Final Fantasy XIII Reviews: The Hardcore Weep
By Benjamin Opal
There’s no question that Final Fantasy XIII is a beautiful, dramatic affair, but according to reviews of the game, released outside of Japan today for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, it’s also a departure for the series. The verdicts aren’t much different than we heard in December, when Final Fantasy XIII was released in Japan: Open worlds, mini-games and exploration are hacked away in favor of eye-popping cutscenes and fast-moving narrative. Whether that appeals to you depends on personal preference.
Wired’s Chris Kohler, for instance, found Final Fantasy XIII to be dull, despite its beauty:
Once the game gets to this fully operational status, the battles become much more interesting. But it takes around 20 hours, prior to which the game is boring as hell. Final Fantasy XIII ramps up achingly slowly, only giving you two characters at first, and limiting the roles and characters you can use. For much of the time, you’re just watching the game play itself.
PC World’s Matt Peckham defends the game’s streamlined approach:
Why cut that stuff? Because trawling for shallow chitchat and to identify weapon-armor-item stores is frankly–hands over ears, hardcore fans–down-tempo and disruptive. As well, because Final Fantasy XIII’s major narrative plays out over a brief span in story-time. Sandwich an entire world to explore between the major plot beats instead of toward the end and you compromise your ability to establish then maintain brisk pacing.
I don’t doubt that the game will sell like mad, as it did in Japan, and validate Square Enix’s approach, but that’s of little consolation to people who view Final Fantasy in a particular way.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010 10:51PM
i am about 3 hours into the game….and it is incredibly boring….yawns! This is what happens when you run out of ideas
Tuesday, March 9, 2010 11:08PM
I've been playing the hell out of The Legend of Zelda : A Link in Time for days. Hopefully FF XIII is at least as engaging as that!!
Wednesday, March 10, 2010 7:29AM
I'm 5 hours in and bored as hell. You basically smash X button as fast as you could for auto-attack since it will pick the best attack for you … health bar is auto generated after each battle … no MP required for spells, every 5 random battle brings you to another CG cut scene that is of no consequence. Oh, the spend points on upgrade is confusing as hell because all paths are in 3D. UGH!
I surely hope this game picks you, but I just don't see how.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010 7:07PM
i'm in for 24 hours. still there hasn't been a change of a wide and outgoing landscape or something. no city i've visited, yet. and the one city that's next to me (for like 6 hours or sth) i still couldn'T reach because of all those interruptig sequences. it's quite disappointing for an occassional FF-fan. but at least i must say, i kinda begin to like the battle system. once you have a routine in paradigm-changes and everything, it seems pretty active and all right. btw: i'm still running around with only 2 out of 6 protagonists. hope to fulfill my group soon…
Thursday, March 11, 2010 2:28AM
Ah, this is a fresh game with a combination of crono cross (on crack) and FF X-2(which sucked monkey nuts) yet it works. You can tell though that the crystalwhatever system is going to make all characters learn the same spells and such so really no character is going to have specialty once we reach boring grinding before beating game stage. So far Im enjoying it, it is quite beautiful for graphics and you know, as much as I liked going to towns and talking to people and sidequests, After you do this for 8,000 other games and really, all you get is stuff that wont matter for killing the last boss, I've only just reached the Vile something or another but the story hopefully will get better and maybe Hope and Vanille die a tragic death,
Thursday, March 11, 2010 5:43PM
I'm glad I'm not the only one to be completely turned off by this game. I'm about three hours in and I don't know if I can continue. The combat consists of pressing X. Not even mashing X. Just… press X. Then press X again. Wait a moment, press X, then X again. Repeat. The tempo of the combat is hideously slow, and the fact that your party members are 100% AI controlled means that even after your characters get access to magic, there's still little to no thought involved in the combat. Ice-weak enemies? Your caster will cast Blizzard on them with no input from you. You might go through a battle not even knowing your enemies have elemental weaknesses and your party is exploiting them, cause all you're doing is pressing X.
I know that some games have slow starts; Kingdom Hearts 2 took 4-6 hours to really take off. But 20 hours? I am not going to sit and press X methodically for 20 hours – fully a third of the total playtime – in order to get to the good part.
Friday, March 12, 2010 12:03AM
i ditched dragon age for this, aye im on the xbox so im just mashing A, i die now n then cos i dont pay attention it reloads the fight n it roles on, shiva a motor bike….. im just waiting to get out onto some kinda world map!
Friday, March 12, 2010 12:42AM
Yes to many xs I agree. How do go beat the supriem bein on lvl 3? Losing intrest.
Friday, March 12, 2010 9:17AM
This game is highly exciting. I put 15 1/2 hours into it in one sitting and now im shooting for around a total of about 25 hours. The game is simply beautiful. Like previous posts, yes, it takes 5-6 hours before you obtain the Paradigm Sets for your characters and for you to be allowed to start advancing your character towards different stages. I heard a lot of people whine over this event. (All I have to say about that, is enjoy the Graphics and the Intense Story Line.) I say intense and every one tilts their head. Yes and of course they are not going to break the story line down to you in the first 5 hours. However if you have some patients for such a beautiful game and you decide to be one of the thousands that finish this game and love it, Then the story line will be highly intense and up most satisfactory. In my opinion Game Informer giving this game a 9.25 is a little low. Upon my standards I would have to rate the game at least a 9.75-10. Its hard for any game to reach a perfect 10 in the world. (probably because of all the different opinions, but if a game was to reach it, I think it should be this one.)
Friday, March 12, 2010 9:20AM
On this reply to KT421, The new strategy breakdown for combat is to be a hell of a lot quicker then it would be for the typical FF RPG. And with you saying press x, then press x, I can tell you made this post before you even played 6 hours. If you have bad feedback on a game. At least you could do is beat it first. And if you payed attention to the layout of the game, the AI does not always use the best suited skills for the job unless you have A. Unlocked the Skill, and B. Have identified the units using Libra or the item form. And 20 hours? You get all the Paradigms only 8 hours into it.
Saturday, May 29, 2010 10:16PM
This game is terrible! A three year old blind kid could beat this game! I cannot believe that I spent money on this crap-of-a-game. I played the game for 3 hours and I knew that it was crap. I traded it in for Heavy Rain…!! (what I was going to buy in the first place) God I miss my SNES and Secret Of Mana, Chrono Trigger…. Final Fantasy 3 ….. ARRRRGHHH