Review: Final Fantasy XIII

i consider this to be one of my best reviews 

Whoa. Well, this just goes to show that (game) reviews are always subjective in the end. Even if it may only come down to *how* negative/positive you think some part of the game is. It always causes vastly different scores per reviewer.  I'll give my own views on the game here, as I don't agree with everything. That said, this is a good review, no mistake about it! So don't take this as me being aggressive or anything, as I realize my writing style can come across that way.
 
I didn't have any problem with the story. You don't have to read codex entries to understand the plot. All you really have to know is that the characters have a Focus (a destiny given to them by the Fal'Cie), and the Fal'Cie of Cocoon and Pulse are using them as pawns to try to destroy their respective worlds. The ones from Cocoon want to bring about Ragnarok with a mass sacrifice of all the humans on Cocoon. The cast tries to find a way to avoid the sacrifice, and they do. More info is not necessary. The Codex info merely serves to flesh it out, for the people who are really interested in the details.

You're correct that the characters don't need anything explained to them. That's not a story flaw; they all grew up with the stories about Fal'Cie and L'Cie. They put it all together through the events of the cut-scenes (like Raines turning to crystal). They actually explain everything to the player well and concisely. What the L'Cie are, what a Focus is… there's even a point when a crystallized L'Cie explains the whole premise of Cocoon and Pulse. It's just a matter of paying attention, even if it's annoying. The alien concepts don't stay alien.

I didn't find the combat uninvolving. It's the same as a game like X-2, it just adds more tactics in the form of the stagger bar. I will say, though, that refusing to participate in the stagger system will cause battles to drag on, which is a flaw. It forces your characters to change roles. Some players want to be totally free to use a team of three black mages (Ravagers), but XIII makes that impossible. For the role-players obsessed with role-playing rather than battle tactics, that's a big flaw. Again, it's a question of what kind of player you are - what type of gameplay you prefer.

Whether or not you auto-attack is up to you - you can still choose which attack to use like in previous games. It's just that auto-attack picks attacks based on what element the enemy is weak to, and their placement on the battlefield. To me, that eliminates unnecessary tedium from the combat. In old FFs, it was always a matter of using the same spell/attack over and over, Firaga or curative spells/items for undead, ice for fire monsters, etc. If there was a group of enemies, use an AOE version of the spell. That. Was. It. At least this FF had the good sense to remove that repetition from the equation and try something new.

I liked the paradigm system - it was all about timing, when to use which attack, and trying to constantly push the limit of offense VS defense, Ravager vs Medic/Sentinel etc. It was about risk VS reward: keep going in order to stagger, or defend, and defend with how many medics? How many 'cures' do I need to get back to sufficient strength to survive and continue doing damage (and increasing the stagger bar for insane damage)? If I launch the enemy now, can Hope cure the team enough, and in time? When do I switch paradigms, can I switch paradigms fast enough to keep the enemy airborne? I liked that micromanagement, and FF was always about micromanagement. What previous FFs did was make enemies go into certain states when they were harder to damage or when they used powerful attacks. XIII at least expanded on it. Yes, XIII is restrictive in some ways - each Final Fantasy has that issue, as I explained. But XIII is mostly the same as a game like X-2 when it comes to restrictiveness. FF is restrictive.

Lastly, the battle rating isn't random. The more efficiently you defeat the enemy, the more points you get to spend on the Crystarium (skills). It fits the combat perfectly, as the combat focuses on being as efficient as possible. Whether you like that or not depends on your preferences.

Overall, it's clear different reviewers have different preferences and priorities. I'm bothered by the game's linearity too, but not enough to consider it to ruin the rest of the game. I still think the combat is fun - the linearity of the game world has no bearing on that. So for me, the combat is enough to get me through to the next part of the game, the next part of the story. And the story is fine to me.

( Edited 27.12.2017 14:39 by Leo Epema )

One of my early memories of FFXIII was walking in on my brother watching a cutscene where Sazh was lecturing Lightning (or someone) about being hunted down because they were a L'cie. He kept going on and on, and I had no idea what's happening.

When the cutscene was over, I asked my brother what a L'cie was, and he just shrugged his shoulders. Pretty much killed my interest in FFXIII before it even started