is criticism against FFXIII a result of cultural difference?

first thing first - this thread is not about culture-bashing and i urge posters to keep an open mind. so, while i was reading up on information about FFXIII, i found out that the game is unanimously celebrated by Japanese media and gamers alike. that got me thinking - is it possible that the criticism it receives from the western audience is indeed a result of cultural difference (as gamer director Toriyama suggests), or at least misplaced expectations on the game?

and if that's the case, is it perhaps more appropriate to judge FFXIII, or any other less-acclaimed Japanese titles, with more than one perspective in order to appreciate the merits of these games as they are intended?

My criticism of the game is the pacing issues. It's just not very well paced at all. The lack of freedom in FF13 didn't sit right with me. If that makes it a cultural difference then so be it. I don't think my criticisms have anything to do with the game being too "un-Western" though.

With that said I liked FF13 a lot, but it wasn't perfect or even great in my opinion. It was a very good game.

i'll speak from my experience not just in gaming, but entertainment in general. i understand Cantonese and am quite familiar with Hong Kong culture. that really makes watching Hong Kong films a MUCH more rewarding experience, giving me access to cultural dimensions which subtitles can never deliver. also in my experience, having a basic understanding - and appreciation - for the common themes and motifs in Japanese pop culture makes playing their games all the more enjoyable. so, while i haven't played FFXIII (although i plan to), it definitely doesn't sound far-fetched to me that there indeed is a certain degree of cultural difference at work in the stark contrast between the audience's acceptance for FFXIII.

My criticism of the game is the pacing issues. It's just not very well paced at all. The lack of freedom in FF13 didn't sit right with me. If that makes it a cultural difference then so be it. I don't think my criticisms have anything to do with the game being too "un-Western" though.

With that said I liked FF13 a lot, but it wasn't perfect or even great in my opinion. It was a very good game.

yokofox33

i'm sure that, if you have played previous FF games, you will agree that the franchise was NEVER about freedom. complexity in character building and class system varies from game to game, but afaik, Final Fantasy has always been linear - the franchise counts on linear narrative, in fact, to ensure the experience of its epic stories. if you agree with this, will you say that your criticism for FFXIII is perhaps...not entirely fair?

[QUOTE="yokofox33"]

My criticism of the game is the pacing issues. It's just not very well paced at all. The lack of freedom in FF13 didn't sit right with me. If that makes it a cultural difference then so be it. I don't think my criticisms have anything to do with the game being too "un-Western" though.

With that said I liked FF13 a lot, but it wasn't perfect or even great in my opinion. It was a very good game.

Jinroh_basic

i'm sure that, if you have played previous FF games, you will agree that the franchise was NEVER about freedom. complexity in character building and class system varies from game to game, but afaik, Final Fantasy has always been linear - the franchise counts on linear narrative, in fact, to ensure the experience of its epic stories. if you agree with this, will you say that your criticism for FFXIII is perhaps...not entirely fair?

There was tons of freedom in FF12. I figured FF13 would build off of that and give us side missions to conquer, places to explore, etc.

But the freedom I'm talking about is the game dictating who you play as and who is in your party for the first 20 hours of the game. I couldn't use who I wanted to at all. I was stuck using a character for a long period of time that I never used again when I finally got the chance to make my own party. And then when you finally get the hang of a character their little arc ends and you end up going to a different party alignment that the game forces upon you. The pacing just wasn't good.

So in that regard, I say that my criticism is perhaps... fair?

nope, for me it is the result of horrible dialogs and voice acting.

nope, for me it is the result of horrible dialogs and voice acting.

mf1986

which really isn't the fault of the game itself, but rather the lack of localisation quality. it's also worth mentioning that many - GS included - happened to praise the voice acting.

[QUOTE="Jinroh_basic"]

[QUOTE="yokofox33"]

My criticism of the game is the pacing issues. It's just not very well paced at all. The lack of freedom in FF13 didn't sit right with me. If that makes it a cultural difference then so be it. I don't think my criticisms have anything to do with the game being too "un-Western" though.

With that said I liked FF13 a lot, but it wasn't perfect or even great in my opinion. It was a very good game.

yokofox33

i'm sure that, if you have played previous FF games, you will agree that the franchise was NEVER about freedom. complexity in character building and class system varies from game to game, but afaik, Final Fantasy has always been linear - the franchise counts on linear narrative, in fact, to ensure the experience of its epic stories. if you agree with this, will you say that your criticism for FFXIII is perhaps...not entirely fair?

There was tons of freedom in FF12. I figured FF13 would build off of that and give us side missions to conquer, places to explore, etc.

But the freedom I'm talking about is the game dictating who you play as and who is in your party for the first 20 hours of the game. I couldn't use who I wanted to at all. I was stuck using a character for a long period of time that I never used again when I finally got the chance to make my own party. And then when you finally get the hang of a character their little arc ends and you end up going to a different party alignment that the game forces upon you. The pacing just wasn't good.

So in that regard, I say that my criticism is perhaps... fair?

When i played FFVII, i remember having spent close to a dozen hours in the game's first chapter (in Midgar) with only Cloud, Barret and Tifa, and it didn't feel limited at all. of course, having only "one" character is pretty tough. but what i'm trying to say is that, if the combat is great (which is agreed by many) and the story is engaging (also agreed by many), perhaps the part which you did not enjoy is not a flaw per se, but a variation of the franchise tradition?

[QUOTE="mf1986"]

nope, for me it is the result of horrible dialogs and voice acting.

Jinroh_basic

which really isn't the fault of the game itself, but rather the lack of localisation quality. it's also worth mentioning that many - GS included - happened to praise the voice acting.

i know what you mean by "isnt the fault of the game", but it was Square Enix's job to make sure the game gets a good translation for the non-Japanese nations.

When i played FFVII, i remember having spent close to a dozen hours in the game's first chapter (in Midgar) with only Cloud, Barret and Tifa, and it didn't feel limited at all. of course, having only "one" character is pretty tough. but what i'm trying to say is that, if the combat is great (which is agreed by many) and the story is engaging (also agreed by many), perhaps the part which you did not enjoy is not a flaw per se, but a variation of the franchise tradition?

Jinroh_basic

Perhaps what you say is true. In FFVII though those 3 characters are all you had. You eventually are introduced to new characters as the story progresses and can use them immediately if you want. In FFXIII you are introduced to everyone almost right away, but can't use them in the way you want to at all. They are all split up and the game tells you who you control in battle. It then switches to a different set of characters and again forces you to use the character they want you to use. This is a variation in the series, but that doesn't mean I have to ignore it just because it's a variation.

The combat was fairly solid and the story was decent. It was so melodramatic at points. Anyway, I'm not trying to bash the game. I liked it. I never said I disliked it. I'm just pointing out what I didn't like in the game. I personally felt FF13 was held back from being a great game because of these issues. That's just me though. Naturally people will disagree.

at the end of the day, i'm not saying that FFXIII and Japanese cannot suck. they can and many do. but i can't help but thinking that, in many cases, Japanese games are not.... viewed in appropriate light. the flip side of this coin seems to proves this - a large number of western titles are markedly less popular in Japan compared to NA and EU markets, indicating a surprisingly different taste in gaming and perhaps entertainment as a whole.

Didnt the japanese dislike the game just as much as the EU/NA?...There was used games everywhere and they had to cut the retail price just to shift copies out of the store. The was a huge disappoint for me maybe i was way to HYPED but thats there fault for showing it off waay to early.-Hoax-

in Japan, the game topped 1 mil on day one, and received stunning review scores from major game media (afaik, anyway). also, last time i checked, used copies surface rapidly for virtually every game out there. i can get my hands on used RDR very easily too, so it really doesn't maen anything. in short, i'm sure FF13 is a resounding success within Japan. the same can be said about a number of other games that fare poorly in the west, such as Dragon Quest 9.

I wouldn't say its a cultural difference. If it were then none of the FF games would have done well. FF7 through 12 were all received very well besides FFX-2 i guess. There are alot of people in the Western world who love JRPGs, more than ever too with games blowing up they way they have in the last decade. FF13 is just a major disappointment plain n simple. Its a complete step back from previous FF games and is an average or even sub par RPG experience at best. they fell victim to what so many devs have this gen. The casual market. They completely dumbed down the game to try and make it more accessible but in the end its just ends up being extremely boring and limited. Now alot of people argue that the FF13 haters are just against change but that's not true. I'm all for change long as its for the better and this was def not for the better.

Not saying this is the end all, be all but Amazon Japan had lowered the price of a new copy of FF13 to something like 20~25 USD. It also has 3/5 stars on the customer review page with over 2100 reviews. Is that a good indicator of how well the game was received? Probably not, but it could be seen as that to some.

The game got horrible reviews in Japan. Everyone returned it after they bought the game. In a site similar to gamerankings with Japanese reviews, 60% of the votes it recieved were under 4/10.

FFXIII a result of cultural difference? No, it's just one of the worst FF games. The Japanese also disliked it, and I loved every other FF game except this one.

yes, i verified and what you said is true. but XII receives 3 stars on Amazon Jp too so i won't say it's a very accurate gauge in Japan. i won't profess to be the authority in this matter, but in any case, i think the question which this thread tries to ask (not to answer) is valid.

The game got horrible reviews in Japan. Everyone returned it after they bought the game. In a site similar to gamerankings with Japanese reviews, 60% of the votes it recieved were under 4/10.

FFXIII a result of cultural difference? No, it's just one of the worst FF games. The Japanese also disliked it, and I loved every other FF game except this one.

WinnerByTKO

would you mind providing us a link? no, this is not a retort. as a response, my opinion was based on report such as this and this

the entire series have been in a decline for a long time, the game plainly sucked, cultural difference or not.

Not just NA/EU, a lot of us in Singapore (Asia) didn't like it either. I saw a lot of used copy and new copies in many game retail store. I believe it's not cultural, I didn't see big difference in taste between NA/EU JRPG lover and Asian JRPG lover. I mean we like the same thing, Tales of series, Suikoden series, Squresoft titles, Tri-Ace's games, some of NIS published JRPG and other niche titles. FFXIII on the other hand felt so restricted, extremely linear and lack in content, we didn't like it either.

As for our mainstream media's opinion, they wrote FFXIII as "Hollywood of Gaming" in daily newspaper which made us fans here facepalmed.

I hated FF13 for many reasons. The poorly told story, the uninteresting world, the characters were almost all bad, not really having any supporting characters (everyone is just dropped from the story or killed for no real reason), not having an interesting villain (I don't even know if I would call him a villain (I wanted to see the world destoryed), there isn't much of a difference between characters in battle due to the level up system save for maybe one or two unique abilities each in one of the classes, the constant whining and stupid decisions by the main characters, I thought it had one of the worst battle systems I have seen in quite awhile no strategy was needed and the fights were long and boring, and I think Fang is probably the dumbest character that I have ever seen in any JRPG.

Unless Japanese gamers like poorly told stories, bad dialogue, and battle systems where you can win most fights just mashing X/A while doing something else (I beat the Warhammer Dawn of War 2 expansion while playing FF13) then I don't see how my opinion would be any different if I was in Japan.

[QUOTE="yokofox33"]

My criticism of the game is the pacing issues. It's just not very well paced at all. The lack of freedom in FF13 didn't sit right with me. If that makes it a cultural difference then so be it. I don't think my criticisms have anything to do with the game being too "un-Western" though.

With that said I liked FF13 a lot, but it wasn't perfect or even great in my opinion. It was a very good game.

Jinroh_basic

i'm sure that, if you have played previous FF games, you will agree that the franchise was NEVER about freedom. complexity in character building and class system varies from game to game, but afaik, Final Fantasy has always been linear - the franchise counts on linear narrative, in fact, to ensure the experience of its epic stories. if you agree with this, will you say that your criticism for FFXIII is perhaps...not entirely fair?

The weapon custimization is rediculous. It's such a waste of recorces to try and explore the different upgrades makeing upgraging linear.

Oh, that was another problem. I looked at the weapon upgrade system and thought, this seems boring and is explained poorly. So I ignored it at the beginning, completely forgot about it mid way, and beat the game having never used it.

[QUOTE="Jinroh_basic"]

[QUOTE="yokofox33"]

My criticism of the game is the pacing issues. It's just not very well paced at all. The lack of freedom in FF13 didn't sit right with me. If that makes it a cultural difference then so be it. I don't think my criticisms have anything to do with the game being too "un-Western" though.

With that said I liked FF13 a lot, but it wasn't perfect or even great in my opinion. It was a very good game.

Legolas_Katarn

i'm sure that, if you have played previous FF games, you will agree that the franchise was NEVER about freedom. complexity in character building and class system varies from game to game, but afaik, Final Fantasy has always been linear - the franchise counts on linear narrative, in fact, to ensure the experience of its epic stories. if you agree with this, will you say that your criticism for FFXIII is perhaps...not entirely fair?

If you read my next post what I meant by freedom is the freedom to choose our party/characters from the get go. I didn't like being dictated who to play as and what my party alignment had to be. Let me choose who I want to play as. Don't make me wait 20+ hours to finally get the freedom to align my party the way I want it. I didn't have a problem with the actual linearity of the maps.

FFX is linear as a stick and it's my favorite game ever.

If you read my next post what I meant by freedom is the freedom to choose our party/characters from the get go

Honestly, I think it's more about "traditional" Final Fantasy fans freaking out over change. It makes me wonder how much better the game would have been received if it didn't bear the Final Fantasy name. Still, that's the blessing and curse the name carries.hazelnutman

I am a Final Fantasy fan and I was wondering the exact same thing. I think the game would have been better to get rid of the ff title. Everyone hopes would have been down and the overall game would have enjoyed a lot more good criticism

But the name moves copies alone ... no wonder they use it ... too much ... they are sinking their own popular trend though

I enjoyed it until i finished the game, but the post game stuff got kinda boring, its always stagger this stagger that and beat the target time. I liked to take my time with battles in the older ones.

I'm pretty sure there where a lot of Japanese gamers that didn't like this game. It's got nothin to do with culture. It's just a very shallow JRPG.

Not at all.

Final Fantasy was almost as popular in North America as it was in Japan. There are other differences that people might not like, not necessarily the cultural difference.

[QUOTE="yokofox33"]

My criticism of the game is the pacing issues. It's just not very well paced at all. The lack of freedom in FF13 didn't sit right with me. If that makes it a cultural difference then so be it. I don't think my criticisms have anything to do with the game being too "un-Western" though.

With that said I liked FF13 a lot, but it wasn't perfect or even great in my opinion. It was a very good game.

Jinroh_basic

i'm sure that, if you have played previous FF games, you will agree that the franchise was NEVER about freedom. complexity in character building and class system varies from game to game, but afaik, Final Fantasy has always been linear - the franchise counts on linear narrative, in fact, to ensure the experience of its epic stories. if you agree with this, will you say that your criticism for FFXIII is perhaps...not entirely fair?

If you put it that way, any and every game is linear. Linear is just another way to say "nothing to do." FF has been known to have optional things to do. FF3 had absolutely no path once you reached the 2nd world. FF7 has an arcade and optional bosses to find. FF10 had a ton of things to do besides the main story. FF12 was basically one big sandbox. True that to complete the game you had to continue a set story, but how else could it be done?

FF13 is just an rpg. I see no culture involved. Just cause other cultures like to dress up like Lightning doesn't make the game any better. FF13 doesn't even allow you to move on a open map. The only part you do get to move around isn't even a map, just a large open area with no points of interest.

For me the problem initially is with the motivations they have given characters. They are all passive aggressive, which does not make for an exciting game. For god's sake even the 8 year old from Eternal Sonata were better written,

For me the problem initially is with the motivations they have given characters. They are all passive aggressive, which does not make for an exciting game. For god's sake even the 8 year old from Eternal Sonata were better written,

dimis_

For me it has nothing to do with the Japanese culture, the pacing of the game was just awful and the story, while tolerable and actually kinda good, was just kinda ruined by corny dialog and annoying voice acting *Glares at Vanille* Overall I thought the game was good, but it wasnt what I thought it would be.

No. I played 7, 8 and 10 and I liked all of them. I bought 13 on day 1 and I hated it.

Japanese players also hate 13.

FF13: http://www.amazon.co.jp/product-reviews/B000FNQXEO/ref=sr_1_1_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&qid=1275410008&sr=8-1

FF10: http://www.amazon.co.jp/product-reviews/B00005OVXR/ref=sr_1_1_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&qid=1275410102&sr=8-1

FF8: http://www.amazon.co.jp/product-reviews/B00005OVXG/ref=sr_1_1_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&qid=1275410197&sr=8-1

FF7: http://www.amazon.co.jp/product-reviews/B000FNY5EE/ref=sr_1_1_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&qid=1275410153&sr=8-1

please refer to my earlier posts, which has far more accurate information to gauge the game's success in Japan compared to Amazon.

when over 90% of the game looks like this, no its not just a cultural difference. and this is coming from someone who usually doesnt care at ALL about a game being linear

what i'm trying to say is that, if the combat is great (which is agreed by many) and the story is engaging (also agreed by many)

Jinroh_basic

I still haven't finished this game mainly because of how boring I find the storyline (granted I'm only on chapter 9 so I'm still stuck on Cocoon). Theres not much diversity in the game and as a result it feels like an RPG on rails. When Square dumbs down their flagship game so everyone and their invalid stepchild can play it you know that you aren't gonna get the most entertaining game.

They need to remember what made these games so darn fun, all the freedom and fun of exploring vast expanses!

[QUOTE="Jinroh_basic"]

what i'm trying to say is that, if the combat is great (which is agreed by many) and the story is engaging (also agreed by many)

xaos

surely you remember that, with the exception of FFXI and FFXII, your party is set stationary in virtually every FF game. combat was universally praised by all reviews, western and Japanese alike.

it seems to me that this, along with various other "flaws" mentioned in this thread, may well be just a variation of franchise traditions. "cultural difference" is probably too broad a term, but judging from FFXIII's success in Japan (which i have attempted to prove in earlier posts), i argue it is likely that the western audience, which since the advent of 7th gen have enjoyed the likes of Dragon Age and Mass Effect, might have approached the game with a set of less than objective expectations.

[QUOTE="xaos"][QUOTE="Jinroh_basic"]

what i'm trying to say is that, if the combat is great (which is agreed by many) and the story is engaging (also agreed by many)

Jinroh_basic

surely you remember that, with the exception of FFXI and FFXII, your party is set stationary in virtually every FF game. combat was universally praised by all reviews, western and Japanese alike.

i'm afraid i don't understand. to elaborate using your example... in previous FFs, you can never actively dodge an enemy attack, be it focused or AoE. so why is it a problem now?

i'm afraid i don't understand. to elaborate using your example... in previous FFs, you can never actively dodge an enemy attack, be it focused or AoE. so why is it a problem now?

Jinroh_basic

please refer to my earlier posts, which has far more accurate information to gauge the game's success in Japan compared to Amazon.

Jinroh_basic

changes are most definitely welcome - if the audience knows what they expect and judge what already is within the existing context of the game itself. as you can see in this thread.... that may not be the case.

[QUOTE="Jinroh_basic"]

please refer to my earlier posts, which has far more accurate information to gauge the game's success in Japan compared to Amazon.

sandyxpcn

thanks for the website. it's great. but as a response, i'd like to point out that Dengeki and Famitsu are among the largest entertainment media in Japan, so their reader polls do carry a great deal of relevance.

PS i need to head out so i'll leave this thread in your hands. thanks for sharing your opinions, and let's hope we won't need to have this kind of discussion about Versus when it's released. :)