FF12 and DQ8 did vastly improve things, FF12 still had issues with production of voice acting, basically consistently having good voices, and sometimes one character would talk and the other would sound like he's in a hole or not speaking into his mic.  All of that is because of the producers/directors of the English voice acting.

And yeah Xenoblade, I've played it, awesome battle system and a good story, I'm worried about the English voice acting like I am with most JRPGs but that could go either way with Nintendo in charge lol

TLS still waiting for it to hit Japan before I say more on it.

I'm glad to see many are disappointed in FF13. Not glad as in happy it disappointed us but some of my friends like the game and give me a hard time when I keep telling them they should play old Final Fantasy's to see how mediocre it is. 

I am very disappointed in the story, actually was there even a story? I can sum up the plot in 3 sentences, I really can I've done it. The linearity was disappointing, when FFX came out it was fine because PS2 had technical limitations, but on PS3 other genre's are getting bigger and better, but Final Fantasy is getting smaller and worse? The dialogue was cheesy and trite, how did the script get past the director, was Toriyama drunk while making the game? The characters were erratic, Hope and Vanille were annoying and awful characters. Snow was unrealistic and stupid. But I liked the rest of the characters.

I liked the games music, battle system, setting and the remaining characters (Lightning, Fang, Sazh). What makes me even more disappointed is that datalog, if the story in the game would be the story in the datalog I would have liked this game much more, the analects were very interesting and made the main story seem irrelevant. 

Story - 5/10

Characters - 7/10

Gameplay - 3/10 (just running forward in most chapters or running in a field in chapter 11)

Battle System - 9.5/10

Setting/World - 9.5/10

Overall 7/10

Its a very erratic game, I am so confused on my feelings with it, it has so many sparks of brilliance that are destroyed by stupid decisions. Disappointing for a FF title, but even more disappointing because they had a great premise and a good story crammed into the datalog that just wasn't told well. Its the perfect case of terrible execution of a great idea.

All in all I still enjoyed it more than FF12, FF14, FF11, FF2, but every other Final Fantasy is better. I hope FF Versus 13 brings the franchise back to the top, or Agito 13.

I managed to play 4 hours it, then got bored playing X and direction buttons only.

You see this quote? That's exactly how I feel about the Assassins Creed series.

OP - I disagree. I thought it was one of the best games in the series. I've been a fan since FFIV. I guess it comes down to taste. I'm not a game nazi so I'm not gonna force you to agree with me.

Yeah, i cant really remember the 'hole thing' its been a while since i played it. but i'm sure with the TLS, Sakaguchi will use the same style that he used in Lost Odyssey, i'm not sure what the voice acting in that is like, but i think it will be along the same lines.

Rob-ot, yeah the dialogue was cheesy, and utter tripe.

Yeah very disappointing. It seemed like they said the same things again and again. Then vanille would make some crappy melodramatic monologue/narration. The worst part was the writing on the loading screen made sense but the story in the game never made sense like the writing on the loading screen or datalog did. Its frustrating when they have a good story but kill it with tripe dialogue and horrible in game story telling. The game has thousands of cut scenes, but fails to put accross the story, thats the games biggest failure. They made it linear to tell a compelling story according to Toriyama, they didn't achieve that at all even though they had a compelling story stuck into the loading screen/datalog. That makes me even more angry at the game. I hope what I'm trying to say came across properly.

Lol, that would have been more effective before I played Brotherhood. What a crappy rehash that was.

No i feel the same way, i understood what you said. all they did in each scene was talk about boring stuff, nothing to do with the mythology or the world. just about how, its their focus, and Serah said so. then they talk about Ragnarok, and its so obvious, predictable, from the beginning that they actully become Ragnorok, or something to that extent. and all the dialogue in each scene, recycles the same point over and over and over again.

i did have hope when we got to Gran Pluse everything would be revealed, but it obvious why they've made the game like this anyway.

they're following this western idea now that you have to make sequels or a series of games. the Fabula Nova Crystalysis compliation is meant to be much bigger than the FF7 compilation. it seems to me they have all the story and everything worked out, but they want to put it over several games, like Versus and maybe FF13-2.

imo this worked with FF12, and the Ivalice Alliance because theres lots of material to work from, Ivalice is a world with a history and culture over thousands of years. but it didnt work with FF13, because a games story cannot be about 6 hours of melodrama, and melodrama alone imo.

I agree they shouldn't have recycled the same things and left out some plot info in the datalog. Why they made such rookie mistakes I do not know. I have heard rumor's of a FF13-2 and you know what I want it to happen. Toriyama and his team doesn't deserve to make FF15, they had their chance with FF13 and for me blew it, FF13-2 is their chance to redeem themselves and fix the mess that they created, especially because it was mess made out of something that could've been much more. FF13-2 won't sell based on its name as FF13 got a mixed response among public, the team will have to make the game good for it to get a good word of mouth and sell well (make a profit etc). So I actually hope they go on to make a FF13-2 so that they can redeem themselves because I am sure they are not satisfied with their final product after reading the developer gaming article. Whats your opinion on this?

Well the hole thing isn't consistent, but it's like a lot of the voice acting in FFXII, I mean main characters are fine, supporting is what can be all over the place and thus have that weird production issue.  The main problem with FFXII was actually that Square apparently had the team change the main character to Vann cause he'd be more 'appealing'.

And with the voice acting, I'm not sure since yeah I'd say the Japanese voices for TLS will be great, but translation and redoing voice acting in different languages is usually handled by the publisher in this case Nintendo, and typically it takes Nintendo forever to translate games first off and then you can have well done voice acting in some games and in others... not so much... that's really where Nintendo needs to get on the ball.  As for Lost Odyssey yes the voice acting is well done in that game but the English translation/voice acting was handled by Microsoft.