The beginning of Final Fantasy's decline in popularity. The general difficulties most Japanese developers had when transitioning to HD game dev combined with Square Enix's own issues led to this game coming out as a jumbled mess. A polished mess, sure, but still a mess. The battle system is a lot of fun... but there are way too many battles.

The plot is stretched real thin for most of the game as you spend a lot of it with your party split into groups of 2 going their separate ways. There are a lot of elements in this game trying to hearken back to the feeling Final Fantasy VII gave everyone when it first released, but it just doesn't do anything well enough to earn that.

This game also has one of the weakest party lineups in a Final Fantasy. Lightning's backstory isn't interesting enough to justify her cold attitude, Snow feels pretty two dimensional, Hope is obnoxious and the game really stretches his whole issue with Snow out way too long, and Vanille is... I don't know. I just do not like Vanille much. Fang is whatever and Sazh is a dad. It's a party that does not work for me.