Despite with the problems that the game directly has, with the technical glitches, the random pop-ins, the enemy models spazzing out when they get knocked out, the enemy hitboxes being broken and what not, but going very short for the review, I... actually somewhat enjoyed the game, maybe it's because I like old games that have that "jank", the kind of jank that you see in most licenced games that were on PS2, Xbox and Gamecube, yeah... that's the jank you really love seeing, and that is how you describe on what Clive 'N' Wrench is.

It did not get good 10 hours in. It did not get good 20 hours in. It did not get good 30 hours in. It did not get good 40 hours in.

It did not get good.

It's fascinating to come to a game like this for the first time. You know, one with the kind of baggage Final Fantasy XIII has, and so many years removed from its most heated discourse. It dawned on me very quickly during my playthrough that the criticisms I heard levied against this game were all indeed true. However, I also feel like they didn't tell the whole story. The reality is that when people painted the picture of what this controversial entry into the series entailed, they didn't do enough justice to how awful it truly is.

For example, when people describe the game as being "too linear" - often in a negative context - that doesn't get to the heart of the problem. Yes, it can sometimes be an issue, but other Final Fantasy games have been overly linear and haven't suffered nearly as much for it. Here, you'll find yourself trudging down the same hallway, looking at the same things, with nothing to break the tedium up, for hours at a time. When you couple that with FF13's braindead combat system, a pisspoor attempt to attract people to the genre during a time many were questioning what relevance the genre still had (especially in the West), you get a mind-numbing experience that offers little for the player to engage in. Let me tell you, I got some good Twitter scrolling in during the first 20 hours of this game.

And yet - AND YET - if it had merely remained that, I'd have walked away like a disaffected anime protagonist going "Whatever." I don't want to belittle this point, mind you - saying "It gets good 20 hours in" is a BIG ask. That's a lot of time to invest in something that isn't particularly compelling. But the real problem is that it got worse than that. Much worse. Pounding my head against my desk on the verge of pulling my hair out worse. When the credits finally rolled, I was thrilled that I would never have to play another second of this game again.

That part where everyone says the game gets good? A lie. Sure, after almost NINE full chapters, you get access to your complete party and see the true breadth of the combat system, but what you find is a game that substitutes basic RPG staples like resource management and strategy for a flowchart of your paradigm sets that require little thought process to choose the right one. Worse yet, as the game progresses, you realize the most optimal strategy is to switch back and forth between the same ones ad nauseam because there is absolutely no penalty for doing so and it's much quicker than letting your ATB gauge recharge. More than playing a video game, my time with Final Fantasy XIII felt like experiencing a simulation of one. You don't even have to execute commands - it's often better not to because the game simply moves too fast to fumble around in menus. Just make sure you're on the right paradigm set and you're good to go.

Well, except for that part where the game "opens up" - all five minutes of it, before you realize the one open area in the game is full of monsters far too powerful to fight at that point in the game. It then corrals you into yet another hallway for several hours, culminating in the game's ONE dungeon. You can tell this game was made during the period when they were ostensibly embarrassed to call this an RPG. All the while, FF13 tosses an overwhelming number of high-level enemies at you in standard encounters to create the illusion of difficulty, before it ends with a series of boss battles that required me to throw away the team I mostly ran with because they literally could execute the strategies required to complete it. Fucking lame. This was also the point in the game where previously minor issues - like enemies interrupting your attacks/healing or how it's an auto-lose if your party leader dies - become omni-present, resulting in a staggering amount of frustration.

Oh, what's that? What did I think of the story? I genuinely couldn't tell you. By the time Final Fantasy XIII started getting around to explaining what was going on, I was mentally checked out. The only thing I could tell you is that I disliked the majority of the cast, outside of Sazh and maybe Fang. (Sazh was genuinely too good for this game.) I do, however, think the complaints about needing to read the datalogs to explain the story are unfounded. That said, it is an issue that the game largely delegates worldbuilding to said datalogs. I never really got a good sense of the world around me from just experiencing the game. It's genuinely hard to tell how this universe operates from a visual standpoint; a lot is going on and very little of it is presented to the player without the additional reading.

I think it speaks volumes that the most fun I had with Final Fantasy XIII came in the earliest moments of its campaign. It opens in such a spectacular fashion that it imprints on you the feeling that this thing might actually beat the bad game allegations. And, for those first few hours, you can turn your brain off and go with the flow, but eventually, the thirteenth entry in the Final Fantasy series begins to reveal itself as perhaps the worst one. There are quite a few other games in the series I need to go through before I can definitively say that, but it's going to take a lot to outrank the misery and frustration I felt forcing myself to see this through to the end. It really wasn't worth it.

The final frontier

Many people wish they could forget the game to enjoy it once again, but I don't believe the game's appeal dissapears after just one time. The travelers will still be there.

I was this close of dropping it in more than one occasion, due to some obtuse as hell puzzles and conditions. I'm glad I didn't, because now my future second playthrough will be more manageable, more focused on the stuff that hit me: the connection, through music or tangled languages in walls.

The physics are omnipresent, space is insurmountable and worlds hold strange secrets. Whenever you may be lost, you can always tune to any planet and listen to someone. You'll talk to them, listen to a banjo 10k miles away from you, and you'll know you're not alone.