FF13 beat.
Gave the game 2/5 stars on Backloggery.
- Battles were fun, mostly during the latter part of the game
- Needed more character development, especially the villains :(
- Yes, the game is linear, but what FF isn't for the most part (not including XI for obvious reasons)
- Music was great, more of Hamauzu's ambient style from FFX, though it seems to me he kinda forced himself to change his style. I don't blame him though.
- The only character that got on my nerves was Snow, the rest of the cast was okay
- SE's first canon homosexual pairing, I think? (no, your lame KH pairings don't count fangirls) It's pretty hard to argue against the pairing in my opinion, but then again the FF fandom is crazy
- Lack of epilogue :( Wanted to see what happened to the characters after.
- Was more than slightly disappointed that I was able to waste the final boss in the span of three minutes. Not joking. I didn't even do all of the missions or max out any of the Optima roles...
- obligatory "bawwww grass textures" note. Actually, I didn't really mind it, even though the ground on gran pulse did look quite bald.
SE is probably working on FFXV right now. I hope the scenario writers will be different. FFXIII's story could have been fleshed out quite a bit more. And by 'fleshed out' I mean not stuffing everything in the autoclip. I mean, I like fictional lore a lot, but this is a videogame, not a book. Quite a number of things written in the autoclip could have been visually represented. I've seen people complain about the amount of cutscenes that FFX has, and yes, they're quite numerous. However, those scenes helped to build and immerse the player in Spira, as pointless to the overall story as they may be. The environments in FFXIII are absolutely beautiful, but you don't feel any sort of connection. All of the scenes in FFXIII serve to either drive the plot forward or give character development, and it's great that the game doesn't waste cutscenes, but they also don't shed much info on the world other than on the immediate topics of the story like l'Cie, fal'Cie, PSICOM, etc.
While Kazushiga Nojima's storylines are at times cliched, I would've preferred him as one of the main scenario writers. He only provided the concept for FFXIII's story. This was also Motomu Toriyama's first time directing a major project (FFX-2 was a sequel so this isn't necessarily on the same level) and I have to say, I'm not impressed.
Also, it felt like the concept of the characters being on the run from the military limited the degree of "exploration" that most FF and RPG fans are used to, especially when the previous main numbered title FFXII was so MMO-like with its game world and allowed slightly more freedom than your usual FF game. I suppose some fans were expecting something similar to that, despite common complaints of it having a weak storyline.
- Battles were fun, mostly during the latter part of the game
- Needed more character development, especially the villains :(
- Yes, the game is linear, but what FF isn't for the most part (not including XI for obvious reasons)
- Music was great, more of Hamauzu's ambient style from FFX, though it seems to me he kinda forced himself to change his style. I don't blame him though.
- The only character that got on my nerves was Snow, the rest of the cast was okay
- SE's first canon homosexual pairing, I think? (no, your lame KH pairings don't count fangirls) It's pretty hard to argue against the pairing in my opinion, but then again the FF fandom is crazy
- Lack of epilogue :( Wanted to see what happened to the characters after.
- Was more than slightly disappointed that I was able to waste the final boss in the span of three minutes. Not joking. I didn't even do all of the missions or max out any of the Optima roles...
- obligatory "bawwww grass textures" note. Actually, I didn't really mind it, even though the ground on gran pulse did look quite bald.
SE is probably working on FFXV right now. I hope the scenario writers will be different. FFXIII's story could have been fleshed out quite a bit more. And by 'fleshed out' I mean not stuffing everything in the autoclip. I mean, I like fictional lore a lot, but this is a videogame, not a book. Quite a number of things written in the autoclip could have been visually represented. I've seen people complain about the amount of cutscenes that FFX has, and yes, they're quite numerous. However, those scenes helped to build and immerse the player in Spira, as pointless to the overall story as they may be. The environments in FFXIII are absolutely beautiful, but you don't feel any sort of connection. All of the scenes in FFXIII serve to either drive the plot forward or give character development, and it's great that the game doesn't waste cutscenes, but they also don't shed much info on the world other than on the immediate topics of the story like l'Cie, fal'Cie, PSICOM, etc.
While Kazushiga Nojima's storylines are at times cliched, I would've preferred him as one of the main scenario writers. He only provided the concept for FFXIII's story. This was also Motomu Toriyama's first time directing a major project (FFX-2 was a sequel so this isn't necessarily on the same level) and I have to say, I'm not impressed.
Also, it felt like the concept of the characters being on the run from the military limited the degree of "exploration" that most FF and RPG fans are used to, especially when the previous main numbered title FFXII was so MMO-like with its game world and allowed slightly more freedom than your usual FF game. I suppose some fans were expecting something similar to that, despite common complaints of it having a weak storyline.