Poll of the Day > I can't believe the lack of love for Final Fantasy 13 games

(+) Yeah! (+)

look at the poll results, it's beaten by almost all other FFs

I can't believe it, why? FF13 games were really good!
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They were not good.
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I think theyre ok games (minus lightning returns), but there a lot better FF games in the series.
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it was alright. but compared to pervious game ff13 has nothing to them. FF13 didn't have an epic story like the other games. I think ff13 is better than ff15, due to content and world building.
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They are some of the worst.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47YPs-qwNQU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elo2nRER7Fw
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I has more votes then 1, that is way more praise then it deserves.
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Superlinkbro posted...

They are some of the worst.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47YPs-qwNQU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elo2nRER7Fw

Nah, nah, nah buddy... if you're gonna bring in the NormalBoots+ circle, make sure you include the one person who has actually put in enough time to have a valid opinion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhTnNxslNcQ
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As for my feelings on it, I'll just copypasta my response on said video.

Y'know, for a good long while there was something drawing me to check out FFXIII. So I finally got it (this was about a year ago).

80 hours later, I can say with utmost certainty that almost every criticism about this game can be solved with "You didn't play FFXIII" or "You aren't far enough to know what you're talking about."

FFXIII was outstanding. The further I got, the more amazingly the characters' personalities developed... but moreso, I got to see every single common criticism collapse in a spectacular manner. The romance between Snow and Serah is more heavy-hitting than the romance in EVERY other FF game before. Those complaining about how annoying Hope didn't even make it halfway as there's a particular game changer (I think Ch5 or 7) where his balls drop and he becomes one of the most useful and awesome characters. The development between Hope and Snow gets fucking crazy intense... and SAZH!!! ...freaking Sazh man... Sazh's story will tear your heart to shreds as you learn more about him... and while Lightning seems to be set up to resist character development, Fang brings it right out of her. Oh and "Mash [confirm] to win every fight?" Lol you can get your whole team bodied by a regular ass enemy in chapter 5 trying that shit... I actually found XIII to be a great deal harder than other FFs. In other FF games, you can drift through thoughtlessly macro'ing with attack/attack/heal/hitall magic'ing, save for a small handful of megabosses. XIII requires you to be a TON more involved.

For those concerned about linearity... Jirard ya did a great job slappin' em silly with Gran Pulse. This blows the major criticism completely out of the water (and again exposes that the critics haven't spent near enough time with XIII to have a well-constructed opinion). Even still, I'd even like to argue that most FF games only have a false sense of freedom anyway... FF4's another of my favorites too... but most of the time that "big open world" has forced progression too often only giving one area a player has access to unless they want to arbitrarily backtrack... and so what if it's linear in the cocoon segment? That's a huge contributor as to why the people who played this game enjoyed it's narrative. When there's a theme of escaping fate, the linearity works for the progression.

Having completed this game. I can see why it managed to uphold a good rating even though it's become 'the cool thing' to trash XIII... I'd like to say I've put a lot of time into FFXIII-2 and 3, but I'm still working on all the side-quests that FFXIII apparently didn't have XD

That all said, I'm not surprised at all at the FFXIII hate. Generally speaking, people tend to just flow with whatever's colloquially accepted with a conquer by numbers strategy... so if a hundred thousand people call it "Final Hallway XIII," it's less risky to chuckle along with them instead of putting forth the effort of individual thought and seeing if it's a blind following the blind situation.
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the only time i didn't just use autobattle in a fight in ff13 was for four bosses.

otherwise i literally just used auto battle for every single fight, it was fucking stupid.
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ernieforss posted...

it was alright. but compared to pervious game ff13 has nothing to them. FF13 didn't have an epic story like the other games. I think ff13 is better than ff15, due to content and world building.

Overall the story was quite epic, if you played all 3 games.

Certainly a much better story than 12 (which I also think is an excellent game btw). 12 got double the number of votes than 13.

Sorry but Final Fantasy 13 games are really underated, I don't understand much why... a big reason I really believe is lack of hype/marketing when it came out
I really do
Final Fantasy 15 got BIG marketing budget, I was even seeing posters for the game in public transport stations
surprise, surprise 15 was well received, and fans said it was "really good"

psychology is a big thing, in every aspect of life
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TLR_ posted...

Superlinkbro posted...

They are some of the worst.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47YPs-qwNQU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elo2nRER7Fw

Nah, nah, nah buddy... if you're gonna bring in the NormalBoots+ circle, make sure you include the one person who has actually put in enough time to have a valid opinion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhTnNxslNcQ

I didn't even know that video existed lol
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FFXIII is much worse than FFVIII, which I used to consider to be the worst of the 3D FF games.

Final fantasy has been trash since 8 with only 9 being a reprieve.

TLR_ posted...

Superlinkbro posted...

They are some of the worst.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47YPs-qwNQU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elo2nRER7Fw

Nah, nah, nah buddy... if you're gonna bring in the NormalBoots+ circle, make sure you include the one person who has actually put in enough time to have a valid opinion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhTnNxslNcQ

So basically "Just wait 20 hours and the game gets better!"

I am all for giving a game a fair chance, but 20 hours is WAYYY too long to be sitting and doing something you hate. I mean if someone said "I played for 5 minutes and the game sucks, I am never playing it again!" then yea I can agree they didn't give it a chance. But if I have to wait more then an hour, then the game just isn't engaging enough.

X was linear, but at least the battle system was fun and involved a ton of strategy. XIII's battle system was basically "Press X over and over again until you win". Similar to the battle system in XII.

XII had an essentially auto battle system, but the game was very open ended and allowed you do a lot of side quests in the middle of the main story. XIII didn't have that and only threw side quests in at the end of the game. Similar to X.

In other words, XIII took all of the faults of X and XII and combined them into one game.
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X battle system was fun??? xD

it was still turn-based, like a 90s game
FF13 battle-system was quite excellent, ESPECIALLY Lightning Returns, which I am still playing now
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icecutter17 posted...

X battle system was fun??? xD

Yes, because you needed to plan out battles. Each character had a strength and weakness and depending on who you were facing you had to decide which one to use and when to use them. Granted you eventually got to the point where ever monster was essentially the same, but by then you had done a good 100 hours of grinding.

XIII was basically auto-battle. It had a paradine system but you never needed to use it.
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13 sucked.
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The first two were ok, but the third one was absolute garbage. And I bought it and the collector's edition guide on day one. That guide was also worthless.

icecutter17 posted...

surprise, surprise 15 was well received, and fans said it was "really good"

lol, fuck no it wasn't well received, and i've never seen anyone call it really good.

at best it's decent if you don't give a fuck about a story.
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Not being to switch characters mid battle really ruins XIII's gameplay
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Makes the game less fun in general

Characters have special abilities they only use when player controlled

Requires too much faith in AI

Death magic...
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It's honestly what I'd expect on the whole. The poll being dominated by VI and VII (since they were the 'best' SNES/PS1 titles respectively) With IX and X pulling up a 3/4 spot (Underrated classic and first JRPG for the PS2 era) with the rest having varied results with the MMO's (due to a multitude of reasons) bringing up the rear beating only II and III which were weak entries in the series.

Really I'm mostly surprised at how well both V (since it wasn't released state-side until the GBA era) and VIII (very often badmouthed) are doing.
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FFV > FFVI easily
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FinalFantasyIV posted...

Not being to switch characters mid battle really ruins XIII's gameplay

that would have made it even more complicated

honestly to me there was nothing wrong with the battle system (as I said before Lightning Returns battle was quite superb, as was FF13-2 with the pokemon style battle system)
FF13 and 12 battle systems were best to me (still haven't played 15)

can't believe anyone would still say the older fashioned battle systems from before were better lol it's like a joke
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The gameplay definitely needed more complexity. Square saw the error of their ways when they let you switch in XIII-2.
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icecutter17 posted...

FinalFantasyIV posted...

Not being to switch characters mid battle really ruins XIII's gameplay

that would have made it even more complicated

honestly to me there was nothing wrong with the battle system (as I said before Lightning Returns battle was quite superb, as was FF13-2 with the pokemon style battle system)
FF13 and 12 battle systems were best to me (still haven't played 15)

can't believe anyone would still say the older fashioned battle systems from before were better lol it's like a joke

Some people like complexity in their battles. If you followed RPGs from the beginning it is kind of odd for a game to add complexity in the battle system every iteration, then all of a sudden streamline it to the point where it feels almost second nature. I can see people getting overwhelmed with a complex system, but a lot of us like complexity.
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TLR_ posted...

80 hours later, I can say with utmost certainty that almost every criticism about this game can be solved with "You didn't play FFXIII" or "You aren't far enough to know what you're talking about."

I played through the entire game up until the 'end game' content.

It was dogshit. It was such a chore to play that I hated every minute of it, but I was playing it out of spite.

Let me sum up my experience with the game - Hold the up button, mash the A button.

That was about it. I can only think of a couple of instances near the end where I didn't just mash the auto attack button and instead actually chose spells.

The characters were lame as hell, I can't recall a single time having purchased anything at a store (though you didn't actually earn money anyway so I guess it doesn't matter), the summon system was dumb, the game set arbitrary grinding stops, the story was fucking weird and I still don't understand what was going on, there was some real garbage vocal soundtracks, etc.

If it weren't such a boring, monotonous way to play a game it might be forgiven. But good lord, they might as well have made it a QTE game.
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FinalFantasyIV posted...

Not being to switch characters mid battle really ruins XIII's gameplay

The only characters you need are Lightning, Fang, and Vanille/Hope.

Honestly the only time I used Snow was when I needed a Sentinel to take a ton of damage like against the Adamantoise. And I never used Sazh unless forced to.

TLR_ posted...

As for my feelings on it, I'll just copypasta my response on said video.

Y'know, for a good long while there was something drawing me to check out FFXIII. So I finally got it (this was about a year ago).

80 hours later, I can say with utmost certainty that almost every criticism about this game can be solved with "You didn't play FFXIII" or "You aren't far enough to know what you're talking about."

FFXIII was outstanding. The further I got, the more amazingly the characters' personalities developed... but moreso, I got to see every single common criticism collapse in a spectacular manner. The romance between Snow and Serah is more heavy-hitting than the romance in EVERY other FF game before. Those complaining about how annoying Hope didn't even make it halfway as there's a particular game changer (I think Ch5 or 7) where his balls drop and he becomes one of the most useful and awesome characters. The development between Hope and Snow gets fucking crazy intense... and SAZH!!! ...freaking Sazh man... Sazh's story will tear your heart to shreds as you learn more about him... and while Lightning seems to be set up to resist character development, Fang brings it right out of her. Oh and "Mash [confirm] to win every fight?" Lol you can get your whole team bodied by a regular ass enemy in chapter 5 trying that shit... I actually found XIII to be a great deal harder than other FFs. In other FF games, you can drift through thoughtlessly macro'ing with attack/attack/heal/hitall magic'ing, save for a small handful of megabosses. XIII requires you to be a TON more involved.

For those concerned about linearity... Jirard ya did a great job slappin' em silly with Gran Pulse. This blows the major criticism completely out of the water (and again exposes that the critics haven't spent near enough time with XIII to have a well-constructed opinion). Even still, I'd even like to argue that most FF games only have a false sense of freedom anyway... FF4's another of my favorites too... but most of the time that "big open world" has forced progression too often only giving one area a player has access to unless they want to arbitrarily backtrack... and so what if it's linear in the cocoon segment? That's a huge contributor as to why the people who played this game enjoyed it's narrative. When there's a theme of escaping fate, the linearity works for the progression.

Having completed this game. I can see why it managed to uphold a good rating even though it's become 'the cool thing' to trash XIII... I'd like to say I've put a lot of time into FFXIII-2 and 3, but I'm still working on all the side-quests that FFXIII apparently didn't have XD

That all said, I'm not surprised at all at the FFXIII hate. Generally speaking, people tend to just flow with whatever's colloquially accepted with a conquer by numbers strategy... so if a hundred thousand people call it "Final Hallway XIII," it's less risky to chuckle along with them instead of putting forth the effort of individual thought and seeing if it's a blind following the blind situation.

Saying "Oh, you just have to keep playing further!" isn't much of an excuse. That just means that the game is designed shoddily at the beginning, which is on the creators.
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They were......okay. Not special in any way.

I did not care for the battle system at all.

Boring characters.

Didn't like the plot either.

I played through all 3 games and while they did have their moments, they simply pale in comparison to the other FFs.
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Alexandra_Trent posted...

They were......okay. Not special in any way.

I did not care for the battle system at all.

Boring characters.

Didn't like the plot either.

I played through all 3 games and while they did have their moments, they simply pale in comparison to the other FFs.

Agree^
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TLR_ posted...

As for my feelings on it, I'll just copypasta my response on said video.

Y'know, for a good long while there was something drawing me to check out FFXIII. So I finally got it (this was about a year ago).

80 hours later, I can say with utmost certainty that almost every criticism about this game can be solved with "You didn't play FFXIII" or "You aren't far enough to know what you're talking about."

FFXIII was outstanding. The further I got, the more amazingly the characters' personalities developed... but moreso, I got to see every single common criticism collapse in a spectacular manner. The romance between Snow and Serah is more heavy-hitting than the romance in EVERY other FF game before. Those complaining about how annoying Hope didn't even make it halfway as there's a particular game changer (I think Ch5 or 7) where his balls drop and he becomes one of the most useful and awesome characters. The development between Hope and Snow gets fucking crazy intense... and SAZH!!! ...freaking Sazh man... Sazh's story will tear your heart to shreds as you learn more about him... and while Lightning seems to be set up to resist character development, Fang brings it right out of her. Oh and "Mash [confirm] to win every fight?" Lol you can get your whole team bodied by a regular ass enemy in chapter 5 trying that shit... I actually found XIII to be a great deal harder than other FFs. In other FF games, you can drift through thoughtlessly macro'ing with attack/attack/heal/hitall magic'ing, save for a small handful of megabosses. XIII requires you to be a TON more involved.

For those concerned about linearity... Jirard ya did a great job slappin' em silly with Gran Pulse. This blows the major criticism completely out of the water (and again exposes that the critics haven't spent near enough time with XIII to have a well-constructed opinion). Even still, I'd even like to argue that most FF games only have a false sense of freedom anyway... FF4's another of my favorites too... but most of the time that "big open world" has forced progression too often only giving one area a player has access to unless they want to arbitrarily backtrack... and so what if it's linear in the cocoon segment? That's a huge contributor as to why the people who played this game enjoyed it's narrative. When there's a theme of escaping fate, the linearity works for the progression.

Having completed this game. I can see why it managed to uphold a good rating even though it's become 'the cool thing' to trash XIII... I'd like to say I've put a lot of time into FFXIII-2 and 3, but I'm still working on all the side-quests that FFXIII apparently didn't have XD

That all said, I'm not surprised at all at the FFXIII hate. Generally speaking, people tend to just flow with whatever's colloquially accepted with a conquer by numbers strategy... so if a hundred thousand people call it "Final Hallway XIII," it's less risky to chuckle along with them instead of putting forth the effort of individual thought and seeing if it's a blind following the blind situation.

I played the game for 30~ hours before I threw in the the towel. If the best defense you got is "Oh you didn't play far enough", then my counter argument is "IF THE FIRST 30 HOURS AREN'T FUN THEN WHATS THE FUCKING POINT"
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I beat 13, 13-2, and Lightning Returns, sinking well over a hundred hours into this series. I can say with absolute certainty and no hesitation that this trilogy SUCKS SHIT THROUGH A STRAW. It is nightmarishly horrendous on nearly every conceivable level, from character and world design to the combat systems themselves, every single facet is a complete and utter failure of game design.

Why play every game if I hated them? I once had a goal of playing every numbered Final Fantasy, until 15 put the final nail in that coffin. Wrote reviews on both Lightning Returns and FFXV here on this site, so I won't bother explaining my feelings in full detail. The series, frankly, isn't worth my breath anymore.

Most who hate the FF13 games are a small but vocal minority that exists only forums at most theres a couple of thousand of them, everyone else i know IRL that played it, loved it
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helIy posted...

the only time i didn't just use autobattle in a fight in ff13 was for four bosses.

otherwise i literally just used auto battle for every single fight, it was fucking stupid.

as compared to me playing FF7 and just having to manually hit attack every turn. same thing just less button pressing.

on topic, 13 was ok, all final fantasy games are ok there really aren't any truly bad ones. but the poll asks for your favorite I believe and very few people have that one as their favorite.
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Sand_Flare posted...

FFXIII is much worse than FFVIII, which I used to consider to be the worst of the 3D FF games.

Yeah, VIII and XIII are the two worst FF's by FAR. I don't know which is worse, all I know is that once I finished both I knew I'd never play them again (unlike most of the other FF's that I've played and beaten multiple times).

Only redeeming thing about VIII was the card game and an okay story. XIII had decent music and the battle system was kind of fun. Everything else about these two games pales in comparison to the standard set by the other FF's.
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FFXIII was a ton of fun for what it was. People were so fixated on how linear it was that they didnt give it a chance.
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fighting system sucked if I recall... or maybe I just sucked at it.

But the game wasn't very good anyway
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these days I really only like 1 and 10. I think making 11 a mmorpg turned me off the series forever. they really should have made a separate series.
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I couldn't make it past four hours with the terrible plot and how the gameplay worked. Everytime I give it another shot I end up getting a little farther but still giving up.
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Sahuagin posted...

these days I really only like 1 and 10. I think making 11 a mmorpg turned me off the series forever. they really should have made a separate series.

agreed. but it really on pisses me off because back in the day I told myself I would play and beat all mainline numbered entries, then that shit had to happen.
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FF13 literally got me into FF and it's the best graphics I've ever experienced in a game

I like FF2 too

I basically like what you FF fans hate

what turned me off wasnt 11 which was very well-done but 14's infinite-but-stupid-story. the amount of dialogue is endless and none of it is worth investing time into. 14 is pretty fun especially as a samurai holy s*** but it's the first time in FF i felt the need to skip the story because if i wouldn't skip the story i wouldve spent 20+ hours for nothing

htig3r posted...

FF13 literally got me into FF and it's the best graphics I've ever experienced in a game

I like FF2 too

I basically like what you FF fans hate

I like them all. including those two. I just acknowledge both games flaws. out of the nes era ones though 2 is my favorite
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*shakes head*

Final Fantasy XIII was too Nomura for me. First game I traded back to the store since '93.
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Too much waifu shilling for fashion magazines.
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XIII is fucking trash and the worst in the series along with XV