That's it. People dissaproves what is done in FF XIII and then they all ask for contradictory things or crazy stuff as making Final Fantasy no different from any standard wrpg. And they are loosing the oportunity to enjoy what by all means is a NEW Final Fantasy, with all it implies.

@A203D: Valkyria Chronicles is by all means a great game, with some fresh ideas and a charming atmosphere. It's a strategy rpg alla Final Fantasy Tactics, Disgaea or Fire Emblem, with some twists in the interface (3rd and 1st person view, etc). You should at least try it.

I had no expectations for FFXIII and it was still a huge disappointment. I bought into all the BS of the game being like FFX. FFX is the far superior game.  FFXIII was probably the last straw for me. Out of the last 8 games in the series (7,8,9,10,10-2, 11, 12, and 13) I've only liked 9 and 10. I enjoyed the first six games in the series although 1, 2, 3 have not aged well.

Cool, i'll give it a try, i really like the look of the game. oh and i can answer why we put it on a pedestal. and thats basically because of the name. if it wasnt called final fantasy 13 i think it would be a lot better. the standard that the game has to meet is unbelievable. for example ff7 after 13 years is still talked about, and the problem is fans were expecting that type of revolution.

i'm not moaning about the changes etc, but 4 years ago when we first heard about this. the way it was promoted, and especailly after what was acheived with ff12, you know i thought this was the ONE where SE were planning another type of ff7 breakthrough game, only this time with photo-realistic graphics.

maybe we were wrong for setting our sights so high, of course i enjoyed parts of the game. but imo ff12 achieved a lot more and ff13 threw those acheivements out of the window for the sake of what!? 6 hours of cutscenes that revolve around a girl called Serah. and its because of this i was dissappointed.

Ok, for all those first or 2nd time playing a JRPG, FFXIII may seems like a good offering because it plays more or less like an action adventure like Uncharted or FPS like COD, straight line to the end (even Gran Pulse is an empty space full of Cieth Stones and monsters and dose not carry any significant story element). Thats what this Yoichi guy did to the series, made it 'modern' so it would appeal to western players.

But for us, real JRPG nerds (I've played FF III,IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XII, X-2, Tactics, Suikoden II, III, Shadow Hearts whole series, Xenogears, Chrono Trigger/Cross, Kingdom Hearts I II, DQ V VII, Tales of Fantasia, Okami, Persona 4), FFXIII is the worst among every JRPG that I have ever touch on.

RPG is Role Playing:

- Ultima VII, the granddaddy of RPG in 1990s, has its town people going at sleep at night, scream for guards when you try to loot their houses, and you can killed them when they are screaming so to not alert the guards, I believe the world of Britannia is alive.

- FF XII,the town of Rabanastle is full of merchants at the market, at thiefs at the underground quarters, I believe in waking up in Rabanastle one morning and went on my usual thieving exercise. Rabanastle is so beautiful I can smell spice in the air.

- I can chat up and date any schoolmate I met at the school in Persona 4, and my small niece will laugh when she watch cute advertisement in the TV,  I believe I was a Japanese student living in his uncle house and I got girls with different characteristics to choose from to be my gf. And boys too, although the most you can get is a friendly crying hug from Yosuke.

As for FF XIII, I work so hard at the towers to go to the Oerba village, which end up to be some empty squares on the overhead map for me to go here and go there, collect some orbs, and basically  NOTHING, EMPTY in the Zen meaning of Buddhism teaching.

And at the end to be asked to go back to Cocoon after we worked so hard to go to Gran Pulse. What? I traveled all the way with my psycho sister in law (role playing Snow here) from Cocoon believing the story of 2 strangers to this 'village' and to be told to go back by the supposely bad guy providing me with a space ship? And I hate the sister in law story line, ughh, bad taste, who want to adventure with their in-laws in a fantasy game?

No way people can role play here, the characters are bad, storyline is obscene (what is the falcie and lacie words that the game keep throwing at my face that I got no clue of), no town, no real NPC to interact of, no real side missions that has story element, stupid plot (ok, i was told to not killing Orphan to protect Cocoon, why the hell am I going all the way to kill him so to finish the game? and end up Cocoon was saved because people want illogical happy ending), and stupid in-laws relationship between characters. Snow seems to be knocked on his head when he was born since he is so single mindedly simple, and dont start me on the psycho bitch Lightning and whiny brat Hope.

Bad taste, bad taste, not going to buy VS XIII unless reviews come out and say that it would be alive with towns, NPCs, quests, and real heart string pulling stories. Like on a certain night of Suikoden II, waiting with my sister on the town gate for my childhoold friend to be somehow escape the grasp of the enemy troop, not going to give up even the moon is high and the night is cold caused I believed he will survived some how.

i hve playd all th games u mentioned ther. I liked FFXIII more than all of them excpt FF7 and FF8.

i ws touched by th story. I cried when sazh almost killed vanille. I liked all chrcters except fang. I felt sad at oerba ws, a place wher tragedy took place, with the music.

u dont like it, fine. bt dont pretend to talk for all JRPG nerds, becaus ur not. 

FFXIII's average user rating is 8.5 on this site, so actully hardly any1 agree tht its the worst RPG, FFXII average user rating is 8.1, below it.

like i sed, its fine if u dnt like it, many don't. But don't pretend tht everyone else thinks its th worst rpg evr, because the majority like FFXIII (proof? user review averages on th net)

I dont know where people are getting this idea that Yochi Wada is responsible for the design choices in FF13. hes a buisness man, who manages Sqaure Enix, and imo he seems to be doing a good job, since Sakaguchi made the company go bust with the Spirits Within.

the key people responsible for the storyline about the psyco sister in law, are Kitase, who produced/directed FF6, 7, 8 & 10. the other person is Toriyama, who directed FF10-2. so these guys who worked on the previous games are the ones to blame.

and i've already said what i thought about the game. but i think that Kitase and Toriyama did fuck up with FF13. and something needs to be done to make sure it dosent happen again - hopefully Wada can do something about that!!

whtever kitase and toriyama did, they made me like the frnchise again aftr the FF12 team fucked up badly with FF12. 

lets hope ff versus xiii cn beat ff7/8 in quality.

I know my Final Fantasy very well and I can't say I was satisfied, maybe he meant to say Final Fantasy Fanboyz/galz?

"It's interesting that you're working with Nintendo to release Dragon Quest IX in the U.S. Can you talk about why that decision was made?

YW: Final Fantasy sold evenly in Japan, U.S., and Europe. Batman sold in the U.S. and Europe. And Dragon Quest was not even released in the U.S. and Europe -- Japan is its predominantly strong market. In our thinking, this is fine for our purposes of globalization. It is okay to have some things lopsided in terms of the numbers sold, depending on the region. We do not believe that everything has to sell well and evenly in every market in the world.

In this environment, we feel that Dragon Quest is strongly Japanese -- the type of game that appeals to the Japanese more. We have made tremendous efforts to try and sell Dragon Quest in the Western market, too. And it was not a failure, but it's not that kind of success, either.

I talked about this with Nintendo, and they showed a strong interest in selling Dragon Quest in the European and American markets. So we thought we should try taking advantage of Nintendo's marketing power. Our expectation is that Nintendo may be able to do what we cannot do by ourselves."

What an idiot.  This guy really needs to be fired.  'Tremendous efforts'?  What a joke.  One Final Fantasy Spin-off or one Kingdom Hearts game has gotten more advertising and focus than all of the Dragon Quest series in 12 years outside Japan.  Its only because Nintendo came and slapped them in the face that the series is getting the proper support it deserves.  At least he acknowledges they failed, but I'm glad Nintendo has a different point of view and doesn't just see Dragon Quest as a game that's only good for the Japanese Market.

Hey, I got the game for free. I still think it sucks. I lent the game to my room mate....he thinks it sucks. He let his graphic design classmate borrow the game (after he asked me) and he thought the game sucked. Yes....we're all ff fans, but really when you lower your expectation for a final fantasy (which just shouldn't be) and it sucks worse than expectations....its horrible. There is no band wagon.