/ramble

Just came here to say the majority of the music was nice, and the work put into the world, monsters, etc was also pretty good.

I've played other games that sort of lead you from one place to the next with very little in the way non-linearity or variety and it was fine. The first Xenosaga comes to mind. You basically are carried from one dungeon area to the next with scripted scenes in between. (looooong scripted scenes)

I guess the difference is I understood the story, I cared/was interested in the story, and I liked the characters. I also liked the combat system and the ability system for those Xeno characters. So even though it wasn't a very open world, I didn't care. I wanted to know what happened next, and really felt like continuing down the corridor to figure it out. Also, at least it had towns instead of random orbs.

For FXIII I still really don't know what the story was. Considering I follow Xeno games just fine, and I didn't really follow XIII, I think that's not a good sign. The characters, maybe because I didn't fully understand their motivation, also kill me. Everyone hates Snow, for example, and I agree. Pumpkin knows I always say he's a combination of Fred Durst and Mathew McConaughey. Some of them are okay, but none really grab me. There's more characters I actively dislike than ones that I'm neutral towards.

Then there's the fact that I feel like the combat is on autopilot. The paradigm systems sounds freaking great. I was so excited to try it, but I was left disappointed. It's not really the system itself, it's the combat system it's attached to. I don't particularly enjoy MMO style combat engines, and that's the path other RPGs are taking. I'm only partially controlling one character, and the others are left completely to their own devices. It pulls me from getting into the game even more because it's actively less engaging to me.

So I'm left with a game that has lots of scenes trying to explain a story to me (poorly), and using characters that I don't really resonate with to do it. When it's actually my turn to play I'm left traveling down corridor after corridor to get where ever we're going. Since I don't really care about where we're going, I have time to notice that getting there might look different, but it basically feels the same in every location. When I finally get to engage with the characters (combat), I find I really only get to engage with one character, and even that feels like a surface level of control. I basically say, "Okay, try this set up. All right, shift to this pattern." Then I watch and see how it goes. I hope they heal when they need to, buff when they need to, etc., but I can't really control it.

I watch scripted scenes, I watch characters run blindly down hallways, and I have what feels to me minimal input into characters once their finally in a fight, so I'm basically watching that too. I'm watching a story I don't really care about unfold basically on it's own.

It feels like an interactive book/movie and when you have one of those you better make sure the characters are engaging and the story makes sense. XIII never did to me, and so it was completely forgettable.