The Hate Thread

[Elpizo]

Lot of Hope hate going around and I agree with it.

And I think anyone who agrees with it is a damn fool.

And I agree with that!

Hope's not given a fair chance at all. Just admit it, people have hated it from the moment he was revealed just because he was a kid. They see him as whiny because that's how the ywant him to be just so they can hate him and call XIII a bad game. While Hope's actually the only kid in the entire series so far who actually had the right to complain. But of course, reasons don't matter. He's a kid and he complains. HATE!!!

[seiferalmasy2]

Hmmm...

- Serious hate and dislike by a vocal minority after release? Check.
- Radically different from previous entries in the series? Check.
- Chocobos, Cid and story? Check.
- Sidequests? Check.

Sounds like your average Final Fantasy to me. And sounds like XII all over again. Carry on SE, you clearly delivered another good one.

- Serious hate by more game magazines and online sites than ever before, edge gave it 50 check

- Radically different in a bad way check

- Sidequests mostly dumb battles - check

- took away tons of RPG elements because it was "too hard to in in HD" check

- deluded fanbase and/or people trying to protect said game and laughably claim it is status quo....CHECK

[Elpizo]

Ah, so now those who like it are deluded? You are not worth debating with, Seifer.

[arcanedude34]

I have to say, one thing that really bugged me was that they seemed to have ideas for scenes they wanted in the trailers, then built the rest of the story around that. Really, the Snow/Hope confrontation, the Sazh/Vanille confrontation, the scene with Snow outside of Hope's house, these were easily the best parts of the plot. The rest feels rather uninspired.

The battle system is certainly a mess, as I hate that it punishes you for experimenting and playing strategically to minimize the damage you take while maximizing your output. If you try to do anything other than brute force your way through the game, you're pretty sure to get low ratings, and therefore less items.

The party suddenly deciding to fight(SPOILER)Orphan after spending half the game trying to avoid it without any consideration stands out as the biggest plothole in the entire franchise. Even worse than Square trying to cover up its own continuity dick up in VII, Crisis Core, and Last Order by saying they were all from different points of view.

I mean, really, you spend half the game dealing with all this stock "We make our own destiny" and "We'll never do what you want!" only for (SPOILER)Orphan to show up and suddenly it's "OMG BIG MONSTER, RPG INSTINCTS KICKING IN!! PREPARE TO DIIIIIEEEE!!!"

The linearity and lack of towns were crippling. This is the first Final Fantasy that I felt was FAR too long for its own good. By chapter 11, I felt it was very tiresome going through the "Mooks, cutcsene, boss, rinse, repeat" routine with no exploration to be had to break up the monotony. Oh, and everyone who says chapter 11 helps break up the linearity by offering those lame quests? No, I refuse to run around killing monsters in a specific order with no reason other than a quick text blurb of some dead guy going "Kill that flan kthxbai." That's not sidequesting, that's running errands with no plot reward. Same reson I never bought into that monster arena bull from X.

The eidolon battles were a mess, the eidolons themselves were pathetic in both design and usage, the gestalt mode made me facepalm, the game cheating me out of pre-emptive strikes for the last 3/4 of the game pissed me off, the fact that random encounters could kill you even though the game healed you after every encounter is a major design flaw, the fact that the game DID heal you after every battle was a major design flaw, the nixing of the defense and agilitiy stats streamlined the game way too much, while the synthesis was unnecessarily involved. The wild jumps in difficulty made my head spin, the monotonous enemy design was uninspired, especially the fal'Cie, characters of the perky, bubbly girl archetype need to be eliminated, Square's insistant use on "quirky" weapon types (Snow, Vanille, Hope, Lightning to a lesser degree [at least her gunblade actually functions as a, y'know, GUN]) needs to stop, I need to be able to pronounce the characters' last names for when I talk about them (Nilbaat? Kneel bat? What?!). Oh, and Square? DON'T TAKE CONTROL OF MY PARTY MEMBERS EVER AGAIN!! >

Would you believe that I really enjoyed this game?

(Hey, post #34! )

[Elpizo]

The reason why they fight (SPOILER)Orphan is better explained in the official guide (which I own). Basically (SPOILER) they didn't fight him because their focus said so, but to free the people of Cocoon from the fal'Cie. All of them. Including Orphan. Now Cocoon is free to start again, without the fal'Cie. It's basically freeing Ivalice from the Occuria all over again.

[arcanedude34]

If it's not thought of ahead of time in order to include it in the game, it's a plothole to me ^-^

And yes, the Hope hate is based solely on the trailers, I bet. Which, I must admit, I was very eager to jump in on. But he's probably my favorite non-Sazh character in teh game (Cid and Yaag were pretty cool too, though)

[Edge7]

I don't know guys, I kinda liked the battle system and a couple of the characters (although I like Lightning less than I do Cloud. Cloud's a punk who I felt for by the end of the game, Lightning's a b*tch who I can't bring myself to sympathize with. And then there's Hope...)

What I like to do in rpgs is spend most of my time before battle prepping my characters in the menus (ie, in FF6, I would decide what relics to give my characters, if I learned the right spells, what summons I should have equipped, etc.), so I feel the Paradigm system was fun in that regard. I also like thinking on the fly during battles (in FF4DS, I would decipher the boss's attack pattern and "ad lib" a strategy on the spot), so I felt that FF13's battle system was exactly what I was looking for. While I do like the freedom granted in an rpg, I'm also flexible enough to look past such a fault, although it does get a little monotonus at times.

But, that's just my 2 cents, I have read everyone's opinion and respect all of them. It's better than just saying "omg, they killed the series, dude". Some people don't even give legitimate reasons for why they don't like the game. Anyway, I, at least, feel like I got my 60 buck's worth.

[VeloZer0]

Lot of Hope hate going around and I agree with it.

And I think anyone who agrees with it is a damn fool.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

---

EDIT: Oh hey, hello page3

Oh, and everyone who says chapter 11 helps break up the linearity by offering those lame quests? No, I refuse to run around killing monsters in a specific order with no reason other than a quick text blurb of some dead guy going "Kill that flan kthxbai." That's not sidequesting, that's running errands with no plot reward. Same reson I never bought into that monster arena bull from X.

Ch11 has completely robbed me of interest in this game. I will probably still slog through and finish just to see what happens, but completing it just to say I did is all that is driving me on.

The reason why they fight (SPOILER) is better explained in the official guide (which I own)

That is complete bull*#$%. I shouldn't have to buy anything other than the actual game to understand it. Pure laziness and profit mongering.

Also complete bull#$%^ is the idea that the only people who hate Hope are the ones that hated him from the trailers. Though I won't deny they exist it is entirely possible to dislike any character on their own merits. I love Lightning as a character, other people don't. I can deal with that, we just have different tastes. Writing off someone's tastes in characters are premeditated hate just because you happen to like the character is an extremely immature thing to do. Ch9 and onwards he is tolerable, I don't especially dislike or like him. Prior to that I felt he needed a swift kick in the teeth.

[The Summoner of Leviathan]

- Serious hate by more game magazines and online sites than ever before, edge gave it 50 check

*sighs*

Final Fantasy XIII (ps3) reviews at Metacritic.com

53 - Favourable
8- Mixed
1 - Unfavourable.

Yes, it was so hated upon!

Heck, this is just Western reviews!

------

I'm not saying people can't hate it. Heck, I can't get into FFVIII and most of my friends LOVE the game. But I don't appreciate when people spout half-truths as fact, used unreliable sources as if they were credible and conveniently take things out of quotes out of context. All of which you have done in the past.

So there are no towns and no NPCs? Actually, there are it just Hello Plotyou are a wanted by the gov't (Sanctum) and loathed by masses, sure you're a real crowd pleaser.

Linear? Okay, I get this, it is very linear but most JPRGs, e.g. Final Fantasies, are as well. Sure, it is a spectrum where you have games like FFX and FFXIII on one end (very linear) and FFXII on the other (more open, but still linear). If you want sandbox, you are totally looking at the wrong genre, try Western and Console RPGs and MMORPGs.

Sidequests? Oh yeah they are basically like the hunts in FFXII. Though as far as asinine quests go hunting down a specific enemies/Marks is up there with being the world's bitch boy and running around exchanging items à la Legend of Zelda.

Combat System? Sure there is no micro-managing and that sucks for those who like to micro-manage. For the most part the AI is solid. And it is not the first RPG to only allow you to control a single character. Persona 3 is considered by many on of the best JRPG experience on the PS2 and you only control one character of a team of 4, and can change the AI setting of each team member accordingly in battle. I get that it is not everyone's cup of tea, but the battles can be difficult and rewarding at the same time.

Not a RPG? Yes, that gets misquoted a lot. If you read what was actually said it is reference to how they were trying to break the mold of the genre and not be confined within it. That's why the game, in certain respects, is so different from your typical RPG cuz that's what they were going for.

Bottom line: Final Fantasy means different things to most people though general there is a Cid and Chocobo among other recurring themes. However, at the end of the day, Final Fantasy, sadly, is whatever Sqaure-Enix says it is. :/

My point? While all the things I mention (as well as other things) can be turn off to people, at the end of the day it does not mean it is a bad game. Different, yes. Not everyone's cup of tea? Most definitely. Bad game? No.

Not liking/hating the game != bad game. Sure, it might be a bad game to you, but it is a far cry from being a bad game, objectively speaking.*

*By bad game, I mean a broken game that is not worth the DVD it was made on, and few--if any--people would actually enjoy the experience.

[Terror of Zanarkand]

Story/Characters
I've so far (Ch11) found it to be all characters no story. Quite frankly I am getting tired of drawn out character exposition. Not to mention we know nothing about any characters other than the main party. I'm usually a plot development > character development type of guy, but I am willing to chalk up my growing disinterest in cutsceens to personal preference.
I don't like the idea of a scene at the start/end of a chapter. Dividing games into 'chapters' really seems to make the story seem un-natural and contrived to me. I feel the story should always be ongoing. Think back to previous FFs. The idea that they could only stop to talk at set intervals would be ludicrous.


Linearity
I don't mind this all that much, I actually really got turned off when it opened up in Ch11 My main beef is that nowadays it seems to be a choice between straight line dungeon and wide open dungeon. Both are not intricate and I find them equally uninspired. I personally like random battles better than ones that appear on the field map, but I don't think this system is appreciably worse.

Stagger
Buff/Heal/Damage? Isn't that what happens in EVERY Final Fantasy title? 'Random' battles are a chore if you just try to plow through them, the fun is to experiment and try to make a strategy that downs them in as little time as possible. If you aren't interested in that, well, yeah the battle system would blow for you.

Crystarium
Yeah, the whole thing should have been opened up right from the start. I don't see the wisdom of capping it every Chapter, since the costs increase exponentially it isn't like you can easily power through to the end of one at the beginning of the game. The real reason I suspect is so they know what every character would have and can tune the encounters accordingly. If you cap out Char A in RAV you might as well put the extra points into MED, but if it was open you might not bother. And then be screwed when you have a party switch and have to depend on that character as your healer.

Characters
Lot of Hope hate going around and I agree with it. Other than Hope I don't strongly dislike anyone in the game, which for me is doing well. I love Lightning as a character, probably because I also liked Cloud as a character. Also her animations are awesome.

I agree with practically everything you have said.

But on the note about Hope.. I actually liked Hope sure at the start he honestly annoyed me to no end but in a way i supposed i enjoyed watching him grow and his perspectives change for me Hope went from being the most intollerable little brat to like... well i don't know a rather intriguing character.

[Raistlin]

I know I said Hope got better, but I'm actually starting to dislike him more now. He went from an obnoxious whiner to a boring, learned-from-his-mistakes-now-he'll-inspire-others cliche. I thought he was going to be ok after he got over randomly blaming Snow, but I've just grown more bored of him. He had approximately 3 seconds of further development right before Alexander showed up to save the day, and that's it.

[Shin Gouken]

- Serious hate by more game magazines and online sites than ever before, edge gave it 50 check

*sighs*

Final Fantasy XIII (ps3) reviews at Metacritic.com

53 - Favourable
8- Mixed
1 - Unfavourable.

Yes, it was so hated upon!

Heck, this is just Western reviews!

------

I'm not saying people can't hate it. Heck, I can't get into FFVIII and most of my friends LOVE the game. But I don't appreciate when people spout half-truths as fact, used unreliable sources as if they were credible and conveniently take things out of quotes out of context. All of which you have done in the past.

So there are no towns and no NPCs? Actually, there are it just Hello Plotyou are a wanted by the gov't (Sanctum) and loathed by masses, sure you're a real crowd pleaser.

Linear? Okay, I get this, it is very linear but most JPRGs, e.g. Final Fantasies, are as well. Sure, it is a spectrum where you have games like FFX and FFXIII on one end (very linear) and FFXII on the other (more open, but still linear). If you want sandbox, you are totally looking at the wrong genre, try Western and Console RPGs and MMORPGs.

Sidequests? Oh yeah they are basically like the hunts in FFXII. Though as far as asinine quests go hunting down a specific enemies/Marks is up there with being the world's bitch boy and running around exchanging items à la Legend of Zelda.

Combat System? Sure there is no micro-managing and that sucks for those who like to micro-manage. For the most part the AI is solid. And it is not the first RPG to only allow you to control a single character. Persona 3 is considered by many on of the best JRPG experience on the PS2 and you only control one character of a team of 4, and can change the AI setting of each team member accordingly in battle. I get that it is not everyone's cup of tea, but the battles can be difficult and rewarding at the same time.

Not a RPG? Yes, that gets misquoted a lot. If you read what was actually said it is reference to how they were trying to break the mold of the genre and not be confined within it. That's why the game, in certain respects, is so different from your typical RPG cuz that's what they were going for.

Bottom line: Final Fantasy means different things to most people though general there is a Cid and Chocobo among other recurring themes. However, at the end of the day, Final Fantasy, sadly, is whatever Sqaure-Enix says it is. :/

My point? While all the things I mention (as well as other things) can be turn off to people, at the end of the day it does not mean it is a bad game. Different, yes. Not everyone's cup of tea? Most definitely. Bad game? No.

Not liking/hating the game != bad game. Sure, it might be a bad game to you, but it is a far cry from being a bad game, objectively speaking.*

*By bad game, I mean a broken game that is not worth the DVD it was made on, and few--if any--people would actually enjoy the experience.

I don't recall anyone at any point saying this was a bad game. In my initial post, i listed reasons for why i personally dislike the game, and find comfort that despite a lot of different views, their are many people who share my complaints. This could be considered the greatest game ever for all i care, i will still dislike it. Anyway, this is a hate thread so if you don't like people bashing the game you could always go post in the love thread.

While Hope's actually the only kid in the entire series so far who actually had the right to complain.

Did he? Am i missing something? He has the right to complain for snow killing his mother? This is the problem i addressed in my initial post. Nobody can sympathize with his whinging because we know it wasn't snows fault. He needs to grow a pair and confront snow from the beginning rather than drag it out through half the game.

[The Summoner of Leviathan]

My post is marked more or less specifically at a few comments and obviously not yours. Though it was more lengthy than I intended, sorta became a rant, it was more address to some unfounded complaints, or at least some things that were said as fact but simply weren't. Such as it being largely received negatively by most media outlets when in fact it wasn't. It kinda went south from there.

Currently annoyed with how much Crystarium cost to upgrade and those stupid fish things that keep rushing me in (SPOILER)Orphan's Cradle.

[Elpizo]

Lessee... He and his motehr got forced on a train to certain death just for being there, his mother got killed, he's branded a l'Cie, all of the world wants to kill him, he can't go home anymore, everybody hates him just for existing, he has a focus to destroy the world he's lived in all his life, he doesn't even see himself as human anymore...

Nope, Hope has no reason to complain at all. That was sarcasm, by the way.

[Shin Gouken]

Lessee... He and his motehr got forced on a train to certain death just for being there, his mother got killed, he's branded a l'Cie, all of the world wants to kill him, he can't go home anymore, everybody hates him just for existing, he has a focus to destroy the world he's lived in all his life, he doesn't even see himself as human anymore...

Nope, Hope has no reason to complain at all. That was sarcasm, by the way.

Yeah, but his whinging is focused on snow.

It would seem to me that his hatred for snow is a poor attempt add friction between two characters which is far too obvious and ultimatley only ends up defining hopes character.