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[dingoreviews]

Final Fantasy XIII Review

I feel like since this is my first(tm) review I should do some explaining on how this will work. But at the same time everyone and their mom posts reviews for things nowadays so I'm sure you get the picture. Feel free to skip all this and go to the end where I sum it up in one sentence. Don't worry. I won't mind.

...Still there? Neat. Unfortunately for you, you've probably made the worse of the two choices.

As a disclaimer, this rant is purely my opinion and completely subjective. No one is paying me to do this. If you dislike what I'm saying, leave an ask and I will sip my iced tea and laugh about it as I read it dramatically to my friends and loved ones. Anyway, let's continue with me shitting on ranting about the FFXIII series in detail. Potential spoilers, but these games are hella old so if you spoil yourself you can just eat a pint of ice cream and cry about it.

I like to consider myself a Square Enix/Final Fantasy fan. I tend to follow their actions and look forward to their games. Some of my favorite games are made by Square (Kingdom Hearts, Tomb Raider (the reboots) and FFX to name a few). That said, there’s a good chance I’m pretty biased in their favor.

But some of their most recent games have been kinda shaky for me, particularly FFXIII and XV. I’ll save FFXV for another time though.

So FFXIII (or 13 for the casuals) stars your typical cast of generic and angsty characters who, in classic JRPG fashion, have to kill god(tm) with the power of friendship and morals. It's got your pretty generic plot where the entire world/government is conspiring against you and your ragtag group has gotta stab everything between point A and point B. Did that sound like a criticism? I mean as cliche as that all is at that point it's basically Square's bread and butter for FF games so I'm not really worried about all that.

I mean, this is typically the part of the review where you go over the plot of the games right? Well maybe I would if I actually knew what it was. That brings me to my first rant point:

Where's the Damn Story?

There's been a trend in games lately where the devs leave little footnotes and data entries littered about that give you background and fully explain the lore of the world you're in. A lot of the time, that's typically reserved for less important information, like the time sheets for the town's police force or the color of their president's undergarments. You know, things that might be nice to know for people who are really into it, but not necessary to understand what is going on. FFXIII also decided to use this method of storytelling...

While on your epic hallway adventure, FFXIII gives you data entries about background and things when relevant. I, for one, made the assumption that, like many other games, I could save those until later as it wasn't necessary for understanding what was going on right now. BOY WAS I WRONG. Throughout the majority of the game the characters go on and on as if you're already well versed in their world. L'cie? Fal'cie? I mean if you're gonna make up words at least define them for me extremely clearly within the plot and storytelling itself.

Literally everything I understand about the plot of the first XIII game came from reading a wiki after the fact. And that says a lot considering I barely understand it even now. It really shows a failure on XIII's part to actually write a plot in a way that would be clear to anyone who played. Throwing data entries at me as a requirement for understanding the plot is EXTREMELY LAZY in my opinion.

Then there's the characters. Honestly, I didn't like any of them. I mean, I liked Fang and Vanilla (that was intentional) mostly, but they still felt kind of underwhelming. The characters had a lot of potential too. I feel like Lightning had genuine motives behind her actions, but she was as expressive as a spiky haired potato. I mean, at least her design wasn't overly emphasizing her tits and ass. I'm going to pretend that Lightning Returns doesn't exist yet because don't get me fucking started.

Then you get Snow who's just like look at me I'm the dumbass who believes I can save everyone herp. And Hope isn't any better with his momma's boy ass whining all the time. I guess there are character arcs but they only really happen by the weird plot point of hey if you don't fucking grow a pair this giant robot is gonna bury your ass so I'm not sure how much that counts.

Hallways for Days

I had already alluded to this, but the game is extremely linear.

Let me put that in perspective. I love FFX. For those of you that have played X, it is also extremely linear. But despite this, the game opens up in different ways that allow for side tracking and bonus stuff. It's not a whole ton until you get to the end, but it's something I don't mind about the game because there's so much more to it.

Meanwhile, FFXIII is so damn narrow that you could throw a hot dog down one of the hallways and it would get caught between the walls. They have all these lush, beautiful environments that you can only admire from a distance as the hallways the force you in make a sharp left turn away from it all. And then to top it off all those locations are one and done. You cannot go back to a majority of the game environments after completing them. Unless, of course, you restart the game. But why on earth would anyone subject themselves to another 30 hours of hallways anyway?

By the time the game opens up for you to roam and stretch your legs, you're basically in the final chapter. It's a question of "Do I fight the final boss or just grind until I die?" The game opens up so far in and so suddenly that, and this is no joke, when my boyfriend was playing the game he had such a shock from his comfortable, narrow hallways he got too overwhelmed to continue the game. That's a bad way to get introduced to the series, considering that was his first ever FF game.

Press X to Shaun Combat

Now my biggest gripe with XIII is the combat system. I saw combat system, but it’s more like a frustration magnet. So much of it feels less like a tactical system you have to actually control and think about and more like… pressing X until you win or die.

For those of you less familiar with the combat, your team takes actions by filling a turn bar with various commands based on their combat roles (or paradigms). Once they perform all their allotted tasks they then wait for the bar to refill again before taking more actions. This also applies to all of the enemies in the game.

Now, you’re probably saying Well if everyone is taking turns simultaneously based on any number of different timings then the battles must be pretty chaotic and fast paced. Yes, random citizen of the internet, they can be. Or, you know, you can press the Auto Battle option which the action cursor defaults to every time your characters have turns and it usually does the most optimal thing for that character based on their current paradigm.

That means we don’t have to think about anything at all! Let the game do it for us! Amazing! Everything I wanted in a movie video game! FFXIII successfully managed to take a combat system that is normally designed to create situations where players have to think strategically and remove almost all the thinking.

Honestly, that’s not what caused me agonizing frustration while playing the game. What destroyed my will to live most was the various area of effect (AoE) abilities that the characters and, more importantly, the enemies have. The most control you have for your characters’ positions is based entirely on their roles/ abilities used. Nothing stops your characters’ AIs from simply standing next to each other in a big pile. They might as well hold up a big sign that says Hit us with all your AoEs at once! I swear, if I had a dollar for every time my healer character walked right next to my tank character, who was pulling all the enemy aggro and died because they got hit by all the AoE, I’d have enough money to ship a package to Square Enix Japan with a video clip of Hope running directly into an attack directed at another character and a card with a big Why? written inside.

Conclusion

Yeah, you can probably tell that I wouldn’t recommend this game to anyone. I mean it’s pretty, the music is solid, and the internet believes that Lightning has great armpits. (As a gay man I have no comment on this.) But I just don’t think it’s very fun. Despite this, I did manage to finish the game and put a lot of time into some of the side quests. But in general, not a great game.

TL;DR

Battle is boring, plot is thrown at you unexplained, and it probably should have been a 48 hour movie. But hey, it’s pretty.