FFXIII

oh..
OH!
HOLY SHIT

It's pretty hit or miss in my opinion. The First and second chapters are really shit in terms of story and gameplay. But it does pick up afterwards. I would say pick it up and play till chapter 6, if you don't like the game by then just drop it. But otherwise I would give the game a solid 8/10 and the follow up games would be FFxiii-2 8.5/10 and Lightning returns 6/10.

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HURTS MY HANDS

Did you ever play FFX? If so at any point did you say to yourself "This game is great with it being so linear and all but I really wish it limited my ability to explore EVEN MORE. I mean what's up with even being allowed to backtrack or level up when and how much I want to?"
If so, then FFXIII is the game for you.

depends on what you like in an RPG. its combat is decent enough, but the story, world, progression, and characters are all shit.

the linear part just makes it so theres no exploration, which is a big hallmark of final fantasy games. theres no exploring and finding towns or feeling of a grand adventure. you pretty much just feel like you walk down a hall of enemies to the next bossfight. then walk through a hall of just people to talk to… then rinse and repeat.

no moments of

instead, just walk in a straight line and fight anything in your path until the game ends.

The combat system is too fast for people who like it slow ans too slow for people who like it fast. The story keeps using flashbacks rather than showing all the INTRICATE BACKSTORY all at once, and the plot kind of goes hither and yon to no real effect including going down to Gran Pulse just to walk around a bit and then get sent right back into the robosphere. Only Sazh and Hope get any real emotional development, and Hope is an unlikable cunt who's summon trial comes long after it would have been character-relevant. The Crystarium is just a sphere grid but with less interaction and larger pay-offs, and the whole benefit of the sphere grid was smaller but more frequent gains, making leveling more analogue than digital and therefore slightly more useful since you're constantly getting stronger rather than struggling to hit the next level. Now, you can argue that people have their own preferences, and people are free to like or dislike the game on their own metric, and i can't really argue with that, but FF13 is a shitty Final Fantasy, if not a shitty game entirely.

And on a similar note, Breath of Fire 5 killed the series, and Suikoden Tierkreis wasn't that bad of a game; at least that had the decency to not call it Suikoden 6.

It's a decent game, but there there are better Final Fantasy games and the combat system radically different from classic FF games (something 12 and 15 are also guilty of).
Also a lot of people dislike lightning because she's a bit of a bitch to other characters, but most other characters are far worse.

I thought people liked lightning BECAUSE she was a bitch to the other characters that no one liked

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The reason people like her is the same reason people dislike her. Different people are different.

the game is allright but not a real final fantasy. The first 30 hours are straight forward hallways with no intersections. Then a place comes where you can do sidequests. Then the next few hours are again a hallway simulator to the final boss. I do not know if you can even go back to the place where you can do sidequests and explore things. There are also no shops in this game, no cities and no dungeons to explore. As I said, it is not a final fantasy game at all but the battle system is allright and it is kind of fun. Some bosses are tough.

The sequels are equally mediocre.

True, but it's more of a Final Fantasy than XV, which is arguably a spin-off.

Watch the cutscenes on youtube and play XIII-2 instead. No idea if lightning returns is good, only played the first hour or so of that one.

You can go back to it.

Fanboys crying is always the reason
Now fuck off

lightning returns is gud but nobody played it because the first one is a meme

The first 20-30 hours of XIII are a literal hallway with nothing to do other than to keep walking forward. No towns, no sidequests, not even some branching paths. It gets a bit better once you get to Chapter 11 and unlock the only open map in the game. I'd recommend skipping XIII and starting with XIII-2 (there is a XIII plot synopsis available on the main menu of XIII-2)
XIII-2 improves on some of XIII's faults. You can go in other directions than forward, change which character you control during combat and there's even some actual towns now. But the plot is a clusterfuck of time travel and despite there having being almost 30 levels, most of the levels are just previous levels during different years.
Lightning Returns: FF13 (which is a awful title) completely overhauls the gameplay and is actually fun. The game is fully open world now, with there being 4 or 5 regions that you can go to after finishing the first couple of missions. The combat gets the biggest changes; being some odd marriage of X-2's dress sphere's and XIII's paradigm system. The standard " kill shit to get xp to level up" is removed in favor of you getting stat increases by doing side quests (which there are many of). There's also a time system that you have to manage (you need to complete each region's main quest before the timer runs out) that some people don't care for. If you run out of time, you have to restart the game from the beginning, but you can keep whatever stats and gear you have earned up to that point. The time system isn't too bad once you know how to play around it; every main quest you finish gives extra time and there's a time freeze skill that can be easily spammed. Once you complete the game, you can do a new game plus run with harder fights.

All this being said, I'd recommend ignoring the plot as the writing is kind of bad. Also, it should be known that the pc ports of all 3 aren't the best.

I've not played it because I still have to force myself to finish XIII-2 beforehand.

Hallway meme aside (which is still a valid criticism) it's because you have to slog through 30 or so hours of a story that isn't engaging, characters that aren't likable, and passable combat that's rarely tries to be challenging.

Just play it user. Play it and you'll find yourself arriving at mostly the same conclusions as the rest of us.

It had one likeable character and that was the nigger

Sazh was the most sympathetic yeah.

I though sazh was meh(above and beyond the others) because he barely did anything. just had his son captured and not kill himself

I honestly thought hope was the "best" fleshed out character in FFXIII. He's hateable and not charismatic but any kid his age would be in that scenario. He is a rich kid who just watch his idiot mother run into a battle led by a bigger retard only to watch them both get killed. When he learns the bigger retard is still alive he goes after him which is pretty ballsy after just witnessing a massacre for the first time. Then snow fucks his life up even more by making him a l'cie, so he can guarantee never return to the life he once had. He waits for his chance to strike and not lash out and kill snow at that instance, which is a lot more than a lot of adult or 14/12 year olds would do. He "learns" from lighting to grab a knife and to stab the fucker; and he does get his big chance to kill snow (but an explosion and the power of forgiveness bullshit or something happens afterwards). In the beginning he seems to be one of the only characters who really keeps pushing on the "fuck snow" train, like a lot more party members and other world NPCs should have, even more than lighting I think. Says a lot about his drive to kill someone even when they are destined to work together to accomplish a goal or some shit. He also starts getting a gun-ho attitude in the face of adversity towards the end and doesn't have a "my parents are dead" batman complex that he could have abused for the whole story. For some 12 year old little shit he had managed to accomplish a lot of shit and had the biggest character arc as well.

now fuck both of you for making me talk about FFXIII in a positive light

Hey, you leave Ann Reardon out of this

I thought the game was fine.

Shoulda been a new IP instead though, woulda solved almost all the problems with its reception if people had no expectations.