I like playing Final Fantasy, but I do not necessarily consider myself a fan because I wasn't a conscious human yet when the series was receiving astronomical fanfare in the PS1 days and early PS2 ones. 

When I hit my prime gaming years, though, I checked out Final Fantasy IV, VI, VII, and X, and XII and loved 'em (to varying degrees). Now with the Switch, I'm checking out VIII and IX. I'm planning on picking up the boy-band Final Fantasy game on PS4 when I've satisfied myself with the two PS1 ones. I don't care much for the Final Fantasy formula, but I do like the grind and the battles, and so the switch-up in XII, for example, didn't bother me like I know it did many fans. Long story short, FF has been consuming my time lately. 

This brings up to XIII. The one that SE hoped would be lighting-in-a-bottle but turned out to be... crap. Or so I hear! 

I remember my 13-year-old arse because hyped beyond imagination when I saw the first Final Fantasy 13 trailer. It looked friggin gorgeous. It's one of the best game trailers ever released. Just check this stuff out: 



Shit man I still get a bit hyped when I see this. Takes me back when I was a hopeful little nerd teen. I never checked out the game, though, because the reception at the time scared me off. I was disappointed along with the whole gaming community despite not knowing what the heck people were talking about. I shunned the game like everyone else. 

BUT! It's now a gap in my Final Fantasy collection and I'm curious of experiencing it. I do not have much time or the will power to check out games I know I will not like, though. So my question is to you guys... how did this game age? Is it still worth checking out? Is the hate the game got reasonable - or was it just the hype at the time that caused the hate? Have you revisited FF13 since it came out, and should I give it a first-time whirl? 

Just play the game.

Curiously, I'm playing this game right now. It appeared to have some of the best ideas and subversions of the Final Fantasy series, but the delivery falls flat on its face.

Since you haven't played it yet, I'm not going into details. Just remember this is the game developers tried to defend by saying people were judging it like an western game at the same time they opnely admitted to have taken heavy inspiration from Call of Duty.

I honestly enjoyed it. The combat was dynamic and interesting, and at the time, I didn't mind the linear design. It's pretty underappreciated for what it was.

Yes, and the game is still rocking. The graphics in certain areas was next gen already back in the day.

Aaaand, the music….

It's better than FFXV (that's not saying much) but the story is a mess. The combat system is pretty interesting once you have access to everything but I'll always prefer the FF games where you control your whole party and pick every single action.

The entire series of FFXIII are honestly not bad games at all. Solid 8/10 for me. I wouldn't mind replaying them again if they remaster them to PS4/PS5.

Btw. FFXV is a fantastic game, just make sure you get the Royal Edition that has all the DLC as it will give more indepth to the story. Personally FFXV has an amazing story, characters, concepts, design etc...but could've been better executed.

I think XIII is fine. It has a lot of problems with pacing and storytelling, which is a shame as the world they built for the game is actually very interesting. They just hid most of the interesting stuff in the in-game archives that you had to read through to even understand the main storyline at times. The combat system can be a lot of fun once it opens up all the way 20 hours in the game, the music is genuinely excellent, and visually it's still quite beautiful. It's nowhere near the best games in the series, but overall it's a decent game that just failed to live up to the hype and expectations that fans had built up over the years. There are at least at least seven non-online mainline Final Fantasy-games better than XIII, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad or anything.

FF13 is a good game but it's not a good Final Fantasy game. Graphics were great, no denying that but the characters, story, leveling and combat all for me were dumbed down and some parts just nonsense. Pathing was linear for nearly all the game, lack of choice over builds, main party member dying = game over, press X to get abilities, press X to attack with best stuff. All flash no substance battle system.

If SquEnix released it as anything else other than a Final Fantasy game, it would have gone down as a great game. Sadly, had the FF name attached to it.

I played through it all the way the first time when it came out then didn't touch until years later when I tried tried to go back and couldn't.

FF13 is the reason I'm scared of the 'remake' and how dumbed down it will be.

Bruh you know it's 50% playing and 50% talking about it!

The bold makes it sound like the game is the black sheep of the series that probably won't be revisited. This CoD comparison is weird - does the game feel like an FPS but the shooting is replaced with RPG battles?

I will agree with you on the FF7 remake - from what I can see it seems significantly more streamlined than the original game. I have a feeling it's going to be a case of going from set piece to set piece and will make people go: "Ah yeah we're getting to this part now." I do have hope that they're making it a very large open world more similar to FFXV, though. 

How does it compare to other FF games to you?