An extremely unpolished title with some cool ideas.
The most common complaints about FFXIII that I've seen are that it's too linear and the combat sucks ("auto battle bad"). I didn't think either of these problems were all that bad. The game is extremely linear except for a brief moment in the middle, but this isn't inherently an issue. FFX is also extremely linear and it's fine. If it weren't for the issues I'll get to later then I don't think most people would've minded as much.
The combat is pretty good too, once you actually unlock all of its functionality (which takes way longer than necessary). It's essentially an ATB system like the older games, but the ATB bar fills SO fast that it's impractical to manually choose specific inputs all the time. Instead of choosing inputs your focus is on choosing paradigms, and in harder fights you will likely need to paradigm shift constantly to fight at peak efficiency. Instead of telling someone to cast Cure, you switch to a paradigm that has a Medic. The result is similar but it allows for more fast-paced battles.
My main issues are with the writing. At the start of the game Snow and Sazh are pretty boring characters, and Hope and Vanille are downright obnoxious. The worst two get a little better as the story goes, but overall I didn't feel like any of the characters really developed all that much. Their relationships with each other are also pretty static - there's some pairings with relationships that are established early, but they don't really develop past this and as a result they never really start feeling like a proper "squad" of people who all have each other's backs. Sazh is the worst offender of this, having virtually no connection to anyone else except for Vanille (and even that gets mostly dropped in the late game), but there are a few other pairings that have barely any direct interactions with each other.
Besides the character writing, the plot was also extremely messy and confusingly told. After the first act of constantly running away, the plot starts to seriously meander, and there were several moments where I felt unclear what exactly the party's short-term objectives were or why we were doing what we were doing. Meanwhile the main villain seems to always say that whatever the party happens to be doing at the moment is exactly what he planned for them to do which starts to feel pretty silly, and in the final moments of the game the day is saved by a completely unexplained deus ex machina.
Much of the plot hinges on saving the floating city of Cocoon, and much of the characters' motivations are wrapped up in their emotional connection to this goal. The problem with this is that I don't feel like I as a player was given much reason to give a shit about Cocoon. You're barely given any screen time with the main characters' loved ones, and you never have any interactions with the general populace outside of them running terrified or trying to kill you. Because of the in-media-res start of the story you never get much of a chance to experience what "normal" life in Cocoon is like, so you can't really miss it.
Despite my earlier saying that the linearity is not inherently an issue, it's true that the game is essentially a series of monster-filled hallways. There is a "stealth" system that allows you to avoid or ambush enemies in theory, but in practice something like 80-90% of the enemies in required areas are directly in the middle of the path and stare straight at you as you approach. There's also no way to run from battles. This means that no matter what you are going to fight a LOT of battles, and for the number of them they individually tend to take a long time especially in the late game. Fighting random encounters all the time in a game like FFX is fine because most of them can be resolved in seconds, and the ones that can't can be fled from. In FFXIII plenty of trash mob encounters take several minutes to complete with no option of running or avoiding them. The length of battles combined with the complete lack of proper "towns" or any similar resting spot makes the whole game kind of blur together into an indistinguishable mess of monster-filled hallways.
There is a single brief moment in the mid-game where it opens up dramatically, with side-quests and fast travel unlocks and everything. This would be a welcome change in theory, but in practice the open map and its many respawning enemies is an absolute chore to traverse, not helped by the paltry number of fast travel points, the clunkiness of using them, and the frankly nauseating camera which is often difficult to corral.
Anyway, it's overall pretty mediocre as far as JRPGs go. Decent combat mechanics are tainted somewhat by an over-abundance of overly-tanky trash mobs, and a cool world is somewhat wasted on a trite and hard-to-follow story.
The most common complaints about FFXIII that I've seen are that it's too linear and the combat sucks ("auto battle bad"). I didn't think either of these problems were all that bad. The game is extremely linear except for a brief moment in the middle, but this isn't inherently an issue. FFX is also extremely linear and it's fine. If it weren't for the issues I'll get to later then I don't think most people would've minded as much.
The combat is pretty good too, once you actually unlock all of its functionality (which takes way longer than necessary). It's essentially an ATB system like the older games, but the ATB bar fills SO fast that it's impractical to manually choose specific inputs all the time. Instead of choosing inputs your focus is on choosing paradigms, and in harder fights you will likely need to paradigm shift constantly to fight at peak efficiency. Instead of telling someone to cast Cure, you switch to a paradigm that has a Medic. The result is similar but it allows for more fast-paced battles.
My main issues are with the writing. At the start of the game Snow and Sazh are pretty boring characters, and Hope and Vanille are downright obnoxious. The worst two get a little better as the story goes, but overall I didn't feel like any of the characters really developed all that much. Their relationships with each other are also pretty static - there's some pairings with relationships that are established early, but they don't really develop past this and as a result they never really start feeling like a proper "squad" of people who all have each other's backs. Sazh is the worst offender of this, having virtually no connection to anyone else except for Vanille (and even that gets mostly dropped in the late game), but there are a few other pairings that have barely any direct interactions with each other.
Besides the character writing, the plot was also extremely messy and confusingly told. After the first act of constantly running away, the plot starts to seriously meander, and there were several moments where I felt unclear what exactly the party's short-term objectives were or why we were doing what we were doing. Meanwhile the main villain seems to always say that whatever the party happens to be doing at the moment is exactly what he planned for them to do which starts to feel pretty silly, and in the final moments of the game the day is saved by a completely unexplained deus ex machina.
Much of the plot hinges on saving the floating city of Cocoon, and much of the characters' motivations are wrapped up in their emotional connection to this goal. The problem with this is that I don't feel like I as a player was given much reason to give a shit about Cocoon. You're barely given any screen time with the main characters' loved ones, and you never have any interactions with the general populace outside of them running terrified or trying to kill you. Because of the in-media-res start of the story you never get much of a chance to experience what "normal" life in Cocoon is like, so you can't really miss it.
Despite my earlier saying that the linearity is not inherently an issue, it's true that the game is essentially a series of monster-filled hallways. There is a "stealth" system that allows you to avoid or ambush enemies in theory, but in practice something like 80-90% of the enemies in required areas are directly in the middle of the path and stare straight at you as you approach. There's also no way to run from battles. This means that no matter what you are going to fight a LOT of battles, and for the number of them they individually tend to take a long time especially in the late game. Fighting random encounters all the time in a game like FFX is fine because most of them can be resolved in seconds, and the ones that can't can be fled from. In FFXIII plenty of trash mob encounters take several minutes to complete with no option of running or avoiding them. The length of battles combined with the complete lack of proper "towns" or any similar resting spot makes the whole game kind of blur together into an indistinguishable mess of monster-filled hallways.
There is a single brief moment in the mid-game where it opens up dramatically, with side-quests and fast travel unlocks and everything. This would be a welcome change in theory, but in practice the open map and its many respawning enemies is an absolute chore to traverse, not helped by the paltry number of fast travel points, the clunkiness of using them, and the frankly nauseating camera which is often difficult to corral.
Anyway, it's overall pretty mediocre as far as JRPGs go. Decent combat mechanics are tainted somewhat by an over-abundance of overly-tanky trash mobs, and a cool world is somewhat wasted on a trite and hard-to-follow story.