Somehow both too chaotic and simplistic for its own good, Final Fantasy XIII stands a definitive sign of its time and a harbinger of our current one.
For many, saying Final Fantasy XIII means saying 'failure' in the same breath. Even fans of the game will speak as if they're playing defense against some nebulous sense of disdain. Growing up, I only heard overwhelming derision when the game was mentioned. It seems that no matter who you are, you understand that XIII has a cloud of darkness looming over it. But why?
Evolution / Devolution
Well, it won't take long after pressing start to see for yourself. First, you'll be assaulted with barrage of proper nouns within moments of just loading in. Talk of Pulse, Purges, PSICOM, Focuses, Cocoon, L'cie, Fal'cie, etc. will disorient you to the point of indifference before you even learn anyone's name. But we'll get back to the story later. If this wasn't enough to set your alarms off, the combat encounters you're thrown into moments later should set you to DEFCON 1 instantly.
To start, Final Fantasy XIII has boldly opted to remove control of party members--meaning you'll be controlling one character and one character only. Consequentially, if that character dies, you'll be getting a game over...even if the other characters are alive and are capable of reviving you.
This decision alone spells ruin for even the most well intentioned of RPGs. Taking away options and methods for character expression should only be done when something else becomes complex enough to justify streamlining. Not to even mention how dangerous it is to leave players at the mercy of party AI. Anyone who's played similar games (Persona 3, etc.) can probably recall at least a few horror stories of negligent healers, absentminded mages, or unresponsive tanks that can still make their blood boil. God knows I can.
But hey, if we're only controlling one character then certainly the game has plenty of fresh rewarding mechanics to throw at us...right? Funny. Nearly every aspect of the game's battle systems have been dumbed down to new impressive lows. The usual RPG stats have been boiled down to merely two unique values (Strength and Magic). Mana no longer exists. Equipment is back to a simple weapon/accessory duality. And finally, proper levels/XP have been excised from the game entirely...just to name a few changes. Beyond player control, nearly every other avenue for unique expression has been reduced or removed entirely--offering the player mere mechanical scraps to work with.
Naturally, 'jobs' in the traditional FF sense are also dead in the water. Instead, players can take on one of six different 'roles,' although only three are available on a character by default. These rolls simplify RPGs to their most basic essence: attack, magic, tank, heal, buff, and debuff. Since you only have three party members, it's a given that you're able to switch roles during battle. However, since this is still Final Fantasy XIII, you can't quite switch roles on command. Instead, you must enter a special menu, create a limited list of pre-made role setups (paradigms) for your entire party. Then, during battle, you can access these paradigms and choose one on demand. In essence, these paradigms rob players of creating unique builds or strategies for battle--pigeonholing them into one of the six cliché and simplistic character roles.
What's in a Battle? / Why do we Battle?
So why do we even need six classes? Well, to be honest, we don't. For 98% of encounters you won't even think about using the tank, buff, and debuff classes. Most battles are simple enough and go by so quickly that you won't have to do anything beyond slap opponents into submission--something the game actively encourages. You heard me right: Final Fantasy now rewards players for finishing battles as fast as possible--meaning you're incentivized to essentially 'speedrun' every battle for the best reward. This change might sound interesting on the face of it. Giving every fight its own small meta-challenge could be good for keeping up player engagement. But unfortunately, the game's implementation of the concept, as well as how it ties into other mechanics, starts more fires than it puts out.
For one, it creates a positive feedback loop that I can only describe as brutally unfun and counterintuitive: Players who are already ahead get rewarded and put even further ahead of the curve. While players who are behind get pushed even further back unless they go out of their way to grind. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a big fan of dynamic difficulty Left 4 Dead AI Director-type balance in jRPGs. Final Fantasy VIII already tried, and failed, to implement such a system. But the exact design of it in XIII shows, in essence, everything I hate about the bog-standard JRPG...or at least the image of JRPGs that most players have. It discourages experimentation, unique play, and plain-old dicking around in order to demand a consistent, bland, and efficient performance from players. And if you're not keeping on the up-and-up...well, then get grinding for all the rewards you didn't get! It has the appearance of a unique challenge, but in reality it's a cheap stat check. One that rewards players only if they've got enough damage to make quick work of enemies. After all, we've established there are virtually zero mechanical avenues for creatively taking down your foes.
This is all made even worse by the new Stagger mechanic that has regretfully become a mainstay of Final Fantasy games since. In essence, you now barely damage enemies unless you fill a separate stagger meter first. The meter slowly boosts your damage and eventually reaches a (temporary) fever pitch once you fill it. However it'll deplete back to zero after you fill it or if you fail to fill it to max while it slowly drains. Basically, you need to fill the meter and then do as much damage as possible within the timeframe before the meter depletes. You can do damage outside of the meter, but considering that you're able to get up to 999% damage with a stagger, it's going to be a necessity in all but the easiest of fights.
So then, how do we build chain? Keeping in line with everything above, you build them in the most boring, limiting, and boilerplate way possible. When it comes to damage output there's only two real options: Commando, who slaps enemies with strength attacks, and Ravager, who damages foes using magic spells. Since your party has three spaces it might sound like you have room to experiment...but somehow, even here the developers have forced you down one path the entire game.
For you see, these two classes affect the all-important chain meter in entirely different ways. Commandos will add very little to the chain meter with each attack, but they slow the meter's degeneration. Ravagers, on the other hand, will add a large amount of meter per spell, but will rapidly degenerate the meter. This might sound like game design 101--making players weigh the costs of different party organizations--but in practice it actually kills what little player freedom is left. The meter's design means that most enemies require you have both commando and ravager in the party at all times when you're trying to build stagger. Presuming we're not using tanks, buffers, or debuffers in our party since we're fighting simple battles, let's consider our possible party lineups:
Commando, Commando, Commando: This lineup is functionally worthless, as commandos don't build stagger meters in any substantial way. Unless the enemies have tiny amounts of HP (making the meter useless), consider this lineup a non-starter.
Commando, Commando, Ravager: Throwing a ravager in the mix means you can start to meaningfully build meter, which is good. On the other hand, there's not really any purpose in having two commandos. One is good enough to stop the meter from resetting. This setup is usable, but horribly inefficient most of the time.
Commando, Ravager, Ravager: Keeping two ravagers means that you can build meters quickly, making good use of a commando to keep the meter from resetting. This is the lineup you'll probably be using for 99% of the game if you want to make quick work of enemies. As long as foes require stagger to fight quickly, you'll have very little choice but to use this when on the offense.
Ravager, Ravager, Ravager: This lineup is great if you can reasonably build a full meter in one full turn. However, if you can't then the chain meter will basically reset instantly, as there's no commando to keep it from disintegrating faster and faster with every spell cast. This is an incredibly situational lineup that only makes sense if you either already popped a chain meter--meaning you just need to focus on damage output--or if you're in the situation outlined above.
Throw in a medic, or two into the mix and you've got yourself the party configurations you'll be looking at 99% of the game:
Ravager, Ravager, Commando - The ol' reliable (50%)
Ravager, Commando, Medic - Boring but safe (20%)
Ravager, Ravager, Ravager - Fast nukes, limited uses (15%)
Commando, Medic, Medic - Survive and keep stagger going (5%)
Ravager, Medic, Medic - Survive and nuke (5%)
Medic, Medic, Medic - SURVIVE (5%)
As for the other classes...they only become meaningful during boss battles or other 'large' fights that make up a miniscule amount of the game's runtime. Even then the playbook is braindead simple:
1) Start battle with buff (Synergist) and debuff (Saboteur) classes
2) Once buffs/debuffs have been applied, switch to regular fight lineups
3) If damaged, throw out a healer
4) If buffs/debuffs run out, GOTO 1
The tank (Sentinel) can also be thrown in whenever a tank is needed, but to be honest I barely ever used the class on account of its niche applications in a game this simple. After all, why have someone tank when a medic heals for better HP throughput?
This might sound like a lot to take in, but it's paper-thin to stretch out over a forty-plus hour experience. This tedium is compounded by the fact that several of these mechanics aren't even introduced until you're already hours into the game!
To summarize party mechanics: they're simpler than they've ever been (beyond games without any meaningful choices like Final Fantasy IV). Developer attempts to 'balance' party structure only lead to further reductions in options. This means every player is essentially forced to play the same boring lineups to cope with the game's barebone mechanics. Even considering the meager class lineup, half are highly situational and will only get thrown out for a cheap hat trick during boss battles or other high profile fights.
I have seen some praise the party system (and paradigm shifting) as a highlight of the game--allowing players to gracefully 'context switch' between several party styles on the fly. But labeling these mechanics as 'good' is completely missing the forest for the trees. The choices the paradigm system gives you--to be offensive, defensive, or some mix--are the basic macro choices all RPGs allow you to make. During battles, you will have to choose when to heal, attack, buff, tank, debuff, etc. The only reason it feels more 'clean' in Final Fantasy XIII is because they have taken away every single micro choice you can make. They've left you with only the macro choice of 'be a healer' or 'be fighter' without any of the finer nuances that make an RPG interesting or rewarding. To be clear, Final Fantasy XIII offers nothing new to the genre of RPGs. It only mechanically takes away what even NES games had already given us 25 years prior.
But the real coup de grâce that seals XIII's fate as one of the worst triple-A JRPGs ever made is the game's Auto-battle feature. As you can imagine, auto-battle picks a (near) optimal set of actions based on battle context. In many games this would sound silly, but with how comically limited XIII's mechanics are, auto-battle tends to do a good job. In fact, auto-battle is too good at its job. So good that there are rarely instances where the player needs to do anything but use auto-battle. The worst part is that auto-battle is the first menu option in combat--meaning the developers expect you to rely on it more than your own decision making! Combine this with the fact that paradigms are so simplistic, and the game quickly devolves into a tiresome combination of switching between a few basic paradigms and pressing X.
And boy, do I mean it. I genuinely spent more time looking away from XIII then looking at it--even during boss fights. The game was able to practically play itself, only requiring me to step in whenever I needed to shift paradigms to heal/buff. It's astounding that the game designers considered this acceptable for a triple-A console game--especially one meant to be their company's flagship title. To be honest, it barely holds up as a mobile game--an ecosystem where XIII's barebone mechanics feel more at home.
And sure, players who really wish to fight the tide can opt out of auto-battling, but you must remember the holy mantra of good game design--something that XIII and its fans have forgotten:
The path of least resistance must not be dull.
The 'World' of Final Fantasy XIII / The Light at the End of the Tunnel is a Train
But the dirty details of battle aren't where this story ends...hell this section isn't even where the literal story begins. Instead, we need to talk about the all-important vehicle for the gameplay and story in an RPG: the world. And believe me, if there's one place Final Fantasy XIII absolutely screwed the pooch, it would be here.
As anyone who lived through the early 2010s knows, Final Fantasy XIII has the exploratory depth of an elevator shaft. Instead of continuing Final Fantasy's tradition of building a complete open world--a trend which had also been gaining steam outside of RPGs--XIII opts for a collection of straight corridors that persist for (practically) the entire game.
I'm sure we've all heard the jokes about how XIII is just a 'tutorial' for 40 hours straight...but that feeling doesn't truly set in until you actually sit down to absorb those forty hours and see just how empty XIII really is. It seriously is just a collection of straight hallways peppered with lazily placed enemy encounters and banal 'branching paths' for treasure collection...for forty fucking hours. It's a completely on-rails experience that comes closer to a train ride through a barren desert than a Six Flags rollercoaster. There's no towns, there's no backtracking, there's no interesting optional areas, there's nothing. It's like one of those rhetorical games people create for the sake of argument. Imagine, if you will, an RPG devoid of all charming content--left with nothing but barebone stats, mundane enemies, and an endless corridor to "progress" down. Would RPG fans still stomach this if it had some cool character designs, fancy graphics, and a 'banger' soundtrack? Thankfully (or perhaps horrifically), you don't need to imagine any of this--Square actually made it.
Of course, fans will remind naysayers that the game eventually 'opens up' when players arrive in Gran Pulse near the 30ish hour mark. This claim is total horseshit. Much like the Calm Lands in Final Fantasy X, Gran Pulse is merely a single large, flat, and dull field that the player is allowed to dredge through before being thrown right back down the generic hallways encompassing the rest of the game. The game purports to 'come alive' in Gran Pulse, but this is only realized through half-baked XII-ian monster hunts that only happen during this one portion of the game. That's right, you finally get access to some piss-poor side content in XIII after about thirty hours of playtime. These hunts, essentially being the only optional content in the game, boil down to the exact same boring fights as the regular story--except now requiring you to walk around a big empty field to fight. It feels like the team realized too late into development that they had a total mess of a world and desperately tried to shove in anything to mix things up. Unfortunate for them, Gran Pulse is the spitting image of 'too little, too late' in terms of world and game design. Any would-be designers ought to take note: this is how not to design a world.
Upon release, the director (and the game's fans) rebuked criticism of XIII's world design with assertions that the game's hyper-linearity was actually a 'breath of fresh air' considering the (still) ever-expanding market of shoddy open world games. Now don't get me wrong, I despise generic triple-A open world games more than anyone else I know. Hell, I spend too much time considering how much better 99% of games would be if they were more linear. But in the case of Final Fantasy, Toriyama has managed to miss the point entirely. More than virtually any series out there, Final Fantasy had staked its claim on delivering players not just a game, but a genuinely unique world with every entry. Players want to live and breathe these places--and they derive a lot of enjoyment from exploring every dungeon, town, and weird spot on their own terms. Previous games were certainly focused on a story--but anyone who's played Final Fantasy I-IX can certainly recall fond memories of 'dicking around' somewhere in the world outside of the mandated story beats. Even Final Fantasy X (as incompetent and maligned as it was) tried to give you a 'sense' of an open world by letting you return to previous portions of the game--going as far to hide the occasional item/quest there. Sure it was 90% filler trash, and it still suffered the 'hallway' problem that XIII faces, but there was clearly an attempt to appeal to the core sensibilities of the genre, no matter how half-assed they were.
Growth / Harm
So the combat and world of XIII are shot to hell, but what about the final ludic pillar of RPGs: progression?
I'll let you guess.
But what's wrong with it and why did it end up that way? First, a short reminder of relevant history:
The traditional level system that defined golden age JRPGs was getting long in the tooth as the 90s came to a close. And so, many started to experiment. Final Fantasy VIII featured a leveling system that actually made the game harder as you progressed while Chrono Cross gated progression behind narrative encounters to discourage grinding. Of course, all of this stands in the shadow of the almighty sphere grid system from Final Fantasy X. Instead of conventional leveling, X gave you points to spend on a large grid where each node represented a stat boost or ability. The grid sounds great in theory but was awful in execution. In the most generous of readings, the grid was a skill-tree par excellence. But in reality it was yet another lazy way that X stretched out its runtime: transforming the streamlined process of leveling into a manual action that you suffered through--for all 828 nodes on each character's grid. Don't get me wrong, the freedom to customize your character is a good thing...but the sphere grid was a hyper-linear and progress-gated mess that forced you to spend more time menuing through UI and watching animations instead of strategizing or enjoying the actual gameplay. Despite a positive fan reception, the sphere grid disappeared in X-2 and was naturally absent in XII as well. But if XIII has somehow been a diluted X knockoff up to now…then it should be no surprise whose notes it was copying for a progression system.
Characters are given a significantly reduced 'grid' for each role they have. And although the general principle is still the same, the streamlined implementation means players will unlock dozens of nodes per role instead of hundreds. In some ways, this is a clear upgrade over X's system. I have to spend far less time thumbing around the UI and watching +1 STR nodes get slowly placed on the grid, meaning every node completed feels at least more meaningful than before...even if they are now mainly just +20 STR nodes instead. However, the new system has managed to make the whole upgrade process even more linear than before. Although the original sphere grid was primarily a straight shot with the occasional branching path (and constant level gates), there were a few items that allowed you to teleport around the grid in novel ways. It certainly didn't redeem the system, but it allowed for some remotely interesting options if you felt like going through the hassle. Instead, XIII's grid is a straight shot with the occasional node or two branched off. The distinction might not seem like much, but simply inspecting both grids should show you how much of a difference it makes. Even if the sphere grid was poorly executed, I could still understand the rough appeal, as well as some of the interesting ideas hidden underneath a layer of garbage. XIII's system, by contrast, is so streamlined it begs the question of why it even exists in the first place. Why take me out of the action and make me navigate menus and press buttons just to get the same garbage I would have gotten through a traditional level up screen?
The answer, funny enough, lies in XIII's most notable quality.
The Magic of Meters / The Malice of Mechanics
You might have noticed a trend in how I describe XIII's mechanics and what makes them bad: namely devolved systems, useless numbers, and filler content. But there is a greater element that ties everything together into a cohesive (and for some, attractive) whole: tactility.
Now forgive me for making up stupid terms midway through my review of a half-star game--but if you've read this far I presume you're willing to hear me out on the stupidest shit I could possibly say, so bear with me. Tactility--or "ludic" tactility if you want to appeal to the would-be academics out there--obviously exists in every game. After all, you need to interact with the game for it to qualify as a game in the first place. But games with a great sense of tactility make players feel the game in ways that go above and beyond. Having smooth animations, top-notch camera work, and synergistic gameplay is a good start, but it's just the entry point for having great tactility. I believe putting XIII under a microscope starts to reveal its significant connection to the concept. Let's consider some of the things it does different from its forerunners.
XIII isn't content with simply killing enemies--watching their HP slowly deplete during battle. Now, we must invent new meters that increase as we hit foes, watching numbers go up until we reach that holy 999% STAGGER! euphoria--allowing us a moment of condensed excitement and chaos before we return to the dull mundanity of battle, where we have to earn that moment of bliss all over again. The meter, the unique player/enemy animations, and the ludicrously high damage values make the stagger system the new method of doing damage in FFXII--and the new method for feeling it too.
XIII also isn't satisfied with simple level progression systems either. Merely earning stat upgrades slowly and automatically is boring and outdated. Now we need skill 'trees' that require our attention and physical input--forcing us to hold buttons, navigate UIs, and watch 'upgrade' animations as we see our characters ostensibly get the same rewards as in the old system--with roughly the same linearity too. The only notable difference is the number attached to those stats: now Lightning ends the game with a thousand strength instead of a hundred. Players are forced to interact with the game in ways they never did in the past--and are arguably 'rewarded' in new ways as well. Think about it--you never saw Squall get two-thousand strength no matter how many hours you spent wrestling with the junction system of FFVIII, meanwhile I can get Hope to double that with just the press of a button.
Battles can't be framed within a greater challenge anymore either. Gone are the days of utilizing resource management and dungeon design as another way to engage players in longform content. Now we need each battle to feature micro tasks that reward us every thirty seconds with a giant FIVE STARS reward. It doesn't matter that items are worthless and we auto-heal between fights for free. It doesn't matter that we're rewarded by actively speeding through the challenge--mindlessly spamming the auto-attack command instead of engaging battles on a more thoughtful level. Because... I mean come on, we gotta get them stars!
These distinctions of tactility might seem superfluous to you, but they genuinely matter to a lot of people. How many times have you written off a game as a pointless 'number go up' experience bereft of anything but hollow dopamine hits? I'm not going to name any names, but I'm sure you have your own list. But you need to understand that there's a chance a game you love is on my list and vice-versa. Moreover, the games that have the worst reputation for these sensibilities are often the ones that make billions of dollars from millions of passionate fans. Even if I'm willing to write a critical diatribe (and you're willing to read it), there's always going to be way more people who don't care about any of this shit--they just want that sweet five-star 'hit.'
And is there anything inherently wrong with that? Are players chasing a shallow sense of happiness under false pretenses? Are we all just rats in cages waiting for the next drop? I'll leave the thought as an exercise for you...but I don't really think so. Sure, there are systems that definitely abuse these aspects of human nature. (loot boxes will be regulated eventually...right?) But at the end of the day, we're all just looking for our own kind of 'hit' when we play games. So who's to say when the line is crossed between 'good fun' and 'societal ill' anyways?
But even if I don't hate the people who enjoy those experiences, their games are still shit in my book--and Final Fantasy XIII is nothing if not the granddaddy of them all. When I said the game's mechanics barely held up for even a mobile game, that was also a backhanded compliment of sorts. Because to be fair, XIII predates much of the mobile game boom--especially in the RPG/gacha genres--but manages to encapsulate a lot of the tactile sensibilities that dominate those multi-billion juggernauts to this day. Sure, it's a lot more awkward and incomplete compared to new shiny gacha games...but the core was still there waiting to be seized on.
Speaking to friends who do enjoy those experiences, many of them also enjoy XIII for much the same: it's a game where they can 'turn off their brain' and see some satisfying animations and big numbers go flying across the screen. In this sense, I suppose the developers of XIII should be commended. They achieved high levels of unique tactility--perhaps even pioneering a set of historic trends...trends that it would never meaningfully profit from. In other words, XIII crawled so that Gacha could run. Bravo Toriyama.
The Maximization of Fun / The Minification of Games
But if these newer gacha games get all the praise (and money), then why didn't XIII? The timing of the game's release and the contemporary market expectations paint us a clearer picture.
For one, XIII released in an era where there was still a clear distinction between the console, portable, and nascent mobile gaming markets. You're probably old enough to remember the nuances of these segregations, but their importance and influence on gaming culture, design, and history will be lost on future generations as we march towards greater market homogenization. You knew that if a game released on both the GameCube and the Gameboy Advance, they weren't actually going to be the same game. If you're on the older side (the GBA is old enough to drink!), you can probably even imagine what that GBA version of that game looks like compared to the home console original. Consequently, early smartphone adopters can remember exactly why Metal Gear Touch was no Peace Walker either. These days, a port usually just means downscaled graphics, 'Cloud Edition,' or just no port at all--even to markets as lucrative as the Switch. But back in the 2000s, entire industries were established to custom fit games for the habits and peculiarities of these individual markets.
It was only a matter of time before these ecosystems started cannibalizing each other's best elements, but Final Fantasy XIII released in an era far before this great merge. It's hard to say when this convergence really cemented itself, but it's certain that the release of the Switch blurred the line between home console and portable systems for good. Now it's all too common to find home console classics on iOS or gacha sensibilities in sixty dollar console games. The hyper-competitive nature of the mobile ecosystem has conditioned developers to fixate more on squeezing every drop of mechanical and temporal efficiency out of their game loops--aiming for very high levels of addictive tactility in the process. In the best case, it means that games are streamlined and have several layers of mechanical satisfaction. But in the worst (and I'd argue, average) case, it means games over-simplify and under-develop all in the name of 'bite-sized' rewards that amount to less than the sum of their parts.
You don't need to look at iPhone games to see what I mean. It seems that nearly every other property (Halo, Elden Ring (Soulsborne), God of War, etc.) has either transitioned to, or refined the same open world RPG designs to further exploit these sensibilities.Breath of the Wild dropped traditional dungeons in favor of tiny shrines--downplaying complexity and atmosphere in the name of approachability and instant gratification. Mario reverted back to Super Mario 64's design conventions in Odyssey to encourage a faster reward loop. The short 'runs' of Roguelikes have helped them explode in popularity in recent years. And finally, Final Fantasy XIII dropped nearly every good RPG convention in pursuit of maximizing shallow metrics of player satisfaction.
I made an offhand comment earlier about the treasures you can 'find' in the world, as well as the 'branches' in the upgrade tree, and when you think about it, they both tie into this philosophy in the same way. You're not actually meant to be exploring the world--there's fucking nothing to explore. But the designers have decided that rewarding you as if you actually did explore the world would be good enough. The same applies to upgrade paths. There aren't any actual meaningful decisions to be made. But by branching off a path, the designers expect you to feel like you made a decision. After all, you didn't actually have to get that +5 STR
Is this good design? Hell no. But it definitely seems to work for many people out there. To me, these systems violate the first law of game design: they don't challenge you in any meaningful way--they merely ask for your time. You can keep heading straight to advance the game…or you can waste a minute taking a dead-end branching path to get some shitty items. You can just keep using the regular upgrade path, or you can waste X points to get a 'branched' upgrade. If you dig deep enough, these feelings start to crop up in the battle systems too. So many fights don't actually require you to use your brain at all--they can just be braved using the auto-battle system. And yet, these battles will sometimes take upwards of five or even ten minutes of just hammering the auto-battle button. You might be thinking that I'm just "playing the game wrong," but each battle has a fucking par time and I'd often come minutes under par--getting rewarded with five stars even when playing like this. Don't be confused: this is how they want you to play. In lieu of any good design choices, Final Fantasy XIII opts instead to manipulate the easiest resource it can--your real life.
There's certainly a conversation to be had on how these trends have negatively affected the industry--maximizing short term rewards at the expense of longform content--but it is undeniable that modern players have grown accustomed to these systems. Based on sales data and critical reception, it's very easy to argue that they even adore them...But when XIII released, players were totally blindsided. They were, in essence, paying sixty dollars for a mobile game with very nice graphics. Perhaps they weren't looking for the mind boggling complexity of XII, but it's very clear in retrospect that the simplifications found in X were as far as fans were willing to stomach.
However, I don't think XIII would have the same disastrous reception if it were released today. In fact, it's easy to see a lot of XIII's DNA in a newer, far more successful relative--Final Fantasy VIII: Remake. Although there are certainly significant differences between the two, Remake shares strikingly similar upgrade systems, stagger mechanics, world design, and pacing. Playing XIII with fresh eyes in 2022, all I could see in it were the quirks I found in Remake. Which begs the question: are fans of Remake hypocritical for hating XIII? I'll leave that as an exercise to you...but I don't have to worry about that question--I fucking hate them both. One common thing I hate about both of them is their abysmal narratives, so let's finally rip the band-aid off and get to it.
Characters Drawn Together / Narrative Drawn Apart
I'm sure you're probably expecting me to tear this game's narrative to sheds, but I won't be spending that much time on it. To be blunt, it's just as bad as you're expecting it to be--frankly probably even worse than that. The dialogue is on par with Watanabe's Kingdom Hearts offerings and there's enough laugh-out-loud content to rival the worst schock out there. A special shout out here to Lightning's "worst birthday ever" and Snow's sick new hot rod.
Still, I'll take some time to point out the story's most egregious errors, but a point-by-point dissection is no more useful here than on Beyond: Two Souls or Mortal Kombat 4--it's so obviously bad that pointing it out is like explaining that the sky is blue. If you disagree...well I can't feasibly convince you otherwise: you genuinely think the sky is purple. Go pop on Kingdom Hearts and ride to Mickey's Dick Smasher world with Donald and Goofy instead of arguing with me. Still, if you've hate-read this far, feel free to send your death threats to my inbox.
Beyond the usual Nomura/Nojima/Watanabe shenanigans that plague XIII' (ultra-juvenile characters, excessive proper noun usage, convoluted plot devices, etc.), the game falls prey to the same flaw found in every Nojima-led Final Fantasy: inconsistent character arcs. One of Final Fantasy VI/VII's claims to fame was its quality arcs. VI might not have literally written the book on JRPG character arcs and pacing, but it certainly solidified conventions--all while featuring some of the genre's highest highs. Funny enough, the narrative framework I'm referring to is incredibly simple, deceptively so considering how many high-profile games still screw it up.
The first half of the game should focus on setting up intriguing characters, their personal challenges, and the interesting relationship dynamics between them. The second half of the game should fully resolve each character's distinct struggle--ideally with a unique, memorable, and emotional set-piece to back it up. VII refined this strategy in many ways. Iconic characters like Barret, Cid, and Red XIII underwent significant character growth and maturation as the narrative progressed--each getting their own classic set piece to boot (the showdown with Dyne, The First Man in Space, and XIII's quest to discover his origins, respectively). On top of this, it's important that following the arc's conclusion, the character changes in some clear way. You want to see new outlooks on life, new relationship dynamics, and even new entire personality traits that signify genuine character growth.
However, the fully Nojima-led VIII took a very different approach. Although there was still a cast of characters, nearly all focus was given to one or two of them over all else. Squall certainly has a complete and satisfying arc...but it came at the cost of everyone else. The other characters arcs range from half developed (Irvine's struggle to pull the trigger), barely started (Quistis' imposter syndrome), or non-existent (Zell certainly is a cool guy). Some characters have things happen to them (Selphie's school getting blown up), but--as we'll see in XIII--being bummed out for a moment doesn't constitute an actual character arc...especially if the character doesn't change in any meaningful way.
X would feature near identical problems. Characters may be strong personalities, but they're ultimately lacking in meaningful development outside of Tidus and maybe Yuna (if you squint). My favorite example being how Wakka's horrible racism is just never resolved. He starts the game as a racist, is racist, and then rides off into the sunset without any clear indication of regret or remorse. All he does is change the target of his racism from Al Bhed to Guado once he learns he is 100% justified in doing so. Oops.
Other characters like hot goth mommy (currently blanking on her name for obvious reasons) are only around for a combination of gameplay purposes (someone has to start off as a spellcaster!) and aesthetic values (once again: hot goth mommy).
You find these same issues persist in XIII, only far worse. For one, the (marketed) protagonist is probably the most unlikeable character of the bunch. She starts off hostile to the point of comedic absurdity ("Worst. Birthday. Ever.") and ends the game only ever-so-slightly less bitter. Meanwhile side characters are just as shallow as in previous Nojima-led games, but with far less personality between them. Snow is no substitute for Wakka, and Sazh is certainly no Irvine either. Characters with a greater sense of subtlety only work if you have the narrative depth to match, which is sorely lacking in XIII. If they were going to blow it, the least they could have done was give us memorable and zany characters a-la VIII and X. Instead we get black middle aged dad (lamer Barret) and some lady from…down under.
Oddly enough, Nojima and Watanabe find their greatest strength in the exact same character type they did the last two times: the young, conflicted boy who's forced to come-of-age. That's right, it's Hope that ends up having the most complete arc in XIII, much to my surprise. He basically spends the early game being a ten year old version of the Joker--but he ends up getting a series of notable moments (with lots of other characters)! Over time he slowly grows into the most mature member of the party. Characters like Lightning and Snow play off of Hope's journey to maturation...but it's very clear by the time Hope meets his dad that he might as well be the star of the show. And I'll admit it, by the end of the game I genuinely was invested in his story! Perhaps it was because of just how dire the rest of the narrative was, but XIII will need to take its W's where it can get them. One decent character arc out of several means we're at least batting at an VIII average (sorry Tidus).
The rest of the characters turn out just as you'd expect. Some have singular moments of intrigue before devolving back into the exact same character (shout out to Sazh's maligned suicide attempt), while others might as well not have an arc (sorry Fang).
I think it's clear by now how to have a conventionally 'good' character-driven RPG narrative:
1) Set up a series of interesting characters and their struggles in the first act of the game
2) Allow these arcs to develop through memorable set pieces while the party struggles to defeat their enemies in the second act
3) Complete each arc with its own set piece and let each character signify their growth in some clear new trait
4) Give our now-developed characters a satisfying sense of maturation and unification as they band together to defeat a common enemy
Reflecting on this checklist also makes it clear why the second half of this game is such a nightmarish slog. First, what little character arc content there is gets shat out mainly in the first half of the game. Two, there is no good 'common enemy' for the party (and the player) to band against.
That's right, one of the most essential parts of a great RPG is practically absent here: a great antagonist. It's true that many previous Final Fantasy games failed to develop a proper villain...but there's a reason why VI/VII have garnered their acclaim over the rest of the series. Even weaker titles like X or II managed to develop their own iconic bad guy while others at least created a memorable fake-out antagonist (VIII, IV). Instead, XIII finds our characters vaguely gesturing at entire nation-states as their enemy for most of the game. When we finally meet our proper antagonist--the fucking Pope--we know just as much about him as you know about your second cousin.
Not only is it hilarious that XIII's primary villain rips directly from X's side plot--where you also basically fight the pope--but it makes it even more clear how much more trite XIII is by comparison...and Jesus Christ is that saying something. As bad as X was, its attack on organized religion made sense--the game's entire world and story were centered around religion. We spend enough time digesting the religion in order to understand why it posed a real threat to our party and the world as a whole. Beyond that, X found some basic ways to invest players in the fight emotionally--as Tidus' romantic ambitions get tangled up with Seymour's plans to marry Yuna.
The combination of these two factors--screwed character arcs and failed antagonist development--cause the game to devolve from 'fun but entertaining mess' to 'all out nightmare.' It becomes more aimless and underdeveloped than any other Final Fantasy game so far--a very impressive feat considering its place in the series. This becomes all the more harrowing in retrospect--knowing that I still have two more games in this franchise ahead of me. Wait...Why the hell did XIII of all games become a franchise anyways?
Fabula Nova Crystallis: The Birth of a Franchise / Fabula Nova Crystallis: The Death of Final Fantasy
It's easy to forget now, but there was a time where XIII was proudly tied to the "next evolution" of Final Fantasy as a franchise. If you were tapped into media cycles around 2006, you probably remember the announcement of Fabula Nova Crystallis: a new shared universe that would tie together Final Fantasy games going forward. Now I'm sure I don't need to tell you how bad of an idea this was. But clearly some people (especially those who worked at fucking Square Enix) needed to hear this…so let's review, shall we? For one, an enduring appeal--hell, the brand identity--for Final Fantasy was its lack of continuity. It was a brilliant choice that made the series evergreen and allowed newcomers to hop in whenever they liked--a crucial appeal for a genre as unappetizing as JRPGs.
Even if the Crystallis games were only tangentially related by lore, it was always going to be a bad decision to market them as a franchise. Yasumi Matsuno pulled similar tricks with the Ivalice games, but there was never any shared marketing to make this clear to players. It's clear that Matsuno's world wasn't really planned as a corporate gimmick--it just happened as he created more games. Hence the odd inclusion of the non-Final Fantasy game Vagrant Story into to the world. It certainly helps that the connections between games were even smaller than in Crystallis. Tactics and XII technically took place in the same location, but if you weren't reading the greater subtext of that relationship then it genuinely had zero effect on the plot.
Instead, Crystallis comes off more like a greedy plan inspired by pure profit motive. The newly merged Square Enix clearly viewed the fresh design of every Final Fantasy as more of a liability than a boon. Why spend years crafting new worlds, art styles, characters, and story lines when you could pump out quick asset flips for the same profit? This isn't even a theorical question--Final Fantasy X-2 was essentially a shortened asset flip of X that sold nearly as well as Final Fantasy XII, a game that had a massive scale, huge budget, and a 5+ year development cycle. It was clear that attaching new titles to pre-established brands was the safer (and far more boring) financial bet--and so we saw the godawful Compilation of Final Fantasy VII as well as Fabula Nova Crystallis.
Of course, the problem with this strategy is that you need to have an already successful game to build your franchise off of. In the case of VII, I can understand where they were coming from--even if every spin-off they made was an unmitigated disaster. People would still buy them because Cloud and Sephiroth were on the tin. Crystallis, by contrast, reads like one of those classic New Coke disasters you learn about in business school. They genuinely thought they could sell a franchise with literally zero cultural capital beyond an attachment to Final Fantasy and Nomura/Nojima's names on the box. There's a reason why later titles like XV changed their name in a desperate attempt to minimize attachment to the trash-fire that was XIII.
The true Crystallis tragedy is the toll it took on the franchise as a whole. I mean, think about it: XIII and the Crystallis universe was announced in 2006 and we're still awaiting the release of the first mainline game to escape its influence. Even XIV originally started off being powered by the same Crystal Tools that ran XIII--a major selling point at the time. Considering single player games, that means we've been stuck in the extended-world of XIII for…about 17 years now. That's the time gap between the birth of Final Fantasy to fucking Final Fantasy X-2. If XII hadn't been delayed for so long it would also be included in this period. That means we've basically existed in two 'eras' for all of Final Fantasy's existence: The 'Classic' era (I-XII) and the 'Crystallis' era (XIII-XV). Now tell me, which era do you honestly think was better for gaming history/culture/design? Which era do you think produced the most iconic moments, heartfelt stories, and genuine honest-to-god fun?
There's a larger industry trend to consider here--but it's impossible not to see Final Fantasy as one of the flagbearers of this cursed ecosystem. Bloated development cycles, convoluted-yet-shallow narratives, and gameplay systems that fail to rival even NES games. All of these sacrifices in the name of graphical fidelity and a greater sense of 'cinematic realism.' I find it hard to take these cinematic qualities seriously, although I'm sure that's no surprise to you. It's not just because XIII is filled with dialogue that wouldn't pass in a two-star movie…but also because you're dropped back into the same generic hallway filled with mindless battles right after each awful cutscene ends. Perhaps we'd never go back to the Final Fantasy VI era of cracking out an entire masterpiece in twelve months…but certainly there is a far better middle ground to be found here. One that allows developers to approach lower-budget, smaller titles that encourage the creation of unique new IP instead of rehashing an already bloated franchise's worst traits. Frankly, the Final Fantasy franchise would be better served with another mainline title that featured such a development cycle.
The Fabula Nova Crystallis franchise makes clear that priorities had finally shifted within Square Enix. First, there was a need for each Final Fantasy entry to build a franchise--one that could run on its own. Spin-off games, marketable plushies, movie tie-ins, you name it. Second, the game needed to be an insane graphical showcase. Sure, the Playstation era games were graphically focused--but they were made with easily achievable pre-rendered graphics. All you needed was budget to afford the SGI machines and you were good to go. Creating the same spectacle with real-time rendering would be exponentially harder on all levels. We'd need to spend years building our own engines and tools to guarantee that the game looked years ahead of the competition. As a consequence, it didn't matter if we limited our game's world to endless corridors or removed core series functionality. We need our games to wow audiences with ultra-high-rez character models and hair physics. And finally third came…the game. That part didn't really matter as much. As long as characters are cool enough (and look good enough), then we could implement even the most laughable of combat systems and players would still part with their sixty dollars…and so…Final Fantasy XIII.
Vision / Indifference
In closing, I think I can express my hatred for XIII in one word: non-commitment. It's frankly hard to see a genuine sense of passion or thoughtful direction anywhere in XIII. Core aspects of Final Fantasy's appeal--like cities and towns--were cut from the game not because Toriyama wanted to make a statement…but because the graphical fidelity made them infeasible to optimize. Entire systems were removed or reduced too. Not because Toriyama wanted to make some bold statement about minimalist philosophy, but because they didn't know what to do with those systems. Just compare XIII to Hiroyuki Ito's Dungeon Encounters and tell me with a straight face XIII is anywhere near as committed to its design.
If you consider how to fix the game's shortcomings you'll quickly realize the core problem: fixing issues would require the game to commit to an idea. They would have to add on systems, mechanics, and design concepts. And if there's one thing that's clear--it's that Toriyama and Co. would rather die than do that.
Think about it…the world doesn't require you to explore it, the mechanics don't require you to learn/consider them, and the gameplay doesn't even require you to play it. Nearly every aspect of XIII has dumbed itself down to the point of insignificance. The game is fundamentally lacking in any true vision--be it from a unified team or from a singular director. And it sadly begs the question: why even have a game at all?
Just months before XIII's release, Toriyama was quoted saying:
"Even at a late stage of development, we did not agree on key elements of the game, which stemmed from the lack of a cohesive vision, the lack of finalized specs, and the remaining problems with communication between departments."
This chronic mismanagement--brought upon us from the top down--seems to be the exact reason XIII came to us as the disaster it was. It was designed as a franchise-starter first and a graphical showcase second--made by people who didn't even want to make a Final Fantasy game in the first place. It's a game that insists upon itself. One created because it had to exist for financial reasons, not because it particularly wanted to.
And so, I hate Final Fantasy XIII. It stands for nearly every single illness in this industry. I hate its hyper-corporate origins, maligned cinematic fixations, aggressively shallow skinner-box gameplay mechanics, and ultimate lack of artistic vision. These issues highlight many of the problems that still plague the industry…and in that sense, XIII is a pioneer--an avant-garde masterpiece. A true titan of the medium. Unfortunately, it didn't come to us as the vanguard of the future, but as one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
I pray that we may one day escape the shadow it has cast upon us all.
For many, saying Final Fantasy XIII means saying 'failure' in the same breath. Even fans of the game will speak as if they're playing defense against some nebulous sense of disdain. Growing up, I only heard overwhelming derision when the game was mentioned. It seems that no matter who you are, you understand that XIII has a cloud of darkness looming over it. But why?
Evolution / Devolution
Well, it won't take long after pressing start to see for yourself. First, you'll be assaulted with barrage of proper nouns within moments of just loading in. Talk of Pulse, Purges, PSICOM, Focuses, Cocoon, L'cie, Fal'cie, etc. will disorient you to the point of indifference before you even learn anyone's name. But we'll get back to the story later. If this wasn't enough to set your alarms off, the combat encounters you're thrown into moments later should set you to DEFCON 1 instantly.
To start, Final Fantasy XIII has boldly opted to remove control of party members--meaning you'll be controlling one character and one character only. Consequentially, if that character dies, you'll be getting a game over...even if the other characters are alive and are capable of reviving you.
This decision alone spells ruin for even the most well intentioned of RPGs. Taking away options and methods for character expression should only be done when something else becomes complex enough to justify streamlining. Not to even mention how dangerous it is to leave players at the mercy of party AI. Anyone who's played similar games (Persona 3, etc.) can probably recall at least a few horror stories of negligent healers, absentminded mages, or unresponsive tanks that can still make their blood boil. God knows I can.
But hey, if we're only controlling one character then certainly the game has plenty of fresh rewarding mechanics to throw at us...right? Funny. Nearly every aspect of the game's battle systems have been dumbed down to new impressive lows. The usual RPG stats have been boiled down to merely two unique values (Strength and Magic). Mana no longer exists. Equipment is back to a simple weapon/accessory duality. And finally, proper levels/XP have been excised from the game entirely...just to name a few changes. Beyond player control, nearly every other avenue for unique expression has been reduced or removed entirely--offering the player mere mechanical scraps to work with.
Naturally, 'jobs' in the traditional FF sense are also dead in the water. Instead, players can take on one of six different 'roles,' although only three are available on a character by default. These rolls simplify RPGs to their most basic essence: attack, magic, tank, heal, buff, and debuff. Since you only have three party members, it's a given that you're able to switch roles during battle. However, since this is still Final Fantasy XIII, you can't quite switch roles on command. Instead, you must enter a special menu, create a limited list of pre-made role setups (paradigms) for your entire party. Then, during battle, you can access these paradigms and choose one on demand. In essence, these paradigms rob players of creating unique builds or strategies for battle--pigeonholing them into one of the six cliché and simplistic character roles.
What's in a Battle? / Why do we Battle?
So why do we even need six classes? Well, to be honest, we don't. For 98% of encounters you won't even think about using the tank, buff, and debuff classes. Most battles are simple enough and go by so quickly that you won't have to do anything beyond slap opponents into submission--something the game actively encourages. You heard me right: Final Fantasy now rewards players for finishing battles as fast as possible--meaning you're incentivized to essentially 'speedrun' every battle for the best reward. This change might sound interesting on the face of it. Giving every fight its own small meta-challenge could be good for keeping up player engagement. But unfortunately, the game's implementation of the concept, as well as how it ties into other mechanics, starts more fires than it puts out.
For one, it creates a positive feedback loop that I can only describe as brutally unfun and counterintuitive: Players who are already ahead get rewarded and put even further ahead of the curve. While players who are behind get pushed even further back unless they go out of their way to grind. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a big fan of dynamic difficulty Left 4 Dead AI Director-type balance in jRPGs. Final Fantasy VIII already tried, and failed, to implement such a system. But the exact design of it in XIII shows, in essence, everything I hate about the bog-standard JRPG...or at least the image of JRPGs that most players have. It discourages experimentation, unique play, and plain-old dicking around in order to demand a consistent, bland, and efficient performance from players. And if you're not keeping on the up-and-up...well, then get grinding for all the rewards you didn't get! It has the appearance of a unique challenge, but in reality it's a cheap stat check. One that rewards players only if they've got enough damage to make quick work of enemies. After all, we've established there are virtually zero mechanical avenues for creatively taking down your foes.
This is all made even worse by the new Stagger mechanic that has regretfully become a mainstay of Final Fantasy games since. In essence, you now barely damage enemies unless you fill a separate stagger meter first. The meter slowly boosts your damage and eventually reaches a (temporary) fever pitch once you fill it. However it'll deplete back to zero after you fill it or if you fail to fill it to max while it slowly drains. Basically, you need to fill the meter and then do as much damage as possible within the timeframe before the meter depletes. You can do damage outside of the meter, but considering that you're able to get up to 999% damage with a stagger, it's going to be a necessity in all but the easiest of fights.
So then, how do we build chain? Keeping in line with everything above, you build them in the most boring, limiting, and boilerplate way possible. When it comes to damage output there's only two real options: Commando, who slaps enemies with strength attacks, and Ravager, who damages foes using magic spells. Since your party has three spaces it might sound like you have room to experiment...but somehow, even here the developers have forced you down one path the entire game.
For you see, these two classes affect the all-important chain meter in entirely different ways. Commandos will add very little to the chain meter with each attack, but they slow the meter's degeneration. Ravagers, on the other hand, will add a large amount of meter per spell, but will rapidly degenerate the meter. This might sound like game design 101--making players weigh the costs of different party organizations--but in practice it actually kills what little player freedom is left. The meter's design means that most enemies require you have both commando and ravager in the party at all times when you're trying to build stagger. Presuming we're not using tanks, buffers, or debuffers in our party since we're fighting simple battles, let's consider our possible party lineups:
Commando, Commando, Commando: This lineup is functionally worthless, as commandos don't build stagger meters in any substantial way. Unless the enemies have tiny amounts of HP (making the meter useless), consider this lineup a non-starter.
Commando, Commando, Ravager: Throwing a ravager in the mix means you can start to meaningfully build meter, which is good. On the other hand, there's not really any purpose in having two commandos. One is good enough to stop the meter from resetting. This setup is usable, but horribly inefficient most of the time.
Commando, Ravager, Ravager: Keeping two ravagers means that you can build meters quickly, making good use of a commando to keep the meter from resetting. This is the lineup you'll probably be using for 99% of the game if you want to make quick work of enemies. As long as foes require stagger to fight quickly, you'll have very little choice but to use this when on the offense.
Ravager, Ravager, Ravager: This lineup is great if you can reasonably build a full meter in one full turn. However, if you can't then the chain meter will basically reset instantly, as there's no commando to keep it from disintegrating faster and faster with every spell cast. This is an incredibly situational lineup that only makes sense if you either already popped a chain meter--meaning you just need to focus on damage output--or if you're in the situation outlined above.
Throw in a medic, or two into the mix and you've got yourself the party configurations you'll be looking at 99% of the game:
Ravager, Ravager, Commando - The ol' reliable (50%)
Ravager, Commando, Medic - Boring but safe (20%)
Ravager, Ravager, Ravager - Fast nukes, limited uses (15%)
Commando, Medic, Medic - Survive and keep stagger going (5%)
Ravager, Medic, Medic - Survive and nuke (5%)
Medic, Medic, Medic - SURVIVE (5%)
As for the other classes...they only become meaningful during boss battles or other 'large' fights that make up a miniscule amount of the game's runtime. Even then the playbook is braindead simple:
1) Start battle with buff (Synergist) and debuff (Saboteur) classes
2) Once buffs/debuffs have been applied, switch to regular fight lineups
3) If damaged, throw out a healer
4) If buffs/debuffs run out, GOTO 1
The tank (Sentinel) can also be thrown in whenever a tank is needed, but to be honest I barely ever used the class on account of its niche applications in a game this simple. After all, why have someone tank when a medic heals for better HP throughput?
This might sound like a lot to take in, but it's paper-thin to stretch out over a forty-plus hour experience. This tedium is compounded by the fact that several of these mechanics aren't even introduced until you're already hours into the game!
To summarize party mechanics: they're simpler than they've ever been (beyond games without any meaningful choices like Final Fantasy IV). Developer attempts to 'balance' party structure only lead to further reductions in options. This means every player is essentially forced to play the same boring lineups to cope with the game's barebone mechanics. Even considering the meager class lineup, half are highly situational and will only get thrown out for a cheap hat trick during boss battles or other high profile fights.
I have seen some praise the party system (and paradigm shifting) as a highlight of the game--allowing players to gracefully 'context switch' between several party styles on the fly. But labeling these mechanics as 'good' is completely missing the forest for the trees. The choices the paradigm system gives you--to be offensive, defensive, or some mix--are the basic macro choices all RPGs allow you to make. During battles, you will have to choose when to heal, attack, buff, tank, debuff, etc. The only reason it feels more 'clean' in Final Fantasy XIII is because they have taken away every single micro choice you can make. They've left you with only the macro choice of 'be a healer' or 'be fighter' without any of the finer nuances that make an RPG interesting or rewarding. To be clear, Final Fantasy XIII offers nothing new to the genre of RPGs. It only mechanically takes away what even NES games had already given us 25 years prior.
But the real coup de grâce that seals XIII's fate as one of the worst triple-A JRPGs ever made is the game's Auto-battle feature. As you can imagine, auto-battle picks a (near) optimal set of actions based on battle context. In many games this would sound silly, but with how comically limited XIII's mechanics are, auto-battle tends to do a good job. In fact, auto-battle is too good at its job. So good that there are rarely instances where the player needs to do anything but use auto-battle. The worst part is that auto-battle is the first menu option in combat--meaning the developers expect you to rely on it more than your own decision making! Combine this with the fact that paradigms are so simplistic, and the game quickly devolves into a tiresome combination of switching between a few basic paradigms and pressing X.
And boy, do I mean it. I genuinely spent more time looking away from XIII then looking at it--even during boss fights. The game was able to practically play itself, only requiring me to step in whenever I needed to shift paradigms to heal/buff. It's astounding that the game designers considered this acceptable for a triple-A console game--especially one meant to be their company's flagship title. To be honest, it barely holds up as a mobile game--an ecosystem where XIII's barebone mechanics feel more at home.
And sure, players who really wish to fight the tide can opt out of auto-battling, but you must remember the holy mantra of good game design--something that XIII and its fans have forgotten:
The path of least resistance must not be dull.
The 'World' of Final Fantasy XIII / The Light at the End of the Tunnel is a Train
But the dirty details of battle aren't where this story ends...hell this section isn't even where the literal story begins. Instead, we need to talk about the all-important vehicle for the gameplay and story in an RPG: the world. And believe me, if there's one place Final Fantasy XIII absolutely screwed the pooch, it would be here.
As anyone who lived through the early 2010s knows, Final Fantasy XIII has the exploratory depth of an elevator shaft. Instead of continuing Final Fantasy's tradition of building a complete open world--a trend which had also been gaining steam outside of RPGs--XIII opts for a collection of straight corridors that persist for (practically) the entire game.
I'm sure we've all heard the jokes about how XIII is just a 'tutorial' for 40 hours straight...but that feeling doesn't truly set in until you actually sit down to absorb those forty hours and see just how empty XIII really is. It seriously is just a collection of straight hallways peppered with lazily placed enemy encounters and banal 'branching paths' for treasure collection...for forty fucking hours. It's a completely on-rails experience that comes closer to a train ride through a barren desert than a Six Flags rollercoaster. There's no towns, there's no backtracking, there's no interesting optional areas, there's nothing. It's like one of those rhetorical games people create for the sake of argument. Imagine, if you will, an RPG devoid of all charming content--left with nothing but barebone stats, mundane enemies, and an endless corridor to "progress" down. Would RPG fans still stomach this if it had some cool character designs, fancy graphics, and a 'banger' soundtrack? Thankfully (or perhaps horrifically), you don't need to imagine any of this--Square actually made it.
Of course, fans will remind naysayers that the game eventually 'opens up' when players arrive in Gran Pulse near the 30ish hour mark. This claim is total horseshit. Much like the Calm Lands in Final Fantasy X, Gran Pulse is merely a single large, flat, and dull field that the player is allowed to dredge through before being thrown right back down the generic hallways encompassing the rest of the game. The game purports to 'come alive' in Gran Pulse, but this is only realized through half-baked XII-ian monster hunts that only happen during this one portion of the game. That's right, you finally get access to some piss-poor side content in XIII after about thirty hours of playtime. These hunts, essentially being the only optional content in the game, boil down to the exact same boring fights as the regular story--except now requiring you to walk around a big empty field to fight. It feels like the team realized too late into development that they had a total mess of a world and desperately tried to shove in anything to mix things up. Unfortunate for them, Gran Pulse is the spitting image of 'too little, too late' in terms of world and game design. Any would-be designers ought to take note: this is how not to design a world.
Upon release, the director (and the game's fans) rebuked criticism of XIII's world design with assertions that the game's hyper-linearity was actually a 'breath of fresh air' considering the (still) ever-expanding market of shoddy open world games. Now don't get me wrong, I despise generic triple-A open world games more than anyone else I know. Hell, I spend too much time considering how much better 99% of games would be if they were more linear. But in the case of Final Fantasy, Toriyama has managed to miss the point entirely. More than virtually any series out there, Final Fantasy had staked its claim on delivering players not just a game, but a genuinely unique world with every entry. Players want to live and breathe these places--and they derive a lot of enjoyment from exploring every dungeon, town, and weird spot on their own terms. Previous games were certainly focused on a story--but anyone who's played Final Fantasy I-IX can certainly recall fond memories of 'dicking around' somewhere in the world outside of the mandated story beats. Even Final Fantasy X (as incompetent and maligned as it was) tried to give you a 'sense' of an open world by letting you return to previous portions of the game--going as far to hide the occasional item/quest there. Sure it was 90% filler trash, and it still suffered the 'hallway' problem that XIII faces, but there was clearly an attempt to appeal to the core sensibilities of the genre, no matter how half-assed they were.
Growth / Harm
So the combat and world of XIII are shot to hell, but what about the final ludic pillar of RPGs: progression?
I'll let you guess.
But what's wrong with it and why did it end up that way? First, a short reminder of relevant history:
The traditional level system that defined golden age JRPGs was getting long in the tooth as the 90s came to a close. And so, many started to experiment. Final Fantasy VIII featured a leveling system that actually made the game harder as you progressed while Chrono Cross gated progression behind narrative encounters to discourage grinding. Of course, all of this stands in the shadow of the almighty sphere grid system from Final Fantasy X. Instead of conventional leveling, X gave you points to spend on a large grid where each node represented a stat boost or ability. The grid sounds great in theory but was awful in execution. In the most generous of readings, the grid was a skill-tree par excellence. But in reality it was yet another lazy way that X stretched out its runtime: transforming the streamlined process of leveling into a manual action that you suffered through--for all 828 nodes on each character's grid. Don't get me wrong, the freedom to customize your character is a good thing...but the sphere grid was a hyper-linear and progress-gated mess that forced you to spend more time menuing through UI and watching animations instead of strategizing or enjoying the actual gameplay. Despite a positive fan reception, the sphere grid disappeared in X-2 and was naturally absent in XII as well. But if XIII has somehow been a diluted X knockoff up to now…then it should be no surprise whose notes it was copying for a progression system.
Characters are given a significantly reduced 'grid' for each role they have. And although the general principle is still the same, the streamlined implementation means players will unlock dozens of nodes per role instead of hundreds. In some ways, this is a clear upgrade over X's system. I have to spend far less time thumbing around the UI and watching +1 STR nodes get slowly placed on the grid, meaning every node completed feels at least more meaningful than before...even if they are now mainly just +20 STR nodes instead. However, the new system has managed to make the whole upgrade process even more linear than before. Although the original sphere grid was primarily a straight shot with the occasional branching path (and constant level gates), there were a few items that allowed you to teleport around the grid in novel ways. It certainly didn't redeem the system, but it allowed for some remotely interesting options if you felt like going through the hassle. Instead, XIII's grid is a straight shot with the occasional node or two branched off. The distinction might not seem like much, but simply inspecting both grids should show you how much of a difference it makes. Even if the sphere grid was poorly executed, I could still understand the rough appeal, as well as some of the interesting ideas hidden underneath a layer of garbage. XIII's system, by contrast, is so streamlined it begs the question of why it even exists in the first place. Why take me out of the action and make me navigate menus and press buttons just to get the same garbage I would have gotten through a traditional level up screen?
The answer, funny enough, lies in XIII's most notable quality.
The Magic of Meters / The Malice of Mechanics
You might have noticed a trend in how I describe XIII's mechanics and what makes them bad: namely devolved systems, useless numbers, and filler content. But there is a greater element that ties everything together into a cohesive (and for some, attractive) whole: tactility.
Now forgive me for making up stupid terms midway through my review of a half-star game--but if you've read this far I presume you're willing to hear me out on the stupidest shit I could possibly say, so bear with me. Tactility--or "ludic" tactility if you want to appeal to the would-be academics out there--obviously exists in every game. After all, you need to interact with the game for it to qualify as a game in the first place. But games with a great sense of tactility make players feel the game in ways that go above and beyond. Having smooth animations, top-notch camera work, and synergistic gameplay is a good start, but it's just the entry point for having great tactility. I believe putting XIII under a microscope starts to reveal its significant connection to the concept. Let's consider some of the things it does different from its forerunners.
XIII isn't content with simply killing enemies--watching their HP slowly deplete during battle. Now, we must invent new meters that increase as we hit foes, watching numbers go up until we reach that holy 999% STAGGER! euphoria--allowing us a moment of condensed excitement and chaos before we return to the dull mundanity of battle, where we have to earn that moment of bliss all over again. The meter, the unique player/enemy animations, and the ludicrously high damage values make the stagger system the new method of doing damage in FFXII--and the new method for feeling it too.
XIII also isn't satisfied with simple level progression systems either. Merely earning stat upgrades slowly and automatically is boring and outdated. Now we need skill 'trees' that require our attention and physical input--forcing us to hold buttons, navigate UIs, and watch 'upgrade' animations as we see our characters ostensibly get the same rewards as in the old system--with roughly the same linearity too. The only notable difference is the number attached to those stats: now Lightning ends the game with a thousand strength instead of a hundred. Players are forced to interact with the game in ways they never did in the past--and are arguably 'rewarded' in new ways as well. Think about it--you never saw Squall get two-thousand strength no matter how many hours you spent wrestling with the junction system of FFVIII, meanwhile I can get Hope to double that with just the press of a button.
Battles can't be framed within a greater challenge anymore either. Gone are the days of utilizing resource management and dungeon design as another way to engage players in longform content. Now we need each battle to feature micro tasks that reward us every thirty seconds with a giant FIVE STARS reward. It doesn't matter that items are worthless and we auto-heal between fights for free. It doesn't matter that we're rewarded by actively speeding through the challenge--mindlessly spamming the auto-attack command instead of engaging battles on a more thoughtful level. Because... I mean come on, we gotta get them stars!
These distinctions of tactility might seem superfluous to you, but they genuinely matter to a lot of people. How many times have you written off a game as a pointless 'number go up' experience bereft of anything but hollow dopamine hits? I'm not going to name any names, but I'm sure you have your own list. But you need to understand that there's a chance a game you love is on my list and vice-versa. Moreover, the games that have the worst reputation for these sensibilities are often the ones that make billions of dollars from millions of passionate fans. Even if I'm willing to write a critical diatribe (and you're willing to read it), there's always going to be way more people who don't care about any of this shit--they just want that sweet five-star 'hit.'
And is there anything inherently wrong with that? Are players chasing a shallow sense of happiness under false pretenses? Are we all just rats in cages waiting for the next drop? I'll leave the thought as an exercise for you...but I don't really think so. Sure, there are systems that definitely abuse these aspects of human nature. (loot boxes will be regulated eventually...right?) But at the end of the day, we're all just looking for our own kind of 'hit' when we play games. So who's to say when the line is crossed between 'good fun' and 'societal ill' anyways?
But even if I don't hate the people who enjoy those experiences, their games are still shit in my book--and Final Fantasy XIII is nothing if not the granddaddy of them all. When I said the game's mechanics barely held up for even a mobile game, that was also a backhanded compliment of sorts. Because to be fair, XIII predates much of the mobile game boom--especially in the RPG/gacha genres--but manages to encapsulate a lot of the tactile sensibilities that dominate those multi-billion juggernauts to this day. Sure, it's a lot more awkward and incomplete compared to new shiny gacha games...but the core was still there waiting to be seized on.
Speaking to friends who do enjoy those experiences, many of them also enjoy XIII for much the same: it's a game where they can 'turn off their brain' and see some satisfying animations and big numbers go flying across the screen. In this sense, I suppose the developers of XIII should be commended. They achieved high levels of unique tactility--perhaps even pioneering a set of historic trends...trends that it would never meaningfully profit from. In other words, XIII crawled so that Gacha could run. Bravo Toriyama.
The Maximization of Fun / The Minification of Games
But if these newer gacha games get all the praise (and money), then why didn't XIII? The timing of the game's release and the contemporary market expectations paint us a clearer picture.
For one, XIII released in an era where there was still a clear distinction between the console, portable, and nascent mobile gaming markets. You're probably old enough to remember the nuances of these segregations, but their importance and influence on gaming culture, design, and history will be lost on future generations as we march towards greater market homogenization. You knew that if a game released on both the GameCube and the Gameboy Advance, they weren't actually going to be the same game. If you're on the older side (the GBA is old enough to drink!), you can probably even imagine what that GBA version of that game looks like compared to the home console original. Consequently, early smartphone adopters can remember exactly why Metal Gear Touch was no Peace Walker either. These days, a port usually just means downscaled graphics, 'Cloud Edition,' or just no port at all--even to markets as lucrative as the Switch. But back in the 2000s, entire industries were established to custom fit games for the habits and peculiarities of these individual markets.
It was only a matter of time before these ecosystems started cannibalizing each other's best elements, but Final Fantasy XIII released in an era far before this great merge. It's hard to say when this convergence really cemented itself, but it's certain that the release of the Switch blurred the line between home console and portable systems for good. Now it's all too common to find home console classics on iOS or gacha sensibilities in sixty dollar console games. The hyper-competitive nature of the mobile ecosystem has conditioned developers to fixate more on squeezing every drop of mechanical and temporal efficiency out of their game loops--aiming for very high levels of addictive tactility in the process. In the best case, it means that games are streamlined and have several layers of mechanical satisfaction. But in the worst (and I'd argue, average) case, it means games over-simplify and under-develop all in the name of 'bite-sized' rewards that amount to less than the sum of their parts.
You don't need to look at iPhone games to see what I mean. It seems that nearly every other property (Halo, Elden Ring (Soulsborne), God of War, etc.) has either transitioned to, or refined the same open world RPG designs to further exploit these sensibilities.Breath of the Wild dropped traditional dungeons in favor of tiny shrines--downplaying complexity and atmosphere in the name of approachability and instant gratification. Mario reverted back to Super Mario 64's design conventions in Odyssey to encourage a faster reward loop. The short 'runs' of Roguelikes have helped them explode in popularity in recent years. And finally, Final Fantasy XIII dropped nearly every good RPG convention in pursuit of maximizing shallow metrics of player satisfaction.
I made an offhand comment earlier about the treasures you can 'find' in the world, as well as the 'branches' in the upgrade tree, and when you think about it, they both tie into this philosophy in the same way. You're not actually meant to be exploring the world--there's fucking nothing to explore. But the designers have decided that rewarding you as if you actually did explore the world would be good enough. The same applies to upgrade paths. There aren't any actual meaningful decisions to be made. But by branching off a path, the designers expect you to feel like you made a decision. After all, you didn't actually have to get that +5 STR
Is this good design? Hell no. But it definitely seems to work for many people out there. To me, these systems violate the first law of game design: they don't challenge you in any meaningful way--they merely ask for your time. You can keep heading straight to advance the game…or you can waste a minute taking a dead-end branching path to get some shitty items. You can just keep using the regular upgrade path, or you can waste X points to get a 'branched' upgrade. If you dig deep enough, these feelings start to crop up in the battle systems too. So many fights don't actually require you to use your brain at all--they can just be braved using the auto-battle system. And yet, these battles will sometimes take upwards of five or even ten minutes of just hammering the auto-battle button. You might be thinking that I'm just "playing the game wrong," but each battle has a fucking par time and I'd often come minutes under par--getting rewarded with five stars even when playing like this. Don't be confused: this is how they want you to play. In lieu of any good design choices, Final Fantasy XIII opts instead to manipulate the easiest resource it can--your real life.
There's certainly a conversation to be had on how these trends have negatively affected the industry--maximizing short term rewards at the expense of longform content--but it is undeniable that modern players have grown accustomed to these systems. Based on sales data and critical reception, it's very easy to argue that they even adore them...But when XIII released, players were totally blindsided. They were, in essence, paying sixty dollars for a mobile game with very nice graphics. Perhaps they weren't looking for the mind boggling complexity of XII, but it's very clear in retrospect that the simplifications found in X were as far as fans were willing to stomach.
However, I don't think XIII would have the same disastrous reception if it were released today. In fact, it's easy to see a lot of XIII's DNA in a newer, far more successful relative--Final Fantasy VIII: Remake. Although there are certainly significant differences between the two, Remake shares strikingly similar upgrade systems, stagger mechanics, world design, and pacing. Playing XIII with fresh eyes in 2022, all I could see in it were the quirks I found in Remake. Which begs the question: are fans of Remake hypocritical for hating XIII? I'll leave that as an exercise to you...but I don't have to worry about that question--I fucking hate them both. One common thing I hate about both of them is their abysmal narratives, so let's finally rip the band-aid off and get to it.
Characters Drawn Together / Narrative Drawn Apart
I'm sure you're probably expecting me to tear this game's narrative to sheds, but I won't be spending that much time on it. To be blunt, it's just as bad as you're expecting it to be--frankly probably even worse than that. The dialogue is on par with Watanabe's Kingdom Hearts offerings and there's enough laugh-out-loud content to rival the worst schock out there. A special shout out here to Lightning's "worst birthday ever" and Snow's sick new hot rod.
Still, I'll take some time to point out the story's most egregious errors, but a point-by-point dissection is no more useful here than on Beyond: Two Souls or Mortal Kombat 4--it's so obviously bad that pointing it out is like explaining that the sky is blue. If you disagree...well I can't feasibly convince you otherwise: you genuinely think the sky is purple. Go pop on Kingdom Hearts and ride to Mickey's Dick Smasher world with Donald and Goofy instead of arguing with me. Still, if you've hate-read this far, feel free to send your death threats to my inbox.
Beyond the usual Nomura/Nojima/Watanabe shenanigans that plague XIII' (ultra-juvenile characters, excessive proper noun usage, convoluted plot devices, etc.), the game falls prey to the same flaw found in every Nojima-led Final Fantasy: inconsistent character arcs. One of Final Fantasy VI/VII's claims to fame was its quality arcs. VI might not have literally written the book on JRPG character arcs and pacing, but it certainly solidified conventions--all while featuring some of the genre's highest highs. Funny enough, the narrative framework I'm referring to is incredibly simple, deceptively so considering how many high-profile games still screw it up.
The first half of the game should focus on setting up intriguing characters, their personal challenges, and the interesting relationship dynamics between them. The second half of the game should fully resolve each character's distinct struggle--ideally with a unique, memorable, and emotional set-piece to back it up. VII refined this strategy in many ways. Iconic characters like Barret, Cid, and Red XIII underwent significant character growth and maturation as the narrative progressed--each getting their own classic set piece to boot (the showdown with Dyne, The First Man in Space, and XIII's quest to discover his origins, respectively). On top of this, it's important that following the arc's conclusion, the character changes in some clear way. You want to see new outlooks on life, new relationship dynamics, and even new entire personality traits that signify genuine character growth.
However, the fully Nojima-led VIII took a very different approach. Although there was still a cast of characters, nearly all focus was given to one or two of them over all else. Squall certainly has a complete and satisfying arc...but it came at the cost of everyone else. The other characters arcs range from half developed (Irvine's struggle to pull the trigger), barely started (Quistis' imposter syndrome), or non-existent (Zell certainly is a cool guy). Some characters have things happen to them (Selphie's school getting blown up), but--as we'll see in XIII--being bummed out for a moment doesn't constitute an actual character arc...especially if the character doesn't change in any meaningful way.
X would feature near identical problems. Characters may be strong personalities, but they're ultimately lacking in meaningful development outside of Tidus and maybe Yuna (if you squint). My favorite example being how Wakka's horrible racism is just never resolved. He starts the game as a racist, is racist, and then rides off into the sunset without any clear indication of regret or remorse. All he does is change the target of his racism from Al Bhed to Guado once he learns he is 100% justified in doing so. Oops.
Other characters like hot goth mommy (currently blanking on her name for obvious reasons) are only around for a combination of gameplay purposes (someone has to start off as a spellcaster!) and aesthetic values (once again: hot goth mommy).
You find these same issues persist in XIII, only far worse. For one, the (marketed) protagonist is probably the most unlikeable character of the bunch. She starts off hostile to the point of comedic absurdity ("Worst. Birthday. Ever.") and ends the game only ever-so-slightly less bitter. Meanwhile side characters are just as shallow as in previous Nojima-led games, but with far less personality between them. Snow is no substitute for Wakka, and Sazh is certainly no Irvine either. Characters with a greater sense of subtlety only work if you have the narrative depth to match, which is sorely lacking in XIII. If they were going to blow it, the least they could have done was give us memorable and zany characters a-la VIII and X. Instead we get black middle aged dad (lamer Barret) and some lady from…down under.
Oddly enough, Nojima and Watanabe find their greatest strength in the exact same character type they did the last two times: the young, conflicted boy who's forced to come-of-age. That's right, it's Hope that ends up having the most complete arc in XIII, much to my surprise. He basically spends the early game being a ten year old version of the Joker--but he ends up getting a series of notable moments (with lots of other characters)! Over time he slowly grows into the most mature member of the party. Characters like Lightning and Snow play off of Hope's journey to maturation...but it's very clear by the time Hope meets his dad that he might as well be the star of the show. And I'll admit it, by the end of the game I genuinely was invested in his story! Perhaps it was because of just how dire the rest of the narrative was, but XIII will need to take its W's where it can get them. One decent character arc out of several means we're at least batting at an VIII average (sorry Tidus).
The rest of the characters turn out just as you'd expect. Some have singular moments of intrigue before devolving back into the exact same character (shout out to Sazh's maligned suicide attempt), while others might as well not have an arc (sorry Fang).
I think it's clear by now how to have a conventionally 'good' character-driven RPG narrative:
1) Set up a series of interesting characters and their struggles in the first act of the game
2) Allow these arcs to develop through memorable set pieces while the party struggles to defeat their enemies in the second act
3) Complete each arc with its own set piece and let each character signify their growth in some clear new trait
4) Give our now-developed characters a satisfying sense of maturation and unification as they band together to defeat a common enemy
Reflecting on this checklist also makes it clear why the second half of this game is such a nightmarish slog. First, what little character arc content there is gets shat out mainly in the first half of the game. Two, there is no good 'common enemy' for the party (and the player) to band against.
That's right, one of the most essential parts of a great RPG is practically absent here: a great antagonist. It's true that many previous Final Fantasy games failed to develop a proper villain...but there's a reason why VI/VII have garnered their acclaim over the rest of the series. Even weaker titles like X or II managed to develop their own iconic bad guy while others at least created a memorable fake-out antagonist (VIII, IV). Instead, XIII finds our characters vaguely gesturing at entire nation-states as their enemy for most of the game. When we finally meet our proper antagonist--the fucking Pope--we know just as much about him as you know about your second cousin.
Not only is it hilarious that XIII's primary villain rips directly from X's side plot--where you also basically fight the pope--but it makes it even more clear how much more trite XIII is by comparison...and Jesus Christ is that saying something. As bad as X was, its attack on organized religion made sense--the game's entire world and story were centered around religion. We spend enough time digesting the religion in order to understand why it posed a real threat to our party and the world as a whole. Beyond that, X found some basic ways to invest players in the fight emotionally--as Tidus' romantic ambitions get tangled up with Seymour's plans to marry Yuna.
The combination of these two factors--screwed character arcs and failed antagonist development--cause the game to devolve from 'fun but entertaining mess' to 'all out nightmare.' It becomes more aimless and underdeveloped than any other Final Fantasy game so far--a very impressive feat considering its place in the series. This becomes all the more harrowing in retrospect--knowing that I still have two more games in this franchise ahead of me. Wait...Why the hell did XIII of all games become a franchise anyways?
Fabula Nova Crystallis: The Birth of a Franchise / Fabula Nova Crystallis: The Death of Final Fantasy
It's easy to forget now, but there was a time where XIII was proudly tied to the "next evolution" of Final Fantasy as a franchise. If you were tapped into media cycles around 2006, you probably remember the announcement of Fabula Nova Crystallis: a new shared universe that would tie together Final Fantasy games going forward. Now I'm sure I don't need to tell you how bad of an idea this was. But clearly some people (especially those who worked at fucking Square Enix) needed to hear this…so let's review, shall we? For one, an enduring appeal--hell, the brand identity--for Final Fantasy was its lack of continuity. It was a brilliant choice that made the series evergreen and allowed newcomers to hop in whenever they liked--a crucial appeal for a genre as unappetizing as JRPGs.
Even if the Crystallis games were only tangentially related by lore, it was always going to be a bad decision to market them as a franchise. Yasumi Matsuno pulled similar tricks with the Ivalice games, but there was never any shared marketing to make this clear to players. It's clear that Matsuno's world wasn't really planned as a corporate gimmick--it just happened as he created more games. Hence the odd inclusion of the non-Final Fantasy game Vagrant Story into to the world. It certainly helps that the connections between games were even smaller than in Crystallis. Tactics and XII technically took place in the same location, but if you weren't reading the greater subtext of that relationship then it genuinely had zero effect on the plot.
Instead, Crystallis comes off more like a greedy plan inspired by pure profit motive. The newly merged Square Enix clearly viewed the fresh design of every Final Fantasy as more of a liability than a boon. Why spend years crafting new worlds, art styles, characters, and story lines when you could pump out quick asset flips for the same profit? This isn't even a theorical question--Final Fantasy X-2 was essentially a shortened asset flip of X that sold nearly as well as Final Fantasy XII, a game that had a massive scale, huge budget, and a 5+ year development cycle. It was clear that attaching new titles to pre-established brands was the safer (and far more boring) financial bet--and so we saw the godawful Compilation of Final Fantasy VII as well as Fabula Nova Crystallis.
Of course, the problem with this strategy is that you need to have an already successful game to build your franchise off of. In the case of VII, I can understand where they were coming from--even if every spin-off they made was an unmitigated disaster. People would still buy them because Cloud and Sephiroth were on the tin. Crystallis, by contrast, reads like one of those classic New Coke disasters you learn about in business school. They genuinely thought they could sell a franchise with literally zero cultural capital beyond an attachment to Final Fantasy and Nomura/Nojima's names on the box. There's a reason why later titles like XV changed their name in a desperate attempt to minimize attachment to the trash-fire that was XIII.
The true Crystallis tragedy is the toll it took on the franchise as a whole. I mean, think about it: XIII and the Crystallis universe was announced in 2006 and we're still awaiting the release of the first mainline game to escape its influence. Even XIV originally started off being powered by the same Crystal Tools that ran XIII--a major selling point at the time. Considering single player games, that means we've been stuck in the extended-world of XIII for…about 17 years now. That's the time gap between the birth of Final Fantasy to fucking Final Fantasy X-2. If XII hadn't been delayed for so long it would also be included in this period. That means we've basically existed in two 'eras' for all of Final Fantasy's existence: The 'Classic' era (I-XII) and the 'Crystallis' era (XIII-XV). Now tell me, which era do you honestly think was better for gaming history/culture/design? Which era do you think produced the most iconic moments, heartfelt stories, and genuine honest-to-god fun?
There's a larger industry trend to consider here--but it's impossible not to see Final Fantasy as one of the flagbearers of this cursed ecosystem. Bloated development cycles, convoluted-yet-shallow narratives, and gameplay systems that fail to rival even NES games. All of these sacrifices in the name of graphical fidelity and a greater sense of 'cinematic realism.' I find it hard to take these cinematic qualities seriously, although I'm sure that's no surprise to you. It's not just because XIII is filled with dialogue that wouldn't pass in a two-star movie…but also because you're dropped back into the same generic hallway filled with mindless battles right after each awful cutscene ends. Perhaps we'd never go back to the Final Fantasy VI era of cracking out an entire masterpiece in twelve months…but certainly there is a far better middle ground to be found here. One that allows developers to approach lower-budget, smaller titles that encourage the creation of unique new IP instead of rehashing an already bloated franchise's worst traits. Frankly, the Final Fantasy franchise would be better served with another mainline title that featured such a development cycle.
The Fabula Nova Crystallis franchise makes clear that priorities had finally shifted within Square Enix. First, there was a need for each Final Fantasy entry to build a franchise--one that could run on its own. Spin-off games, marketable plushies, movie tie-ins, you name it. Second, the game needed to be an insane graphical showcase. Sure, the Playstation era games were graphically focused--but they were made with easily achievable pre-rendered graphics. All you needed was budget to afford the SGI machines and you were good to go. Creating the same spectacle with real-time rendering would be exponentially harder on all levels. We'd need to spend years building our own engines and tools to guarantee that the game looked years ahead of the competition. As a consequence, it didn't matter if we limited our game's world to endless corridors or removed core series functionality. We need our games to wow audiences with ultra-high-rez character models and hair physics. And finally third came…the game. That part didn't really matter as much. As long as characters are cool enough (and look good enough), then we could implement even the most laughable of combat systems and players would still part with their sixty dollars…and so…Final Fantasy XIII.
Vision / Indifference
In closing, I think I can express my hatred for XIII in one word: non-commitment. It's frankly hard to see a genuine sense of passion or thoughtful direction anywhere in XIII. Core aspects of Final Fantasy's appeal--like cities and towns--were cut from the game not because Toriyama wanted to make a statement…but because the graphical fidelity made them infeasible to optimize. Entire systems were removed or reduced too. Not because Toriyama wanted to make some bold statement about minimalist philosophy, but because they didn't know what to do with those systems. Just compare XIII to Hiroyuki Ito's Dungeon Encounters and tell me with a straight face XIII is anywhere near as committed to its design.
If you consider how to fix the game's shortcomings you'll quickly realize the core problem: fixing issues would require the game to commit to an idea. They would have to add on systems, mechanics, and design concepts. And if there's one thing that's clear--it's that Toriyama and Co. would rather die than do that.
Think about it…the world doesn't require you to explore it, the mechanics don't require you to learn/consider them, and the gameplay doesn't even require you to play it. Nearly every aspect of XIII has dumbed itself down to the point of insignificance. The game is fundamentally lacking in any true vision--be it from a unified team or from a singular director. And it sadly begs the question: why even have a game at all?
Just months before XIII's release, Toriyama was quoted saying:
"Even at a late stage of development, we did not agree on key elements of the game, which stemmed from the lack of a cohesive vision, the lack of finalized specs, and the remaining problems with communication between departments."
This chronic mismanagement--brought upon us from the top down--seems to be the exact reason XIII came to us as the disaster it was. It was designed as a franchise-starter first and a graphical showcase second--made by people who didn't even want to make a Final Fantasy game in the first place. It's a game that insists upon itself. One created because it had to exist for financial reasons, not because it particularly wanted to.
And so, I hate Final Fantasy XIII. It stands for nearly every single illness in this industry. I hate its hyper-corporate origins, maligned cinematic fixations, aggressively shallow skinner-box gameplay mechanics, and ultimate lack of artistic vision. These issues highlight many of the problems that still plague the industry…and in that sense, XIII is a pioneer--an avant-garde masterpiece. A true titan of the medium. Unfortunately, it didn't come to us as the vanguard of the future, but as one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
I pray that we may one day escape the shadow it has cast upon us all.
HaloBlues
7 months ago