One of the worst Final Fantasy games. As an RPG itself, it'd be mediocre, but to the slightly higher standards of Final Fantasy, the flaws of this game really shine through. The main character, Lightning, is one of the simplest main characters I've ever seen. Yet they decided to plaster her over the entire trilogy, and even in XIII-2 when Serah was supposed to be the main character, literally the entire time, all they could think about was Lightning. The other characters are completely forgettable. Hope is...well, hopeless. Vanille has some weird accent that isn't quite specific though it sounds like perhaps somebody tried to do a horrible British accent...on purpose. Fang at least has more character than the others, but she's ultimately forgettable as she comes in later, and doesn't have much to say other than something a bit cocky. Snow and Sazh are both pretty annoying, both with a very similar objective of saving someone close to them. The problem with this is that it feels like everyone has the same objective, and behind all this L'Cie stuff, no one is connectable. Perhaps Lightning could be, to the edgy 13-14 year old weeaboo, but other than that, no one seems to be a good character. As for the gameplay, this is my REAL problem with the game. First off, there's no towns. Let's just get that out of the way. The idea of having no towns could've been interesting, since it feels like the characters are always on the run, but it provides no stopping point to gain your bearings and freshen up, as an RPG usually should have. The combat system is just god-awful. It's like if someone took out everything that was great from Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII and made it slower than a slug on mud. I'll basically sum it up for you: You have your Physical Attacker, who's class name I could care less about, the Ravager, who's basically your mage, and your Synergist, which is like your Time Mage. Everything else doesn't matter, and just provides more crap for you to paradigm switch to. Paradigm switching basically changes everybody's class so that they can suddenly perform new functions. This sounds like a very interesting idea, if it weren't for the fact that there's no downside to paradigm switching, other than that it's really annoying, is pretty much required to always use, and having to use it 24/7. Now, most enemies take forever to kill, so what you have to do is use your Ravager (or someone with a mage-like attack) and get their Stagger bar up pretty high. The faster you raise it though, the faster it lowers. This can easily be stopped though with your physical attacker, as physical attackers don't raise the stagger bar for crap, and thus, slow down the stagger bar as well. Repeat this cycle of your ravager attacking, and then your physical attacker attacking, and then someone healing you, and eventually your opponent will be staggered. Afterwards, spam the living hell out of your strongest attacks, and you win. Though, the most annoying part, is that MANY boss fights will use Doom on you. In past Final Fantasy games, Doom was often a spell that had low accuracy but could be a one hit kill on one unit. This time, it's a counter that, when it goes down to 0, means your character dies. Which is an instant game over, because you don't even control every character on the screen! You only control the one person you picked as leader! This has caused me lots of annoyances when I've needed a synergist to just use the right freaking buff and instead uses something pointless. The Crystarium is also a tedious mess. You get Crystarium points that basically let you level up things individually, such as HP, Strength, etc. You also learn spells and other abilities this way. Only problem, is that you can't really choose the exact thing you're going to level up. You level up your paradigm class, and that has some weird random path for leveling up that you can't choose. Need more strength? Too bad, your next level up in that crystarium path is going to be HP. Maybe after 50 battles you can finally learn Cure, too! Also, remember summons? Yeah, those are now called Eidolons and they take the most interesting things from previous games (Alexander, Shiva, etc.) and turns them into vehicles. Um...what? Shiva is now Shiva sisters, and they turn into a motorcycle for Snow to ride. This is perhaps the lamest attempt at making something look cool I've ever seen. Hope's is the only interesting one, considering Alexander's actually fits the theme of what he is in the first place. Lightning's is alright, though, I suppose. Anyway, the game is extremely linear, hence the Jontron joke "Final Hallway XIII." No RPG should be this linear. Remember the other worst Final Fantasy game? Mystic Quest? Yeah, well that got panned for being linear, so I don't see why this isn't. The two things this game does right is make itself look pretty and have a pretty great soundtrack. That may sound like it's good enough, but trust me, it's not worth the thousands of hours you spend in one battle, wasting your time, when you can just watch the cutscenes online and buy the soundtrack. No one should bother with this game, and it's a damn shame that this is some people's first Final Fantasy game. I once got questioned if I even beat this game, and yes, I did. I got to Orphan, staggered the weird wheel guy, and killed him. The ending was typical, and the whole L'Cie confusion came to an end as I didn't have to care anymore because I didn't have to endure any more of this worthless junk.
