There is also the issue of the soldiers instantly trying to blow the train up. It seems a bit ridiculous. The train and the city seems to be controlled by this massive army. It seems a bit silly that they would instantly resort to blowing the thing up and completely ignore any possible damage that might be dealt to the track/road. Maybe its just me.

It really is just a small issue. Irregardless of the opening scene, the 20 hours of the game that I played are crap.

Anyways, your initial comment was that “One second a train is going through this huge area and is getting attacked, the next second all of the characters are outside of said train and shooting at people” Which is untrue. Not all characters were suddenly outside shooting at people, in fact the main characters remained inside the train. It seems like a silly thing to get confused about, enough to make you include it in your review (or comments about your review). Maybe I am alone on this one, maybe other gamers are confused by the opening cinematic, all I am saying is that from a story telling perspective the whole “The train is attacked, crashes, people get off the train and try to defend themselves” makes sense. Again, you are entitled to your opinion about the game, just didn’t seem like a solid criticism from a reviewers standpoint.

It looks like the train fell a considerable distance which leads me to believe that everybody would die if not be severely injured. But somehow, everybody in the trains seems to have picked up a gun, gotten outside the train, and engaged in combat in less than a second.

Do you understand what I am complaining about? Other scenes have similar issues. And you can’t just push it aside and say it doesn’t matter; it does matter. It matters because I watched the opening cinema and I was confused in the first 5 minutes of the game. Somebody fucked up if people playing the game are confused when you are still in the opening scene and haven’t even gotten to the gameplay. Just watching that opening scene makes me frustrated.

Ok, this literally never happened. Check the opening scene again:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv2OG6rh6bs

at 3:18 you can see that an enemy is attacking the train, rips a hole in the roof and they all climb out to fight it. Maybe it is the reviewer and not the game that deserves a 4/10…

But I miss the feeling of the towns. There is something that you can’t replicate without having some form of towns or a home base to return to. When you go out on an adventure, it is nice to have a place to go where it is safe and you can go from shop to shop and sell you loot and stock up on potions or anything you might need.

The game might have some sort of central hub once it opens up after Chapter 10 but the game is completely lacking something this feature in the first 20 hours.

The first part is that the game treats you like a retard, yet not telling you anything at the same time. The opening cinema literally has a missing scene. One second a train is going through this huge area and is getting attacked, the next second all of the characters are outside of said train and shooting at people.

Not a single one of the characters is interesting and they are all over exaggerated in everything they do. Hope’s mom dies right away in the game, a scene which has no gravity because EVERYBODY is dieing and it is just another random character that there is no reason for the player to care about. From that moment Hope gets all super emo and decides that it is his mission to kill Snow because it is somehow his fault.

The game teaches you how to play it one painfully slow step at a time. It introduces a very simple battle mechanic and then has to do that thing over and over and over again. It would be better if it introduced additional gameplay elements sooner in the game.

The character animation in this game is also complete shit. I understand that when you have a game like Final Fantasy VII on the PlayStation 1 you need to exaggerate some of the animations because you have a lot less to work with. Over animation is a technique that can be used in live theater a lot because most of the audience is farther away so you have to adjust and make sure everybody can see what is happening. Movies, however, don’t need to do this. The camera can get up close and personal so the acting can be much more subtle. With the level of detail we have with todays consoles, animation needs to be more subtle. SquareEnix has this idea that it is still 1997 and it looks really really bad.

Another problem is the story itself. This may sound like nitpicking but parts of the story are just ridiculous and make no sense at all. Hope and the gang are all on the run from the government and need a place to hide. Hope’s dad helps them all out until they are discovered. In the middle of all the chaos, another army shows up to save the day and everybody gets to escape. But for some insane fucking reason, they decide that they have to tie up Hope’s dad and make it look like they forced him to help them so he won’t get arrested. Why wouldn’t they just bring Hope’s dad along for the ride where they can keep him safe?

A scene that happens not long after that is between the black dude with the afro and this young chick who gets way too excited about everything whose names I can’t remember right now. Basically, the two of them are watching the rest of the characters getting attacked on national television and they show no indication of caring whatsoever. Right after that, they start wandering through some garden or some shit and the black dude’s little chocobo runs away so they spend an entire hour looking for the fucker. Seriously. Why the fuck is this part in the game? It is bullshit filler. It servers no conceivable purpose to the story other than to show that the characters don’t give a fuck about anything but a god damn little chocobo.

I mentioned in the actual review that the battle system is one of the better parts of the game. This is true, but only when you have a good combination of character. At one point in the game you are forced to use the Snow and Hope combination, which is beyond comprehension. I guess it is supposed to build suspense in the story because of the whole part where Hope wants to kill Snow but Hope is just a giant pussy so nothing ever happens with that.

This part of the game actually pissed me off the most. The way the game seems to be programmed is that enemies will have very different attack patterns based on the characters that you are using. Right before this section I had Hope and Lightning and maybe somebody else. The combination works fine because Lightning can deal a lot of damage and hope offers support and whatnot. So what happens when you just have Hope and Snow is that the game wants you to use Snow’s defensive class to draw the attacks away from Hope. So you use Snow’s ability to draw the attacks, and then Hope does no damage because he is worthless so you have to switch Snow’s class to one that does damage. As soon as you switch, the enemies butt fuck Hope in the ass immediately.

At this point you have to switch Snow back to defensive and draw the attacks. There is almost nothing you can do to make these battles last less than a minute or more just to kill two or three enemies. I will note that when you have Hope and Lightning, this isn’t a problem at all. Enemies tend to attack Lightning over Hope and Lightning is able to do considerable damage and you can finish fights in 20 seconds. It is only when the game wants you to use defensive abilities that the enemies decide to destroy Hope unless you draw their attacks to Snow. This is fucking bullshit. It is one of the worst things I have ever seen in any video game that I have ever played. It is tedious, boring, and annoying.

I also can’t fucking stand the environments in the game. Yes, they are pretty. But they serve no purpose within the world of the game. Why do these giant platforms move back and forth and why are the characters running through here? Because its cool? That seems to be the answer about 90% of the time in this game. Very very few of the environments have any reason for being the way they are other than that it looks neat.

I think the real problem with this game is that so many things seem out of place and there are so many problems that I am not able to believe that the world within the game is real. I need to have a suspension of disbelief. Alan Wake does a brilliant job of being based somewhat in reality but being able to make me believe that everything that happens in the game is possible. I have been playing a bit of Fable 2 again recently and I think it succeed as well. there are a couple thing that seem a bit out of place but Lionhead has been successful in creating a world that is alive and believable regardless of the unrealistic things that happen in the game. SquareEnix has completely failed in this task with Final Fantasy XIII.

Wow, after writing all this out I think I like the game even less. 4/10 might have been a bit lenient considering the only thing they did well is the basic structure of a battle system.

When you have to say things like “The story itself seems interesting, but in the 20 hours I played”, your generally not going to sound very credible. Also the Fal’cie and l’cie they keep saying over without knowing what is about would be like me writing a review on old yeller, not finishing the book and wondering, Why the hell do they keep talking about this damn dog all the time!

Lets go to the books – Metacritic score 8.2 out of 10 out of 50 publications. Can’t fade on math.

However – I’m not against negative opinions, there needs to be balance in the universe. I’d just appreciate some hate with some passion and maybe some humor behind it, This one made me laugh so I’d thought I’d share -

Nick 3/10
“Emo Hallway Simulator 13 is one of the most dissappointing games I’ve played in years. There isn’t much good to say about the gameplay itself. The storyline is worse than laughably bad, the characters are over-emotional and terribly annoying, the graphics are so-so, sound and music are lazy, the cut scenes get stale very quickly, the new fighting system results in mindless button mashing…. all that aside the real tradgedy of this game is how it has exposed the unapologetic scam that is the game-review industry. It is beyond me how any professional outfit could rate this junk higher than even a 7/10, yet I’m seeing 10/10s everywhere. Shame on you world.”

I’m on Chapter 12 and enjoying it, It’s by no means perfect, but I will finish it. I’ve spent about 30 hours on chatper 11 itself. While its not my favorite Final Fantasy, I can say if you stop to look around you may enjoy some of the most unique and detailed environments to date (Chapter 3, Chapter 7). I’ve spent some time admiring the detail in hidden backdrops which a normal run through would bypass, the polish in the graphic design is in my opinion currently unrivaled. The Characters do need work, badly. The glass half full argument would be that there was issues getting lost in translation and localization, but Sqaure should be beyond that at this point. Some conversations tough to swallow, in these instances I put on my otaku face, grin and bear it. I can see how some could not stomach it. However the game is deffinatly not deserving of a failing grade. If I had to score it now… I’d give it a B-. Proof that with enough polish you really can make a turd appealing(to some).

It’s simply because, much like Rich, I lost interest in the game. I got to Chapter 11 when it becomes open-ended, and I think I kind of felt meh without the linearity.

The characters are pretty flat, and the only thing that was really fun about it was the battle system, like Rich said.

I dunno, that and it’s harder for me to play super long games anymore. I share my apartment with a roommate, we both play the same games, and I got sick of having to trade off the game. I’d have to wait for him to get to a certain part to play anymore, and vice versa.

I’m sorry I’ve failed you. I promise really good forthcoming GameCrush articles to make up for my laziness.

PS Rich – I need a webcam :p

I wouldn’t say that my review is under-researched. I played the game for 20 hours. The game just completely sucks, in my opinion. I could have honestly written 5 pages on how bad this game is and gone into detail but I figured nobody wanted to read that, and I didn’t really want to write it.

Are they working on that?