CGI cutscenes were rather poor aswell, I only enjoyed one of them and that is when they enter the city:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyxKVlajpX8

You die! You die and you go to hell!

I tend to agree with you and hynad as well. In regards to art style, I can see this being more subjective, and I can accept someone not liking it. Overall, I enjoyed the art style although some of the levels were somewhat bland. The real problem I had with the game was that the world just never really came to life for me, and I had a hard time caring about the world or the characters.

The real problem with most criticisms I see, including runa216's, come from their descriptions of the battle system. When people make the statement that the battle system is too fast or too complex for players to input their own commands, it immediately raises a red flag for me because I had no problem doing it myself. When I see these types of statements, it honestly makes me wonder whether reviewers gave the game a fair review because I know the statement to be false through experience. Whether or not the game is intended to be played with manual or auto-inputs is probably an answer better left to the developers, but I can say that someone is making the game needlessly harder if they opt to use the auto-commands rather than input their own simply because they are sacrificing some of the control they have over the actions taking place on screen.

It was ok at the start, but when I had 5/6 ATB bars, the ATB had been filled for at least 3 seconds before I had selected all my commands, this will cripple you in a boss fight.

I think auto-battle was implemented after they realised this, and I don't blame them.

@brendude, I agree with your reply towards runa (can't quote - typical vgc). I only read a couple of paragraphs before I stopped, and it did seem like he was blinded by hate. He complains about the graphics and that they're only good if you own an HDTV :/, but he goes complaining about the price of an HDTV (which don't cost $1,500 mind you). Not sure about the text problems, but I have heard about it in various games.

He also praises FFXII's soundtrack but calls XIII's bland and forgettable, which it isn't imo. I love the soundtrack from XII, but I have to admit it's fairly generic and easily forgettable. A lot of his arguments were poorly constructed that I didn't bother spending my time reading the rest. He may have brought up good points, but too bad.

I can admit it has it's flaws, and I can tolerate opinions, but what he said was just taking it too far.

So...because I disagree with the masses I'm an ignorant hate machine?  No, I was not blinded by hate, I didn't decide to criticise the game's art direction or audio because I hated everything else, they were some of the first things I hated long before I decided I hated the game.  I cannot praise a game for lacking a single shred of originality (I've played plenty of JRPG's, and this looks pretty much exactly like every other one I've played, art-wise).  I cannot praise a game's soundtrack that annoys the piss out of me from beginning to end, in spite of the fact that some of it was merely okay.  I've played every Final Fantasy game to date, and each one had its own uniqueness about it, each one had beautiful, haunting music (well, some of the earlier ones were iffy, but everything from IV to XII was astounding) that I wanted to listen to over and over again.  

There are few things I hate more than foolish people on the internet assuming they know absolutely everything about me and my supposed bias based on only a few short posts on a largely inconsequential internet gaming forum.  I hate how people assume that I'm blinded by hatred for the game rather than, oh, I dunno, hating it because of these reasons.  it couldn;t possibly be that I disagree because I disagree, it's just because I'm contrarian!  That's the only possible explanation?  Since the majority liked something, anyone who disagrees is either ignorant or just disagreeing to raise a fuss! 

to clarify and repeat, I am not a HATER, especially not for final fantasy which I have explained is my alltime favorite game series.  I played Final Fantasy XIII all the way through to the end because I had faith it would impress me, I had hope that what I had come to dislike was only temporary. It wasn't until I beat the game that I sat back and thought about all the points I liked and disliked as far as presentation goes. 

And if you think I'm blinded by hate, I imagine I must also hate Halo's music becuase I Feel that game is horribly overrated...wait, no, I think Halo's soundtrack is one of the best of all time BECAUSE IT IS.  

Your logic is flawed and your accusations are frankly ignorant.  Instead of throwing insults about my integrity, try asking questions or getting more details before spewing nonsense. 

All I gathered from this post is "He disagrees with the majority, therefore he's wrong and ignorant for thinking otherwise."  See what I did there? 

Don't be a fool.  I don't trash games, I criticise them.  This was not a review, this was a compilation of the things I disliked about the game so of course there was a lot of criticism, much of it harsh.  The same BS happened when I wrote the Duke Nukem review: a low score or harsh critic couldn't possibly mean that the person who spent many hours of their life playing it with reviewing it fairly in mind actually felt the game failed, they had to be criticising it like that because they're a hater and wanted to find fault. 

I don't like finding fault, I'm actually an overwhelmingly positive person who doesn't even like going to the movie theater with certain people becuase their negative attitude ruins the experience for me.  I go into a movie or game or book looking for the good and finding excuses to forgive the faults.  I've always been like this and I've actually been reprimanded by my bosses here on the site for giving too much praise and overlooking minor faults when I should be factoring them in.  

Final Fantasy XIII is a game that fails in practically every way.  The level design/game design is poor (too l inear) the combat system is flawed (if you read the whole rant you'd see why I felt this), and even the Audio and Visual elements had their faults.  Granted, audio and visual criticism is especially hard because no two people have identical tastes in music and art, but I Felt the game failed there as well because of the stunning lack of originality. sure, it was polished and well done, but I didn't like it one bit and it wasn't because I hated the game (trust me, as with my Halo example, I'd much rather find something to like than something to hate.)  

I'm honestly sick and tired of being 'called out' as some hack because I happen to have a much harsher opinion of the game than most, and am willing to elaborate on why I feel that way.  I don't want to hate the game, I'm not a hack, and I'm certainly not doing it for attention, but the game is greatly flawed and seems to be an amalgamation of poor design choices.  I even outlined a series of things that Squeenix could have done to tweak the game to make it tolerable, but as it stands there's nothing to praise; it's just broken. 

In spite of this rather lengthy rant, I'll still be there day one (or week one, whatever) to get Final Fantasy XIII-2 and vsXIII because I truly do feel the game is just a few tweaks away from enjoyability.  as it stands it's just one frustration after another. It's like the game was designed with one major flaw (dying if your main character dies), and almost every design choice was led to maximize that effect.  A simple change like making it so that you could change what character you control would, on its own, elevate this from "nearly unplayable" to "not unpleasant."  But the fact of the matter is you die needlessly a lot, and there's about a dozen things that ensure you die as often and unfairly as possible.  

This is bad design.  

I had a lot of issues with the game. The gameplay while it was fast and exciting, ranked slightly lower than FF12 (one of this games few redeeming features) which had awesome customisability and control. The story was ok ranging from very good (at the start) to mediocre in the middle stages and the ending battle cutscenes were a disappointment - in the end the "heroes" did exactly what they said they wouldnt do. The sidemissions consisted pretty much of defeating the monsters and nothing else much. Some of the characters like Sazh and Fang were ok but the rest were bloody irritating.

In the end they did away with sidemissions and cities becos the story wasnt flexible enough but unlike shooters and action games which are around 10hrs long, the length of the game (and the fact that its an rpg where exploration is a given) meant that the lack of these was glaringly obvious.

As a result, i am in two minds about whether to get the sequel. Will probably wait until reviews to see how good it is.

I wouldn't hold your breath, they said XIII-2 was going to be a lot like XIII. 

And I'm curious, what about XII didn't you like?