So I finished FFXIII
And, uh. I mean, you can say whatever you want about XII's ending, but at least you knew what was going on, unless you played it blindfolded and on mute (without subtitles).
While XIII was like, the characters have absolutely no fucking clue what's going on, and neither do you, even though we give you a lot of plot-related info in the datalog that we actually should show you in the game itself, but we thought XII's bestiary was really rad, so we decided to ape them except that we actually had no clue about how to do it right. So you wander around going l'Cie? What? Pulse and Cocoon? Okay! Oh look, Vanille's high again. Wait, fal'Cie? ...There are different kinds of 'Cie? So some are bad and some are, wait what?
And then Serah happens and it is obvious that it has a huge impact on the characters and it should have that same impact on you. Except you don't know who Serah is.
But WHO CARES LIGHTNING IS HOT AND SNOW GOT PUNCHED AGAIN LIFE IS CLEARLY EXCELLENT.
And then Vanille is a lying liar who lies and Hope gets slightly too trigger-happy with a knife that folds in a ridiculous way. Namely, with the sharp edge to the outside so that every time you fold it out you cut yourself.
Also, you get trolled by Barthandelus who tells you that you either have to destroy the world and turn into a crystal statue for the rest of time as reward, or you can not destroy the world and turn into a monster and finally a stone that gives missions and may teleport you to other stones! WHICHEVER COMES FIRST I GUESS.
(Vanille actually had the only rational reaction to this, which basically was, 'uh, he's obviously a bad guy who wants to destroy the world, why the fuck should we believe him?')
And at the ending Barthandelus trolled you again! I wanted the fucker to be upset that he died, not happy in that 'finally got exterminated' way. And then Orphan was like, oh hai! And I think, okay, so we know not to kill this guy because otherwise Cocoon is going to be destroyed. And Orphan, too, is like, destroy me oh puny mortals so that Cocoon may go kablooey!
...So of course the party decides to do the smart thing. They go, how dare you want to destroy our world! You obviously don't know the value of life! Therefore we shall kill you!
NICE JOB BREAKING IT HEROES.
Also, Fang, seriously. I thought we already had that talk about your attitude, oh, right around the time you got Bahamut you moron. And I seriously expected Vanille to go Ragnarok on everyone in that scene. Because Fang? NO BUILD-UP.
And then there were deus ex machina or something like that - like anyone actually knew what was going on in that scene - and then you fight Orphan. And it results in Cocoon crashing into Pulse JUST LIKE THE BAD GUYS TOLD YOU IT WOULD FUCK MY PARTY SERIOUSLY except Fang and Vanille pull some more deus ex machina out of whatever and freeze lava or something. I seriously had no clue what was going on until it was all over, and just decided to turn off my brain and enjoy the pretty pixels.
So honestly, FFXIII had a likable cast and good interactions and character development, but the story was extremely sloppily written (the datalogs can spoil you on its own plot, seriously, and are both extremely redundant, and just made of fail) and some of the scenes were pretty much just inserted into the game without any context. By which I mean, Sazh was the only one with good development leading up to his Eidolon battle. Lightning's was okay, Hope's was done well in theory and was believable in the scene itself, but had no build-up to it, so it came kinda out of nowhere, and the other three battles just sort of came out of nowhere.
Also I guess that now I'm going to have to spend hours casting Death on turtles. This game could have seriously benefited from a new game plus, Tales style. Or something like TWEWY.
While XIII was like, the characters have absolutely no fucking clue what's going on, and neither do you, even though we give you a lot of plot-related info in the datalog that we actually should show you in the game itself, but we thought XII's bestiary was really rad, so we decided to ape them except that we actually had no clue about how to do it right. So you wander around going l'Cie? What? Pulse and Cocoon? Okay! Oh look, Vanille's high again. Wait, fal'Cie? ...There are different kinds of 'Cie? So some are bad and some are, wait what?
And then Serah happens and it is obvious that it has a huge impact on the characters and it should have that same impact on you. Except you don't know who Serah is.
But WHO CARES LIGHTNING IS HOT AND SNOW GOT PUNCHED AGAIN LIFE IS CLEARLY EXCELLENT.
And then Vanille is a lying liar who lies and Hope gets slightly too trigger-happy with a knife that folds in a ridiculous way. Namely, with the sharp edge to the outside so that every time you fold it out you cut yourself.
Also, you get trolled by Barthandelus who tells you that you either have to destroy the world and turn into a crystal statue for the rest of time as reward, or you can not destroy the world and turn into a monster and finally a stone that gives missions and may teleport you to other stones! WHICHEVER COMES FIRST I GUESS.
(Vanille actually had the only rational reaction to this, which basically was, 'uh, he's obviously a bad guy who wants to destroy the world, why the fuck should we believe him?')
And at the ending Barthandelus trolled you again! I wanted the fucker to be upset that he died, not happy in that 'finally got exterminated' way. And then Orphan was like, oh hai! And I think, okay, so we know not to kill this guy because otherwise Cocoon is going to be destroyed. And Orphan, too, is like, destroy me oh puny mortals so that Cocoon may go kablooey!
...So of course the party decides to do the smart thing. They go, how dare you want to destroy our world! You obviously don't know the value of life! Therefore we shall kill you!
NICE JOB BREAKING IT HEROES.
Also, Fang, seriously. I thought we already had that talk about your attitude, oh, right around the time you got Bahamut you moron. And I seriously expected Vanille to go Ragnarok on everyone in that scene. Because Fang? NO BUILD-UP.
And then there were deus ex machina or something like that - like anyone actually knew what was going on in that scene - and then you fight Orphan. And it results in Cocoon crashing into Pulse JUST LIKE THE BAD GUYS TOLD YOU IT WOULD FUCK MY PARTY SERIOUSLY except Fang and Vanille pull some more deus ex machina out of whatever and freeze lava or something. I seriously had no clue what was going on until it was all over, and just decided to turn off my brain and enjoy the pretty pixels.
So honestly, FFXIII had a likable cast and good interactions and character development, but the story was extremely sloppily written (the datalogs can spoil you on its own plot, seriously, and are both extremely redundant, and just made of fail) and some of the scenes were pretty much just inserted into the game without any context. By which I mean, Sazh was the only one with good development leading up to his Eidolon battle. Lightning's was okay, Hope's was done well in theory and was believable in the scene itself, but had no build-up to it, so it came kinda out of nowhere, and the other three battles just sort of came out of nowhere.
Also I guess that now I'm going to have to spend hours casting Death on turtles. This game could have seriously benefited from a new game plus, Tales style. Or something like TWEWY.