A game that, to me, felt like a 60-hour feature film.
I just returned to the game, to try and find redeeming features to it, or if my opinion would change with time. No such luck.
Final Fantasy XIII is quite possibly the most graphically stunning, yet empty-minded game I have ever played. I tried to like it, because I am at heart still a horrible fanboy, though I try to deny it still. I did my absolute utmost to play through to the very end, and found that I simply could not do so. Even now, the thought of playing through yet another dungeon (albeit the final one) puts me off playing the game altogether, even though I'm still mildly curious as to how it ends.
Let's start with the good things about the game. The Graphics. And sadly, that's pretty much it. Graphically, this game is an absolute masterpiece. Every place you visit looks beautiful, every city, every cave, every forest is an absolute delight to behold. That alone captured me when I started playing, and as a result I ignored the more annoying parts of the game. Even the Sphere Grid - sorry, "Crystarium" - looks incredibly pretty.
This, however, is more or less where the good ends. The bad is a very extensive list. Going through the list one by one:
Gameplay: Essentially, you're placed in a corridor with monsters in it. You run from point A to point B, sometimes taking a detour of no more than 3 meters to point C for a chest, and that's pretty much it. Sidetracking is nonexistent. I realise that for some, this is desirable, but the mono-directional gameplay is so pervasive, it became intensely boring to work through. You are, thankfully, granted some freedom of movement in chapter 11, where you can actually roam for a while. This is to go through the SIDE-QUESTS! Hang on, didn't I say there were none? Well, that's not entirely true. There are 64 of them in chapter 11! Well, okay, there's just one, consisting of 64 separate monster hunts. But let's not spoil the fun here! It's 64 sidequests!
Of which about 10 or 15 are mandatory. Sod it then, I was bored doing the mandatory ones, and I can't think how the voluntary ones would improve on it in any way.
Then there's the battle system. Some people adore it. I am repulsed by it. You have a standard team of 3 characters (at least, later in the game. Earlier on, you're often stuck with two, or sometimes even just one character). The action during battles is fairly fast-paced, yet still utilises the ATB system that Final Fantasy games have become so well-known for. However, the time-flow doesn't stop while you select your abilities, and if you want to select everything separately, you'd better be prepared to be pounded in the ground in the meantime. To combat this issue, the developers have been kind enough to provide you with the Auto-Battle command, which is basically a "one-button-solves-all" solution, and removed two of the three characters from your control, who operate on AI.
These features make combat mind-numbingly boring. In the start of the game, you find an enemy, go into the graphically beautiful battle field, and start spamming auto-battle. Rinse and repeat until you get the paradigm system.
The Paradigm system adds some more versatility to your battles, by allowing you to switch out the active roles of your party members, turning a fighter into a healer, and similar such changes. Even then, though, you'll still be mashing auto-battle, only now it's titled auto-heal (or some-such). Literally the only thing I have ever done during battles was swap my paradigms. Add to that the fact that near the end of the game, monsters seem to suddenly multiply their HP and strength by about a thousand, and you understand why I have classed the game as "hard", despite the boredom. There is no slow increase in difficulty, you're just suddenly smashed in the face by ridiculously powerful enemies. And by this I don't mean the über-beasts on Gran Pulse. I know they're there for new game+.
So, the battle system? Boring, lacking control.
Basically, the game wants to involve you, the player, as little as possible. You're allowed to run from A to B and push auto-battle while you're at it. Then watch a boring yet fabulously pretty cutscene.
Moving on from gameplay, which took longer than I intended.
Sound:
The musical score, in my opinion, is neither brilliant nor terrible. There are a few songs that I really like - the Yaschas Massif comes to mind - but most of them were utterly unmemorable. Given that taste in music is very variable, I can only say that this is my opinion.
Characters:
Yeah. Some people state that they absolutely love all the characters. I'm tempted to start quoting Zero Punctuation's take on the characters here, as they were pretty much spot on. Having no desire to commit plagiarism, however, I'll strive to use my own words to describe them. They are all highly standard stock characters, who go through some badly forced character development to make it look as if they change substantially. Sadly, this just isn't the case for most characters.
Lightning goes from angst personified to a few standard revelations, after which she is suddenly the (angstily) caring character.
Snow is the most horribly stereotypical gung ho tough guy I've seen in ages, and though he's faced with many 'horrible tragedies', his character remains as flat as it starts out. About the only change is that he becomes less loud, which IS a good thing.
Fang, the mysterious girl from Austral- PULSE. Sorry. Not Australia. Pulse. Essentially she is a rebellious girl who does what she likes, but is fiercely protective of her friends. Yep, novelty subject right there.
Vanille seems to be completely mental. It is all to hide some sort of shocking revelation about her past in relation to the plot, but the only thing I could think of when the moment came about was that I could see that coming from the next country over.
Hope is the personification of emo. He sees his mum die, though Snow tries to save her, and instantly decides to hate Snow and wants to kill him. This gets stretched out horribly throughout the game, with Vanille for some reason constantly pushing him along and into the travelling party. Later on the story finds its inevitable peaceful resolution, Snow and Hope are buddies again, and Hope seems to have forgotten all about his mum's existence.
Sazh is the only character I liked. He's another horrible stereotype, sadly. The black guy, complete with afro. However, his story actually has a few surprise twists that I didn't see coming, and at least the bloke has a sense of humour. (No, Snow does not have a sense of humour. Sorry, but all his amusing comments were just not amusing).
So far for the characters then. Let's move on to the final point: The story.
Now, the story sets off in medias res. I am not opposed to this way of starting off. It's as valid as any method. However, you're kept in the dark for about half the game as to why on earth these characters are still together and trying to do whatever it is they're supposed to be doing. I simply had no idea what was going on for large parts of it, and to understand many things, I was relegated to the handy data codex in my menu. Why do I have to read an encyclopaedia on the side to understand the story in which I am playing? I am all for some extra information on the side, but when the main explanation to plot points that went so far by me I might as well have been on the other planet are only to be found in the codex, something's gone horribly horribly wrong.
There are many other minor gripes. The shopping system feels awkward. You have access to shops at every save station, but most of them sell items you've either already found or items for the weapon upgrade system. Which is another minor gripe. The weapon upgrade system has you randomly slap a truckload of random materials onto your weapon, which then most likely levels up. There is no rhyme nor reason for it. You're not guided in the slightest as to what materials may be more or less useful for whatever type of weapon. You're reduced to randomly throwing claws, ooze, and metals at weapons until they go up another level. It feels pointless, and I feel they might as well have just put in an old-school weapons system. I.e. find better weapon, equip better weapon, toss previous weapon. Done. Simple, perhaps, but without this pointless upgrade system.
Just to sum this minor novel up in a short paragraph then. Final Fantasy XIII is a graphical masterpiece, which falls short on nearly every other front, except possibly music, where some decent tracks are heard. The characters are flat, and often even annoying. The gameplay is so stupidly linear it's almost insulting, with a battle system that seems to want to involve the player as little as possible. The story was impenetrable unless you read the data-log. With all this so wrong, I admit that I can't understand how the game scores so consistently high, not just on official reviews, but also on player reviews. Am I of a different generation of gamers, who prefers at least some freedom? It boggles the mind. I was tempted to give the game 1 out of 10 to even it out, but I decided to give it the score I felt it deserved, rather than stupidly try to make a pointless point.
In short: 4.5/10. Graphically stunning, but feels like a 60-hour film with little interaction.