with Snow. They're not what I expect or hope for from Final Fantasy.
- Crystarium system is a poor-man's sphere grid, which in itself was a pretty poor idea for character growth.

It's better than FF X, which is something, but it's still nowhere near the Final Fantasy game I was looking for.