Final Fantasy XIII series sold over 10 million games, do they deserve it?

[Pristine20]

@The Fury

If you look very closely, everything about FFXIII is borrowed from past games. If the game was called anything other than FFXIII, it'll be a huge plagiarism job. I guess S-E can't plagiarise themselves though lol. I'll elaborate:

-The MC was ripped from FFVII

-The over arching game design, pacing and levelling system is  nearly identical to FFX

-The sidequests are straight from FFXII

-The idea of monsters free roaming the world is from FFXII again

-The actual battle uses ATB charging from older games combined  with preprogrammed AI a la gambits but less flexible

The only thing new was the idea of staggering enemies. How can this not be an FF game?

I though FFXIII also had great voice acting especially compared to FFX that's beloved. Most didn't like FFXII's story for being too political as well but I'll give you the point on FFXII's story lacking mostly because you have to read the datalogs to comprehend a lot of stuff.

Leader death = game over is not a bad thing. It makes careful selection of your leader part of your strategy. This is why it's better to use maybe Fang or Snow instead of Light as leader. Ironically, I'm having a similar conversation on another site and my debate opponent there thinks that FFXIII was the easiest of all of them because she never died lol. I did think it was the most difficult like you but I also thought that was a good thing. There was no real punishment for dying anyway so I don't understand why it bothered you so much.

As for ether management, did you know in FF7, you can duplicate items? In FFVIII, there is no MP, you can draw magic indefinitely from enemies, refine items etc. Can't remember FF9 too well. In FFX, save points refilled MP too if I remember correctly so ethers did not need micromanagement. In FFXII, the clan shops sell ethers. I'm not sure where you're getting this idea that magic is some rare commodity to be managed carefully in previous FF games. Manybe FFVI and earlier? I haven't played those so can't tell you.

I know nothing about the advanced sphere grid. I've only played the NA version of FFX so I can't speak to that. I will say though that in NA version of FFX, all the characters ended up the same stats and ability-wise. Only difference was overdrives. I thought FFXIII improved on the FFX formula in this regard. I just don't see how regular sphere grid =/= crystarium except for holding x to move vs pressing x on each node.

 

Nostalgia is good because it's a cheap way to get people to buy the game (just ask nintendo) but it seriously puts a damper on developer creativity. We will never see anything really new if the nostalgic always had their way. In a game with regular sequels I'll understand your complaints but the standout thing about FF vs other games with sequels is that FF games are all stand alone games with no real ties to their predecessors besides some common elements like summons, chocobos, a guy named Cid, magic called firaga, thundaga and blizzaga, etc.  Compare to say resident evil series with it's clear connection between games. With every new FF, we expect a fresh game, not a play on the old. Only FFX and FFXIII have had real sequels and they didn'tgive the sequels new numbers for a good reason.