Current Events > 13 years later, what's your opinion on Final Fantasy 13? *possible spoilers*

(+) Yeah! (+)

I'm willing to admit for all its various flaws, I do like 13. It's not one of my favorites, but honestly I'm such an easily-pleased RPG fan that even a "bad" Final Fantasy game is still a good game. (except for some spinoffs like the completely unnecessary FF4 The After Years)

Lightning is a boring protagonist but the rest of the cast is pretty good; Sazh is a favorite of mine, and I can even say I really like Hope and get his character arc. He's a 14-year-old kid who just watched his mother die in front of him and circumstances force him into traveling alongside the man who he (completely understandably) views as responsible for her death, without being given so much as five minutes to process things before the entire world is hunting him down. Pretty much anybody in that exact situation would go at least a little crazy.

Also I remember Hope as being one of the best party members to use in combat for his healing and support abilities, which always scores a character points in my eyes.

I do really wish that you didn't have to consult the in-game Wiki to understand so much of the lore, that the plot wasn't so confusing, and that you could explore the environments more, because goddamn they're really nice. A little bit of downtime that allowed the party to interact with the world around them a bit would have done wonders for immersing the player in the world of Cocoon.

The battle system is fine but I personally would have preferred the option to control all three members during combat.

I never played any of the sequel games and kind of stopped playing towards the end (a bad habit of mine) but if it gets a Switch port or something I'd definitely replay it. It's honestly kind of weird that Square-Enix never really did port it to anything but PC considering how much they like to push it in spinoff games and other media.

Nice soundtrack, mostly terrible party, fun battle system that's held back by not having any freedom until the game is almost done(also XIII-2 doing it better), and hallways/10.

A mediocre game but not a terrible game that it was made out to be by many.

battle system was neat and the presentation was great from graphics to music. Story was convoluted as fuck though and the pacing was weak and there wasn't much to do beyond the battle system and fucking with the crystallis or whatever it was called.

Characters were...eh? fang and Sazh were cool, Snow was...okay I guess. vanille and Hope could be dumb. Lightning was one of the main protagonists of all time. Didn't like her or hate her much either way.

The production value is the best part: visuals, music, etc.
The battle system is fine, but too reliant on staggering.
Everything else? Oh boy. Oh dear, even.
Did anyone even try upgrading weapons and equipment? You need to reference a damn spreadsheet to not waste anything.

I was one of the lunatics ranting and raving on its dedicated board here when it released. I absolutely despised it and it shat on my soul. A year later I was just kinda "meh" about it and realized the franchise wasn't really for me anymore.

I've tried to replay it multiple times and always have the exact same experience. The first couple of chapters I find myself wondering why I hated it so much and then I start to dislike it again. I can't pinpoint an exact reason or moment, but it happens each and every time. I do know there's no character in the entirety of gaming that I hate as much as Snow. Fuck him.

I think the first game is good, second game is ok, and the third game is mediocre. When talking about the first game specifically, I enjoyed it for what it was. I never go into any game with high expectations, so it ended up being an enjoyable experience.

Of the more modern Final Fantasy games, I enjoyed the characters in XIII more than X, XII, or XV. The music is really great especially once you get to Oerba.

It's god awful. The story is nonsensical and the gameplay loop is one of the most inane things I've ever experienced and it does not in any way support a game the length of this. I actually like the combat, but doing only combat and walking forward for 40 or however many hours it was is just insane. The encounters don't even change dramatically. The gameplay has content for maybe 10 hours of enjoyment as is. Everything was just horribly botched. Even something like weapon upgrades is just unimaginably poorly done. It's not even that the game is linear, it's that the usual strengths of a linear experience aren't present here, and usually a linear game doesn't go out of it's way to explicitly inform you of its own linearity every single second you're playing it.

good, not great, wildly over hated

mid to bad

OudeGeuze posted...

good, not great, wildly over hated

This

Great music, looks and combat though

Not really bad, but I hated it. The hallway gameplay was too undeniable, the main villain sucks, didn't remember ever switching weapons and using items, and Vanille.

I thought FF13 was great. One of my favorite games on the 360. I played the hell out of it back then and was on the answers section frequently enough to earn the title of expert (my only expert game)

I trusted Square, and this betrayal combined with my Aspergers is just making me lose all hope.

I can pretty much track my childhood and growth to adulthood alongside the release of Final Fantasy games. It's funny how my maturation ended up paralleling that of the series itself. I guess I'm just blessed that by concidence my birth happened at the exact time to make something like this even possible.

Wide eyed and excited,brash and sure of righteousness and good in the world, I felt drawn to FF4 (2 US) on the SNES like no game I had ever been drawn to before. A few years later I was a little more vulnerable, understanding my need for friendships and trust, and FF6 (3 US) was there as well, Terra and I were going through the same experiences in our lives.

I purchased a Playstation just because of FFVII, and I was rewarded for my trust with only the greatest game to ever grace a console. Bold, deep, mature, it was everything I was craving. The loss of Aerith paralleled a deep personal loss I had experienced just prior IRL, and just like with FF6, I felt like the game and I sort of got through the tough periods together.

This continued with FF8, and FF9 was just what I was looking for at the time, an joyfull reminder of youth and things past, a sense that it was okay to recapture it and revel in it, even if its time was past.

Once again I picked up a PS2 just for FF games. I would talk about how FFX mirrored my brash entry into a more adult world and relations with the opposite sex, and X-2 led to my understanding and acceptance of that other sex as a full time part in my life, but I just dont have the heart. My soul is crushed. I can't even think about talking about FF12 right now I just can't.

I brought a PS3 for FFXIII and not much else. I put my trust in Square, in Sony, in myself. That trust has been broken. I really don't know what I am feeling right now but it is unfamiliar. I'm angry, but it is more than that. Part of the FF series was making that total commitment to the console, and being rewarded for that commitment with a barrage of emotions, feelings, and sensations that only a game carefully crafted in a symbiotic relationship with a single console could provide. Now that Square-Enix has violated my trust, and this bond, it's not going to be the same this time.

I hate to say it but it looks like I am going to have to forge a life of my own now. without Final Fantasy guiding me along. But right not all I feel like I can do is cry.

Gonna assume copypasta for the sake of us all

I'll admit, I didn't give it a fair chance.

after an hour or two, I dropped the game.

I had heard previously that the map would open up later on, but I didn't care for the writing or characters, and the gameplay wasn't for me.

so even though I should have given it some more time, I don't think my opinion would have changed.

shit

TMOG posted...

I can even say I really like Hope and get his character arc. He's a 14-year-old kid who just watched his mother die in front of him and circumstances force him into traveling alongside the man who he (completely understandably) views as responsible for her death, without being given so much as five minutes to process things before the entire world is hunting him down. Pretty much anybody in that exact situation would go at least a little crazy.

THANK YOU

Fucking stupid that you can only control the party leader and if they die, instant game over.

gmanthebest posted...

Fucking stupid that you can only control the party leader and if they die, instant game over.

You can restart battles so it's really not a big deal.

Decent, 7/10. My favourite of the trilogy (XIII-2 had slightly better gameplay but the plot was even more crazy).

Best things are the graphics and soundtrack.

ApherosyLove posted...

THANK YOU

np

It just slightly scratches the FF itch. Practically no end game content. Ultimate weapons which are obtained through the same tedious way of beating a certain monster over and over, non sensical story and under utilized cool character like Jill and Yagh are its biggest problems for me. Also the summons are not worth it at all. The battle system was decent enough.

It all comes down to the story and end game content for me.

Not good.

don't care; never played

Good game overall

I think I played like 2-4 hours of it, and never touched it again.

I didn't like it when I tried to play it. Set it down and never went back to it.

I remember enjoying it at the time but I kinda wonder how I'd feel about it now, I've played so many games with huge open worlds since then and FF13 was like the complete polar opposite of those.

As someone who followed the game's development since 2006, I was prepared for the game's curveball as an RPG as the developer repeatedly said they were trying to change what an RPG was. It also helped me prepare for the lack of exposition XIII had as I knew the background going in. So I see it as an experiment that outside of the battle system (which was nerfed most of the way) didn't work.

Played it when it came out, hated it, played it again a decade later, still hated it.

The voice acting is bad in general but Vanille and Hope in particular are horrid, half the story was buried in walls of text that I couldn't be arsed to read and for the first time I didn't give a fuck about the story in a FF game, it takes like 15+ hours to be able to actually modify your characters, even more of a corridor sim than X, music that didn't fit at all even if good... just a terrible game.

A bad game with a bad story featuring bad characters. One of the most emblematic examples of JRPGs in that era declining as they tried and failed to "modernize"

OudeGeuze posted...

good, not great, wildly over hated

^

Bad game. Hated most of the playable characters. Especially Hope!

It was decent, along with the characters and gameplay. But the world and story were a mess. Which made the maps feel small and linearity alot more noticeable compared to 10s.

Which is a shame because the world and esthetics were amazing. And the lore/story had potential if it didn't have so much dumb jargon. The lack of a Tidus like character for a excuse to explain crap didn't help either.

And worse still is that even though it had two sequels to expand upon the above for some reason they soft rebooted everything, twice.

I thought it was a beautiful-looking game but I hate hate hate the battle system, the constant hallways, and the characters for most of the game. A lot of issues could be resolved if they just talked their shit out instead of holding it in. Lightning needed to remove the stick from her ass way early in the game.

- It's a good game, but maybe on the weaker side of FF games
- It needs a Trilogy re-release with QoL badly
- anyone who thinks 15 is better than 13 is suspect

I've played it 3 times, I like it more each replay. Most recently was last spring. I didn't really care for it much at all my first play through, just enough to beat it.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/2/4/AAHS2BAAEQvE.jpg
This is a design that was given much thought and they probably wanted her to be a big deal antagonist. Yet she just dies half way through the game in the most anti climatic way possible and before we knew ANYTHTHING about her. She would probably still be in 3d porn videos had they giver her any characterization at all.

Breathtakingly beautiful game. Even to this day the graphics are amazing. I enjoyed the battle system.