This trilogy really that bad?

[Helyx]

15 minutes ago, SnowxSakura said:

Personally from what I've played of the franchise, 13 is by far the worst final fantasy game

 

I'd agree, if I didn't loathe the combat in FF2. Other than that, yeah, XIII is the worst the series has to offer besides crap like Dirge of Cerberus.

[SnowxSakura]

36 minutes ago, Helyx said:

 

I'd agree, if I didn't loathe the combat in FF2. Other than that, yeah, XIII is the worst the series has to offer besides crap like Dirge of Cerberus.

I wasn't really factoring in spin-offs, but I'd agree that Dirge of Cerberus is crap. FF2 isn't that bad since there's various methods and tricks of leveling up early

[exsentry]

6 hours ago, EdwardTheMartyr said:

From what I've seen, it looks pretty interesting. Is it the gameplay everybody hated or the story?

 

I've only played XIII-2 (enjoyed) and own Lightning Returns, and just based on the playthroughs I've watched I'm not sure what every was complaining about. For me personally, the bar for FF is set pretty low (especially after FF X), so it's pretty hard for me to be truly disappointed with a FF game. 

 

If I remember correctly, I think people were expecting just something a bit more or take a bigger leap for it's first game on the PS3.

Edited December 25, 2019 by rotoninja

[a3069namebke]

I played this game eight or nine years ago and returned to it now. When I first played it, I didn't like it. Now, I'm playing through it and have over 20 hours in the game. I have mixed feelings about it, even though it held my interest for longer this time around. 

 

I think the combat is fun since it is similar to Persona (but not as deep). The paradigms give the combat a layer of strategy, and mixing and matching them keep battles fresh. I like exploiting enemy weaknesses, staggering the enemy, and building up chains. Even though it doesn't mean anything, I enjoy getting five star rankings on battles. 

 

However, I do not know why I am doing what I am doing. The story is not well explained at all and introduces a bunch of terminology that is central to the plot (what is a l'Cie or a Fal'Cle?). Some of the enemies are downright weird and seem to be there because we need an enemy to fight (Flanitor, for example). I like that the characters are flawed, which makes them relatable, but any points of contention between characters is resolved rather quickly. Overall, Lightning and Snow are good and keep me engaged, but Hope is a disaster of a character. 

 

I played a lite bit of FFXV. The story is way better than XIII, but because the combat does not do anything new in that game, I like XIII a little more. 

Edited December 25, 2019 by a3069namebke
Grammar

[Taliesin_2943]

Xiii was not great except the cutscenes the actual playing was just bad and I get that they was trying something new but it was kinda broken, -2 was pretty good but the timelines and such got confusing and tangled, but lightning returns I feel got it as right as 13 saga could get it was the right paving and everything. Overall if they did port them up I'd give it another shot I'm a different gamer than I was back then I'm slot more patient and have better control but if the trophies for the first 2 glitch up like the ps3 did I'm out 

[Beast_Mode255]

Nah I don't think they're bad games. They definitely aren't the best FF games imo, but not bad. 

[hsn963]

Very bad,

The protagonists are stupid hateful and vapid irritating, that made me want to chear the bad guy(s), problem is, they were as bad ?‍♂️.

[Dreggit]

I don't think so. But the games themselves would have benefited from not being tied to the Final Fantasy brand. Being tied to the brand meant that some ideas couldn't be explored as much as the director wanted. If you can read Japanese, I recommend checking out the Ultimania, it has some really interesting stuff in there! 

[majob]

9 hours ago, rotoninja said:

If I remember correctly, I think people were expecting just something a bit more or take a bigger leap for it's first game on the PS3.

The game was delayed for years so expectations started to rise then comes release day and the game was as mediocre as could be. Yeah, that didn't end too well

[AK-1138]

There hasn't been a worthy FF game since before Obama's first term in office, let me put it to you that way.

[Vermilion_Joker]

I think the games are well written (the second and third could not exist and it'd be okay though), but the issue lies in the fact a handful of the lore is given to you through data logs. The game expects you to have at least read a few of them (quote, not all) to understand the general gist of everything, but in the grand scheme of it all, you don't need to read ALL of the logs to understand what is going on. They usually explain what is happening at that moment when it's happening relatively quickly. If you get lost on the story, you've only yourself to blame for not paying attention. The characters are a mixed bag, but as a writer and story enthusiast, I think how they behave are pretty appropriate to the issues taking place. Any teenager would be freaking the hell out in that scenario that is this game, especially after your mother died right in front of you and you're on the run from a government that wants you dead for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The whole party you have are just emotional disasters so please, take the excessive "vibrant" critique with a grain of salt. Every character develops appropriately because the general theme aside from the typical FF game's defiance of fate, is acceptance of one's own issues.

The original is definitely a game that requires a grind, but it isn't as insane as most other RPG's (such as Star Ocean) to obtain the platinum. I saw X/X-2 being mentioned and honestly, those two are much more of a grind (in their own category), and I truthfully found myself loathing the X games due to just how tedious the grinding is compared to XIII (those Jecht spheres are awful). Just keep a checklist on what you've obtained and upgraded, and you're set. The game is definitely worth a play, and I stand by the fact the game receives an unfair amount of hate. It seems like the typical fad for FF fans to hate on XIII just because it's not turn-based and "too linear" see FFX for more details. I will say this: it's linear because it's part of the story. You can't exactly free roam while running from the government who is hot on your tail for half the game. You do get to free roam midway through the game, and it is definitely much more enticing then. The combat system isn't as "lazy" as people claim to be, because you still need to actually pick and choose what abilities to use in a fight to actually get anything done. Letting it auto-play won't get you far unless it's really low leveled mobs.

 

tl;dr Try your hand at XIII, but set it down for a weekend or a day off so that you can actually relax and watch the story unfold. Definitely not a game to play for an hour a day, especially in the beginning.

[Rick_Sanchez]

FF XIII is the 3rd worst Final Fantasy game I've played with FF 2 taking the 2nd spot and FF XII taking the 1st spot.

 

FF XIII fumbled in almost every aspect of a good FF game is. It features linear corridors that would make Call of Duty jealous, terrible characters with the exception of a few (Fang, Vannile, Sahz) [Lightning started out okay but became awful later], a nonsensical story that's hard to follow, a press X to win battle system (With the exception of a handful of fights), little to no interaction with anyone that isn't in your party. I can say the music is okay and the graphics are pretty for its time.

 

13-2 fixes a ton of problems and is closer to what a FF game is like but still has issues mentioned previously but not as bad. I haven't played but a few hrs into it but I liked it more, just haven't got around to finishing it

 

Lightning returns - no comment due to not playing it yet.

[MandA60VISE]

Not as bad as XV. Yeah, the story was kinda bad mainly because how little it explained in the cutscenes and regulated almost everything to the data logs. The combat is fine, good even at points. Everyone's main complaints is that auto-battle is good enough. However, if you actually attempt combat you'll realize auto-battle sucks and telling your person what to do is much better. XIII-2 improves on every aspect from XIII though some would argue story and characters aren't. Lightning Returns is completely different but Square left a cliffhanger ending on XIII-2 so if you want to finish the story might as well.

 

Also, if you're aiming for the platinum XIII and LR are a long, dumb grind while XIII-2 is still a grind but much more manageable if you know what you're doing. Would suggest looking at some guides for at least XIII so you don't accidentally make it harder.

[EdwardTheMartyr]

I think I'll watch the cutscenes. I got enough jRPGs to play. If I end up liking the first game's cutscenes, I'll watch gameplay and decide if I wanna playthrough the trilogy.

[Sword]

The trilogy is not that bad at all... It's just that in terms of game play as a whole it does not hold up to the standard many would expect from top tier RPG games. It kinda falls in the middle for most people. It's not exceptional, but not the worst game many have played either (in terms of RPGs). It's just.... meh. Average. Passable and playable but not the pinnacle the series can achieve. 

 

One of the downsides of the series is that you must read a vast majority of the data logs to actually understand the deeper aspects of the lore/what the hell is even going on. Tacking onto that, some characters are just plain or downright unlikeable/annoying and has you screaming "Will you just shut up" or "Quit being a little brat for five seconds". The first game has no towns to visit and is basically a walking simulator down a hallway. Which, thematically actually makes sense for the story (you're branded as outlaws/on the run, the government is after you, EVERYONE hates you and wants you dead/wants you off the planet, so HOW would going into towns make sense?... People seem to miss this!) But still I think they could have AT LEAST made the areas... bigger? More open? To explore. Then, when you FINALLY get a little bit of breathing room to explore (near the end of the game I might add)... you really can't, because everything will kill you. Which makes it extremely frustrating because you go from being able to tackle every enemy you come across, to suddenly feeling like the difficulty got cranked to 10 for no reason... 

 

XIII-2 got a little better. Game is more open, you visit more areas, you actually have towns/cities to visit and see. Storyline is kinda eh though. Characters IMO are much better and more likeable than XIII through the whole game. You got nice character development/struggles. Feels more like a typical RPG experience with time travel elements tacked on to it. I actually really liked this one and I think it's the best out of the three in terms of overall likeableness. 

 

Lightning Returns is the worst of the three IMO. Absolutely hate the time aspect of this game. If you spend too much time wandering around/exploring you could run out of time and get a game over/forced to restart from the start. Reminds me of Zelda: Majora's Mask. The very ending of this game was really cool though, but overall I didn't like it. You go through the same 4 areas over and over again getting a little more progress each time you go through it by advancing peoples storylines over day(s). Downside of this game is that if you don't do certain quests early enough, you might miss it (some span out over a couple days so you gotta start it early enough to make sure you have enough time to complete it). In this game you swap outfits to get powers and stuff which made no sense to me. Stats are only gained through completing quests, so fighting monsters isn't something I did much unless I had to for materials. 

 

Battle systems across all three games kinda are interesting. A mix between real time and turn base combat. I actually really enjoyed it, didn't really make me think too much but also couldn't just sit back and not pay attention at all to what was going on. Sometimes you had to react to an attack coming, swapping into a sentinel/healer mode then immediately swap back to attacking mode. It's not earth shattering by any means but it's not that bad either.

 

Music though, that's what I liked about these games. Whatever else you can say about these games, the soundtrack was absolutely beautiful. I guess it has to be that way though, considering how boring some sections of these games can be. At least you get to listen to some nice tracks to get you through the misery.

 

[ifyucantbeatmeXD]

amazon.co.jp avg customer rating of ff13 and 13-2 = 3,5*, amazon.com = 4.2*

i dont see how these are bad ratings

im not saying amazon ratings are some great measure of whatever but a lot of the hate on these games is just some kind of internet fandom herd mentality thing by mostly hardcore followers

it's a major reason why i avoid fandoms and hardcore fans of anything, those ppl are usually the most toxic and nitpicky and they complain about every little thing, whether's it's FF or KH or Tales of or Sonic or whatever franchise really

i love the ff13 games

Edited February 22, 2020 by MeteoraXV

[EdwardTheMartyr]

1 hour ago, MeteoraXV said:

amazon.co.jp avg customer rating of ff13 and 13-2 = 3,5*, amazon.com = 4.2*

i dont see how these are bad ratings

im not saying amazon ratings are some great measure of whatever but a lot of the hate on these games is just some kind of internet fandom herd mentality thing by mostly hardcore followers

it's a major reason why i avoid fandoms and hardcore fans of anything, those ppl are usually the most toxic and nitpicky and they complain about every little thing, whether's it's FF or KH or Tales of or Sonic or whatever franchise really

i love the ff13 games

Most games on Amazon get at least a 4. 3.5 is considered mediocre.

[Spike_Hostile17]

I just finished FF13 this week, 10 years after finishing the trilogy at 100% on xbox 360, and really it's mediocre. 

The only positive thing are the cinematics, which aged pretty well even on my old ps3. The game however looks just decent.

BUT the problems are :

- the story is poor and each act is just a long serie of corridors that you desperately want to get over with.

- most of enemies just have too many HPs (i dont talk about the special Tortoise boss in the post-game) and some normal enemies can take up to 5 or 6 minutes to defeat even with the good strategy. That makes every encounter a pain in the butt and for the 1st time in a FF, i found myself avoiding battles cause it just takes too long and it's too repetitive.

-the Cristarium is bad, it doesn't allow any customization, unlike FF10's spherier or FF12's board.

-the Grinding is insane. So far, i must have spent 500 hours on FF10 both on ps2,ps3 and ps4 because the game was fun, you grind because you have many secret areas and hidden bosses to defeat but in FF13, there is no post-game boss except the boring Tortoise which are just a pack of HP. Even the last hunting mission can be poisoned to death.....

- you can't teleport anywhere you want, you need to activate some Crystals and only few of them actually work as portals, so you just end up walking 90% of the time .... You can only use Chocobos post-game and even there you have to walk up to them instead of just calling them like in FF9.

 

So overall, imo the FF13's are still better than FF15 (the absolute garbage) but they are so far from the previous ones in terms of quality and gameplay.

[WakeUpHP]

FFXIII fails miserably in every respect aside from the graphics, and even while the graphics were technically very impressive for the time, they are quite soulless and sterile in my view.

 

The story follows the usual band of motley misfits trying to stop godlike beings from destroying the world for obscure reasons.  The narrative style is severely lacking since a lot of the story is explained through bland text entries that most people (including myself) won't bother to read.  I remember being completely uninterested in what was happening during the cutscenes, but still noticed some glaring plotholes that render aspects of the story completely incoherent - maybe they were cleared up in the text entries, but either way it's a failure in the art of storytelling on the part of the writers.  The characters on the other hand are far worse than merely bland, derivative or incoherent; they are simply horrid to spend time with and their so called development arcs are the usual cookie cutter after-school-special nonsense that I'm tired to death of. Even by the standards of JRPGs, the dialogue here is dreadful, most of the time the characters cry or complain or speak in overwrought, melodramatic speeches.  Snow and Hope are particularly deserving of scorn in this respect.  The voice actors didn't have a good script to work with, but they do a poor job nonetheless - except for Sazh whose actor actually had some chops, and Fang whose actor was OK. 

 

The above complaints would be forgivable were the gameplay enjoyable, however this in fact was the game's biggest problem.  Here we have a game that's stripped away all the satisfying aspects from an RPG, (namely exploration, customising, leveling and collecting) and left behind a shambling husk. Like has been mentioned a million times, the maps are linear; you are running down a ramrod straight corridor for the first 15-20 hours of this game whilst admiring, but of course never interacting with, the very pretty backgrounds.  There are no towns, villages, shops, or people to talk to; all roads lead to the inevitable endless corridor.  Thus satisfying aspect number one, exploration, is nonexistent. 

 

Meanwhile the combat, while not being the worst aspect of the game, is very poorly designed and only becomes in any way interesting against bosses and the tougher enemies towards the end of the game.  To sum it up, doing anything but selecting ''auto battle'' is sub optimal in 99% of cases.  You can theoretically select your spells or special attacks to use manually, but this takes too much time and allows the enemies a chance to fight back, so it's much better to simply auto battle and allow the AI (which is quite good) to select the suitable attacks for you - they will use fire attacks against ice enemies and heal if you need healing and so forth.  This means that leveling up and obtaining new spells and special abilities is not at all exciting or satisfying, since you never actually use them yourself, rather the AI does, and the animations for all of them look more or less the same.  As for the system of leveling itself, it's just as linear and tedious as the corridor that you spend most of the time running through.  Each character is assigned 3 classes (paradigms) out of a possible 6, which you must level up manually in the very pretty looking ''Crystarium''.  Finally some freedom, right!?  Wrong!  The Crystarium a prettier but much less interesting or interactive Sphere Grid from FFX.  Simply hold X and watch the character power up and learn new skills, you have no freedom to favour one paradigm over another, since the level is capped and you can only progress by passing certain points in the story, and you'll always have enough EXP to reach this cap if you just fight the enemies that you come across naturally.  Later in the game all the possible paradigms open up for every character, but again the freedom offered is completely illusory, because the EXP required to power up these secondary paradigms is prohibitively high, so developing them before the primary paradigms would be very suboptimal.  Thus our second and third satisfying aspects of 'leveling' and 'customising' fall by the wayside; you have to play the way the developers envisaged, and what they envisaged was very constrictive to the player.

 

The weapon and equipment system in this game is not often mentioned, but I actually think it's one of the game's biggest flaws.  Firstly, weapons you pick up in chests or buy in shops are all approximately equal in terms of power; the base equipment that you start with is essentially the same as that which you find in chests towards the end of the game, so there's never any curiosity or anticipation to be felt in opening chests in the hope you'll find a cool new weapon.  To access better weapons you must upgrade the base weapons by means of perhaps the most unintelligible upgrade systems I've ever seen in a game.  Once you use a guide to explain it, since there's no way you'll ever figure it out on your own, you'll find yourself for some reason adding wolf's teeth, particle accelerators and bull semen to your weapons in order to spiff them up a bit.  Where do you get these items?  What a stupid question!!  You buy them with all that money you grinded for, how exciting! Yet again this mechanic is repetitive and tedious and in no way satisfying.

 

Side missions, superbosses and just the tiniest of scope for exploration were tacked on towards the end, but it's painfully clear that these were an afterthought for the developers: the side missions are simply timed battles, mostly against the regular enemies that you've been encountering throughout the rest of the game, while the superbosses are laughable palette swaps of bosses that you've already fought earlier - don't expect anything cool and original like Ruby Weapon, Ozma, Penance etc.

 

A long post but I won't give a TL;DR, read it if you want to know what it's about you lazy fuck!

Edited November 29, 2020 by WakeUpHP

[MrJAMBA]

FF XIII was the first final fantasy game I ever played, followed by the rest of the series. So without any nostalgic fanboy bias, I think they were all great games.

[EdwardTheMartyr]

14 hours ago, WakeUpHP said:

FFXIII fails miserably in every respect aside from the graphics, and even while the graphics were technically very impressive for the time, they are quite soulless and sterile.

 

The story follows the usual band of motley misfits trying to stop godlike beings from destroying the world for obscure reasons.  The narrative style is severely lacking since a lot of the story is explained through bland text entries that most people (including myself) won't bother to read.  I remember being completely uninterested in what was happening during the cutscenes, but still noticed some glaring plotholes that render aspects of the story completely incoherent - maybe they were cleared up in the text entries, but either way it's a failure in the art of storytelling on the part of the writers.  The characters on the other hand are far worse than merely bland, derivative or incoherent, they are simply horrid to spend time with and their so called development arcs are the usual cookie cutter after school special nonsense that I'm tired to death of. Even by the standards of JRPGs, the dialogue here is dreadful, most of the time the characters cry or complain or speak in overwrought, melodramatic speeches.  Snow and Hope are particularly deserving of scorn in this respect.  The voice actors didn't have a good script to work with, but they do a poor job nonetheless - except for Sazh whose actor actually had some chops, and Fang whose actor was OK. 

 

The above complaints would be forgivable were the gameplay enjoyable, however this in fact was the game's biggest problem.  Here we have a game that's stripped away all the satisfying aspects from an RPG, (namely exploration, customising, leveling and collecting) and left behind a shambling husk. Like has been mentioned a million times, the maps are linear; you are running down a ramrod straight corridor for the first 15-20 hours of this game whilst admiring, but of course never interacting with, the background.  There are no towns, villages, shops, or people to talk to; all roads lead to the inevitable endless corridor.  Thus satisfying aspect number one, exploration, is nonexistent. 

 

Meanwhile the combat, while not being the worst aspect of the game, is very poorly designed and only becomes in any way interesting against bosses and the tougher enemies towards the end of the game.  To sum it up, doing anything but selecting ''auto battle'' is sub optimal in 99% of cases.  You can theoretically select your spells or special attacks to use manually, but this takes too much time and allows the enemies a chance to fight back, so it's much better to simply auto battle and allow the AI (which is quite good) to select the suitable attacks for you - they will use fire attacks against ice enemies and heal if you need healing and so forth.  This means that leveling up and obtaining new spells and special abilities is not at all exciting or satisfying, since you never actually use them yourself, the AI does, and the animations for all of them look more or less the same.  As for the system of leveling itself, it's just as linear and tedious as the corridor that you spend most of the time running through.  Each character is assigned 3 classes (paradigms) out of a possible 6, which you must level up manually in the very pretty looking ''Crystarium''.  Finally some freedom, right!?  Wrong!  The Crystarium a prettier but much less interesting or interactive Sphere Grid from FFX.  Simply hold X and watched the character power up and learn new skills, you have no freedom to favour one paradigm over another, since the level is capped and you can only progress by passing certain points in the story, and you'll always have enough EXP to reach this cap if you just fight the enemies that you come across naturally.  Later in the game all the possible paradigms open up for every character, but again the freedom offered is completely illusory, because the EXP required to power up these secondary paradigms is prohibitively high, so developing them before the primary paradigms would be very suboptimal.  Thus our second and third satisfying aspects of 'leveling' and 'customising' fall by the wayside.

 

The weapon and equipment system in this game is not often mentioned, but I actually think it's one of the game's biggest flaws.  Firstly, weapons you pick up in chests or buy in shops are all approximately equal in terms of power; the base equipment that you start with is essentially the same as that which you find in chests towards the end of the game, so there's never any curiosity or anticipation to be felt in opening chests in the hope you'll find a cool new weapon.  To access better weapons you must upgrade the base weapons by means of perhaps the most unintelligible upgrade systems I've ever seen in a game.  Once you use a guide to explain it, since there's no way you'll ever figure it out on your own, you'll find yourself adding wolf's teeth, particle accelerators and bull semen to your weapons in order to spiff them up a bit.  Where do you get these items?  What a stupid question!!  You buy them with all that money you grinded for, how exciting! Yet again this mechanic is repetitive and tedious and in no way satisfying.

 

Side missions, superbosses and just the tiniest of scopes for exploration were tacked on towards the end, but it's painfully clear that these were an afterthought for the developers: the side missions are simply timed battles, mostly against the regular enemies that you've been encountering throughout the rest of the game, while the superbosses are laughable palette swaps of bosses that you've already fought earlier - don't expect anything cool and original like Ruby Weapon, Ozma, Penance etc.

 

A long post but I won't give a TL;DR, read it if you want to know what it's about you lazy fuck!

I wonder why they made it so different like this.

[Uylak]

I don't have a problem with people giving opinions until they start acting like their opinion is fact, especially without proof, which happens more often than not.

[PhazePrime]

People complained about the linearity of 13. I don't think that was the problem. I think the slow speed of the game, the length, the high difficulty, and the XP system is what brings it down the most. It is enjoyable, especially the battle system, but expect to be playing it for a bit. 13-2 was a massive improvement, and is honestly in my top 5 favorite games in the series. The battle system has been even further improved, the speed of the game is much faster, and it arguably has one of the best villains in the series. Lightning Returns is complicated. It stripped out a lot of what made 13-2 so great, and put it into this expansive world with a time limit. You also mainly only control one party member who can do everything. It makes for a very stressful and complicated game. I played it a bit, but I have to restart because I ran out of time. Time limits are literally my least liked mechanic in a video game, so yeah, LR was very disappointing for me. I think it is worse than 13.

 

Overall, I would at least give 13 and 13-2 a try. They are good. 13 is flawed but not nearly the dumpster fire all of these brilliant internet critics believe it is. 13-2 is great, and one of my all-time favorites, that's how much it improved 13 for me in my opinion.

 

13-2 > 13 > LR

[Three-Snap]

Honestly.  It's no more linear then final fantasy X.  FFX is literally on rails until the end of the game when you can freely use the airship.  The main downside that people hate with ff13 is the party spits up.  And for most of the game you switch between 2 or 3 parties.  So you'll have many moments where you switch to a story that just isn't that interesting.  Hope is probably my most hated FF character he just goes through 80% of the game hating Snow but never saying anything.

 

So yea I think FF13s biggest downside is they split the party up... at least FFx they stay together.

[starcrunch061]

Since I'm arguing about this now on gamefaqs, I suppose I'll post here.

 

I didn't like FFXIII, but I at least thought they were trying something new. It didn't work for me. It was slow as hell, the battle mechanics were obtuse, the gating of your character's development was lame, and the story was the most laughable this side of Kingdom Hearts. But, they tried.

 

With FFXIII-2, though, they seemed to give up completely. That game is like a Kemco game with good graphics. Nothing in it makes any sense. You run around helping people, and your rewards...are rocks. No fooling. Sure, the rocks ultimately serve a purpose at the end of the game, but how would your character know that. Can you imagine if you were helping people for hire, and at the end of your job, they gave you a rock that you couldn't sell or eat?

 

Lightning Returns might be the worst of the bunch. The gameplay is better, but my Lord - the story somehow manages to take a nosedive from the first two games. It's rotten to the core.