Are you serious? FFXIII has one of the most brilliant storylines I have ever experienced in a video game. It is truly inspiring and an emotional roller coaster at time.

And the battle system is easily the best in the series...

I dont really know what changed. FF2 3 4 5 6 7 all good games 8 was meh 9 was good 10 was decent 12 worst one ever and 13 I have not played and from the last FF games I have played I see no reason too. Owell, Least they still have Dragon Quest and Kingdom Hearts around.

VII, VIII, and IX are my personal favorites, I've never played an FF that I thought wasn't good, XIII wasn't fantastic, but it certainly wasn't bad either

Is this a joke thread?

A. The game has sold tremendously well

B. Its a fantastic game

In regards to FF12 while I do not like it as much as FF13 its still a decent game & again that sold very very well too.

I am new to FF (FF13 being my first one) & I have to say this:

Final Fantasy fans are some of the most condescending, elitist, demeaning & stubborn fans I have ever seen, no offense but that is what I have seen/realized in the past 2 weeks. Obviously not all FF fans are like this, but many seem like that to me.

I'm new to the whole FF series (13 is my first game)

I absolutely hated it. Mind you I'm not a fan of the genre and my tastes are far more in tune with the Western PC style RPGs.

I couldn't stand the game for several reasons.

1: Too many cut scenes. Every time it cut to a cut-scene it messed with the flow and pacing of the game.

2: The battle system is too fast. Whilst the system was fun I didn't get enough thinking time as I like when playing a Turn based game. However it was an interested attempt. It would have been nice if you could control more the one character at once as-well.

3. Far too over the top with the characters emotions. They go from being neutral to crying in like 1 second. I found it utterly jarring.

4. Poorly written/translated script. Too much dialogue and description of events that could have been shown visually. The guy with the afro is a great example of that. He simply comments about everything and it really annoyed me.

5. The continuous grunting within the cut scenes.

6. The chick from pulse with the shit aussie accent really pissed me off... don't care if the voice actor is aussie the way she voiced my countries accent was a travesty that made every cutscene with her near unwatchable

But last and seriously not the least it was far too LINEAR...

In many ways it felt less like a game and more like an attempt at shying away from the interactivity that makes the medium great.

I really likes how the game was quite difficult in moments however, it was nice to play something that I couldn't finish in 5 hours.

Alright, since I have time, my explanation of why FFXIII itself may not be the cause of decline:

Install base. I don't mean the number itself, as that doesn't tell us the whole story. Perhaps some previous FF fans decided to skip this gen out for the Wii, as it has the bigger RPG coming for it, Dragon Quest. This is really the first time the two franchises were put on separate consoles, it's possible that many fans of both (which should be large, I imagine there's a big overlap) can't afford two, three, maybe four consoles. There's no way all fans of Square Enix can afford all the consoles they're supporting on the market at the moment (DS, PSP, Wii, PS3), so sales will have to suffer somewhere.

FF is a long running series. Ever since FFV, most people buy it first week. This means that a large portion of its sales are dependent on things like overall interest in the series, the reception of the previous game, stuff like that - most of which have little to do with the game itself. It's not unlike Hollywood blockbusters - the biggest openings always come from sequels of well-received movies. Besides, the fact that there has been a decline in the series ever since FFVIII means you couldn't solely put the blame on FFXIII, but other games as well, like FFIX, FFX.

As for being a million behind FFX, that's mainly due to re-releases and such. From the other thread:

Admittedly, FFXIII's extra releases won't see numbers quite like this, but that's where I pull the userbase excuse (keke), as the PS2 had really taken off by then.

Anyway, I know there's a problem with FF, seeing its decline, though I wouldn't say FFXIII is any more a failure than FFX (looking at sales). There's just no easy solution for the franchise. The problem with focusing on Japanese sales is that the majority of sales come from outside the country. I'm a huge fan of older FF's, but would they sell as well in the west? Just what would a modern day FF look like if it returned to its roots, anyway?

What went wrong with Final Fantasy? Two things.

One - Superfluous Fantasy: The series, even up to the PlayStation era, was doing fine. It was being handled masterfully and at a nice pace. At the rate of about 1 main game every 2 years and a port or side game every year or so. But then, something horrible happened. With the launch of the DS and XBOX360...all hell broke lose. We started seeing ports, remakes and sequels coming from every corner possible. Why, since 2004, we've seen the series quadruple in size with nearly 45+ games bearing the label 'Final Fantasy'. And the list isn't shrinking anytime soon. Even the most diehard Final Fantasy fan isn't going to be able to keep up with that onslaught. And probably won't want to.

Two - Every game has to be 'Different': Now, its not bad to be different. Heck, changing gameplay can be healthy for a game series. But sometimes...changing too much can be bad. And for the Final Fantasy series, they've piratically changed the gameplay, art design and well...everything on nearly every game. Think about it. What does Final Fantasy X, XII and XIII have in common? Aside from the name, a few summons and probably the appearance of some Chocobo...not much at all. And this breeds problems. Some people will love the massive diversity. But others will be turned off by this constant change. Causing them to pick favorites. We all know the problem. Final Fantasy 'A' is better than Final Fantasy 'B'! Why is this such a problem? Well...because they're so different, and as a result, so easy to choose one over the other. Perhaps the games designers should have looked for more common ground when designing the games.

If you combine the two, you get a simple reason for the seemingly complex decline in Final Fantasy XIII.  Too many games in the last 6 years caused people to lose interest in the series.  This coupled with people expecting the game to be something totally different from previous Final Fantasy games, which some people embraced and others decided against.

This post screams to me that you need to play FF9 RIGHT NOW!

I don't know anything about FF9, is it significantly different from 13 and in ways that you think would appeal more to my tastes?

It's incredibly different.

The battle system is slower-paced, it is not linear (well, not to the extent of FF13), there are no voices, so no grunting stuff, and you won't have to suffer from their emotions, the translation is decent, and the music is INCREDIBLE.

However, the story is bad. But Vivi is one of the best, if not the best, characters in the series.

You should get it.