FXIII; Final Day
So I'm going to make this more of a review than my random disjointed thoughts and random lulzy observations. Not a long one, but a short one kind of like I did to XII.
First, because it is the first thought in my head, allow me to say this.
THE ENDING; the last scene of that game after you send the final boss to its grave is one of the single most awesome things I have ever seen in this or any other life.
That's right, the ending of this game improved my overall opinion of the entire game. Will I ever play Final Fantasy XIII a second time? No. I didn't play XII twice, and I liked that plot a LOT more than this one (Of course, XII took me 100 hours to beat). But that last scene... right off the top of my head there's only one thing I can think of that matches it in pure epicness.
Yeah, that's right. I rank what happened up there with raising one finger to the sky and stopping the end of the world.
Congratulations, Fang and Vanille... you are officially in God Tier.
And I'm so damn glad the game ended on a sort of bittersweet note like X did; it starts off sort of dark and sombre, so the ending was a relief that it, even a little, matched.
Anyway, the game itself was a little longer than I thought it was going to be. Mostly because I stopped to do one of the TWO total sidequests there were in that game... and I didn't even get all of the hunts. (I didn't find Pakti's parts, either. Didn't need to bother.) Which meant it took me about 60 hours to beat (most guides say the overall time for the plot was 40 hours... which is damn short for an FF game.) an odd time since that's how long it took me to beat FFX. However I didn't do much side-questing in X before the final boss so you can see how the plot is violently short.
And it cuts off randomly right about 2/3rds of the way through, allowing you to do all the free-roaming level grinding it should have given you earlier in the game.
THE CHARACTERS are likeable... but they get the vast majority of their developing done in the first half of the game... which leaves the second half of the game to just kind of... hang there in terms of characterization. Sazh was amusing for comic relief until they forgot they were using him for comic relief about the time you're finishing up Nautilus. Snow was an idiot, and he stopped being so much of an idiot after a while, but I think it was more the other characters conformed to it. Hope was so damn angsty for a little kid... and then he REALLY wasn't anymore and that was weird. Lightning remained well balanced until the end which was a relief. Vanille's incessant bubbliness of annoying went away and it balanced her out a WHOLE bunch; made her a really likeable character by the end. Fang had some weird mood swings that weren't well explained, but overall I really liked her, too.
Oh and before you ask, I got used to Vanille's accent weirdness. I think the directing got better by the end, but at some point it just stopped bugging me.
THE PLOT is utterly forgettable. I was reading a review while doing one of the many battles in the game that I think summed up the problem with the plot better than I could off the top of my head; The game does an excellent job of telling you the story instead of showing it to you. If anyone's ever taken a college writing class, then they'll understand. The teachers drill into your head; show, don't tell when it comes to things. Unfortunately, the cutscenes don't cover a whole bunch. The game gives you an entire compendium to recap the plot and motives of the characters... things that they should be able to cover with internal dialogue, actions, and speech, but rather spectacularly fail to do. It starts out doling out a bunch of ill-defined terms that you have to look up and the like and if you're not confused 10 minutes into the game, you're doing a lot better than I was.
THE MUSIC; Oh God I'm so disappointed. ;; Apparently the OST was done by the same guy that did XII. Okay, says I, I liked XII's music for the most part. Except... there's not a single goddamned song in this game besides the Strangely Replaced Theme of My Hands (which is a good song but... what) that is memorable. I can think of four or five off the top of my head from XII that I liked (I'm not gonna bother comparing to the Nobuo Uematsu era of FF games - he was about four tiers above the new guy). The background music, for some reason, is turned WAY down, too, so even in that last scene when My Hands is playing you can hardly hear it over all the ambient sound effects. And some of it was so weirdly out of place. There's some really upbeat jazz pieces when you walk through the ruins of Gran Pulse that are just like... what. I was expecting something in a more... minor key.
Speaking of random things that were out of place; why weren't Fang and Vanille more affected by seeing Oerba in the state it was in? :|
THE GRAPHICS; are amazing. As usual, SE delivers. If they weren't as good as they were, it probably would've not made the game worth playing. Not gonna lie.
THE BATTLE SYSTEM; everyone's making a mention of it, so I will, too. It's like if XII and X-2 had a baby. And truth be told, I liked the predecessor systems better. For one, because you could switch which characters you were controlling. It's fine if the AI (which is kind of retarded, by the way. More than once I saw good healing go to waste only to watch my leader die) takes control of the others because the pace of the game is BLISTERING at best (which I like), but at the least either let me switch to a character when they're being retarded so I can correct it, or give me a way to prioritize attacks and buffs.
It's also too easy at first, then hits a difficulty spike... and then is too easy again. They gave you an iWin button. I will continue, forever into eternity, to call it an iWin button... because for most of the battles, it's the only button you need to spam to win fights. I will not lie, there were boss fights that I spent the entirety of reading Fang/Vanille smut, reviews of the game, or tagging things on Rivelata when I should have been paying attention. But I didn't need to except to press X every once in a while and/or switch paradigms.
OVERALL; on a scale of ten, I'd probably give it a 7... originally I was gonna give it a 5, maybe 6, but I'm not going to lie, the ending made up for a lot of the other shortcomings.
Play it once so you can say you have, enjoy it for what you can enjoy out of it. Wallow in the sexual tension between Fang and Vanille. And then make your own opinion.
First, because it is the first thought in my head, allow me to say this.
THE ENDING; the last scene of that game after you send the final boss to its grave is one of the single most awesome things I have ever seen in this or any other life.
That's right, the ending of this game improved my overall opinion of the entire game. Will I ever play Final Fantasy XIII a second time? No. I didn't play XII twice, and I liked that plot a LOT more than this one (Of course, XII took me 100 hours to beat). But that last scene... right off the top of my head there's only one thing I can think of that matches it in pure epicness.
Yeah, that's right. I rank what happened up there with raising one finger to the sky and stopping the end of the world.
Congratulations, Fang and Vanille... you are officially in God Tier.
And I'm so damn glad the game ended on a sort of bittersweet note like X did; it starts off sort of dark and sombre, so the ending was a relief that it, even a little, matched.
Anyway, the game itself was a little longer than I thought it was going to be. Mostly because I stopped to do one of the TWO total sidequests there were in that game... and I didn't even get all of the hunts. (I didn't find Pakti's parts, either. Didn't need to bother.) Which meant it took me about 60 hours to beat (most guides say the overall time for the plot was 40 hours... which is damn short for an FF game.) an odd time since that's how long it took me to beat FFX. However I didn't do much side-questing in X before the final boss so you can see how the plot is violently short.
And it cuts off randomly right about 2/3rds of the way through, allowing you to do all the free-roaming level grinding it should have given you earlier in the game.
THE CHARACTERS are likeable... but they get the vast majority of their developing done in the first half of the game... which leaves the second half of the game to just kind of... hang there in terms of characterization. Sazh was amusing for comic relief until they forgot they were using him for comic relief about the time you're finishing up Nautilus. Snow was an idiot, and he stopped being so much of an idiot after a while, but I think it was more the other characters conformed to it. Hope was so damn angsty for a little kid... and then he REALLY wasn't anymore and that was weird. Lightning remained well balanced until the end which was a relief. Vanille's incessant bubbliness of annoying went away and it balanced her out a WHOLE bunch; made her a really likeable character by the end. Fang had some weird mood swings that weren't well explained, but overall I really liked her, too.
Oh and before you ask, I got used to Vanille's accent weirdness. I think the directing got better by the end, but at some point it just stopped bugging me.
THE PLOT is utterly forgettable. I was reading a review while doing one of the many battles in the game that I think summed up the problem with the plot better than I could off the top of my head; The game does an excellent job of telling you the story instead of showing it to you. If anyone's ever taken a college writing class, then they'll understand. The teachers drill into your head; show, don't tell when it comes to things. Unfortunately, the cutscenes don't cover a whole bunch. The game gives you an entire compendium to recap the plot and motives of the characters... things that they should be able to cover with internal dialogue, actions, and speech, but rather spectacularly fail to do. It starts out doling out a bunch of ill-defined terms that you have to look up and the like and if you're not confused 10 minutes into the game, you're doing a lot better than I was.
THE MUSIC; Oh God I'm so disappointed. ;; Apparently the OST was done by the same guy that did XII. Okay, says I, I liked XII's music for the most part. Except... there's not a single goddamned song in this game besides the Strangely Replaced Theme of My Hands (which is a good song but... what) that is memorable. I can think of four or five off the top of my head from XII that I liked (I'm not gonna bother comparing to the Nobuo Uematsu era of FF games - he was about four tiers above the new guy). The background music, for some reason, is turned WAY down, too, so even in that last scene when My Hands is playing you can hardly hear it over all the ambient sound effects. And some of it was so weirdly out of place. There's some really upbeat jazz pieces when you walk through the ruins of Gran Pulse that are just like... what. I was expecting something in a more... minor key.
Speaking of random things that were out of place; why weren't Fang and Vanille more affected by seeing Oerba in the state it was in? :|
THE GRAPHICS; are amazing. As usual, SE delivers. If they weren't as good as they were, it probably would've not made the game worth playing. Not gonna lie.
THE BATTLE SYSTEM; everyone's making a mention of it, so I will, too. It's like if XII and X-2 had a baby. And truth be told, I liked the predecessor systems better. For one, because you could switch which characters you were controlling. It's fine if the AI (which is kind of retarded, by the way. More than once I saw good healing go to waste only to watch my leader die) takes control of the others because the pace of the game is BLISTERING at best (which I like), but at the least either let me switch to a character when they're being retarded so I can correct it, or give me a way to prioritize attacks and buffs.
It's also too easy at first, then hits a difficulty spike... and then is too easy again. They gave you an iWin button. I will continue, forever into eternity, to call it an iWin button... because for most of the battles, it's the only button you need to spam to win fights. I will not lie, there were boss fights that I spent the entirety of reading Fang/Vanille smut, reviews of the game, or tagging things on Rivelata when I should have been paying attention. But I didn't need to except to press X every once in a while and/or switch paradigms.
OVERALL; on a scale of ten, I'd probably give it a 7... originally I was gonna give it a 5, maybe 6, but I'm not going to lie, the ending made up for a lot of the other shortcomings.
Play it once so you can say you have, enjoy it for what you can enjoy out of it. Wallow in the sexual tension between Fang and Vanille. And then make your own opinion.