I would switch out "highly regarded" for "not publicly loathed by a vocal community". Financially it did terrible in comparison to the numbered entries and would have likely done worse if it didn't come with the XV demo. Sadly the "started as a mobile game" defense was a double edged sword as it meant no one had any expectations for it, but also meant no one was interested in it either. It's release in the West could have been handled better as well.Originally Posted by Lord Golbez
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For my own assessment and to no one's surprise, I honestly enjoyed XV more, warts and all.
Setting: Both game kind of drop the ball here, but I feel XV does a better job of pulling together it's lore and setting into the narrative. XIII has the more interesting premise but doesn't do anything with it and then goes in a decidedly different direction in the sequels from the base game. I appreciate the fact that when XV name drops a place or person as important, it usually comes to play in the plot at some point even if it's background only. They could have played the Lucian Kings more especially after Kingsglaive. Overall, I think my biggest issue here and where XV does better is consistency with the world view and rules of the setting. XIII may have the same cast and mythos, but I kind of feel like they are are different games that just happen to have the same cast as opposed to feeling like a collective whole that builds on each other. It seems weird how so many events from within the first game's story has little bearing on what happens by the third game. Whereas XV has a more consistent feel to its setting outside of the gimmicky "events" which could never work in the narrative anyway. Something as simple as the infrastructure of the world designed to protect people from the constant daemon infestations is underappreciated whereas by Lightning Returns, it feels like the whole fal'Cie/l'Cie drama is an afterthought which sort of just cheapens how much weight the concept had in the first title.
Plot: Again, both have problems but XV's is generally less insulting to one's intelligence up until the end and the whole "King of Light Prophecy" makes you raise an eyebrow as you really start to think about it. Both endings are basically Deus ex Machina's but XV's makes a bit more sense as opposed to XIII's being a literal one you won't understand unless you read the Ultimania, play the sequel or listen to blowhards like myself rant about it. I feel the biggest problem with both stories is that for XV, all the cool world shattering stuff happens off screen, or in the DLC. You spend a lot of time wishing the cool parts had been playable which is disappointing, my issue with XIII is that the plot had several chances to go into very interesting directions and never did. In fact any time the game had a chance to go in a daring direction it always took the safest route. XV still has some suspenseful moments and plays with your false sense of security as bad things happen to the cast left and right, XIII plays it so safe that every time it teases something disastrous you know it will never go through with it, and most of the time it doesn't so I give XV the point here for being a little more ballsy. Both have pacing issues but XV's is largely a result of the game style being open world which rarely lends itself well to a structured narrative. XIII's issue is that it's taking a simple premise and trying to stretch it out for thirty plus hours. Not that XV isn't guilty of this as well in several places. Both games have an issue of having really slow beginnings, good middle sections, and disappointing end sections. In truth, the saving grace of XV is really the cast, not so much the plot. I think the biggest issue with XV is that it's plot is simple and kind of boring, while XIII's is intriguing but utterly stupid in execution. A good chunk of how much you'll like either story really comes down to how well either of them convince you to take what it tells you at face value and not actually think about what it is actually doing. Both games had a moment or two where I said to myself "How does that make any sense?" but to XV's credit, I was towards the end before it started being dumb whereas I was in Chapter 3 in XIII about the time I uttered that phrase for the first time.
Cast: I liked XV's cast more. This mainly stems from the fact that I enjoyed how the team really meshes with each other and the theme of brotherhood and camaraderie shines through with the team. Course Gladio does become a pill in the plot with his "tough love" attitude, Prompto tries way too hard to be the comic relief and his subplot is easily the worst implemented into the game, and if I'm going to be frank, I do find Noctis to be a boring character who only works when his dull personality is bouncing off the more colorful members of his entourage but I find that is a problem with the genre more than just XV specifically. Still, I find there is a certain charm in watching the four interact with each other and there are some honestly powerful moments between them.
Most of you know I don't like XIII's cast, Lightning's anger issue rub me the wrong way and having it followed up with SE just plastering wherever they could has only entrenched my animosity towards her. Snow could have been interesting and I'm sure I would have a different opinion of him had I played the sequels as he seems to be the only cast member to actually go through a legitimate story arc that doesn't end up getting retcon by the game's ending. Still, Snow feels kind of flat to me due to spending so much of the plot off screen. Hope would have worked better had the plot either allowed him a better means to develop his story of if he had a different story to begin with. I know I'm a broken record on this but I feel that Hope is simply a poor man's Ken Amada from Persona 3, and when you combine that with how utterly safe and family friendly XIII is with the plot, there is honestly little drama in his story that doesn't feel staged. Vanille is easily my least favorite among the cast simply because I hate the Hyper Genki Girl archetype, the fact she's kind of stupid and overly childish doesn't really help considering how "super cereal" the game's plot tries to be. She's also attached to a lot of the game's worst writing moments so I kind of wish she simply didn't exist. Fang has no real point in existing in the plot. Like seriously, why is she here? She could have been more interesting, especially since her more confrontational personality would have worked better had she been given Vanille's story. I still feel like XIII would have done better to just merge the two of them together cause Vanille feels like a quota box for fanboy tastes while Fang who is actually charming could have been more impactful if she was the one who was focused on with the plot. Sahz, well Sahz is the one exception to the team since his story is actually something rare in the medium since JRPGs shun parents like they were lepers. This doesn't change the fact he mostly feels like an Eddie Murphy expy a la Mushu/Donkey variety where he's there for comic relief. He has one of the best character moments but again, the plot is too safe to make it meaningful and it's a shame the sequels drop him like a rock since he was the only character who actually offered something new to a fairly cookie cutter JRPG cast. Also, while I know XII usually gets knocked for the cast being "perfect strangers to each other" am I the only person who finds it odd that for such a small cast every party member has one if not two other cast members they rarely speak to? I mean I don't think I ever remembered Snow and Sahz ever talking to each other outside of a group conversation. Which is odd because they actually have the most in common with each other out of the whole party. I think Lightning is the lone exception and even she rarely talks to Vanille when you think about it. Fang only ever interacts with Vanille and Lightning, for a game people tout as being the most character driven, it's odd how clicky the party is with each other. Just saying...
Granted, both games do an abysmal job with the supporting cast but at least Iris and Aranea are interesting if painfully underutilized. Cor seems to get the majority of his screen time in the DLC from what I gather and Lunafreya has kind of been the poster child of characters falling through the cracks, she's a plot device, not a person. Cidney is just as cringy as I feel most fans felt she would be in terms of being oversexulized, but I was surprised to find she actually ended up having a bit more depth to her which eased the cringe a little. XIII only really has Serah because Dahj has no personality, Cid feels more like a Mustang cosplayer than a character, and the NORA crew are so bland that when the showed up in the last chapters I was honestly surprised because I forgot they existed. XV gets a few more points for having some colorful NPCs who give out quests, whereas XIII's supporting cast barely has ten friendly NPCs and most of them only show up for one or two scenes at most before the plot forgets them.
Villains: This is a weird one cause the games are practically inversions of each other in my mind. XIII has a few colorful and interesting villains who are ultimately sidelined and under-perform so the game can spend more time on the blandest villain to grace the franchise's history and I'm counting Cloud of Darkness and Zemus in this assessment. Nothing about Barty is actually a surprise or even interesting, his plan doesn't even make sense when you think about it. Whereas the other two villains actually had some interesting build up to them before the plot shoves them aside to let Barty take center stage. XV has the opposite problem, the majority of the villains are cookie cutter evil empire expy's with Ravus and Ardyn being the only dissidents from this assessment outside of Ravus being the token honorable villain and Ardyn being the deceitful Chancellor. So the fact all of them get pushed to the side for the only villain with any actual personality be considered a bad thing? Well yes, cause you should never write a character if they aren't going to serve a real purpose, but the villain sting doesn't hurt as much here, at least Ardyn is actually fun to see when he shows up unless you just don't care for his brand of villainy. But considering the last two single player entries had hands off villains with reserved personalities, I kind of enjoyed finally getting a chatty villain who likes to chew the scenery when he's around.
Combat Systems: Honestly? I didn't care for either of them. If they represent the future of the franchises future, then I honestly have nothing to really look forward to it seems. XIII offers a bit more variety, but I honestly felt that XV was a more tactical system. I'll let that statement sink in a bit. XIII's issue is that the gameplay is too formulaic and static. There is very little room for player creativity in the combat system because so much of it is automated and combat has to flow in a certain direction to be successful. There is really no way to get around it. XV's system is far more open and success really comes down to the player making the most of the tools and abilities given to them. In XV, I found myself actually using abilities and weapon load outs for unconventional strategies. My favorite being a Hunt mission which involved spamming Prompto's deceptively not useless flashbang move to defeat a powerful group of Nocturnal Slimes. If Noct got too banged up, I had to scan the battlefield to find warp points to heal him up or make a retreat. If my party is getting banged up in XIII my options really depend on one thing, will we win regardless? If yes, then I switch to a defensive paradigm and heal up, if not, I just let the team die and reconfigure them to be more successful. Yes, you have things like Saboteur and Synergist who are very important for later battles and most boss battles, but it's not really tactical if all you need to do is use Libra to have the A.I. figure out the best strategy. That's the issue of XIII's mechanics, it makes you think you're playing smart when really the computer is kind of doing all the hard stuff for you. You're just babysitting the A.I. scripts and while there are a few tactical elements at play here in order to boost the speed of your character's actions, I honestly don't feel like it ever makes a real difference outside of getting a higher battle score which itself is pointless because it nets you nothing but an anchievement/tropy/completionist and some items that are counter-intuitive to the player if the former is your only goal for getting good scores.
Now it sounds like I prefer XV's combat, but that's not actually true. Yes, there are options for some interesting tactics and you have to actually pay attention to spatial awareness to maximize certain abilities but frankly, XV's combat is kind of boring and once you get a few good levels and weapon upgrades, you can spam warp strike to end most battles effortlessly. In fact, I started to find XV's combat so dull that the actual gameplay change up in Chapter 13 was actually a welcome sight for me until it also grew tedious. I just don't like Action-RPGs as much as Turn Based ones and I'm incredibly picky and critical with Action-RPG mechanics. So while XV fixed a few issues I had with XIII's system, it didn't actually make it a better experience for me. I will say that XV handled summons better for me as I still find the direction of summons in XIII to be nonsensical. I wish magic had been better handled in both.
Overall, my biggest gripe with both games is the underwhelming customization options. In fact, it's getting to the point where if SE makes a game where leveling involves making dots glow on line maps, I'm going to automatically dock it because holy hell is leveling a chore in these games. The real issue with both games is a sheer lack of variety. XV had to make leveling up non-combat skills and an optional way to use the battle system in order to make the level grid seem larger than it really is. XIII only levels three lousy stats and garners a few abilities that are way too streamlined compared to earlier entries. I can commend XV for not including a gimmicky equipment mechanic, but there is honestly not a whole lot of variety in it either which is a shame. XIII's equipment system had some potential but it's never truly actualized in any meaningful way as most of the interesting options are underwhelming over boring practical upgrades, and the actual upgrade mechanics are some of the most tedious grind fests in the series next to leveling up magic and weapons in FFII.
Sidequests: Ha, like this is a contest, you actually have to have some if you wish to compete. XIII basically has Mark Hunts, which only open up at the end of the game as well as one mini-game at the Nautilus that is frankly too simple to be called a real mini-game unless we're going to count VI's Auction House as a mini-game now. There is also that weird sheep quest and the one to revive Vanille's pet robot but the first one is largely pointless and the second one is kind of forgettable if it wasn't for the fact the game is so sidequest starved that anything that actually takes you out of the monotony of the main game is welcomed. It not a surprise the sequels rectified this complaint really quick.
XV has the opposite issue, there are too many sidequests and they are all boring MMO nonsense like fetch quests and kill a certain monster nonsense. But XV also wins out because it actually has some legitimately fun side content to do that isn't an event or relegated to DLC. I honestly enjoyed hunting down recipes for Ignis which could either involve one of the samey fetch quests above, checking out new local cuisine, or finding rare animals to kill for meat. I also loved the fishing mini-game, brought back good memories of Breath of Fire IV, though I could have done without the chorus in the background. Most importantly, XV has the optional dungeons which are actually some of the most creative parts of the game with interesting themed locations like the Goblin Mine or FFI Ice Cave redo, as well as some cool puzzles and optional boss battles. I also enjoyed having the power to explore more as I actually like free roaming around between story events and such, but XV may be too big of a world and I wonder how many hours of my playtime weren't just me trying to get to the fun part of the game. It's not helped that the Regalia is kind of a boring transportation method (Chocobo all the way) and Fast Travel is anything but fast. Still, XV is a game that gives you plenty of interesting things to do if you want to just screw around for a few hours. This is largely why I feel XV is a better game between the two because it at least knows you're here to unwind.
Soundtracks: Both are actually pretty good. Neither is my cup of tea but if there is one thing Square-Enix did maintain from Square before the merger, it's the ability to have a good soundtrack. I feel my issue with both is simply that Hamazu's OST is one where I feel some of the lesser known pieces are better than the ones the fans love. I generally zone out battle themes when I play games, so having the most memorable pieces from XIII be the battle themes doesn't work well for me but some of the area themes are actually pretty nice if painfully short. I feel Sakimoto has the same issue as many of my favorite themes from Tactics or XII are often themes that play once and are generally a minute in length at most compared to the themes you hear all the time. For XV, my issue here is that I honestly felt the OST for Brotherhood was better. In fact once I unlocked it, it's what I listened to the most in the Regalia and it always dumbfounded me how much better it fit the feel of the game than the actual OST. In fact with the exception of Somnus and the Stand By Me song, I doubt I could actually recall a single theme from XV. I enjoy it once I listen to it of course, but it didn't leave as much of an impression like XIII's OST did.
Art Direction: Graphically both games are gorgeous so comparing them is redundant especially when tech gets involved. Instead I'm going to focus on the actual art direction each game went with. The real kingmaker here pretty much depend on whether you prefer subtle and grounded or loud and fantastical. XIII's design lends itself to a conflict of extremes that is made purposely to convey the conflict of Cocoon's science and civilization against Pulse's natural and barbaric. While XIII doesn't go so far to make the world unrecognizable for the player, it does overload the sense experience with a wide palette of colors and designs that all compete to grab your attention. XV by contrast almost feels like the real world, to the point where contrast really comes into play once the major fantastic elements start to show up. I don't think anything was quite as unnerving as the first time an Iron Giant appeared when I stayed up too late and too far from a rest stop. It makes the fantasy elements stand out better because you get so use to the mundane world as you travel about. It does create some awkward moments like chocobo riding or heaven help us the ridiculous flying car nonsense. I feel XV's art direction appeals to me more simply because it appeals to my need to move past the surface. and find deeper answers whereas XIII doesn't really hide anything which makes it initially more interesting but grows more boring as you become accustomed to it. There are no areas in XIII I really wish I could return to because while each zone was interesting initially, I ultimately grew bored of it by the end of the chapter but that could also stem from level design and gameplay structure, whereas in XV, I would actually get a little excited to have an excuse to return to Alitissa or Fantasy Cuba. I even started to miss the Hammerhead by the end of the game. Character design-wise, I actually prefer XIII's variety with the core cast, I feel that if Tabata was going to change a few things in XV, it would be expanding the color palette of the core team's wardrobe, but I understand that's a left over from Versus XIII. Granted, I'm more likely to wear Ignis' outfit than Snow's.
Sequels vs. DLC: Eh, I didn't care for either of them. Not that I've partake of either mind you, so I can't judge on their quality. I never felt like XIII was a strong enough title to deserve a sequel. Hell, I feel the sequels downplaying the whole fal'Cie/l'Cie nonsense to bring in all this Chaos/Seer powers/timey whimey ball shenanigans only adds to my argument that XIII never had a well established setting and theme going for it. On the other hand, I really detest service model business practices, it was one of the reasons why I resisted PC gaming for so long cause I never wanted to encourage playing an unfinished product that will be patched later. My own judgement on XV are largely based on the Day 1 Vanilla version, I am sure if I were to play the Royal Edition or even just replay the vanilla version I own with two years worth of patches, I would walk away with a very different opinion of the game. I'm probably a little more miffed with XIII, especially since SE kind of promised us XIII-2 would be the only sequel and I feel the fact it gained sequels assigns an unearned value to a subpar title. Likewise, XV's rocky development was never a sequel so the constant fan feedback patches and DLC stuff was kind of expected on my part, but I still feel the game could have handled the DLC better by not making it so obvious where it lands within the game proper. There's also a real sense that XV was designed to please instead of just being someone's idea of a good game.
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