What are your thoughts on the FFXIII series?

[Pike]

Now that Lightning Returns has arrived on the scene, what are your overall thoughts on the FFXIII games?

[Psychotic]

Each installment improved on the last but it was a disappointment and a lot of potential was squandered.

[Colonel Angus]

I've yet to play them, & am trying to keep an open mind about them, so when/if I do ever play them I can go in giving the games a chance on their own merits & not what 95% of FF fans say.

[Freya]

Meh. They weren't horrible but they weren't that great either. My complaint was mostly with the characters. I didn't connect with pretty much any of them. I wasn't invested in their cause to save whatever. It's hard to like a game if you can't really relate and want to save whatever.

[Aulayna]

XIII was great in places and terrible in others and suffered from incredible "on-rails-syndrome" and a story that largely relied on you reading primers to understand.

XIII-2 was pretty darn decent aside from the ending, and fixed the majority of XIIIs issues.

LR was okay. I'm not a huge fan of Lightning as a character so this really didn't have any gravitas with me.

[Ayen]

Boring. I got as far as the first boss fight on the game and didn't feel compel to play it any further than that, and IMO the worst thing a game can do is bore the ever loving crap out of you. This game also suffers from the creators trying way too hard to recreate the success of FFVII and trying to make Lightning their new poster child. You can't plan to make that kind of stuff happen, it just does. I doubt anyone on the FFVII development team thought it was going to be the Final Fantasy game for which all future Final Fantasy games are judged. The stars just happen to align that year. Chill, Square. Give Lightning a break for 20 years the poor girl been through enough.

[Galuf]

ha you see this is the first FF game i played ( main series) so i went in open minded. and it was good i actually liked it alot. but then i played ff vi and well you know what that game is like compared to FF XIII so yeah. i choose the top option since you didnt say compared to the other FF games.




please dont kill me

[Jessweeee♪]

Great music, some of the best boss themes in the series.

[Sephiroth]

Seeing how I think Final Fantasy I is worse in comparison
and II
and III
and IV
and V
and VI
and VIII
and IX
and X
and XII

It is ranked very high on my list.

[Freya]

You think XIII is better than pretty much every entry but VII? I... What? Did we play the same series?

[Galuf]

You think XIII is better than pretty much every entry but VII? I... What? Did we play the same series?

no. sephiroth played sephiroth fantasy and you played Freya fantasy.

i played Galuf fantasy.

also just realized that we all use FF character names ...

[Dat Matt]

Best music in the series in my opinion, and I love the battle system. It is also pretty to look at.

The story and characters though, they were terrible.

[Sephex]

Voted the meh option. I have still yet to play XIII-3 (but I intend to). The only thing that I loved was the soundtrack for the two games I played. Everything else was very hit and miss for me. I liked them better when they first released, but the more I thought about the games the more I thought they were underwhelming.

[Pumpkin]

I've only played the first one but I liked it fine. Was it the best game ever? No. But I still had fun

[Sephiroth]

You think XIII is better than pretty much every entry but VII? I... What? Did we play the same series?

That was no secret.

[Freya]

Best music in the series in my opinion, and I love the battle system. It is also pretty to look at.

The story and characters though, they were terrible.
YEAH CAUSE IT HAS CRAZY CHOCOBO RIGHT?

hEUOOgNzOv4

[Dat Matt]

Crazy chocobo is amazing and I love it.

Songs like Worlds Collide (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J5vsL0A-EY), Run (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9Ec2NE98DA) and Noel's Theme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfmupLRxxM8) are all amazing. The range of songs in this game is amazing.

[Karifean]

Final Fantasy XIII is my least favorite FF game, but that's saying nothing. I enjoyed it a lot, the combat system was quite great and I found the lore to be interesting.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 fixed most of the problems I had with XIII and was an overall very fun and enjoyable game.

And I haven't yet played Lightning Returns beyond the first 2 hours or so.

[DanielCLFFF13]

Best music in the series in my opinion, and I love the battle system. It is also pretty to look at.

The story and characters though, they were terrible.
YEAH CAUSE IT HAS CRAZY CHOCOBO RIGHT?

hEUOOgNzOv4
62128
http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view5/3346016/im-a-goofy-goober-o.gif

I really love Final Fantasy XIII sequel, just everything about it. It's the Final Fantasy game or sequel that brought me to Final Fantasy universe, well I've already said this to many time :D

But this is my opinion :)

[Carl the Llama]

I was pretty happy with the games, I think that peoples opinions on the game are way to high and they really should play other non Final Fantasy games then try playing the games again. For instance, I played Radiata Stories on a friends recommendation a few months ago and it was pretty shallow tbh and I pretty much had to force myself to finish it, after playing it I went and watched a few reviews on youtube and a few of them rated it reasonably high...

The story IS linear, but then iirc people complained about XII being to open. I personally loved the game and they had some really emotional spots that when I played my most recent playthrough, I really looked forward to it, for example that part with Hope and Snow just before they get to his home... its a highlight for me (not cause I think Snow is a jerk but because I genuinely like that scene).

Then we moved on to part 2 and they definitely "Fixed" the "its to linear" problem, open world, being able to have monsters fight by your side and DLC that allows you to get some of your XIII buddies on your side was pretty awesome, and one of the very few times I have spent money on DLC. Really was a great improvement on what was a great game.

Then we come to Lightning Returns... its my second favourite game of the series after VII, and so much fun to play, the combat system is top notch, the online competitive scoring system is also pretty damned awesome (I even held a few of the top spots for a while, they have been shifted down to second place by someone known as ZHONG) and having it there made me go back time and time again.

[Laddy]

In regard to visuals and music, they were excellent. Another series would kill for production values of that quality.

Gameplay and story had cool elements and mechanics utilized in the worst possible ways.

[Rin Heartilly]

I actually wrote my own rant/review/thingy on how I felt about XIII as objectively as I could (except for ragging on Hope) here (https://mooglesandmoombas.wordpress.com/2014/06/08/final-fantasy-xiii-the-good-the-bad-and-the-annoying/) :D

I liked the sequel a lot better than the first game and I've only played about a 1/4 of Lightning returns so I don't think I qualified to rate it yet, but it is different and visually it's amazing.

[Tyson]

I despise the FF XIII games. Everything about them was completely forgettable.

Story? I can barely recollect, there were things called Fal'cie and the characters were L'cie. Fought a big statue at the end.....

Characters? Again forgettable, I dont think its quite as bad as XII in this regard. But they were very cliché and lacked depth.

Music? Can't name one song, I own most of the soundtracks for the previous FF's. This was probably my biggest let down of the bunch. Pretty much every other FF has atleast 1-2 pieces I listen to on a regular basis.

So, yeah. Definitely not a fan haha

[Vermachtnis]

I like them well enough. XIII had Fang, who was pretty cool. XIII-2 was the first Platinum I ever got. I haven't played Lightning Returns though and I don't really feel like it.

[Mirage]

FF13 was a stream of battles that you fought in something that was a pretty decent battle engine-thing and a pretty uninteresting story/characters although fang was cool enough

FF13-2 actually gave you options and choice and trout and had a much better battle system with an even worse story but i didn't hate the characters as much as I did in 13

13-3 was idk haven't finished it yet

[Scotty_ffgamer]

I enjoyed XIII when I first played it, but not enough to ever be able to play it again. I've tried a few times, but it's just designed in such a way that replays are a chore. There's nothing really new to explore or do, and the way they lock your progression throughout the game/have that lengthy tutorial period just adds to the boredom. That said, I've never understood the complaints about them throwing out terms like Fal'Cie and us not being able to understand what's going on. I never had a problem figuring out the world.

XIII-2 was hella fun though. As everyone has mentioned, it fixed a lot of the issues of XIII. I enjoyed exploring the world and getting to know more of the story behind Noel, Caius, and Yeul. Monster collecting was fun. I liked dressing up the monsters a bit too. The soundtrack is also one of my favorites in the whole series. I also liked the religious lore getting fleshed out a bit more. I can see complaints about the story not being the best, but I still loved it all the way to the end. DLC was even pretty enjoyable (except for the Sazh stuff. That was pretty terrible).

Lightning Returns was also pretty fun, but XIII-2 still comes out ahead. I enjoyed Noel and Serah more than Lightning in this game. It also bothered me how Hope kind of regressed in this game. His character was pretty cool in XIII-2. The world was beautiful though, and I really liked how it felt pretty alive. It is kind of funny since the world is kind of dying at this point. The gameplay was enjoyable enough, but I couldn't really get into it. Lightning moved a bit too slow in battle. I feel like if the speed was ramped up a little, I would have enjoyed it a lot more. I enjoyed learning more about the lore as well.

[Shiva95]

They were alright and I enjoyed them, even if they are not my favorite.

[Loony BoB]

FFXIII had one of my favourite concepts in the history of Final Fantasy with the fal'Cie, l'Cie, Cie'th thing. I really liked it. I felt it could have been played out a lot better though, and the world plot, despite having that favoured concept, ended up falling flat. The characters I loved, liked or slightly disliked, and at one point I really didn't like Hope. Thankfully he got better in the second game. But yeah, characters great, music great, graphics awesome, story meh, battle gameplay okay, field gameplay barely existent.

FFXIII-2 jacked up gameplay and it was huge loads of fun. I didn't connect as well with the characters at all, though. I didn't like what they did with the story at all, either. I would have preferred a story that focused on the "directly afterwards" stage of rebuilding life on Pulse, discovering new regions of the world and perhaps even discovering inhabitants remaining on Pulse somewhere. I'd have loved that. But either way, the music was arguably even better than the original game and the graphics were par. The monster catching and using in battle thing improved battles even further. So... characters okay, music great, graphics awesome, story bad, battle gameplay great, field gameplay good.

Lightning Returns even further improved the gameplay beyond that of XIII-2, there was so much to do! I cared for the story marginally more than I did in the previous game, but it still didn't get to the point that I felt it was better than the original, further showing that the great concept of the series just didn't reach it's potential. The characters were okay, which ones there were actively involved at least. I'm not sure I'm happy with what they did with the old crew but generally speaking I felt it was understandable and realistic (as far as realistic goes in an immortal fantasy world!). So... characters okay, music good, graphics awesome, story meh, battle gameplay good, field gameplay awesome.

The endings of the games I found to be, respectively: Good, Bad (but with so many AMAZING paradox endings!), Great.
The games overall I found to be: Good, Great, Good.

[Formalhaut]

Funnily enough, when I introduced my boyfriend Sam to the Final Fantasy series, he quite enjoyed FFX, FFX-2 and FFXII, but when he got to the FFXIII series, he got hooked. He's replaying LR:XIII just after finishing it, so yeah, in his opinion, the FFXIII series were awesome.

As for me, I feel as if FFXIII had the best overall story. I felt as if it made sense throughout and all the main characters were fleshed out. In FFXIII-2 and particularly in LR:XIII, all my favorite characters like Sazh, Fang and Vanille were reduced, somewhat. Vanille was integral in LR:XIII, but she didn't really have any emotion other than 'despair' and 'self-loathing'. Having said that, Lumina was one of the best new characters the sequels produced. Noel, Caius and Yeul were also great characters.

I second BoB's assertion that XIII-2 would be more interesting with a fuller exploration of Pulse. I enjoyed the time-travel element, but I feel as if the story got more and more bloated with new stuff as time went on. At first, it was a story about Cocoon and Pulse, fighting against Gods using the power of teamwork and friendship and then it turned to woooo time-travel and artifacts and guardians and unseen realms and then God himself and the savior saving souls and a new world and yggdrasil and so on.

I'm exaggerating, but it just seems as if the game makes just too big a leap between games. It all technically makes sense in the lore, but I feel the games were slightly disconnected. It's more apparent comparing XIII and LR:XIII, the bookends of the series.

Overall, though, the games are still one of my favorites. The music is incredible, and the gameplay is, while different, quite enjoyable. It's pretty straightforward, compared to XII's damage calculations and chest mechanics.

[chionos]

Get ready. :grump:commenced.
The worst battle system.
The worst world.
The worst upgrade mechanic.
The worst leveling system.
The worst summons.
The worst magic.
The worst villains.
The worst NPCs.
The worst camera.
The worst system of equipment/weaponry.
The worst monster design.
The worst airship. :shakefist:
The worst "ultimate" skills.
The worst items.
The worst vehicles.
The worst disconnect between cutscenes and gameplay.
The worst voice acting. (yes, even X was better. Though, to be fare, the voice acting is far from the worst thing about the game).
The worst sidequests.
The worst minigames.
The worst music. Best music of the series, are you fucking kidding me? Bland techno and the final fantasy equivalent of elevator music? You like that shit, fine. But to say it's the best in the series sounds utterly ludicrous to me. I'm not trying to diss anyone's opinion, I just truly don't get it.

But all of these things can be true and a game still deserve to get sequels, if, that is, it has a good story and strong characters worth being revisited. The problem is, there's not a single compelling character in the whole fucking series. Not one. Fang comes close, but even she disappoints. And the rest just get progressively worse, with Hope and Snow down at the bottom.

The script is atrocious, just the biggest load of horseshit and melodrama I've ever allowed myself to sit through. FFs have been getting progressively less funny over the years. What happened to SE's sense of humor? Was that all Sakaguchi? Or maybe Uematsu? When did FF stop being fun? These games have no soul. The characters have no soul, no real warmth, no depth.

This feels appropriate.
http://imgur.com/mDRnc5C.jpg

The characters were shallow enough in the first game! What the hell makes you think you can stretch that into a series?

The worst story. I despise melodrama, and that's all this is, and to me FF has always been first and foremost about the story. Without a good story driven by good (or at least passable) characters and quality music, it's just not FF to me.

[Hannibal_Khan]

I thought XIII was pretty bad. I remember being about 25 hrs into the game and just quit playing. Data logs? "Hallways"? No exploration or towns? smh ... XIII just did not feel like a true Final Fantasy experience. In regards to the writing and story, i think chionos said it best with "melodrama". The summons were turrible. The music was mostly bad, while some was just horrible. That main song with the repeating 'melody' was like nails on a chalkboard after a while. The battle system was lousy.

I actually thought XIII-2 was OK, or maybe just meh, idk. I had low expectations when i played it so maybe that curved my judgement. The story was forgettable, the chocobo racing got boring real fast, and it still had Hope(although alot less of him). But the time travel was interesting, and those clock puzzle things i actually kinda enjoyed, and i thought the jump button was sorta novel for FF and i enjoyed jumping my way along the whole game, although yeah it was very limited in what you could use the jump for. And it kinda felt less "hallway-e". But my overall grade for the game would be: Meh, or maybe +Meh. Mostly, its just forgettable.

I might get LR if I happened to see it for a bargain($10 or less), as i hear thy improved things in regards to exploration and battle system, but ultimately i think i might avoid buying it, as any revenue generated form this game might... might...... in some way encourage SE to make another mediocre FF game into an expansion of sequels that last an entire console generation!



FFs have been getting progressively less funny over the years. What happened to SE's sense of humor? Was that all Sakaguchi? Or maybe Uematsu? When did FF stop being fun? These games have no soul. The characters have no soul, no real warmth, no depth.
I couldn't agree more with this. Zidane always breaking Steiner's balls, or giving vivi advice about women.... that was all gold, imo. And i believe thats why IX is my favorite, too me its just the funniest. XIII seemed to be completely divorced of comedic relief. FF desperately needs some humor back in the series.

[Formalhaut]

Oh you guys should listen to some of the funny responses to dialogue in FFXIII-2. It has a heavy plot, but really know how to take itself lightly sometimes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Hz3LoiAFtQ

[chionos]

Okay, fluffy bunny, this is a thread of hate. You don't belong here.

[fat_moogle]

Does anyone else think that entirely removing the fanfare theme from the game was a stupid decision? A simple " duh duh duh duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duuuuhhhhh!", even if only after a boss fight as FFXII did, would have injected more of a Final Fantasy feel in to the game.

[metagloria]

All three XIII games are better than IV and VI.

[Ayen]

All three XIII games are better than IV and VI.

Yeah, that's why XIII is facing VII for a spot in the semi finals--

Oh, wait. No it isn't :smug:

[Loony BoB]

Yeah, XIII had decent humour, probably on par with the rest of the series (I don't think any FF has been that high on the comedy scale overall, but most of them have their moments).

[Mirage]

I might get LR if I happened to see it for a bargain($10 or less), as i hear thy improved things in regards to exploration and battle system, but ultimately i think i might avoid buying it, as any revenue generated form this game might... might...... in some way encourage SE to make another mediocre FF game into an expansion of sequels that last an entire console generation!

Easily solved by buying it second hand. It's what I did, and for that exact reason.

[Masamunemaster]

Honestly, I love Fang. Her voice acting is probably the best in a while.

[Egami]

I already said my piece about XIII in another post (http://home.eyesonff.com/showthread.php/159455-Views-on-XIII-now-that-time-has-passed?p=3505896&viewfull=1#post3505896). Simply put, it is the worst FF game and one of the worst RPGs in general I have ever played. I am replaying XII at the moment and looking at XIII as the follow up to that game it is amazing how much XIII fails at every level and I wonder what SE were thinking when they made it. The two follow up games were SE basically backpedaling and being defensive due to the criticisms XIII received.

So, XIII-2 gave you a bit more freedom to jump around the different areas, gave you a bit more to do than just running forward in narrow corridors fighting monsters, included npcs, made some adjustments to the battle system such as you being gable to change the party leader (which XII had already implemented years before and XIII took away for no reason), etc. But it still inherited a lot of the things that made XIII bad and added a few of it's own bad things along the way.

LR gave you a more open world feel (again in response to criticism and the demand for such among gamers and again which XII had already done years before and XIII took away for no reason) and more customization with it's schema system; but then it mitigates against the exploration of said world with it's time limit/mechanic making you feel rushed and cutting you off from certain areas at different times of the day. It also has what is perhaps the most annoying aspect in a FF game done no less by who is probably the most annoying character in FF history: Hope. I hate games that treat me as if I am too stupid to figure things out or as if I have a ridiculously short attention span. Hope is nearly always pointing out the obvious or is constantly reminding you of things you already know and he does this over and over again to the point where it becomes annoying and distracting. I already KNOW I will be teleported back at 6:00, I KNOW there is a ladder there I can use or that I only need another number for the passcode, so pretty please...with sugar on top...shut the hell up. It is as if the game doesn't trusts the capability of the player to figure things out on his own and goes out of it's way to hand hold you in a rather abrasive manner. It is really distracting and immersion breaking.

I probably could expand some more on what I said about XIII-2 and LR but I really don't feel up to it and I don't want to ruin the good mood I am in :). All in all I think the XIII saga is a massive disappointment that really shouldn't have been the way it was in the first place. Going by what we have seen so far, XV actually seems more like a proper follow up to XII and what SE should have done with XIII in the first place.

[Richard]

Sort of wish Square would go back to making the FF games like they did Final Fantasy 7. It was less complicated.

[Mirage]

I already said my piece about XIII in another post (http://home.eyesonff.com/showthread.php/159455-Views-on-XIII-now-that-time-has-passed?p=3505896&viewfull=1#post3505896). Simply put, it is the worst FF game and one of the worst RPGs in general I have ever played. I am replaying XII at the moment and looking at XIII as the follow up to that game it is amazing how much XIII fails at every level and I wonder what SE were thinking when they made it. The two follow up games were SE basically backpedaling and being defensive due to the criticisms XIII received.

So, XIII-2 gave you a bit more freedom to jump around the different areas, gave you a bit more to do than just running forward in narrow corridors fighting monsters, included npcs, made some adjustments to the battle system such as you being gable to change the party leader (which XII had already implemented years before and XIII took away for no reason), etc. But it still inherited a lot of the things that made XIII bad and added a few of it's own bad things along the way.

LR gave you a more open world feel (again in response to criticism and the demand for such among gamers and again which XII had already done years before and XIII took away for no reason) and more customization with it's schema system; but then it mitigates against the exploration of said world with it's time limit/mechanic making you feel rushed and cutting you off from certain areas at different times of the day. It also has what is perhaps the most annoying aspect in a FF game done no less by who is probably the most annoying character in FF history: Hope. I hate games that treat me as if I am too stupid to figure things out or as if I have a ridiculously short attention span. Hope is nearly always pointing out the obvious or is constantly reminding you of things you already know and he does this over and over again to the point where it becomes annoying and distracting. I already KNOW I will be teleported back at 6:00, I KNOW there is a ladder there I can use or that I only need another number for the passcode, so pretty please...with sugar on top...shut the hell up. It is as if the game doesn't trusts the capability of the player to figure things out on his own and goes out of it's way to hand hold you in a rather abrasive manner. It is really distracting and immersion breaking.

I probably could expand some more on what I said about XIII-2 and LR but I really don't feel up to it and I don't want to ruin the good mood I am in :). All in all I think the XIII saga is a massive disappointment that really shouldn't have been the way it was in the first place. Going by what we have seen so far, XV actually seems more like a proper follow up to XII and what SE should have done with XIII in the first place.

The problem is that in LR, some players might actually not have time to figure these things out on their own. If the game wasn't time limited, it'd be different.

[Ayen]

Sort of wish Square would go back to making the FF games like they did Final Fantasy 7. It was less complicated.

I can't help but respond with this:

MjpAqXNUUM8

[BlackFire]

I enjoyed XIII. Of course there were some difficult fights and boss fights in there. I also liked the main characters. Fang will always be a top favorite of mine, she and Lightning make a good ass kicking team! The music I enjoyed too and the battle system. The linear gameplay I wasn't too much a fan of, but I got used to it.

I haven't played XIII-2 yet, but I have played LR.
That game and the clock and the first time fighting Noel and Caius was HARD.
The final boss was also a bit hard. But the combat system was great, I also liked all the garb options Lightning has. Also, every area was more open than XIII. Some areas felt like Gran Pulse.
The story was one I have heard of before. I liked the side missions and the insane stories that cropped up there. Some of those NPCs were dressed weird. LOL. :p

The 13 series to me has good replayability. I have beat both.