gaming Random Redeye Reviews #1: The Black Sheep of FF

[Redeye 399]

Today, i'm gonna talk about things. This is the start of my series of extreme Critique towards media that DOES NOT involve My Little Pony, sadly.

 

Today, let's talk about Final Fantasy 13. The game that is considered to be the Black Sheep of the Final Fantasy universe.

 

 

Final Fantasy XIII is considered to be the worst trilogy in the Final Fantasy franchise. (I shit you not, there are 2 sequels to this game.) To be brutally honest, I liked this game, and the sequels. I have only played this game and Final Fantasy XIII-2, which i'll talk about another time, and I have yet to touch Lightning Returns. The 3rd game in the trilogy was just released recently and so I have to wait until the prices go down because it was up for 50 freaking dollars. But enough chat, let's go in to what was to be the Black Sheep of Final Fantasy history.

 

We start of with our Female protagonist, who conveniently has bright pink hair resembling my favorite character from Friend- *Slaps self* Get ahold of yourself, you are talking about games, not ponies, got it? Anyways, yeah. The protagonist's name is Lightning. Lightning is the first of many characters who are going to be named after nouns because the writers just got lazy. Lightning goes on a journey with a Black guy named Sazh who, in my opinion, is the best character out of all 6 Protagonists. The mission is to join the Purge to save Lightning's sister, Serah, from a being known as a fal'Cie. If you played this game, the story is overly complicated to no extent.

 

I'll try not to spoil the story too much, but net we have the Blonde guy named Snow, who's about as cocky and hero-minded as Rainb- *Slaps self again* SHUT THE HELL UP ABOUT PONIES AND TALK ABOUT FINAL FANTASY, DAMNIT! Okay, okay, no more pony talk. This Snow guy is currently searching for Serah as well, as she is his fiancee. Snow leads a Resistance group known as NORA, and this resistance rebels against PSICOM, a group of law enforcers that support the Purge, the act of sending suspected outlaws to the Lowerworld of Pulse. As in Outlaws, I mean people who might have been contaminated by Pulse l'Cie, people who are branded by Pulse fal'Cie to become slaves. Among the citizens who are being Purged, there is this little boy named Hope. (Yeah, real masculine name, amirite?) His mother dies during the battle against PSICOM, which is taking place in the city of Hanging Edge. There is also this hot pink-haired chick named Vanille who is a tad bit crazy. (By crazy, I mean way too damn optimistic about the current situation.) Ya know, Vanille kinda reminds me of- *Gunshot*

 

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Hello, I am Redeye's non-ponifying clone. I'm here to finish what he started since he is an idiot. Anyways, continuing with the game, the battle of Hanging Edge continues until a huge Pulse Vestige pops out of nowhere. The 5 current protagonists meet up there, with Lightning and Snow trying to find Serah, and Sazh, Hope, and Vanille in tow. They eventually find her, try to kill the fal'Cie, end up failing, and becoming Pulse l'Cie for trying to attach the fal'Cie. That's all i'm gonna say about the story from Chapter 2 of 13. The 6th character is a woman named Fang, who is personally my 2nd favorite character of the game. She has black hair and talks in an Australian accent.

 

The characters face some development, but most of the times it's not really that interesting. The backstories are actually similar. All of the 6 characters entered the fight against the Purge for their own personal goals ever since it started 13 days ago within the Seaside City of Bodhum. Well, only that part is the only similar thing between the characters. Their other backstories are different, but that'll be spoiling.

 

In short, the characters were OK. But to be honest, I only liked 2 of the 6 protagonists. The Antagonists? There were so few of them it was really hard to even come up with anything. The moment a new antagonist appeared, he/she was killed off in a matter of minutes. There was really only 1 antagonist that stayed for the entire story, and the Main Villain didn't even make an appearance until HALFWAY INTO THE GAME. The Final Boss? A villain whom was mentioned throughout the game, and came out as an out-of-nowhere final conflict for the last 10 minutes of the game.

 

Characters: 6/10

 

And the story. The story was very complicated. There were so many plotholes that the writers didn't even bother to foreshadow the points that broke the rules. They pulled off a bullshit move just to make the ending work, and thus made the overall story disappointing. Only some aspects of the story were okay, but most of it wasn't really that spectacular.

 

Story: 4/10

 

Now it's onto the gameplay itself. All in all, it took me a total of 60+ hours to beat the game. Not just about the story length and sidequests, but the difficulty.

 

This game is HUGE. It literally took me a year or two just to beat the main storyline. I'm still trying to complete all of the sidequests, even today. Some aspects of the game were pretty enjoyable, such as the vast world of many lore and stories. Although, the gameplay was far from superior. Basically put, the levels in which you walk around the place to get to the objective are 100% Hallways with the exception of Chapter 11, which takes place on Gran Pulse. Secondly, the battle system basically gives you an Auto-battle feature in which you can pretty much finish a battle by mashing X for a few seconds. And finally, the entire game was AGONIZINGLY HARD. Not as hard as Dark Souls, but pretty damn hard. I got stuck on plenty of bosses before, and when I did, I did not touch the game for months until I picked it back up one day and beat it on my first run. Yeah.

 

Overall, the gameplay was ok, but far from perfect.

 

Gameplay: 6/10

 

Finally is the presentation. This game was BEAUTIFUL. The graphics were almost realistic for a game that was made in 2010. The world looked like a piece of art. The music was downright staggering, as every single song in the OST was amazing. I'd easily give this game a great score.

 

Presentation: 9/10

 

In conclusion, Final Fantasy XIII is not a perfect game. Not at all. It is a downgrade from the previous Final Fantasies, but to me, I kinda liked it. I disliked about 30% of it, and the rest I thought was decent enough for me to give it an A-OK score.

 

Overall: 7/10

 

This is Redeye, closing off one of my first of ma- *Shotgun sound*

 

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Damn clone, always interrupting my happy moments. Anyways, like he said, this will be the first of many Random Reviews on media. I hope to see you guys soon, right after I get a little bit of rest at the Hospital. Turns out Bullets weren't part of a good breakfast after all.

 

~Redeye

 

[Redeye 399]

I'm just gonna bump this for the sake of other people's opinions. Can I haz opinions, plox?