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.

First of all. You need to play this game modded on PC, because it struggles to keep 60 fps, and it may start randomly crashing.

Pros:
-Interesting combat system, really fun and rewarding to figure out strategies and team comps.
-Music is reaaally good
-Artstyle is nice, monsters look cool and ominous.
-Some robust endgame content

Cons:
-Main problem with the game and it's story, is pacing. They really didn't know how to structure everything toghether, so the game works like this:
Walk through a hallway-like level, fighting the same monster groups for 2-3 hours, in fights that may take 1-5 minutes, with little cutscenes sprinkled over, and then you fight a boss before moving into another area. Rinse and repeat for like 20-30+ hours until chapter 11, where the "open world" unlocks and the game is almost over.
-The lore and world are not explained in-game, but you have to read it in the pause menu, along any other name, term and important information.
-Although the combat is fun, the constant mobile game-like structure of gameplay, may ruin the experience.
-Snow just makes me cringe ngl. The semi-realistic man trying to make anime smirks just makes me die a little every time.
-Missions during the endgame, sometimes force you to go back and forth between the SAME, DAMN, LONG, HALLWAYS, SEVERAL, TIMES.

I was more excited for this game than perhaps it deserved me to be. I think it's not all its fault, maybe I just don't like games Kawaii girls and cringe dialogues and it's not because it's a japanese product, it's because the characters are so poorly written.

Overall, it's meh, the story is intriguing at first but it quickly becomes boring, the gameplay is linear, like, no joke linear, it's just one straight line, THE ENTIRE GAME. The characters are very bland, and while the designs are pretty dope, the characters themselves are shallow and no amount of greatly executed CGI can make up to it. The turn based gameplay is pretty good once you pass the first hours, it actually can be pretty fast for a turn based rpg and it keeps you in your toes, easily the best part of the game that sadly doesn't manage to save it.

Sigo flipando al pensar en el realismo de las portadas cuando era un chaval viéndolo en las tiendas.
El primer FF que me termino y lo he disfrutado como un enano. También es un paso más en la evolución natural de FF desde el combate por turnos hasta el juego de acción.
El plantel de personajes es diverso y carismático, los diseños son una pasada y la música está llena de temazos.
Es verdad que "es un pasillo" la mayor parte del tiempo, pero ser lineal no hace a muchos otros juegos malos, aunque sea un RPG. Tan sólo es distinto. Y es un pasillo muy bonito.
Para mí, no le hacía falta el resto de la trilogía, termina redondo y a mi gusto.

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 incompetente, 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

The Hanging Edge

The name shared by both the first area and its accompanying background music in FFXIII immediately transmit the sense of tension and exhilaration that both of them contain. As you gain control of Lightning, the area around you is chaotic, crawling with enemies, rife with conflict. The slightly panicked piano pops into your ears, compelling you to start to move forward. Yet then it is also a sweeping strings section that bursts in as well, conveying the scale of everything happening around you. It makes you want to soak in the stunning environment, the excitement of your surroundings. But there is only one way forward, and the only option left is to run.

It wouldn't be true to say that XIII is defined by freneticism necessarily, but it is such a striking element that it bears mentioning nonetheless. That first level sets a tone that doesn't let up for quite some time, one that deserves immense credit for how committed they were to it. The paths only have one way to go because it's the only way the characters CAN go. They are hunted by what feels like the entire world around them, while pitted against the ticking time bomb they've been stuck with, and still not even able to keep from fighting with each other. Needless to say, the design directly serves the story by adding that tension for them to spin great character moments out of. This is a group of people struggling against circumstance, compelled to keep moving forward when they don't really have a direction. Splitting the party up works great for this, as it allows for Lightning/Hope and Sazh/Vanille to play off of each other and simultaneously get strong character development. These sections work so well because of how focused they are, but the resolution is equally as satisfying too.

The thrilling nature of the story plays very well into the design of the combat system as well, contributing to the consistent sense of energy that the game has. The original ATB system was inspired by Formula One races, yet this system is the first time that dream feels fully realized. The segmented ATB bar gives that sense of actual speed, making it rewarding to act as quickly as possible. It also rewards attentiveness, as even with just auto-attack the timing of your actions is important. Strategy is more important than ever as well, due to Paradigms allowing for mid-battle adaptability. The stagger bar is a great mini-time limit that incentivizes all of these things. It all works quite excellently, and while it takes some time to fully unfurl it is easily one of the best battle systems in the franchise. If anything, I wish it could have been taking advantage of even more. The menus could be even snappier, the time between switching paradigms even faster, and even enemies with more emphasis placed on countering player inattentiveness.

I mentioned before that the fast-paced style of the game isn't the only one it has, and the marked shift it undergoes later is interesting in a lot of ways. There's an inherent satisfaction in stepping into a vast open area after hours of being essentially trapped, a really well done contrast that shows just how foreign Pulse is compared to Cocoon. However, it also feels disappointingly compromised in a lot of ways. A side mission based structure is a fun idea, but it mostly functions as a way to still lead you from point A to B rather than giving a real sense of exploration. Having a lot of enemies that are meant to be avoided is a neat idea for an area consumed by nature, but it also feels at odds with how enjoyable the freedom of the combat is. It also just feels unnecessarily trial-and-error heavy, which just feels like wasting time. Of course the dungeons at the end of this area are quite strong, but it still feels like it missed on the potential at hand and just went back to what works.

This is just one chapter though ultimately, so it's hard to say it ruins the game. One aspect that it does show that I found to be much more detrimental, however, is that the story starts to crack pretty hard around this point. The story thrives off character moments for most of its run time, but it feels somewhat aimless once it moves past that. Of course, this isn't to say it's bad or anything. Oerba is a particularly impactful moment, letting a long lost town just completely speak for itself for the most part is an excellent contrast to the excess of Cocoon. Outside of this though, the story fails to entirely deliver on the promise it makes. We know that Cocoon has elements of a police state, that people like Cid resist it, and that its citizens support its crimes, yet it never feels like we get solid resolutions to these aspects of the world. I don't think answering all of these necessarily makes for a great story, however I don't think pinning them all on the influence of a Fal'cie does either. The main villain has plans that are greater than we know, but that also makes it hard to get attached to the main characters fight against him. The idea that defying fate is the only reason you need to fight is a good theme, yet I don't think that means it couldn't have been more as a whole.

Even if it falls short of being my favorite in such a stacked franchise, I want to reiterate that I think XIII still resonates quite well all around. It's hard to not be impressed by how bold this game is when it pays off in so many ways. I heard most of my life about what a disaster it is, and now it feels like that just speaks to what a tough time it was for JRPGs to get a fair shake. Rather than a fundamentally broken mess, it's a game that could have tapped into its potential even more. Yet what is there is still quite special in its own way, and for that I hope it manages to get more recognition some day.