I recently beat FINAL FANTASY XIII and I want to tell you my impressions.
First of all the game is terrible as a FINAL FANTASY main title as it has very little to do with the main series mechanics and gameplay. This game should have been called a spin-off, not the main title entry.
The game lacks all the charming points of a FF RPG and it falls flat at delivering the old fans of the series good things. I was excited to try the next gen game after finishing PS2 FF title and some NDS spin-offs. FF XII was quite alright but I still couldn't forgive the developers for not including the ability of a free roaming on a world map which was included in FF IX last time skipping next two entries in the series. In any case both PS2 FF titles were much more limited in terms of exploration and your actions compared to PS1 FF games, but at least they were still "FINAL FANTASY" games, you could feel it and you could still enjoy it. With the coming of the next gen console (PS3) and the FF title on it I expected all the limitations to be lifted and I thought the new game would give me freedom like never before plus amazing graphical improvements which didn't happen.
The game became even more limited and almost completely lost all RPG parts which before made me a FINAL FANTASY fan. There are no cities, there are no villages, there are no NPCs to interact with and get some hints on finding treasures or secret places because there is no world map to explore, no big locations to roam, only a corridor style levels with the same boring battles with the same boring monsters which lack in variety. All the interaction goes between party members but the player is not involved as he is not given any choice in dialogues, the player just watches and listens to animated cut scenes and he is never given any choice. The story of the game has a main idea of not giving up and not agreeing with your destiny or whatsoever, but to fight and to follow your own choice and heart. Surprisingly the game doesn't give any choice to the player who blindly follows the plot unable to make any changes to any aspects of the story or even to dialogues between the party members or those rare and fake NPCs which don't bear any meaning at all, were they absent in the game, it would change nothing. Those few NPCs are in the game only for the sole purpose of telling the players that the developers put them there and they are there! That's all.
There are no mini games here which were very popular in previous FF games. The game is easy and the only place where the difficulty suddenly rises to an inadequate level is chapter 11 (there are 13 chapters in total) where I had to switch to EASY difficulty level as killing monsters became too difficult and impossible in many cases without a long and boring grinding which still doesn't help as the party members' levels are limited by the story. You just can't level up unless you go farther in the story and when you do you will have already lost the interest to come back and fight those tough monsters because you have already beaten the game! You saw the end credits, you saw the THE END screen, you don't want to play more since there is no point. Getting some stronger weapons or rare armor or making more money loses its point since the game is over and you don't feel like continuing playing when nothing will happen, no story advancement, no new twists or anything.
I am not afraid to say that FF13 was the worst game in the series. If they called it something like "FINAL FANTASY the defenders of Cocoon" without putting number XIII in the title and considered it as an experimental spin-off then I wouldn't have any complaints because it wouldn't fail at satisfying my expectations, but since it was called "FINAL FANTASY XIII" I had the right to imagine a FINAL FANTASY game only improved and better than the previous ones.
I forgot to mention how stupidly the invisible walls are placed in this game. You can't move your character anywhere except the straight path in front of you, you can't fall off a cliff and such - everywhere are the invisible walls. Jump points are stupid too, where developers put the jump points you can jump like a flea flying over huge crevices and taking up on 20 meters heights or more, but when there is no jump point placed by the developers then you become a toddler who can't climb or jump even on half meter height or jump over a crack in the floor of the same size. Looks really stupid.
I hate this game on which I wasted about 70 hours of my life and unfortunately there are two more of the same shit quality fake Final Fantasy titles with the same protagonist female called Lightning. :(
You may say that I can skip the two, yet I can't because I must play them all being the fan of the series and all. I heard that the next number entry (FF14) is much better than this spawn of the otherwise great series and goes back to an RPG game style. So while waiting for its release for PC I can go through the worst to enjoy the better even more than I would if I had never played "FINAL FANTASY XIII, XIII-2, XIII Lightning returns.
Now, there are some really idiotic designer decisions in the game concerning monsters. It may be the same in some previous games but I somehow didn't notice these things before and in this game they popped right in my eyes so I couldn't let them go.
Some monsters in the game wear clothes and use some tools and equipment which is hard to believe since you never see anything like monster towns and cities nor factories where they would produce all the needed equipment for themselves. You never see them sitting and making clothes or braiding their hair. You can't imagine that too because there are no prerequisites for it in the game.
So you have a complete feeling of an utter nonsense and falseness of the world of the game. You can clearly see that it's just some dumb developers silly ideas and not "real" monsters of this game universe. Everything is false from the beginning to the end starting with invisible walls around you and ending with disappearance of monsters or humans after a battle (they promptly disintegrate instead of their bodies falling to the ground at least).
Look for yourself and try to imagine all those beasts sewing clothes and making tools (just some examples, there are more monsters like this):
This Ahriman has a cape on him, but I don't see any hands on him which could sew the garment
The goblin chieftain has a neat pair of goggles, leather pants and a hat which were all produced by who and how? Do goblins rob humans of their clothes? How do they make sure the size is correct? Do they make them on their own? How? When? Where? Goggles, how? Wheels and boots on them is a unique feather of goblins so I think these items couldn't be stolen from humans, then how do they make them?
The humbaba monster has huge leather sleeves and laces on them, leather shorts, bracelets and a giant sword. Then there must be humbaba clothes makers, humbaba smiths and humbaba armorers to produce these things. Do humbabas buy the equipment from their kin? then do they also have money? then do they have cities somewhere? Families? Tribes?
Tonberries were present in other FF games too and now I can ask the same questions to the creators of older games - who makes the clothes for them? There must be big settlements of Tonberries somewhere where they live their lives making the shoes, clothes and knives with lamps, right? Why we never see that?
This Yaksha has his hair (is it hair?) braided and obviously he has clothes on him but he doesn't have arms and hands so it's a mystery how does he make it. So there must be times when all yakshas and their friends get together and help each other with their beaks or something to do the hair and put up some clothes, yes?
The whole idea of this so called Cie'th stones is a total bullshit. Not a single word of truth behind it, nor logic. The story of these stones has it that they are crystallized people who once were chosen by Fal'Cies to do some missions but failed and firstly became Cie'ths (a mindless zombie-like monster only not rotting but crystallizing) and then after a long-long time of wandering about in the form of Cie'th and finally losing all the energy they became these stones who still try to relay their missions on other chosen ones who happen to pass by.
What is so stupid about it you may ask? The stupid thing is that all the missions are still available for our party. The background story of the stones clearly said that they became like that only after a very long time (hundreds of years) of staying in a form of a mindless "zombie" which is Cie'th. Their missions are usually to defeat a usual monster or another Cie'th. How the hell all those very specific to the mission monsters survived through centuries and are still available in the same place where those Cie'ths were supposed to find them? How those other Cie'ths who were supposed to be defeated by the chosen ones didn't become Cie'th stones? The chosen ones failed at defeating them and became Cie'ths themselves and then after a long time became the stones, but their original Cie'th targets outlived them and didn't become those stones? Why and how could that be? The game doesn't follow it's own rules and logic because there are seems no rules and logic in this game even it pretends to have them. So, if only the mission target is not some immortal never aging and never moving from its place creature the whole "stones missions" crap is just a crap and impossible to exist which gives us another blatant smack in the face of the falseness of this game's "world".
Spoiler alert! Don't read further if you still plan to play this game!
The whole story is actually a piece of shit which doesn't make any sense.
Our playable characters were talking the whole was through the game up to the last battle about fighting against their mission and not following the plan of the biggest baddie in the game but all their actions were playing along his master plan. As the ultimate purpose for our heroes the bad guy wanted them to fight and kill the Orphan which would make the whole world collapse and kill off all the inhabitants in it as a sacrifice to summon the original god who created the world and Fal'cies in it. So our heroes were always blah-blah about not letting that happen and about killing off the bad guy and not the Orphan, yet in the end they fought the Orphan and successfully killed him which should have invoked the end of the world and deaths of all the people and animals in it. Somehow nothing like that ever happened and we had a happy end! How the hell? Again just no logic or any explanation. They did everything to the last letter what the bad guy Barthandelus wanted but his plan didn't trigger the end result of what he hoped to achieve. In other words it goes like this: you, cut off your finger and throw it away, then you'll live the rest of your life without your precious finger! then you really start cutting off your finger and successfully manage to do so and throw it away, but the next minute instead of 100% guaranteed result of the lost digit on your hand forever and ever you find that your finger is still on it's place and maybe there is only a little scratch. Wouldn't you be surprised by such a twist in your tale?
