And still it can get damn hard.. Thatì's why the videogame reviewers are supposed to be above average. many simply don't look so.

Fast foward to 7.44 for the prize!

Quite possibly the most annoying cast in an FF game. the voice acting is awful at times. in the English version Waka a white guy has a Jamacan accent. the dialogue at times is a bit ridiculous. these are pervasive problems of FF10-2, Dirge of Cerberus, Advent Children, The 3rd Birthday, FF13 and FF13-2.

i can forgive those things because it was the first time Square used voice acting in FF. but 10 years on FF13 has unacceptable levels of presentation. its made worser still when you look at some of the excellent cutscene direction, voice acting and dialogue of FF12.

Even accepting that some voices could be annoying (mostly Wakka obviously. Tidus is the typical football player brat. Rikku to me was perfect. Auron, Lulu & Yuna great. Kimaru perfectly played. Dona exceptional -in all senses!! - Jecht the best of all, and so on) did it really take the fun out of the game? No. Also you'll be surprised to know that some actually LOVE Tidus and Wakka. So, sorry, that is not an issue, it is a personal view. Not to mention that there have always been characters made annoying on purpose. 

Talking about the game mechanics the only possible issues I see could be the linearity at the beginning and the lack of ship. So what? The story progression fit perfectly. And then we could go back later to at most any place (and we had to, to get the Aeons and/or build the Arena. Or the Dark Aeons in the EU version). The ship? I don't think many at the PS2 time would have accepted a dumb small ship travelling above a map. It would have taken many resources to implement a real world to flight over. Then what? The random encounters? Been there since ever. The Aeons were fantastic the least. Actually the best in all FF games. In FF XII and XIII, but also in FF VI and VII they are just useless. The magic animations superb. The list of monsters never ending. Plenty of minigames, made very hard on purpose (you want the Celestial weapons? You must suffer). I seriously hope there will be a trophy for getting all Celestial weapons in FF X HD. Armors and weapons not only made sense, they were customizable. The Grid actually gave space to customize the characters, although there was no need for it. 

And still I have to read that FF X was mediocre. We sure played a different game (well, I played the PAL one, with the Dark Aeons indeed).

You are totally right that the entire collection of FF13 etc games is abysmal. I just completed 13-2 and it is PAINFULLY clear that the game wasn't planned at all. They admitted before that they had quite a lot of content left over. We then get a game that is actually incredibly small and features a few areas just altered slightly. The time travel aspect acts as a way that they can simply link all these random places together.

After completing 13-2 I'm actually geniunely angry that the people who wrote it have jobs. It is in all seriousness the WORST piece of writing in any media I have ever seen. I would put it on the same level as badly written fan-fiction. All complete nonsense that doesn't fit in with 13 and that lacks any sense of internal logic. There are so many ridiculous plot devices strewn through the game that you can barely move for them.

Once again we get a game where Etro is actually the most important part of the entire thing by a million miles. Yet is barely even grazed upon. The timeline stuff is honestly like a joke. There are so many plot holes and happy coincidences that I'm not sure if the game is actually meant to be funny. Characters still constantly act against character or however they feel. I'm still 100% convinced no-one at Square has ever had feelings for anyone judging from the writing for the characters. If Square had written Romeo and Juliet then when Romeo comes upon Juliet's lifeless body he would have just gone ''Aw shucks kid'' and walked off whistling. It feels like watching a comedy only it's all being done straight faced, like someone crossed Lost and Futurama badly. 

Next game Square need to either fire everyone on the writing team and bring in an entirely new team or go right back to utter basics. To quote a review in part of British newspaper ''If FF13-2 were a film, it would be the worst you've ever seen''

If you disliked XIII, why did you play XIII-2? I don't understand Final Fantasy fans. It's like they want to be disappointed, so they can complain about being disappointed.

I got a free copy of the game. I enjoyed the demo and Square had made a lot of promises about fixing the problems of FF13. I also enjoyed the end-game of 13 and the gameplay but just hated the pacing, writing and characters. I enjoyed the game side of FF13-2 but not the narrative. The narrative is a disgrace. However now I have completed it I can just enjoy doing the sidequests, hard monsters etc. At least with 13-2 they fixed the pacing. They just somehow managed to have worse writing. Characters were a slight improvement I think, even though they are still poorly written. Noel is at least quite likeable.

Also I have been a big fan of FF for a long time. The only big bumps in the road being X-2 and XIII. When I played a good demo and saw reviews hitting the 80% or so mark I figured it couldn't be that bad. And it's not. As a whole the game is okay. Personally I would say somewhere around a 6/10. 

My issues are with the writing. That's two games in a row that Square has had awful writing and characters. It says a lot that when playing ME2 and old characters popped up I thought ''OMG! Yay I hope they stick around'' whereas when playing 13-2 and old characters popped up I thought ''Oh god, please no. Just go away quickly please'' 

Square need to abandon the entire 13 world. Hire some people who can actually write and get cracking on new games.

this, I feel the same way, it was pretty obvious that the story was not planned, they just threw some crap together from the leftovers. The worst part is that they are making another.  I dont know if they just want to use it all for cost sakes, they are too lazy to start something new or they are forcing us to like 13. but wth, SOME PEOPLE LIKE IT

Zim, God forbibs! FF vs XIII is supposed to be fantastic. If it will ever come out. That should (hopefully) kill many fans complains.

Onlyide, that's the Final Fantasy Universe. It's impossible to please everyone. Personally the only FF game I nearly hated has been FF X-2. But still I played it twice to get 100%. Some aspects of it were exceptional, like the combat style. Others totally annoying. Read: commspheres. And frankly, I find FF IX quite boring. FF XII with an ugy story. So at the end it goes back to personal feelings.

Regarding a third iteration of XIII, I wouldn't mind. As long as that wouldn't steal many resources from the development of FF vs XIII. It is quite a lame to have to wait 5 years for a new one. They may not be exceptional, but still they are good games. If SE can make good money out of them filling the gap while waiting for the new big project (again: FF vs XIII), it is good for me.