You were only slightly more generous to it than I was. I give it a 2.1 for pretty much the same reasons you do, though I go more into detail concerning the subtle ticks and shitballs that is the combat system...almost all of which could have been remedied - or at least alleviated - by NOT making it so that if your main character died, you get a game over. Seriously, I do not understand, for the life of me, how a game with something like an 85 million dollar budget like this could spend years in development, have literally hundreds of people involved in its creation, and not one person thought, "hey, maybe this gameplay mechanic is shit, let's take 5 minutes and fix that!"

Seriously, If your partners have a Phoenix down, I like to think they're not retarded. if you absolutely MUST have full control of only one character, at least make the others know to use a fuckin phoenix down.

Runa you are giving them too much credit. Remember they made lames excuses for not having towns and NPCs due to cost and time constraints. Despite the fact that virtually every other JRPG from the generation had them and had a shorter dev cycle. What's worse is The Last Remnant had some damned interesting town designs and it was from the same damned company.

Final Fantasy XIII was a very disappointing game: lacklustre game play, whimpy annoying characters, weak story line and plot, too many CGI cut scenes that went on for a long time and extremely linear for a JRPG, no towns to explore.

FFXIII averaged 83% on metacritic but contained mixed reviews ranging from 40% to  a few 100% review scores. FFXIII probably only deserved a matacritic score of 70%: soft reviewers, 20+ year establish brand name saved it from getting marked down to the average review score it thoroughly deserved. Lower ranking JRPGs on metacritic in the 65 to 75 review range were better games but did not have the brand name to protect them from getting smashed in the review scores. Final Fantasy XIII did not deserve its sales success and FF fans were heavily didsappointed in a series that has seen better times. 

The action in FFXV looks very impressive, a huge improvement upon FFXIII. FFXV game play looked a lot like Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, God of War/hack n' slash. Final Fantasy XV has been converted into hack n' slash- confirmed. FFXV will hopefully bring new life to a series that has seen better days. 

i personally loved Final Fantasy 13 and liked xiii-2 even more.
I understand people have their opinions and everybody isnt going to like the same game. However i do think people get brainwashed and end up jumping on the bandwagon when the're constantly reading bad things about something, they end up believing its bad themselves and when they play it they are playing it with a criticism manner and are just looking at negative points no matter how small they are.

While you say the story was the worst part, this is the part of the review i disagree with most. Time and time again games are released with a story which has been done before over and over, developers just do it in their own style and with there own fictional characters and locations. FFXIII however, done something new and in my opinion very creative with the whole Fal.cie and L'cie thing.

IMO there one gripe i had with FF13 was the battle system, because in most fights you simply didnt have to really change tactics and you just press attack untill you eventually won, it was only the harder fights where you had to cjange paradigms to buff/debuff and heal during the fights in which i found fun but they didnt happen enough.

I'm not criticising your review as that's your opinion and you entitled to it, and no doubt the're are games out there that i dislike but you love. :)

Snow

Well XIV is supposedly pretty good now. And XV is directed by Nomura and co-drected by Tabata (Type-0) with no Toriyama in sight. 

"The Story in FF XIII was poor". I often hear that, but I almost always miss further arguments...

In my opinion FF XIII had a really great story and I find it was among the very best games of this generation. It was one of the few games that tried to take their story very serious, that tried to portray the emotions of Human seriously.

Why did I find the story great? It revolved around some very deep topics...

Free will vs. Determination:
The Fal'Cie are beings with godlike powers and they are much stronger than humans... but they do not have a free will. Humans, while they are weak and the Fal'Cie could possibly kill them at they will (like shown in the scene where they turn Humans in L'Cie without focus) they can't force Humans into killing the Fal'Cie.

One important aspect of the games story is thinking about how a "god" could trick a Human into killing him so that the world can be destroyed.

The power of propaganda:
Just in case that you didn't notice, a great source of inspiration of this game was the propaganda used by fascist regimes like in Germany. The Fal'Cie tried to inspite fears into the heart of the people. One of the strongest scenes was when you see Barthandelus grinning while the TV News reported that the people of Cocoon demanded that those why came near the Pulse objects are to be purged... It was not the regime wanting to kill those civilians who simply happened to be at the wrong place in the wrong time. The "normal people" wanted them to be purged... Just imagine a world where there is a strange object found in a house next to yours and the next day the whole country demands that you are to be executed because you unintentionally came close to that cursed object.

A Situation where there is no solution - a perfect plan:
The story writer came up with a story where there is no possible good ending. (It was the same thing with FF13-2, too). The L'Cie could either become a monster or turn into a crystal. Either way, the characters were doomed and they knew it. The changing mark was there just to show you that you have to hurry up because you are running out of time. The whole game delivered a feeling of hopelessness... at different times in the game you could see the characters almost despair because they simply did not know what to do because they couldn't see a solution....

They got the order do destroy their homeworld (except Fang and Vanille). That was a thing that they simply couldn't do. And the price for this decision was becoming a monster. That got them angry, but if they kill the Fal'Cie they would simply fulfill what the Fal'Cie wanted them to do. There simply was no way out... The Fal'Cie Barthandelus simply had the perfect plan from the start. He knew that eventually he would win.. either the L'Cie would become strong enough to kill him (he wins) or his Propaganda Plan worked so that a Civil War would start and the military would try to kill off the Fal'cie (he wins).

Sacrifice:
Vanille was somehow the most important character for the story. She simply decided that she would not destroy Cocoon and she accepted her fate of becoming a Monster. It was her Fate to become Ragnarok, but she refused (free will).


So, I can live with the phrase "I didn't like the storyline" but hearing "the story was poor" is a thing that I feel is so wrong. There is so much thought put into this game and it reaches a mature storytelling that you will not find in many games. Final Fantasy left the "Main Hero tries to save the world because he is simply a good guy and the main villain tries to destroy the world because he simply is plain evil" story scenario for much more mature and deeper storytelling. And thats why I FF is still the best RPG franchise out there for me. It deals with highly philosophical themes and tries to deliver a great story above all else.

I will not go into your "linearity" argument. I can understand your point of view, but I do not share it. I personally do not think that "exploration" is a main aspect of a JRPG. It is nice to have some hidden dungeons where you can find Ultimate Weapons/Summons/etc... But it is a bonus, just like a hidden Superboss is not a "must" for me. The main reason why I play JRPG is because they are the only games that put so much effort in their characters/Story.

So if I had to review this game, it would be one of the few real 10/10 games of this generation, among games like Uncharted, Assassin's Creed 2 or Heavy Rain.

You are spot on with this post. I was beyond frustrated when fighting the second form of the final boss when he would keep on instant killing my main character about half way through the battle. I did some research and found that I had to equip an item which increased my resistance to death. Mind you I never ran into an enemy with this ability in the prior 70 hours I spent on the game.

I would have been happy if we were at least given the choice to control all characters but I guess they wanted to push the action to the fore and the tradional jrpg elements to the background. Unfortunately they never really got the balance right IMHO.

On the plus side I loved the texture work on the characters and the music in this game was wonderful. Hopefully Square-Enix can redeem themselves with FF XV

:O

Okey ... !?!?!?!

That is the same for any FF game. You easily curn your way through fight after fight (until you run like a chicken from a Malboro) because they are for leveling up then every now and again, you have a boss fight. To test what skills you have learned. Standard formular. There were bigger problems with the battle system than that in FFXIII.

main problem of ff13 was the cocoon part. if it had been pulse only the hate would have never been so big.