Silencing the Final Fantasy XIII Haters

With Lighting Returns on its way later this year, John debunks some of the common criticisms of the original Final Fantasy XIII.

[FateoftheGame]

I liked how Final Fantasy XIII dared to streamline the JRPG experience. I also thought the complaints about auto-combat were stupid - you didn't have to make it automatic! The battle system was the best part about Final Fantasy XIII.

However, the game had one of the worst stories of any game I've played.

[pedrof93]

The game failed in :

Battle mechanics.

The world wasn't interactive as posteriors FF games.

I had a reasonable story but it had too many cut scenes with pointless dialogues about feelings(Seriously).

Overall the game grew apart of the main structure of FF.

Kill this sub-franchise please.

[FateoftheGame]

What about the battle mechanics? I found the battles quite engaging in that you had to switch classes on the fly to beat the hardest enemies.

[pedrof93]

@FateoftheGame

Quite engaging but quite automatic too. They could keep the dynamic fighting style but the old battle system.

[FateoftheGame]

You could input the commands manually or automatically. How is this any different than the classic JRPGs that offered auto combat?

[wishingW3L]

even if you can input commands manually or automatic the enemies have no weaknesses so there is no point or difference in choosing one or the other. It's all about building the stagger meter with magic/ravager and then hit hard with normal/commando attacks. That's all you do through the entire game until the post-game.

The game's battle system is not even fully realized until the post-game because that's when all the characters have access to all the roles. But even then the possibilities it opens up are nothing but a bunch of brain-dead strategies you will not even use until the last couple of hunts.

FF13's battle system was very limited but very flashy looking just like NT's DMC. It was greatly dumbed-down.

[NewMonday]

the Tales games superseded FF in combat, tactical+engaging+fun, FF now is better only in production value and story.

in the the other hand MegaTen games like Persona and Devil Survivor are the best in story and characters while perfecting the turn based combat system and giving different world interaction systems(the social system in P and the countdown in DS)

[adorie]

What I find funny is all the goons supporting this franchise. Was it not a slap to your faces when That Versus XIII logo SHATTERED! Then reformed as FFXV? Even SE knew that XIII was sub-par as a main Final Fantasy and wish to distance XV from it as far as possible

What better way to do that than show, visually that Versus XIII was more ambitious than the entirety of the XIII trilogy.

[dumahim]

I'd love to see someone watch Spoony's review of the game and then try to defend it.

[ps3_pwns]

not @ fateofthegame

ff 13 sucked and the moore you retards praise it the more hate it will get so why don't you just shut up? Why must you keep talking? you want to make me get 10 more people to hate final fantasy? or will just be silent so that no further damage is done to the franchise? because if you guys want I can turn into that guy whose like ahah jrps are lame anime is crap and that wont be good for no one. ff13 series was lacking fact.

the battle system was basically timeing. you can beat the whole thing and be like what did I actually do to win lol. just switching commando ravager etc. the whole battle system was a blur and easy.

the story was dumb im like really you about to kill this dude cause your mom dies or you about to kill her or yourself because you a la ce and crap lol. I was just like meh.

give me persona 5 please.

[Heisenburger]

God forbid that people enjoy different things, right?

I guess ol' Adolf had some good ideas.
/s

I definitely prefer Persona 3 and P4G way more than the recent FF games. Though having THAT opinion doesn't make me "correct".

[Dravidian]

I guess you and I are in the minority. While overall I found FFXIII to be lacking, I rather enjoyed the combat system. I didnt mind the lack of major enemy weaknesses (they showed up after being staggered iirc) since different enemy groups still required a different strategies to efficiently discard them.

The story was horrible though. But I was pleasantly surprised that one of the most well represented characters was Sazh. I expected him to be a token black guy, but he was one of the few characters who made sense most of the time.

[wishingW3L]

this guy has absolutely no shame. Trying to compare FF13's linearity to a fully realized world like FF7's which is like 10 bigger and with many more side-quests (not to mention towns). Even worse is that he lies about the linearity being present only on the first half when the truth is that after the Pulse chapter the game goes back to its corridor. -__-

There is so much wrong in this opinion piece that it would take a monumental wall of text to rectify all that nonsense. Some people shouldn't be allowed to write stuff on the internets, seriously.

[Mr_Nuts]

You know what's wrong with this piece...he's clutching at straws the whole way. Trying to twist the bad stuff into good stuff

You want to know "hate" in a amazing FF game where people nit picked it death despite being a better game then even FF7....FF8 and that's because it wasn't a direct FF7 sequel.

[Dj7FairyTail]

FFXIII is the reason why I am done FF.

FFXHD might be the last FF game I play even though already beaten FFX.

Moving on with Xenoblade 2, Tales, Etrian Odyssey, Shin Megami Tensei, Pokemon and more.

[Dravidian]

Eh, I wouldn't throw away the series. I usually make decisions on a game-by-game basis since even "crappy" game makers may churn out a gem every now and then. FFXV looks like it might be a gem. However, I hate that it's not coming to ps3 and find it BS how much time and money was spent on it just to have it go multiplat to make up for it. Sure it's pretty, but was spending obscene amounts of cash on it to make it a little prettier and draw out the dev process even longer worth it? Look at Xenoblade. Low rez and massive. Ps3 could have made FFXV just as massive, but at a reasonable resolution, but hey it's not my money...

TL;DR version: judge a game not the makers. SE doesnt know how to budget.

[Dj7FairyTail]

Well I skipped
XI, XII and XIV.

Even though I have XIV PS3 Beta.

While I do like Lightning, Snow, Hope, Sazh, Fang and Vanille and the Music. That just about it.

[Mr_Nuts]

I was going to go through the points but I've said it so many times especially when the games come out that there's no point...people know what's wrong with the game

Here's one point which you could separate into smaller points

It's anything but a Final Fantasy ga,e

[knifefight]

I love how haters must be "silenced."

Yeah, because I want to live in a world completely free of varying opinions, different views, and containing no legitimate discussion. Stop liking what I don't like! Stop disliking things I like! Haters must be silenced! Grrrrrr!

...

......

-_-

[Hicken]

I don't think the haters should be "silenced," but I do think most of that crowd are more wrapped up in wanting to dislike the game than anything else.

I still contend that rather than view the game on how well it does what it ties to do, they'd prefer to spend time complaining about it not doing things it never intended to do. And yes, you can make arguments that it fails as an FF in some areas. But people have taken it so much further than that, to say that it's truly a bad game.

And that's absolutely false.

[Ksar]

Lightning is the favourite female character in the entire series in Japan and Europe.

http://www.novacrystallis.c...
http://www.ffdream.com/news...

Kaboom. No more haters.

[HarryMasonHerpderp]

People can vote for whatever they want it doesn't change the fact that FFXIII was a huge disappointment to a huge percentage of the Final Fantasy fanbase.
You can see that through the sales in the sequel.
Not to mention the game was garbage, nothing more than pretty graphics and a complete identity crisis.
http://www.destructoid.com/...

[kayoss]

Thats because Fantasy 13 was the only damn Final fantasy game of this generation. It doesnt look like they had a choice.

[dumahim]

I seriously don't get it. She was so boring and had so little character development. Everyone else had some decent stuff going on. In all honesty, the only things I remember about her is playing as her at the start, her not giving a crap about anything, and that she punched Snow, which was pretty awesome. As much as I disliked Snow, at least he had a personality and charcter development.

[Jdoki]

Articles can make all the points they want.. All I know is that FFXIII is the only FF game I've played that I didn't finish due to utter boredom and poor game experience.

I'm happy for those who liked it, but no article is going to change my opinion that it was a bad game.

[Rob_From_GopRant]

I own all Final Fantasy Games including all the imports. I must say - I did not like FF13. The story was ok - People had problems with bosses? - I thought FF13 was pretty easy and straight forward. I thought the dialogue and voice acting was cheesy. I feel FF12 voice acting has been the best so far. I think FF12 is underrated but FF13 has been my worst experience in this franchise.

[Firan]

Never finished FFXIII. I did get past what was it Pulse? I don't remember. People can like it as much as they want but it didn't satisfy me one bit.

[ps3_pwns]

yep ff 13 was bland and boring and just felt like I was grinding the whole time for nothing. I had to finish it though because mah trophies needed to be at a respectable percentage lol. cant be having less then 50%

[tigertron]

It's funny that this article has appeared today, because I was thinking about FFXIII earlier and whether I should go back and complete it, because I only reached chapter 12.

It wasn't the game I was expecting from the 2006 trailer (which had me incredibly hyped), and it may have under-delivered in quite a few ways but it is still a decent game. I'm just considering whether to go back to it.

As for XIII-2 - I didn't think much of the demo with the QTEs, but I may pick it up at some point if I complete XIII.

With Lightning Returns, I think it has the potential to be good, but for some reason SE are releasing it in a period when next-gen consoles will be out, and thus the PS3/360 will be last gen. Now, you may think that's good business sense due to the large install base, but it has the potential to put people off, I'm sort of put off because I know I'll be focusing my attention on PS4 games, but if it gets good reviews then we'll see. It does look interesting though.

[FinalFantasyFan]

The problem is that he considers those who gave valid opinions as to why the game isn't such a good game "haters" because he can't come up with any good counter argument. The truth is that I've yet to see a FF13 fan who can give good reason why the series should stick with FF13's style rather than go with FF15's style. One such dumb argument is that FF15 is nothing more than mindless hack and slash. Haven't they seen its trailer? Did it look like "mindless hack and slash"? What's more, FF15 will bring back the experiences we love about the series that were entirely missing from FF13 : a large open world to explore, Chocobos to ride, and airships to fly. How can FF15 not be better than FF13?

[Simco876]

Sadly I think the old style FF is gone...with Versus turning to FFXV...very disappointing. I was hoping....it's Versus..it's Versus, no problem...then they changed it to XV.

FF is finished, but at least I got I, IV, VII, VIII, IX, X out of the deal.

[HarryMasonHerpderp]

I'm with you on that one.
Seems us guys that want a classic Final Fantasy are just being ignored by Squeenix.

[Firan]

Bravely Default for 3DS gets English release so at least we get one classic FF style game. It has job system, summons and everything.

It's a spiritual successor to FF 4 Heroes of Light for DS.

[HarryMasonHerpderp]

Bravely Default looks great but I don't own a 3DS unfortunately, not really a fan of the hardware ( I own a Vita) but it does have some great titles on it, I'm also really interested in Shin Megami Tensei IV so I may up getting a 3DS eventually.

[Kyosuke_Sanada]

Wished Mistwalker comes out with a multiplatform RPG. Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey gave me such hope for the future......

[kayoss]

I have a feeling that Final fantasy 15 will be very similar to devil may cry mechanics.

[JonnyBigBoss]

You can't change my mind. FFXIII was boring and way too linear.

[Keregan]

Even if this guy is trying hard to convince us that FF13 is not that bad he did forgot to underline what really makes this game a total failure. The combat system and the linearity are just secondary reasons to me while the main flaws remains how poorly written (story, characters, world)the game is. IMAO since Hironobu Sakaguchi departure in 2001, the FF branch has been nothing more then a Emo retarded kids manga with boring cutscene. I really hope FF15 turns this around with a more dark and mature scenario. I'm 32 and have no time to waste with a bunch of pussy characters that are trying to connect with their emotions...damn it's like FF13 was a game for teenage girls. Now come on SqareEnix, it's time to go back too your roots, i want a hero who is disillusionned, that drink smoke and who enjoy swinging a skyscraper sword for the sake of his own ambition. :)

[-Gespenst-]

Gamers are just too conservative and a little bit spoilt. I like that XIII took such a huge risk. It shows that SE weren't too concerned with just turning a profit by putting out exactly what the masses wanted. They tried to push the envelope, or shake things up a bit. They were fighting creative stagnation.

I know the game was supposed to have been a bit of an admin and communications nightmare, and sure, maybe Wada was a bit careless in greenlighting it, but it's still a solid game. I played it a bit recently at a friends house and it's super fun.

The story wasn't the best, but the gameplay really complemented it very well. The linearity really supported the narrative force of running from fate, as did the frantic battle system. The visuals and visual design are just sublime from start to finish - the game should win multiple awards for it, from the world, to the enemies, just beautiful. The XIII soundtrack was literally the best score I heard all gen, nothing even comes close and Masashi Hamuazu, while a deeply acquired taste and perhaps requiring a large interest and involvement in music, is an absolute genius.

The characters were probably the game's weakest point - in the worst cases they felt like generic anime archetypes - and the world wasn't really fleshed out very well on account of the pace of the narrative. This of course was rectified in XIII-2, and dare I say it, Noel is one of the strongest characters I think I've seen in a Final Fantasy game. Nevertheless I've always thought Lightning was an interesting character. The idea of a "female Cloud" is interesting to me, and I'm interested to see how SE will develop her identity as a woman, not just a masculinised woman.

I'd choose most of the Final Fantasy games over XIII, but it's by no means a failure. It't among the worst of a great bunch, but it still very much belongs in that great bunch.

[Son_Lee]

One of my favorites in the series. Love it to death. Don't see the hate for it. Yes I played them all and this is my 3rd fave behind FFVII and FFX.