How does Sup Forums feel about this game?

I think it's a solid game and don't get why it received so much hate. It got generally good reviews yet at the same time had a ton of people bashing it.

chicken legs with no ass, and her head is too big

Didn't enjoy it and it's a testament to how SE has changed over the years. FF is just their experimental baby now and the franchise no longer resembles what it once did in the RPG community for most.

> shiva motorbike
Drop everytime

>don't get why

The countless threads weren't enough to get through your thick skull?

>It got generally good reviews yet at the same time had a ton of people bashing it

Welcome to the world of paid off reviews.

Some of the main issues include:

>Linear, even for modern FF. Linear to the point where you can rarely go backwards and the world doesn't open up till late in the game.
>Relatively uninteresting characters with one-dimensional personalities that have many conflicts that could easily be solved by just talking.
>A main character that is extremely stoic for a lot of the game and not even with a weird/awkward personality quirk. Cloud was a bit of a dork (crossdressing, "Lets mosey") and Squall was sometimes over the top with how cold he was. Lightning is just...serious. That's it.
>Pretty, but kinda bland world and environments.
>Constant switching of characters so until later portions of the game it feels like plot lines and gameplay is disjointed.

Overall it wasn't a bad game necessarily. But really flawed in a lot of ways. A major issue throughout was that it took so fucking long to get going, and that lead up has so little substance. Lots of JRPGs have long startups, but they also tend to have fun characters or intriguing plots. FFXIII doesn't have much going on for it early on.

The real bashing came when the sequels appeared. It's easy to look at FFXIII in a vacuum and just say, "Eh, I didn't like it but whatever." But then we got FFXIII-2 which had Lightning on the cover. And while it was better in some ways most people weren't super into the world and characters from the first game to be interested in a sequel. Then we got Lightning Returns, a third entry for an FF entry people weren't enthused about. To my knowledge no other FF game got that many sequels, but one of the least popular ones did. It's not only infuriating, but add on to it the obsession with Lightning, a character people weren't blown away by, and it's just one big mess.

It's solid, not amazing. It looked great and some people got past the slow start to get to the good bits. But it wasn't as good as other games in the series. And yet it got two other sequels. That's why it gets bashed so much.

Its got Snow and Sazh.

So I love the game. Guilty Pleasure.
Got me a Lightning, Snow and Sazh figurines. Shiiet im a faggot.

30 hours of fucking snore fest. I don't even know how I could manage to slog through it until Gran pulse, the supposed ""good"" part of the game.

And even then, grand pulse is mediocre at best.

I dropped it when I got to Gran Pulse and obsessively picked it up 4 years later. I think you have to immerse yourself with everything it has to offer and not the linear story to appreciate it.

One of the best battle systems in the series. The characters probably have the most development in the series, but whether you like them or not is still up the air.

Overall it's upper mid tier for me.

50% because of the ultra-linear on-rail world with horrible lack of exploration,
50% because realistic, relatable characters with human flaws and plot with complex themes like social commentary are too much to take for the average nostalFFag grown with mainstream shonenshit, who unironically thinks that Cecil and Kefka are good characters

Too linear. Lack of exploration. No towns. The combat system is probably my favorite in the series tho.

Meh.

It was boring. Gran Pulse made everything worse too, it was literally just a giant plain of nothingness and bounty quests. It was not fun at all. The combat is sluggish and dumb.
The characters are shallow and silly and don't actually do anything noteworthy with their time, it's like they are incapable of critical thinking.

The vistas were very nice but also very sterile and "clean", alot of giant structures and architecture for no real reason and sensibility.

The plot was extremely nonsensical and stupid, the Fal'Cie thing is just dumb as bricks and humans are like apathic little retards in this game.

I never knew what real japanese JRPG retardation was until I played this game. It's like every cliche turned up to the max.

I thought it was OK but XIII-2 was brilliant

13-2 > LR > 13

They rectified the linearity in XIII-2 but at that point lots of people had already written off the series.

>that one character everyone hates but is your favorite of the game

Ditto for Tidus.

It was a solid game.

It also had a very shitty development hell.

The amount of time between XII and XIII releasing caused anything wrong with the game to be magnified tenfold.

It was also supposed to be the great white hype of PS3 after MGS4, and it promised way too much in the process.

That being said, ironically, the first 4 or so hours of the game are the best. They do a great job establishing characters, motivations, and assembling the crew. The battle system is introduced gradually, and ramps up difficulty.

Once the actual game begins, though, it gets lost in itself. If you can actually stick with it, it's a very finely tuned RPG. Just absolutely boring as hell.

It's actually the first FF game I ever played because I always had a Nintendo growing up and only switched to Sony for the PS3.

>characters look beautiful
>environments are all extremely pretty
>the fighting system was somewhat interesting... after the first half dozen hours
>I liked the xp/class system and having choice of which characters you want in your party

However,
>it's a nonstop linear dungeon for 15-20 hours
>the cutscenes made me cringe so hard I'd sometimes cry with laughter during a 'sad' scene
>if you don't pick at least one Synergist, you're fucked
>no option to murder that fucking boy
>even when you get to the 'open world' section, it's more like a maze in a dungeon than anything else
>music starts to get very repetitive

I dropped it eventually, can't remember where. I don't regret buying it (on sale) though: it was fun for the most part.

>no option to murder that fucking boy

armpit

I gave this game a chance. I was pleasantly surprised.

The ending was fucking horrid though. Not in premise, but in execution. How the fuck do you make two lesbians fusing into a giant monster boring?

For the first twelve hours or so you don't even need to look at the screen to win 99% of battles. You can literally hold forward and press X every now and then. It's true, you can get hours and hours into the game just by holding fowards and clicking X, you only need to looka t the screen once in a few minutes at most.

That's "solid" to you? You call that solid? You really, honestly do?

>the world doesn't open up till late in the game
The world in FFXIII doens't open up, period. Stop spreading this shitty lie. You get one location where you can either kill monsters in order or die to strong ones and then kill monsters in order, and then it's back to corridors until the very end.

The plot was shit, the characters were boring, the combat basically played itself. It was terrible.

I'd say you do need to look at the screen frequently as you are constantly switching paradigms in combat, but the combat is pretty much a "Press X/A/ENTER" simulator.

It's a heavily flawed game. It's enjoyable, but pretty far from the hype built up and what you'd expect from a full-price AAA rpg(XV will wind up the same way.)

Complaints about the battle engine are usually pretty lulzy though. The rare times someone bitches about magic, it makes sense, but most of them were whining non-stop about "auto-battle" button, without any consciousness at all that it was just a slightly more intelligent "Fight" command.

>The characters probably have the most development in the series
Stating their confused motivations into the camera like robots counts as development now? The game is a special case of horrible writing even by Final Fantasy standards.

Yo who cares. I think the game is shit but I wish I had enjoyed it.

It's quite unimpressive considering the scale of its development and advertising.

Grand Pulse aside (which beyond looking pretty wasn't anything special), the game never opens up at all. Saying it opens up later is just incorrect because the moment you leave the Steppe the game goes back to being a corridor simulator.

>I'd say you do need to look at the screen frequently as you are constantly switching paradigms in combat
You only start doing that about 10 hours intot he fucking game, remember?

Why does that girl look like she has down syndrome

it's a mediocre prologue to Lightning Returns.

I didn't think it was a bad game, but for a FF game it felt...small, in every FF you have different conflicts, sub-stories, things that happen that doesn't have anything to do with the main quest. And you feel like traveling over the world, in this game is just...like playing ff 7 and you have midgard, then a little zone around midgar and that's it, that's the entire world of 13.

In this game you feel like they only created the world for the story and they added nothing else, it's not about most of the game being linear, it is about FEELING linear and small.

Many people compare it with X and its linearity for most of the game, but in X you were able to revisit most places at some point and you had other activities that had nothing to do with the main quest, even if many of them were to get the best equipment or shit like that, they were different.

In XIII you have a lot of linear hours and then at some point it's "here, have this open green zone with kill x and collect y MMO-ish missions". And that's it, you can't go back to other places, you can't revisit cities or villages.

>Grand Pulse aside (which beyond looking pretty
Get your shit together. It was the ugliest place in the whole fucking game. Top screenshot is what the early part of the game looks-like (in-game). Bottom is the fucking Gran Pulse. Jesus fucking Christ, get your shit together.

I have no idea where these Gran Pulse myths even come from. It's not nonlinear, it's not the game opening up (it simply doesn't, it's just a bunch of monster optional hunting quests in a couple of areas and it's back to walking down corridors again), it's not good looking and the story still doesn't appear when you get there.

>I didn't think it was a bad game
Really, you don't? The corridors and the by far the most ridiculous writing in the whole fucking series (even counting 10 and 8, easily) didn't tip you off?

Oh fuck that is ugly. Holy shit, user, I remember this looking a lot better. Forgive my poor memory.

It's unironically a decent entry-level jRPG. It's far from the best FF but it can be fun

Only in LR, retard.

i guess if you're not a weeb or japanese, the characters, their interactions and actions might seem weird or stupid to you

Prob thinking of Calm Lands.

...

Just so you don't think I've handpicked. The rest of the stupid game is absolutely gorgeous, but Gran Pulse is ugly as sin.

Nah man that's an area I remember quite well. I'm willing to bet that I just zoned out at Grand Pulse because of how dull it was.

Gran Pulse is exactly the same except the corridor is wide.

>that
>absolutely gorgeous

serious?

I worship Goddess Lightning's armpits!!

I know, dude. FFXIII's visuals were actually really good. I remember Nautilus, Eden, and the Sunleth Waterscape looking great. I think my confusion regarding Gran Pulse is simply down to zoning out during that area, and assuming that due to the rest of the game being pretty, Gran Pulse must've been too.

Reading comprehension, please.

Attached screenshot (it's in-game) is gorgeous. That one, from Gran Pulse part of the game, is ugly as fuck. The other guy said Gran Pulse was beautiful, but he's misremembering.

Why didn't I need to be a weeb to understand final fantasy 3?

That's still gran pulse.

>Gran Pulse is ugly as sin.

it's shit

Game had some beautiful backgrounds, should have spent less time on those and more time making an actual game that isn't shit

I played it for 6 hours and just couldn't bring myself to go any further. I almost feel like I should try to go back to it.

Actually, the game system isn't bad, especially for a Final Fantasy game. It's just that vital parts of it unlock only even 2-3 hours so that you literally have nothing to do for almost 10 hours. The first 6-8 hours the game literally (LITERALLY) plays by itself, because other characters fight autonomously, paradigms are not a thing yet and Lightning's auto recommendations are always the best anyway.

At around 15 hours in the game gets actually kinda challenging. It's true, the system is not that bad. It can get entertaining and even strategic. Too bad the writing is so improbably horrendous (I really haven't seen anything like it outside of modern Square-Enix games like the 3rd Birthday or this) and yet there's so much of it.

>lose if your arbitrary lead gets downed
>segment of the game where enemies cast nothing but death
It was really not that good. The combo system marginalized both support roles, so there were only two good setups: full offense and full defense.

The whole problem with FFXIII is by that time Square Enix already estabislished a large portion of their playerbase as MMO fans and designed the whole iteration based on the idea of obtuse crafting mechanics and checking subquests off of the long list of tedious tasks just like in an actual MMO. Thus, the game plays decently if you follow a walkthrough (just like you would in an MMO—research all the mechanics and quests off wikis beforehand), but completely fails on its own. And to make things worse, the cinematic story they designed for the nostalgia fanbase is lackluster and drawned out. These things are much more prominent in the 2 sequels, which play just like MMOs even moreso.

>One of the best battle systems in the series

Are you fucking kidding? It's the worst I have ever seen in a FF game. Literally just "mash X to win, the AI will do everything for you".

What you said is entirely alleviated by the fact that you lose nothing if you die. Of course, it lowers the stakes too, but I'm not saying it's a great game. All I'm saying is gameplay isn't as horrible as it is initially and not nearly as god awful as the game's writing, for example. It has its flaws, but it's adequate and occasionally fun.

Until about 12 hours in I was playing in actual disbelief though. I literally didn't drop the game just to see how it can go like that, just playing all the characters for me, just like fucking that. For those first ten hours, I was mesmerized and in complete disbelief.

>Literally just "mash X to win, the AI will do everything for you".
Confirmed for not having played the game longer than an hour.

You're not getting away with that

I beat the whole game, yes the paradigms give you SOMETHING to do, but just pressing auto-select for most of the game is inexcusable.

It is bad and not challenging enough. It's barely a game. There is no excuse for not having control of the party, and for even taking away less control than was in FFXII.

The game system is inferior to every FF, even the MMOs which I hate, and not even close to something like Valkyria Chronicles

I liked the graphics and I liked the designs, but this really is a polished turd

Can you really blame the person for not surviving the first dozen hours before the game even begins? It's ridiculous and insulting, and not for one hour at all, it lasts for hours and hours and the awful story doesn't help.

Even when you get the paradigms it's still barely more involved than "mash X to win". Sometimes switch to Sentinel to avoid damage. It's fucking shit.

And Crystarium is the worst levelup method in history. Even just getting bonuses and having no control would be better.

oh yeah forgot to mention the deep and engaging switching between sen/med/med and rav/rav/com

That's because believe it or not, after 12 years the challening still doesn't start. It took me around 130 hours to finish every subquests, and some of them were very challenging for sure. Too little too late though. FF13-2 is liked a lot more for the reason of unlocking the combat properly from the get go.

>It's barely a game.
This isn't true. It gets challenging enough so that planning your paradigm setup is a requirement later on and you have to change all the time and adapt to the situation very, very quickly. Bosses actually make you learn some patterns too. It's not much, but it is real gameplay and it's most OK.

>ignoring debuffs and energy bar resetting for fast paced combat
hello there casual

Yes, well, although I haven't played 13-2, Lightning Returns, despite having apparently been written by a fourteen year old, is a great game no matter how you look at it. It's immediately complex, it's truly open-ended and it's challenging right from the start.

yes, if you buy a game and can't be asses to play it for 10 hours, you're a spoiled little shit millennial with an epic backlog and should quite honestly end your life because everything has been spoonfed to you

back to watching markiplier you shit

Both 13-2 and LR have improved hugely on the combat. 13-2 kicks your ass with the first boss 30 minutes in and forces you to git gud and LR has some nice timing additions and overall feels great to control, but as much as 13's story was bad the other 2 games are fan fic tier so most people will be put off

oh boy, one extra paradigm you only need for bosses. deep.

>spoiled
Not everyone has the time, and you're better off selling them if they're going to be shit to get your money back

You sound full-blown autistic

>I don't have the time, but I'll buy a 100 hour long on average RPG and then make excuses that it's not absolutely perfect due to my limited attention span
The reason you don't have the time is because you're too busy shitposting on Sup Forums.

>forgetting
no character switching
If you die game over party members can rez you
I FUCKING HATE THAT

>long guis are bosses
play the game kid

It doesn't look like it's going to improve at all. There actually being some gameplay later on in FF13 is a surprise for anyone playing it. I personally only played that far because I was playing with a friend and we just couldn't stop laughing every time a battle started and Lightning won it for us or some characters joined the party and autobattled bosses to death.

Also if you get wiped characters in the back burner don't jump in and you can't control where you go

I meant to say that they don't have time to play it quickly, so they're better off getting the resale value back.

And they would be right to do so because FF13 is shit from beginning to end.

Nobody forced you to auto-battle the whole beginning. It was just a feature made for people who wanted to play it for the story.
>abuse a mechanic not intended for you
>cry about it
You're just retarded. Deal with it.

Lightning Returns is the best in the series.
It makes up for all the failures of the previous two by itself.

I'M GOING TO MARRY LIGHTNING!

superbosses even

and no, i'm not playing that turd ever again

But it fucking plays itself you shitter. It auto-picks the optimal commands. Until almost ten hours into the game the optimal strategy is to press X.

>constant timer on everything you do wherever you go
I wanted to like it, but they committed a cardinal sin with that mechanic.

>it sucks, you only need to use complex strategies for challenging enemies
are you new to video games?

Fang is literally best girl.

I believe so, yes. And, despite the god-awful writing that reads like fanfiction by a middleschooler, it even has meow mewo choco chow to entertain you. I just wish the fucking retard girl didn't spawn on every corner to explain the plot.

That's because you're dumb and too stupid too realize it's a feature made to help the player keep up in fast paced battles with rapid switching. It's your own fault that you decided to abuse it.

>pressing lb twice instead of once sometimes
>complex

Nah nigga. Serah though...

Are you serious? It was one of the best things about the game. It added tension and improved immersion and sense of reality. What the fuck is your problem with the timer? Are you a very slow person or a "completionist" autist or something?

Forget best pic.

You've got plenty of time. I unlocked the secret day on my first playthrough.

And the optimal commands are literally just attack attack attack heal heal.

FFX was similar, but at least you could fucking control the whole party and switch things around. At least you could play around

>inb4 Lightning attacks again

How is pressing X an abuse of the game system, you fucko?

Nobody is best in FF13. It's so horribly written that even Vanille is somehow made fucking insufferable.

Yes, I wanted to complete everything on 1-2 playthroughs.
>completionist autist
The game literally wants you to fall for the padding by doing repeated playthroughs and the same quests over and over for stats. If I didn't autism it up I'd have to waste 300 hours and speedrun the game to get everything.

There's no way to get back the lost time and it's very limited. You're guaranteed to be completely fucked in LR on your first playthrough and even once you adjust it's very hard to explore with constant nagging from Hope. It's just not fun.

>Nobody is best in FF13
Yeah, because how can you pick between Lightning, Vanille, and Fang? it's Vanille though

Because auto battle isn't always going to put the right debuffs on enemies especially if you don't know what they're vulnerable to, so you're gimping yourself if you always rely on it.

>FFXIII
>good battle system

it's like X-2's, except shit
the game blows