I don't give a fuck what anybody says best final fantasy of all TIME!!! first and favorite final fantasy and it will stay my favorite! Starting off the visuals for the games time are honestly STUNNING I mean just look at some of the clips and you'll see. The music is genuinely one of the best osts ive listened too, saying this at an unbiased standpoint that shit is top 5. All the characters (not snow fuck you) in the game are wonderful are pretty fucking cool (bias as FUCK for my boy sazh) The gameplay mechanics are def one of my favs, the paradigm system is just awesome and a unique (Imo since ive haven't seen anything like it) battle system, though there are some changes to be had with it. If this game had a remake I would defiantly add the option to switch characters like ff7 did but other than that its a great game mechanic. Level design wise I kind of agree with it not having an open world, im fine with ff13 not having an open world but I would like it if the levels were bigger sometimes (and had more loot) Talking about equipment, im also kind of not a fan of. This really goes to how you upgrade it, it seems you have to grind a lot to upgrade your gear and how you level it up is also weird. sometimes I just end up not paying attention to my gear and more towards general leveling. The story is decent, i would be glazing it but i kind of forgot about it. Overall my favorite final fantasy game, haters can go die in a ditch

I love the story in this game, if I were to rate this off story only it would be a 5/5. buuuuut, the gameplay style felt incredibly tedious, almost like a chore. I tried to love it but unfortunately I couldn't get into it.

A lot of the game is just a corridor sim with gorgeous cutscenes and that's that. I was also disappointed that side quests got introduced towards the end of the game, when I was no longer interested in even pursuing anything more than just the main story to get it over with. That said, while this is my least favourite FF game, I think all characters are very lovable and I enjoyed seeing a female MC a lot:3

OH also menus like the one in ff13 need to have a come back I'm afraid

Final Fantasy XIII is a JRPG in the final fantasy series with new battle mechanics and all. I've really tried to hard to like this game and replayed it three times through, but there are simply not enough positive points to outweigh the negatives. It still is a final fantasy game with kind of captivating story, though it defintely is among the weakest in the franchise. The boredom of tunnelrunning cannot be overstated, there are few more interesting level designs towards the end of the game, but just like with the opening of the side quest system 80 % in the game, it's too little too late. And the new fighting system is kind of innovative but has crucial failures; bad AI and broken tank-class concept make for rather annoying battles. You cannot do much in the battles even though you know by entering specific commands you'd win all battles, the paradigm shift takes too long and battles seem too slow. Music, graphics etc. are great as expected, it really fails in the fun of gameplay section.

Severely underrated, and a nostalgia bomb for me.

Playing it on Steam Deck as that is my preferred platform. Unlocked framerate, glorious 720p.

The Paradigm system is an amazing adaption of the traditional JRPG system. Where I thought FFXII become to finicky with it's real time program system in the later half, FXIII is smooth, frictionless and modern system that still upholds traditional JRPG systems. In later entries we see Final Fantasy combat becoming even more restricted on your control over your party and here a nice balance is kept.

The story similarly flows seamlessly, alternating between gameplay and story cutscenes. Playing in Japanese probably enhances the voice acting significantly (even though there are no proper subtitles available). The story still feels contemporary, reflecting current conflicts in our world.

Coming from FFXII, I didn't miss the semi-open world slogs and preferred the concentrated main quest. Even in FFXV, I skipped most open world parts and focused on the main storyline. Being in Chapter 7, I'm still a ways off from the open world part, having never reached it in my playthrough upon release. I'm excited for what is to come and wouldn't actually mind having some time to grind now.

We can see a bunch of Western influences like Star Wars and Halo. Does this make it a lesser entry? Future entries will likely continue this trend, yet here I still feel a reverence to the old Final Fantasy entries.

This much-maligned entry might have spelled doom for traditional JRPG design, but in hindsight, there is a real gem here, and nothing in this era beats this level of production design.

I'm honestly not sure where to even begin with this game. There are so many things to love and so many problems at the same time. I haven't even really decided what the quality of the game is myself, yet I still ended up really loving it in the end. I guess I'll just go over every thing that did and didn't work for me.

Gameplay:

Final Fantasy XIII has one of the best combat systems I have ever played. It truly feels perfectly thought out and designed in every way. Battles control like your average turn based RPG, however there is no taking turns in this game. Your party as well as the enemies you fight have an action bar that charges over time, and you decide when and how to use that action bar. This is the best way in which I have ever seen an RPG make the player focus on timing that didn't feel a bit clunky; unlike some of the older FF games. On top of the amazing timing system, this game also introduces the stagger system, another one of the best RPG mechanics I have ever seen. Each character can switch between numerous different stances with different types of attacks. Some of these attacks focus on doing damage while others focus on charging the "stagger bar," Which significantly weakens the enemy and is often the only way to practically kill them. What all this means is that in every single battle, no matter what the enemy, having a real strategy is an absolute must. It makes it so that the game never feels slow or grindy as battles will always demand your full attention and be engaging at the same time. Additionally this game makes the excellent choice to replenish your health after every battle, meaning you never have to worry about resource management and can just focus on what's actually fun; the combat. The game also does an excellent job with its experience/level up system. Rather than there being actual levels, there is a crystarium that functions like a skill tree where you can choose what aspects of your character you actually want to upgrade. New sections of the crystarium with better upgrades are unlocked upon completing chapters, which prevents you from ever becoming too overleveled. This is just another factor forcing you to constantly use strategy in battles, and also actively discourages the player from grinding. All of these aspects combine to make probably my favorite RPG battle system ever.

Outside of the combat system, this game has one big, glaring problem that I'm a little bit conflicted on: it's linearity. It is a bit ridiculous just how linear this game is. Aside from one area, nearly every single level of this game is just a straight hallway where you walk directly to your objective and I understand why some people hate it, but here's the thing; I don't. I have to ask myself, does this game really need exploration? While it's true that the level design definitely could be a bit more interesting, it doesn't hurt this game too much. The most interesting part of this game is the fighting, and this linear level design ensures that the player is always guided to the exact area they should be in to fight enemies that are exactly the right strength for them. It also ensures that the story can be paced exactly how the developers intended, despite this game's story being a bit lacklustre in a few ways. The way I see it, the time you spend walking between battles is a bit of an intermission for you to observe the world around you and to connect everything in the game together, and that’s okay.

I think my one big issue with the gameplay and the reason that so many people have a problem with these levels and the lack of interactivity with the world is caused by the lack of mini games. Though the world looks stunning you almost never interact with it in any way aside from walking from enemy to enemy. There is exactly one minigame in chapter 2 of the game, and then you never see one ever again. It almost feels like there was a plan to include them that was just never executed for whatever reason. It’s not the end of the world, just a bit disappointing.

Story

This is by far Final Fantasy XIII’s biggest problem by a long shot. I’ll give it some credit in that the general concept of the world and its backstory is genuinely very cool, but it is executed and presented so bafflingly badly that I don't even know how Square thought it was acceptable to release in its current state. For starters, you are given no context on what many of the made up terms and nonsense story aspects are. Instead, you're expected to read an in-game dictionary to make sense of anything, however you'll often just have to read the game's wikipedia page. This game loves to tell you what happens in its story without actually showing it to you. What really doesn't help is that the dialogue in this game is some of the worst, most unnatural sounding I have ever heard. I have seen student films made by 10th graders developed on budgets of cardboard with better dialogue than this. The characters often barely feel like they're even talking to each other, instead just spouting random nonsense needed to progress the plot. There must have also been some sort of miscommunication between the writers, voice actors, and animators, because holy sometimes the editing for this game's cutscenes is actually so horrible. Characters will constantly cut each other off or have 2 voice lines play at the same time, and interrupt themselves constantly with their weird anime grunting. Each character is a fairly simple anime trope you've probably seen many times before and they are all pretty hard to relate to, which sucks cause the entire first 6 chapters of this game are dedicated to each character's arc, and none of them are good. Still, despite everything I just said, the characters (though bland) were consistent enough that by the end of the game I did find myself liking them and even rooting for them. Also, none of this story stuff would be nearly as big a deal if this game wasn't an RPG, one of the most story heavy genres in gaming. Even if you don't like the story, if you can look past it, the game is still playable.

Graphics

Graphically FF XIII is absolutely stunning. I have no idea how this was even released on PS3 because it looks better than many PS4 games I've played, and at a distance could even be mistaken for something that was released today. One advantage to this game's linear level design is that the developers can control exactly what you see and focus all their effort into making it absolutely beautiful. This game has so many interesting and incredible locations that would often make me take a small break from playing just to sit back and observe them. Interestingly the one area in this game that doesn't match the rest in terms of visual quality happens to be the one “open world” style area.

Music

I do not have too much to say about this aspect aside from the music being a little disappointing. Off the top of my head I can't exactly remember any of this game's music aside from one battle theme. I wouldn't care about this as much as I do if this were any series other than Final Fantasy, but as it is, I expected more.

Conclusion

I’ve definitely got a few more stray complaints and compliments I haven't mentioned in this review, but I feel I've properly conveyed my general feelings on this game. Despite being conflicted on many things I did enjoy Final Fantasy XIII quite a bit, and it might even be my favourite RPG in some aspects. If you're reading this wondering if you would enjoy the game or not, I really couldn't say. Some of the things that annoyed me about this game might be completely hated by someone else, or might be loved. I feel like this game felt really tailor made for me to enjoy in a lot of ways, so it really depends on your taste in games. Personally I definitely enjoyed it and will not be forgetting my time with it anytime soon.

Quizá el videojuego más frustrante que jamás llegaré a jugar con todo lo que eso conlleva. Es insufrible, creo que nunca sufrí por completar un videojuego tanto como con este, lo que es curioso pues en general tengo una opinión contraría a las críticas generales del juego sobre su historia y personajes, que en lo personal me resultaron bastantes buenos, especialmente Lightning, ni tampoco por su diseño pasillero que ciertamente no es algo que me resulte algo más allá de anécdotico, si no de su jugabilidad sencillamente horrible, aderezada a una IA de compañero extremadamente incomprentente, un diseño de enemigos francamente desalentador y unos combates contra jefes tan frustrantes, cansinos, desgradables, tortuosos y en general los peores de la saga. La banda sonora es brillante y especialmente única, jamás en otro JRPG llegué a escuchar algunas pistas similares. Me resulta imposible recomendarlo aparte de su historia y personajes, resultando más cómodos solo ver las cinemáticas, siendo en general lo único que me alegra de haberlo terminado es jamás tener que jugarlo de nuevo. Horrible.

when i made the commitment to myself to play through all the final fantasy games (excluding the mmos and any non-mainline spinoffs... for now?!) i knew i'd have ff13 ahead of me

i also knew i'd have ff8 ahead of me but i loved that one so moving on

i try to find the good in any games i play, especially near-universally hated ones because i'm a contrarian piece of shit, but i can't

the problem with ff13 is that everything feels half-assed, and i know i'm not saying anything new here

the story's kinda good but all the details suck cause they don't explain most shit except through the datalogs

the gameplay's almost good but it's like they did a prototype and never bothered to expand it into anything interesting, and it also lacks the charm of other ff game mechanics? like they took all the fun stuff out of the job system and just made it generic tank healer dps, although they get bonus for the separate buff and debuff roles... or like they wanted to make the gambit system from 12 more accessible, but in doing so ripped out any reason to really dig deep... not that there is much depth!

the environments are (mostly) nice looking but obviously everyone knows HALLWAYS so you just end up running in a semi-straight line seeing the same shit over and over instead of being allowed to explore and find cool hidden corners like in most rpgs

but then to counter that! when the game finally does open up it's with some of the ugliest environments! i mean i'm spoiled by modern games doing big open plains better, to be fair, but still, even fi i give it leeway for being old, it's still not INTERESTING (except the giant titan, that's cool)

stagger is a nice mechanic i'll give it that (and they know it cause it's carried through to other games at this point)

the one thing i did really like was the characters, and their arcs, both individually and as a group - although the PLOT got in the way sometimes, their emotional growth throughout as they respond to the shit they're dealing with is genuinely good i think

ahhh whatever i've written enough it's a bad game

onto the sequel

- I actually enjoyed the combat mechanics, it's very enjoyable that I rarely avoid enemies at least until chapter 12 which is when the enemies get obscenely difficult.

- Hate on the enemies blocking your way that you had no choice but to fight. Imagine having to fight 2 Himbabas or Juggernaut + 2-3 Sanctum Templar with no possible way to preemptive strikes or avoid them.

- People complained about how linear the game is but it didn't really bother me as much. It would make the game a whole lot better though as the world building is fascinating.

Final Fantasy XIII is quite.....infamous to say the least. And it's somewhat deserved.

First of all, let's establish, what exactly is the appeal of an RPG. I would say its player choice. The fact that no one will play exactly the same is quite commonly told. Some are more than others and that's fine. I don't think it's the be all end all way to judge an RPG.

To list the positives. The characters are annoying and unlikeable yes, but fairly well written and very well voice acted. It's a gorgeous looking game, and the soundtrack is pretty good. And its world, seems, keyword here, intriguing. The combat is also fairly enjoyable if a little too automated.

FF13 is not bad because its linear (I love FF10). It is bad because the world is completly gated off to you. At no point does it feel like you're interacting with the world in any way shape or form. You are going through unnaturally formed video game levels. "The Hallway" is literal in this sense. Other very linear games, like The Last of Us disguise this hallway by making the environment feel lived in, FF13 does not. You do everything at every conveniently placed robot, shopping for everything, saving etc.

The early game teases you with decent 3 person combat but then gates you off and forces you to have 2 people in your party severly fucking over the substance of battles. And even when you get more than 3, it is not until 20 hours into the game that it gets any sort of party customisation.

And even its absolutely worthless because of how the classes work in this game. Each character gets 3 in the early game, and gets access to the other 3 later. But theyre absolutely worthless because you have to level them up from the beginning with increased xp requirement. This means that you have to keep with the classes initially given to each party member. And then you realise, that actually, with this setup, only one party combination makes sense: Lightning-Hope-Fang. Because A. you're not allowed to switch Lightning out, B. it's the only combination that gives you every available class at once.

OH BUT GRAND PULSE

Grand Pulse is an open field where you can hunt monsters. It is more fun than most of the game, but it's way too little too late, and you can get the exact same thing from FF10, or even FF15 and 16, and its much better.


I'm not gonna pretend like this game is the sole catalyst for the downfall of Final Fantasy or some other retarded take, but It's not a very good game.

Oh boy, where to begin? I played this game for the first time in 2010 on my PlayStation 3 and hated it. As a Final Fantasy fan, who wants to play all the mainline games eventually, I’ve tried it again a few years later. Still hated it. In 2023, 13 years (what a coincidence?) later, I bought the PC version to give it a final try. I installed some mods because without them the game has severe performance issues that never got fixed. After a bit of fiddling around everything ran smoothly with my DualSense 5 controller in modern resolutions. The game still looks great. The artstyle and music are probably the biggest pros of the game.

Friends were preaching to me that “it gets good after 20 hours”. I’ve never made it to the 20 hours mark before, but this time, I finished the game after 50 hours. Was it worth it? No. The game does not get “good” after 20 hours. Will it get better? Well, not really. It just trades incredibly narrow corridor levels against a somewhat confusing open-ish world structure. The world is still barren and empty and uninteresting. There are no NPCs, no towns, no points of real interest. Just random enemy mobs roaming the lands. Some that will one-hit you without warning. And speaking statues that give you MMORPG-like quests.

But these aren’t even the greatest issues of the game. The story is a nonsensical mess that throws gibberish at you at a maddening pace. The characters are bland and boring. The combat system is mostly automated where you give roles to each character between fights. Then you can change between these roles during combat. It’s complicated and messy and hard to follow. But basically switch to healer and defender roles when low on health and to offensive roles when at full health. There are also roles to buff your team and weaken the enemies.

Then there are both the trash levelling and crafting systems. Levelling works through points you invest in a sphere grid like structure. But this time it is almost 100% linear. It also is visually extremely confusing. But basically you just follow a linear line and unlock new skills and permanent attribute upgrades for the characters. There is a limit per chapter. Only through beating the next boss you advance into higher tiers of the grid effectively capping the maximal power you can achieve per chapter. This leads to another problem of the game: Stupid difficulty spikes. Normal enemies are mostly easy, but some of the bosses demand some very specific strategies and setups which can lead to trial and error and a lot of frustration.

Another way to get stronger is the crafting system. And this is yet another strike of idiocy in terms of game design. Another convoluted mess of a system that I won’t explain in detail here. Just google it if you plan to play the game and don’t want to mess up your weapon crafting and grind forever for materials.

All in all, Final Fantasy 13 is easily the worst mainline FF game I’ve beaten. Even the massive disappointment that Final Fantasy 16 was is better than this mess. The only game worse in the series might be Final Fantasy 2 which I have never played too far. But that also came up with some let us call it "interesting" systems for an RPG.

Takes a much more streamlined and linear approach to its gameplay design than the only other FF game I've played, X, and in favor of a more direct and cinematic experience toeing the line of avant-garde

In terms of its narrative, the world of Pulse stands out as remarkably unique, providing an excellent backdrop for the unfolding story and character development.

Though, the story itself falls short in some aspects, and the biggest the issue lies in the fact that within a game as linear as this one, the pacing is remarkably uneven, managing to feel both too slow and too fast simultaneously. It heavily relies on its characters and their internal conflicts, which are intricately woven and complement the narrative style. However, character development is rushed and lacks depth due to the rapid-fire exposition, leaving little room for genuine connection with the characters before they undergo significant transformations. Additionally, crucial plot developments and world-building information are crammed into the final hours of gameplay, resulting in a rushed narrative. These shortcomings are exacerbated by unexpected difficulty spikes, the amount of context-specific terms, the character Snow, further elongating already overstretched moments in the game.

The characters are generally likable, and it's commendable how their relationships evolve convincingly throughout their journey. Sazh, in particular, shines in many scenes, stealing the spotlight with his presence.

I liked Lightning's character shift from distant and cold, to the self-revelation hits that she had been blinded by her anger and loss all along, and in-turn fueling Hope’s self-destructive anger, to the person in the group who lifts people’s spirits up and encourages them back to their feet

Although the main antagonist may not leave a lasting impression by Final Fantasy standards, they do offer a few notably challenging boss battles.

The music really carried the game by a few standout tracks like "The Promise"; a heartfelt track that is used for some of the more pensive moments of downtime in the game and does a good job making you empathize with the characters, and "Blinded by Light"; very unique and goes through a nice range of emotions throughout the song that keeps it fresh no matter how long the battle lasts, the main violin part is just beautiful

The uniqueness of the setting, coupled with some memorable character moments and excellent presentation, helps compensate for any narrative shortcomings. The sensation of awe upon arriving at Gran Pulse, after navigating through hours of long, linear sci-fi corridors, is a testament to the game's masterful design and well worth the wait IMO