Runa216 said:
I'd argue that the only thing particularly similar about the two is that they're both relatively linear games. They aren't like other Final Fantasy games that let you just...explore. Beyond that there's so very little in common about them and context matters. Because while both are linear, Final Fantasy 10 is Linear with room for some exploration and divergence while XIII might as well have been on rails until chapter 11 (On Gran Pulse). And on top of that, I don't mind Linear (oftentimes I prefer it, I greatly enjoy it when an experience is properly curated), but XIII's linearity was not matched with a well curated experience. Despite being TIGHTLY controlled, there was no sense of world building or organic storytelling. Way too much of the plot and character and world building was relegated to the in-game Datalogs to the point where every cutscene I had to go back and wonder 'wait, who was that? Why should I care? what just happened?' whereas I never had that problem with FFX. Further, I don't even think that 'having to learn the game's lore and backstory through context clues and in-game items' is inherently bad. Dark Souls are some of my favourite games and like 95% of the world building and plot in those games only really explored in item descriptions. The problem was that XIII was so linear it didn't give you ANY room for deviation or exploration while not playing to any of the strengths of that game style. IF you're linear, you have to be curated. If you're going to be obtuse about story and world building, you need to give your players room to explore at their own pace. you CANNOT have a strictly linear game like that which also sucks at telling a story and expects you to do homework in between every battle and cutscene. I have MANY other complaints about XIII I could rant about forever but I intend to give the game another shot with more perspective so I don't want to speak with too-strong of a conviction...but I didn't like ANYTHING abou XIII. I hated every character (With them capping out at Fang, who I thought was kind of okay), I hated the bland, generic aesthetic, I hated the music (Though that has grown on me), and above all elseI haaaaated the combat system. IT's WILD to me that I had people genuinely trying to argue that it was a better version of what 12 was doing when it completely obliterated ALL Sense of agency from the player. The pace was off, the lack of control was terrible and couldn't be mitigated, and the entire combat system boiled down to timing when you got to chose from one of 14 potential 'paradigms'. IT was bad. It was VERY bad. Playing something like X again to see how something like 'getting a new ability' or 'unlocking a new summon' affects your gameplay after playing XIII was a game changer. And playing XVI and XV after XIII shows that XIII was a failed experiment. Because XV and XVI headed more action oriented while still clearly being Final Fantasy and Fun. I understand not wanting to play the recent ones, preferring turn based to action based, but XIII did neither well. It was trying to move on from Turn Based and make the game feel more like action without giving you ANY of the agency that comes with an action game. And Clair OBscur (And even stuff like Octopath) Doing turn based so well proves just how moronically stupid square-Enix is to want to actively move away from turn based combat. PEOPLE WANT this sort of thing, but Square Enix seems stuck int he PS3 era where EVERYTHING has to be action and focus tested to shit with no artistic merit. There's something fundamentally wrong with that company and I feel like their problems got WAY out of control after the merger and after XII came out. XIII Represents a time when they were SO DESPERATE To peel away from the things that made FF good, but instead of giving us something new and exciting they just gave us the worst of both worlds. They gave us a story that was strict and linear but not well curated. They gave us a world that didn't reward exploration. They were trying SO HARD To cater to an edgy teen demographic instead of making a good story for all ages. They wanted to make their game look like it was an action game while still technically making it turn based, resulting in a system that isn't deep or complex enough to make turn based battles fun and not reactive enough to make action fun. IT was the worst of everything it was trying to do. I'm so glad XV and XVI were at least fun. I do still prefer my FF games turn based with excellent stories but at least XV and XVI were fun to play, and XVI actually had an excellent story, writing, and music on top of being fun. XIII represented a time when they wanted to ditch everything that made FF good but they still had to anchor themselves down to what made the series special, crippling it from both ends. And it sucks. so bad. |
FF 13 music and battle system are great, we vastly disagree on that.
13 is not one of the strongest FFs, but neither is 10, and as far as I'm concerned 13 is better than 10 all over.
12 eclipses both massively, tho, that's a top tier game, so after the PS1 golden days it was easily the best (I have not played 15 or 16 yet). 12 is actually tied as my favorite with 9, with 12 being my 1st pick most times.
13 did not deserve nearly as much hate as it got tho, it's a decent game.
