Film Club

I’m currently playing FFXIII because I was considering its unnecessary sequel (the one we never asked for, using the time and resources that should’ve been spent on Versus XIII which we were promised and did ask for) and even though I’m only 15 hours in and not yet done with the intro/tutorial part, I believe I can safely say that FFXIII is a piece of shit.

1. RPGs never gave you complete freedom but they at least gave you more space to run around, a world map, separate sections in dungeons, NPCs to interact with, etc. XIII doesn’t offer this. You’re given a straight line (however, some maps are curved lines) to run in and after you’ve defeated the enemies in that A-to-B path, there’s a cutscene. Repeat for 15 hours and you’re at where I am in the game. Apparently, there’s more freedom 13 hours from now, I read somewhere. Still no minigames like Triple Triad or Golden Saucer or even the fishing in FFXII that no one did but, hey, at least we get some more boss battles.
2. People talk a mean game about how FFXII was garbage but those people are what I like to call “fucking stupid.” These are the same cretins who like XIII and think Lightning is their waifu and their only defense is that “the battle system sucked.” The Gambit system was complex and required programmer’s insight to utilize properly but you (a) weren’t forced to use it, (b) could control other characters with it and (c) could instruct others to use items without having to enter a menu. The Paradigm system, however, is also ATB-based, is forced upon you, isn’t fully featured for the first 6 hours and forbids the control of other characters. You give your sub-characters roles and pray they know what they’re doing. You’re the only one who can use items, which is the only way to revive anyone so far. Besides this type of system being stupid, it also prevents the player from learning strategies until it’s too late. See, if your main character dies, it’s Game Over. You die, everyone else has 99% their HP, it’s Game Over. That hasn’t been so in a RPG since the PS1 era and even then, most games weren’t dicks about that. So when you’ve been fighting level 1 Flandragoras for hours, you probably think you’re doing ok until you get into a fight with a Velocycle that uses Gatling Gun on you. You’re not prepared for this at all and you don’t bother cooking up methods to survive barrages until after your 10th Game Over, which wouldn’t have occurred in any other RPG. To top it all off, you don’t have a say in the variety of skills you can learn to customize your characters, either. Gone are levels and exp, too. You just save up Crystogen Points so you can eventually get some more HP or the ability to cast Fire. Happy hunting.
3. The story is something I wrote when I was still crawling and had no idea what my dick was for. I think it’s about ethnic cleansing and the end of the world and everyone’s an idiot who gasps every 3 seconds because that’s what people do in JRPGs, I guess. They dropped the ball on the easiest part of the game’s development, the part that doesn’t need to be polished in 3D or lined with pages of C++, the fucking script. In other RPGs, if you were battling the evil government, you were either part of the rebel/liberation army or once part of that very same evil government and wanted to do right, not “I was on the train with ‘em and they wanted to kill me because I was different and that sucks. Also, I got cursed by a thing that changed my entire race and that race is also considered evil, why did this have to happen to meeeeeeeeeeeeee?” Ugh, whatever. I can’t even be bothered to talk about the non-existent plot because I hate the characters more. Hope is a pussy except when he’s not. Vanille’s british except when she’s not. Sazh is the black comic relief who shoots guns sideways and has an afro that doubles as a Chocobo nest and that’s not racist at all. Fuck, even Barrett in FF7 had stereotypes out the ass but you got to live in his neighborhood and understand his family. Sazh? He was on the aforementioned train and decides to follow Lightning, there’s your exposition. And the names. Snow, Lightning, Vanille, Hope, Fang… and Sazh, the black guy.
4. No one has dropped any gil YET. Why are there shops at every save point if you can’t make any money without having to sell the few items you do find?
5. The only memorable theme from this game’s soundtrack is the battle music. And when you compare it to any of the music from any other FF, you get disappointed in people as a whole. It forces you to think about what this game is lacking that other Final Fantasies had in spades. The art direction is boring and uninspired, which is tragic in a game that was made just to show off how good looking Square’s new engine is, when compared to any of the towns, ruins, castles, armies, parks, or even classrooms found in other titles in the FF series. Down to the loud, distracting footstep sound effects when you’re moseying down the simple dungeon paths, you get the sense that they just phoned all of it in. But, hey, if you’re missing Hironobu Sakaguchi’s music, Lost Odyssey is better than 6 of these games even if they came with free turkey burgers.
6. Fuck that infernal camera in whatever orifice it receives the most pain from!

Ok, so this is my mini-review 15 hours in. More to come as I progress.