So, I know this topic has been done to death over the last couple of years, but since I have quite recently just beat it for the first time, I was thinking it might be appropriate to start this topic again. Keep in mind I've only started XIII-2 now, and have yet to play LR, and I do believe those games will be better, but just bear with me for a while and try not to spoil too much

So let me just start by saying I don't hate this game. I was excited to see FFXIII finally come out on Steam so that I could finally experience it, and despite a lot of people saying bad things about it, it was the next main entry in the series, and as the massive FF nerd that I am, I had been itching to play it for a while. Spoilers: I didn't like it, though mostly because it was a wasted opportunity in many respects, and it simply felt like a chore to me. While I'm at it, I'd like to address the quite toxic stance many people who liked this game have had towards those that didn't - just because I don't enjoy it or see it as a bad game does not mean I do not like fun or that I played the game just to hate it. As I mentioned earlier, I came into this game with the most open of minds, considering the circumstances, and I really find no joy in buying games just to mope about them on the Internet. I tend to analyze games as I play them because that is what makes it fun for me. If you like XIII - great! You can get enjoyment out of a game that I simply cannot, physically, on a neurological level, enjoy. Different strokes for different folks, and you should be happy that you just have that one more pleasure in life that I will never have. That said, I'm gonna mope just a bit in this thread

I kid, of course. Like I said, you have the full right to love this game despite everything I say - I am not any kind of authority. I just wanted to share my overall thoughts about it, and in general, why I think it's simply a bad game.

First of all, there are a couple things I really liked about it. Mainly, the music. I sincerely believe this is one of the best soundtracks in the main series, if not the best. Masashi Hamauzu simply operates on a different level of artistry, seriously breaking the mold in many parts. I often feel video game music is even too low for him - he could really make it in the artistic world as an actual artistic composer, IMO, and this soundtrack certainly delivers. From the dissonant tones of Ragnarok, to the lonely yet heartwarming tones of Dust to Dust, to the chills I get every time Blinded by Light plays, the soundtrack is nothing short of phenomenal. The grapihcs are also very pretty, but they'd be nothing if not the concepts of the world. The clashing worlds of Gran Pulse and Coccoon are a very interesting concept, with plenty of jaw-dropping designs and concepts. But while I love the world idea, well, the execution is where it all goes to the proverbial trout.

I'll try not to comment too much on the story, because I know this is subjective, and I know I have some ridiculous requirements when it comes to the story, but I just did not enjoy it. The character development is there, but it is forced, heavily realying on overdone anime cliches. The only refreshing characters, which are Fang and Sazh, get very little screentime, and even they aren't immune to the forced melodrama and terrible dialogue. The game tries to present its story as deep and meaningful, but it all falls apart by the end. "Let's defy our fate... by doing exactly what the big bad tells us to do! We're going to do what fate tells us, but we'll do it with a frowny face, so therefore we defy it! Freedom!" Yeah, no, that doesn't work that way. The game tries to tell us that the heroes are carving their own path, when really, they're just doing everything Barthandelus wants them to and they do end up killing Orphan. The world is saved only through a big-ass Deus Ex Machina, which isn't that bad in itself, IMO, but the moral ends up being, instead of "carve your own path", "just keep going and wrecking trout and maybe a miracle will happen." I could go on about how the relationships between many characters just don't make sense in the context, but that would be like opening a whole other can of worms, and really, that's not the gist of what makes the game bad, IMO. Because a game can have a crap story but still be a good game. Well, about that...

Yes, it does limit your freedom. There is no argument about that, sorry guys. No matter how you look at it, FFXIII is a cage. Not even a hallway - a motherfriggin cage. You are restricted in everything, and this is what killed FFXIII for me. People argue that XII or X restricted you just as much, as one "played itself" and one was a hallway as well, to which I'm going to say bull-smurfing-trout.

FFX was linear in its progression, true, but there were towns, people around the way, secret passages leading to different extra dungeons, etc. Now, keep in mind, I dislike X much more than XIII, so I'm not saying this out of spite or anything. While limited compared to earlier FFs, there was still a degree of exploration to X. In XIII, the only way to move is forward. Occasionally, you'll take a small detour to a treasure chest, but you need to come back anyway, going ever forward, hoping the next cutscene starts before you go into a coma. There are always the same enemies along the way and you need to fight precisely that amount to progress. You can't even go around them most of the time. And it was mind-numbing. Granted, Gran Pulse is great, and the Archylte Steppe and Oerba are my two favorite moments in the game, but that only makes the game all the more painful. It's all too little, too late - it's practically end-game, and after a bulltrout chapter that is canonically just there to let you grind - the characters say so themselves - I'm really to worn-out to enjoy myself. And still, you need to fulfil the hunts in the order the game tells you to. So the supposed freedom is, once again, a complete illusion. Not to mention it's dead. Again, no people, no interesting things, just monsters, chocobos, and those stupid floating rocks.

This bring me to the battle and character progression system. Oh boy. This is what killed it the most for me. The crystarium looks fancy only as long as you don't look close enough, as it's actually just another hallway. I really don't understand why they went through all the trouble of making it instead of leveling up. But that's not the worst part. I could deal with it if it weren't for the locks on the crystatium. Say what you want about FFXII, but at least I had the option of grinding silly in that game if I damn so please. VI is ridiculously easy when everyone masters quick, but I have the oprion of doing that. In X I can spend hundreds of hours in the arena to get every node on the sphere grid with everybody. And in this game, I can expand the crystarium to the extent that the game allows me to at the moment, which is just insulting. The funniest thing is, you don't even get access to it all by endgame - no, you have to beat the final boss to get the last layer. And what good is that? The hell? The roles are a neat idea, but why suddenly let me level everyone in every role at the end of the game? You should either have left everyone as just with their jobs as they were, or let me customize them freely from the beginning, because otherwise, what's the point? You think you're going to throw me a bone after all that imprisonment and hope that I forgicve you? Well, tough luck, game, cause I call BS on that!

I didn;t like the battles either. Yes, the paradigm system was interesting in theory, but the implementation was poor. People often, again, compare it to XII because you could set all allies to AI there and the game "played itself". Well, here we come back to options yet again. Final Fantasy XII was robust and you could play it any way you liked. You could give a character two gambits, or a full set, or no gambits and just control everyone manually. You could realistically set the game up to grind for you overnight - but that required tremendous effort and was immensely satisfying when you did manage to pull it off, what with character positioning and just the right gambits in the right slots. You could go as hands-on or hands-off as you wanted. Here, all you do in battle is manage your party on a macro scale, which wasn't that appealing to me. There isn't really much room for strategy besides "okay, now weaken him; okay, now stagger him; okay, now wail on him; okay, now heal". And yeah, you can enter commands manually, which I tried to do, but that led me to an existential crisis: what's the point if the game makes better choices than me, and it does it much faster?" No gambits here for you to determine the AI path - the game is just set for optimal, so that you can feel dumber than it, being the foolish fleshbag you are.

Alright, I'm done. I suppose some people will have a lot to say to me after this, and I know a lot of this isn't new, but I just needed to get this off my chest. Feel free to discuss the merits of FFXIII over here, if you're so inclined. Just please, don't try to convince me to like it. I really wanted to, but I only ended up exhausted after that. This is the only FF of which I can say for sure that I never want to replay again.