I think the linear nature of the majority of the game is supposed to symbolize that the characters are trapped in their fate as that has been determined for them as fal' cie and then when they start to break away from that fate the game opens up for more exploring. I actually think it was a brilliant artistic choice.
@@neku2741 nah it was trying to make Crystal Tools work with XBOX 360 the game was made with the PS3 in mind nothing to do with the console limitations. It opens up with Gran Pulse.
@@renereyes2648 it doesn't really open with pulse. It's just the area is more spacious and you have bad sidequests. It happened due to time constraints. Linear part isn't even what's bad, it's the pacing and having it mostly be a long hallway/dungeon full of long trash pulls
@@delsingray5923 FFX was just as if not more linear with boring combat and some scaling camera tricks that gave the illusion of depth in the maps. I never see FFX being called out for it's linearity or bad pacing like making a detour to play water pollo even though their supposed to be on a pilgrimage to save the world. Or that fact that the heartfelt somber ending was ruined by FFX-2.
I liked the cut scenes in the food factory between Light and Hope a lot. When they discuss the roles of humans and fal'Cies in their society while approaching the weird looking Carbuncle. "Like Pets!" - It still gives me shivers.
I just turned 17 when FFXIII dropped back in 2010, I remember being so hyped for the game and my mother got me the limited boxed edition of the game. It was one of the best gaming memories I had growing up.
I've played through this game maybe 30 times with many different weapons and accessories. I've played through it without upgrading anything and while the end bosses can take up to 2 hours to defeat it was a fun playthrough. That's what I love about the game. Your spoils are based on your battle time and if you're good at paradigm shifts you can offset your lack of firepower with rapid paradigm shifts. The more underleveled your characters are the better your spoils. I love that aspect of the game. Then there's the characters. Lightning is amazing. She's equally beautiful and tough. She's by far my favorite FF character.
the Gapra Whitewood area still really sticks in my mind as an interesting environment. The biggest negative for me is the battle system, something about the battle systems of 12 and 13 has a weird effect on me. I think they are good at first but by about mid-game im already weary of them. This happened with both games even when trying to re-visit them.
If i remember correct the reason why Cid Raines commits suicide by asking his friend to kill him, was because he couldn't take it anymore to be use by His fal'cie (barthandelus?). He was brought back by him to be a slave for him again and Cid just wanted it to end. So he choose death because Barthandelus would never let him go. Its actually really sad.
Yep. As a l'Cie, he'd have continued serving fal'Cie for however long they felt like using him. Cid's ambition was to ultimately make humanity independent of the fal'Cie so they could shape their own future; he's kind of similar to Vayne in that sense. However, Barthandelus had been aware of his goals for a while and was using him as another pawn to help bring the last few Pulse l'Cie together so they could ultimately destroy Orphan. His realization of this, combined with him being turned into a l'Cie robbing him of his freedom, was why he became disillusioned. He didn't feel like continuing to serve as a l'Cie or becoming a Cie'th, so he thought death was the only way out. It really is sad and reinforces why people are so afraid of l'Cie and the idea of becoming one, along with why Cid would try pursuing that goal in the first place.
I wish you did a retrospective on every FF game dude. these videos are fuckin awesome. ive only played a couple FF games but hearing you tell the stories are great
I do think the shift when going down to Gran Pulse was really purposeful. You, as well as the characters, are realising how much your lives are just funneled to feed "the machine" of Cocoon. It was "down there is scary, wild, deadly... Up here you're safe and happy", but you realise that it's all a lie. And people are just tools for Fal'cie.
Sounds Acutely Akin To Certain Governmental Entities, And As Well As ShinRa Electric Power Company, Is Primarily A Reflection of Societies, Their Governments, And A “HELLO, WAKE UP!!!” To The Masses, As To What You Described Above. Shalom.
I'm glad I played FFXIII at a time when just bought PS 3 (sometime mid. 2011) so it gave me what I want: graphics leagues better than PS 2 and Wii, and awesome sounds and soundtracks. Plus, at the time I was hungry for engaging story in games and was bored to death by games that has a lot of side quests. A lot of side quest and missable side quest reaaally annoyed me. With FFXIII I just have to sit back, enjoy the battles, the beautiful graphics and awesome musics, without worrying too much about what quests did I missed! FFXIII trilogy, along with Sonic Unleashed, are the games that remind me, and gave me, of great memories with PS 3.... until Trails of Cold Steel duology closes my PS 3 era with a bang😆
Vanille’s voice actress is actually Australian, whereas Fang’s isn’t, but in story Vanille does drop the Hollywood Australian accent for a more natural one when she opens up more to the group.
And the issue isn't even her voice, it's the voice direction, unlike FFXII they actively asked of her to do the same noise you can hear in Japanese anime girl character, this doesn't translate well in english (on japanese dub it's fine tough especially if you're accustomed to anime's japanese dub), and the actress herself thought it was a bad idea but didn't have a choice in the matter
The thing about FFXIII is that all good parts, like paradigm system, feel basically insulting for how the overall structure of the game does them dirty. Like, FF XII had awesome gambit system. But it was decidedly less interesting than paradigms. It was so good because it interacted with everything so well. You would buy the gambit targets so it progressed with gil and exploration. License board unlocked gambit slots, allowing ever more complex gambits at the cost of other options available to you. You could run away from fights more dynamically, on-and-off engage etc, giving more opportunities for gambits. You'd set different gambits for bosses, situations where you explore, and situations where you cut down mobs. FF XIII on the other hand has the system tied down to more restricted isolated battle screen, so dynamically engaging or no isn't an option. You can't explore because there is nothing to explore anyway. Leaving fighting just this isolated minigame and paradigms only exist inside this minigame. Paradigms are essentially equivalent of the XII limit break style minigame. It's fun, but it just doesn't really connect with anything. You are happy while clicking, since it's cool looking and entertaining, but after minigame is over, you forget about it.
I know everyone rags on the auto battle, but I actually really liked it by endgame. At the beginning sure, everything is so simple that it’s kind of pointless and feels like the game wants you to be lazy, but around the time the game opens up on Pulse that all changes The combat system is more about reactivity than meticulously choosing every command, for lack of a better word fights just flow so well in this game. You’re constantly active in more of a commander role: simultaneously watching for when combatants have the correct buffs and debuffs on them, maintaining and increasing the stagger gauge, getting ready to heal HP and status effects, getting ready to turtle a big enemy attack, and transitioning to an all-out offensive when the enemy is staggered. All these things need to be juggled and prioritized in your head, with specific Paradigms you created in anticipation of which situation, or more likely, combination of situations you’ll find yourself in. There’s so much going on that you literally can’t choose individual commands The battle system is so unique and I truly enjoyed it in both of the games that it appeared in. I just wish FFXIII wasn’t such a slow starter, I want to do another playthrough but it feels like the tutorial is around 20 hours long and I can’t handle that lol
I'd say this about the combat tough this game suffer for basically not telling all his mechanic to the player, the Auto-Battle doesn't always pick the best option, it's serviceable for a casual playthrough, however in speedrun and challenge run more often than not it's more optimal to select your command manually, and I have to say it takes some time to get use to but once you do the combat is even more fun, another thing the game doesn't tells you is you can repeat the set of action you did last time by pressing right on the ability command significantly reducing the menuing, also the pardigm shift has one other mechanic that clearly encourage frequent change of strategy is the ATB refresh mechanic the first time you switch strategy your ATB will instantly be fill to the full regardless of where it was, and then this will happen if you switch strategy after 12 seconds, knowing this mechanic significantly increase the number of actions you can get in combat. Also on the "limiting how much you can progress in the crystarium, until beating certain ennemy", I mean the explanation is pretty easy and a recent indie RPG called Chained Echoes did it to, the thing is by limiting how much the player can grind, the devs knows approximatively what level and what options the player will have access at any point, this allows them to tune the difficulty of areas and bosses more easily so that the game is neither to easy or to hard, while preventing the player to do excessive grinding to make the game to easy, no weither people agree with this decision or not is another discussion, same as if the game succeed in that or not, but I think in term of game design this is a good basic idea.
Yeah, it feels like every time I hear someone in a review complain about the length of battles or enemies being "tanky", they never bring up ATB refresh. I'd be totally fine with someone criticizing the combat and feeling the fights are still too long even with ATB refresh, but it feels like they often feel that way because they just aren't aware of it. I definitely got that vibe from CANDLE's gameplay. There were so many moments when I was mentally shouting "Dude please shift, you can get a refresh right now and increase your DPS significantly" lol. I also don't really get the criticism of the level caps. Like... he said it himself - after reaching a cap, the CP enemies in an area give you isn't enough to efficiently get through the next Crystarium section. It makes sense to me that the game would just level cap you and say "Listen, you don't want (or need) to grind here, there are plenty of other ways to make the boss easier if you really need to. Or you can just git gud." And like you said, it allows the devs to tune the difficulty of areas and bosses so the game feels well-balanced in that regard. And I mean, XIII does get really grindy if you 100% it, it just saves that stuff for later, which is when grindy side content is usually unlocked in most JRPGs anyway. It's basically just a slightly different way of doing what most other JRPGs already do. I really have never understood this criticism at all lol.
@@sydklem1023 My only guess is some people just love to grind like madman and overpowered the game one shoting everything.... or just doesn't want to strategize and want to brute force through and if they can beat something they want to grind, which XIII doesn't allow nearly as much as typical JRPG, it sadly something that I see many gamer do if they stumble on a boss they immediatly jump to the conclusion "OH I need to grind." before anything else, when sometime just considering their options and putting up a different strategy would have save them the time they took to grind, and to be fair the previous Final Fantasy didn't help when it come to difficulty pretty much since FFVI they have been some of the easiest JRPG around, in most of them you can ignore like 80% of the game's options and still get through fine. But I'll say I don't mind if some casual players complains and are unaware of game mechanic like ATB Refresh because once the game NEVER tells you about it, it's litterally impossible to know unless you do research on the game before hand, which let's be real many players will not do, most of the time because they want to go blind, the legit critic here is the player shouldn't have to research on internet for such an impactfull mechanic and it should properly teach by the games (which is even more baffling in a game like FFXIII bombard you with ton of tutorials early on yet doesn't mention ATB Refresh which is a core mechanic), that critic... HOWEVER I indeed think that when you took the time to play through the entire game, do research on this game's development and then took the time to put together a 1h30 review, it makes it kinda bad that in the middle of all that they didn't bother to do external research on the gameplay, just to at least make sure they aren't telling BS or haven't miss anything major feel to me it would be the bare minimum if you want to review a game's gameplay, and doesn't tell the viewer about any of it, if the review is done like 1 month after a game release where not everything might have been figure out I can understand, but FFXIII is 15 years old game and everything about it's game mechanics are very well documented and easily accessible.
Considering they are not welcome anywhere being branded always moving not staying in one place the linear world makes sense, the exploration is modeled by the characters situation. But their more free on pulse so it becomes more explorative
“Sorry, I’m Scottish.” Haha man that was a good one, cool accent though. I just found your channel because of your FF7 video, amazing work on that too by the way.
I’ve always thought a large part of the game’s quality increasing from Chapter 11 onward has way more to do with the combat mechanics being fully unlocked than the game allowing you to explore. There’s not really much satisfaction in the exploration, though there is at least some value in simply being able to choose the direction and pace you’re going instead of being railroaded forward. The game’s battle system is balanced around having three party members switching between particular roles to cover all your bases, yet you spend 60% of the game playing with only two party members. It causes the combat, the best aspect of the game by far outside of maybe the worldbuilding, to feel incomplete and not very engaging prior to Chapter 11. The battles flow so much better when you’re able to use all threeee characters and they’re able to crank up the difficulty since you have access to all of the mechanics available. For many years I’ve been of the opinion that this game and Final Fantasy XV are both extremely close to greatness and all it would take is a remaster and some comprehensive tweaks to what already exists to do them justice. Obviously the structure of FFXIII would need to stay the way it is, even if it is fundamentally flawed, but the mechanical side of the game could be improved to minimize the damage the linearity and limitations do to the overall experience of the game. I think a large part of why we haven’t seen something like this is our own fault. We spent a majority of the time since this game’s release pretending it was the worst thing to happen since the holocaust and those voices drowned out the relatively small amount of people who could appreciate what they were trying to do and saw glimpses of a masterpiece during certain moments in the game. I don’t think many people understand that most PS3 games were put together with popsicle sticks and glue due to the difficulty of developing for PS3’s architecture. It could have been far worse than what we received and I’m just thankful that it was as good as it ended up being. XIII hand XV will never be my favorites in the franchise, but they certainly are the ones I find the most interesting and I’ll always stand by them deserving to be remembered whether they get an eventual remake or not. The revenue gained from making them available on modern hardware would more than exceed any costs associated with solving at least some of the game’s problems.
Even upon release, I never considered Lightning to be the definitive protagonist of the (first) game. The majority is told in retrospect through the interpretation of Vanille, and lightning as a character isn't really developed enough to single handedly carry the weight of the story, and I feel putting her as the box cover for both this and XIII-2 was a bit of a misdirection for global audiences.
Damn!! March of 2010, I Was A Freshly Minted High School Graduate. Class of 2009. “Dust To Dust” The Track That Is Playing In Oerba, Is By Far, One of The Best Tracks, And Very Emotional Pieces, I’ve Ever Heard. Reminds Me of My Sister, In That She Is Who Got Me Into Final Fantasy And Gaming. Man, Final Fantasy May Suck From Iteration To Iteration (Some Are True Treasures) Though The OST ALWAYS SLAPS!!!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥
This was a really great watch/listen. I have my own disagreements with some assessments which could admittedly be because the ideas weren't expanded on further, but that's the fun of being a fan of anything. Finding what we all liked and disliked and where that common thread ties us together. On Vanille: You're dead accurate about the voice direction/coaching for her. It felt like they decided one character in this entire game had to produce anime stereotypical schoolgirl sounds. It was unbearably grating. What I will give to Vanille which is something I found you a little harsh on was her happy go lucky nature. This was part of her character development. She was putting on an act so she didn't have to face Fang about knowing what she did in the past. In the scene where Vanille fights her Eidolon she's forced to confront her entire personality, the happy go lucky pulse girl with no worries in the world, was not only a self-destructive lie, but a horrible way to treat her allies and friends as she never really trusted any of them. That does get lost when you can't move past the way they decided to portray her overall so I get not really reading that much into her attitude. Especially when Sazh is written in similar fashion but executed far better. Which is funny because they pair the two of them for most of the first chunk of the game as if they wanted you to compare how poorly executed she was compared to Sazh. On Crystarium Expansion: I see where you're coming from on this but I think it's missing the mark. The point of the expansion upgrades isn't just to prevent grinding although that is one outcome of the design choice. There's two major things, one narrative and one gameplay related that it accomplishes. Narratively it serves to help you comprehend your characters' advancement in power as l'Cie. You are, after all, taking on the gods of the world at the end of the day. This is one of the few JRPGs in recent memory that really helped introduce your powercreep in an understandable way, and better yet they tied it directly to the levelling mechanics. The second thing is it tightens up fights significantly. I recall you saying how tough the boss fights were, the fact that they weren't easy most of the time and that it was pretty rewarding to finally down one. That's a direct result of having a system that allows the combat team to design things around a more closely approximated power floor and power ceiling of the player party. Tricks like this allow them to really curate your experience with major fights especially and is what contributes immensely to those boss encounters being incredibly rewarding to complete and force the player to be more resourceful and less stingy with their items. Cid: I agree that Cid wasn't fleshed out the greatest but I don't think his story was that hard to follow. The reveal was that he was a Cocoon l'Cie whose focus was to ensure your party was ready for the final encounter with Orphan. Everything he did was to meet that end: Allying with Fang, rescuing Snow, helping Snow find his allies, providing an escape from Sanctum forces. Everything was orchestrated by the fal'Cie including your support structure, there was no escape. His final act was also to prepare you. If you couldn't beat him then you definitely weren't ready to face Bathandalus and later Orphan. Once he was beaten he had fully completed his Focus and was turned to crystal. After that Barthandalus was occupied with with preparing for the final showdown so he brought Cid back from his crystal stasis "reward" to rule Cocoon. Cid was absolutely done being a pawn at this point so he killed himself. Many of these characters have such incredible tragic backgrounds that unfortunately get lost because the game really did the disservice of not fleshing out it's story properly. That brings me to a point that I'm surprised you didn't address and is my biggest gripe with the damn game despite the fact that I adore the 13 trilogy: The goddamn codex. The codex is SUPPOSED to be supplementary info for world building. Cool stuff to know, maybe some neat bits about the past conflicts, interesting societal nuance to explain certain attitudes etc. It should not ever, in such a narrative/storytelling focused series, be the PRIMARY SOURCE of almost all important plot points. Great examples of the codex/encyclopedia in game done right are Xenosaga, Star Ocean 3 and Mass Effect. In each case they describe technologies and more complicated but not necessary context behind societies and governments between different worlds and peoples. In FF13 basically every time you have a major encounter/cutscene that leaves you going "Did I fall asleep? I feel like I missed something important because that didn't quite make sense" and then if you decide to open up the codex it invariably not only describes the event that just happened but goes over the exact fucking details and context you needed to make it impactful. That is not good storytelling, that is frustrating to no end and a narratively poor way to treat your audience as I think, on average, we want to enjoy the media we consume and have it be cohesive on first brush. If I'm stopping to read the codex after every major interaction you're basically pulling me out of the game and it comes off as kinda arrogant too. Almost like "Oh well this was too complicated to REALLY make into a cutscene so we had to spell it out for you, enjoy!". 13-2 was leaps and bounds past this because despite how convoluted it got at times (As most time travel stories will) it never felt like you missed something important. They always described the big stuff happening, why it was important and why your characters were motivated to get shit done. That's my 2-bits on where I disagreed a bit, and I do recognise it could just be because you didn't want to/bother to elaborate further and I wouldn't blame you since it's massive topic to cover already without getting too wordy. Really enjoyed listening to it while grinding out a Diablo 4 character and hope to watch some more soon! You got a fan today.
Yeah I think that Square saw Mass Effect use the codex to explain stuff like how guns and spaceships work, and said "aha! We can use this to explain anything we want!"
These are great points. I think that if Vanille was the party leader (as I believe she was once planned to be), the game's problems with the codex would be mitigated, if not entirely solved. Vanille plays dumb for much of the game, and her being a stranger to Cocoon would have given developers more of a reason to properly explain things. XIII acts like everyone already knows what its jargon means, and players won't and they're overwhelmed with the terms thrown at them. With Vanille as the party leader, she could have played a similar role to Tidus in X, who was a fish-out-of-water character and also a bit happy-go-lucky. Another thing, you bring up Xenosaga. Did you notice some parallels between XIII and Xenoblade (if you played it)? The high tech environments of Cocoon and the naturalistic tones of Gran Pulse mirrored the environments of Mechonis and Bionis.
I'm actually very surprised when people comment on how good Pulse is. At that point I was way too tired of combat to care much for hunts or anything. It's not that i think combat is bad, it's that the battles drag for way too long, and the system has already shown most of its tricks at that point. On the other hand, it seems I honestly enjoyed the story more than other people. I did read the entries in the database (I found it a good way to take breaks between the constant battles) and I think it has some interesting ideas and arcs. Its not very well executed, though, so I'd still put it below average in the franchise.
an opinion that I've heard and kind of agree with is that Gran Pulse gives the illusion of fixing a lot of problems the first 2/3 of the game has, but doesn't actually do that depending on your perspective. If you're biggest problem is the narrow halls and lack of side quests, then yes gran pulse fixes pretty much everything. But, what I somewhat recently heard was someone referring to Gran Pulse as "just being the big, fuck-off field." And its just kind of true? Like, you aren't just going forward anymore, but what actual goals are you getting that take advantage of your new, open environment? The sidequests all boil down to defeating a certain group of enemies or going somewhere specific (where there will be enemies to fight), which means you just carve the straightest line possible from the quest giver, to the enemy, and back to the quest giver. In my mind, Pulse was actually worse. because it meant I had to walk farther distances filled with nothing to accomplish things that were technically optional but that I had to do for exp. Nothing actually changed. Even the party formation and crystarium opening up there meant very little, because party members are naturally way worse at roles they don't start with and seldom gain access to the full list of spells/abilities (in spite of the roles unlocked later costing more crystarium points per level). You make a statement somewhere in the video that, by the end, any party member can basically function as anything but I just don't feel like its true. Lightning's final spell she learns as medic is cura. You cannot actually rely on her as a medic at all, you need either vanille or hope to do it. nobody else learns the full medic spell list. Similar examples can be brought up for every role in the game, its realistically just not feasible to use most party members as anything outside their starting set.
For me, it wasn't just the extra freedom that the game gave me when I got to Gran Pulse that I enjoyed, it was also the big step up in overall quality from that point on till the rest of the game. I enjoyed the hunts even though they were very bare-bones, and I also liked being able to roam around and actually choose which monster to fight instead of mostly being funneled through to specific groups of enemies within corridors like the game had done up until that point. However, aside from that, the frequency of cut scenes went down a bunch, the story actually got really interesting all of a sudden cos things were actually happening, the dungeons got really, really good, and developing the Crystarium became far more rewarding. Although, regarding my statement in the vid that anyone can pretty much take on any role, I may have been wrong there. Tbh, I just continued developing everyone on their starting roles for the whole game rather than going onto the new ones so I just assumed they could all learn everything but looks like that's not the case from what you're saying!
@@candletype1a447 I can understand how that is more enjoyable for you then. Even if I still didn't particularly like it, I can certainly understand your perspective. With how old ff13 is now, you can actually look up everyone's full crystariums and level-up costs. I didn't do this and wasted a ton of points trying to make a final party of lightning sazh and fang work, but none of those three ever developed a meaningful amount of healing ability. If anyone could truly be anything (and if the crystarium point cost to do so wasn't crazy) it would get rid of one of my main disappointments.
Gren Pulse felt like a big side quest/dungeon. It happens too late in the game, and I understand that wouldn't make sense it being earlier. The completion of the crystarium late game felt meaningless because auto-battle would just choose the quickest spells/techniques 90% of the time. The only mild benefit was the added HP. It would just boil down to "do you want this technique now, or more HP/Str/Mag?" Again, for the main game it was fine in my experience. I tend to be very stingy on item usage and upgrade, always fearful of screwing up, but no other game made me completely avoid the usage of materials for the whole game like 13 did, I can only recommend this game for a pure plot paythrough. The "one hundred - ism" on this title is absolute madness and I never ever did it, I tried to 3 times, between long hiatuses (years) and once you have to keep killing turtles before you kill uber turtles, it gets, let's say, boring. Overall I very much enjoyed this one, the positives weighted more than the negatives. And there's no right or wrong. It is good seeing other's perspectives so you have the opportunity to look at it through another lens and add to your own overall experience and evaluation going forward.
i specifically remember making an angry rant facebook post about the gapra whitewood when i first started traversing it lmao. so gorgeous; so boring. ff xiii-2 had monster catching so i liked it more. still never beat it. good retrospective!!
Great retrospective! I agree with almost every critique you have of XIII. I laughed hard at your hatred for Snow cos I honestly felt the same. The character design really was the weakest aspect of XIII. I hope to see your retrospective of 12, I think it’s one of the most underrated FFs considering how much lore it has compared to the rest of the franchise.
Lol, yeah, Snow irritated the hell out me. I'll defo do a retrospective of FF12 cos I absolutely love that game, but I'm kinda preparing myself for it cos that's gonna be a long playthrough and a very long video haha.
While the combat system was awesome, it was designed for 3 person parties. Unfortunately IIRC you spend about half the game with 2 person parties which leads to some incredibly tedious encounters. I remember ripping my hair out when Sazh and Vanille spent yet another 20 minutes taking out random mobs because neither of them is a damage dealer.
You kind of covered this from another angle. I don’t think it was that the enemies were too tangy. At least I never had an issue from Chapter 11 onwards when I could use a custom 3 person team.
The whole FF13 trilogy is awesome. Without a doubt the most overly and unjustly games in the franchise. Defend it all you want but I'll never stop laughing when a FFX fanboy complains about 13's map/traversal. (FFX is great btw but so it 13.)
I wish I could play this game, but the GamePass version I tried on PC was an absolute mess. But I do love watching long retrospectives on it. I'm excited to see where this one goes. Edit: This was a pretty good overall retrospective - I enjoyed it. If I could suggest some feedback, I think this retrospective could use something of an angle / argument / thesis to drive it. Like one focused point of analysis that connects the dots together and helps highlight some interesting perspective of the game. While I enjoyed this video and realize a lot of work went into it, it seemed to go from point-to-point a lot without a strong sense of an end goal or direction, in my opinion. Given this game's reputation, its analyses often have angles like "how did it compare to expectations?" or "what parts of this game are under-appreciated?", and those angles tend to lend a sense of cohesion even when those videos reach an hour in length - but of course your angle could be anything. Just some idea to return to from time to time, to connect everything and reinforce your perspective. In fact, I especially enjoyed your quick lore dive at the beginning, since not too many retrospectives tend to really dig into the game's world. That combined with your points on level design makes me think something like "how does FFXIII's world impact the player experience" could've made for an angle you'd have a lot to say about. On one side, you'd have the confusing lore that put off players. On the other side, you'd have the fascinating environment design and it's lore implications, as well as monster and boss designs, and the game's unique summons, all of which you already touched upon.
Thanks a lot for your detailed response and feedback; I appreciate it! My general style for my retrospectives does just tend to be much like this one where I cycle through talking about the game's various elements before finishing it up with a plot summary, rather than having a goal or central theme for the vid. I just like talking about games tbh, particularly ones that I have a history with, and so tend not to have a driving point or message that I'm trying to put forward. Nonetheless, thanks for watching my vid and for giving me a really thoughtful response cos I'll defo keep your feedback in mind for future videos!
The biggest problem I had with 13 was the combat: not every class is made equal, and almost every single fight in the game is scripted for you to pair certain jobs to take them on, similar to exploiting elemental weaknesses in previous games. But there's not really a way to tell so unless you have them all memorized through a process of trial and error, fights fall into one of two categories: they're either piss easy or they're a lengthy slog where you're in very real danger of dying. Which leads into a related issue I had with the leveling system. You're literally level capped by progress through the story, and you're even capped all the way up to the final boss. Which means you will never be able to overlevel to overcome the aforementioned restrictive combat system, and are forced to tackle every fight exactly how the devs want you to or suffer. Auto-battle frequently didn't choose the best options in my playthrough so I rarely used it, and I felt severely punished by trying out different team comps. That was my experience with FF13, and while I enjoyed 13-2 quite a lot more, the story just never gripped me enough to make me even want to go back to it.
I had a friend that describes FFXIII the best way possible. It's a poorly designed game but a very polished one. On another note going from Final Fantasy XII to XIII felt like a huge downgrade in terms of everything
Let me clear up that question for you. Is FFXIII a good game? Yes. I know this, because I came into it completely blind, having never played any Final Fantasy game before. I also played it at a time when I barely was playing video games. Nonetheless, it pulled me in and kept me hooked until I beat the game. With that said, although it's a good game, it may be a bad FINAL FANTASY game. I feel like many of the criticisms of the game are based on unfavorable comparisons to other FF games. TBH, I think that's perfectly fine to do, but as a standalone game I think it's solid. Also, keep in mind that this game released during the open world craze, where people were demanding giant worlds in every game. So when FFXIII didn't have that, it got dragged through the coals. As I've never been a fan of big, but shallow, worlds, this worked perfectly fine for me.
Please, if you haven’t played XIII-2, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Don’t let X-2 lead you to believe Final Fantasy can’t have good sequels. XIII-2 is what got me into the franchise. Such an underated gem of a game. I’d love to hear your take. You can skip Lightning Returns though. Vomit inducing for real.
I managed to break the crystarium, there's a point where you can buy exp buffing accessories. got to the point where i was maxing the crystarium immediately after expanding it with change.
Your frustration was understandable but the battles were long because the game was punishing you for using awful paradigm spreads. Triple/double rav quickly staggers with only one or two turns of commando damage.
The thing is there are just too much jargons ( l'Cie ,fal'Cie, grand pulse, etc) in this game, as a non english speaking person it is really hard to follow the story, the farther the story goes the more gibberish you get. This never been the issue in other final fantasy series. And some people might hate the character and the battle mechanic but that is subjective and understandable
Moving in straight lines, way too many cutscenes, random combat encounters acting as filler as you traverse from set piece to set piece? Sounds like a PS4 exclusive. But for real I genuinely enjoy the sequel 13-2 because the levels felt like little sandboxes and there was a good spread of sidequest and main quest plus the monster collecting was kinda fun. Then there was lightning returns which is far from perfect but I think it was a fun take on the time limit video game style (even if Chrono stasis was way too overpowered) and while the whole plot line was very convoluted it brought a solid conclusion to the series. But the problem with lightning returns was its gameplay shift seems to have permanently altered final fantasy into the fairly linear action game direction which I’m not sure I’m a fan of.
We were all disappointed by 13. I was at the midnight debut at my local GameStop, pre-order, hardcore FF fan. I cannot put into words the heart sinking feeling I had about 3 hours in. It does get somewhat enjoyable after getting to pulse, but damn son, 70% of the game is mediocre. At best. Besides the graphics, graphics were sick lol combat was actually pretty fun too after getting used to it
Does modern storytelling rely on using flashbacks way too much, and as a result, the final product suffers in some cases? 🤔 The constant flashbacks were what hurt 13, in my opinion. Certain stories, flashbacks make sense. Assassin's Creed, for example. Alot of today's stories overdue the flashbacks tho. Even final fantasy 7 or 8 would seem trash if you add a flashback after every dope moment. It kills the momentum of the characters we're just now starting to feel and like. How do I connect with Cloud, Barrett if... They just did something really cool but--- Here's a 45 minute flashback of Cait Sith working at Shinra drinking coffee? 😂
FFXIII is, in my opinion, one of the first signs of Nomura just caring about the aesthetics of Final Fantasy and not the gameplay. His penchant for “combining” action gameplay and jrpg gameplay only got worse with FFVII Remake (fight me, I just said that) and FFXV. Admittedly I’m speaking from a place where I played the Sakaguchi FF games first so the bias is there. So much potential but totally wasted. That’s FFXIII for me.
here... I will save everyone an hour and a half of their lives. games were bad... REALLY BAD! no one knows WHY it got 2 sequels from a lame, poorly written story and mostly terrible characters with an atrocious battle system.
This game doesn't get good until chapter 12, the rest of it is just padding. All of that just to lose a fight to a giant sonic ring who wants to destroy the world, and lightnings commander is a rocket raccoon parody that square were so anal about they made their own guardians game and why lighting fights like gamora (they're called the guardian corps ffs) all to reference a obscure square game noone's heard of which has infected their entire series since 13.
A 3/10 game. Everything in this game is bad. -Characters design= 2/10. Vanille and Sazh are 0/10 and you are force to only allow use her and Sazh for 3-4 hours with those slow jazz music at background and combine with those eee, ahhh, yeeehh sound from Vanille.Omg. -Music= 4/10. Dont remember any good tracks while playing, but insteand the main song is too girly that seems to creat for 8 or9 year old girls. -battle system =4 Any ff game battle system beat this -monster design = 3 Fighting same monter again and again, and than the upgrade virsion of it but just change the colour. And than another upgrade virsion in different colour. Wtf is that h like alphabet monster that have no eye, no hair, no hand, no legs, no weapon, Linear- 0/10 this game have no town, no side quest, no secret weapons, no secret boss, no secret charaters, no mini games,
I think the linear nature of the majority of the game is supposed to symbolize that the characters are trapped in their fate as that has been determined for them as fal' cie and then when they start to break away from that fate the game opens up for more exploring. I actually think it was a brilliant artistic choice.
Nah it's just the console limitation
@@neku2741FF14 released as a MMO on PS3 and was well performing...
@@neku2741 nah it was trying to make Crystal Tools work with XBOX 360 the game was made with the PS3 in mind nothing to do with the console limitations. It opens up with Gran Pulse.
@@renereyes2648 it doesn't really open with pulse. It's just the area is more spacious and you have bad sidequests.
It happened due to time constraints.
Linear part isn't even what's bad, it's the pacing and having it mostly be a long hallway/dungeon full of long trash pulls
@@delsingray5923 FFX was just as if not more linear with boring combat and some scaling camera tricks that gave the illusion of depth in the maps. I never see FFX being called out for it's linearity or bad pacing like making a detour to play water pollo even though their supposed to be on a pilgrimage to save the world. Or that fact that the heartfelt somber ending was ruined by FFX-2.
i loved this game so much that i got his platinum, what a game
I liked the cut scenes in the food factory between Light and Hope a lot. When they discuss the roles of humans and fal'Cies in their society while approaching the weird looking Carbuncle. "Like Pets!" - It still gives me shivers.
In 1998 I hated high school and played Xenogears and never set foot in a church ever again.
I just turned 17 when FFXIII dropped back in 2010, I remember being so hyped for the game and my mother got me the limited boxed edition of the game. It was one of the best gaming memories I had growing up.
Final Fantasy 13 trilogy is honestly my favorite. I'm not joking
My brotah!
I've played through this game maybe 30 times with many different weapons and accessories. I've played through it without upgrading anything and while the end bosses can take up to 2 hours to defeat it was a fun playthrough.
That's what I love about the game. Your spoils are based on your battle time and if you're good at paradigm shifts you can offset your lack of firepower with rapid paradigm shifts. The more underleveled your characters are the better your spoils. I love that aspect of the game.
Then there's the characters. Lightning is amazing. She's equally beautiful and tough. She's by far my favorite FF character.
the Gapra Whitewood area still really sticks in my mind as an interesting environment. The biggest negative for me is the battle system, something about the battle systems of 12 and 13 has a weird effect on me. I think they are good at first but by about mid-game im already weary of them. This happened with both games even when trying to re-visit them.
If i remember correct the reason why Cid Raines commits suicide by asking his friend to kill him, was because he couldn't take it anymore to be use by His fal'cie (barthandelus?). He was brought back by him to be a slave for him again and Cid just wanted it to end. So he choose death because Barthandelus would never let him go. Its actually really sad.
Yep. As a l'Cie, he'd have continued serving fal'Cie for however long they felt like using him.
Cid's ambition was to ultimately make humanity independent of the fal'Cie so they could shape their own future; he's kind of similar to Vayne in that sense. However, Barthandelus had been aware of his goals for a while and was using him as another pawn to help bring the last few Pulse l'Cie together so they could ultimately destroy Orphan. His realization of this, combined with him being turned into a l'Cie robbing him of his freedom, was why he became disillusioned. He didn't feel like continuing to serve as a l'Cie or becoming a Cie'th, so he thought death was the only way out. It really is sad and reinforces why people are so afraid of l'Cie and the idea of becoming one, along with why Cid would try pursuing that goal in the first place.
I wish you did a retrospective on every FF game dude. these videos are fuckin awesome. ive only played a couple FF games but hearing you tell the stories are great
Great video, Can't agree 100% but that's not a bad thing, I appreciate your personal input. Looking forward to 13-2 video
I do think the shift when going down to Gran Pulse was really purposeful. You, as well as the characters, are realising how much your lives are just funneled to feed "the machine" of Cocoon. It was "down there is scary, wild, deadly... Up here you're safe and happy", but you realise that it's all a lie. And people are just tools for Fal'cie.
Sounds Acutely Akin To Certain Governmental Entities, And As Well As ShinRa Electric Power Company, Is Primarily A Reflection of Societies, Their Governments, And A “HELLO, WAKE UP!!!” To The Masses, As To What You Described Above.
Shalom.
Much respect for the Barthandelus love, he's an awesome boss/character, and his boss themes are amazing!
I'm glad I played FFXIII at a time when just bought PS 3 (sometime mid. 2011) so it gave me what I want: graphics leagues better than PS 2 and Wii, and awesome sounds and soundtracks. Plus, at the time I was hungry for engaging story in games and was bored to death by games that has a lot of side quests. A lot of side quest and missable side quest reaaally annoyed me.
With FFXIII I just have to sit back, enjoy the battles, the beautiful graphics and awesome musics, without worrying too much about what quests did I missed!
FFXIII trilogy, along with Sonic Unleashed, are the games that remind me, and gave me, of great memories with PS 3.... until Trails of Cold Steel duology closes my PS 3 era with a bang😆
Vanille’s voice actress is actually Australian, whereas Fang’s isn’t, but in story Vanille does drop the Hollywood Australian accent for a more natural one when she opens up more to the group.
And the issue isn't even her voice, it's the voice direction, unlike FFXII they actively asked of her to do the same noise you can hear in Japanese anime girl character, this doesn't translate well in english (on japanese dub it's fine tough especially if you're accustomed to anime's japanese dub), and the actress herself thought it was a bad idea but didn't have a choice in the matter
13 is great. My personal favourite trilogy in the series.
I see what you did there.
Defo the best trilogy !
@@Tyranastrasza ?
@@KyngD469 Well, it's the only trilogy in the series (spin offs an X-2 : Last mission don't count)
The thing about FFXIII is that all good parts, like paradigm system, feel basically insulting for how the overall structure of the game does them dirty. Like, FF XII had awesome gambit system. But it was decidedly less interesting than paradigms. It was so good because it interacted with everything so well. You would buy the gambit targets so it progressed with gil and exploration. License board unlocked gambit slots, allowing ever more complex gambits at the cost of other options available to you. You could run away from fights more dynamically, on-and-off engage etc, giving more opportunities for gambits. You'd set different gambits for bosses, situations where you explore, and situations where you cut down mobs. FF XIII on the other hand has the system tied down to more restricted isolated battle screen, so dynamically engaging or no isn't an option. You can't explore because there is nothing to explore anyway. Leaving fighting just this isolated minigame and paradigms only exist inside this minigame.
Paradigms are essentially equivalent of the XII limit break style minigame. It's fun, but it just doesn't really connect with anything. You are happy while clicking, since it's cool looking and entertaining, but after minigame is over, you forget about it.
I know everyone rags on the auto battle, but I actually really liked it by endgame. At the beginning sure, everything is so simple that it’s kind of pointless and feels like the game wants you to be lazy, but around the time the game opens up on Pulse that all changes
The combat system is more about reactivity than meticulously choosing every command, for lack of a better word fights just flow so well in this game. You’re constantly active in more of a commander role: simultaneously watching for when combatants have the correct buffs and debuffs on them, maintaining and increasing the stagger gauge, getting ready to heal HP and status effects, getting ready to turtle a big enemy attack, and transitioning to an all-out offensive when the enemy is staggered. All these things need to be juggled and prioritized in your head, with specific Paradigms you created in anticipation of which situation, or more likely, combination of situations you’ll find yourself in. There’s so much going on that you literally can’t choose individual commands
The battle system is so unique and I truly enjoyed it in both of the games that it appeared in. I just wish FFXIII wasn’t such a slow starter, I want to do another playthrough but it feels like the tutorial is around 20 hours long and I can’t handle that lol
i got chills while u were telling the story bro this game is awesome
I'd say this about the combat tough this game suffer for basically not telling all his mechanic to the player, the Auto-Battle doesn't always pick the best option, it's serviceable for a casual playthrough, however in speedrun and challenge run more often than not it's more optimal to select your command manually, and I have to say it takes some time to get use to but once you do the combat is even more fun, another thing the game doesn't tells you is you can repeat the set of action you did last time by pressing right on the ability command significantly reducing the menuing, also the pardigm shift has one other mechanic that clearly encourage frequent change of strategy is the ATB refresh mechanic the first time you switch strategy your ATB will instantly be fill to the full regardless of where it was, and then this will happen if you switch strategy after 12 seconds, knowing this mechanic significantly increase the number of actions you can get in combat.
Also on the "limiting how much you can progress in the crystarium, until beating certain ennemy", I mean the explanation is pretty easy and a recent indie RPG called Chained Echoes did it to, the thing is by limiting how much the player can grind, the devs knows approximatively what level and what options the player will have access at any point, this allows them to tune the difficulty of areas and bosses more easily so that the game is neither to easy or to hard, while preventing the player to do excessive grinding to make the game to easy, no weither people agree with this decision or not is another discussion, same as if the game succeed in that or not, but I think in term of game design this is a good basic idea.
Yeah, it feels like every time I hear someone in a review complain about the length of battles or enemies being "tanky", they never bring up ATB refresh. I'd be totally fine with someone criticizing the combat and feeling the fights are still too long even with ATB refresh, but it feels like they often feel that way because they just aren't aware of it.
I definitely got that vibe from CANDLE's gameplay. There were so many moments when I was mentally shouting "Dude please shift, you can get a refresh right now and increase your DPS significantly" lol.
I also don't really get the criticism of the level caps. Like... he said it himself - after reaching a cap, the CP enemies in an area give you isn't enough to efficiently get through the next Crystarium section. It makes sense to me that the game would just level cap you and say "Listen, you don't want (or need) to grind here, there are plenty of other ways to make the boss easier if you really need to. Or you can just git gud." And like you said, it allows the devs to tune the difficulty of areas and bosses so the game feels well-balanced in that regard.
And I mean, XIII does get really grindy if you 100% it, it just saves that stuff for later, which is when grindy side content is usually unlocked in most JRPGs anyway. It's basically just a slightly different way of doing what most other JRPGs already do. I really have never understood this criticism at all lol.
@@sydklem1023 My only guess is some people just love to grind like madman and overpowered the game one shoting everything.... or just doesn't want to strategize and want to brute force through and if they can beat something they want to grind, which XIII doesn't allow nearly as much as typical JRPG, it sadly something that I see many gamer do if they stumble on a boss they immediatly jump to the conclusion "OH I need to grind." before anything else, when sometime just considering their options and putting up a different strategy would have save them the time they took to grind, and to be fair the previous Final Fantasy didn't help when it come to difficulty pretty much since FFVI they have been some of the easiest JRPG around, in most of them you can ignore like 80% of the game's options and still get through fine.
But I'll say I don't mind if some casual players complains and are unaware of game mechanic like ATB Refresh because once the game NEVER tells you about it, it's litterally impossible to know unless you do research on the game before hand, which let's be real many players will not do, most of the time because they want to go blind, the legit critic here is the player shouldn't have to research on internet for such an impactfull mechanic and it should properly teach by the games (which is even more baffling in a game like FFXIII bombard you with ton of tutorials early on yet doesn't mention ATB Refresh which is a core mechanic), that critic... HOWEVER I indeed think that when you took the time to play through the entire game, do research on this game's development and then took the time to put together a 1h30 review, it makes it kinda bad that in the middle of all that they didn't bother to do external research on the gameplay, just to at least make sure they aren't telling BS or haven't miss anything major feel to me it would be the bare minimum if you want to review a game's gameplay, and doesn't tell the viewer about any of it, if the review is done like 1 month after a game release where not everything might have been figure out I can understand, but FFXIII is 15 years old game and everything about it's game mechanics are very well documented and easily accessible.
The townz meme will forever be my favorite FF meme.
Considering they are not welcome anywhere being branded always moving not staying in one place the linear world makes sense, the exploration is modeled by the characters situation. But their more free on pulse so it becomes more explorative
“Sorry, I’m Scottish.” Haha man that was a good one, cool accent though. I just found your channel because of your FF7 video, amazing work on that too by the way.
I’ve always thought a large part of the game’s quality increasing from Chapter 11 onward has way more to do with the combat mechanics being fully unlocked than the game allowing you to explore. There’s not really much satisfaction in the exploration, though there is at least some value in simply being able to choose the direction and pace you’re going instead of being railroaded forward. The game’s battle system is balanced around having three party members switching between particular roles to cover all your bases, yet you spend 60% of the game playing with only two party members. It causes the combat, the best aspect of the game by far outside of maybe the worldbuilding, to feel incomplete and not very engaging prior to Chapter 11. The battles flow so much better when you’re able to use all threeee characters and they’re able to crank up the difficulty since you have access to all of the mechanics available.
For many years I’ve been of the opinion that this game and Final Fantasy XV are both extremely close to greatness and all it would take is a remaster and some comprehensive tweaks to what already exists to do them justice. Obviously the structure of FFXIII would need to stay the way it is, even if it is fundamentally flawed, but the mechanical side of the game could be improved to minimize the damage the linearity and limitations do to the overall experience of the game. I think a large part of why we haven’t seen something like this is our own fault. We spent a majority of the time since this game’s release pretending it was the worst thing to happen since the holocaust and those voices drowned out the relatively small amount of people who could appreciate what they were trying to do and saw glimpses of a masterpiece during certain moments in the game. I don’t think many people understand that most PS3 games were put together with popsicle sticks and glue due to the difficulty of developing for PS3’s architecture. It could have been far worse than what we received and I’m just thankful that it was as good as it ended up being. XIII hand XV will never be my favorites in the franchise, but they certainly are the ones I find the most interesting and I’ll always stand by them deserving to be remembered whether they get an eventual remake or not. The revenue gained from making them available on modern hardware would more than exceed any costs associated with solving at least some of the game’s problems.
Very well done and completely agree with everything you said! Maybe ff13-2 next?
Even upon release, I never considered Lightning to be the definitive protagonist of the (first) game. The majority is told in retrospect through the interpretation of Vanille, and lightning as a character isn't really developed enough to single handedly carry the weight of the story, and I feel putting her as the box cover for both this and XIII-2 was a bit of a misdirection for global audiences.
Repeating the same battles to get perfume to sell for end game weapons really killed it for me
Damn!!
March of 2010, I Was A Freshly Minted High School Graduate. Class of 2009.
“Dust To Dust” The Track That Is Playing In Oerba, Is By Far, One of The Best Tracks, And Very Emotional Pieces, I’ve Ever Heard.
Reminds Me of My Sister, In That She Is Who Got Me Into Final Fantasy And Gaming.
Man, Final Fantasy May Suck From Iteration To Iteration (Some Are True Treasures) Though The OST ALWAYS SLAPS!!!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥
This was a really great watch/listen. I have my own disagreements with some assessments which could admittedly be because the ideas weren't expanded on further, but that's the fun of being a fan of anything. Finding what we all liked and disliked and where that common thread ties us together.
On Vanille: You're dead accurate about the voice direction/coaching for her. It felt like they decided one character in this entire game had to produce anime stereotypical schoolgirl sounds. It was unbearably grating. What I will give to Vanille which is something I found you a little harsh on was her happy go lucky nature. This was part of her character development. She was putting on an act so she didn't have to face Fang about knowing what she did in the past. In the scene where Vanille fights her Eidolon she's forced to confront her entire personality, the happy go lucky pulse girl with no worries in the world, was not only a self-destructive lie, but a horrible way to treat her allies and friends as she never really trusted any of them. That does get lost when you can't move past the way they decided to portray her overall so I get not really reading that much into her attitude. Especially when Sazh is written in similar fashion but executed far better. Which is funny because they pair the two of them for most of the first chunk of the game as if they wanted you to compare how poorly executed she was compared to Sazh.
On Crystarium Expansion: I see where you're coming from on this but I think it's missing the mark. The point of the expansion upgrades isn't just to prevent grinding although that is one outcome of the design choice. There's two major things, one narrative and one gameplay related that it accomplishes. Narratively it serves to help you comprehend your characters' advancement in power as l'Cie. You are, after all, taking on the gods of the world at the end of the day. This is one of the few JRPGs in recent memory that really helped introduce your powercreep in an understandable way, and better yet they tied it directly to the levelling mechanics. The second thing is it tightens up fights significantly. I recall you saying how tough the boss fights were, the fact that they weren't easy most of the time and that it was pretty rewarding to finally down one. That's a direct result of having a system that allows the combat team to design things around a more closely approximated power floor and power ceiling of the player party. Tricks like this allow them to really curate your experience with major fights especially and is what contributes immensely to those boss encounters being incredibly rewarding to complete and force the player to be more resourceful and less stingy with their items.
Cid: I agree that Cid wasn't fleshed out the greatest but I don't think his story was that hard to follow. The reveal was that he was a Cocoon l'Cie whose focus was to ensure your party was ready for the final encounter with Orphan. Everything he did was to meet that end: Allying with Fang, rescuing Snow, helping Snow find his allies, providing an escape from Sanctum forces. Everything was orchestrated by the fal'Cie including your support structure, there was no escape. His final act was also to prepare you. If you couldn't beat him then you definitely weren't ready to face Bathandalus and later Orphan. Once he was beaten he had fully completed his Focus and was turned to crystal. After that Barthandalus was occupied with with preparing for the final showdown so he brought Cid back from his crystal stasis "reward" to rule Cocoon. Cid was absolutely done being a pawn at this point so he killed himself. Many of these characters have such incredible tragic backgrounds that unfortunately get lost because the game really did the disservice of not fleshing out it's story properly.
That brings me to a point that I'm surprised you didn't address and is my biggest gripe with the damn game despite the fact that I adore the 13 trilogy: The goddamn codex. The codex is SUPPOSED to be supplementary info for world building. Cool stuff to know, maybe some neat bits about the past conflicts, interesting societal nuance to explain certain attitudes etc. It should not ever, in such a narrative/storytelling focused series, be the PRIMARY SOURCE of almost all important plot points. Great examples of the codex/encyclopedia in game done right are Xenosaga, Star Ocean 3 and Mass Effect. In each case they describe technologies and more complicated but not necessary context behind societies and governments between different worlds and peoples. In FF13 basically every time you have a major encounter/cutscene that leaves you going "Did I fall asleep? I feel like I missed something important because that didn't quite make sense" and then if you decide to open up the codex it invariably not only describes the event that just happened but goes over the exact fucking details and context you needed to make it impactful. That is not good storytelling, that is frustrating to no end and a narratively poor way to treat your audience as I think, on average, we want to enjoy the media we consume and have it be cohesive on first brush. If I'm stopping to read the codex after every major interaction you're basically pulling me out of the game and it comes off as kinda arrogant too. Almost like "Oh well this was too complicated to REALLY make into a cutscene so we had to spell it out for you, enjoy!". 13-2 was leaps and bounds past this because despite how convoluted it got at times (As most time travel stories will) it never felt like you missed something important. They always described the big stuff happening, why it was important and why your characters were motivated to get shit done.
That's my 2-bits on where I disagreed a bit, and I do recognise it could just be because you didn't want to/bother to elaborate further and I wouldn't blame you since it's massive topic to cover already without getting too wordy. Really enjoyed listening to it while grinding out a Diablo 4 character and hope to watch some more soon! You got a fan today.
Yeah I think that Square saw Mass Effect use the codex to explain stuff like how guns and spaceships work, and said "aha! We can use this to explain anything we want!"
These are great points. I think that if Vanille was the party leader (as I believe she was once planned to be), the game's problems with the codex would be mitigated, if not entirely solved. Vanille plays dumb for much of the game, and her being a stranger to Cocoon would have given developers more of a reason to properly explain things. XIII acts like everyone already knows what its jargon means, and players won't and they're overwhelmed with the terms thrown at them. With Vanille as the party leader, she could have played a similar role to Tidus in X, who was a fish-out-of-water character and also a bit happy-go-lucky.
Another thing, you bring up Xenosaga. Did you notice some parallels between XIII and Xenoblade (if you played it)? The high tech environments of Cocoon and the naturalistic tones of Gran Pulse mirrored the environments of Mechonis and Bionis.
I'm actually very surprised when people comment on how good Pulse is. At that point I was way too tired of combat to care much for hunts or anything. It's not that i think combat is bad, it's that the battles drag for way too long, and the system has already shown most of its tricks at that point.
On the other hand, it seems I honestly enjoyed the story more than other people. I did read the entries in the database (I found it a good way to take breaks between the constant battles) and I think it has some interesting ideas and arcs. Its not very well executed, though, so I'd still put it below average in the franchise.
an opinion that I've heard and kind of agree with is that Gran Pulse gives the illusion of fixing a lot of problems the first 2/3 of the game has, but doesn't actually do that depending on your perspective. If you're biggest problem is the narrow halls and lack of side quests, then yes gran pulse fixes pretty much everything. But, what I somewhat recently heard was someone referring to Gran Pulse as "just being the big, fuck-off field." And its just kind of true? Like, you aren't just going forward anymore, but what actual goals are you getting that take advantage of your new, open environment? The sidequests all boil down to defeating a certain group of enemies or going somewhere specific (where there will be enemies to fight), which means you just carve the straightest line possible from the quest giver, to the enemy, and back to the quest giver. In my mind, Pulse was actually worse. because it meant I had to walk farther distances filled with nothing to accomplish things that were technically optional but that I had to do for exp. Nothing actually changed.
Even the party formation and crystarium opening up there meant very little, because party members are naturally way worse at roles they don't start with and seldom gain access to the full list of spells/abilities (in spite of the roles unlocked later costing more crystarium points per level). You make a statement somewhere in the video that, by the end, any party member can basically function as anything but I just don't feel like its true. Lightning's final spell she learns as medic is cura. You cannot actually rely on her as a medic at all, you need either vanille or hope to do it. nobody else learns the full medic spell list. Similar examples can be brought up for every role in the game, its realistically just not feasible to use most party members as anything outside their starting set.
For me, it wasn't just the extra freedom that the game gave me when I got to Gran Pulse that I enjoyed, it was also the big step up in overall quality from that point on till the rest of the game. I enjoyed the hunts even though they were very bare-bones, and I also liked being able to roam around and actually choose which monster to fight instead of mostly being funneled through to specific groups of enemies within corridors like the game had done up until that point.
However, aside from that, the frequency of cut scenes went down a bunch, the story actually got really interesting all of a sudden cos things were actually happening, the dungeons got really, really good, and developing the Crystarium became far more rewarding. Although, regarding my statement in the vid that anyone can pretty much take on any role, I may have been wrong there. Tbh, I just continued developing everyone on their starting roles for the whole game rather than going onto the new ones so I just assumed they could all learn everything but looks like that's not the case from what you're saying!
@@candletype1a447 I can understand how that is more enjoyable for you then. Even if I still didn't particularly like it, I can certainly understand your perspective.
With how old ff13 is now, you can actually look up everyone's full crystariums and level-up costs. I didn't do this and wasted a ton of points trying to make a final party of lightning sazh and fang work, but none of those three ever developed a meaningful amount of healing ability. If anyone could truly be anything (and if the crystarium point cost to do so wasn't crazy) it would get rid of one of my main disappointments.
Gren Pulse felt like a big side quest/dungeon. It happens too late in the game, and I understand that wouldn't make sense it being earlier. The completion of the crystarium late game felt meaningless because auto-battle would just choose the quickest spells/techniques 90% of the time. The only mild benefit was the added HP. It would just boil down to "do you want this technique now, or more HP/Str/Mag?"
Again, for the main game it was fine in my experience. I tend to be very stingy on item usage and upgrade, always fearful of screwing up, but no other game made me completely avoid the usage of materials for the whole game like 13 did, I can only recommend this game for a pure plot paythrough.
The "one hundred - ism" on this title is absolute madness and I never ever did it, I tried to 3 times, between long hiatuses (years) and once you have to keep killing turtles before you kill uber turtles, it gets, let's say, boring.
Overall I very much enjoyed this one, the positives weighted more than the negatives. And there's no right or wrong. It is good seeing other's perspectives so you have the opportunity to look at it through another lens and add to your own overall experience and evaluation going forward.
i specifically remember making an angry rant facebook post about the gapra whitewood when i first started traversing it lmao. so gorgeous; so boring. ff xiii-2 had monster catching so i liked it more. still never beat it. good retrospective!!
I called off work for this game and honestly really enjoyed it. Its not the best ff game but it was a lot of fun and i enjoyed the story
Great retrospective! I agree with almost every critique you have of XIII. I laughed hard at your hatred for Snow cos I honestly felt the same. The character design really was the weakest aspect of XIII.
I hope to see your retrospective of 12, I think it’s one of the most underrated FFs considering how much lore it has compared to the rest of the franchise.
Lol, yeah, Snow irritated the hell out me.
I'll defo do a retrospective of FF12 cos I absolutely love that game, but I'm kinda preparing myself for it cos that's gonna be a long playthrough and a very long video haha.
Well I look forward to it.
if you take ffxiii as mostly a cinematic experience it's top tier
While the combat system was awesome, it was designed for 3 person parties. Unfortunately IIRC you spend about half the game with 2 person parties which leads to some incredibly tedious encounters. I remember ripping my hair out when Sazh and Vanille spent yet another 20 minutes taking out random mobs because neither of them is a damage dealer.
You kind of covered this from another angle. I don’t think it was that the enemies were too tangy. At least I never had an issue from Chapter 11 onwards when I could use a custom 3 person team.
The whole FF13 trilogy is awesome. Without a doubt the most overly and unjustly games in the franchise. Defend it all you want but I'll never stop laughing when a FFX fanboy complains about 13's map/traversal. (FFX is great btw but so it 13.)
I wish I could play this game, but the GamePass version I tried on PC was an absolute mess. But I do love watching long retrospectives on it. I'm excited to see where this one goes.
Edit: This was a pretty good overall retrospective - I enjoyed it.
If I could suggest some feedback, I think this retrospective could use something of an angle / argument / thesis to drive it. Like one focused point of analysis that connects the dots together and helps highlight some interesting perspective of the game. While I enjoyed this video and realize a lot of work went into it, it seemed to go from point-to-point a lot without a strong sense of an end goal or direction, in my opinion. Given this game's reputation, its analyses often have angles like "how did it compare to expectations?" or "what parts of this game are under-appreciated?", and those angles tend to lend a sense of cohesion even when those videos reach an hour in length - but of course your angle could be anything. Just some idea to return to from time to time, to connect everything and reinforce your perspective.
In fact, I especially enjoyed your quick lore dive at the beginning, since not too many retrospectives tend to really dig into the game's world. That combined with your points on level design makes me think something like "how does FFXIII's world impact the player experience" could've made for an angle you'd have a lot to say about. On one side, you'd have the confusing lore that put off players. On the other side, you'd have the fascinating environment design and it's lore implications, as well as monster and boss designs, and the game's unique summons, all of which you already touched upon.
Thanks a lot for your detailed response and feedback; I appreciate it!
My general style for my retrospectives does just tend to be much like this one where I cycle through talking about the game's various elements before finishing it up with a plot summary, rather than having a goal or central theme for the vid. I just like talking about games tbh, particularly ones that I have a history with, and so tend not to have a driving point or message that I'm trying to put forward.
Nonetheless, thanks for watching my vid and for giving me a really thoughtful response cos I'll defo keep your feedback in mind for future videos!
Ravagers are *not* magic classes, why do you think elemental strikes exist? Commandos are *not* physical classes, why do you think Ruin/ga exists?
Couldn’t stand the pacing, storytelling, and gameplay of this game. But it did look amazing.
Alreet big man, I made it here from the FF7 one. It's great. Now where is my FF13-2 retrospective? 😄
The biggest problem I had with 13 was the combat: not every class is made equal, and almost every single fight in the game is scripted for you to pair certain jobs to take them on, similar to exploiting elemental weaknesses in previous games. But there's not really a way to tell so unless you have them all memorized through a process of trial and error, fights fall into one of two categories: they're either piss easy or they're a lengthy slog where you're in very real danger of dying.
Which leads into a related issue I had with the leveling system. You're literally level capped by progress through the story, and you're even capped all the way up to the final boss. Which means you will never be able to overlevel to overcome the aforementioned restrictive combat system, and are forced to tackle every fight exactly how the devs want you to or suffer.
Auto-battle frequently didn't choose the best options in my playthrough so I rarely used it, and I felt severely punished by trying out different team comps. That was my experience with FF13, and while I enjoyed 13-2 quite a lot more, the story just never gripped me enough to make me even want to go back to it.
I had a friend that describes FFXIII the best way possible.
It's a poorly designed game but a very polished one.
On another note going from Final Fantasy XII to XIII felt like a huge downgrade in terms of everything
Let me clear up that question for you. Is FFXIII a good game?
Yes. I know this, because I came into it completely blind, having never played any Final Fantasy game before. I also played it at a time when I barely was playing video games. Nonetheless, it pulled me in and kept me hooked until I beat the game.
With that said, although it's a good game, it may be a bad FINAL FANTASY game. I feel like many of the criticisms of the game are based on unfavorable comparisons to other FF games. TBH, I think that's perfectly fine to do, but as a standalone game I think it's solid. Also, keep in mind that this game released during the open world craze, where people were demanding giant worlds in every game. So when FFXIII didn't have that, it got dragged through the coals. As I've never been a fan of big, but shallow, worlds, this worked perfectly fine for me.
Yeah extrem close to the undeniable truth💎💎💎
In the name of GOD THE ALMIGHTY
Please, if you haven’t played XIII-2, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Don’t let X-2 lead you to believe Final Fantasy can’t have good sequels. XIII-2 is what got me into the franchise. Such an underated gem of a game. I’d love to hear your take.
You can skip Lightning Returns though. Vomit inducing for real.
Love your voice.
I managed to break the crystarium, there's a point where you can buy exp buffing accessories. got to the point where i was maxing the crystarium immediately after expanding it with change.
I like this video. and this game was the beginning of my declining interest in the series
Your frustration was understandable but the battles were long because the game was punishing you for using awful paradigm spreads. Triple/double rav quickly staggers with only one or two turns of commando damage.
The thing is there are just too much jargons ( l'Cie ,fal'Cie, grand pulse, etc) in this game, as a non english speaking person it is really hard to follow the story, the farther the story goes the more gibberish you get. This never been the issue in other final fantasy series. And some people might hate the character and the battle mechanic but that is subjective and understandable
Moving in straight lines, way too many cutscenes, random combat encounters acting as filler as you traverse from set piece to set piece? Sounds like a PS4 exclusive. But for real I genuinely enjoy the sequel 13-2 because the levels felt like little sandboxes and there was a good spread of sidequest and main quest plus the monster collecting was kinda fun. Then there was lightning returns which is far from perfect but I think it was a fun take on the time limit video game style (even if Chrono stasis was way too overpowered) and while the whole plot line was very convoluted it brought a solid conclusion to the series. But the problem with lightning returns was its gameplay shift seems to have permanently altered final fantasy into the fairly linear action game direction which I’m not sure I’m a fan of.
I wish you could play this on the Nintendo switch or PlayStation five
We were all disappointed by 13. I was at the midnight debut at my local GameStop, pre-order, hardcore FF fan. I cannot put into words the heart sinking feeling I had about 3 hours in. It does get somewhat enjoyable after getting to pulse, but damn son, 70% of the game is mediocre. At best. Besides the graphics, graphics were sick lol combat was actually pretty fun too after getting used to it
I hope FFXVI will go back to roots like FFIX did, FFX was also very good. FFXV had terrible story and rpg implementation.
Yeah, I hope FFXVI is decent. I thought FFXV was dreadful but I quite like some of the stuff I've seen of the new one.
Does modern storytelling rely on using flashbacks way too much, and as a result, the final product suffers in some cases? 🤔
The constant flashbacks were what hurt 13, in my opinion.
Certain stories, flashbacks make sense.
Assassin's Creed, for example.
Alot of today's stories overdue the flashbacks tho.
Even final fantasy 7 or 8 would seem trash if you add a flashback after every dope moment.
It kills the momentum of the characters we're just now starting to feel and like.
How do I connect with Cloud, Barrett if...
They just did something really cool but---
Here's a 45 minute flashback of Cait Sith working at Shinra drinking coffee? 😂
Going back to FFXIII reviews... It seems that the problem is the WESTERN GAMERS
13 wasnt bad in terms of story and gameplay. the characters and everything that followed afterward that made it so awful
FFXIII is, in my opinion, one of the first signs of Nomura just caring about the aesthetics of Final Fantasy and not the gameplay.
His penchant for “combining” action gameplay and jrpg gameplay only got worse with FFVII Remake (fight me, I just said that) and FFXV.
Admittedly I’m speaking from a place where I played the Sakaguchi FF games first so the bias is there.
So much potential but totally wasted. That’s FFXIII for me.
You're overselling autobattle. Autobattle is most of the time the worst thing you could ever do in combat.
here... I will save everyone an hour and a half of their lives. games were bad... REALLY BAD! no one knows WHY it got 2 sequels from a lame, poorly written story and mostly terrible characters with an atrocious battle system.
-Bladestorm Player
Thank you I will now play Final Fantasy 13
@@GeraldMorshomp Hey its your limited life span in life to use how you wish.
This game doesn't get good until chapter 12, the rest of it is just padding. All of that just to lose a fight to a giant sonic ring who wants to destroy the world, and lightnings commander is a rocket raccoon parody that square were so anal about they made their own guardians game and why lighting fights like gamora (they're called the guardian corps ffs) all to reference a obscure square game noone's heard of which has infected their entire series since 13.
I disagree strongly
This game is complete trash
This game sucks
A 3/10 game. Everything in this game is bad.
-Characters design= 2/10. Vanille and Sazh are 0/10 and you are force to only allow use her and Sazh for 3-4 hours with those slow jazz music at background and combine with those eee, ahhh, yeeehh sound from Vanille.Omg.
-Music= 4/10.
Dont remember any good tracks while playing, but insteand the main song is too girly that seems to creat for 8 or9 year old girls.
-battle system =4
Any ff game battle system beat this
-monster design = 3
Fighting same monter again and again, and than the upgrade virsion of it but just change the colour. And than another upgrade virsion in different colour. Wtf is that h like alphabet monster that have no eye, no hair, no hand, no legs, no weapon,
Linear- 0/10
this game have no town, no side quest, no secret weapons, no secret boss, no secret charaters, no mini games,