I hate Final Fantasy XIII. I hate it with a fiery, red-hot passion. I understand that there will be a lot of people arguing with me about it, calling me a hater or that I was letting my expectations interfere with the game, but the truth was that I wanted to like it. Not only did I want to like it, but I kept playing long after I was convinced I hated it because I wanted it to get better. See, Final Fantasy is easily my alltime favorite game series, beating out mario, megaman, Ratchet and Clank, and dozens of others. Final Fantasy VI is my single favorite game, and almost every other FF game I've played has a place in my heart as an alltime favorite, so it's not like I'm a hater or I'm just looking for reasons to bitch. In fact, with every new iteration I was first in line to defend against any wild accusations and stand up for the games I loved. Hell, I remember people complaining that XII was too 'different' than the previous games, and that they needed to stay traditional. I was the first one to point out that change is good and it's nice to mix things up.
So then Final Fantasy XIII comes out, and it's VERY different. At first I was cautiously optimistic because I didn't care for the battle system and the linearity, but I imagined it was going to expose itself to me and I'd come to love it, just like every Final Fantasy game before it.
That never happened. The game continued to be linear and restrictive.
The thing is, Final Fantasy has always been a perfect example of how to blend western and eastern RPG tropes to one universally loved series. The series as a whole has got it all: a stylized world, memorable and unique characters, deep and involving but mostly linear story, plenty of sidequests and minigames, and just enough explosions and action setpieces to keep western audiences in tow. Final Fantasy XIII has none of this.
I do need to reiterate, I did try to like it. In fact, I put the game down a dozen times in frustrated, disgusted rage, but I picked it back up every time and did eventually beat the game. The problem was that I had to remind myself every hour or so that I had an obligation to myself to complete it because I wasn't allowed to complain unless I'd beaten it. The problem was that every complaint I had early on continued until the end, and some of my complaints got worse.
Now I don't want to go into rage mode, I've had a year to stew over my thoughts and blindly spewing hate-speeches is not going to get me anywhere (in spite of how much I want to do that every time the game's name is brought up.) Instead, I'm going to try and deconstruct the game's every flaw to explain why I feel it fails in practically every way.
First up is the audio. I really don't have much to say about it since as a whole the audio in the game was only slightly grating, bordering on tolerable and mostly forgettable. I do know that by the end of the game I was so sick of hearing that stupid battle theme that I turned down my volume to near mute and put on the subtitles. My question is: what happened to Nobuo Uematsu? I know he doesn't work for the company anymore, but the soundtrack to XII was remarkably haunting and effective, so why was this one so...bland and forgettable? It's not that the company doesn't know how to make great music, they've been praised year after year for their phenomenal scores and this game had a stellar budget compared to the other titles in the series. I'd mostly just categorize this as overwhelmingly disappointing. I do have to say though, at least the voice acting was well done, too bad the script was a joke. We'll return to that in a moment.
Until then, let's talk about graphics. Final Fantasy XIII's graphics were hit or miss, I found. Yeah, they were crisp and clear and well done, but that doesn't mean a thing if the art direction is about as bland and uninspired as you could possibly be. Seriously, Final Fantasy has been known for sweeping landscapes, varied environments, and lush, lifelike worlds. Final Fantasy XIII is about as 'generic anime-inspired sci fi' as you can possibly get. Everything looks sterile and perfect, the plants look like plastic, and in spite of there being a lot of detail in every level, that didn't change the fact that there was nothing of interest to look at until about 4/5 through the game when you are dumped from your sterile environment and put into the wild where you got to see the wildlife and vegetation. The worst part is that it doesn't look much better, but at least it was interesting by comparison.
The problem with the graphics, though, is that they are only particularly good looking if you're on an HDTV. I played the game before I got an HDTV, so the graphics barely looked better than the ones on X and XII. I don't know why this was, after all, Halo 3 looked infinitely better than Halo 2 and both of them were played on an SDTV. No, instead the game was pretty much a massive middle finger to anyone ignorant enough to not spend 1500+ on a TV big enough to display the detail. The biggest frustration was that the text was all made with HDTV's in mind, so reading the names and numbers was a crapshoot depending on where they were. I could hardly read the menus or discern between 300 damage and 800 damage, and in a game that is comprised mostly of number crunching and reading, this is a fatal flaw in design. There have been a few other games with this problem as well, namely Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Something so basic is not forgiveable.
And speaking of Reading, would someone please explain the complete lack of a story to me? This is another major complaint of mine about the game: The story. Previous FF games had lengthy, epic stories with deeper themes and meanings, but XIII was about as predictable and generic as you can imagine (generic...have you noticed a theme yet?). As best I can tell, the game was about getting pissed off at the pope for abusing his power and corrupting his purpose...by lying about the gods and using them as a tool to take over. Apparently there's a LOT of backstory about the world they live in, the wars that came before, and the characters, but you literally need to read an in-game novel and glossary to even know such things because none of it has any bearing on the main story. I can literally sum up the plot in a sentence or two: “You are lightning, an ex soldier who takes a ragtag band of reluctant heroes on a quest to get revenge on the church that betrayed her.” That's pretty much it, there were no significant plot twists, no character development, and no great revelations. Instead it's just 6 people with remarkably generic backstories helping for their own reasons.
Most Final Fantasy games have deep, emotional characters with an ocean of depth to them. They have backstories, they have motives, and they develop throughout the course of the game. Hell, Final Fantasy VI had some of the deepest, most well thought out characters in any game ever, and that game came out a decade and a half ago (which is a veritable eternity in game time). XIII has generic stereotypes and two dimensional characters. Lightning is the hardned warrior who is doing her duty...to protect her sister. Hope is the whiny emo kid who has to learn to pick himself up and do the right thing. Sazh is the jazzy black comedic relief who's just hiding up the pain of having his child taken by the church. Snow is the self proclaimed hero who learns the hard way that being a hero is hard. None of these characters are likeable, and they're all so flat and cliche that you can tell almost no effort went into writing them. Hell, even the villain is the simplest caricature you could imagine: he's the pope. Hell, I didn't even know WHO the villain was until about 2/3-3/4 of the way through the game; up until that point I was just blindly following the narrow path for some unexplained reason against an unseen and faceless enemy.
This is not good writing. The story is generic and bland, the characters flat and cliche, and the villain is about as boring as you could imagine. He's not menacing, he's not memorable, and he's not really a threat. He's the pope, old and creepy. Hell, even Kuja was a better villain than this, so was Ultimecia, and you didn't even see her till the end of the game!
The worst part is that there are people out there who will be quick to point out that the story is deeper than it seems, and that's true but you have to read a glossary to see it. I want to play a game and I think it's fair to ask that the story happen AS I play it, not in an in-game book. That's bad storytelling no matter how you twist it.
Let's tally this up. The sound is disappointing at best, not bad but repetitive and uninspired; The graphics are technically fantastic but artistically devoid; the display is broken and faulty unless you're playing on an HDTV; the story is poorly told and bland; the characters are generic and flat, and the villain is entirely forgettable, but none of this can even remotely touch on how broken the gameplay was.
Let me clarify right now that I have absolutely no problems with linearity or change. While freedom is welcome and encouraged, some games do in fact benefit from a linear story and gameplay path. Final Fantasy X was a perfect example of this, the game lacked a world map and was mostly just a series of events broken up with short bursts of killing things, and it worked. The fact that Final Fantasy XIII was linear didn't bother me one bit, it was the fact that it allowed absolutely NO deviation from it's decidedly set path. Every event was scripted, every enemy was scripted, every movement was scripted. There were no random battles, there were very few alternate routes, and there were practically NO sidequests or minigames. For lack of a better term, the game was an RPG on rails. It was a Rail Roleplaying Game.
The other defense was that “you just hate it because it's different.” No, I don't hate it because it's different, I hate it because it's bad. I remember when Final Fantasy XII came out, there was an entire wave of people going to outrageous lengths to declare their hatred for it...because it had the licensing system and a real time battle system instead of the traditional FF battle system where you go into a separate world to stand in line like British Riflemen, taking turns in a gentlemanly battle. No, I don't hate it because it was different, I hated it because it was a poorly done set of changes that lacked polish, or it was like they didn't play test it to see how poorly it worked as a whole. Keep in mind that any of the following on their own are not a particularly bad reason to hate a game, but when you factor in all that went wrong here, it just becomes too much too fast.
For one, I felt it was absolutely pathetic that the 'tutorial' level lasted through about half of the game. Most Final Fantasy games have a tutorial that lasts about an hour or so, teaching you the game mechanics and adding a thing or two here as the story progressed. Final Fantasy XIII's entire first half was a strictly controlled, restrictive, lacking game. There was no reason withhold certain skills or abilities, this wasn't like Final Fantasy VI where nobody gets summons or magic until the story allowed you to, this is a game that says “No Paradigms for you!” for many hours. This is just silly and really hurt the game, but on its own it's not that big of a deal.
Throughout this tutorial, and right up till about ¾ of the way through the game, the story restricted who you played as, not giving you any control over your parties, offering you no control over anything. Final Fantasy IV did this as well by having the story dictate who was where, and in a way XIII does this as well, but it was more effective in IV because all the characters were defined and unique. Final Fantasy XIII's characters have no defining traits, they all subscribe to the same six character classes, and they all have the same move lists. This is a complaint I've had about a lot of the recent FF games, where there's nothing differentiating characters, but it's the worst here because all six characters can use all six classes and it makes them all so remarkably bland, there's not even any unique movies or limit breaks as far as I can tell. The only thing that controlling your characters did was restrict what teams you could have, and I don't like tyrannical restriction one bit.
Give me equipment slots, give me accessories, give me armor dammit! I want to see an equip system like IV or VI, where you have a helmet, right hand, left hand (for attack and defence, respectively), body, and legs/pants! I want to see multiple accessory slots, I want to see items that alter your stats or give you bonuses like immunity to poison or whatever! XIII has none of this. Sure, it's got accessories and a weapon slot, but that's it and there's no variety in them. I miss the days when you had evasion, vitality, speed, accuracy, strength, defense...etc. There's none of this here and frankly I'm amazed they even remembered to add a defense stat to the game, even though it can only be altered by levelup or using up accessory slots. The one thing I actually LIKED in this game, they totally dropped the ball on: weapon and accessory upgrading. As you go through the game you get items that can be turned into points to level up your items...but there's no way to tell what you're doing with it or how you're going to level up or what the resulting creation will be. There's no way to tell if it's smart to use your items on this weapon or not, there's no way to keep tabs on it, and it becomes a random game of chance. I would upgrade two items using the exact same items, and one would get massive levelups and 3x multipliers, while the other would remain stagnant. This is not a well done weapon system, it's sloppy and shoddy, even though I liked the idea. Some polish would go a long way here.
But this brings me to my next point: Absolute linearity. Not only was the game practically a dictator of your journey, but it allowed NO room for deviation. I have to repeat, I don't mind a linear game as long as it gives you something to do on the side, or something to play around with. The major reason people complain about the linearity of the game is the amount in which your actions are restricted. As I said earlier, the game seems to be in a perpetual tutorial because it controls what battles you have, what abilities you unlock, what characters you control, and where you go. There's no exploration, there's no chance to check things out, no ongoing sidequests or minigames at all. In fact, the only part of the game that gives you even a lick of freedom is practically the very end, when you are taken to the more beautiful Gran Pulse (the planet's surface), and it gives you a series of linear paths, all going off in different directions. This is the least linear part of the game and it STILL only gives you multiple linear paths. I admit, I liked this part of the game. For about 10 hours I was exploring, battling, and hunting marks; I rode chocobos, I explored, and I actually enjoyed myself! But this was short lived because as soon as I decided to continue on with the story it returned to the same bland, linear, restrictive paths.
Did the developers not understand that one of the things that made final fantasy such a massively successful franchise was that it balanced linearity and freedom perfectly? The stories were still just a series of “go here, do this, activate event, rinse and repeat”, but in between those points you were allowed to play card games, get involved in sports, battle enemies, search ruins, hunt marks, and even play delivery boy. There's none of that in this game, and for that reason I say it's entirely devoid of content. The game entirely consists of the restrictive, linear story and a series of about 50-60 hunts that you have to do all at once. That's it. No cities, no sidequests, no minigames. None of that other than some hunts, and that's a travesty if you ask me. Hell, since there's no deviance in the main game, there isn't even a remotely good reason to play it again, you might as well be playing a rail shooter, for how much freedom you get.
But now that I've released a bit of tension about the game design and levels and content, I think it's time I start to really complain about the battle system.
I know a lot of people claim they like the battle system, and good for you, I'm glad you do! But am I the only one who notices that it's just a sped up but dumbed down version of Final Fantasy XII's battle system but with many, major flaws? It's like the battle system was completely designed around what the Japanese think americans want: Flashy but simple combat with little room for error or creative problem solving. Everything about this system reeks of “make it simpler, take out options.” Final Fantasy XII had a complicated battle system that literally encouraged you to 'program' your teammates how to act in any respective situation. You had to decide to tell them what spell to use on who in what situation, and you got to chose priority by putting healing and restorative actions in front of attacks, or vice versa. In Final Fantasy XIII, you get to chose from 6 pre-set party formations, your allies do whatever the hell they want, and you're pretty much forced to press 'auto-fight' since the battles went by too fast to keep up and chose your own commands. I know because I tried it, I played ¾ of the game choosing my own commands and it became increasingly evident that was a horrible idea and the game was not meant to be palyed like that.
In Final Fantasy XII, you had control over one character and could program the others, but if something came up you could press a button to take over the other characters and input commands in real time or in a separate menu. In Final Fantasy XIII, you get control of one person, and there's no way to control others. The best you can do is hope they keep your ass alive, because if the character you control dies, it's game over. In XII, if the character you were controlling dies, you just took over one of the others and that was that. I do admit they at least had the good will to not send you back to the last save point and instead just have to restart the battle, but some battles last 20+ minutes, so having to start over is still adequate punishment.
See, this is where the majority of my hatred for FFXIII comes into play, this stupid decision to make your character dying a game-ending action. On its own, it's not all bad except the part where you can't chose to control anyone else, you have to HOPE your allies have the common sense to keep you alive (or waste your time keeping yourself alive while they attack), and a lot of bosses have instant kill or relentless attacks that kill you faster than you can react. The final boss, for instance, has a move that WILL kill you in one hit unless you found an item earlier in the game that prevents instant death attacks. He uses it on one of your three party members at random, meaning there's a 1 in 3 chance it's a game over every time he uses it...and he will use it more than once. I ended up fighting the end boss over a dozen times and each time took 20-30 minutes...all because he decided it was appropriate to span an instant kill attack that even the tank class (sentinel) couldn't stop.
This is just piss-poor game design. It's one thing to restrict your control to only one person, it's not even entirely horrible to have to rely on AI teammates, but to have any death of your character being a game over is just stupid. It's doubly stupid when they have the common sense to revive each other should one of them fall, and triply stupid when you consider many bosses have instant kill attacks or change their patterns so abruptly that you can't possibly defend against an onslaught without having prior knowledge or be clairvoyant. Some of the later bosses would seem simple enough, you attack until one of your members gets low on health, then you revert to a healing paradigm in which will remedy that...until he says some words and within seconds he's unleashed an onslaught that WILL kill your entire party, and if not that it'll leave you so devastated that you will not be able to recover before he kills off your remaining team.
This wouldn't be so bad on its own except there's this issue where, even if you see a change in attack pattern and press the button to do a paradigm shift, the enemies can still attack you and have their guages filled in spite of the fact that your team has essentially paused to do a little 'Paradigm Shift” animation. During this animation, you're stuck and open to attack but you can't defend yourself and your move bars don't refill, so you're open, sitting ducks for the latest enemy's onslaught. You're also open to attacks at all times since you have NO control over where you go but enemies still have 'area of effect' attacks that can do massive damage. One battle early in the game I failed at dozens of times because both my characters insisted on staying nice and close to the enemy in spite of the fact that he had a wide, sweeping move that could take out any member in a couple of swings. I didn't win until lightning happened to have the common sense to stand back out of the way while Hope took the brunt of the attack. I only survived because my AI decided to do the simplest battle tactics: keep your ranged attacker in the back away from damage.
Again, this is just atrocious design and I have no idea who thought this worked in any way at all. At this point it's almost ensured that the designers got together in a diabolical lair to discuss how they could maximize frustration and still get fanboy praise, like it was all a joke to them.
I'm not a game developer, I don't know much about programming, but there's a slew of little problems in this game that could be fixed with a little tweak. Allow me to control all three characters or at least cycle through them all. Allow me to slow down the battle so I can pick and chose my moves. Don't give me a game over every time the person I control falls...the allies CAN heal me. If the enemies have moves that only hit certain allies depending on location, GIVE ME THE POWER TO MOVE MYSELF. Any of these things would likely help to make the game tolerable, but instead we have a game where even the battles seem specifically designed to control what you do and how you do it.
You HAVE to stagger some enemies, if not the battle can last ages. You HAVE to have a certain paradigm to attack this enemy, you HAVE to change to this paradigm at this precise moment to not die, and any slight misstep results in death and a game over. This means the only way to beat some battles is to memorize the enemy's patterns and follow a strict order to counter them, and any deviation will result in a game over.
Everything about this game reeks of bad design and lazy game-making from beginning to end. It's almost like they were either trying to make the least enjoyable game they could, or they just didn't test it to see what worked and what didn't.
The score is lazy and generic, completely forgettable. The visuals are crisp but completely devoid of artistic creativity. The game's display only works on HDTV's, otherwise it's too blurry to read properly. The story is horribly put together with an entire cast of cliche, flat characters and almost no development. The Villain sucks and is a horrible representation of the pope. The game lacks any sense of freedom or wonder, and is practically an on-rails-RPG. There's no sidequests or mini games. The battles are remarkably restrictive and cruel. You die at every corner, in many situations where you couldn't possibly have foresaw or reacted fast enough, and in some times have no control over at all.
It just sucks. I don't see how anyone could like it. I can see what they were trying to do, and they failed miserably. The battle system isn't exciting and revolutionary, it's dumbed down, restrictive, and needlessly punishing to anyone without the gift of clairvoyance. The story is there but it's so poorly told that it's practically not there and you don't even learn 90% of what's going on until you're done with the tutorial...halfway through the game. The characters lack any sort of depth, and are little more than flat, two dimensional cliches. The Villain was lame. There were only a few good parts in the entire game, and even those were poorly done.
An absolute failure on Squeenix's part, I can only hope that vsXIII fixes all the indignancies this turd spewed on the long running and critically acclaimed series.
