They all share the same underlying crystal mythology. thus i am assuming the world from Versus 13 is Pluse before the War of Transgression... which is why we are not told of anything to do with the original Gods, the Fal'cie origin, even the Goddess, in the whole game her name is only mentioned in the last Analect. which is probabily the best part of the game.

i think even though Type 0 was renamed its still part of that compilation, but they want Type 1, 2, 3 etc. these games are believed to also have sequels.

the problem is the mythology was there. and they chose instead to fill the game with 6 hours of what some people have deemed soap-opera (bad) story. i've heard FF13-2 actully goes into more depth with the Goddess Etro. but apparently the story and the characters are still not well presented.

oh yeah i agree, i understand having to wait a year for this years Spartacus. but 5 years for FF13, and it wasnt that good. unacceptable. and from what i've heard the sequel is also unacceptable if they want to feed us more COD, Assassin's Creed type sequels. thats not what FF was about.

The only thing I'm not sold on when it comes to Vs is the setting.  I'm generally not fond of overly advanced technologies or contemporary fantasy, but VII and VIII both managed to overcome that and become favorites of mine.  gameplay looks good, plot sounds great, characters seem interesting so far.  I'm not sold, but genuinely excited. 

The fact that it's 2012 and we still dont know what the hell is going on, only shows how trash this compilation is. IMHO SE is just making up BS as they go along. They wanted to duplicate the success of 7 and Ivalice compilations, but they did it for the wrong reasons and it shows

I didn't say reviews needed to be objective, what I said was that review sites with no objectivity don't have a purpose or credibility.

In order to have a purpose, review sites do in fact require some degree of objective criteria. Only then does a review publication become a reliable source which a user can put confidence in when selecting which games they should buy.

If FF13-2 is better than FF13, then how is that helping anyone when this site says FF13 is a 9.0 game and FF13-2 is a 5.4 game? It's not like the bar of quality has gone up THAT much in the past 22 months. How exactly is this helping anyone? Something is clearly broken with how this website handles its review section.

You're just further iterating what I said in my previous quote. The fact that there are gamers that actually think this way shows the immaturity of the games industry. Your analogy also doesn't work because the sole purpose of grading a students work is to show their current level and how to improve. The point of a games review is to aid readers (not developers although they get the benefit of the critique) in making a purchasing decision.

The content of the review is far more important than the score. A game like the one here can score poorly, yet still describe the positives to a point where someone can decide whether they'd actually enjoy the game or not. I've read negative reviews of games before, yet still been able to say, "I may buy this game because the review decribed it did x, y and z well". Those are review done well. Most of Edge's review are like this and so is the review this thread is based on.

Why do you actually care about the metacritic score? Does it stop you from purchasing and enjoying the game? Why should any reviewer limit themselves to a 7-10 scoreline?

The fact that these questions have to be asked is facepalm worthy. It's like the Uncharted 3 metacritic debacle all over again.

I pretty much consider FFXIII a continuation of FFX's problems, I have said that many times here and it isn't even a coincidence considering the same people are behind bothe games.

I enjoyed both X-2 & XIII-2 more than X or XIII to be honest with you, they were just more fun games and had stories that came to me as ridiculous but fun (in XIII-2 in Live Trigger I picked all the silly options and most genuinely made me laugh), even though XIII-2's story many times seemed to be taking itself too seriously.

Then FFXII, I dislike that more than any of the others even though mechanically the game was good, it just wasn;'t exectued well and ended up bland and forgetful; shocking considering how much I lvoe Matsuno's games.

I semi-agree with you. i cant dislike FF10 because it was Sakaguchi's last FF. he himself expressed doubts at the time of moving the series foward with voice acting, the departure of the world map, and fully rendered 3D backgrounds. but some things did generally work very well. the battle system and the depth of Sphere Grid customisation, the replay value. the game had its moments. i dont consider it a top tier FF. but its a decent RPG, and yes it is an awful RPG at times. but that comes with the territory of unexplored ground.

the parts that you can see came from FF10 to FF13 were consequently the worst parts. the characters... only FF13s were worst. and those parts came from FF8 before it, which Sakaguchi had no involvment with. so it is the team who are to blame, since they've just come out of the train wrek that was The 3rd Birthday. and other games like Dirge of Cerberus, or FF10-2.

hopefully they have learned what they need to do now...

on the FF12 point. i dont know anymore, i love parts of the game, and other parts are saddening to experience, ie scenes involving Vaans Tidus type tantrums. they dont fit in with the tone of the game, the style of Matsuno's games. he wasnt even meant to be in the game. so this is a team i want to see take foward what worked in that game to FF15. since i believe that will be annouced this year.

This operates off of the assumption that there needs to be consistency between different reviers when reviewing similar games. There does not.

Objective criteria are almost impossible to find in the arts, particularly in the respects that make an RPG decent (story, pacing, construction). Where they are found, they're still weighed subjectively. Different value sets are going to result in completely different scores even under passingly similar criteria.

You never said what the purpose of the review section is.

And I repeat that no one can read all reviews. Many people look at the Metacritic score, mentioned also in Wikipedia. Taken two reviews on the extremes they can be completely contradiptory. One says that the music is great, the other that it is the worst ever. At this point a good review should (must) just explain what music stye is played and when. The quality of the audio and dare NOT give a personal judgement. One may like Madonna and others hate her. Some like Opera others can't simply stand it. It's completely SUBJECTIVE so it must be taken out or used only as a personal opinion in brackets. 

Regarding my 70/100 as a minimum it is a matter of quality. Quality matters for half of the score. That's why Skyrim is inflated in all reviews. A broken game can NEVER be GOTY (not the PS3 version at least). It's an average game. A 50/100 is usually given to broken games or games with no content. Does anyone want to claim that FF XIII-2 is either one of them? Come on, make me laugh. It always ends up withthe Skyrim comparison. FF XIII-2 combat is too easy? Skyrim's one is pathetic (compared with Dark Souls and ingdom of Amaturs it's simply worth nothing. One ends up slincing air far too many times). FF XIII-2 story sucks? Well, where is Skyrim story? FF XIII-2 has long loading times (which isn't true. They are lower than average and without disc installation). Should I mention Skyrim loading times again? Runa even dared to mention occasionally frame rate drops (sorry guys: X360 only. In the PS3 is quite stable above 25 fps)!! Do we really wanna talk about Skyrim frame rate?!

Also if someone opinion/score differs 25-30 points in a 100 scale from the average, usually there is someting wrong. That goes in the other way around. there is no way FF XIII-2 is a perfect 10, like the (real) fanboys are evaluating the game. So if who gives a 10/10 is a fan boy what is who give sa 5/10? Obviously an hate boy. Are they allowed to their opinions? Sure. Am I allowed to define them for what they are? Sure as well. 

Yeah, sure. You obviously didn't play the game then. FF X has just everything an FF game can ask for (oh well. It lacks the moveable ship, sorry) implemented in such a good way that it is still superior to some current gen games. There is a minigame (blitzball) that can go on for 30-40 hours itself. Levelling up as in the mail game. The quests for the optional Aeons. Smart puzzles. The Arena. A great story (sorry, this is not subjective. The story is great, period). A music score that perfectly fits with the story.The best quality ever.  Also the Dark Aeons in the EU/PAL version. Just name it, it's there.

Does someone think it is mediocre? Fine. I think they are mediocre themselves. Just give me any argument to substain that FF X is worth a 6/10. But one isn't enough. They must be quite a few to justify such a low score.