Playing this has given me a new found appreciation for Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Rebirth. Anyone complaining about that game going off the rails and becoming too much like Kingdom Hearts needs to see what this game does with the world set up XIII.

I'll start with my positive thoughts on the game. For something that was made in 18 months, it's actually quite impressive. The bulk of the design work for the combat was obviously already done but there are some smart, slight changes here that improve upon the already fantastic battle system. Being able to change leaders and no more 2 second animation when changing paradigms for the first time in a battle are welcome additions.
It's also a much less linear game, clearly a response to the criticisms of the incredibly straightforward area's of the previous game. Gone is the corridor level design in favour of more open area's with actual people to talk to. There's also the inclusion of a handful of minigames to break up the monotony that was ever present in the previous game. Clearly the developers understood that it wasn't just the level design that made sections of the previous game feel like a drag.

Unfortunately, the game just didn't have the time or scope to make these changes meaningful. It's the very definition of missing the wood for the trees.

The combat is vastly improved, but the game's difficulty curve is a complete mess. I fought most battles I encountered and did what I thought to be a conservative amount of side content and found the majority of the game to incredibly easy... until the final dungeon/boss which then became way too difficult. In 13, the potential to level up was capped so the developers were always able to design fights around a very small range of party power levels and thus, every fight felt engaging and challenging, but not too challenging. Obviously that approach was met with some backlash but the alternative this game presents left the combat feeling unsatisfying.
I did find it interesting that the majority of battles don't give that much CP, and the majority of that levelling currency will come from the side content so this difficulty spike at the end really encourages you to go back and do more of the side content. However, when I finally returned to the last dungeon area I had completely outleveled everything, including the final boss. The difficulty curve in 13 was so perfect that it's a shame it wasn't able to be recreated here.

The area's being open is also a nice idea, but the area's are filled with nothingness and just leads to constant backtracking for quests. There's nothing interesting and meaningful in the world. Gone are the enemies roaming the world and in their place are randomly placed quest items that only serve as a way to keep you running back and forth with nothing interesting going on. I'm completely fine with reused area's/assets, but when you're asking me to run through an area for the 4th or 5th time, looking for invisible items to throw my moogle at, it ends up feeling just as tedious as the previous game.

I'm not even gonna talk about the moogle throwing mechanic.

The story itself isn't totally without merit. It's a non linear time travel story that doesn't get over complicated, which I think is commendable. I also think Caius, the villain, is actually pretty well fleshed out and lightyears ahead of the previous game's villain, who is basically nonexistent.

However, the bulk of your time is spent with Noel, Serah and the Moogle and unfortunately they're just not as interesting as the villain. In 13, the party was diverse and lead to a plethora of interesting interactions but here, Serah and Noel don't really play off of each other that well, and their relationship wears out it's welcome sooner rather than later.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment in the story for me was the treatment of the party members from the previous game. While X-2 felt like a fun epilogue that allowed you to get a glimpse of those character' lives after the events of X, XIII-2 basically doesn't even try to continue the excellent character work of XIII. I guess it comes with the territory in being a less character driven story, but Snow (the literal love interest of one of the main characters) being relegated to a single chapter that teases things that are not resolved in any way is a travesty. Sazh is basically non existent and used as an incentive for DLC. Vanille and Fang are completely absent (which given the circumstances, I was completely fine with) and Lightning, while important to the story, has only a handful of appearances. Hope is arguably the only character that has a satisfying arc, but even he is fodder for the time travel shenanigans at hand.

Ultimately, there's stuff I enjoyed about the game but when it comes down to it, this game feels incredibly rushed and the interesting idea's presented are both underdeveloped and ignore the strengths of the previous game.

I did like the ending, and I'm happy to have crossed another Final Fantasy game off the to play list, but I still think this is a bad game that has no respect for the story and world of XIII.

While my interest in the first person military shooter has waned over the years, this is still one of the best FPS campaigns I've ever played. Those last moments still give me goosebumps.

Though the campaign alone is not what makes this an all time favourite to me because on top of a fun, challenging single player, the multiplayer is really the thing I spent the most time with. I didn't bother trying to load it up on this playthrough but the memories of playing this for months on end in 2007 will stick with me forever.

I enjoyed this game when it first came out and 14 years later I still think this is an incredibly underrated entry in the Final Fantasy saga.

I don't disagree with a lot of the criticism, it's certainly incredibly linear and it handholds the player for way too long before opening up but at the same time it excels in area's where other Final Fantasy games don't.

For starters (and the thing I enjoyed most about the game) the story, the characters and the world. This felt like the first Final Fantasy game to make every single character feel important, and maintain their importance to the very end of the game.
In previous games, there were always characters that felt less important to the plot the further in you get. Sometimes it was because they were optional (see 1/3 of the FFVI cast), others it was just because they just weren't important to the overarching plot (see basically everyone except Zidane in FFIX). This isn't inherently a bad thing but for the first time in the series, 13 shines the spotlight on every single character and develops the relationships between them more so than any previous entry. There's even a point where 4 of the 6 characters intentionally decide to go opposite directions, with different objectives in mind.

Another area this game excels is in the difficulty curve. I feel like most Final Fantasy games reach a point of basically becoming stomping grounds for your characters, with the last bosses feeling like pushovers to your 9999+ damage wrecking crews.
Final Fantasy 13 manages to stay challenging through to the very end. It does so by very much constraining the upper limit of growth your characters can reach. It's an interesting solution to the balancing issue these games have always faced and it left me engaging with the combat for far longer than I would have otherwise.
This is a double edged sword though, because by removing the ability to out level the enemies, you're removing a core part of the franchise' identity and a lot of people weren't into that. I get it, but in my eyes it lead to a much more satisfying difficulty curve that kept the gameplay engaging.

Ultimately, I'm able to overlook the game's numerous shortcomings in favour of appreciating the things it gets right. In hindsight, a lot of the linearity seems to be the result of Square Enix struggling to adapt to the demands of developing HD games. This project was announced as a trilogy, clearly a means to recoup the increased development costs and given how much longer it would take for 15 and 16 to come out, it's clear they struggled with this issue for a very long time.

At the end of the day, Final Fantasy at it's core is about a good story and a rich, layered world and 13 delivers that in spades. Definitely a top 5 game in the franchise for me.

Oh, and there's a baby chocobo that lives in a dudes afro, so like, best game ever.