Square has lost it's way with Final Fantasy XIII, although many are glooming and dooming about the company as a whole it is really just this one installment that they've forgotten what makes Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy (not with XII as some would insist).

The overall storyline of Final Fantasy XIII was a mess -

(SPOILER)
  • It was difficult to understand what your party was trying to accomplish at any point of the game
  • The Fal'Cie's powers were vague and too omnipotent for it to be believable that they lost to the party - I.E. bringing back a dead Cid.
  • The world was not properly fleshed out. Unlike previous games the player does not gain an attachment to the regions they are in, there is no Dalmasca, Alexandria, Lindblum, Midgar, etc. to become attached to. It's one thing to remove long sits in towns, it's another thing to remove them completely.
  • Your main enemy is first, vague, then his intentions are vague, then his intentions are unrelatable.
  • There are almost no established non-playable characters to care about. Really there's Serah and that's about it and even with her she spends almost all the game being a statue.
  • The entire backstory is thrown in menu's and a large database. Unlike FFX, FFIX, or any of the previous games, I do not have an understanding for the mechanics of Pulse and Cocoon without reading through boring data-pad-esc menus.


This new game, instead of working on the faults of the previous, is throwing in a new random enemy, again with intentions I will probably not hear about or understand and is completely dropping the poorly fleshed out ideas introduced in the previous game, L'Cie, and the Fal'Cie.