I'm sure this is 10/10 in a timeline where p5 never released.......

Jokes aside, I think the gameplay and soundtrack are amazing and the visuals are good too. The dialogues are weak, I think it felt a lil' better when there was no voice acting too, maybe I'm bad at judging dialogue but it felt like people reading twitter threads out loud. The dating parts are what bothered me the most, I ended up ignoring them altogether (sidenote I did the golden ticket thing that exists for some reason???) and it turns out the social links affects the ending lol.
It is a pretty fun game to try out though.

since they added the watched category i can safely say that i played danganronpa 2...... or that is what i would say if i had watched it in its entirety.
truth is, when the game wasn't released on the west, i watched the first two cases when someone was translating them in video form, and then i read the third and fourth cases on a tumblr mirror of the somethingawful let's play, and the last case i read on a translation of a korean let's play.
so i'm humbly asking the backloggd administration to IMMEDIATLY add the "read" category to this website, or there will be consequences.

“Yesss! Let’s disable the four locks and get into that lab!
Sounds kinda video-gamey when you say it out loud, huh?”
-Nemona Pokemon.

I don’t fucking care about graphics nor glitches. It’s the type of thing that you see and forget about 5 minutes afterwards. I didn’t care about them in cyberpunk and I don’t care about them here. It’s true that demanding that the company with the biggest gaming franchise in the world do better it’s the right thing to do, but c’mon man, if that’s the only thing you have to say about this and other games then you don’t care much about the medium as you say.
That being said, this game sucks ass.

The last Pokemon game I played to completion was Moon, so I don’t know about Sword and the other games in between, but I’m gonna pretend they don’t exist for this review.
The main problem with this game is also the problem I had with other recent releases from other franchises (SMTV, Elden Ring…) but I think this one here is the worst of them all.
It’s the open world thing. It’s a very sad thing that this is the norm now.
My main gripe with this new approach is that it’s supposed to give you ‘freedom’, but in reality, while being true that you can go anywhere you want (not that much though), the game openly reveals the points of interests you need to know, and in a very open-worldy fashion, becomes rigidly structured. You can do A, B, C or B, C, A, but that’s it, it’ll never allow itself to divert from that. It becomes a checking boxes simulator with stealth and crafting. Just beat 8 leaders, 5 paradoxes and 5 star members, collect shit and get the ending. It’s just the open world way man, you’ll never understand…
All the tera stuff is pointless, in combat, in raids, in minibosses. The paradox bosses, gym tests and team star bases were boring as fuck, the last two are specially jarring because the pre-gym dungeon/team bases were the most fun part of the series for me, and they replaced it with mini-games.
Let’s not forget about the difficulty, since I feel that the series became a bit too easy the past few gens. I would say that it’s all over the place with spikes and all but you can also make your own path here, so maybe it’s my fault in some way. But it’s also true that the game makes no attempt to adjust itself to the path you choose, it doesn’t need automatic level scaling, that would suck, but for example: very early in the game you get to choose between two doors, east and west, but when you do so, instead of leveling up the path you did not take, they leave it as it is, and when you reach there you wipe everything instantly and it kills all the hype of those bosses. And do not tell me that you can beat one gym and take the other door; you probably can, but it’s still a very boring alternative imo (and even nurse joy tells you to keep going the way you were, but that system just works like shit). I’ll say that the boss battles that are around your level are pretty fun, but they were rare in this long game, mostly the late game stuff.
Open world ruins everything. Trainer battles became glorified normal encounters most of the time. The UI is hell, especially the map. The world itself feels like a minecraft server with towny, this is not a jab towards the graphics, it’s a design issue, I just can’t explain further, just look at the world with that thought in your mind and you’ll see. And populating the world are the pokemon, that look like mmo monsters walking around their spawn spots. Compared to the old, invisible random encounters, seeing them in the overworld makes them less special, it strips the encounters from the surprise, and finding the rarer forms stops feeling special; your mind used to fill in the gaps and all that. At first thought they were going to go with a bugsnax-style approach for the mon hunting, but outside of the occasional wigglet, just throw a ball at them and fight, that’s all. And sometimes you will accidentally step on a microscopic pokemon with your giant koraidon, starting a battle. Random encounters, please come back. I need you baby.
The only thing that redeems such an empty feeling world, is the characters themselves. I love their designs and, while still being unidimensional asf, they successfully managed to give a feeling that they like to be around each other. They carry this game’s world. Director Clavell is GOD. I really like the team star storyline, love what they tried to do there.
But yeah I hated this most of the time. I can’t wait for Palworld, that’s gonna rock.

tl;dr si hubieran puesto el juego acá en burzaco en lugar de españa hubiera sido bueno

I'm honestly not sure where to even begin with this game. There are so many things to love and so many problems at the same time. I haven't even really decided what the quality of the game is myself, yet I still ended up really loving it in the end. I guess I'll just go over every thing that did and didn't work for me.

Gameplay:

Final Fantasy XIII has one of the best combat systems I have ever played. It truly feels perfectly thought out and designed in every way. Battles control like your average turn based RPG, however there is no taking turns in this game. Your party as well as the enemies you fight have an action bar that charges over time, and you decide when and how to use that action bar. This is the best way in which I have ever seen an RPG make the player focus on timing that didn't feel a bit clunky; unlike some of the older FF games. On top of the amazing timing system, this game also introduces the stagger system, another one of the best RPG mechanics I have ever seen. Each character can switch between numerous different stances with different types of attacks. Some of these attacks focus on doing damage while others focus on charging the "stagger bar," Which significantly weakens the enemy and is often the only way to practically kill them. What all this means is that in every single battle, no matter what the enemy, having a real strategy is an absolute must. It makes it so that the game never feels slow or grindy as battles will always demand your full attention and be engaging at the same time. Additionally this game makes the excellent choice to replenish your health after every battle, meaning you never have to worry about resource management and can just focus on what's actually fun; the combat. The game also does an excellent job with its experience/level up system. Rather than there being actual levels, there is a crystarium that functions like a skill tree where you can choose what aspects of your character you actually want to upgrade. New sections of the crystarium with better upgrades are unlocked upon completing chapters, which prevents you from ever becoming too overleveled. This is just another factor forcing you to constantly use strategy in battles, and also actively discourages the player from grinding. All of these aspects combine to make probably my favorite RPG battle system ever.

Outside of the combat system, this game has one big, glaring problem that I'm a little bit conflicted on: it's linearity. It is a bit ridiculous just how linear this game is. Aside from one area, nearly every single level of this game is just a straight hallway where you walk directly to your objective and I understand why some people hate it, but here's the thing; I don't. I have to ask myself, does this game really need exploration? While it's true that the level design definitely could be a bit more interesting, it doesn't hurt this game too much. The most interesting part of this game is the fighting, and this linear level design ensures that the player is always guided to the exact area they should be in to fight enemies that are exactly the right strength for them. It also ensures that the story can be paced exactly how the developers intended, despite this game's story being a bit lacklustre in a few ways. The way I see it, the time you spend walking between battles is a bit of an intermission for you to observe the world around you and to connect everything in the game together, and that’s okay.

I think my one big issue with the gameplay and the reason that so many people have a problem with these levels and the lack of interactivity with the world is caused by the lack of mini games. Though the world looks stunning you almost never interact with it in any way aside from walking from enemy to enemy. There is exactly one minigame in chapter 2 of the game, and then you never see one ever again. It almost feels like there was a plan to include them that was just never executed for whatever reason. It’s not the end of the world, just a bit disappointing.

Story

This is by far Final Fantasy XIII’s biggest problem by a long shot. I’ll give it some credit in that the general concept of the world and its backstory is genuinely very cool, but it is executed and presented so bafflingly badly that I don't even know how Square thought it was acceptable to release in its current state. For starters, you are given no context on what many of the made up terms and nonsense story aspects are. Instead, you're expected to read an in-game dictionary to make sense of anything, however you'll often just have to read the game's wikipedia page. This game loves to tell you what happens in its story without actually showing it to you. What really doesn't help is that the dialogue in this game is some of the worst, most unnatural sounding I have ever heard. I have seen student films made by 10th graders developed on budgets of cardboard with better dialogue than this. The characters often barely feel like they're even talking to each other, instead just spouting random nonsense needed to progress the plot. There must have also been some sort of miscommunication between the writers, voice actors, and animators, because holy sometimes the editing for this game's cutscenes is actually so horrible. Characters will constantly cut each other off or have 2 voice lines play at the same time, and interrupt themselves constantly with their weird anime grunting. Each character is a fairly simple anime trope you've probably seen many times before and they are all pretty hard to relate to, which sucks cause the entire first 6 chapters of this game are dedicated to each character's arc, and none of them are good. Still, despite everything I just said, the characters (though bland) were consistent enough that by the end of the game I did find myself liking them and even rooting for them. Also, none of this story stuff would be nearly as big a deal if this game wasn't an RPG, one of the most story heavy genres in gaming. Even if you don't like the story, if you can look past it, the game is still playable.

Graphics

Graphically FF XIII is absolutely stunning. I have no idea how this was even released on PS3 because it looks better than many PS4 games I've played, and at a distance could even be mistaken for something that was released today. One advantage to this game's linear level design is that the developers can control exactly what you see and focus all their effort into making it absolutely beautiful. This game has so many interesting and incredible locations that would often make me take a small break from playing just to sit back and observe them. Interestingly the one area in this game that doesn't match the rest in terms of visual quality happens to be the one “open world” style area.

Music

I do not have too much to say about this aspect aside from the music being a little disappointing. Off the top of my head I can't exactly remember any of this game's music aside from one battle theme. I wouldn't care about this as much as I do if this were any series other than Final Fantasy, but as it is, I expected more.

Conclusion

I’ve definitely got a few more stray complaints and compliments I haven't mentioned in this review, but I feel I've properly conveyed my general feelings on this game. Despite being conflicted on many things I did enjoy Final Fantasy XIII quite a bit, and it might even be my favourite RPG in some aspects. If you're reading this wondering if you would enjoy the game or not, I really couldn't say. Some of the things that annoyed me about this game might be completely hated by someone else, or might be loved. I feel like this game felt really tailor made for me to enjoy in a lot of ways, so it really depends on your taste in games. Personally I definitely enjoyed it and will not be forgetting my time with it anytime soon.