The fan hate, poor reviews and the criticisms are all deserved for a game that was poorly managed and developed. The devs basically said they created a load of redundant art assets and didn't have a focus for the game until the last year of development when they made the demo. Before that they were still debating what to put in the game.

The game tooks years to develop but so much of that time was wasted on useless and unused artwork instead of focusing on actually developing a well-paced game with a variety of features.

How in the world was Lost Odyssey original?

Please, give a list with quotes and links to each review where reviewers said the gameplay was broken. The likability of a character is completely subjective and therefore can not be a absolute thing (not to say that character can certainly have more endearing quality, etc.).

Tons of hate from you towards this game, but that's expected.

there's more playability in ff4 than ff7-ffxiii as a whole!! Bring back 2d FF now they had class playability!!

This post describes exactly how furious I feel about this embarassment of a FF; or any JRPG for that matter.

For me it was, sucks people can't accept FF XIII for what it is.

I love everything that has been said here. Consider me number Five.

The issue with me was that no characters in FF XIII really captivated me, unlike the old FF's (mostly IV through X). Fang was okay though.

Regardless, I think if the game had better direction, stayed true to it's FF traditions (explorative approach), interesting characters and a whole lot more that a solid JRPG should have, then obviously FF XIII would've been a major hit.

Such an awesome game!

Light-kun kicked ass!

Same here for me. SE is super lucky that the demo impressed me. I loved the battle theme and boss theme, the battle system seemed interesting if not a bit limiting, but I figured since it was a demo that there would be more in the full game.  Boy was I mistaken!

Heck I ended up buying the Lightning edition PS3 when the game first came out too. I guess if I have to say anything good about the whole thing, Lightning's image on the side of the white PS3 looks nice. =P