20 thoughts on “A Very Tepid Defense of Final Fantasy XIII | A Fabula Nova Crystallis Retrospective”
Halfway through I gotta say I feel like the title is a joke at this point haha I do understand though I feel like you need to understand this games flaws to appreciate what it provides.
Edit, finished! My above comment holds true but it was interesting and I enjoyed hearing your perspective on the past and future of FF13. You nailed it when you said despite everything it still felt like there was a passion ti everything that resonated with the games themes to shine a unique experience through. Like the characters themselves the devs believed in themselves and followed there hearts and while there was mass death and destruction we still got a relatively good ending.
I mean Barthandulus makes sense as a villain when you realize he's a being higher than the human characters who are pretty much cattle to him, tbh I feel like they were tryina do an eldritch story without the horror part for FFXIII, which probably just doesn't work and wasn't developed enough also the MCs funneled linearity makes sense because not only are they being pursued but they also face the fact that they could become C'ieth at any time. I do love this game because it's beautiful and the combat imo is the best and most strategic form of ATB combat, I've literally game overed in this probably twice as much as all other games in the series combined. I def think the game while flawed deserves a lot more credit than people give it, I think the segmented ATB and stagger mechanics which were further fleshed out in 7 Remake's combat were great additions to the series I hope we can see be further implemented in titles even after Remake is finished. I had a point and I forgot it.
Funny, many would argue Sazh to be one of the best in the game, realistic and relatable. I found his waywardness pretty understandable particularly since, well, it doesn't make sense for him to do what the others are. Lightning's a badass soldier who probably has the best chance at her goals, but would honestly probably fail if she got anywhere close by herself (she isn't as strong as in Lightning Returns quite yet). Hope's emotions are carrying him, also to a rather fruitless goal. Vanille wanted to go home, but options aren't presenting themselves. Snow has a goal for Serah, but again; pretty futile. And Fang's goal to find Vanille is achievable until she does and then her goal is just as difficult as Vanille's, but more achievable with teamwork. Which is to say, all the characters aren't in any position to have life-changing goals without working together. So I never had any problem with how the characters felt about their situation or how they chose to deal with it, but whether it made for the most enticing journey is up for debate. When it came to Sazh, it really was a case of; what really IS he supposed to do. He's an old civilian, doesn't harbor much anger, has limited time, and even if he wanted to fight, his son could have been used as leverage against him. The only reason he got involved in the story was because of his son's condition. So it really doesn't behoove him to care about anything else. And while he took his time, he eventually decided that his goal was simply to meet his son one last time. I don't fault him for that at all. Additionally, all the scenes you showed of Sazh supposedly "complaining" I found to just be mostly rational statements that worked against your point. He rarely said any of those lines with vitriol. He said they should be "rational" when fighting a mecha scorpion, he made a lame but spirited joke about hell on the hanging edge, he told Snow that he wasn't being logical which everyone agreed with (and by everyone I mean Lightning, the best one), he said Light and Snow were hopeless and accurately psychoanalyzed them when they just couldn't just agree to disagree, had more sarcasm, wanted an understandable though ill-advised break, and so on. He's just correct most of the time. Maybe his character isn't at all entertaining, but as a person he's the most palatable across the board, next to maybe Fang.
The way I see it, the setup for the story presented only two boats for the characters to jump into. The "do something stupid and futile alone" boat, or the "avoid the cops and try to figure something out" boat. The first paints the character as flawed and/or stupid, and the second paints them as indecisive or weak. I mean I love Lightning the most, but her plan simply would not have worked out, and deep down she knew it was a suicide mission. She wasn't rallying people to go with her, they're dead weight; she wanted a solo mission. You brought up a Barret comparison, but admittedly I enjoyed Barret less than Sazh because he falls into much of the same boat that Snow does. Not that Barret's goal is altogether stupid or unachievable, but more because his mindset would put him in similar suicidal situations like Lightning or Snow, if it weren't for the team that stands by him to correct his course. When comparing Sazh to other character in 6 or 9, you can't discount the fact that a lot of them hold a lot of power and/or responsibility in which they are actually able to do something with it. Along with supportive party members who aren't splintered and/or divided in their goals. I mean when Celes had a support group she stuck things out, but when everything went to hell, she legit jumped off a cliff, which pretty much is the ultimate "whinge" imo, even though she survived.
One of the issues in FF13 that divides the party is that they're all thrust into life-changing problems immediately, with no time to figure themselves out, so no one has enough stability to where they can spend time to help anyone else out or encourage them.
The only real inoffensive solution to both boats is for all of them to come together for singular achievable goals that they can do as a team; hence all the character-focused stories in the first half, aimed towards sorting their interpersonal problems out. Also worth noting that a singular group goal wouldn't necessarily be what any individual party member would care about the most. It's either just an indirect means to achieving that, or something they eventually settle on.
Also, not sure what the point of your off-hand description of Dajh was, but I found it odd and possibly insulting.
Anyway, the analysis of the characters here especially has me questioning why this ultimately chose the side of a defense video, because much of the game is so dependent on whether people can empathize with most of the characters' situations and mindsets. For me, Snow is probably my worst offender, but even as I see his flaws and was as annoyed as Lightning was of him, I don't hate him outright like that, because I see those human parts of him. I usually spend most of my words defending Lightning or Hope or Vanille. First time I've had to defend Sazh, and I think that's for good reason.
In any case, I do love and defend the good of FFXIII, but this particular review lost me in places to where I don't really know how to take much good away from it.
The paradigm roles also provide certain kinds of stat buffs to the entire team, with the party leader providing most of the bonus. Commando for examples increases the party's damage output, while Ravager increases (if I recall correctly, it's been a while since I last played) the team's ability to build up the stagger gauge.
Here's a little known fact: The duration of buffs that are conferred by Synergists increases a bit per 1000 Magic. So basically the best Synergists will have over 4,000 Magic, at least if you want the longest possible buff durations.
I forget the exact formula, but there's a Gamefaqs post about the Battle Rankings formula in XIII and how it works. It's completely skill-based and you can consistently get 5-star rankings in virtually every battle if you know what you're doing. In first playthroughs it's not as likely that the player will get the maximum rankings so frequently because they don't really know what they're doing yet, but for all of the most important fights (story bosses) it's a complete non-issue since the story bosses have fixed drops that aren't dependent on your ranking, and the Techniques are more meant as emergency measures anyway (barring Libra). The Techniques bar is even balanced in such a way as to make sure that the player should always have access to Libra even if they do poorly in combat, since the lower bars are much smaller and therefor are significantly easier to fill. Where your Battle Ranking mainly becomes super important is if you're using Techniques a lot (especially high cost ones) or if you want to get monster drops, since getting higher ratings improves the likelihood that you'll get the rarer items.
Quake's main utility is actually slowing down the stagger gauge, which the Commando, Saboteur and Sentinel do to different extents (the Commando does it better than the Saboteur and far better than the Sentinel), but Quake does it better and faster. If you're worried about a boss or other enemy's stagger duration not lasting long enough for you to capitalize on, just use Quake before they get staggered and make sure that it hits before the stagger happens.
Stopga is an emergency measure and a safety net for bad players. It's really not something that competent players will be using.
Libra is immensely useful because it not only tells you all of the damage/ailment weaknesses, resistances and immunities, it also far more usable than Librascopes. It's true that Librascopes can be used on all the enemies at once, but they're rare items and so you can't be nearly as liberal with their usage. I basically only use a couple Librascopes in Bart 1 and a couple other particular fights, and that's it. I use Libra at least once for everything else. Libra also not telling you everything doesn't matter because killing those enemies multiple times will gradually fill in the rest of the information, and Libra gives you most of the information to begin with…..The "cheating" point is also ridiculous. Retry exists as an option for a reason, and if players want to use it that way, that's fine. You're more than welcome to dislike it being used this way, but I would argue that it's a clever use of the intended systems because it allows you to go into the fight with a more effective strategy after getting roughed up trying to figure out what strategy to use. If this were one of the other games where you have to carefully manage your HP and MP outside of battle because there's no HP/MP Full Restore after combat I would be more understanding of this point of view, but it just can't be considered a flaw in XIII's design.
Renew is basically a poor man's Curaja/Cura combo. It can certainly help in a pinch, but I can only think of two fights in the whole game where it would be a good idea to use it. A good strategy will make it so you'll never having to use Renew in any fight, barring arguably one or two specific encounters. Ironically I'm more likely to use Renew as a method of giving my character temporary hyper-armor and healing to tank a powerful attack than I am to use it for pure healing.
Summons I definitely think are a bit of an issue, but more because the "correct" way to use them is not intuitive. Lightning's for example is basically meant to be used for Zantetsuken, so that way you can instantly kill tougher enemies like bosses. However, as anyone who's seen a speedrun of the game will know, these kinds of setups are very specific and complicated. Someone who doesn't know what to do beforehand will definitely struggle to use them effectively, which is a similar issue to a lot of the mechanics in the Kingdom Hearts games. If you know what you're doing though the Summons in XIII can be very effective in certain situations. Lightning's Eidolon for example is used twice in the any% speedrun to insta-kill the remaining HP of two specific bosses in the story, and it's incredibly rewarding if you pull it off yourself.
….You…. you use Libra to learn what the Eideolon wants you to do in order to fill up its Gestalt bar…. Most people figure this out when they first play the game….🤦♂
I agree that the turning animation is too slow and makes things kind of unresponsive on the whole, but the "cinematic" for paradigm shifts adds a layer of strategy to the game by making it so you have to carefully consider when to shift paradigms, and it also has the affect of preventing the player from abusing Role Buffers too liberally, which ended up being a huge problem in the sequel, which removed this cinematic. If you don't know what Role Buffering is, basically it's using a specific ability on say, a Ravager, then switching the party leader to another role while the ability is in use in order to benefit from the specific stat bonuses of the role you switched to. For example, a Firaga used while in the Ravager role doesn't do much damage, but if you cast Firaga and then switch to the Cerberus paradigm (three Commandos) the damage of that Firaga will be substantially increased. The lack of this cinematic in XIII-2, in addition to reducing the amount of strategy that exists in the game's combat, means that you can spam this technique very liberally to do lots of damage insanely quickly to groups of mobs, and that combined with the significantly lower health pools of the enemies in that game and how Magic outscales Strength in the progression system, as well as the fact that you can get endgame Magic abilities like Firaga pretty early on in the game because of the way the progression system works makes Role Buffer strats incredibly broken and exploitable. Ravager -> Commando Role Buffers in particular are exceptionally broken in XIII-2, especially against mobs with low health, which are commonly weak to fire damage.
Uggghhhhh, the "FFX did linearity better" non-argument. FFX is actually more linear than FFXIII because it's a pilgrimage story, so you even have less choice in how you can progress your characters (referring to progression systems) despite the Sphere Grid seeming more open than the Crystarium.
The reason FFXIII doesn't have "meaningful side paths and mini-games" is because it not only doesn't match the world that you spend most of your time in as a tightly controlled, manipulated and monitored cocoon that was designed by the fal'Cie to trap, brainwash and eventually end up killing the entire human race, it doesn't match the narrative and themes of the story, in which the characters are transformed into slaves with magical powers by demigods and who will eventually turn into zombies if they fail to complete the vague tasks they have been given and then are forced to constantly run away from and battle the state whilst they figure out what their designated tasks are and either try to complete them or try to overcome them. When putting the level design into narrative and thematic context, I'd hardly consider it a flaw that the game is mostly so linear and I do not think that the linearity is too extreme. Even the parts that are a bit more open-ended on Cocoon or give slight reprieve (Nautilus) are clearly conveying the illusion of control that the characters have over their own situation. The lack of connectedness also isn't really an issue because Cocoon is meant to feel artificial and it doesn't make sense in the story for the characters to go back to places they've been to previously like Lake Bresha, since that would undercut their progress and they would also likely get caught. Pulse is something of an exception because the state has no presence there, but they still need to push forward eventually because their bodies are ticking time bombs running on vague, unknown time limits.
I find the linearity complaints to be so hard to understand for FFXIII because the level design is far better integrated into the narrative and themes of the story than it was in FFX (based on what I've played of FFX so far, anyway), where the exploration and mini-games were usually out of place because they didn't fit the narrative. It doesn't really make sense that Tidus can go around exploring a bunch of side-paths and doing other things when they're on a pilgrimage that has a very clearly implied and even outright stated urgency to it. Why would the other Guardians allow him to just go back and participate in Blitzball tournaments whenever he wants to? The Cloister of Trials is arguably the worst example of this, because what do the puzzles in the Cloister of Trials have to do with being a Summoner or Yuna's journey? Narratively and thematically they're completely out of place in the story at hand, and so they break immersion because what you're doing in the gameplay and what you're doing in the story have nothing to do with one another, and this becomes even more apparent once you realize that there are certain secret chests that grant powerful items for your characters if you can get them, which makes the Cloister of Trials seem like something that was added to the game purely because that kind of content is traditional to RPGs rather than because it actually adds something of value to the experience. If the Cloister of Trials were a series of combat trials designed primarily around Yuna's abilities (Tidus's for the first two Cloister of Trials) then that would have been far more narratively and thematically appropriate. It just seems to me like the level design and game structure of FFX was intentionally compromised in order to accommodate certain traditional sensibilities of the genre, even though those accommodations came at the expense of the story and has the result of making the world and (in certain parts of the game) the story feel rather artificial and 'videogamey" when they clearly weren't intended to feel that way, or in other words, that it was pulling its punches with the level design and overall gameplay structure, making its level design and gameplay structure strictly inferior to FFXIII's by all objective metrics. That's not to say that FFXIII's doesn't have its issues in that regard necessarily, just that I think it's objectively better when compared to FFX's.
All of the characters are undergoing and processing their trauma and grief. They might not have a good sense of where to go and what to do for a lot of the game, but that's kind of the point. People who are suffering the immediate or even long-term effects of trauma and/or circumstances that are larger than them and that they have no control over tend to be confused and not really know what to do, sometimes opting to just go with the flow, though how they deal with these kinds of issues depends on their specific personalities and motivations. Hope is in a state of shock and anger after seeing his mom get murdered by the state and becoming a slave with magical powers, eventually wanting to get revenge on Snow because he thinks he killed his mom. Lightning wants to destroy the state, who is responsible for their current predicament (and Serah's), but eventually realizes that Hope needs help and decides to teach him to fight and encourages him to get revenge, and upon realizing this mistake she decides to really help him by taking him home to see his family. Vanille feels immense grief over what happened the first time in her and Fang's battle against Cocoon and wants to run away from and hide their Focus rather than carrying it out because she thinks it's scary, so she generally just goes with the flow and presents herself in a bubbly way in order to deal with the grief and rationalize her dishonesty and keeping of secrets. Etc etc etc. Part of the journey of these characters is in overcoming or coming to terms with their grief in order to not just become friends, but to become more complete and mature people who can bear the responsibility of saving the world and helping others who need it. How can you consider them not having much of an idea of what to do and where to go in the earliest stages of their character arcs a criticism in this context?
And…. the characters do find something to do with their time? Just because it doesn't advance the goals of their fal'Cie owners that doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't doing anything. Hope is shook initially but he is made to follow Snow, then he later resolves to take revenge on Snow after being put into another state of shock and being forced to do certain things because he's been pursued by the state like the others. Lightning wants to destroy the state (as previously mentioned) and resolves to try and help Hope become better at combat, encourages him to get revenge and then later resolves to help him see his family so he can grow past his desire for revenge, of which the former is a result of her imposing her world view on Hope when he's emotionally unstable and doesn't know any better. Fang is trying to find Vanille and get back her memories, then decides to help the rest of the crew for a while. Vanille wants to run away from her Focus and decides to stay with and help Sazh, learning more about him and just trying to enjoy her time with him as best as she can. Snow wants to save Serah, and later Cocoon (pretty straightforward). Sazh wants to free his son from the state (iirc), and is overall probably the character that is the most unsure of what he wants to do after he gets turned into a superpowered slave. I think "the first 25 hours of the story revolves around the characters having no idea what they want to do" is a gross oversimplification and a deliberately disingenuous interpretation of the relevant material that is seemingly motivated by arbitrary personal preference.
The characters don't have open motivations all of the time because a lot of what informs these motivations, which they've kept generally hidden, is tied to things or events that had a deep effect on them psychologically and emotionally, and so they understandably don't want to share those things with people who they don't really know and generally consider to be strangers, or at the very least don't consider to be close enough friends to share this private information with them, and as the story progresses the characters gradually open to each other as they slowly bond and become friends. This is how most people in real life deal with these kinds of things, so it's weird that you would criticize the characters for not having open motivations when they're dealing with the circumstances they've been dealt in a realistic way that fits with their individual personalities and backgrounds. It's not that they are wandering aimlessly until the revelations happen (though it might seem that way from the audience's perspective), it's that they don't feel closely enough to their travel companions to expound on their personal issues in conversations with them until around the time the revelations happen, which is actually clever writing and it does make sense in context. Final Fantasy XIII is a story of six complete strangers being forced to become allies through bad/unlucky circumstances because they're fugitives, separating from each other at various points in the story that are based on their circumstances, motivations, personality differences and/or toxic personality traits and then gradually becoming close friends and in turn more mature, complete and fulfilled individuals as the story progresses, up until the point where they finally become best friends and set aside most of their differences to fight the state by Chapter 9.
Just because Sazh doesn't make the most direct choice in just going back to Eden when he doesn't have the skills, the familiarity or the power to attack PSICOM single-handedly and get his son back, that doesn't mean that he's written poorly. In fact, he's literally make a realistic choice in not going directly into enemy territory. He's a fugitive and he didn't plan on becoming one, going back to PSICOM to try and take his son back by force.. alone, or even with Lightning, would almost certainly get him captured and killed. As for Sazh not displaying his emotions as outwardly as the others, he's clearly more emotionally mature than the other characters and is a more stoic figure by comparison. He's more capable of behaving rationally and objectively than the other characters and is clearly bothered by what's happened to him. We just don't get shown his emotional and psychological issues as explicitly as with the other characters. Honestly, the fact that you have to compare Sazh to Barret from FF7, despite the fact that they are completely different people with different personalities and backgrounds and only have the most superficial and irrelevant similarities really kind of goes to show that you don't have a sound basis for your conclusions on Sazh and that your criticisms are motivated entirely by arbitrary preference. That was a ridiculous and obviously unfair comparison that only the terminally braindead will believe is valid, and the assertion that Sazh "doesn't just get to agonize all the time", even if that were true an Sazh did this, is not an argument.
Honestly it just kind of seems like you lack empathy and don't really understand mental health issues like PTSD, and I say this as someone who really loves the characters in this game, especially Hope. As someone with trauma myself, these characters are incredibly relatable and I'd hardly call them poorly written. They're certainly better than FF7's characters (I think I've played enough of the first part of the FF7 Remake to be able to say with confidence that the characters and story of FF7 aren't very good). I actually disagree that Lightning is the most fleshed out character in the game. Hope has by far the most dynamic and fleshed out character arc out of the main cast.
On the whole you appear to have a very bad comprehension of the material and lack the ability to distinguish between objective quality and your personal preferences. If you don't like the characters, that's fine, but they're all objectively well-written and I challenge you to prove otherwise. And no, the comparison to two specific characters from Final Fantasy 6 doesn't hold up to scrutiny. It's an obvious apples to oranges comparison that you're using to mask the fact that you have no good argument against why the characters in XIII behave the way that they do, and your argument is based on a falsehood anyway, since the characters do have motivations and carry out actions in accordance with those motivations once they are given the space to breathe and think about what they want to do (they are fugitives being constantly chased, attacked and harassed by the state after all, so they don't always have time to think about what they want to do). There are moments of uncertainty from the characters as they come across specific issues and are forced to deal with their trauma, but they are temporary instances and are not permanent. I suppose you could say that maybe they're unsure of what to do about their Focus for 25+ hours, but that's not what you said, is not the same thing and is perfectly understandable given the circumstances.
The sign of a hack critic is that they can only ever criticize or defend something by comparing it to another personal favorite property of theirs, no matter how far the reach.
I honestly don't even feel the need to address the "Datalogs" point. The Datalog is not necessary to understand the story, and any information that you would only learn in the Datalog is information that the player doesn't need to know in order to understand the story. I understand the story and relevant pieces of lore just fine without having read any of the Datalog entries, so other people have no excuse for needing to read them in order to understand the story. If you struggle to understand the relevant pieces of story and lore in XIII and need to read the Datalogs in order to understand them, you're either not paying attention or you're stupid. One of the two.
Honestly, XIII's story, world and characters aren't that hard to understand. I'd hardly describe myself as being the smartest person in the world or as someone who has a very high amount of arts literacy. It really is not that complicated and virtually everything, if not everything, that needs to be explained in order for the story to work is explained in the cutscenes and gameplay themselves and do not require the Datalog to understand. Most of the information contained within the Datalogs is optional lore that you don't need to know and is placed there as a convenient method for anyone who wants to dig deeper into the lore and history than what is necessary for understanding the story to be able do so. Yeah, there's a lore entry on what the Guardian Corps do in the Datalog, but it's just not important information to know for the story at hand and you can figure out what the Guardian Corps are by just playing the game normally anyway (obviously they defend certain locations to protect the people from monsters and other threats such as criminals, whereas PSICOM is a specialized military force for dealing with "threats that originate from Pulse". Basically PSICOM is the military and the Guardian Corps are the local police. You can figure this out by just.. playing the game and applying a bit of critical thinking, no Datalogs required, the Datalog is just an alternative to way to learn this information if you're really struggling with it for some reason or want to know more specific details that ultimately don't matter).
The summaries of each chapter's events exist as a way for the player to go back and read up on those events if they forget about them (say, after not playing the game for a while), or as a way to pull them back in and make sure they're still caught up when they load the game up (summaries of what's currently happening or have happened a little while ago in the chapter you're in are played on the loading screens when you load the game from the title screen, likely for what I've mentioned and also to give you something to do while you wait for the game to load because the load times aren't exactly fast, especially on a PS3/360). You're obviously not intended to read the summaries that are in the Datalog right after finishing those events you nincompoop. This is a misconception.
If you want some subtlety so you can figure out what just happened for yourself.. just don't read the Datalogs. It's really that simple. That's what I did each time I played the game. They're not required to understand the story and relevant lore. The people who complain about the Datalogs being necessary to understand the story are the ones who are foolish enough to actually read the Datalogs all the time instead of trying to process the material for themselves, gimping their ability to think critically about and understand the material in the process. The actual lore and plot are laid out properly, you're just not intelligent enough to understand it and/or aren't paying attention to the story. One of the two. Barring like, two, maybe three things that I think might be plot holes, I've never had any issues understand the plot and relevant lore despite not having read the Datalogs. The Datalogs are literally just flavor text, my guy. You only have your own arts literacy and material comprehension to blame if you struggle to understand the story without reading that stuff.
The story doesn't "jump around constantly". Anyone who's actually played the game knows that the story is split up into segments of roughly equal length that spend an equal amount of time focusing on the relevant characters and other relevant information in their respective segments, and these segments either last for multiple hours or for 30-60 minutes depending on the story structure, which gives you plenty of time to get to know the characters and start familiarizing yourself with any new information. In Chapter 1 you spend around 30 minutes or so with Lightning and Sazh to slowly get to know who they are and what their motivations are, and you are also introduced to concepts like The Purge, PSICOM, biological weapons, AMP technology and PSICOM's technology, with most of those being briefly touched upon when they were relevant and most of the concept exploration being dedicated to showing and explaining what The Purge is to the player. Then you spend around 30 minutes or so with Snow and his ragtag group of friends, showing us The Purge and PSICOM more directly from the perspective of those who are fighting against them, while also exploring them further and introducing new characters, chiefly Snow and who he is, Vanille and ho she is, showing us a small glimpse of her bubbly and fun persona and the true Vanille that lies underneath the mask via the narration, as well as Hope and his mom, which is vital to both Hope's characterization and the events of the story going forward, so Hope's mom and his relationship with her is fleshed out early and we get an idea of the kinds of psychological issues that Hope is currently dealing with under the circumstances. After that we see the big fight on the bridge with the new recruits, the death of Hope's mom and both Hope's and Snow's deeply traumatic reactions to that whole event, including the other deaths that occurred. After which we see Hope in a state of shock (largely induced by seeing his mom fall to her death) being brought to his senses by Vanille and Snow falling into a seemingly bottomless pit. We then cut to Lightning and Sazh talking about The Purge in more detail, then there's a boss fight and we're finally introduced to the Pulse Vestige, and…. you get the idea, I'm sure.
The point is that while a lot of concepts and characters are introduced in Chapters 1-3, roughly equal amounts of time are dedicated to all of them, and establishing the characters and ideas that early allows them to gradually expand upon and explore those characters and ideas at a more comfortable pace afterwards. The first three chapters are all about gathering the pieces, and the rest of the story is figuring out where those pieces go on the board. Not only that, every Chapter after Chapter 2 has a slower pace to it and a longer duration, and since all of the relevant concepts and characters were introduced and explored in the first three chapters (barring Fang, but she isn't relevant to the story until later), you can slowly and gradually expound upon them over time throughout each chapter, as the player really shouldn't leave Chapter 3 without having a basic understanding of all of those ideas and characters as long as they are paying attention and thinking critically about the information they are presented with. And obviously the rest of the story follows this trend of having good pacing and splitting the amount of time dedicated to each of the character arcs, plot threads and concepts roughly equally. The jumps only appear as being really sudden and out of place if you're not paying attention to the story to begin with.
The irony of someone complaining about XIII supposedly lacking subtlety when he evidently wasn't paying attention to the story to begin with and missed blatantly obvious details that weren't conveyed in dialogue because they weren't explicitly spelled out for him….
XIII isn't heavy-handed with its ideas at all. You could maybe argue that it just tells you the themes in the dialogue which arguably only really happens in Chapter 10 with Cid, but how those themes are used and what they really mean in the context of the story is not so direct, and that's why I think a lot of people seemingly struggle to understand these elements of the story, yourself included. It's not like the game goes around constantly telling the player that the story is about trying to overcome the "fate" that was dealt to you and free will in such explicit, clear cut terms, and those ideas are really only vaguely alluded to in certain conversations with Barthandelus and Cid, which are few and far between throughout the game. These themes are otherwise conveyed in much less direct ways, typically through action (including gameplay) and music.
The dialogue in this game is fine. You have a few select lines of dialogue that are memeable as fuck ("All this dampness is damp!"), but the rest of it matches the tone and themes of the story and the way the characters are behaving. I wouldn't expect the conversations of a bunch of traumatized characters in a highly dramatic story to be incredibly sophisticated, especially when at many points they're struggling to articulate their own feelings properly. I think the simplicity and (occasionally crude) wit of the dialogue in the game works to its benefit and makes sense for the characters and story. I don't see how this dialogue is anything like Disney Fanfiction Wars dialogue, nor how any of the dialogue is problematic. Are characters in stories not allowed to be witty in situations where they're obviously stressed out and/or traumatized and in ways that makes sense for their personalities? That's just a ridiculous thing to criticize. I certainly wouldn't expect real people in these situations to be all dour and serious business all the time, especially kids, young adults and jaded fathers.
…..Nuh-uh, you did NOT just frame Nora saying that moms are tough as a joke or a "witty response" in this compilation. That's incredibly dishonest, and I think you're well aware of the fact that you're lying about this. "Moms are tough" is what she said to convince Snow to let her help, and it's what she says again to reinforce that, only for it to end in tragedy, which makes her death hit harder. In context the statement is not a joke or something witty.
If you were actually paying attention to the ending you would have noticed the small flash of light in the center of Cocoon during the final CG scene from before (or after? It's been a while) they uncrystallized, which very heavily implies that it was an external force, perhaps an individual on a higher plane/level of existence, that helped them un-crystallize, but even without having played the sequel to learn that this is the case for sure, you can just as easily interpret it as them having overcome their assigned fates, since they clearly did so. Cocoon wasn't destroyed after all, yet they crystallized anyway. Not only that, Final Fantasy XIII was clearly written to be part of a larger story (given the ending) and it exists as part of a trilogy, and so it is actually fine to leave the full explanation for how this happened in the sequel because it gives you enough to go off of to reach the right conclusion already, it just doesn't give you any specifics because they're not relevant to XIII's story and would certainly require a clunky exposition dump that would be totally out of place in the ending and in fact the story as a whole if those specifics were to be told.
I would give you the short answer for what happened in the ending of XIII, but that's spoilers for the second game, and you really should have just been paying attention when watching the ending in the first place.
Orphan said that the fal'Cie are chained down by their designed natures to perform specific tasks as dictated by the Creator, which puts a hard limit on what they're capable of doing, whereas not only do humans not share such restrictions on what they can do with their abilities, they have incredible ambitions and much stronger drives than the fal'Cie. The fal'Cie have far less capacity to do what they want to and cannot achieve the impossible like humans do because they're severely limited by their intelligent design, and so they can only manipulate and control humans to do what they want in their place. In simpler terms, he's saying that the fal'Cie have far less freedom compared to humans. This is by definition the fal'Cie having less free will compared to humans because they don't have nearly as much individual agency, which is required for free will. Free will, in the simplest of terms, is the ability to compare proposed actions to ideal standards and act in accordance with either those standards or your own impulses absent force or coercion. For example, it would be an exercise of free will for a smoker to choose to stop smoking. If you're not capable of making those kinds of decisions, or can't do so nearly as much as humans, and instead can only mostly act in accordance with your designed natures that the Creator gave you, then can you really be said to have as much free will as humans? Barring perhaps Barthandelus while he's in his human form, the fal'Cie are obviously not capable of doing whatever they want absent force or coercion and are either hard-limited to specific functions/roles as given to them by the Creator (food production, tunnel system production) or can only do certain things for the most part but have a very limited amount of individual agency outside of those roles, so they have less free will than humans because the Creator restricted their free will. Orphan also doesn't control everything on Cocoon. You seem to be forgetting that the Orphan in that scene is a fusion of fal'Cie to begin with, and that Barthandelus is the one running the show most of the time under the guise of a human named Primarch Dysley, and not even he has control over everything in Cocoon, otherwise the other Cocoon fal'Cie are completely pointless and serve no purpose in Cocoon's society. Your misinterpretation of this explanation of why they make L'Cie of humans is so absurd and so obviously conflicts with what was actually said in the dialogue that I cannot help but think that this was deliberate, because you're either just that stupid or you're being intentionally unfair to the game's story because you're biased against the story, don't know how to prove it's bad and want to feel validated by giving the appearance of making a valid argument without having to put in the time and effort to actually demonstrate your position. It's fine if you don't like and don't care to understand the story, but it isn't badly written just because you don't like it and don't care to understand it.
No, the goal of their Focus was to destroy Cocoon. That was what the fal'Cie wanted; they don't exactly hide that from the characters. It's even implied that Cid may have overcome his fate by using all of his remaining power when he confronted them inside The Ark entirely of his own volition. Also, the "hazy glimpse" that L'Cie receive are just hazy visions of the future without much detail or logic, and that doesn't really tell the L'Cie what the fal'Cie want them to do. Fundamentally the Focus was changed by the L'Cie's decisions and willpower, and so their Focus changed to be different than what it was prior to the final battle. Literally everyone I've seen talk about the ending understood it to be the characters overcoming their designated fates and shaping their own destiny, so why are you the odd one out? XIII-2 and LR just go into depth on things that aren't relevant to XIII's specific story and/or would not work well in XIII's story if explained there, so XIII's ending gives you enough information to go off of to understand it and avoids going into certain specifics that would awkward to explain at the end of the story. Also, even if the ending was not explained "well" in XIII, it wouldn't have really mattered because it was going to become a trilogy of games and was never meant to be just the one game. it's not "using other media to explain your plot" in the negative way you're implying if the other media in question is part of the same storyline and is the canon prequel or sequel to the media currently being discussed. That's like complaining about how you need to watch the Star Wars prequels in order to fully understand the climax and resolution of Return of the Jedi, because the prequel trilogy is integral to the story and alleviates the issues of misinterpretations that were caused by the prequels not being there originally (Darth Vader was perceived as being far more evil and menacing than he really was, he was intended to be a tragic character). There's nothing about XIII's ending that is like using the original JoJo manga to explain away important information that was cut from the anime adaptation.
Looking back on the scene where they save Fang in the final battle, it seems like some clever bits of foreshadowing for the ending of the third and final game, but that's spoilers, so I won't go into that.
Ugh, I give up. There's no reasoning with with the intellectually dishonest. It's pretty obvious that you're just biased against the game and that "A Very Tepid Defense of Final Fantasy XIII" is a misnomer and a misleading video title. This is a badly made critique of XIII, not a tepid defense of it.
The score is directly related to the damage out put too and I think connected to the parties overall hp. It all ends up being then like multiplied by how fast you win in the end.
So HP Left over + Damage x the time you didn't waste getting the win. = The difference between platnium > Gold > Silver and no stars.
I think these characters are so polirizing because they're not your typical heroes. They are normal people with mental health issues drawn to a scary fate and they need to figure out how to cope with the situation. It brought someone different to the franchise and i appreciate it, specially since I could relate to them in ways i never did to final fantasy characters. I played the game at 14 which was hope's age and honestly i would've acted the same way as him but it made me happy how he became mentally stronger.
As for the linearity, I agree with you in that they should have disguised it better, letting us go back to previous locations and maybe creating just one city with npcs, quests and shops would have helped make the world seemed more alive. I don't have a problem with linear games but it's true that ffxiii seems too linear maybe because they focused too much on graphics, since at the time required a lot of work.
I hope they remaster the game and let us control more than one party member in the combat. And being able to summon other characters' eidolons. Eidolons in this game are there to help when you are about to die since they revive and cure the party (i would have preferred they dealt more damage too).
I love this game already, i have 150 played getting all the trophies. But it has more potential for upgrades like they did with FFXII.
I don't think the dialogues are that bad and the ending is pretty good to me. It's explained in the sequels that the goddess Etro helped them. And i like the idea of the Fal'Cie being super powered creatures who themselves believe to be gods for humans (this is far from the truth since they were made by the gods with limited will, they nature is different from humas since humans were created by Etro, with hearts and free will). It should have been better explained in the game tho.
Halfway through I gotta say I feel like the title is a joke at this point haha I do understand though I feel like you need to understand this games flaws to appreciate what it provides.
Edit, finished! My above comment holds true but it was interesting and I enjoyed hearing your perspective on the past and future of FF13. You nailed it when you said despite everything it still felt like there was a passion ti everything that resonated with the games themes to shine a unique experience through. Like the characters themselves the devs believed in themselves and followed there hearts and while there was mass death and destruction we still got a relatively good ending.
I mean Barthandulus makes sense as a villain when you realize he's a being higher than the human characters who are pretty much cattle to him, tbh I feel like they were tryina do an eldritch story without the horror part for FFXIII, which probably just doesn't work and wasn't developed enough also the MCs funneled linearity makes sense because not only are they being pursued but they also face the fact that they could become C'ieth at any time. I do love this game because it's beautiful and the combat imo is the best and most strategic form of ATB combat, I've literally game overed in this probably twice as much as all other games in the series combined.
I def think the game while flawed deserves a lot more credit than people give it, I think the segmented ATB and stagger mechanics which were further fleshed out in 7 Remake's combat were great additions to the series I hope we can see be further implemented in titles even after Remake is finished. I had a point and I forgot it.
Funny, many would argue Sazh to be one of the best in the game, realistic and relatable. I found his waywardness pretty understandable particularly since, well, it doesn't make sense for him to do what the others are. Lightning's a badass soldier who probably has the best chance at her goals, but would honestly probably fail if she got anywhere close by herself (she isn't as strong as in Lightning Returns quite yet). Hope's emotions are carrying him, also to a rather fruitless goal. Vanille wanted to go home, but options aren't presenting themselves. Snow has a goal for Serah, but again; pretty futile. And Fang's goal to find Vanille is achievable until she does and then her goal is just as difficult as Vanille's, but more achievable with teamwork. Which is to say, all the characters aren't in any position to have life-changing goals without working together. So I never had any problem with how the characters felt about their situation or how they chose to deal with it, but whether it made for the most enticing journey is up for debate. When it came to Sazh, it really was a case of; what really IS he supposed to do. He's an old civilian, doesn't harbor much anger, has limited time, and even if he wanted to fight, his son could have been used as leverage against him. The only reason he got involved in the story was because of his son's condition. So it really doesn't behoove him to care about anything else. And while he took his time, he eventually decided that his goal was simply to meet his son one last time. I don't fault him for that at all.
Additionally, all the scenes you showed of Sazh supposedly "complaining" I found to just be mostly rational statements that worked against your point. He rarely said any of those lines with vitriol. He said they should be "rational" when fighting a mecha scorpion, he made a lame but spirited joke about hell on the hanging edge, he told Snow that he wasn't being logical which everyone agreed with (and by everyone I mean Lightning, the best one), he said Light and Snow were hopeless and accurately psychoanalyzed them when they just couldn't just agree to disagree, had more sarcasm, wanted an understandable though ill-advised break, and so on. He's just correct most of the time. Maybe his character isn't at all entertaining, but as a person he's the most palatable across the board, next to maybe Fang.
The way I see it, the setup for the story presented only two boats for the characters to jump into. The "do something stupid and futile alone" boat, or the "avoid the cops and try to figure something out" boat. The first paints the character as flawed and/or stupid, and the second paints them as indecisive or weak. I mean I love Lightning the most, but her plan simply would not have worked out, and deep down she knew it was a suicide mission. She wasn't rallying people to go with her, they're dead weight; she wanted a solo mission.
You brought up a Barret comparison, but admittedly I enjoyed Barret less than Sazh because he falls into much of the same boat that Snow does. Not that Barret's goal is altogether stupid or unachievable, but more because his mindset would put him in similar suicidal situations like Lightning or Snow, if it weren't for the team that stands by him to correct his course.
When comparing Sazh to other character in 6 or 9, you can't discount the fact that a lot of them hold a lot of power and/or responsibility in which they are actually able to do something with it. Along with supportive party members who aren't splintered and/or divided in their goals. I mean when Celes had a support group she stuck things out, but when everything went to hell, she legit jumped off a cliff, which pretty much is the ultimate "whinge" imo, even though she survived.
One of the issues in FF13 that divides the party is that they're all thrust into life-changing problems immediately, with no time to figure themselves out, so no one has enough stability to where they can spend time to help anyone else out or encourage them.
The only real inoffensive solution to both boats is for all of them to come together for singular achievable goals that they can do as a team; hence all the character-focused stories in the first half, aimed towards sorting their interpersonal problems out. Also worth noting that a singular group goal wouldn't necessarily be what any individual party member would care about the most. It's either just an indirect means to achieving that, or something they eventually settle on.
Also, not sure what the point of your off-hand description of Dajh was, but I found it odd and possibly insulting.
Anyway, the analysis of the characters here especially has me questioning why this ultimately chose the side of a defense video, because much of the game is so dependent on whether people can empathize with most of the characters' situations and mindsets. For me, Snow is probably my worst offender, but even as I see his flaws and was as annoyed as Lightning was of him, I don't hate him outright like that, because I see those human parts of him. I usually spend most of my words defending Lightning or Hope or Vanille. First time I've had to defend Sazh, and I think that's for good reason.
In any case, I do love and defend the good of FFXIII, but this particular review lost me in places to where I don't really know how to take much good away from it.
Nice video. I enjoyed it very much
The paradigm roles also provide certain kinds of stat buffs to the entire team, with the party leader providing most of the bonus. Commando for examples increases the party's damage output, while Ravager increases (if I recall correctly, it's been a while since I last played) the team's ability to build up the stagger gauge.
Here's a little known fact: The duration of buffs that are conferred by Synergists increases a bit per 1000 Magic. So basically the best Synergists will have over 4,000 Magic, at least if you want the longest possible buff durations.
I forget the exact formula, but there's a Gamefaqs post about the Battle Rankings formula in XIII and how it works. It's completely skill-based and you can consistently get 5-star rankings in virtually every battle if you know what you're doing. In first playthroughs it's not as likely that the player will get the maximum rankings so frequently because they don't really know what they're doing yet, but for all of the most important fights (story bosses) it's a complete non-issue since the story bosses have fixed drops that aren't dependent on your ranking, and the Techniques are more meant as emergency measures anyway (barring Libra). The Techniques bar is even balanced in such a way as to make sure that the player should always have access to Libra even if they do poorly in combat, since the lower bars are much smaller and therefor are significantly easier to fill. Where your Battle Ranking mainly becomes super important is if you're using Techniques a lot (especially high cost ones) or if you want to get monster drops, since getting higher ratings improves the likelihood that you'll get the rarer items.
Quake's main utility is actually slowing down the stagger gauge, which the Commando, Saboteur and Sentinel do to different extents (the Commando does it better than the Saboteur and far better than the Sentinel), but Quake does it better and faster. If you're worried about a boss or other enemy's stagger duration not lasting long enough for you to capitalize on, just use Quake before they get staggered and make sure that it hits before the stagger happens.
Stopga is an emergency measure and a safety net for bad players. It's really not something that competent players will be using.
Libra is immensely useful because it not only tells you all of the damage/ailment weaknesses, resistances and immunities, it also far more usable than Librascopes. It's true that Librascopes can be used on all the enemies at once, but they're rare items and so you can't be nearly as liberal with their usage. I basically only use a couple Librascopes in Bart 1 and a couple other particular fights, and that's it. I use Libra at least once for everything else. Libra also not telling you everything doesn't matter because killing those enemies multiple times will gradually fill in the rest of the information, and Libra gives you most of the information to begin with…..The "cheating" point is also ridiculous. Retry exists as an option for a reason, and if players want to use it that way, that's fine. You're more than welcome to dislike it being used this way, but I would argue that it's a clever use of the intended systems because it allows you to go into the fight with a more effective strategy after getting roughed up trying to figure out what strategy to use. If this were one of the other games where you have to carefully manage your HP and MP outside of battle because there's no HP/MP Full Restore after combat I would be more understanding of this point of view, but it just can't be considered a flaw in XIII's design.
Renew is basically a poor man's Curaja/Cura combo. It can certainly help in a pinch, but I can only think of two fights in the whole game where it would be a good idea to use it. A good strategy will make it so you'll never having to use Renew in any fight, barring arguably one or two specific encounters. Ironically I'm more likely to use Renew as a method of giving my character temporary hyper-armor and healing to tank a powerful attack than I am to use it for pure healing.
Summons I definitely think are a bit of an issue, but more because the "correct" way to use them is not intuitive. Lightning's for example is basically meant to be used for Zantetsuken, so that way you can instantly kill tougher enemies like bosses. However, as anyone who's seen a speedrun of the game will know, these kinds of setups are very specific and complicated. Someone who doesn't know what to do beforehand will definitely struggle to use them effectively, which is a similar issue to a lot of the mechanics in the Kingdom Hearts games. If you know what you're doing though the Summons in XIII can be very effective in certain situations. Lightning's Eidolon for example is used twice in the any% speedrun to insta-kill the remaining HP of two specific bosses in the story, and it's incredibly rewarding if you pull it off yourself.
….You…. you use Libra to learn what the Eideolon wants you to do in order to fill up its Gestalt bar…. Most people figure this out when they first play the game….🤦♂
I agree that the turning animation is too slow and makes things kind of unresponsive on the whole, but the "cinematic" for paradigm shifts adds a layer of strategy to the game by making it so you have to carefully consider when to shift paradigms, and it also has the affect of preventing the player from abusing Role Buffers too liberally, which ended up being a huge problem in the sequel, which removed this cinematic. If you don't know what Role Buffering is, basically it's using a specific ability on say, a Ravager, then switching the party leader to another role while the ability is in use in order to benefit from the specific stat bonuses of the role you switched to. For example, a Firaga used while in the Ravager role doesn't do much damage, but if you cast Firaga and then switch to the Cerberus paradigm (three Commandos) the damage of that Firaga will be substantially increased. The lack of this cinematic in XIII-2, in addition to reducing the amount of strategy that exists in the game's combat, means that you can spam this technique very liberally to do lots of damage insanely quickly to groups of mobs, and that combined with the significantly lower health pools of the enemies in that game and how Magic outscales Strength in the progression system, as well as the fact that you can get endgame Magic abilities like Firaga pretty early on in the game because of the way the progression system works makes Role Buffer strats incredibly broken and exploitable. Ravager -> Commando Role Buffers in particular are exceptionally broken in XIII-2, especially against mobs with low health, which are commonly weak to fire damage.
Uggghhhhh, the "FFX did linearity better" non-argument. FFX is actually more linear than FFXIII because it's a pilgrimage story, so you even have less choice in how you can progress your characters (referring to progression systems) despite the Sphere Grid seeming more open than the Crystarium.
The reason FFXIII doesn't have "meaningful side paths and mini-games" is because it not only doesn't match the world that you spend most of your time in as a tightly controlled, manipulated and monitored cocoon that was designed by the fal'Cie to trap, brainwash and eventually end up killing the entire human race, it doesn't match the narrative and themes of the story, in which the characters are transformed into slaves with magical powers by demigods and who will eventually turn into zombies if they fail to complete the vague tasks they have been given and then are forced to constantly run away from and battle the state whilst they figure out what their designated tasks are and either try to complete them or try to overcome them. When putting the level design into narrative and thematic context, I'd hardly consider it a flaw that the game is mostly so linear and I do not think that the linearity is too extreme. Even the parts that are a bit more open-ended on Cocoon or give slight reprieve (Nautilus) are clearly conveying the illusion of control that the characters have over their own situation. The lack of connectedness also isn't really an issue because Cocoon is meant to feel artificial and it doesn't make sense in the story for the characters to go back to places they've been to previously like Lake Bresha, since that would undercut their progress and they would also likely get caught. Pulse is something of an exception because the state has no presence there, but they still need to push forward eventually because their bodies are ticking time bombs running on vague, unknown time limits.
I find the linearity complaints to be so hard to understand for FFXIII because the level design is far better integrated into the narrative and themes of the story than it was in FFX (based on what I've played of FFX so far, anyway), where the exploration and mini-games were usually out of place because they didn't fit the narrative. It doesn't really make sense that Tidus can go around exploring a bunch of side-paths and doing other things when they're on a pilgrimage that has a very clearly implied and even outright stated urgency to it. Why would the other Guardians allow him to just go back and participate in Blitzball tournaments whenever he wants to? The Cloister of Trials is arguably the worst example of this, because what do the puzzles in the Cloister of Trials have to do with being a Summoner or Yuna's journey? Narratively and thematically they're completely out of place in the story at hand, and so they break immersion because what you're doing in the gameplay and what you're doing in the story have nothing to do with one another, and this becomes even more apparent once you realize that there are certain secret chests that grant powerful items for your characters if you can get them, which makes the Cloister of Trials seem like something that was added to the game purely because that kind of content is traditional to RPGs rather than because it actually adds something of value to the experience. If the Cloister of Trials were a series of combat trials designed primarily around Yuna's abilities (Tidus's for the first two Cloister of Trials) then that would have been far more narratively and thematically appropriate. It just seems to me like the level design and game structure of FFX was intentionally compromised in order to accommodate certain traditional sensibilities of the genre, even though those accommodations came at the expense of the story and has the result of making the world and (in certain parts of the game) the story feel rather artificial and 'videogamey" when they clearly weren't intended to feel that way, or in other words, that it was pulling its punches with the level design and overall gameplay structure, making its level design and gameplay structure strictly inferior to FFXIII's by all objective metrics. That's not to say that FFXIII's doesn't have its issues in that regard necessarily, just that I think it's objectively better when compared to FFX's.
All of the characters are undergoing and processing their trauma and grief. They might not have a good sense of where to go and what to do for a lot of the game, but that's kind of the point. People who are suffering the immediate or even long-term effects of trauma and/or circumstances that are larger than them and that they have no control over tend to be confused and not really know what to do, sometimes opting to just go with the flow, though how they deal with these kinds of issues depends on their specific personalities and motivations. Hope is in a state of shock and anger after seeing his mom get murdered by the state and becoming a slave with magical powers, eventually wanting to get revenge on Snow because he thinks he killed his mom. Lightning wants to destroy the state, who is responsible for their current predicament (and Serah's), but eventually realizes that Hope needs help and decides to teach him to fight and encourages him to get revenge, and upon realizing this mistake she decides to really help him by taking him home to see his family. Vanille feels immense grief over what happened the first time in her and Fang's battle against Cocoon and wants to run away from and hide their Focus rather than carrying it out because she thinks it's scary, so she generally just goes with the flow and presents herself in a bubbly way in order to deal with the grief and rationalize her dishonesty and keeping of secrets. Etc etc etc. Part of the journey of these characters is in overcoming or coming to terms with their grief in order to not just become friends, but to become more complete and mature people who can bear the responsibility of saving the world and helping others who need it. How can you consider them not having much of an idea of what to do and where to go in the earliest stages of their character arcs a criticism in this context?
And…. the characters do find something to do with their time? Just because it doesn't advance the goals of their fal'Cie owners that doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't doing anything. Hope is shook initially but he is made to follow Snow, then he later resolves to take revenge on Snow after being put into another state of shock and being forced to do certain things because he's been pursued by the state like the others. Lightning wants to destroy the state (as previously mentioned) and resolves to try and help Hope become better at combat, encourages him to get revenge and then later resolves to help him see his family so he can grow past his desire for revenge, of which the former is a result of her imposing her world view on Hope when he's emotionally unstable and doesn't know any better. Fang is trying to find Vanille and get back her memories, then decides to help the rest of the crew for a while. Vanille wants to run away from her Focus and decides to stay with and help Sazh, learning more about him and just trying to enjoy her time with him as best as she can. Snow wants to save Serah, and later Cocoon (pretty straightforward). Sazh wants to free his son from the state (iirc), and is overall probably the character that is the most unsure of what he wants to do after he gets turned into a superpowered slave. I think "the first 25 hours of the story revolves around the characters having no idea what they want to do" is a gross oversimplification and a deliberately disingenuous interpretation of the relevant material that is seemingly motivated by arbitrary personal preference.
The characters don't have open motivations all of the time because a lot of what informs these motivations, which they've kept generally hidden, is tied to things or events that had a deep effect on them psychologically and emotionally, and so they understandably don't want to share those things with people who they don't really know and generally consider to be strangers, or at the very least don't consider to be close enough friends to share this private information with them, and as the story progresses the characters gradually open to each other as they slowly bond and become friends. This is how most people in real life deal with these kinds of things, so it's weird that you would criticize the characters for not having open motivations when they're dealing with the circumstances they've been dealt in a realistic way that fits with their individual personalities and backgrounds. It's not that they are wandering aimlessly until the revelations happen (though it might seem that way from the audience's perspective), it's that they don't feel closely enough to their travel companions to expound on their personal issues in conversations with them until around the time the revelations happen, which is actually clever writing and it does make sense in context. Final Fantasy XIII is a story of six complete strangers being forced to become allies through bad/unlucky circumstances because they're fugitives, separating from each other at various points in the story that are based on their circumstances, motivations, personality differences and/or toxic personality traits and then gradually becoming close friends and in turn more mature, complete and fulfilled individuals as the story progresses, up until the point where they finally become best friends and set aside most of their differences to fight the state by Chapter 9.
Just because Sazh doesn't make the most direct choice in just going back to Eden when he doesn't have the skills, the familiarity or the power to attack PSICOM single-handedly and get his son back, that doesn't mean that he's written poorly. In fact, he's literally make a realistic choice in not going directly into enemy territory. He's a fugitive and he didn't plan on becoming one, going back to PSICOM to try and take his son back by force.. alone, or even with Lightning, would almost certainly get him captured and killed. As for Sazh not displaying his emotions as outwardly as the others, he's clearly more emotionally mature than the other characters and is a more stoic figure by comparison. He's more capable of behaving rationally and objectively than the other characters and is clearly bothered by what's happened to him. We just don't get shown his emotional and psychological issues as explicitly as with the other characters. Honestly, the fact that you have to compare Sazh to Barret from FF7, despite the fact that they are completely different people with different personalities and backgrounds and only have the most superficial and irrelevant similarities really kind of goes to show that you don't have a sound basis for your conclusions on Sazh and that your criticisms are motivated entirely by arbitrary preference. That was a ridiculous and obviously unfair comparison that only the terminally braindead will believe is valid, and the assertion that Sazh "doesn't just get to agonize all the time", even if that were true an Sazh did this, is not an argument.
Honestly it just kind of seems like you lack empathy and don't really understand mental health issues like PTSD, and I say this as someone who really loves the characters in this game, especially Hope. As someone with trauma myself, these characters are incredibly relatable and I'd hardly call them poorly written. They're certainly better than FF7's characters (I think I've played enough of the first part of the FF7 Remake to be able to say with confidence that the characters and story of FF7 aren't very good). I actually disagree that Lightning is the most fleshed out character in the game. Hope has by far the most dynamic and fleshed out character arc out of the main cast.
On the whole you appear to have a very bad comprehension of the material and lack the ability to distinguish between objective quality and your personal preferences. If you don't like the characters, that's fine, but they're all objectively well-written and I challenge you to prove otherwise. And no, the comparison to two specific characters from Final Fantasy 6 doesn't hold up to scrutiny. It's an obvious apples to oranges comparison that you're using to mask the fact that you have no good argument against why the characters in XIII behave the way that they do, and your argument is based on a falsehood anyway, since the characters do have motivations and carry out actions in accordance with those motivations once they are given the space to breathe and think about what they want to do (they are fugitives being constantly chased, attacked and harassed by the state after all, so they don't always have time to think about what they want to do). There are moments of uncertainty from the characters as they come across specific issues and are forced to deal with their trauma, but they are temporary instances and are not permanent. I suppose you could say that maybe they're unsure of what to do about their Focus for 25+ hours, but that's not what you said, is not the same thing and is perfectly understandable given the circumstances.
The sign of a hack critic is that they can only ever criticize or defend something by comparing it to another personal favorite property of theirs, no matter how far the reach.
I honestly don't even feel the need to address the "Datalogs" point. The Datalog is not necessary to understand the story, and any information that you would only learn in the Datalog is information that the player doesn't need to know in order to understand the story. I understand the story and relevant pieces of lore just fine without having read any of the Datalog entries, so other people have no excuse for needing to read them in order to understand the story. If you struggle to understand the relevant pieces of story and lore in XIII and need to read the Datalogs in order to understand them, you're either not paying attention or you're stupid. One of the two.
Honestly, XIII's story, world and characters aren't that hard to understand. I'd hardly describe myself as being the smartest person in the world or as someone who has a very high amount of arts literacy. It really is not that complicated and virtually everything, if not everything, that needs to be explained in order for the story to work is explained in the cutscenes and gameplay themselves and do not require the Datalog to understand. Most of the information contained within the Datalogs is optional lore that you don't need to know and is placed there as a convenient method for anyone who wants to dig deeper into the lore and history than what is necessary for understanding the story to be able do so. Yeah, there's a lore entry on what the Guardian Corps do in the Datalog, but it's just not important information to know for the story at hand and you can figure out what the Guardian Corps are by just playing the game normally anyway (obviously they defend certain locations to protect the people from monsters and other threats such as criminals, whereas PSICOM is a specialized military force for dealing with "threats that originate from Pulse". Basically PSICOM is the military and the Guardian Corps are the local police. You can figure this out by just.. playing the game and applying a bit of critical thinking, no Datalogs required, the Datalog is just an alternative to way to learn this information if you're really struggling with it for some reason or want to know more specific details that ultimately don't matter).
The summaries of each chapter's events exist as a way for the player to go back and read up on those events if they forget about them (say, after not playing the game for a while), or as a way to pull them back in and make sure they're still caught up when they load the game up (summaries of what's currently happening or have happened a little while ago in the chapter you're in are played on the loading screens when you load the game from the title screen, likely for what I've mentioned and also to give you something to do while you wait for the game to load because the load times aren't exactly fast, especially on a PS3/360). You're obviously not intended to read the summaries that are in the Datalog right after finishing those events you nincompoop. This is a misconception.
If you want some subtlety so you can figure out what just happened for yourself.. just don't read the Datalogs. It's really that simple. That's what I did each time I played the game. They're not required to understand the story and relevant lore. The people who complain about the Datalogs being necessary to understand the story are the ones who are foolish enough to actually read the Datalogs all the time instead of trying to process the material for themselves, gimping their ability to think critically about and understand the material in the process. The actual lore and plot are laid out properly, you're just not intelligent enough to understand it and/or aren't paying attention to the story. One of the two. Barring like, two, maybe three things that I think might be plot holes, I've never had any issues understand the plot and relevant lore despite not having read the Datalogs. The Datalogs are literally just flavor text, my guy. You only have your own arts literacy and material comprehension to blame if you struggle to understand the story without reading that stuff.
The story doesn't "jump around constantly". Anyone who's actually played the game knows that the story is split up into segments of roughly equal length that spend an equal amount of time focusing on the relevant characters and other relevant information in their respective segments, and these segments either last for multiple hours or for 30-60 minutes depending on the story structure, which gives you plenty of time to get to know the characters and start familiarizing yourself with any new information. In Chapter 1 you spend around 30 minutes or so with Lightning and Sazh to slowly get to know who they are and what their motivations are, and you are also introduced to concepts like The Purge, PSICOM, biological weapons, AMP technology and PSICOM's technology, with most of those being briefly touched upon when they were relevant and most of the concept exploration being dedicated to showing and explaining what The Purge is to the player. Then you spend around 30 minutes or so with Snow and his ragtag group of friends, showing us The Purge and PSICOM more directly from the perspective of those who are fighting against them, while also exploring them further and introducing new characters, chiefly Snow and who he is, Vanille and ho she is, showing us a small glimpse of her bubbly and fun persona and the true Vanille that lies underneath the mask via the narration, as well as Hope and his mom, which is vital to both Hope's characterization and the events of the story going forward, so Hope's mom and his relationship with her is fleshed out early and we get an idea of the kinds of psychological issues that Hope is currently dealing with under the circumstances. After that we see the big fight on the bridge with the new recruits, the death of Hope's mom and both Hope's and Snow's deeply traumatic reactions to that whole event, including the other deaths that occurred. After which we see Hope in a state of shock (largely induced by seeing his mom fall to her death) being brought to his senses by Vanille and Snow falling into a seemingly bottomless pit. We then cut to Lightning and Sazh talking about The Purge in more detail, then there's a boss fight and we're finally introduced to the Pulse Vestige, and…. you get the idea, I'm sure.
The point is that while a lot of concepts and characters are introduced in Chapters 1-3, roughly equal amounts of time are dedicated to all of them, and establishing the characters and ideas that early allows them to gradually expand upon and explore those characters and ideas at a more comfortable pace afterwards. The first three chapters are all about gathering the pieces, and the rest of the story is figuring out where those pieces go on the board. Not only that, every Chapter after Chapter 2 has a slower pace to it and a longer duration, and since all of the relevant concepts and characters were introduced and explored in the first three chapters (barring Fang, but she isn't relevant to the story until later), you can slowly and gradually expound upon them over time throughout each chapter, as the player really shouldn't leave Chapter 3 without having a basic understanding of all of those ideas and characters as long as they are paying attention and thinking critically about the information they are presented with. And obviously the rest of the story follows this trend of having good pacing and splitting the amount of time dedicated to each of the character arcs, plot threads and concepts roughly equally. The jumps only appear as being really sudden and out of place if you're not paying attention to the story to begin with.
The irony of someone complaining about XIII supposedly lacking subtlety when he evidently wasn't paying attention to the story to begin with and missed blatantly obvious details that weren't conveyed in dialogue because they weren't explicitly spelled out for him….
XIII isn't heavy-handed with its ideas at all. You could maybe argue that it just tells you the themes in the dialogue which arguably only really happens in Chapter 10 with Cid, but how those themes are used and what they really mean in the context of the story is not so direct, and that's why I think a lot of people seemingly struggle to understand these elements of the story, yourself included. It's not like the game goes around constantly telling the player that the story is about trying to overcome the "fate" that was dealt to you and free will in such explicit, clear cut terms, and those ideas are really only vaguely alluded to in certain conversations with Barthandelus and Cid, which are few and far between throughout the game. These themes are otherwise conveyed in much less direct ways, typically through action (including gameplay) and music.
The dialogue in this game is fine. You have a few select lines of dialogue that are memeable as fuck ("All this dampness is damp!"), but the rest of it matches the tone and themes of the story and the way the characters are behaving. I wouldn't expect the conversations of a bunch of traumatized characters in a highly dramatic story to be incredibly sophisticated, especially when at many points they're struggling to articulate their own feelings properly. I think the simplicity and (occasionally crude) wit of the dialogue in the game works to its benefit and makes sense for the characters and story. I don't see how this dialogue is anything like Disney Fanfiction Wars dialogue, nor how any of the dialogue is problematic. Are characters in stories not allowed to be witty in situations where they're obviously stressed out and/or traumatized and in ways that makes sense for their personalities? That's just a ridiculous thing to criticize. I certainly wouldn't expect real people in these situations to be all dour and serious business all the time, especially kids, young adults and jaded fathers.
…..Nuh-uh, you did NOT just frame Nora saying that moms are tough as a joke or a "witty response" in this compilation. That's incredibly dishonest, and I think you're well aware of the fact that you're lying about this. "Moms are tough" is what she said to convince Snow to let her help, and it's what she says again to reinforce that, only for it to end in tragedy, which makes her death hit harder. In context the statement is not a joke or something witty.
If you were actually paying attention to the ending you would have noticed the small flash of light in the center of Cocoon during the final CG scene from before (or after? It's been a while) they uncrystallized, which very heavily implies that it was an external force, perhaps an individual on a higher plane/level of existence, that helped them un-crystallize, but even without having played the sequel to learn that this is the case for sure, you can just as easily interpret it as them having overcome their assigned fates, since they clearly did so. Cocoon wasn't destroyed after all, yet they crystallized anyway. Not only that, Final Fantasy XIII was clearly written to be part of a larger story (given the ending) and it exists as part of a trilogy, and so it is actually fine to leave the full explanation for how this happened in the sequel because it gives you enough to go off of to reach the right conclusion already, it just doesn't give you any specifics because they're not relevant to XIII's story and would certainly require a clunky exposition dump that would be totally out of place in the ending and in fact the story as a whole if those specifics were to be told.
I would give you the short answer for what happened in the ending of XIII, but that's spoilers for the second game, and you really should have just been paying attention when watching the ending in the first place.
Orphan said that the fal'Cie are chained down by their designed natures to perform specific tasks as dictated by the Creator, which puts a hard limit on what they're capable of doing, whereas not only do humans not share such restrictions on what they can do with their abilities, they have incredible ambitions and much stronger drives than the fal'Cie. The fal'Cie have far less capacity to do what they want to and cannot achieve the impossible like humans do because they're severely limited by their intelligent design, and so they can only manipulate and control humans to do what they want in their place. In simpler terms, he's saying that the fal'Cie have far less freedom compared to humans. This is by definition the fal'Cie having less free will compared to humans because they don't have nearly as much individual agency, which is required for free will. Free will, in the simplest of terms, is the ability to compare proposed actions to ideal standards and act in accordance with either those standards or your own impulses absent force or coercion. For example, it would be an exercise of free will for a smoker to choose to stop smoking. If you're not capable of making those kinds of decisions, or can't do so nearly as much as humans, and instead can only mostly act in accordance with your designed natures that the Creator gave you, then can you really be said to have as much free will as humans? Barring perhaps Barthandelus while he's in his human form, the fal'Cie are obviously not capable of doing whatever they want absent force or coercion and are either hard-limited to specific functions/roles as given to them by the Creator (food production, tunnel system production) or can only do certain things for the most part but have a very limited amount of individual agency outside of those roles, so they have less free will than humans because the Creator restricted their free will. Orphan also doesn't control everything on Cocoon. You seem to be forgetting that the Orphan in that scene is a fusion of fal'Cie to begin with, and that Barthandelus is the one running the show most of the time under the guise of a human named Primarch Dysley, and not even he has control over everything in Cocoon, otherwise the other Cocoon fal'Cie are completely pointless and serve no purpose in Cocoon's society. Your misinterpretation of this explanation of why they make L'Cie of humans is so absurd and so obviously conflicts with what was actually said in the dialogue that I cannot help but think that this was deliberate, because you're either just that stupid or you're being intentionally unfair to the game's story because you're biased against the story, don't know how to prove it's bad and want to feel validated by giving the appearance of making a valid argument without having to put in the time and effort to actually demonstrate your position. It's fine if you don't like and don't care to understand the story, but it isn't badly written just because you don't like it and don't care to understand it.
No, the goal of their Focus was to destroy Cocoon. That was what the fal'Cie wanted; they don't exactly hide that from the characters. It's even implied that Cid may have overcome his fate by using all of his remaining power when he confronted them inside The Ark entirely of his own volition. Also, the "hazy glimpse" that L'Cie receive are just hazy visions of the future without much detail or logic, and that doesn't really tell the L'Cie what the fal'Cie want them to do. Fundamentally the Focus was changed by the L'Cie's decisions and willpower, and so their Focus changed to be different than what it was prior to the final battle. Literally everyone I've seen talk about the ending understood it to be the characters overcoming their designated fates and shaping their own destiny, so why are you the odd one out? XIII-2 and LR just go into depth on things that aren't relevant to XIII's specific story and/or would not work well in XIII's story if explained there, so XIII's ending gives you enough information to go off of to understand it and avoids going into certain specifics that would awkward to explain at the end of the story. Also, even if the ending was not explained "well" in XIII, it wouldn't have really mattered because it was going to become a trilogy of games and was never meant to be just the one game. it's not "using other media to explain your plot" in the negative way you're implying if the other media in question is part of the same storyline and is the canon prequel or sequel to the media currently being discussed. That's like complaining about how you need to watch the Star Wars prequels in order to fully understand the climax and resolution of Return of the Jedi, because the prequel trilogy is integral to the story and alleviates the issues of misinterpretations that were caused by the prequels not being there originally (Darth Vader was perceived as being far more evil and menacing than he really was, he was intended to be a tragic character). There's nothing about XIII's ending that is like using the original JoJo manga to explain away important information that was cut from the anime adaptation.
Looking back on the scene where they save Fang in the final battle, it seems like some clever bits of foreshadowing for the ending of the third and final game, but that's spoilers, so I won't go into that.
Ugh, I give up. There's no reasoning with with the intellectually dishonest. It's pretty obvious that you're just biased against the game and that "A Very Tepid Defense of Final Fantasy XIII" is a misnomer and a misleading video title. This is a badly made critique of XIII, not a tepid defense of it.
The score is directly related to the damage out put too and I think connected to the parties overall hp. It all ends up being then like multiplied by how fast you win in the end.
So HP Left over + Damage x the time you didn't waste getting the win. = The difference between platnium > Gold > Silver and no stars.
> Clicks on the video finding a Sopranos analysis.
Now I want a Sopranos video from this guy huh.
2:00 I know your just play and no work, but please adjust the music volume
I think these characters are so polirizing because they're not your typical heroes. They are normal people with mental health issues drawn to a scary fate and they need to figure out how to cope with the situation. It brought someone different to the franchise and i appreciate it, specially since I could relate to them in ways i never did to final fantasy characters. I played the game at 14 which was hope's age and honestly i would've acted the same way as him but it made me happy how he became mentally stronger.
As for the linearity, I agree with you in that they should have disguised it better, letting us go back to previous locations and maybe creating just one city with npcs, quests and shops would have helped make the world seemed more alive. I don't have a problem with linear games but it's true that ffxiii seems too linear maybe because they focused too much on graphics, since at the time required a lot of work.
I hope they remaster the game and let us control more than one party member in the combat. And being able to summon other characters' eidolons. Eidolons in this game are there to help when you are about to die since they revive and cure the party (i would have preferred they dealt more damage too).
I love this game already, i have 150 played getting all the trophies. But it has more potential for upgrades like they did with FFXII.
I don't think the dialogues are that bad and the ending is pretty good to me. It's explained in the sequels that the goddess Etro helped them. And i like the idea of the Fal'Cie being super powered creatures who themselves believe to be gods for humans (this is far from the truth since they were made by the gods with limited will, they nature is different from humas since humans were created by Etro, with hearts and free will). It should have been better explained in the game tho.