Dislike this but liked X?

[Cloudane]

It's difficult to place XIII as a similarity to any of the previous ones, but yeah I guess X is closest on a few aspects (it's also close to VIII on some of the less positive aspects).

I don't hate XIII. I enjoyed it actually. But it's distinctly average, whilst I consider X tied for first place with VII so it's considerably better. At first I loved XIII, but that was the initial after-effect of it being a zillion times better than XII in my opinion.

The reasons have pretty much been stated and I agree with most. FFX had a relatively coherent story (for an FF) and I really liked that story in general. It flowed through to the end very well, unlike the "blah, we can't be bothered now, don't care how but let's just end it" feel that XIII has after Oerba.

It had very distinctive cultures from the laid back Besaid to the sport loving Luca to the highly religious Bevelle to the Klingons of Mt Gagazet etc, making it feel like a really well fleshed-out world and the pilgrimage really did feel like you were touring all of Spira. That's not what I see in XIII's world where I see basically "Cocoon people" and "Pulse (Zanarkand)". Also unlike Zanarkand you don't get to see what it used to be like, so it's difficult to relate to Pulse in the same way. Back to the general point about culture, there were small hints at the cultures of Nautilus and Oerba, but they were too few and too vague.

X was also very scenic. Pulse is very nice, but Cocoon is - in the main - corridor after corridor of dullness.

There was a real sense of purpose in X. You were going from one side of the world to the other in order to defeat Sin and make the world a happier place. From Tidus's POV you were trying to go home, or at least see what happened to it, eventually finding that you cared about *this* world and wanted to save it too. I like the concept of what they did in XIII with slavery but being puppeted around randomly (aside from Pulse which felt a little better and more purposeful for a short while) made me feel just as lost and confused as the characters. I know that was the idea, but it didn't work so well for me.

X was properly turn/strategy based - no matter how much you ended up throwing the controller, nothing could beat having to think in order to beat Seymour and Yunalesca, nor having the time to do so instead of mashing buttons to keep up with the AI.

XIII's characters are good, it's easy to identify with them, but nothing will match the uniqueness of characters like Wakka or the pure badass of Auron or the strong will mixed with fate mixed with cheerfulness of Yuna.

There was just so much charm to X. Think also of Maechen, or their incarnation of Cid. All of it just shines. I don't dislike XIII, but if you compare it to X it's not even close.