Final Fantasy XIII was released in 2009 and after the initial wave of praise, it started getting very different opinions thrown about it. I read all those opinions and had certain expectations, but… It’s Final Fantasy, come on! I played all of the previous titles, though have not finished any of the PS2 games. X just didn’t click with me at all, due to characters and the setting, while XII was completely almost 100%, but I got bored during the final boss fight and watched the ending online. Hopefully, it gets a re-release in HD someday, preferably on PC and I’ll definitely play it again. Anyway, I couldn’t skip FF XIII, all of the “Trilogy”. And it starts… well, atrociously.
I read that the development of 13 was a mess. Nobody knew what to do about it, instead of real gameplay scripted pre-renders were shown. The whole series within the series called Fabula Nova Crystallis concept was still alive, that was supposed to tell similar concepts in different settings. But only one of the other titles in this “series” got released – Type-0 (and a complimentary title Agito). And the other is now the official XV, despite being announced 10 years ago! And all of that mess is felt throughout Final Fantasy XIII – both the story and the gameplay.
Story-wise, this might be one of the worst story-driven titles I’ve ever had bad luck playing. And yes, I have considered all options. I did play lots of games with worse stories, worse characters, worse events. But I’ve never before encountered a game that’s designed as a 60+ hour experience, where absolutely nothing happens, characters do nothing, and nothing matters until the ending cutscene. All of the cutscenes you’re watching while you play are just regurgitating the same things over and over and over again. There are a couple of tiny segments of the game, where it seems like things are moving, like the characters are about to grow, to become interesting, but then it stops and starts repeating itself again. It’s a constant l’cie fal’cie enemies of cocoon focus fulfill cie’th. Swap the words around for variety.
And it’s not like there are no good ideas here. The mythology is great. The concepts are great. And the game should be an amazing tale about resisting fate, freedom of choice, human willpower. And characters do manage to sometimes be and act really alive and moving. It’s just that most of the time they repeat the same crap over and over again and have no idea why they are in the game in the first place. Lightning has more depth, potentially, than Cloud or Squall she has been compared to. But the game has no idea what to do with all of this potential. So it does nothing at all.
Mechanically this is also pretty cool. It’s a bit of a mix between VIII, X and XII, with some ideas from The Last Remnant. In fact, there are many things that seem almost directly inspired by VIII, like the removal of armor, switch to upgrading weapons rather than switching them, the fact that money are rarely an important thing. And the eidolons/summons here are far closer to Guardian Force. Oh and no mana/mp. Also, I suppose, love story as one of the central themes. And I’d love to see a really good return of some of the best ideas from VIII, it’s just that the game doesn’t seem to understand how and why things were as they were in VIII.
The magic draw from VIII, while a bit annoying, had really cool potential in upgrading and improving stats and led to cool strategising. Leveling up systems from X and XII could give you a cool freedom of choice in how you want to develop each character. Automating combat in XII with Gambits with the simple “If>then” rules was genuinely engaging and never making the game easier, just faster and more fun. Even The Last Remnant gave you the feeling that you’re controlling an actual force, not just a couple of heroes, so positioning squads in battle was important.
In FF XIII all of this is completely misunderstood. Upgrading equipment is just busywork, since you don’t really have much choice in how you can level things up until the very end. The “paradigms” in combat, the roles each character can play, seem really cool and deep, until you realize that they’re extremely simplistic and most of the time you can just use the same set of commands and they will always work. You just need to confirm actions from time to time and even more occasionally switch things up. It was so painfully tedious that I just downloaded a trainer to speed things up. It never made things “easier”, but it made things go much faster. And even then I was bored throughout. And every time I’d turn it off for a boss fight to check if I, perhaps, need to switch things up, I was disappointed to see that the same strategy works all the time. It’s never hard or interesting, just tedious busywork.
Oh and the infamous corridors of the levels. Yeah, most of the game is painfully linear, just simple “go from A to B” while fighting visible enemies on the screen (which, by the way, can respawn almost immediately in some areas). Beautiful locations, obviously, this is a Final Fantasy game after all. But so unbelievably forced. Just a straight, sometimes curved, line to go through. Occasionally with a tiny dead end with a “treasure” inside (treasure being trash that you stick to equipment to improve it). It does “get more open closer to the end” as you might’ve heard. But that only means that you get a gigantic and mostly empty field made for grinding levels. There are “hunts”, which are far less exciting than the ones in XII, and really all you do is grind. And can ride a chocobo, because it wouldn’t be a FF if you couldn’t.
Final Fantasy XIII is a really terrible game and not in an entertaining way. It’s tedious, it’s unnecessary, it’s pointless. It has lots of potential, but it’s all wasted potential. If you’re a fan like me, you probably would try playing it anyway. And will most likely drop it a few hours in. I know I would’ve if not for the bizarre dedication to completing FF games. This is the absolute worst Final Fantasy game I’ve played to this day and one of the absolute worst games I’ve had misfortune to play ever. And I still plan to go through its 2 direct sequels… Well, let’s see how they go.