Hi guys, it's me again, I've been wanting to write this for some time now but was too lazy to do it. Anyway here it goes:

Final Fantasy XIII, a game that I was waiting for for about five years and finally got to play it on my PS3 and thankfully finished it right befored it YLOD'd on me for the first time(it's been four time till now). Of course after playing games that I always loved back on older generation consoles and seeing how these great franchises "evolved" on current generation consoles left me with a lot to be worried about, DMC4 wasn't as good as it was supposed to be, Silent Hill Homecoming was a disaster IMO and Resident Evil 5 was a real disappointment. All this made mevery worried how Final Fantasy XIIIwill turn out to be.

So what happened to FFXIII? OK guys I played it, and it was alot of fun and I enjoyed it very much, HOWEVER, that only applies to the game as a game in itself, BUT as a Final Fantasy game, it turned out to be more like a miniature final fantasy...a very short version of a real final fantasy game...Ok, I'll explain:

The game had the right artstyle and epic story elements in addition to nice music and beautiful graphics(especially the FMV's), however it lacked some important things that make a final fantasy game so special:

1-Story wise: despite creating a great new world for the game, the developers failed to use it to the max, instead the story only focused on the progression of the characters(which is done well), but no real focus was shed on the environments or the events happening around those characters. Also there are no noticable side characters that you see in every FF game.

2-Gameplay wise: it's been said before and I'll say it again: the game is so damn linear, and although I don't necessarily consider linearity a bad thing but, in this game it is done in a very annoying manner, every chapter from the 13 different chapters in the game feel the same...it might look a bit different but it plays the same, a set of long narrow corridors that connect the beginning and the end of the level or chapter...with the EXCEPTION of chapter 11 of course where you'll FINALLY get a nice big area with a lot of branching paths. But let's be honest here, that's a long time for a game to open up.

3-Every FF game has a wide range of various creatures or monsters, however in FFXIII they are very few and most of them are different versions of the same creature.

4-As for the character development system: the crystarium is a very fun and accessible means to grow your characters but it is so narrowed down into only three stats: HP, Strengh, and Magic.

5-The side quests are a big attraction in every FF game, and here it is taken away, only a chocobo-riding-treasure-hunting-mini game and a set of side missions are scattered throughout chapter 11.

All these remarks and more not just from this game but others too confirm my theory that big games are being toned down for the sake of trying to make them run on other consoles, as you can see FFXIII has been shortened considerably in order to run on the XBox360, and even at that it still took 3 disks there. But why do developers still keep doing that to our favourite games and messing with them? probably money, and that's the harsh reality that sadens me as a gamer and makes me pessimistic about the future of gaming.

Ohh, I miss older games.:(