when i made the commitment to myself to play through all the final fantasy games (excluding the mmos and any non-mainline spinoffs... for now?!) i knew i'd have ff13 ahead of me
i also knew i'd have ff8 ahead of me but i loved that one so moving on
i try to find the good in any games i play, especially near-universally hated ones because i'm a contrarian piece of shit, but i can't
the problem with ff13 is that everything feels half-assed, and i know i'm not saying anything new here
the story's kinda good but all the details suck cause they don't explain most shit except through the datalogs
the gameplay's almost good but it's like they did a prototype and never bothered to expand it into anything interesting, and it also lacks the charm of other ff game mechanics? like they took all the fun stuff out of the job system and just made it generic tank healer dps, although they get bonus for the separate buff and debuff roles... or like they wanted to make the gambit system from 12 more accessible, but in doing so ripped out any reason to really dig deep... not that there is much depth!
the environments are (mostly) nice looking but obviously everyone knows HALLWAYS so you just end up running in a semi-straight line seeing the same shit over and over instead of being allowed to explore and find cool hidden corners like in most rpgs
but then to counter that! when the game finally does open up it's with some of the ugliest environments! i mean i'm spoiled by modern games doing big open plains better, to be fair, but still, even fi i give it leeway for being old, it's still not INTERESTING (except the giant titan, that's cool)
stagger is a nice mechanic i'll give it that (and they know it cause it's carried through to other games at this point)
the one thing i did really like was the characters, and their arcs, both individually and as a group - although the PLOT got in the way sometimes, their emotional growth throughout as they respond to the shit they're dealing with is genuinely good i think
ahhh whatever i've written enough it's a bad game
onto the sequel
i also knew i'd have ff8 ahead of me but i loved that one so moving on
i try to find the good in any games i play, especially near-universally hated ones because i'm a contrarian piece of shit, but i can't
the problem with ff13 is that everything feels half-assed, and i know i'm not saying anything new here
the story's kinda good but all the details suck cause they don't explain most shit except through the datalogs
the gameplay's almost good but it's like they did a prototype and never bothered to expand it into anything interesting, and it also lacks the charm of other ff game mechanics? like they took all the fun stuff out of the job system and just made it generic tank healer dps, although they get bonus for the separate buff and debuff roles... or like they wanted to make the gambit system from 12 more accessible, but in doing so ripped out any reason to really dig deep... not that there is much depth!
the environments are (mostly) nice looking but obviously everyone knows HALLWAYS so you just end up running in a semi-straight line seeing the same shit over and over instead of being allowed to explore and find cool hidden corners like in most rpgs
but then to counter that! when the game finally does open up it's with some of the ugliest environments! i mean i'm spoiled by modern games doing big open plains better, to be fair, but still, even fi i give it leeway for being old, it's still not INTERESTING (except the giant titan, that's cool)
stagger is a nice mechanic i'll give it that (and they know it cause it's carried through to other games at this point)
the one thing i did really like was the characters, and their arcs, both individually and as a group - although the PLOT got in the way sometimes, their emotional growth throughout as they respond to the shit they're dealing with is genuinely good i think
ahhh whatever i've written enough it's a bad game
onto the sequel