Board 8 > Rate the VG Story Day 23: Final Fantasy XIII

(+) Yeah! (+)

Alright this should be a fun one, time for Final Fantasy XIII. How would you rate the story on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest?
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Previous Results:
Outer Wilds - 9.82 (19 votes)
Omori - 9.6 (5 votes)
Nier Automata - 9.31 (30 votes)
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty 8.72 (27 votes)
Disco Elysium - 8.58 (12 votes)
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective 8.35 (18 votes)
Final Fantasy X - 8.28 (50 votes)
The Last of Us - 8.21 (31 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - 8.13 (37 votes)
Life is Strange - 7.89 (28 votes)
Bioshock: 7.6 (22 votes)
Celeste - 7.5 (23 votes)
Tales of the Abyss - 7.34 (27 votes)
Super Paper Mario - 7.14 (18 votes)
Dark Souls - 6.86 (19 votes)
Chrono Cross - 6.77 (15 votes)
Death Stranding - 6.73 (13 votes)
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc - 6.62 (25 votes)
*Professor Layton and the Curious Village - 6.1 (13 votes)*
Final Fantasy IV - 5.62 (27 votes)
Uncharted: Drakes Fortune - 5.41 (26 votes)
Fallout 4 - 4.39 (14 votes)

You can still rate previous days games if you missed them, just write <game name> <rating>. If you want to change your rating you can just specify that you are changing your rating. Nominations for future days are also welcome, nominate as many games as you like and I will get to all of them.

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8/10

Love the concept, love the cast, but Square clearly had no idea how to satisfactorily resolve the dilemma they created.

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3.5/10

Starts out ok and I do like the cast, but by the end it becomes a convoluted mess that goes a long way in undermining its own buildup and themes. Also there is no mechanism to give the world any personality which ends up being a critical flaw.
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I'd need to replay it really, but I'll say 7.5. I personally found the ending emotionally satisfying, but it absolutely fundamentally betrays the central plot mechanic they revolved the entire game's conflict around. I can't really forgive that! And the villain is straight up bad, although thankfully minor. Aside from that I enjoyed most of the cast (the women are great), their character development and their interactions so I still had a lot of fun with the story.

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You know what I take that back; change it to a 3/10 actually
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9

What can I say? I loved it.

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4/10

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2.

Its a disaster. The core idea of the story has a lot of potential but it does not in any remote way realise that potential. There is a fundamental storytelling issue where none of the concepts the story revolves around are introduced. The cast are all unlikeable, and I think are the most obvious sign that this game learned all the wrong lessons from the PS1-PS2 era Final Fantasies. Simultaneously cloying and goofy as well as overly dour which is quite the feat. Then everything that happens in the last act is unearned to the point of feeling random which is bizarre.

So its bad.

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3
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7.5/10. Definitely has some storytelling issues, but I thought the cast was written pretty well for the most part. Theyre pretty great and probably my favorite or second favorite overall among FF casts. Worst Birthday Ever.

5

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4

FFXIII has a bad story with some redeeming elements. There's cute character interaction here and there and a couple dynamics I enjoyed, like Lightning taking care of Hope, but most of the character actions and dialog is stilted and inhuman, and while I understand that the game is deliberately going for a very flawed cast of characters, I think it overdoes that to the point where the cast is almost constantly acting in ways that are irrational to the point of being unbelievable - not to mention unlikable. I'd say the worst offenders in this regard ironically are also Lightning and Hope, with Lightning violently attacking half of the other characters in the first few hours and threatening to kill her sister and Hope's whole beef with Snow being so irrational that it's hard to feel anything except annoyance toward him even cutting him some slack considering he's 14. I think some people are overly harsh toward the plot elements like l'cie and fal'cie since they aren't too hard to understand, but that's mainly because they're explained in a very forced expository manner.

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2

1.5

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4.5

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1

barthandelus lmfao

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2

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8/10

Gets a lot more hate than it deserves, just like the game itself

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4

Only played it through once, so I'm only basing it on first impressions, but I remember very little of it making sense. I feel like there's a solid core group of characters here (the 4 is mostly for Lightning, Fang, and Vanille) but many of their motivations are either weak or cliche. Couldn't tell you anything about the major villain in this game, or anything about the story beyond "they get marked as Fal'cie and exiled onto Pulse."

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6.5

Flawed but enjoyable is what I'd best use to describe FFXIII's story. XIII-2 and Lightning Returns is when the plot really goes off the rails.

I like the early parts of the game quite a bit, story-wise (gameplay not so much!). Eventually it kinda goes off the rails, but even later on there's stuff I like. Barthandelus is fucking hilarious and I burst out laughing pretty much every time he opened his mouth. And the ending with the Fang + Vanille stuff was great.

7/10 at least it's better than FFX
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3

Which is probably better than it deserves

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Any more?

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I never beated this game and the reason why was that I was so bored and underwhelmed by the story. There's no hook. The characters are unmemorable. The world-building was great but that's about it. I put it down and never played parts 2 or 3.

...should I rate this or do I need to have beated the game to be able to do so?
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3


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Vote if youve played enough to know that your feelings are guaranteed not to change regardless of the rest of it.

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haters gonna hate

7.5

Lots of neat ideas and concepts but as Leon said Square was not prepared to land the plane.

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5/10

It starts off well, but fizzles out quickly. The characters are meh, the plot is meh. The conflicts between the characters feel melodramatic.

The gameplay is what drove me to play this one. The story is just kinda there.

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Previous games:

Life is Strange - 8.5/10

Cool concept, loved Chloe, hated Warren.

NieR Automata - 7.5/10

Yes, it's super philosophical, but it lacked the emotional punch and atmosphere of the original NieR, which I can't help but compare it to.

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Nominate Xenoblade 2. Want to see some split opinions.

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