XIII, thread over.

Other games have shortcomings but we can give some Freudian excuses for their problems (FFII was trying to break out of the DQ mold and was on a system that couldn't allow much of a story, VIII is trying to follow up the smash hit VII, FFX was hampered by developing for a new system on limited time and was meant to incorporate voice acting, XII had internal issues and spent the bulk of it's time trying to recreate an open world on inferior hardware without the aid of the optional hardrive peripheral and got it done no less) but XIII? Almost six years in development and we got the most bare boned entry in the series, a terrible plot, a weak cast whose strongest characters are bad rip-offs from a game made in 2007 that did most of XIII's ideas better. There is not much gameplay to speak of since gameplay is simply consists of engaging in a middle management battle system with lackluster A.I. and moving forward to progress the story. No real puzzles, no NPCs worth talking to, exploration is a moot point in terms of finishing the story, and the game is probably the most newb friendly entry in the series since FFX, with death/losing becoming a trivial annoyance rather than something you should fear, since you just respawn a few feet away anyway. It all ends with one of the dumbest endings in the franchise barring spin-offs, and requires an Ultimania, or the game's sequel to actually explain to you what really happened.