Comparing opinions on Final Fantasy XIII between newcomers and existing fans

[deathsaber]

I don't hate it like others. Yes it had problems (the extreme linearity of much of the length), but to its credit, it feels like Final Fantasy, which I can't say for 12 or 15. Neither the tone or gameplay of 12 are Final Fantasy to me, and 15 is a complete abomination of a product, so 13 in hindsight looks pretty good to me now. Don't get me started on the supposed sequels though (they are bad fanfic that try to retcon 13, a full and complete story, to justify their existence and don't exist to me).

 

[TheXbox]

I played X previously so wasn't a complete noob. I thought XIII was fine, but it took me years to finish. The writing is insipid but at least the combat is fun. If I'm being completely honest, the presentation is the game's saving grace. It looks and sounds amazing, even today. It definitely kept me going through some of the more tedious hallway grinds.

 

[Aly]

I like 13-2 the most out of the trilogy. My biggest problem with the 13, in general, is that I don't like most of the characters.

 

[ghostemoji]

I was a series regular and not a fan. XII is my favorite overall game in the series and I really enjoy XV despite it's huge flaws, so I'm not adverse to anything that doesn't cling to a particular formula.

XIII just takes too long to get going, and what is there wasn't interesting enough to keep me engaged. I dropped it after about 5-6 hours.

 

[HammerOfThor]

I couldn't get into XIII. May have just been a timing thing back in the day.

I LOVED XIII-2. I played the fuck out of it.

 

[Kromeo]

it feels like Final Fantasy, which I can't say for 12 . Neither the tone or gameplay of 12 are Final Fantasy to me,

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You just summoned Dreamboum to the thread

 

[TheJollyCorner]

I liked it.
Liked the world, liked the lore, liked the cast. Music was incredible. Graphics (at the time) were stunning.

I've been a fan of the series since I was reluctantly pushed into watching my cousins play FF2 (IV) in 1991.
Since release I felt like the hate for the game was overblown.
Does it have its problems? Absolutely. The incredible world is wasted by the linearity and most of the lore is hidden away in data logs, as there are really no information hubs like active towns. The battle system is very thoughtful, but I've always hated the "MC goes down in a party system and it's game over" design.

That said, I still think it's a very enjoyable, imaginative JRPG. As a new IP, I think it would have been regarded differently (more positively). As a FF, it's understandable how it was a letdown by many. Especially with its potential.

It's still an 8/10 for me. It would be in the back-half of my FF rankings, but to this day there hasn't been a mainline FF game that I hated.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

Played it after hearing how bad it was and going in with an open mind. Had fun the first few hours until levels or hallways (as people call them) got longer, the enemies started getting annoying to fight because how long it took to stagger them, leveling up was limited and linear. You only had two party members most of them game up until the last third, but you couldn't experiment with party members until the very end. Getting new weapons was pointless because you end up leveling up the first one you get (Granted it barely felt any more powerful than it did before). The story was a mess which had players looking at its datalogs aka in game wikipedia to understand what was going on and even then the story was boring compared tot the lore it was trying to set up. The dialogue was Elementary school tier and the voice perfomances were over dramatic which made it laughable and annoying to listen to.

By the time I was at Gran Pulse which to some people would say, the best part of the game, I've already had enough. Aside from some monster hunts, it was just dull, it then railroads to linear progression near the end where you fight the dumb final boss (Boss baby + Ferris Wheel?) and then the Deus Ex machina ending happens.

I hated it, I only forced myself to complete it because I wanted to see if there were any redeeming points other than its presentation.

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Yeah. "Wait for Gran Pulse, it gets good!" is such nonsense. Literally all there is to do there is walk around and do monster hunts. No compelling side content, no interesting places to explore, it just takes the first half of the game and blows its pacing to hell.

 

[Deleted member 81119]

Yeah. "Wait for Gran Pulse, it gets good!" is such nonsense. Literally all there is to do there is walk around and do monster hunts. No compelling side content, no interesting places to explore, it just takes the first half of the game and blows its pacing to hell.

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I disagree with this. There are some nice places to discover in Gran Pulse that are totally optional. Yes it's just battle content which is kind of a drag after 40 hours of battle content, but it's good quality battling. Compared to the Calm Lands (which was the standard back then) it's great. It'd be nice to have more varied side content in Gran Pulse, but it's not bad. It's definitely one of the strongest parts of the game.

 

[Agni Kai]

Looking back, I disliked the story, the characters and the combat system. I remember I ended up cheating using CheatEngine to max my crystarium points so I could just finish it fast.
I watched a video a couple of weeks ago on the lore of the FF13 trilogy and it sort of changed my perspective on it. I'm willing to give it another try, so I'm going to play through FF13 one more time. I also bought XIII-2 on Steam yesterday!

 

[Yuntu]

Played almost all entries, 13 is one of my favs.

 

[Raidou]

Finished every main game in the series and it's one of my favorites. XIII-2 is also great.

 

[Cassius Bright]

It had amazing graphics (and they still hold up very well, even now) and the battle system was excellent.

On the other hand, the game was far too linear, the characters weren't particularly memorable (with a few exceptions like Sazh) and the story was complete nonsense.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 was excellent though and the only unambiguously brilliant FF game released in the last 20 years.

 

[Thordinson]

Series regular, loved the trilogy.

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Same here.

 

[Slaythe]

I've only played the first game back when it launched. Wasn't too into it, but I did beat it.

Now i'm just about done with my second play though of FF7R with the DLC and I'm thinking about replying 13 and the two sequels.

Do you guys think it's worth revisiting if I didn't car for it back when it came out? (I loved 7 Remake if that has anything correlation)

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13 is a non stop corridor where you kill things over and over, with overly dramatic cutsccenes in between and horrendous exposition and required lore into text dumps.

So your tolerance towards the game design will decide if it's worth it or not. I don't think the story is good.

13-2 is really solid, one of the best HD Final Fantasy for sure, it has fun side content, is a linear game done right where you still have some agency over the progression, the story is pretty interesting and deals with time travel.

Lightning Returns is a very low budget game, that could have been okay, unfortunately it's really messy and broken as is, and also kind of ruined FF13-2, but it's playable, there's some cool stuff. The story is not good but the value as a video game is much higher than 13 I think. 13 was a lot more polished tho.

 

[GoatLink]

For me it was Corridor Simulator XIII, but that's coming from Open World XII and other games in the series.

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This. Felt more like X(even though I finished it I'm not that fan)....Coming from XII it was really a disappointment. Though I don't know if the game gets better because I stopped after 3 hours.

 

[Semfry]

I've played almost every mainline game in the series now and I easily put FF13 somewhere close to the bottom. If you count the sequels I am a fan of the trilogy as a whole because I like both 13-2 and LR, but it seems this thread is just talking about the original.

 

[Cruxist]

I thought the plot was nonsense and the pacing was really off. It took far too long to open up the combat to its full potential, which is a shame because once it's all unlocked it isn't bad.

But really, the plot stuff killed it for me. I just had zero interest in the characters.

 

[Demon Lizardman]

I disagree with this. There are some nice places to discover in Gran Pulse that are totally optional. Yes it's just battle content which is kind of a drag after 40 hours of battle content, but it's good quality battling. Compared to the Calm Lands (which was the standard back then) it's great. It'd be nice to have more varied side content in Gran Pulse, but it's not bad. It's definitely one of the strongest parts of the game.

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Here's the difference, the Sphere Grid in FFX was pretty open, the Calm Lands was a great place to level your characters up. FF13 was like, fuck this freedom and made investing in other classes for your characters expensive, so you end up spending your CP in the ones you were investing since the beginning. You can access all your characters at this point, but building them is extremely linear compared to FFX. Also, IMO, staggering multiple enemies is boring compared to the Rock Paper scissors mechanics in FFX.

 

[Deleted member 81119]

13 is a non stop corridor where you kill things over and over, with overly dramatic cutsccenes in between and horrendous exposition and required lore into text dumps.

So your tolerance towards the game design will decide if it's worth it or not. I don't think the story is good.

13-2 is really solid, one of the best HD Final Fantasy for sure, it has fun side content, is a linear game done right where you still have some agency over the progression, the story is pretty interesting and deals with time travel.

Lightning Returns is a very low budget game, that could have been okay, unfortunately it's really messy and broken as is, and also kind of ruined FF13-2, but it's playable, there's some cool stuff. The story is not good but the value as a video game is much higher than 13 I think. 13 was a lot more polished tho.

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Yeah I must admit that I wince when people call Lightning Returns a mainline FF because it's just not got the budget of a mainline FF, and they clearly used the branding of the game to distance it from the series.

XIII-2 is amazing, XIII could be amazing with improvements, LR is just a fun low budget sequel game.

 

[StraySheep]

XIII-2 is amazing, XIII could be amazing with improvements, LR is just a fun low budget sequel game.

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I think I agree with this assessment of the trilogy.

 

[Strings]

I think the first mainline one I played was IX. Anyway, I hated XIII - it's the worst mainline game. XIII-2 is much better.

Like, I hate the cast (Hope especially), find the battle system, cutscenes and soundtrack pretty snoozeworthy, etc. Good looking though.

 

[StraySheep]

I've played almost every mainline game in the series now and I easily put FF13 somewhere close to the bottom. If you count the sequels I am a fan of the trilogy as a whole because I like both 13-2 and LR, but it seems this thread is just talking about the original.

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The poll is just for the original. But everything is fair game for the discussion!

 

[Deleted member 81119]

Really happy XIII-2 is getting the love it deserves after going under the radar for years. It and X-2 are fantastic.

 

[Cryoteck]

I love FF and I really liked FF13. The music, graphics and battle system were all amazing to me.

Sure it was linear but that's what I like about JRPGs, you have a story and they lead you through it, why have branching paths when in the end you get to the same place. They could have added some towns and side quests though.

Still can't wait to play it again on Gamepass.

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FFX also had a linear structure and it's one of my favs but XIII just didn't click for me. I think it was more that it felt like there was 0 interactivity with the world and NPCs which made it feel like a step backwards.

 

[Deleted member 61531]

FF games always get shit from the fanbase for changing too much, and that's probably part of the problem with XIII.

But no other RPG since XIII has thought streamlining out exploration, NPCs or player choice was a good idea, so it's not just that.

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This a really reasonable take. The change might've just been too much all at once.

I love FFXIII. It might even be my favorite in the series.

 

[Elandyll]

Not exactly a "series regular", but having played 6, 7, tactics and 8 before it, it wasn't my first either.
Hated it.
Corridor runs literally put me to sleep multiple times, and the Fal' Cie-whatever nonsense language / encyclopedic made up terms was just so bad.

 

[Slaythe]

Remember how 13-2 gave us bad ass time travelling adult Hope

Then LR took it away from us

 

[Sanctuary]

Series fan, although I don't consider FFVII to even be in the top three, and FFXIII was just about everything wrong with modern gaming.

It was the first and as of now only Final Fantasy I've played. Didn't finish it because I didn't like it

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That's unfortunate. You were introduced on a low note.

 

[CloseTalker]

I really didn't enjoy it at launch, but I've warmed to it quite a bit since. Still not my favorite, but I can see the merit to it in a way I didn't at release. I think the sequels are pretty solid too.

I think a lot of my ire at the time wasn't even due to the quality of the game, it was just me being annoyed that Square spent almost an entire generation on this one universe because they invested so much into it. That, coupled with the fact that XIII wasn't a home run at launch, made me really bitter.

 

[Mechaplum]

Very subjective, but personally hated the paradigm system.

 

[Era of not Yakuza]

Because of 13 I never played FF again, it was the game that made me realize that the series wasn't for me anymore.

 

[Darkmaigle]

The game just takes way too long to ramp up. By the time you are fully in control of the battle system most players are ready to move on.

but once you are man does it become fun

 

[Orion]

Remember how 13-2 gave us bad ass time travelling adult Hope

Then LR took it away from us

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Honestly the biggest crime of the trilogy.

He really should've been the 3rd party member in XIII-2.

 

[Qwark]

I thought it was received overly harshly. I liked my time with it, but I do like linear games to begin with. I quite enjoyed the battle system and exploring Pulse. I did not like being throttled by the plot progression and some of the characters were annoying (Hope). It's not in my top 5 FF games, but I still thought it was a good game.

 

[Weiss]

There's a level where I believe that the late 00s "Japanese games suck and RPGs are outdated and stupid" viewpoints so prevalent around the time would mean that FFXIII would get a lot of hate regardless, but maybe it would have gotten less if it weren't so damn awful.

 

[StraySheep]

Because of 13 I never played FF again, it was the game that made me realize that the series wasn't for me anymore.

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I think it's impossible to make judgment calls on the whole series when they tend to be so different from each other. If someone said they hate the gameplay of Final Fantasy after playing XII you would laugh at them.

VII Remake is amazing

 

[Crossing Eden]

Wasn't a huge fan of FF as I had only played VII during childhood. But all the trailers were hype AF, at least for the standards of a teenager:



So I bought the game day one. Was in hindsight really hype but the disappointment set in once I realized that I wasn't super interested in anything but the visuals.


On a side note. It's kinda funny how Square hasn't changed their marketing strategy for over a decade lmao. You get disconnected bits of gameplay followed by entirely disconnected glimpses at narrative moments of the game overlaid by the main theme without context.

I enjoyed it, but then I got stuck at this boss:

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Had to restart the game because of this motherfucker. And STILL got stuck and had to retry it multiple times.

 

[LinguisticGoblin]

But no other RPG since XIII has thought streamlining out exploration, NPCs or player choice was a good idea, so it's not just that.

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I mean FFX thought streamlining out exploration would be a good idea and it got away with it relatively scott free. When you look at how the two are structured I think the issue was more on the storytelling (minimal NPCs, broken up party, over-reliance on flashbacks, and no central narrative thread pulling everything forward till a dozen plus hours in) and the fact there was nothing to break up the lengthy corridoors besides cutscenes.

You can get away with making an extremely linear RPG so long as the story grasps people or you at least make the journey have setpieces or other points of interest to spice it up and give the player a breather - like how FFX had towns, inns, and temples along the way mixed with stuff like Blitzball. Lots of people bounced off the cast and plot of XIII and then their only breather inbetween combat encounters and looking at the scenery they ran through was...cutscenes of the cast and plot.

 

[Deleted member 81119]

I always go on about the improvements I'd like to see in XIII for a remaster but I'm gonna go for it again anyway:

Battle system
-Bring back Wait mode as an option. I want time to slow down VII Remake style when I'm in the commands select window, so I can take my time and choose when I'm not just using Auto-Battle.
-Obvious stuff like changing party leaders
-Give each character more of a specific defined role like XII: TZA, and then make it so I can switch in any character by Paradigm.

Sidequesting
-Give me a mini game like Blitzball, Triple Triad or Fort Condor that I can pick up and play at any save point. It would help break up the monotony.
-C'ieth stones throughout the game, and instead of a text box giving the mission, have a sort of Ghost NPC give the mission. It'd give some desperately needed NPC interaction.
-There's a point where you get an airship and fly to Eden. Let me return to previous areas like in FFX. Imagine if you could fly back to Nautilus or Bodhum.

Storyline
-I actually think the story is great, but maybe adding in Chapter 0 would be nice, or else getting to meet Yeul on Pulse.

 

[ZeoVGM]

Series regular here.

XIII is one of my favorites in the series.

 

[Zephy]

I hated it at first and sold it out of spite. A few years later I rebought it knowing what to expect and enjoyed it a lot. It's great if you accept it for what it is and not for what you would have liked it to be.

 

[Slaythe]

I think it's impossible to make judgment calls on the whole series when they tend to be so different from each other. If someone said they hate the gameplay of Final Fantasy after playing XII you would laugh at them.

VII Remake is amazing

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It's technically also a corridor slasher game and it's because it was designed by the 13 guy. LOL

It is better than 13 for sure tho.

 

[Taneleer]

I was so hyped for it, and then disappointed with it. I actually sold it, and then bought it again and finished it after XIII-2 was announced, I can't believe how long ago that was. I loved the soundtrack and graphics, thats about it, everything else was awful. I'm hesitant to be hyperbolic and say it's the worst FF, as I've yet to finish XV.

 

[Weiss]

Wasn't a huge fan of FF as I had only played VII during childhood. But all the trailers were hype AF, at least for the standards of a teenager:



So I bought the game day one. Was in hindsight really hype but the disappointment set in once I realized that I wasn't super interested in anything but the visuals.


On a side note. It's kinda funny how Square hasn't changed their marketing strategy for over a decade lmao. You get disconnected bits of gameplay followed by entirely disconnected glimpses at narrative moments of the game overlaid by the main theme without context.

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Oh my god is this where that bullshit started? I fucking hate trailers like that.

 

[silva1991]

Been a fan of the series nearly a decade before it came out. It's trash. Even XV was better.

 

[Teiresias]

FFXIII is a mixed bag for me as an established series fan that played FF2 (US, so actually FF4) on its release on the SNES. I kind of hated the story itself, but I actually really enjoy the combat in the game, so if it were transplanted to another game that was a bit more open and less restrictive on the front end (with even similar characters) then I wouldn't have that much of an issue with it.

I haven't played it in the forever, but from memory it just seems like characters spent a whole lot of time giving lip service to rebelling against their focuses and then turn right around and just do it anyway, but everything ends up ok just because.

 

[Makoto Yuki]

Been a fan since the PS1 and went back and played the first six games.

XII was where I started to worry about the series, XIII is where I really got bummed out with the direction.

XV, while not perfect by any means, was a pleasant return to form. For me at least. Though XIII and the original XIV were low bars.

Edit: To be fair I didn't hate FFXII or FFXIII, I just didn't like them. FFXII was way better with the Zodiac Job System, while FFXIII was goegeous and it's music fantastic, and FFXIII-2 was weirdly refreshing, my favorite game of that trilogy. So they have good qualities overall.

 

[RDreamer]

Series regular and I liked it a good deal and didn't have many actual problems with it even when it first came out. I thought it was unfairly panned. The gameplay was pretty great with one of the best difficulty curves in the series. I enjoyed the characters and their interactions, and the story was overall good. I actually thought the game would be worse than it ended up, since the transformer summons looked dumb as hell when revealed but largely that worked well enough I guess.

After the disaster that was XV I appreciated XIII even more. It was better in basically every way than XV.

 

[Deleted member 36578]

Series regular here.

XIII is one of my favorites in the series.

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Why?
Which ff did you start with?