I’m venturing into dangerous internet territory by saying this, but Final Fantasy XIII is a really good game, and it only misses out on beating the greatest of the great by trying to be the coolest guy on the block. Spoilers might be ahead!
Actually, it’s roughly 1/2 of the game that’s my favorite. It’s the half where the characters aren’t talking, where the player isn’t concerned about the Sky Pope. It’s the half where Hope and Snow don’t even exist unless you want them to. It takes a long time to get there, though. After 20 hours of nonsense and mostly horrible dialogue, the game stops talking and finally shows its strengths to the player: the world and its inhabitants.
Enormous bizarre gods walk, roll, and swim throughout the world of Gran Pulse, endlessly creating tunnels through the earth, consuming creatures and spit out new stronger ones, and sometimes just doing things that aren’t fully explained. Huge and tiny creatures now roam a world once populated by humans. The only thing left is the crumbling remains of civilization, and the husks of monsters that were once human themselves.Unfortunately, it kind of gets lost beyond trench coats and guns unless you dig around and explore.
While i applaud the concept creation, it’s hard to tell what’s going on exactly when you’re being bombarded with “Fal’cie” and “L’cie”. It’s only worse when you try to follow the plot. The villains’ and the heroes’ motivations are confusing. It’s easy to tell what end the individual characters are working for (saving loved ones), but when the final boss finally explains it all, it’s really effing stupid.
The most enjoyable way of playing the game is to stop giving a shit. If the Sky Pope says something more complicated than “YOU ARE GOING TO DIE NOW!”, ignore it. Your job is to kill the biggest, craziest looking thing at the end of the game. When the characters say something like “Moms are tough!”, just embrace it. Its okay. It’ll be funny later.Another weak point was the 1/3rd of the characters with the letter “o” in their names. Snow and Hope were awful. Any time they said ANYTHING, i wanted to just skip the entire cutscene. Lightning was great either, but she redeemed every one of her completely unnecessary statements by punching Snow in the face.
The other half of the characters were great! I loved Sazh in particular, and would put him in my party of Best Final Fantasy Characters, along with Golbez and Fran. A lot of people seem to view his characterization as racist, but he’s really no goofier than any of the other characters. Instead, he has a real relatable goal. He’s the only character that you get the sense that he’s just a guy that got caught up in this mess. The chocobo chick in his hair might’ve been a bit much, though.
Vanille and Fang were pretty great too, with an intriguing backstory, and unlike everyone else (save Sazh), they had something to say that wasn’t stupid. Sadly, Vanille was just a little oversexualized. She says she’s 519 years old, but i still think she’s the trap on “To Catch a Creeper”. Those battle sighs, moans, and that final Eidolon strike that can only be described as “Orgasm” isn’t what you want to be going around your mother. or any other member of the human race.Nearly every jrpg has a turn-based battle system, and eeeeveryone usually groans when they’re pulled into a jrpg battle. The good news is that the battle system in FFXIII is fresh and fun to play. The battles play out like puzzles, where the player has to figure out what stuns the bad guys and how to not get killed before they do. You’ll have to plan ahead and get used to quickly switch through menus in the always active battles.
Everything in this game has a good side and a bad side: Gran Pulse (GREAT!) and Cocoon (errr…), Fang (AWESOME) and Hope (GOD SHUT UP). The weakness of the battle system is that often you’ll come up against several strong enemies in a row and you’ll have to spend way to long going through the exact same motions to beat several of them in a row.
Gran Pulse is really cool, because it lets you fight whatever you want, even if it’s going to kill you, but to get there, you have to fight all those flying motorcycles and hedgehogs.Embarrassing dialogue from worthless characters and stupidly boring areas with monotonous battles aside, this is the best Final Fantasy. Sadly, you can’t take those things out of the game, so it’s somewhere a little higher than the middle.
Oh wow I agree with ALL of this, right down to Sazh being the best character out of the bunch.
The overall story in FFXIII is pretty ridiculous, but Chapter 8 is one of the most moving sequences in any FF game and makes up for the decidedly overblown main plot.
