Before anyone moans about the score they should remember the reviewer would have given FFXIII a 2/10 in his own words; so on his own level it reflects a drastic improvement from XIII.

The problem may be in giving him the review for the game.

Another thing is people need to see that the reviewer sees 5 as mediocre.

5 Isn't seen as "mediocre" by most people, its seen as "Terrible" while a 7 is the standard "mediocre mark" among reviewers. So I'm glad Runa is actually using a 0-10 scale rather than a 7-10 scale like most reviewers.

I would personally give FFXIII-2 a 9/10 (I'd have given FFXIII a 7). Better than any Final Fantasy since IX as far as I'm concerned, brought the fun back to the series. Now they just need to sort the writing out...big time.

This is my thought exactly, especially when he praised Skyrim for its plot (I believe it was him anyway).

What irritates me most when it comes to reviews of FFXIII/-2, is that it's score is lowered far more than any other game for the same flaw. If Skyrim has poor voice acting, 0.1 is docked from its overall score, if FFXIII/-2 has poor voicing (which I believe it doesn't), a whole point is docked from the score. If Skyrim has a very short and bland main story and the rest of your playtime is made up of fetch quests and grinding, 0.2 is docked from the overall score, if Final Fantasy XIII/-2 has a very short and bland main story and the rest of your playtime is made up of fetch quests and grinding (which once again, I don't think it is), a whole 2 points are docked from the score.

This isn't directed at Runa, I haven't seen a review of Skyrim from him and I don't know how many points he docked from its overall score and for what reasons, it's aimed at reviewers in general.

Problem is that everyone has a different defintion of what a review should actually do or rather what the reviewer should write about.

To me, a review is more than just one man's opinion. If it was, I wouldn't care one bit because we all know what a weird place the internet and its inhabitants is. (Not claiming that print reviews are different to online ones).
A review should inform people and judge its content in the most objective way possible and furthermore compare it to other games in an appropriate way (Comparing gameplay to other games in the same genre, graphics to other games on the same platform, etc.).
If you're supposed to write a review and dislike the whole genre or franchise, either skip it completely or rate it higher than what you actually think (because your own taste is in this case certainly not objective at all).
If you're a fan, don't give everything automatically a 9.0 etc.

Now this review is marked as being the "official VGC review". I'd agree that something like an average out of ... 3-5 or so staff members would definitely make it more official. However that means that the "main" reviewer would need to change parts of his review to give the correct impression of the score. And on the other hand it would certainly need more time to publish them when 5 members need to finish a game first (probably not enough review copies anyway, etc.)
Just saying that the VGC GOTY awards aren't made up by one writer either but being a product of a number of staff members.

From my play time with FFXIII and the demo of FFXIII-2 i would say the score is a bit harsh but not uncalled for.

That combat system was and will always be the downfall of the game. Its too incredibly boring. All auto attack and change paradigms once in a while to defend against a major attack or heal. There are basically 3 commands you have to master to play the game. Imagine playing a game of rock-paper-scissors for 40 hours. It gets boring.

Once the gameplay falls short like that, wether you have a good story or a living world, will always fall short. FFXIII was a terrible game that deserved 3/10. FFXIII-2 does deserve somewhere around 6/10.

GotY is done as a group, but reviews were never meant to be that way.  In the end the person who attaches their name to the piece has to agree with the score.  I personally approve most any score that goes through the reviews on our site and while I do feel it's ok to be closer to the meta score on most games it's much more important that the scores match the text, and I think this review did that.  

The Process goes like this: After reading a few other reviews and making sure there isn't any objective fact in Runa's review that is contradicted by a different writer to check the content rhe review scores are looked over to make sure that he isn't being overly nice or harsh based on what is written in the review and that he roughly remains consistent with how other jrpgs have been scored (again based on the text).  If all that matches up then it's approved and Craig looks over the spelling and grammar editing.  

Having all the reviewers agree on something is nice, but what's the point of having more than one review site if they all say basically the same thing?  I much prefer to have variety out there so people can read a couple different views on a game and get an idea of not only what they might love about it, but also what they might dislike.  

self proclaimed "bearded gamer's" FF XIII review was hella more controversial than this. He was actually bribed with an early copy review if he promised to give FF XIII at least a 9 :P . Just like Squeenix did with Dues Ex.


Runa is a girl? I think not. But it would actually answer a lot of question mark posts made by him.

I dont like the low score on value. lol.

I liked the review, like someone said before I like that the person is actually USING the 10 point scale. I rather see a 5-mediocore than a 8-9 "good" game knowing damn well the game is not anywhere close to that. Im not just referring to FF13, but to others as well.

So the reviewer didnt like the other one?? Ok, the man has a job to do, are people sure that they just didnt tell him to review it anyway. He said he liked the first 5 hours, but the rest of the game got boring. Unacceptable for a JRPG, the battle system did improve. But it still isnt anything I would call good. so that leave the narrative. Which still sounds like it sucks. Let me harp on the story a bit more, the general consensus is that it was lacking to say the least, but some reviewers throw 8s at it anyway. The battle system didnt improve that much, so that leads me to believe some dont value story that much in a JRPG, which i think is stupid. Call me old fashioned, but if im going to play your game for 40-60 hours, you better have good characters and a story that doesnt suck. I dont care how good the battle system is or how pretty the graphics are, if I dont care about the world im not going to play the game, and im thinking the reviewer feels similar

I agree with you on that seems like 13-2 is getting treated unfairly in general. 

I found the score consistent with the text and thus I am fine with the review. Also, I didn't liked much FFXIII and the review was helpful to what I should expect from XIII-2 if I ever try it (which is very unlikely at this point). If anything, I think some editorial overview could help the writing here and there but it is a minor problem.

The reception of XIII-2 is a much more interesting subject. Many review sites and magazines consider it somewhat better than its predecessor but, despite that, they are giving lower scores. If anything, it shows how susceptible is game journalism to hype and tradition as it is clear now that XIII was overrated by most reviewers.