Are Final Fantasy 10 fans hypocrites?

[Scoobes]

FFX got a lot of stick at the time and some of them are pretty valid criticisms, but it also did a lot of things right compared to FFXIII.

- Linearity: Whilst FFX was also linear it, FFXIII was a lot worse. FFX had branching paths, dungeons with puzzles to solve before you could progress and by the last third of the game you had the ability to return to virtually any area of the game to complete optional side quests. FFXIII was basically a long path and a giant field you could re-visit right at the end.

- Side quests (with variety!): FFX actually had them! Extra areas to discover whilst in game, Dark Aeons, hidden Aeons, extra locations to find in the airship etc. FFXIII only had the hunts which is basically the same combat system used in the main game... over and over. Not something most people want to repeat when the main game is 40+ hours of the same.

- Mini-games: FFX actually had in mini-games! Whether you liked them or not, stuff like Blitzball which could be played at any save point gave players a nice optional break from the main action.

- Towns: FFX had fully fleshed and explorable towns. Why is this so important? If you wanted to discover the world you were playing in (and the lore), having towns allowed you to discover them yourself. In FFXIII this sense of discovery was relegated and lost to a Wiki style datalog.

- Useful collectibles: The Al-bhed primers for instance allowed you to decipher their language. FFX was one of the few games to get collectibles right. This allowed you to decipher new words/locations for the airship to visit. It wasn't essential, but it was useful. In FFXIII they're absent.

- Levelling system: I'm actually not a huge fan of the sphere grid system, but after using the advanced grid, I actually appreciated the customisability. FFXIII's is pretty linear throughout the bulk of the game and seems to do everything to sway you away from customising.

Overall: A total lack of variety in XIII lead to a repetitive game that for the most part, lacked immersion. So people the criticse XIII whilst loving X are not hypocrites as there are numerous critical points to divide the two. 

I haven't commented on the story or the characters as that's relatively subjective but for me personally I found nothing of substance and on the whole I couldn't bring myself to care about them. If FFX came out now, I might feel the same way, but for the time the story and characters had depth. General storytelling in games has improved a lot since then though.