The thing I remember most about FF13 discourse was it was the first instance of “the game gets good after 30 hours” that I can recall from a bunch of reviews
I think my overall ignorance about the series helped me when I played through it the first time. FFXIII was my first Final Fantasy game, never had access to the other ones when I was younger.
When I played through it, I was just astounded about the visuals, the graphic design felt stellar to me. 'Anime as heck', that was phrase that comes to mind from back then in regards to the story, but it was not as much of a critical observation for me as it was for others. I had fun keeping track of all the weird quirks of the narrative because, well, it was my first proper JRPG and I had no idea what it was supposed to be like.
As braindead as the statement sounds, I didn't waste time judging whether it was good or bad, I was too busy having fun, lol
Yeah, this is a take that sadly isn't seen more these days
Like there have been plenty of games that I have played over my near 3 decades of gaming that were terrible, new and old, but I'm going into games to have a good time
I always try to go into games and meet them on their level rather than having them trying to meet some expectation that I have set but also not ignore the flaws, it helps you enjoy games so much more than sitting and stewing over things not being what you wanted them to be
What people always leave out of that recommendation is that 30 hours is like 80% of the game. After it 'gets good', you're on the way to the final chapter. I can't believe how often that got said but left out that key detail.
2/3 is too low. The game properly opens up at Gran Pulse, the part where people say 'it gets good'. What people often leave out however is that Gran Pulse is right before the final chapter. So it's closer to like 4/5 of the way through. I feel like they were expecting everybody to spend like 10 or 20 hours in Gran Pulse alone.
I heard that "it gets good when the game opens up at 30 hours" and thought "OK, I'll try to play until then".
Got to 30 hours, to the first open area that wasn't a sequential corridor and it was still boring, I pushed further and immediately hit another corridor at the other end of the open area and stopped playing right there and never went back.
Yeah there's like four kinds of things in that open area, two of which give dogshit exp, one of which is ballbustingly hard if you can even beat it, and one of which kills you immediately unless you cast Death on it (and Death never works so why would it work on the giant turtle that stomps once and wipes your party?)
Apparently there's like, quests or something randomly peppered around? The only one of those I found wanted me to kill a super behemoth so that was also not an option.
Thing is, FFXIV is an MMO so you basically enter with the expectation of "I'll have to put in twelve billion hours to eventually find the good endgame stuff" anyways, that's just part of playing most MMOs.
FFXIII is a single player RPG, you'd hope it can pick up before the two hour mark, let alone the five hour, ten hour, or god forbid the thirty hour mark. There's shitloads of other games I can play in the same series that will hook me in that initial timeframe, I don't think there's any other Final Fantasy games that get the "no but it gets good eventually (more than halfway through the game) tho" treatment.
Took me so long to get back into FF14 because all I could think of was that Yogscast vid when the game first came out.
Didn’t give it a try until Shadowbringers. Catching snips of Pat playing the end of Stormblood helped, along with a friend who had been playing since HW.
And even then, 14 has a much better story, world and characters then 13, but that's also because the game has years of content. I won't talk about 1.0 (no need since it crashed and burned), but just ARR is better then FF13.
I remember I was going to try to play it when I had game pass and then I loaded into the game and saw that first hallway and remembered that the next 30 hours is going to be nothing but straight hallways. I uninstalled it about 5 minutes later.
Yes you do get more options and you can explore a bit more, but a lot of it is still fairly limited until you beat the game and the unfortunately the game doesn't have much depth until the final boss and the last 2 or 3 missions.
the only kindness i will give 13 is that it is at least a complete product. for some mad reason, i have beaten it twice back in the day and i have nothing else good to say. With 15, i cant even say that.
There are plenty of things to like about FF13. There's a lot of good there.
It's just that it does a pretty terrible job not feeling like long filler hallways between cut scenes.
Like, a lot of FF10 was long hallways between story segments too. But they did it better there.
I'll die on the hill that FF13 is underrated, but only because I feel like it gets more hate than it deserves--it isn't honestly that awful. Combat is fun, class shifting is dynamic and feels great, and I'll fight you all over Snow being a genuinely great character and that him being so clearly in the wrong genre entirely fully enhances that. Bro belongs in a shonen anime or something, not the magipunk dystopia. But that makes me love him more.
But FF13 also does a very poor job of making it feel like those fun combats matter rather than being meaningless filler clearly only there to distract from holding forward to get to next cut scene, and they wanted so much for Lightning to be so cool that she comes off as terribly flat--and then they tried to make her be the main character. She's literally the least interesting member of the cast.
There's a lot of good we can take away from FF13. It's too bad it's packaged in with so much boring nothing.
I find the problem with ff13 is every hyperbolic claim is true for the first 10-15 hours. Until everyone goes through their small character arc they are horrendously annoying, obtuse and immature.
The gameplay should have never been slowly rolled as its far from the best system but making people experience it at about 30 percent of content for 15 hours did it no favors.
And while the plot was easy enough to follow it does just throw terms at you so often with no explanation save a glossary entry.
Snow is my least favorite character in the bunch 😅
He keeps doing the same thing over and over and then getting remorseful and saying he’s sorry and then he does the same thing again. It happens over and over and in the end everyone just goes “awww that’s our Snow!”
This is probably my own baggage, but it’s like an abuser getting rewarded for their bullshit.
His scenes with Serah are very sweet and they’re a really great pair, unfortunately she’s a statue for most of the game and he’s in Rambo-Himbo mode.
He's literally just the "believe in my own justice!!!" anime hero in a setting where that absolutely does not work, but he does it anyway and I find that kind of great. Like, even when he knows the kid wants him dead, he just picks him up, carries him to safety, then goes "fair enough, stab me if you want" once the kid wakes up, and it feels like nobody else in the story would've done that.
Everything he does is to keep up the image he has of himself as a hero, in a world that punishes the fuck out of heroism. And yet, in the end, his determination means something.
It's really not any different then any shonen hero, it's just that he so clearly is in the wrong setting for it, but the fact that he never gives up on it makes it feel more earned, to me, than most shonen heroes.
I get why not everybody feels that way.
Still gonna fight people over it, same way I'll fight people who shit on Tidus laughing in 10.
Yeah, I said it in a comment above, but I consider Snow an archetypical FF hero frankly. And I find it bewildering everyone seems to dislike him for it as players
Frankly, if Lightning hadn't been so against him because she hated the fact he was fucking her sister (and it's so blatantly mostly just that), and more supportive of his radical ideas (said radical ideas being "Hey, shouldn't we go save your sister and also ourselves, fuck the government eh?") .. and things woulda gone WAY smoother
As you say, I approve of the fact that he never gave up on what he thought was right. Cause I think he WAS fucking right, the whole goddamn game. Just hardly nobody else seemed to be able to see it, weirdly
He's almost in the same camp as Zack Fair in that regard, though I guess Zack gets actually truly punished for it in the end. But for some reason Zack feels more likeable? Maybe it's because Zack is less obnoxious about it and because he's more tragic.
I'd argue Snow does get a pretty shit deal until right at the end when his absolute determination actually pays off and they break their enslavement curse. I don't feel like the game treats him kindly before that, but I guess I sort of get how the ending not being misery porn might not be tragic enough for some folks. Some people love that shit, I really don't. I like it when determination and an unending desire to stand up and make things better pays off.
I get enough "everything sucks and nothing gets better" in real life, y'know?
I really feel like Snow got put through Hell, but it was his stubborn refusal to give up or let the cynicism win that carried him through, and that it had a positive effect on everyone around him in the end in a way I really appreciated.
Yeah it's this bizarre thing where Snow makes all the right decisions but he's still blamed for her death rather than the military that actually killed her. If Snow were, say, showboating and more concerned about looking cool so he got himself into a nasty fight and needed bailing out, I could understand being pissed at him. If Snow had demanded for other people to join his crew in fighting off the military, or if he downplayed how dangerous it would be so they were tricked, I could understand being pissed off at him. If Snow were neglectful or reckless at any point so that it contributed to Nora's death, I could understand getting pissed at him. If Snow and his crew had barged in and gotten all these civilians dragged into this conflict with the military instead of the civilians literally already being caught and sent on a purge train to their deaths by the military if NORA hadn't intervened, I could understand being pissed at him. Instead he did everything right, did everything he could, but the military still killed her, and so Hope just feels like a little shit. He doesn't have to be grateful to Snow for saving his life and trying to save everyone else, but he shouldn't have an arc that can be summed up as: "Let's take Ken from Persona 3 and completely enshittify him and make him one of the main characters in one of the most highly anticipated JRPGs ever."
It's like an arc about wanting to kill the paramedic that couldn't save his mom after a serial killer stabbed her or a drunk driver ran her over. I know he's a kid and sometimes you're just irrationally angry at the world but not this much, I remember being younger than Hope and thinking he was a crazy twat. Sure, kids can be stupid but to this degree it's implausible and it's confusing who in the audience would benefit from this message. People who want to murder the surgeons who failed to revive their murdered loved one? Really? So his arc about realizing that the guy who isn't to blame for his mother's death shouldn't be blamed for her death feels like a waste of time.
His norm is "We should actually be doing something", is it often foolhardy and not super thought out? Sure. But the others could help out with that, and offer better suggestions that involve DOING things
The problem is most of them time they didn't, they stuck with the status quo, or wanted to give up, or not do anything that honestly they needed to do. Was only further on when they started doing that
Snow was never wrong, was how I felt about that game. He was right to be up in arms about everything, and he was right that they needed to fight for it. If they'd supported him and worked together on it, things would have gone way better. He only ended up doing shit on his own recklessly because he frankly got no fucking backup whatsoever most of the time, cause Lightning was on his ass all the time cause she hated him for the crime of being involved with her sister
You're not wrong, and Snow would be served better as a character if it weren't for the biggest gripe I have about the game: the whole L'cie focus nonsense. It's the most nakedly empty Macguffin, and nearly a half of the game is spent with the characters aimlessly milling around saying they have to do something or they'll turn into a zombie, but that something is utterly arbitrary.
Without Focus, the plot has absolutely no impetus. Focus is like taking a prophecy, which is already a plot device for hacks, and removes the need for the writer to write a prophecy to be subverted, making it double hack shit.
Then you have Barthandalus's big plot basically being fulfilling an arbitrary prophecy but not being able to do it himself so he is manipulating the party off-screen and it's just hack shit on hack shit on hack shit.
It's clear that the writers fundamentally had no idea how to get characters from point A to point B in a story, and it's a boring directionless mess as a result, with characters milling around, where we're told but not shown all the interesting bits over, and over and over.
The writers just lack basic competence in the craft of plot-writing.
The average gamer when a narrative asks you to invest in a complex arc about characters trying to become better people: “god why is everyone so ANNOYING 🙄🙄”
Very soon after you acquire more party members allowing you to swap around
Can backtrack
Tidus being a complete fish out of water character is utilized to provide necessary exposition to the player
NPCs also fill the world and provide supplementary information about the world
FFXIII:
Within 1-2 hours game arbitrarily splits the main characters into 2 member parties (literally one is due to Vanille plopping her butt down and being tired and she and Sazh just never catch up to the others)
I cannot remember when you acquire the ability to get a 3 member party or swap characters in/out. I want to say more than 10 hours. It could be over 15. It's a lot.
The Paradigm system also means if you don't have this Optimal party set up with X characters doin Y Role you're going to be very inefficient
Little to no backtracking until that 30+ hour mark where the game opens up
Despite having not 1 but 2 good candidates for the fish out of water archetype (Vanille, plus Hope being a sheltered kid) the exposition is weak and clunky and the player gets hit with a lot of jargon with a poor means of processing it
Game lacks significant towns, villages, or NPCs to provide supplementary information about the world
It's a combination of all these things that make FFXIII reek of "hallway simulator" or "tram ride" in ways that FFX artfully manages to avoid. FFXIII also has way more cutscenes and instead of cutscenes being used to enhance the story players can feel aliened by the game not allowing them to participate in the game. It's not JUST that FFXIII is linear: it's holding you by the hand and yanking you forward while you struggle to keep your balance.
We know why FFXIII is the way it is for a lot of things. The leap to HD was very hard on Japanese developers, Square-Enix included. But by FFXIII standards, especially at the time, FFXIII was a disappointment. It's honestly a 7.5/10 game, just kind of boring, but Final Fantasy used to have such a stellar reputation and FFXIII was a jarring end to that streak.
Also yeah the Paradigm system can be fun provided it doesn't take 20 hours to unlock it, which is why almost everything gets unlocked within the first few hours of FFXIII-2.
Yeah, the issue is never that FF13 is hallways. Most things are disguised hallways. Just some hallways are super wide. The issue is that it's a fucking gated one way system most of the game, with the party switching as you say and all the other guff
FFX meanwhile, despite being mostly made up of corridors, is in fact a plot gated open world most of the time, which is how most FFs are. You start out in one area and unlock more as you go, but can usually backtrack. And as you say, dark aeons aside, you can go back to the entire start of the game or various other areas at any point.. when you get the airship, all it opens up is easy travel, mostly. It was already there in many ways.
FF13 breaks from that and only really lets you choose where you're going at gran pulse.. while simultaneously not having anyone alive to interact with, meaning it's a very empty world that has opened up. It's not the worst of games, but for an FF, it was a big disappointment indeed
I'll fight you all over Snow being a genuinely great character
I also think the hate towards Hope was very misplaced. Yeah he's seething silently about Snow... and then they talk and he forgives him and it's actually a pretty good moment! He has a little arc about forgiveness and putting the blame on the right people, but from the way people talk about him, you'd think he's just a little shit kid
Part of the fun in FFs is exploring, seeing towns, talking to the people in those towns and places and discovering the lore and story organically. FF13 has none of that. You're always on the run in long hallways, the lore is stuck in magic floating shopkeeper terminals in every zone. It feels so fake.
Even FF10, which is also technically a long hallway from start to end, manages to have all of the other good stuff in it.
The combat, which it's fans like to rave about, is cookie cutter from start to end. While you can input commands, I'm pretty sure that when I played it I let it play itself the entire game (other then doing paradigm shifts when needed) because there was no use in doing anything.
And then it depends on if you like the characters or not. I liked Sazh and Vanille and that was basically it.
FF10 also doesn't suffer from being a hallway since the story is about going on a pilgrimage to a specific place in the world that multiple people have gone to in the past. The trail is the way it is because summoners prayed at multiple temples. The only thing that would change a summoner's pilgrimage is what village/town that person was born in or where they decided to become a summoner. The end goal is the same for everyone that chooses to make the journey.
I am never going to pretend 13 is a hidden gem everyone forgot. I am going to say it doesn't deserve the level of vitriol it got and that there genuinely are things you can say we're worthwhile about it and that while they ain't gonna bring it up to "good", they definitely keep it out of the "it offends me by existing" pile.
The FF10 comparison to FF13 when it comes to its hallways is disingenuous (Not saying you are, just making the comparison). FFX knew to actually have a party engaging with each other, the ability to backtrack, knowing that having actual shops and NPCs and minigames is important, to open the gameplay up over time instead of keeping with the same basic 2-people combat for well over half the game, etc.
I really wanna replay but square for some reason decided it's the ONLY FF not on modern consoles (13 aside, and I know it's on Xbox backwards compatibility but you get me)
I really, genuinely think they want to give it a big remaster and overhaul before they bring it back, like with X and XII or even Kingdom Hearts and Tactics. But it's also a very, very big project. Not only do they have to do the visuals, which are still beautiful and plentiful, but the music, which is also beautiful and plentiful.
And the sequels as well. And they probably want to make gameplay adjustments, particularly to smooth over XIII's issues - mostly using QOL stuff from XIII-2 I'd say. I remember when it felt like X's remastering was taking years and years, that it felt like it'd never arrive, and then it did.
SE tends to go above and beyond when Remastering, for better or for worse - I think Crisis Core Reunion is the definitive version of CC, but it has a few issues, namely aesthetic ones like it's too bright in Midgar at times.
I remember HCBailey (big FF fan and let's player, does absurdly detailed walkthroughs of each game) surprising everybody when he finally played FF13 and turned out he really, really liked it.
There's a lot to love and hate in that game, but I really don't think it's at worst, anything lower than a 7.5 out of 10.
XIII has a lot of mechanical depth it doesn't tell you about that I'm half certain was put in to make the game run smoother, but when exploited is very fun.
Hell, the whole "Auto-Battle" thing bugs me mostly because the game doesn't emphasise what you're actually supposed to do - figure out the optimal strategy against enemies, quickly choose your commands and when the battle ebbs and flows adjust your strategy. Like, it's way better to cast Haste first rather than wait for Auto Battle to do it for you.
Are we getting “FF13 was good actually” kids now? Fine, whatever. No account for taste and all that. Frankly, I think it’s really only the most frustrating if people DENY a game’s flaws rather than accept that they like it in spite of it.
That being said, I don’t know how entertaining it would be for Pat to hate-play FF-13. That’s a LONG ASS game to hate-play.
Pat also had a lot of opinions about Infinite he could actually share and explain. But a 40+ hour JRPG? Man, that’s like, what, a month and a half of streams for him to just grouse through? Sounds like that would wear thin.
FF13s issues are much simpler and the game is much longer. What would happen is I'd do 2 streams, make my point, quit, and then be inundated with the same argument from 2006: "OF COURSE HE HATED IT, he quit right before it got good!"
I try not to begrudge people for loving "flawed"/"bad" media because sometimes shit just hits you at the right time. If you were a weeby young teen in 2009 it probably hit like a truck.
But, yeah, there's a difference between loving a flawed thing and being totally blind to its flaws.
EDIT: This comment reads shittier than I meant it. If you like FF13 you are in no way wrong for liking it. I was trying to make a generalised point about how our attachment to specific games/media is often more about how and when you encounter it, and how it hits you personally, than about whether it measures up to some "objective" yardstick of quality.
Smallville is my personal go-to example of this. That show has a lot of problems but I loved it as a kid/teen and no amount of analysis or critique of the things it does wrong will change that. Shits rooted in my heart til I die.
Hell, just Blinded by the Light alone is amazing and has legitimately one of, if not the, best "chorus" (idk shit about music it's the violin part lol) of any Final Fantasy battle song. It stands out in my mind just as strong as Battle on the Big Bridge and Those who Fight.
I'll give FF13 shit any day of the week but the music was always a standout.
I agree this is not a good game to rage play on stream (I'd argue it's not a good game to stream in general). The plot isn't always at the forefront in parts of the game, and the game is too long to keep any criticisms about the gameplay fresh throughout.
I like the game, but it has some real issues. I can see specific types of people liking many parts of it, but giving it an unqualified "good rpg" moniker would raise some big flags on my end even about their general taste in games compared to mine.
Hi it’s me I’m the FF13 shill lmao. NOTHING hits like the Paradigm system and I fuckin’ love the characters and environments and soundtrack it’s just 👌 mwah.
Does it also got some fucked up parts? Like how all the villains totally suck? They structured it like an FPS rather than an open RPG? It very slowly gives you the tools needed to make the combat fun? Oh yeah all that and more. Still love it to death but boy do I acknowledge the issues.
See this is fine. I bear you no I'll will. What drives me up the wall and gets this thread made every time is some variation of "what YouTuber gave you that opinion" or it was only jaded hater millennials that don't like it etc.
I literally bought a ps3 to play it and am a massive FF mark, I couldn't have been primed more to enjoy it.
This is fair, it drives me up the wall when people will defend every part of something to the death just because they like it. Everything I love has a lot of flaws and I feel like I'm able to more accurately explain why I like them because I understand and accept those flaws.
To be fair, individual villains that were not that great was a issue that Final Fantasy games in general had for a while that wasnt "fixed" until the expansions of FF14 and FF16 in general.
As someone who loves FF5 more than most, I agree and I like Exdeath. Not because he's actually cool or anything, but the fact that he's so lame and feels like a caricature of a Saturday Morning Cartoon villain. "Everything will return to the void. Mwahaha" headass, which totally works for tone of ff5 which is the most whimsy/anime entry in the franchise.
Gave it a chance last year and it jumped to my favourite mainline FF game.
Agree hard with all your first points but MAN I gotta gush about the Paradigm system.
Not only does it feel entirely unique to other rpg systems, I love how crafted it feels balanced around the whole game. It feels like the opposite of Expedition 33, while that game is all about breaking it's systems, FFXIII forces you to play by it's rules and thus every fight feels like the right amount of difficulty. I was engaged the whole time.
Oh my god hello other local FF13 shill. Yeah the game has a shit ton of issues and really even when it comes to defense of it I actually defend 13-2 more because I think it has a better story and is pure fucking PERFECTION of the paradigm system. But I still love base 13 I love the world I adore the characters.
I genuinely thought about giving 13 a shot when it was on sale on Steam a few months ago, but then I found out that the game runs like dogshit on PC and you have to install a bunch of mods and fan patches to get it up to snuff.
A bunch of mods and fan patches is actually just 1 patch, and the only thing it doesn't fix is some shadow issues you might not notice
The ones that are actually bad are 13-2 and LR since their fan patch solutions are not as robust, which is unfortunate for me since imo those games are far more fun to actually play
I bought the game on Steam last year, installed the 4k mods(models, FMV), fan fixes, everything. I had played it at launch, but dropped it after a couple of hours. I thought 'Now I know what to expect from the game and will enjoy what it has to offer' and...nah, dropped it again. It's just not fun, I don't think I like a single thing about it. Well no, I like the enviroment art, it looks really pretty, but that's about it.
And I say this as someone that loved playing FFXIII-3
I couldn't believe how good XIII-2 was. I did enjoy XIII more than most people, especially the end game Grand Pulse grind. But XIII-2 had no business being as good as it was.
made a joke on the thread about the initial "ff13 fans working at square" thing about how ubisoft probably has ac syndicate fans there, like unity performance aside i thought that one was almost universally considered the worst one.
I don't like it despite my Japanese friend sending me as a gift and telling to try. the only things I did enjoy were the music and Lightining being pretty/cool looking though so I can't argue her fans
Honestly as much as I disliked it on release, I’m feeling charitable towards the game these days and would love a remaster on PS5 so I can reassess it. The sequels were bangers though. Would love to play them again
"___ is good when you ain't got..." is one of those "ok the original had a good point, but now the phrase is just a blanket 'people can't criticize thing' statement that means nothing and contributes nothing".
It's also incorrect. If you were the only human being on planet Earth, FF13 would still be ass.
Little Caesar's Pizza is totally fine as long as you eat it fresh, it just falls into an absolute pile of inedible shit after a few hours that even warming it back up doesn't really fix.
I mean, it's still not great pizza, but ain't nobody else delivering Pizzas to my door for twenty bucks including delivery fees and tips, everyone else wants twice that. It's the McDonalds of Pizza.
I have a friend that has terrible bowel issues if he eats cheese. He ate a Lil Ceasars pizza and had no adverse effects. I've never stepped into one again after that nugget of knowledge
Eh, I still stand by the original point of the phrase
The internet is miserable and negativity will get you clicks and attention (which is why this post is currently top of the subreddit lmao). People love a good internet punching bag to drag and dogpile.
I don't blame people for saying such a phrase because a lot of the times, people can't let other people just simply enjoy things.
People will voluntarily get up on your ear and basically say "why are you enjoying that, X is bad" which is basically what Pat is doing lmao.
I honestly tried FF13 for the first time in 2025. No one to tell me anything I just thought I'd give it a shot since I got it super cheap on steam sales sometime.
I made it maybe a few hours into the game and no. The combat system is so ass I just couldn't force myself to play it any further. I don't want a game that plays itself while I make suggestions to it. Everything else was either OK or mediocre with amazing graphics for the time but god that combat destroyed the game, I don't care about what came after.
I tried 13-2 as well since people say it's the best and it's got roughly the same combat and it's also a no from me.
FF13 was my first FF. Didn't know anything about its reputation, only that the series was popular and it had a new entry
The game still SUCKED.
I got all the way to the planetside levels purely because the series had pedigree and I was sure I was missing something. If it didn't have FF's name on it, I would've bailed 2 hours in. Genuinely one of my worst gaming experience on the 360
I am curious what it'd be like to have pat and super butter buns debate about ff13. There wouldnt be any winners but i reckon it'd be entertaining for around a minute or 2.
16’s got great everything except engaging gameplay. Like the combat itself is cool but damn it’s against very dull enemies saddled with the most boring side quests that make you remember that it’s a game made by a dude who’s been working on an MMO for years.
Technically, I feel the gameplay has aspects of being very fun - but you never can use it? Basically, bosses can't be juggled so the aerial combat only works on weak mobs. There's some crazy animation cancel combos with Odin but the enemies even the bosses usually die in the middle of doing the combo or will soon die after you finish it.
It very much feels like an RPG that desperately wants to be a character action game. You can do all sorts of crazy bullshit combos and abilities! Except few enemies are actually designed for you to be able to use any of them.
For me it also didn’t help that the game runs out of new enemies to throw at you midway through. If you keep giving me new tools but don’t throw anything new or interesting to use them on, then it starts to feel like bloat where I’m curb stomping foes that can’t hold up to my new toys.
Combat gets better as you get more tools. Then it gets way worse as the combat becomes an MMO rotation, except every ability is a 4-10 second lavishly animated cutscene.
I'm convinced that the single biggest and easiest improvement they could make to that combat system is to limit you to 1 "ultimate" ability equipped at a time. By the endgame, I was rolling through 15-20 seconds of completely-invincible ults which, combined with Diamond Dust freezing most enemies for several seconds, lets you blow through most of the cooldowns of those ults. With that, I was only really engaging with the actual combat mechanics for about 1/3 of the time I spent in combat.
I really want them to reuse that combat system for something (maybe not an actual FF game, to avoid the series' baggage), and just take the time to tighten up the edges because all the pieces are there for it to be great.
All I know about FF13 is the DSP unboxing video, where he doesn’t actually open the game and complains about his fire alarm going off in the background for 15 minutes
I played FF13 a few years back and yeah I had ton of problems with it. That being said all of this is a bit overblown. The 13 games aren’t this huge train wreck the internet makes them out to be. The main characters have a pulse, the combat systems are amazing, they’re pretty and even the lore is interesting to someone who is naturally curious or just googled the terms.
For all the leeway this place gives DMC4 I find it funny 13 doesn’t gets the same treatment.
I get it I still feel a strong irrational hatred towards the last seasons of GoT, Veilguard and Zero Time Dillema. I just don’t think I’d lose my mind if I found out younger folks liked them
You can probably find some good in pretty much anything. Just look at how much of DmC, DMC2 & DMC4 are in better games
Shoot I said it in another posts but a good chunk of the XIII trilogy lives on the newer VII games
Lastly, folks tend to forget kids and others don’t live life online I’m sure they don’t 13 is hated. I didn’t know until I was like 20 and Japan for sure treats the series way differently….
For a channel that has a history of playing middling games I find all of this funny. I’m not annoyed I am just giggling at all of this especially when I learn more and more of supposedly other classics were rushed or hated back in the day too
XIII remains one of my favorites in the series. Not like top 3 or anything but it’s up there. It takes a little while to get going, theres way too much time spent with two character parties with a battle system that feels like dogshit with only two characters for example, but once it gets going its a real blast to play.
FFXIII is fine, I think highly(-ish?) of it, and there are several ways that I feel that people who complain about it endlessly are just wrong, from how to play the game to the presentation of the story. Personally, I love the mythology, the story is intriguing, I like how the party is full of different kinds of people that are forced together, the setting is interesting, and I like the gameplay for a lot of its nuances like chaining commands, ATB Refresh, exploiting passive bonuses, and for once buffs and debuffs aren't just viable, but strong.
Yeah, the maps aren't that great, but also I like...don't care? FF is already a pretty linear, story-driven series, but people act like FF was this non-linear, open world franchise that FFXIII railroaded into hallway. It worked well enough for the game that FFXIII is, and the story it has.
The problem is that FF brings with it an expectation, and when those expectations aren't met, people turn into babies about it. There's still people that hate FFVII because it wasn't more like FFVI, and then it just goes on and on. The nature of the franchise is that basically everything can and will be different, and you have to remain flexible when it comes to the different entries, otherwise you just end up disappointed. FFXIII is certainly not for everyone, but that is also true for a lot of games in general, not just in the series. I'm still not all that keen on FFXII, and I didn't beat it until the Zodiac Age like a decade later because it remedied some of my more insurmountable issues with the game.
I like FFXIII for what it does. People shouldn't be surprised that can be the case. It'd also be cool if people could stop being insufferable about it.
Pretty much close to how I feel. I try to be somewhat realistic with my FF expectations so if one fumbles I know that there’s old favorites or eventual new ones.
I absolutely hate XV but I ended up getting a ton of new favorites after and I went back and played the ones I missed.
Probably explains why I’m so lenient on 16. I really wish that game had better rpg mechanics as well ones for its action stuff but the spectacle and story left a huge impact on me
A long time ago I basically reoriented my thinking of Final Fantasy to something more akin to a brand. I like all kinds of genres, and like, I can't expect every Capcom game to be a survival horror like RE, just the same way I can't expect every FF game to the same as one particular entry. If I had written off the series some time ago for that, I never would have fallen in love with the ones I did later.
It's literally just "fine". The combat's fun and interesting and only gets better as the game progresses, but it has a very rough and confusing start not helped by the fact that most of the game takes place in several long, drawn-out hallways; a large chunk of the characters are presented like the "cool", edgy, early 2000s characters that were common for the time it released and it actively makes many of them look worse than they actually are; and the plot is just nonsensical and presented to players fucking terribly, with a ton of backstory buried in bestiary entries that you wouldn't realize until you went looking for them.
The main reason why so many people despise it is because the FF13 trilogy were the only new, mainline, Final Fantasy games we got for the entirety of the 360/PS3 generation, so for some people, that wound never fully healed. And all this is coming from someone who also initially hated the game when it released, but as I got older and started to appreciate more games for what they were or were trying to accomplish, I gave it another shot and ended up enjoying it quite a bit more.
I'm in the boat of really like FF13 when it came out but FF13-2 is much better that it made 13 worse. It's like the sequel improved the things that made me enjoy the original to a point where it eclipsed it.
While on the topic, Lightning Returns is the biggest example of good gameplay but bad story. That story is so contradictory and ruins most of its characters.
To be fair, LR had a notoriously bad translation, there's two different terms that got turned into one and you'll never get the context ever because it's never gonna be the right word (I think it was heart and soul That just became one thing? Been a while, there's a whole reddit thread about it)
I liked the side stories but yeah the main campaign was a mess. 13-2 is somehow but better and lesser than the first game probably because of the pacing
So, that said, how are FFXIII-2 and Lightning Returns? I know LR is looked upon poorly, but since I heard nothing about XIII-2, does that mean it is just...there? Is is it more a "normal" RPG compared to the other parts of the trilogy?
13-2 is pretty solid imo, it's much more open than 13 and they made a bunch of improvements to the combat. (Faster paradigm swaps, full access to the combat systems straight away Vs 20+ hours in, you no longer game over if the leader dies etc)
The story can be pretty silly at times but it has an actual antagonist and that puts it far ahead of 13. The games budget was much lower than 13 tho and that shows, they mostly reuse 13 enemies and any new enemies are reused a ton to get their money's worth out of any new assets.
Lightning returns is a weird game, the story is horribly localised and mostly nonsense but the combat/job system is actually excellent if you can look past the goonerish outfits, I'd honestly really like square to try this concept again. The whole time limit thing isn't anywhere near as daunting as it sounds, I finished pretty much everything and still had 2~ days to spare.
I like 13-2 and lightning returns. 13's music is also peak. Best in the franchise probably and I don't think it's even close. I followed general consensus at the time, I heard 13 was bad but 13-2 got decent reviews and it fixed a bunch of problems 13 had. So I skipped right to 13-2 and I gotta say the story is nigh incomprehensible, still a great game.
ITT: People who can't accept that maybe, just maybe, people out there genuinely enjoy FF13.
I am not blind to its flaws, I was not 12 when I played it, I am not revising history. I simply found it to be an enjoyable game, even with the 20 hour tutorial. Once you have full access to the Paradigm system it's pretty cool what you can pull off (and you really only see how far it goes if you do a ton of optional side content). The characters start off fairly cliched, but they all evolve and have some hidden character depths. I even ended up liking Snow, the generic anime hero character, because his arc is specifically about that heroic nature being called into question.
Also the graphics and music are absolutely incredible for 2009, but it's Final Fantasy so that's pretty much a given.
But it's FF so it has to be monolithic or something.
Yeah, fandom wars for FF are something else. Like, it's not as bad as it once was, but to this day the vitriol VI and VII fanatics have to each other is scary, as an example.
It's really annoying that whenever something goes through reevaluation or people just talk about liking something divisive, the immediate response is "oh, you were young and stupid. you liked it as a child" a la the prequels.
And this is just an anecdote, but it's my personal experience, but I've watched four streamers play 13 who had no prior experience with it. And they all loved it. And they're all queer women. And so am I. Just a funny tidbit
I think ff 13 is one of those weird situations where if you like it, people assume you played it as a child and if you dont like it people assume you got your opinion from someone else.
It's a love it or hate it game. That's all, no need for an incoming 300+ comment thread about people decrying 'toxic positivity' or psychoanalyzing each other or what have you for why they can't STAND other people having different opinions from them.
Yeah, but have you ever considered that XIII is not Pat Approved™️ and liking it disrupts the groupthink?
This sub is definitely one of the better ones on Reddit but that doesn't mean its users don't generally dislike opinions that go against what their almighty tastemaker tells them they should think, just like every other internet personality-based sub.
"X is better when you don't have someone telling you it's bad" is such a bitch response to criticism. If someone is vomiting out a content creator's take as their own, call them out on it, but otherwise your game might just be mid.
I thought the point was more about getting into something already primed to look for flaws rather than just copying someone else's opinion, which being devil's advocate for a bit, I think can be a valid side-note to point out in certain situations, but if that's the crux of your argument, it is indeed a conversation stopper, doesn't really leave space for a proper discussion.
Feels like a “you’re toxic for pointing out flaws” complaint to me. Sure, some people might be overly or unfairly critical, but if you can’t take a thing you like being criticized at all then that’s a YOU issue.
For me, it's a volume thing, it's not about a bitch, it's about an endless torrent of bitching when you bring something up. It's the criticism equivalent of "nice opinion, which youtuber gave it to you?"
That works the other way to. If you can't take someone liking something you hate that's a you issue. I think Silent Hill F is an annoying to play dog shit game. I don't care that people like it. Doesn't stop that game stand from crying when I say I hated my time with it.
The internet is a miserable place that revels in negativity and misinformation.
Going against the grain and stating an opinion that goes against a belief held by active online communities can absolutely get you dragged and dogpiled.
I don't blame people for saying such a phrase because a lot of the times, people can't let other people just simply enjoy things.
The problem with this line of thought is that sometimes there is an organized effort by "bitches with an agenda" that succeeds in shitcanning media that did not deserve it.
Dragon Age is functionally dead now because of stuff like this. The week Veilguard came out there were people in this sub who (despite not playing the damn thing) endlessly reposted the skillup review that misrepresented that game by putting every bit of cringe dialogue in a compilation and making it seem like that was everything.
People here tried to do the same thing with Metroid Prime 4 and Miles.
The Acolyte faced a torrent of racist and homophobic influencers whose opinions bled into the mainstream and discouraged viewership.
Now I'm not gonna sit here and say all 3 of these bits of media did not have noticeable problems. Cause they do. But they were blown out of proportion by bad actors chasing clout. My chief reaction on engaging with all three was "that's it? that's what people lost their minds over?". Especially with Miles in Prime 4.
There are definitely victims of the post-AVGN hyper negative engagement driven nightmare hellscape that we live in today (which brings us today's reminder that if you're on the fence about playing The Outer Worlds 2 or Avowed, a lot of the criticisms you've heard about them are literally made up by people who wouldn't have like New Vegas unless they were told it was good, you should definitely try them for yourself)
But on the other hand, shit from butts exists and Final Fantasy XIII and related content are shit from a butt.
FF13 was the first FF game I beat and 100% even. I love the game, so much so that I want a L'Cie tattoo. I know it has problems but I don't think it is a bad game personally. Yes I've played other FF since. 7 is great, 8 is 8, 9 has issues but mainly when it comes to completing it 100%(Who hurt you dev who put in 1000 jump ropes).
I've always been in camp "FF13 has always been good" and I'll forever be in that camp. It was a lot rougher back in 2009 when the whole ass internet was against us but hey atwast we've reached the point where response by new people tends towards "well I expected worse" so I'll take it
I don't know, I think I definitely used to be in my early 20s but I'm sure not now. As long as they aren't harming anyone it's like... who gives a fuck? Or better, why should I care that they like it and I don't?
Big example for me would be Exp33, I just don't get it despite giving the game about three attempts with lengthy play sessions... but I'm not gonna be fighting people on socials when they say it's their GOTY.
I think it's really edgy to assume everyone has the same parasocial behaviour as you.
Parasocial is probably the wrong word in this case (though folks in this sub are very weirdly parasocial when it comes to Pat and Woolie), but edgy? Their comment reeks of "You all think the same way as me, even if you don't think you do" energy. That's edgy as fuck if you ask me... Which you did.
It's just a silly line of thinking, I can see a teenage version of me thinking it's cool to say shit like that. If you assume everyone thinks or feels in the same way as you, you're sorely mistaken and need to speak to more people in real life.
I’ll be honest here. I’ve been on this Earth of 30 years. I’ve never felt like this. I’ve disliked plenty of stuff and when someone says they like something I dislike, I just shrug and nod.
I’ve never had the compulsion of arguing with someone on something they like.
I continue to be confused by how this surprises people
It was The big single player FF in the age range a lot of the newer devs hit. It's like being surprised there's a lot of like, I don't know, Brave and the Bold fans working on a new batman show instead of DCAU.
Besides ff13 is a perfectly fine 6.5/10 and not an abomination like people claim (although yeah it's too long for a 6.5 and there's no good way to play it on modern hardware). I sure enjoyed it more than 15.
A 6.5 is a very flawed by passable game (60% is the passing grade in my country). However it feels like a step down after the golden years of 6-10. No comments on 11 since I never played it, and even 12, which is also flawed, has more juice then 13. A lot of people (myself included) probably bought a PS3 or 360 for FF13, and it was probably a slap in the face if they didn't like it.
I dunno what popular opinion is on FF13. I liked the gameplay of the battle system when they let you play it. Problem is they don’t let you play it for like most of the game lol. Like I can understand not hating FF13 but playing other/most FF games and having it as your favorite is wild lol
I had a very funny thing happen with XIII where I really didn't like the cast and it took me years and Snow and Lightning showing up on World of Final Fantasy to warm up to them.
Then Berseria came out and I was like "This is what I wanted out of those character" down to a bunch of parallels between them. God is everyone devoid of any sort of charisma in that game. Except Sazh he's my guy.
Granted I haven't played it since high school, but I remember feeling like FFXIII had the best combat system in the series up to that point. I actually liked the cast/story quite a bit and didn't mind it being super linear, but that may be because those Australian accents were teaching me some very profound things about myself.
It really depends on what you're looking for in an RPG combat series. Are you looking to break the combat? Plenty of other FF games are way easier to break and customize. Are you looking to genuinely engage with it? FFXIII is amazing in that regard because you have to play by its systems and once you do, it's genuinely very compelling having to constantly switch paradigms to exploit the stagger gauge as much as possible. Where everything is important, buffs, debuffs, healing, tanking, aggro, timing, etc.
I much prefer FF7Re series these days but even back then I could say FFXIII probably had the best combat and maybe the hardest game in the series simply because you had to engage with it.
Im currently playing granblue fantasy relink. i get the same problem i had with ff13. push through the story to get to the good part. although i really am enjoying the atmasphere of granblue way more and main story seems much shorter.
Ff13 is somehow genuinely my favorite FF despite being the worst one I've played.
Like. The few bits that resonate really hit for me and having spent so much time examining it I feel like I have a greater depth of feeling towards it.
If I'm being honest though. 70% of this is that Saber's Edge and Blinded by Light are incredible battle themes that make everything else better by association.
Someone should mod the PC version of FFXIII to replace all the voice acted dialogue with Banjo-Kazooie guh-huhs and make Pat play that
Leave Vanille making awful cum noises though. Just her.
No shade at the VA
Vanille’s va is a treasure and so are her random orgasm noises.
One man's awful is another man's treasure.
And disguise it as a QOL mod so Pat doesn't know.
I vote for this or all of the dialogue is replaced with Hank hill BWAAAAAAGHs.
Pat: "Hang on guys, I think this might be the wrong version, this was supposed to be the gibberish mod. One sec."
Pat: "Yeah guys, I can't tell the difference. This is the modded one, right?"
The thing I remember most about FF13 discourse was it was the first instance of “the game gets good after 30 hours” that I can recall from a bunch of reviews
...at which point the game is already almost over. Like seriously the reason the game opens up is because THAT IS THE ENDGAME/POSTGAME CONTENT.
I think my overall ignorance about the series helped me when I played through it the first time. FFXIII was my first Final Fantasy game, never had access to the other ones when I was younger.
When I played through it, I was just astounded about the visuals, the graphic design felt stellar to me. 'Anime as heck', that was phrase that comes to mind from back then in regards to the story, but it was not as much of a critical observation for me as it was for others. I had fun keeping track of all the weird quirks of the narrative because, well, it was my first proper JRPG and I had no idea what it was supposed to be like.
As braindead as the statement sounds, I didn't waste time judging whether it was good or bad, I was too busy having fun, lol
Yeah, this is a take that sadly isn't seen more these days
Like there have been plenty of games that I have played over my near 3 decades of gaming that were terrible, new and old, but I'm going into games to have a good time
I always try to go into games and meet them on their level rather than having them trying to meet some expectation that I have set but also not ignore the flaws, it helps you enjoy games so much more than sitting and stewing over things not being what you wanted them to be
What people always leave out of that recommendation is that 30 hours is like 80% of the game. After it 'gets good', you're on the way to the final chapter. I can't believe how often that got said but left out that key detail.
The game stops being on rails 2/3rds of the way through. The story doesn’t improve.
2/3 is too low. The game properly opens up at Gran Pulse, the part where people say 'it gets good'. What people often leave out however is that Gran Pulse is right before the final chapter. So it's closer to like 4/5 of the way through. I feel like they were expecting everybody to spend like 10 or 20 hours in Gran Pulse alone.
This is legit why I dislike FF13.
I heard that "it gets good when the game opens up at 30 hours" and thought "OK, I'll try to play until then".
Got to 30 hours, to the first open area that wasn't a sequential corridor and it was still boring, I pushed further and immediately hit another corridor at the other end of the open area and stopped playing right there and never went back.
Yeah there's like four kinds of things in that open area, two of which give dogshit exp, one of which is ballbustingly hard if you can even beat it, and one of which kills you immediately unless you cast Death on it (and Death never works so why would it work on the giant turtle that stomps once and wipes your party?)
Apparently there's like, quests or something randomly peppered around? The only one of those I found wanted me to kill a super behemoth so that was also not an option.
Ok, now I can play with the combat system for rea- annnnnd the game's over.
Compare this to ff7 which has one of the strongest intros of all things i have played ever
Even if thats all it was like a demo I'd be like "remember that cool demo with the black guy and the big sword dude in the reactor"
FFXIV is arguably worse in that regard, and people rave about that game.
Thing is, FFXIV is an MMO so you basically enter with the expectation of "I'll have to put in twelve billion hours to eventually find the good endgame stuff" anyways, that's just part of playing most MMOs.
FFXIII is a single player RPG, you'd hope it can pick up before the two hour mark, let alone the five hour, ten hour, or god forbid the thirty hour mark. There's shitloads of other games I can play in the same series that will hook me in that initial timeframe, I don't think there's any other Final Fantasy games that get the "no but it gets good eventually (more than halfway through the game) tho" treatment.
Those x hours to get good took 2 launches for 14, SE sucked for a hot minute
Seriously, 14 surviving what it endured for its first like 5 years is actually astounding.
Took me so long to get back into FF14 because all I could think of was that Yogscast vid when the game first came out.
Didn’t give it a try until Shadowbringers. Catching snips of Pat playing the end of Stormblood helped, along with a friend who had been playing since HW.
This is so funny because I also avoided it because of yogscast just to learn that like a quarter of them ended up playing it daily in the end anyways.
And even then, 14 has a much better story, world and characters then 13, but that's also because the game has years of content. I won't talk about 1.0 (no need since it crashed and burned), but just ARR is better then FF13.
14 takes more time to take off but I don't think it's exactly as frustrating as starting 13 could be
Though I'm saying it as someone who likes both
I think that's basically a genre expectation for MMOs at this point
Being a slog isn't an expectation anyone should have.
Yeah because XIV, even at its weakest, is better than XIII by a long shot
I'M STRUGGLING through the first bit of msq, the world building TAKES FOREVER
Its all proportional and relative tho isn't it.
1/4 (30h) of XIV is outright bad, compared to 3/4 (30h) of XIII being outright bad.
I actually like a lot about XIII, I just wish I understood the story and that they didn't bury it in an in-game wiki.
I remember I was going to try to play it when I had game pass and then I loaded into the game and saw that first hallway and remembered that the next 30 hours is going to be nothing but straight hallways. I uninstalled it about 5 minutes later.
To clarify, the game gets OK after 30 hours.
Yes you do get more options and you can explore a bit more, but a lot of it is still fairly limited until you beat the game and the unfortunately the game doesn't have much depth until the final boss and the last 2 or 3 missions.
Destiny is Destiny.
I regret to inform you that Destiny (the game) is no longer Destiny. Because they removed all the old content and deleted it.
Destiny is sunsetting.
Another three years of Three Houses discour-
ah no, sorry, I thought you were someone else...
"3H, NO!"
"What, I'm right here."
"Oh sorry, force of habit. FF13, NO!!!"
the only kindness i will give 13 is that it is at least a complete product. for some mad reason, i have beaten it twice back in the day and i have nothing else good to say. With 15, i cant even say that.
My only thoughts on the entire trilogy is
Sunleth Waterscape is a very pretty dungeon with very pretty bgm.
Dude has a chocobo in his fro.
The 1st game ends with a lesbian couple saving the day by doing a fusion dance.
There are plenty of things to like about FF13. There's a lot of good there.
It's just that it does a pretty terrible job not feeling like long filler hallways between cut scenes.
Like, a lot of FF10 was long hallways between story segments too. But they did it better there.
I'll die on the hill that FF13 is underrated, but only because I feel like it gets more hate than it deserves--it isn't honestly that awful. Combat is fun, class shifting is dynamic and feels great, and I'll fight you all over Snow being a genuinely great character and that him being so clearly in the wrong genre entirely fully enhances that. Bro belongs in a shonen anime or something, not the magipunk dystopia. But that makes me love him more.
But FF13 also does a very poor job of making it feel like those fun combats matter rather than being meaningless filler clearly only there to distract from holding forward to get to next cut scene, and they wanted so much for Lightning to be so cool that she comes off as terribly flat--and then they tried to make her be the main character. She's literally the least interesting member of the cast.
There's a lot of good we can take away from FF13. It's too bad it's packaged in with so much boring nothing.
I find the problem with ff13 is every hyperbolic claim is true for the first 10-15 hours. Until everyone goes through their small character arc they are horrendously annoying, obtuse and immature.
The gameplay should have never been slowly rolled as its far from the best system but making people experience it at about 30 percent of content for 15 hours did it no favors.
And while the plot was easy enough to follow it does just throw terms at you so often with no explanation save a glossary entry.
Edit: typos.
Snow is my least favorite character in the bunch 😅
He keeps doing the same thing over and over and then getting remorseful and saying he’s sorry and then he does the same thing again. It happens over and over and in the end everyone just goes “awww that’s our Snow!” This is probably my own baggage, but it’s like an abuser getting rewarded for their bullshit.
His scenes with Serah are very sweet and they’re a really great pair, unfortunately she’s a statue for most of the game and he’s in Rambo-Himbo mode.
He's literally just the "believe in my own justice!!!" anime hero in a setting where that absolutely does not work, but he does it anyway and I find that kind of great. Like, even when he knows the kid wants him dead, he just picks him up, carries him to safety, then goes "fair enough, stab me if you want" once the kid wakes up, and it feels like nobody else in the story would've done that.
Everything he does is to keep up the image he has of himself as a hero, in a world that punishes the fuck out of heroism. And yet, in the end, his determination means something.
It's really not any different then any shonen hero, it's just that he so clearly is in the wrong setting for it, but the fact that he never gives up on it makes it feel more earned, to me, than most shonen heroes.
I get why not everybody feels that way.
Still gonna fight people over it, same way I'll fight people who shit on Tidus laughing in 10.
Yeah, I said it in a comment above, but I consider Snow an archetypical FF hero frankly. And I find it bewildering everyone seems to dislike him for it as players
Frankly, if Lightning hadn't been so against him because she hated the fact he was fucking her sister (and it's so blatantly mostly just that), and more supportive of his radical ideas (said radical ideas being "Hey, shouldn't we go save your sister and also ourselves, fuck the government eh?") .. and things woulda gone WAY smoother
As you say, I approve of the fact that he never gave up on what he thought was right. Cause I think he WAS fucking right, the whole goddamn game. Just hardly nobody else seemed to be able to see it, weirdly
My hatred for Snow stems from him looking like a 30 year old man grooming a 14 year old girl in almost every flashback scene.
Lol, is certainly true that they made very different design choices in those two, sure
He's almost in the same camp as Zack Fair in that regard, though I guess Zack gets actually truly punished for it in the end. But for some reason Zack feels more likeable? Maybe it's because Zack is less obnoxious about it and because he's more tragic.
I'd argue Snow does get a pretty shit deal until right at the end when his absolute determination actually pays off and they break their enslavement curse. I don't feel like the game treats him kindly before that, but I guess I sort of get how the ending not being misery porn might not be tragic enough for some folks. Some people love that shit, I really don't. I like it when determination and an unending desire to stand up and make things better pays off.
I get enough "everything sucks and nothing gets better" in real life, y'know?
I really feel like Snow got put through Hell, but it was his stubborn refusal to give up or let the cynicism win that carried him through, and that it had a positive effect on everyone around him in the end in a way I really appreciated.
I like Snow. Or at least his introduction and energy.
But I found that was hampered by the inverse of Hope and Hope blaming Snow for his Mom.
Hope’s mom willingly picked up a weapon and dropped a one-liner ready to assist and during the games intro.
I get Hope’s perspective but didn’t like the game wanting to blame Snow, even though he didn’t force her to in anyway.
"Mom's are tough!" - dies 5 seconds later.
Yeah it's this bizarre thing where Snow makes all the right decisions but he's still blamed for her death rather than the military that actually killed her. If Snow were, say, showboating and more concerned about looking cool so he got himself into a nasty fight and needed bailing out, I could understand being pissed at him. If Snow had demanded for other people to join his crew in fighting off the military, or if he downplayed how dangerous it would be so they were tricked, I could understand being pissed off at him. If Snow were neglectful or reckless at any point so that it contributed to Nora's death, I could understand getting pissed at him. If Snow and his crew had barged in and gotten all these civilians dragged into this conflict with the military instead of the civilians literally already being caught and sent on a purge train to their deaths by the military if NORA hadn't intervened, I could understand being pissed at him. Instead he did everything right, did everything he could, but the military still killed her, and so Hope just feels like a little shit. He doesn't have to be grateful to Snow for saving his life and trying to save everyone else, but he shouldn't have an arc that can be summed up as: "Let's take Ken from Persona 3 and completely enshittify him and make him one of the main characters in one of the most highly anticipated JRPGs ever."
It's like an arc about wanting to kill the paramedic that couldn't save his mom after a serial killer stabbed her or a drunk driver ran her over. I know he's a kid and sometimes you're just irrationally angry at the world but not this much, I remember being younger than Hope and thinking he was a crazy twat. Sure, kids can be stupid but to this degree it's implausible and it's confusing who in the audience would benefit from this message. People who want to murder the surgeons who failed to revive their murdered loved one? Really? So his arc about realizing that the guy who isn't to blame for his mother's death shouldn't be blamed for her death feels like a waste of time.
His arc is:
"I'm foolhardy and go in guns-a-blazin. Oh no, everything turned out wrong"
to
"I'm foolhardy and go in guns-a-blazin. Yay, everything turned out right!"
His norm is "We should actually be doing something", is it often foolhardy and not super thought out? Sure. But the others could help out with that, and offer better suggestions that involve DOING things
The problem is most of them time they didn't, they stuck with the status quo, or wanted to give up, or not do anything that honestly they needed to do. Was only further on when they started doing that
Snow was never wrong, was how I felt about that game. He was right to be up in arms about everything, and he was right that they needed to fight for it. If they'd supported him and worked together on it, things would have gone way better. He only ended up doing shit on his own recklessly because he frankly got no fucking backup whatsoever most of the time, cause Lightning was on his ass all the time cause she hated him for the crime of being involved with her sister
You're not wrong, and Snow would be served better as a character if it weren't for the biggest gripe I have about the game: the whole L'cie focus nonsense. It's the most nakedly empty Macguffin, and nearly a half of the game is spent with the characters aimlessly milling around saying they have to do something or they'll turn into a zombie, but that something is utterly arbitrary.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of that whole weird premise either
Without Focus, the plot has absolutely no impetus. Focus is like taking a prophecy, which is already a plot device for hacks, and removes the need for the writer to write a prophecy to be subverted, making it double hack shit.
Then you have Barthandalus's big plot basically being fulfilling an arbitrary prophecy but not being able to do it himself so he is manipulating the party off-screen and it's just hack shit on hack shit on hack shit.
It's clear that the writers fundamentally had no idea how to get characters from point A to point B in a story, and it's a boring directionless mess as a result, with characters milling around, where we're told but not shown all the interesting bits over, and over and over.
The writers just lack basic competence in the craft of plot-writing.
Hope was literally a kid. And he literally realises later that he was wrong to blame Snow. Almost like that was the whole point of hs character arc 🙄
The average gamer when a narrative asks you to invest in a complex arc about characters trying to become better people: “god why is everyone so ANNOYING 🙄🙄”
FFX:
Within 1-2 hours you got a party of 3 members
Very soon after you acquire more party members allowing you to swap around
Can backtrack
Tidus being a complete fish out of water character is utilized to provide necessary exposition to the player
NPCs also fill the world and provide supplementary information about the world
FFXIII:
Within 1-2 hours game arbitrarily splits the main characters into 2 member parties (literally one is due to Vanille plopping her butt down and being tired and she and Sazh just never catch up to the others)
I cannot remember when you acquire the ability to get a 3 member party or swap characters in/out. I want to say more than 10 hours. It could be over 15. It's a lot.
The Paradigm system also means if you don't have this Optimal party set up with X characters doin Y Role you're going to be very inefficient
Little to no backtracking until that 30+ hour mark where the game opens up
Despite having not 1 but 2 good candidates for the fish out of water archetype (Vanille, plus Hope being a sheltered kid) the exposition is weak and clunky and the player gets hit with a lot of jargon with a poor means of processing it
Game lacks significant towns, villages, or NPCs to provide supplementary information about the world
It's a combination of all these things that make FFXIII reek of "hallway simulator" or "tram ride" in ways that FFX artfully manages to avoid. FFXIII also has way more cutscenes and instead of cutscenes being used to enhance the story players can feel aliened by the game not allowing them to participate in the game. It's not JUST that FFXIII is linear: it's holding you by the hand and yanking you forward while you struggle to keep your balance.
We know why FFXIII is the way it is for a lot of things. The leap to HD was very hard on Japanese developers, Square-Enix included. But by FFXIII standards, especially at the time, FFXIII was a disappointment. It's honestly a 7.5/10 game, just kind of boring, but Final Fantasy used to have such a stellar reputation and FFXIII was a jarring end to that streak.
Also yeah the Paradigm system can be fun provided it doesn't take 20 hours to unlock it, which is why almost everything gets unlocked within the first few hours of FFXIII-2.
Yeah, the issue is never that FF13 is hallways. Most things are disguised hallways. Just some hallways are super wide. The issue is that it's a fucking gated one way system most of the game, with the party switching as you say and all the other guff
FFX meanwhile, despite being mostly made up of corridors, is in fact a plot gated open world most of the time, which is how most FFs are. You start out in one area and unlock more as you go, but can usually backtrack. And as you say, dark aeons aside, you can go back to the entire start of the game or various other areas at any point.. when you get the airship, all it opens up is easy travel, mostly. It was already there in many ways.
FF13 breaks from that and only really lets you choose where you're going at gran pulse.. while simultaneously not having anyone alive to interact with, meaning it's a very empty world that has opened up. It's not the worst of games, but for an FF, it was a big disappointment indeed
I also think the hate towards Hope was very misplaced. Yeah he's seething silently about Snow... and then they talk and he forgives him and it's actually a pretty good moment! He has a little arc about forgiveness and putting the blame on the right people, but from the way people talk about him, you'd think he's just a little shit kid
Part of the fun in FFs is exploring, seeing towns, talking to the people in those towns and places and discovering the lore and story organically. FF13 has none of that. You're always on the run in long hallways, the lore is stuck in magic floating shopkeeper terminals in every zone. It feels so fake.
Even FF10, which is also technically a long hallway from start to end, manages to have all of the other good stuff in it.
The combat, which it's fans like to rave about, is cookie cutter from start to end. While you can input commands, I'm pretty sure that when I played it I let it play itself the entire game (other then doing paradigm shifts when needed) because there was no use in doing anything.
And then it depends on if you like the characters or not. I liked Sazh and Vanille and that was basically it.
FF10 also doesn't suffer from being a hallway since the story is about going on a pilgrimage to a specific place in the world that multiple people have gone to in the past. The trail is the way it is because summoners prayed at multiple temples. The only thing that would change a summoner's pilgrimage is what village/town that person was born in or where they decided to become a summoner. The end goal is the same for everyone that chooses to make the journey.
Hey, those are all valid complaints.
I am never going to pretend 13 is a hidden gem everyone forgot. I am going to say it doesn't deserve the level of vitriol it got and that there genuinely are things you can say we're worthwhile about it and that while they ain't gonna bring it up to "good", they definitely keep it out of the "it offends me by existing" pile.
The FF10 comparison to FF13 when it comes to its hallways is disingenuous (Not saying you are, just making the comparison). FFX knew to actually have a party engaging with each other, the ability to backtrack, knowing that having actual shops and NPCs and minigames is important, to open the gameplay up over time instead of keeping with the same basic 2-people combat for well over half the game, etc.
I just know the Lightning meme.
I really wanna replay but square for some reason decided it's the ONLY FF not on modern consoles (13 aside, and I know it's on Xbox backwards compatibility but you get me)
I really, genuinely think they want to give it a big remaster and overhaul before they bring it back, like with X and XII or even Kingdom Hearts and Tactics. But it's also a very, very big project. Not only do they have to do the visuals, which are still beautiful and plentiful, but the music, which is also beautiful and plentiful.
And the sequels as well. And they probably want to make gameplay adjustments, particularly to smooth over XIII's issues - mostly using QOL stuff from XIII-2 I'd say. I remember when it felt like X's remastering was taking years and years, that it felt like it'd never arrive, and then it did.
SE tends to go above and beyond when Remastering, for better or for worse - I think Crisis Core Reunion is the definitive version of CC, but it has a few issues, namely aesthetic ones like it's too bright in Midgar at times.
I remember HCBailey (big FF fan and let's player, does absurdly detailed walkthroughs of each game) surprising everybody when he finally played FF13 and turned out he really, really liked it.
There's a lot to love and hate in that game, but I really don't think it's at worst, anything lower than a 7.5 out of 10.
XIII has a lot of mechanical depth it doesn't tell you about that I'm half certain was put in to make the game run smoother, but when exploited is very fun.
Hell, the whole "Auto-Battle" thing bugs me mostly because the game doesn't emphasise what you're actually supposed to do - figure out the optimal strategy against enemies, quickly choose your commands and when the battle ebbs and flows adjust your strategy. Like, it's way better to cast Haste first rather than wait for Auto Battle to do it for you.
Are we getting “FF13 was good actually” kids now? Fine, whatever. No account for taste and all that. Frankly, I think it’s really only the most frustrating if people DENY a game’s flaws rather than accept that they like it in spite of it.
That being said, I don’t know how entertaining it would be for Pat to hate-play FF-13. That’s a LONG ASS game to hate-play.
The spitethrough of Bioshock Infinite worked for two reasons:
It had something interesting to say (albeit poorly) that Pat, Peach, and Woolie were able to comment on.
The game is like, 8-10 hours. It goes by FAST.
FF13 would simply take too long to be of interest.
Pat also had a lot of opinions about Infinite he could actually share and explain. But a 40+ hour JRPG? Man, that’s like, what, a month and a half of streams for him to just grouse through? Sounds like that would wear thin.
FF13s issues are much simpler and the game is much longer. What would happen is I'd do 2 streams, make my point, quit, and then be inundated with the same argument from 2006: "OF COURSE HE HATED IT, he quit right before it got good!"
And who needs more people saying you didn’t give it long enough to get good as some sort of gocha?
I try not to begrudge people for loving "flawed"/"bad" media because sometimes shit just hits you at the right time. If you were a weeby young teen in 2009 it probably hit like a truck.
But, yeah, there's a difference between loving a flawed thing and being totally blind to its flaws.
EDIT: This comment reads shittier than I meant it. If you like FF13 you are in no way wrong for liking it. I was trying to make a generalised point about how our attachment to specific games/media is often more about how and when you encounter it, and how it hits you personally, than about whether it measures up to some "objective" yardstick of quality.
Smallville is my personal go-to example of this. That show has a lot of problems but I loved it as a kid/teen and no amount of analysis or critique of the things it does wrong will change that. Shits rooted in my heart til I die.
I was a weeby young teen in 2009 and I can tell you I did NOT enjoy it
Everything about it is bad. People will be like “the combat is good though” NO IT ACTUALLY ISN’T
The music is stellar
Hell, just Blinded by the Light alone is amazing and has legitimately one of, if not the, best "chorus" (idk shit about music it's the violin part lol) of any Final Fantasy battle song. It stands out in my mind just as strong as Battle on the Big Bridge and Those who Fight.
I'll give FF13 shit any day of the week but the music was always a standout.
I only watched my brother play it but it was the first game to show me the importance of buffs and debuffs
I got stuck on the space pope and then quit cause I could not figure out the combat system in that game.
Hey, I wouldn't say everything. Sahz was a shining diamond hidden in a steaming poo.
Or maybe they just don't find those things to be "flaws" like you do? That's not being blind, it's a difference of opinion.
I agree this is not a good game to rage play on stream (I'd argue it's not a good game to stream in general). The plot isn't always at the forefront in parts of the game, and the game is too long to keep any criticisms about the gameplay fresh throughout.
I like the game, but it has some real issues. I can see specific types of people liking many parts of it, but giving it an unqualified "good rpg" moniker would raise some big flags on my end even about their general taste in games compared to mine.
Hi it’s me I’m the FF13 shill lmao. NOTHING hits like the Paradigm system and I fuckin’ love the characters and environments and soundtrack it’s just 👌 mwah.
Does it also got some fucked up parts? Like how all the villains totally suck? They structured it like an FPS rather than an open RPG? It very slowly gives you the tools needed to make the combat fun? Oh yeah all that and more. Still love it to death but boy do I acknowledge the issues.
See this is fine. I bear you no I'll will. What drives me up the wall and gets this thread made every time is some variation of "what YouTuber gave you that opinion" or it was only jaded hater millennials that don't like it etc.
I literally bought a ps3 to play it and am a massive FF mark, I couldn't have been primed more to enjoy it.
This is fair, it drives me up the wall when people will defend every part of something to the death just because they like it. Everything I love has a lot of flaws and I feel like I'm able to more accurately explain why I like them because I understand and accept those flaws.
None of the individual villains are great, but I enjoy how it's just blatantly about religious forces using fear to control the masses.
Assassin's Creed 2 🤝 Final Fantasy XIII
2009 video games that let you fight the Pope
To be fair, individual villains that were not that great was a issue that Final Fantasy games in general had for a while that wasnt "fixed" until the expansions of FF14 and FF16 in general.
Would add FFXV to that, Ardyn's backstory is really solid and near-completely left out of the main story for some fucking reason.
I'd say that Golbez/Exdeath/Kefka/Sephiroth-Jenova/Kuja-Queen Branhe/Seymour (and other FFX villains) have all been pretty solid villains.
Exdeath is a major sneak in this list, he just has a cool design and that's IT.
As someone who loves FF5 more than most, I agree and I like Exdeath. Not because he's actually cool or anything, but the fact that he's so lame and feels like a caricature of a Saturday Morning Cartoon villain. "Everything will return to the void. Mwahaha" headass, which totally works for tone of ff5 which is the most whimsy/anime entry in the franchise.
Gave it a chance last year and it jumped to my favourite mainline FF game.
Agree hard with all your first points but MAN I gotta gush about the Paradigm system.
Not only does it feel entirely unique to other rpg systems, I love how crafted it feels balanced around the whole game. It feels like the opposite of Expedition 33, while that game is all about breaking it's systems, FFXIII forces you to play by it's rules and thus every fight feels like the right amount of difficulty. I was engaged the whole time.
Same here on all fronts. Loved 13 since release but also like you I won’t pretend like most issues people have aren’t legitimate
Oh my god hello other local FF13 shill. Yeah the game has a shit ton of issues and really even when it comes to defense of it I actually defend 13-2 more because I think it has a better story and is pure fucking PERFECTION of the paradigm system. But I still love base 13 I love the world I adore the characters.
Irrc, 13 was pretty popular in Japan. The international audience are the ones who’re more divided on it.
I genuinely thought about giving 13 a shot when it was on sale on Steam a few months ago, but then I found out that the game runs like dogshit on PC and you have to install a bunch of mods and fan patches to get it up to snuff.
A bunch of mods and fan patches is actually just 1 patch, and the only thing it doesn't fix is some shadow issues you might not notice
The ones that are actually bad are 13-2 and LR since their fan patch solutions are not as robust, which is unfortunate for me since imo those games are far more fun to actually play
13-2 does have a whole "Pokemon/SMT" style system on it wich does make it a lot more interesting to play than the OG one.
Also, i personaly find it hilarious to have one of the protagonists be the girl who was pretty much just a plot device for all of the previous game.
You could always emulate the PS3 version and have it run way better.
I bought the game on Steam last year, installed the 4k mods(models, FMV), fan fixes, everything. I had played it at launch, but dropped it after a couple of hours. I thought 'Now I know what to expect from the game and will enjoy what it has to offer' and...nah, dropped it again. It's just not fun, I don't think I like a single thing about it. Well no, I like the enviroment art, it looks really pretty, but that's about it.
And I say this as someone that loved playing FFXIII-3
It's always ran perfectly fine for me 🤷♂️
I thought FFXIII was good, not great.
But I did Platnium FFXIII-2 because I genuinely enjoyed it.
I couldn't believe how good XIII-2 was. I did enjoy XIII more than most people, especially the end game Grand Pulse grind. But XIII-2 had no business being as good as it was.
think every reviled thing is having this.
made a joke on the thread about the initial "ff13 fans working at square" thing about how ubisoft probably has ac syndicate fans there, like unity performance aside i thought that one was almost universally considered the worst one.
I'm not surprised. We have Sonic 06 defenders, ffs.
I don't like it despite my Japanese friend sending me as a gift and telling to try. the only things I did enjoy were the music and Lightining being pretty/cool looking though so I can't argue her fans
Honestly as much as I disliked it on release, I’m feeling charitable towards the game these days and would love a remaster on PS5 so I can reassess it. The sequels were bangers though. Would love to play them again
Oh my god 400+ comments on just this, jesus christ
"___ is good when you ain't got..." is one of those "ok the original had a good point, but now the phrase is just a blanket 'people can't criticize thing' statement that means nothing and contributes nothing".
It's also incorrect. If you were the only human being on planet Earth, FF13 would still be ass.
P sure the original was in regards to little caeser's pizza, WHICH IS TRUE
Little Caesar's Pizza is totally fine as long as you eat it fresh, it just falls into an absolute pile of inedible shit after a few hours that even warming it back up doesn't really fix.
I mean, it's still not great pizza, but ain't nobody else delivering Pizzas to my door for twenty bucks including delivery fees and tips, everyone else wants twice that. It's the McDonalds of Pizza.
you know the trope of how your little league team wins their big game and you go out for a pizza party
little caesar's is where the team goes when they lose
I have a friend that has terrible bowel issues if he eats cheese. He ate a Lil Ceasars pizza and had no adverse effects. I've never stepped into one again after that nugget of knowledge
I’m just saying, when I was a drug addict with nothing going for me, Little Caesars was always there with a 5 dollar slop pizza to keep me going.
Well, now you got me cheering for Little Caesars
Their thin crust is genuinely pretty good for the price.
Eh, I still stand by the original point of the phrase
The internet is miserable and negativity will get you clicks and attention (which is why this post is currently top of the subreddit lmao). People love a good internet punching bag to drag and dogpile.
I don't blame people for saying such a phrase because a lot of the times, people can't let other people just simply enjoy things.
People will voluntarily get up on your ear and basically say "why are you enjoying that, X is bad" which is basically what Pat is doing lmao.
I honestly tried FF13 for the first time in 2025. No one to tell me anything I just thought I'd give it a shot since I got it super cheap on steam sales sometime.
I made it maybe a few hours into the game and no. The combat system is so ass I just couldn't force myself to play it any further. I don't want a game that plays itself while I make suggestions to it. Everything else was either OK or mediocre with amazing graphics for the time but god that combat destroyed the game, I don't care about what came after.
I tried 13-2 as well since people say it's the best and it's got roughly the same combat and it's also a no from me.
FF13 was my first FF. Didn't know anything about its reputation, only that the series was popular and it had a new entry
The game still SUCKED.
I got all the way to the planetside levels purely because the series had pedigree and I was sure I was missing something. If it didn't have FF's name on it, I would've bailed 2 hours in. Genuinely one of my worst gaming experience on the 360
It did have IMMACULATE CGI for the time though.
I like ff13.
Gamers when you like a game they don’t like.
I am curious what it'd be like to have pat and super butter buns debate about ff13. There wouldnt be any winners but i reckon it'd be entertaining for around a minute or 2.
I like XIII more than XVI
Sorry
13's problem is the same issue I have with 16, its to liner to want to replay it
If there is one game that would benefit ABSURDLY from having a Bloody Palace style unlock after you finish the main game it would be FF16.
You can make the argument that the first DLC for it kinda gives you that, but, it's not the same.
The last DLC has basically that, the Kairos Gate.
16’s got great everything except engaging gameplay. Like the combat itself is cool but damn it’s against very dull enemies saddled with the most boring side quests that make you remember that it’s a game made by a dude who’s been working on an MMO for years.
Technically, I feel the gameplay has aspects of being very fun - but you never can use it? Basically, bosses can't be juggled so the aerial combat only works on weak mobs. There's some crazy animation cancel combos with Odin but the enemies even the bosses usually die in the middle of doing the combo or will soon die after you finish it.
S tier solutions to B tier problems is the way its sat in my mind, Clive is way too overtuned for the game hes actually in.
It very much feels like an RPG that desperately wants to be a character action game. You can do all sorts of crazy bullshit combos and abilities! Except few enemies are actually designed for you to be able to use any of them.
For me it also didn’t help that the game runs out of new enemies to throw at you midway through. If you keep giving me new tools but don’t throw anything new or interesting to use them on, then it starts to feel like bloat where I’m curb stomping foes that can’t hold up to my new toys.
Combat gets better as you get more tools. Then it gets way worse as the combat becomes an MMO rotation, except every ability is a 4-10 second lavishly animated cutscene.
I'm convinced that the single biggest and easiest improvement they could make to that combat system is to limit you to 1 "ultimate" ability equipped at a time. By the endgame, I was rolling through 15-20 seconds of completely-invincible ults which, combined with Diamond Dust freezing most enemies for several seconds, lets you blow through most of the cooldowns of those ults. With that, I was only really engaging with the actual combat mechanics for about 1/3 of the time I spent in combat.
I really want them to reuse that combat system for something (maybe not an actual FF game, to avoid the series' baggage), and just take the time to tighten up the edges because all the pieces are there for it to be great.
Nah, 13 at least has more gameplay depth to mess around with, despite the party limit throughout the game. 16's gameplay is too shallow for that.
Well I’m gonna keep liking it to spite Pat specifically then.
Thanks Pat, now I need to fight Crazy Talk to avoid FF13 becoming good
All I know about FF13 is the DSP unboxing video, where he doesn’t actually open the game and complains about his fire alarm going off in the background for 15 minutes
That video unironically sums up Lightning Returns perfectly.
I played FF13 a few years back and yeah I had ton of problems with it. That being said all of this is a bit overblown. The 13 games aren’t this huge train wreck the internet makes them out to be. The main characters have a pulse, the combat systems are amazing, they’re pretty and even the lore is interesting to someone who is naturally curious or just googled the terms.
For all the leeway this place gives DMC4 I find it funny 13 doesn’t gets the same treatment.
I get it I still feel a strong irrational hatred towards the last seasons of GoT, Veilguard and Zero Time Dillema. I just don’t think I’d lose my mind if I found out younger folks liked them
You can probably find some good in pretty much anything. Just look at how much of DmC, DMC2 & DMC4 are in better games
Shoot I said it in another posts but a good chunk of the XIII trilogy lives on the newer VII games
Lastly, folks tend to forget kids and others don’t live life online I’m sure they don’t 13 is hated. I didn’t know until I was like 20 and Japan for sure treats the series way differently….
For a channel that has a history of playing middling games I find all of this funny. I’m not annoyed I am just giggling at all of this especially when I learn more and more of supposedly other classics were rushed or hated back in the day too
XIII remains one of my favorites in the series. Not like top 3 or anything but it’s up there. It takes a little while to get going, theres way too much time spent with two character parties with a battle system that feels like dogshit with only two characters for example, but once it gets going its a real blast to play.
FFXIII is fine, I think highly(-ish?) of it, and there are several ways that I feel that people who complain about it endlessly are just wrong, from how to play the game to the presentation of the story. Personally, I love the mythology, the story is intriguing, I like how the party is full of different kinds of people that are forced together, the setting is interesting, and I like the gameplay for a lot of its nuances like chaining commands, ATB Refresh, exploiting passive bonuses, and for once buffs and debuffs aren't just viable, but strong.
Yeah, the maps aren't that great, but also I like...don't care? FF is already a pretty linear, story-driven series, but people act like FF was this non-linear, open world franchise that FFXIII railroaded into hallway. It worked well enough for the game that FFXIII is, and the story it has.
The problem is that FF brings with it an expectation, and when those expectations aren't met, people turn into babies about it. There's still people that hate FFVII because it wasn't more like FFVI, and then it just goes on and on. The nature of the franchise is that basically everything can and will be different, and you have to remain flexible when it comes to the different entries, otherwise you just end up disappointed. FFXIII is certainly not for everyone, but that is also true for a lot of games in general, not just in the series. I'm still not all that keen on FFXII, and I didn't beat it until the Zodiac Age like a decade later because it remedied some of my more insurmountable issues with the game.
I like FFXIII for what it does. People shouldn't be surprised that can be the case. It'd also be cool if people could stop being insufferable about it.
Pretty much close to how I feel. I try to be somewhat realistic with my FF expectations so if one fumbles I know that there’s old favorites or eventual new ones.
I absolutely hate XV but I ended up getting a ton of new favorites after and I went back and played the ones I missed.
Probably explains why I’m so lenient on 16. I really wish that game had better rpg mechanics as well ones for its action stuff but the spectacle and story left a huge impact on me
A long time ago I basically reoriented my thinking of Final Fantasy to something more akin to a brand. I like all kinds of genres, and like, I can't expect every Capcom game to be a survival horror like RE, just the same way I can't expect every FF game to the same as one particular entry. If I had written off the series some time ago for that, I never would have fallen in love with the ones I did later.
As someone slowly working their way through the series (just started VI), I'm so interested to get to XIII and see what it's like
You're gonna get to it and think it's fine. Internet would have you believe it's the worst game ever when really it's fine.
It's literally just "fine". The combat's fun and interesting and only gets better as the game progresses, but it has a very rough and confusing start not helped by the fact that most of the game takes place in several long, drawn-out hallways; a large chunk of the characters are presented like the "cool", edgy, early 2000s characters that were common for the time it released and it actively makes many of them look worse than they actually are; and the plot is just nonsensical and presented to players fucking terribly, with a ton of backstory buried in bestiary entries that you wouldn't realize until you went looking for them.
The main reason why so many people despise it is because the FF13 trilogy were the only new, mainline, Final Fantasy games we got for the entirety of the 360/PS3 generation, so for some people, that wound never fully healed. And all this is coming from someone who also initially hated the game when it released, but as I got older and started to appreciate more games for what they were or were trying to accomplish, I gave it another shot and ended up enjoying it quite a bit more.
The context will be “this seems okay?” Until you realise this was all they put out for the entire ps3 console generation
You're just gonna ignore the two other XIII games that came out within the same generation?
I mean, I don't blame it if you do, but in terms of production value and scale, those might as well be mainline FFs.
I'm in the boat of really like FF13 when it came out but FF13-2 is much better that it made 13 worse. It's like the sequel improved the things that made me enjoy the original to a point where it eclipsed it.
While on the topic, Lightning Returns is the biggest example of good gameplay but bad story. That story is so contradictory and ruins most of its characters.
To be fair, LR had a notoriously bad translation, there's two different terms that got turned into one and you'll never get the context ever because it's never gonna be the right word (I think it was heart and soul That just became one thing? Been a while, there's a whole reddit thread about it)
I liked the side stories but yeah the main campaign was a mess. 13-2 is somehow but better and lesser than the first game probably because of the pacing
So, that said, how are FFXIII-2 and Lightning Returns? I know LR is looked upon poorly, but since I heard nothing about XIII-2, does that mean it is just...there? Is is it more a "normal" RPG compared to the other parts of the trilogy?
13-2 is pretty solid imo, it's much more open than 13 and they made a bunch of improvements to the combat. (Faster paradigm swaps, full access to the combat systems straight away Vs 20+ hours in, you no longer game over if the leader dies etc)
The story can be pretty silly at times but it has an actual antagonist and that puts it far ahead of 13. The games budget was much lower than 13 tho and that shows, they mostly reuse 13 enemies and any new enemies are reused a ton to get their money's worth out of any new assets.
Lightning returns is a weird game, the story is horribly localised and mostly nonsense but the combat/job system is actually excellent if you can look past the goonerish outfits, I'd honestly really like square to try this concept again. The whole time limit thing isn't anywhere near as daunting as it sounds, I finished pretty much everything and still had 2~ days to spare.
This is me with the ff7 remake and post OG game stuff
I like 13-2 and lightning returns. 13's music is also peak. Best in the franchise probably and I don't think it's even close. I followed general consensus at the time, I heard 13 was bad but 13-2 got decent reviews and it fixed a bunch of problems 13 had. So I skipped right to 13-2 and I gotta say the story is nigh incomprehensible, still a great game.
This is basically just a circle jerk subreddit
ITT: People who can't accept that maybe, just maybe, people out there genuinely enjoy FF13.
I am not blind to its flaws, I was not 12 when I played it, I am not revising history. I simply found it to be an enjoyable game, even with the 20 hour tutorial. Once you have full access to the Paradigm system it's pretty cool what you can pull off (and you really only see how far it goes if you do a ton of optional side content). The characters start off fairly cliched, but they all evolve and have some hidden character depths. I even ended up liking Snow, the generic anime hero character, because his arc is specifically about that heroic nature being called into question.
Also the graphics and music are absolutely incredible for 2009, but it's Final Fantasy so that's pretty much a given.
It’s really a bridge that goes both ways.
Yes some people like FF13 — & Yes some people hate FF13.
It’s not a monolith of a game in terms of reception.
But it's FF so it has to be monolithic or something.
Yeah, fandom wars for FF are something else. Like, it's not as bad as it once was, but to this day the vitriol VI and VII fanatics have to each other is scary, as an example.
It's really annoying that whenever something goes through reevaluation or people just talk about liking something divisive, the immediate response is "oh, you were young and stupid. you liked it as a child" a la the prequels.
And this is just an anecdote, but it's my personal experience, but I've watched four streamers play 13 who had no prior experience with it. And they all loved it. And they're all queer women. And so am I. Just a funny tidbit
I think ff 13 is one of those weird situations where if you like it, people assume you played it as a child and if you dont like it people assume you got your opinion from someone else.
It's a love it or hate it game. That's all, no need for an incoming 300+ comment thread about people decrying 'toxic positivity' or psychoanalyzing each other or what have you for why they can't STAND other people having different opinions from them.
Yeah, but have you ever considered that XIII is not Pat Approved™️ and liking it disrupts the groupthink?
This sub is definitely one of the better ones on Reddit but that doesn't mean its users don't generally dislike opinions that go against what their almighty tastemaker tells them they should think, just like every other internet personality-based sub.
I will never get around my hatred of Snow. Great Value Zell lookin' ass...
"X is better when you don't have someone telling you it's bad" is such a bitch response to criticism. If someone is vomiting out a content creator's take as their own, call them out on it, but otherwise your game might just be mid.
I thought the point was more about getting into something already primed to look for flaws rather than just copying someone else's opinion, which being devil's advocate for a bit, I think can be a valid side-note to point out in certain situations, but if that's the crux of your argument, it is indeed a conversation stopper, doesn't really leave space for a proper discussion.
Feels like a “you’re toxic for pointing out flaws” complaint to me. Sure, some people might be overly or unfairly critical, but if you can’t take a thing you like being criticized at all then that’s a YOU issue.
For me, it's a volume thing, it's not about a bitch, it's about an endless torrent of bitching when you bring something up. It's the criticism equivalent of "nice opinion, which youtuber gave it to you?"
For me its not a volume thing or a bitch thing.
Its a "concerted effort by right wing shitheads to misrepresent and shitcan media" thing.
That works the other way to. If you can't take someone liking something you hate that's a you issue. I think Silent Hill F is an annoying to play dog shit game. I don't care that people like it. Doesn't stop that game stand from crying when I say I hated my time with it.
I mostly disagree.
The internet is a miserable place that revels in negativity and misinformation.
Going against the grain and stating an opinion that goes against a belief held by active online communities can absolutely get you dragged and dogpiled.
I don't blame people for saying such a phrase because a lot of the times, people can't let other people just simply enjoy things.
The problem with this line of thought is that sometimes there is an organized effort by "bitches with an agenda" that succeeds in shitcanning media that did not deserve it.
Dragon Age is functionally dead now because of stuff like this. The week Veilguard came out there were people in this sub who (despite not playing the damn thing) endlessly reposted the skillup review that misrepresented that game by putting every bit of cringe dialogue in a compilation and making it seem like that was everything.
People here tried to do the same thing with Metroid Prime 4 and Miles.
The Acolyte faced a torrent of racist and homophobic influencers whose opinions bled into the mainstream and discouraged viewership.
Now I'm not gonna sit here and say all 3 of these bits of media did not have noticeable problems. Cause they do. But they were blown out of proportion by bad actors chasing clout. My chief reaction on engaging with all three was "that's it? that's what people lost their minds over?". Especially with Miles in Prime 4.
It's more about people butting in to say something sucks when you say you like it.
There are definitely victims of the post-AVGN hyper negative engagement driven nightmare hellscape that we live in today (which brings us today's reminder that if you're on the fence about playing The Outer Worlds 2 or Avowed, a lot of the criticisms you've heard about them are literally made up by people who wouldn't have like New Vegas unless they were told it was good, you should definitely try them for yourself)
But on the other hand, shit from butts exists and Final Fantasy XIII and related content are shit from a butt.
Oooo. Thats good.
I got one.
"These people would have been calling for DS9 to be cancelled for not being "Pure Trek"."
Feel free to use that one.
"your platitudes mean nothing to me" is a phrase that should be said by every human everyday, something i say with a very dumb smile
FF13 was the first FF game I beat and 100% even. I love the game, so much so that I want a L'Cie tattoo. I know it has problems but I don't think it is a bad game personally. Yes I've played other FF since. 7 is great, 8 is 8, 9 has issues but mainly when it comes to completing it 100%(Who hurt you dev who put in 1000 jump ropes).
I've always been in camp "FF13 has always been good" and I'll forever be in that camp. It was a lot rougher back in 2009 when the whole ass internet was against us but hey atwast we've reached the point where response by new people tends towards "well I expected worse" so I'll take it
I just can't imagine caring this much and being that bitch
You'll probably be able to imagine with a different piece of media.
We all do.
We are all the "I don't get why thst matters" person until its something that matter to us.
I don't know, I think I definitely used to be in my early 20s but I'm sure not now. As long as they aren't harming anyone it's like... who gives a fuck? Or better, why should I care that they like it and I don't?
Big example for me would be Exp33, I just don't get it despite giving the game about three attempts with lengthy play sessions... but I'm not gonna be fighting people on socials when they say it's their GOTY.
I think it's really edgy to assume everyone has the same parasocial behaviour as you.
In what possible way is that edgy or parasocial?
Parasocial is probably the wrong word in this case (though folks in this sub are very weirdly parasocial when it comes to Pat and Woolie), but edgy? Their comment reeks of "You all think the same way as me, even if you don't think you do" energy. That's edgy as fuck if you ask me... Which you did.
It's just a silly line of thinking, I can see a teenage version of me thinking it's cool to say shit like that. If you assume everyone thinks or feels in the same way as you, you're sorely mistaken and need to speak to more people in real life.
I’ll be honest here. I’ve been on this Earth of 30 years. I’ve never felt like this. I’ve disliked plenty of stuff and when someone says they like something I dislike, I just shrug and nod.
I’ve never had the compulsion of arguing with someone on something they like.
Especially when it's a wholly subjective matter of preference that has no real-world significance.
I continue to be confused by how this surprises people
It was The big single player FF in the age range a lot of the newer devs hit. It's like being surprised there's a lot of like, I don't know, Brave and the Bold fans working on a new batman show instead of DCAU.
Besides ff13 is a perfectly fine 6.5/10 and not an abomination like people claim (although yeah it's too long for a 6.5 and there's no good way to play it on modern hardware). I sure enjoyed it more than 15.
A 6.5 is a very flawed by passable game (60% is the passing grade in my country). However it feels like a step down after the golden years of 6-10. No comments on 11 since I never played it, and even 12, which is also flawed, has more juice then 13. A lot of people (myself included) probably bought a PS3 or 360 for FF13, and it was probably a slap in the face if they didn't like it.
I dunno what popular opinion is on FF13. I liked the gameplay of the battle system when they let you play it. Problem is they don’t let you play it for like most of the game lol. Like I can understand not hating FF13 but playing other/most FF games and having it as your favorite is wild lol
FF13 is fine buts its 100% not what i wanted out of a final fantasy game. Now final fantasy has left me but I’ll always have 1-X
Ff10 and ff13 have the best battle systems in ff.
Ff13 is good.
I had a very funny thing happen with XIII where I really didn't like the cast and it took me years and Snow and Lightning showing up on World of Final Fantasy to warm up to them.
Then Berseria came out and I was like "This is what I wanted out of those character" down to a bunch of parallels between them. God is everyone devoid of any sort of charisma in that game. Except Sazh he's my guy.
Final Fantasy 13 is the only mainline FF game I've played to completion.
40 hours of my life I ain't getting back.
30 hour of me getting to pulse before dropping it.
10 hour of me giving the game a legit second chance years later.
I've earned the right to hate 13.
The true horror is the sheer amount of FF13 fans that this community has. It's like secret koreans.
Granted I haven't played it since high school, but I remember feeling like FFXIII had the best combat system in the series up to that point. I actually liked the cast/story quite a bit and didn't mind it being super linear, but that may be because those Australian accents were teaching me some very profound things about myself.
It really depends on what you're looking for in an RPG combat series. Are you looking to break the combat? Plenty of other FF games are way easier to break and customize. Are you looking to genuinely engage with it? FFXIII is amazing in that regard because you have to play by its systems and once you do, it's genuinely very compelling having to constantly switch paradigms to exploit the stagger gauge as much as possible. Where everything is important, buffs, debuffs, healing, tanking, aggro, timing, etc.
I much prefer FF7Re series these days but even back then I could say FFXIII probably had the best combat and maybe the hardest game in the series simply because you had to engage with it.
Im currently playing granblue fantasy relink. i get the same problem i had with ff13. push through the story to get to the good part. although i really am enjoying the atmasphere of granblue way more and main story seems much shorter.
Ff13 is somehow genuinely my favorite FF despite being the worst one I've played.
Like. The few bits that resonate really hit for me and having spent so much time examining it I feel like I have a greater depth of feeling towards it.
If I'm being honest though. 70% of this is that Saber's Edge and Blinded by Light are incredible battle themes that make everything else better by association.