It's pretty bad for both a Final Fantasy and a JRPG. It really does feel like a game that went through developer hell and was released in an unfinished state with just story and battle system shoved together. Nice artwork but not a lot else. It does pick up a bit towards the middle but nowhere near enough.

Speaking of artwork, I did like the scene of the bullet train going through the world outside. THat was gorgeous. Had a ton of visual throwbacks to FF7, though, like the lions running down a dirt trail and the train itself. You thought you were being subliminal, Square, but I noticed. Nostalgia won't win you any points with me.

You liked 12.......

May be bad as a jRPG in your opinion, but if we look at the average critics its a good jRPG. I understand that critics arent important for your personal preferences but it needs to be taken in perspective to make such kind of statement.

It's kinda funny that still threads about ff13 you have the same old excuses coming out. Bristow9091 says the battle system is fun and fast... when you get to chapter 10 or 11..... which takes longer than most great games to even get there.

Areym saying it's pretty good.... he plans to finish it after a long hiatus. LOL. Ah yes all the greatest games require a hiatus to keep playing them.

It's just funny how even the people that like the game give it backhanded compliments without realising it.

I actually think there is a good game somewhere in FF13 but it's just such a tiny slice of the whole experience. In the time it took for FF13 to become good I can play Alan Wake all the way through with it's better story, characters and gameplay. Or even compared to other Jrpgs I would say previously the slowest one was Lost Odyssey which I thought had a great first hour then a very slow and rough next 7 hours but then became brilliant and remained that way throughout.

It's not good for an FF and it's not a good JRPG. Even games like Blue Dragon which is about as forumualic as you can get beats it, easily. If it is good, please elaborate.

Everyone has opinion, the best factual measure you can get is an average of its review against the average of other similar products. Heres your elaboration:

Blue dragon: http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/blue-dragon

Final Fantasy 13: http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/final-fantasy-xiii

And just for the sake of the other poster

Lost Odyssey: http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/lost-odyssey

We could arguably say that Final Fantasy 13 would have receive even better critic if it has been a new IP.

If you took Final Fantasy out of the name I seriously doubt it would have scored particularly high. If you rate it as a JRPG there are very few actual features that would even constitute it as such. It does the bare minimum (battle system & story) albeit very polished.

Admitedly, JRPGs this gen on HD consoles haven't been particularly good, but in the genre as a whole FFXIII can hardly be considerred good (critics included).

Tagging, I'm interested to see how Khuutra chronicles FFXIII.

For the record I did like Lost Odyssey quite a lot, but it was more about the fundamentals of the genre (in terms of gameplay) married to some very forward-thinking storytelling. I'm not going to be comparing FFXIII to Lost Odyssey the whole time.