FINAL FANTASY® XIII

Awesome Game! I played this years ago on XBOX 360 when it first came out and could not get past Havoc Skytank due to the cd issues upon launch. Now on my Legion Go this games works Flawlessly and much crisper images on this handheld. Definitely recommend!

"I fear I have sadly misjudged you." Mark Twain, Star Trek The Next Generation. FF13 is a beautiful and unique JRPG with deeply confusing lore and a story that mostly happens in the codex. BUT if you like the battle system, the aesthetics and music are enough to carry everything else. It's a game you want to keep looking at, even if you're not quite sure what it's trying to tell you in the end. Simple mods make the graphics even sharper.

basically a walking sim with fights every 5 feet until chapter 11. pretty meh story for boring game play.

Admittedly, I've never beaten it on PC, but I did on Xbox, so ignore my hours played.

Man, I love this game. Objectively, it's not great, it might not even be good. The three (arguably) good aspects are the world's art direction, the music, and the combat system. The story... is pretty melodramatic. It's very "anime," and definitely not for everyone. Personally, I didn't mind, but I could see how it would irk some people. Finally, the non-combat gameplay is indeed pretty nonexistent. It's a hallway simulator until like the last third, then it becomes a grassy field simulator. It's a flawed, cringey mess with a decent combat system and a gorgeous world.

For me, it just vibes.

---{ 04 / 10 }---
Great story, but the whole game is just one big line, no cities whatsoever.

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☑ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☑ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☑ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Bugs }---
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ Spoilers }---
- Pulse (Military force), Sanctum, Cocoon (Main city) have Fal'Cies (= divine entities) and protect it
- Snow wants to marry Serah (A Pulse L'Cie = Beings, usually humans, cursed by Fal'Cies and given great power)
- After Serah fulfilled her focus (Protecting Cocoon they thought, but it was bringing the crew together), she gained eternal life as a crystal.
- When the party tried to save Serah by killing the Fal'Cie, they were cursed as well.
- The goal of the Fal'Cie is to call the maker (god who created both humans and Fal'Cie), thus sacrificing cocoon's population through the L'Cie.
- Despite the chance of turning into Cie'th, they turn against the Fal'Cie to save Cocoon (Because that is what Serah wished for)

I find this game criminally underrated. The combat is amazing, i just love the Paradigm system. The music is up there too. Story is good. It's about as linear as FFX. Personally FFX is my favorite FF, so I just adore FF XIII.

This is one of the best final fantasy game made. I highly recommend it. I have played almost every final fantasy game there is. Final fantasy 13 was one of the great games made for the playstation 3 and was eventually ported to PC. The port is excellent. You have many options on the pc to improve the graphics as well surpassing the original resolution. The story is great and the graphics are wonderful. I bought all three games in the series. I recommend all the ported final fantasy games. The pc breaths new life into these games. This game alone has made me a pc gamer. Square-enixs made a great decision by moving to the pc market. I hope their full library will be avalable one day.

STEAM DECK PERFORMANCE:
i played half of this game on my pc and half of it on my steam deck as i purchased one through my playthrough for my own convenience. it runs fine but obviously isn’t optimized the best it can be. i played this game vanilla without any added performance mods and on the steam deck it was mainly in 30 fps and would lag when too much would happen on screen. it’s playable, but if you really care about quality then probably try to get the performance mods installed. the game still looks beautiful on steam deck though.
ACTUAL REVIEW
i don’t understand why this game has such a bad reputation. as someone who has only played final fantasy 7 remake going to this game about 15 years after its release obviously has a difference in quality. visually i loved the artistic style of this game, i feel like it still holds up 15 years later. the character designs are so awesome, and don’t even get me started on the locations in this game. its super visually appealing even on the steam deck with a bit lower quality. the pre-rendered cutscenes or whatever they are called are AMAZING, they hold up perfectly to this day. outside of how the game just looks, i like how the game feels. i found myself so engaged with the combat in this game, the consistent switching of classes was honestly really fun and i really enjoyed how the combat works here. the moves are also flashy at times and looks super pretty. i didn’t ever catch myself feeling like “this combat is tiring me” because it felt like i was consistently trying different things with the combat, switching at different times, just trying to figure out what works. i’m not the biggest into jrpgs but i am starting to really get into them and i think for me personally this has made me really want to step into them more like ive always wanted.
the story in this game is beautiful, but it has its issues. the game throws you into it as if you already know about this world, but you don’t at all. it rook me a good couple hours to get the basis of the story but i was pretty lost during the intro of it. overall though this cast is so fun and interesting, each character has their complexities which is super awesome. it’s not a perfect story, it has some strange pacing issues at times but overall i loved it for what it was and i grew really attached to these characters.
besides my issue with the story another issue i just have with the game in general is how repetitive certain areas of this game can be. there was a few times i remember where i would catch myself just trying to avoid these groups of enemies because there were so many and i would grow sick of fighting the same ones. yeah it would be quick xp, but it wasn’t keeping my attention as much as i wanted it to. overall though, final fantasy xiii is a game i really regret letting sit in my steam library for so long. i would love a remake of this game and i feel like it deserves it.
8.5/10

The game is amazing, sadly the horrendous port turns a 10/10 game into a 5/10 slog. The game constantly crashes when I try to take screenshots, the framerate is unstable, the game uses only 20% of my gpu and I can't even get 60 frames. Overall it is playable but I can't say it's an enjoyable experience.

its funny a lot of people gripe about this game for its "endless hallway" when they love final fantasy 10. others gripe about in the combat where you set up a series of actions and wait for them to play out, i would tell those people to never play the first 3 final fantasy games then. sure there are limitations to your growth needing to unlock more progression on the crystarium but that means you actually need to play tactically and do more than just auto battle which seems to have turned a lot of people off. who knows maybe they just dont like a female lead character. personally i enjoy the game and the challenges that it brings. sure sometimes cutscenes can run a bit long making you wonder when you will need to pick the controller back up or if you should make some dinner but that has become more and more commonplace over the years.

the scenarios are perfection, the music is perfection and the battle strategies roles etcetc is so fun, this game for me was the scenarios and the battles, vanille and sazh carried, its sad that sazh in the second half of the game becomes invisible, like in the second game they gave protagonism to the male character sacrificing others stories and developments

SCREEN FLICKER FIXED!!! Best game ever created! Only reason it never got the attention it deserves is because it was up against MW2 Halo 3 and Wrath of The LickKing World of Warcraft...........thats enough said. come play the best game ever made. Only complaints is that its hard, crafting is awkward and you get no GIL from battles. Thats all true but also not an issue if you take 10 minutes out of the 20+ hours you can sink into this game to look up a quick guide like 99% of gamers do.... lol Ignore the lame takes.

Always loved the music in the first game and looking forward to playing the expansion packs.

If you are interested in this games visuals i promise that's all you're going to get. Great soundtrack and awesome FMVs. but then you have to play the game and deal with everything else. Terrible combat system that is a regression from every game in the series, unlikable characters, and a mediocre story that gets too much praise.

If you have the time to play through a large final fantasy game please try FF7, FF9, or FF10 instead.

This is a soft recommend. Although I personally enjoy this game, it is divisive for good reasons. The Paradigm System, which is actually one of my favorite Final Fantasy battle systems, is completely blocked off to the player for the first 5 hours of the game. The entire first half is a corridor simulator, and the second throws the entire rest of it basically all at once. A bulk of the essential lore is also deep in the Datalog. I enjoy the character drama, but it will be off putting to some. I really like this game, but DON'T DO EVERYTHING. Its a grind. Also the PC port is bad. A fan patch is necessary for an enjoyable experience.

Only real Chocobos play 13. This game is 13/10 but the port itself is a 13/100. Use mods to fix it.

It's a love-hate relationship. On one hand I love the ATB combat and storys decent but it truly is Final Hallway 13

Genuinely the worst game I've ever had the misfortune of playing in my entire life. Combat in each chapter is a boring slog of fighting the same types of enemies over and over and over again, and I was frequently frustrated by the fact that I couldn't control my party members more directly. The story feels very directionless and inconsequential - genuinely for the majority of the game, the main driving force of the plot is just "you need to run away from the bad guys", so you end up wandering through a bunch of random places for basically no good reason. Maps are essentially just a series of long hallways - even when the game "opens up" in Chapter 11, it's still mostly just a bunch of long hallways that branch off of one big open area (and then the final 2 chapters after that go back to being hallways). It's possible for a game like this to be good despite its linearity (Final Fantasy X is a great example), but the hallways in this game feel like random chores rather than something like FFX, where almost everything is purposeful and feels like it fits coherently into a broader world. The vast majority of the time there's nothing to break up the tedium of going down the hallways in this game - no interesting NPCs to talk to, no cool buildings to go into, no fun minigames to play, etc. The open overworld is definitely the best part of the game, but it's such a bore to get to that point that I'd say it's not even worth it. With few exceptions, the main party members are boring and/or annoying and have no real chemistry with each other, and the side characters are completely forgettable - I basically did not care about anything that any of the characters actually did (which usually wasn't that much to begin with). The only positive points I can think of is that it looks decently pretty and has a genuinely good soundtrack. Other than that, unless you're a diehard Final Fantasy fan, I would avoid this game like the plague. (Also I had to play the entire game in a messed-up resolution because the launcher could not actually open - pressing the "Play" button on Steam did nothing. Thanks Square Enix!)

Nice:
-Awesome graphics and cut scenes
-The combat system is really great especially fighting a boss that makes you shift between paradigms every second trying to stay alive while keeping up stagger while buffing/debuffing, Button-mashingly Palm-sweatingly Micro-managingly INTENSE!
-Good music
-Nice scenery. How nice? It-makes-you-wanna-print-screen-nice.
-Good lore
-It has a DATALOG that you can access in the game menu that lets you read and review certain events that got you confused. Also has information and details of the in-game lore. And of course, the information of your enemies or a Beastiary.
-Giant Cactuar

Not Nice:
-Only one type of side quest
-I dont like their weapon system. It takes forever to fully upgrade them.
-Too very super linear, no towns. You buy stuff at save points.
-The story is kinda average
-Smelly Chocobos :(

At first, I was having problems using my Keyboard to play the game as when you press ESC key (in which my instinct always tells me to do that when making cancels), making a pop-up that confirms if you want to exit the game, which is really frustrating. Then I tried plugging in my USB controller which made the problem go away.

If it wasn't for Sahz Katzroy, my gameplay would have been a really dull experience.

honestly the game looks good but thats it, the first 2 hours consist of just pressing a on the same 2 enemies over and over again, while watching cutscenes with absolutely cookie cutter characters, and corny dialogue. lightning returns was 1000 times better in every aspect.

I remember seeing people tear into this game when I was a kid. The idea that it was just a bunch of hallways and that it only begins after 40 hours made me think it was horrible, and I hadn't even played it. Well, it's 2025, and I have played it, and I enjoyed it very much.

You should understand, there are lots of hallway maps for quite a long time and it does take like 25-40 hours for the game to "open up." If you'd believe it, I appreciated these aspects because the gameplay and game systems took a long time for me to fully grasp, and the extended railroad approach helped me get in touch with the game.

The music is incredible. Seriously... I've always loved FF music, but somehow no one ever told me about FF13's soundtrack. I liked the characters. I loved the style. I enjoyed the story bits in between the main attraction of gameplay and character enhancement.

I remember 2 or 3 sections of the game that I thought were just horrible. Begging for it to be over type horrible. Those sections were clearly under-cooked. There's also plenty of outdated and/or frustrating mundane aspects (like save points, loading paths & animations, etc).

IMO, it's a heavily flawed 2000s game with some great ideas, music, and style, and I think it's worth a try you are at all interested and are willing to deal some roughness.

Really doesn't deserve all the hate it gets. Not perfect by any means, but definitely not as bad as a lot of people say.

You know how players talk about how this game really opens up around Chapter 11 and the free roam makes playing the game worth it?

Yeah....no.

Granted, this game has a great combat system that could have gone down as one of the greats. But you've got to slog through repetitive fights and a brutal story for a few dozen hours first. And that open world? Just a big green field with not much in it, especially not a reason to justify playing this.

Played this one many many years ago, when it first launched, as I've done with every Final Fantasy game since the OG FF7. I remember being fairly critical of it back in the day, mostly for its linearity, which is an undeniable fact, for most of the game its literally a straight corridor. However, even given its truly on-rails nature, i enjoyed it all those years ago.

Decided it was time to replay it again with a set of eyes much more aged than my first time, and to be honest, it holds up well if you can look past the linearity. The characters are distinct and everyone gets their time in the sun, the combat is a fine mix of turn-based and action, and while there's not much room for build or equipment diversity, there is a nice straightforward system there to engage with.

The story can be a little weird at times because of the similar vernacular used for different things, but besides that its fairly straightforward and easy to follow.

Overall id say it was a good decision to replay this one. I ended up dumping about 200 hours in on 2 different playthroughs (because i sold my +resist rings on the first one, which there are a limited number of, DOH!) and ended up getting every trophy complete. Time well spent.

8/10

I really love this game's visual aesthetic, as well as the mechanics. The game path is pretty linear, but as someone with ADHD, I prefer games with less options, as it makes me focus more on the main story. The steam version of the game does have a few crashing issues, but it's only crashed once so far for me, and it was because I was messing with the window, and I guess it didn't enjoy that.

I like kit, specially the art. One of the first games that started to approach the kind of games I want to play.
Is not perfect and I don't enjoy the grinding and the never ending fights with bosses where the only exercised quality of my self is patience.
Good memories, convoluted "chuni" story, annoying characters, but for some reason, I like it.

Actually, it's not as bad as what people say, and I've been playing FF from VI to X and XII. The story and the characters are not the best here, but the gameplay is quite fun. I'll give it 7/10

I was told by my friends, and random people throughout the years that this was the worst final fantasy (the whole trilogy). However, I have to disagree. Though I do believe it is more linear compared to the other titles, but it doesn't detract or take away value this game offers. I think if people looked more into the story, it makes a lot of sense on why it has to be. Which leads me into my next topic. The story is very character driven and it is on full display the entire game and then some. Lots of full circle going on. These characters I fell have had the most development and growth compared to other series.

Good steam game I didn't run into any bugs. And personally this was my introduction to Final Fantasy as a kid. Loved it so much, 13-2 is definitely my favorite. Lightning returns had so many fun outfits though.

This game is absolute garbage. It's constantly crashing. Do not recommend.

Just finished the game. the story a bit confusing but enjoyable. I love the battle system! the paradigms shift sure makes the battle system more fun. The visual is amazing even tho this game first came out before 2015 I believe. Took plenty of screenshots because I like what I see~
Not going to replay this game tho. Didn't really enjoy the mini games. Did the mission for grinding sake but kinda boring imo.
But I didn't regret buying this game. still worth the money.

I was excited to play this game when I got this on sale but the stupid game launcher didn't work now I got to wait until square makes a remastered trilogy

The game got stunning visuals and beautiful soundtracks. However, the game's rigid, linear gameplay and lack of exploration make it a tough selling point for many Final Fantasy fans.

The story is intriguing but it is bogged down by long-duration cutscenes and the narrative is very complicated and feels disconnected. I always feel like I'm watching the cinematic cutscenes more than I'm playing the game. It's like I'm watching a movie, not playing the damn game LOL

Combat, though fast-paced and strategic, becomes repetitive, especially before the game opens up its deeper mechs. The lack of towns or traditional RPG elements like free exploration makes the world feel restrictive.

While it’s visually impressive and the battle system has potential, I now understand what it mean when Final Fantasy fans say "FF13 doesn’t live up to the legacy of the franchise, leaving fans wanting more."

Final Fantasy XIII is a game that dared to take risks, some of which paid off while others alienated longtime fans. Its combat system and visuals are exceptional, but its linear design and convoluted storytelling hold it back. If you’re looking for a more traditional RPG experience, this might not be for you. However, if you enjoy cinematic storytelling and fast-paced battles, Final Fantasy XIII is worth trying.

Score: 7/10

Great story, Great game. its a bit linear and the fighting might be a bit too easy but there is definently strategy involved especially near the endgame.

As for the achievements, if you want to 100% it my advice is to play on easy mode and keep an item checklist with you. Easy mode gives you higher item drop chances which will make the endgame grind much less tedious. I've completed this game with all achievements on normal mode and it took way longer than it should've.

Is this a game that I can recommend? No, definitely not. Am I disappointed by the game? No, because I knew the mixed reviews beforehand but played the game blind and therefore didn't know what to expect as gameplay.

From a technical point of view the game works well and as intended. The PC version only had a crash bug which I could fix by applying a community patch/mod. I also added HD textures, which make the game look nice, even today.

The problem I have with the game is that it is incredible boring - it is neither challenging nor exciting. I felt that the devs were being incredible lazy during development and no longer had any ideas left about how to make a game fun. There are two major issues:

1. The combat is always boring. It is an auto-battler turn based mix. And that was never fun to play with. Being an auto-battler means that as a player I could rarely interact with the game. Being turn based means that I have to wait after every interaction with the game. Both lead to a lot of idle time as a player, which is super boring. During the entire playthrough, I always felt under-stimulated. I was doing something else on a second monitor the entire time. It is possible to control one character of your party manually instead of choosing auto-combat but I did that only a handful of times. Manual control only meant to query next actions to execute but I could not react to anything that was happening in the game, except of switching between fighting, buffing and healing mode. Which in of itself meant that I could also not enjoy the game as a movie because two or three times a minute I have to interact to switch to the correct modes.

2. The story is underwhelming. The game does not build a connection between party and player and the party members also don't build a connection among each other. The game sometimes tries to create something like a connection when it lets you play through a flashback sequence but these last only for a few minutes and then it switches back to the main storyline. I never started to care about anything that is happening in the story and the game also doesn't allow me to change anything anyway.

I imagine the devs who came up with the concept for this game as super lazy or bored-of-life people. There is no creativity or excitement in this game. This game is a huge failure as a game and as a movie. This is not a JRPG (because it contains no RPG elements and no connection to the story and characters) but a spreadsheet filling simulator. The combat makes sense logically. I understood how to get better but I experienced this as similar stimuli input as filling up any spreadsheet with more data over time. Even watching the story on YouTube instead of playing the game I can't recommend because there is just nothing to experience here. I would give this game/simulation maybe a 5/10. It works technically but the only people I can imagine who can enjoy playing this game are maybe people who are easily overstimulated or overwhelmed with more than one thing happening at the same time.

I recommend to watch the first minutes of gameplay on YouTube and if you think it is boring you know that you won't enjoy it in the longer term because it doesn't get better. Some people say that it gets better after ~20 hours, which is not true. You only gain the ability to freely choose your party members and abilities after that time but it doesn't add any depth to the gameplay for more than half an hour. In chapter 11 (out of 13) there is also the issue that the game starts to get incredible time consuming or the progress slows down because you need to grind to progress. Otherwise you don't gain enough DPS to keep up with the HP increase of enemies, which changes rapidly from around 20k to 500k on normal enemies and to over 3M on bosses (!). I used a kill-on-single attack mod to be able to progress at all (steam achievements show that at this point the game lost half of its players that were still playing). I needed about ~35h to get to the ending. If you refuse to use kill mods after chapter 10 I estimate that you need 50-60h to get to the ending regularly because you need to grind upgrades to increase your DPS.

Great instalment in the FF series. Paradigm system is fun to play around with. Great story line and environments to explore.

always enjoyed this imo under rated game. understand the reasoning behind why people dislike, but all i'll say is just play for yourself.

FF系列最毁誉参半的游戏。虽然有一些缺点FF13还是一个好游戏。
一本道的缺点，其实是因为故事不太好懂，大家觉得有些枯燥。其实如果及时看菜单里的各种故事文本，还是能跟上故事的，特别后半段故事还是写得不错的。
地图不定朝北，不停转圈变向，特别第11章后很容易迷路，不过放弃记路直接看指路箭头还是能走完迷宫的，就是缺了点冒险感。不过FF本来就是讲故事游戏，没必要追求开放世界的冒险感。
后半段怪物堆HP有点肝，好多换皮怪，有为了延长游戏时间勉强加难度的感觉，任务感比较强有点枯燥。最终boss会使一招猝死技，我打了半个多小时最终boss突然猝死，然后直接放弃，看视频最后通关。
说了这些缺点，优点还是很多的，音乐绝对一流，我觉得除了FF10就属FF13的音乐好听，沉浸在音乐里才能打这么多换皮怪。战斗系统一流。过场动画一流。故事也很感人。FF13还是很值得一玩的，特别是打折的时候。

Terrible Port. Buggy as hell, and escape key exits game, accidentally exited game 4 times before putting it on my ban list.

Great game and story for the franchise BUT....

-fullscreen will freeze the application, requires 3rd party fix from github.
-audio may have issues in stereo if you're windows 10 or newer. (may require a lengthy fix)

The fact that you buy it and have to do a lot of runaround to get it to play correctly alone is reason i cannot recommend purchase.

Despite having great music and pretty graphics, this game kinda sucks.

FF13 has a single "mode" and it's completely static for the first 20 hours. The combat isn't awful, but I'm utterly sick of it, and that's literally the entire game. There is NOTHING else you do. Even most boss fights just feel like normal enemies that take longer to kill. Every other complaint I could have is secondary to how terrible the gameplay loop feels.

The reason usually given for why the gameplay is almost exclusively combat is that the characters are on a time limit and on the run. That's fine, but the story needs way better pacing to pull that off. Several chapters drag for way too long with too much time between interesting cutscenes. The combat itself also needed to be more interesting much sooner. The Crystarium frankly sucks and feels like a normal leveling system that forces you to manually confirm each level you want to get.

At this point, my boredom has turned into frustration. I'd like to finish it, but I don't know how much more of FF13's gameplay loop I can stomach.

I was told this game was really bad, but actually its not "THAT" bad, buuut its still underwhelming...

Story its kinda meh, character development is poor, the first hours of the game have terrible pacing and gameplay.

The combat can be interesting when you finally get how it works, however overtime it gets very repetitive, having the stagger mechanic and preemptive fights mechanic which are many times impossible, also the star grading system after battle does not make sense, sometimes you do really bad and get highest score, sometimes you do everything you can and get bad score.
Combat can feel very "unstable"due to how it works.

I dont think linearity its a problem, linear games can be good, however its a shame you can't go back to many areas.

The game has a couple good songs, but nothing spectacular.

Graphics are very pretty, for a ps3 game its impressive. Performance was solid for me, except sometimes there are micro hiccups when the game tries to load some areas, but they are very few so its not bad.

Now the big problem with this game is that you need to patch it or you will get multitude or crashes and graphical glitches. Game does not even support borderless screen without a patch. Cutscenes only render at 720p 30 fps, although community found a way to have them at 60fps and higher resolution.

After all this I feel like FF13 was more of a showoff for Square Enix than a good FF game.

I personally didnt enjoy it as much, but I wouldn't consider it the worst game in the series.

Great game! in my opinion, but this game may not be liked by everyone, but still recommend you to try it out

Still one of my Favorite Final Fantasy games. Def not as bad as some people make it out to be.

I recommend installing the 4gb patch so it avoid random crashes, the game is programmed in a way that if it exceeds 2gb of ram usage, it crashes(clearly ported from ps3), this pc port is slightly broken, but it is playable, hopefully not as bad as XIII-2 from what i hear, i haven't started 2 yet.

And as of the time i write this, I've finished it again after years, playing in the normal difficulty sometimes may have unbalanced encounters, i only activated the easy mode about 3 times only in the entire game (there are 13 chapters, so it is a little long game), the last boss battle is truly a hassle, specially the second phase which left me pondering about using a hack, which i didn't, easy mode was the only way.

The battle rating system is HORRIBLE, i don't understand it, it may go super quick and easy, but i will get no starts, 2, 3, 4, not 5, there's an achievement for 5 star in every Gran Pulse mission (64 missions...) you gotta walk a lot for each, and having to redo a majority of them because the rating system is bad, makes me give up trying to 100%

Personally, i'm a fan of FFXIII, the characters are charismatic, the story is engaging, i'm not sure why is it hated, however, i understand a little of the hate, it doesn't completely follow the FF formula all the other numbers have, yet, it's still fun. I really love the designs, specially the creatures, really like all the biomechanical factors and weird designs, it's interesting.

Most maps are pretty linear but has a little exploration you can do, i'm aware many people don't like this, personally, it doesn't bother me. The map with the most exploration factor is Gran Pulse, with a whopping 64 missions to do (not obligatory to finish the game, unless you want to 100% the achievements....which is a hassle as i've typed why before)

And, Is nobody going to talk about how Y2K the game style is? The menus and some maps are COMPLETELY Y2K, which is interesting because it came out at a time Y2K wasn't around anymore, it was already leaving the frutiger aero era to the flat corp, i may be talking shit but that's how i remember things.
some parts weirdly use 98% of my GPU (rtx 3060) which felt weird

For now it's all i got to write, might edit later if i remember any points

game is good as it is a FF game. i am using a controller as well.

I am a fan of final fantasy series and played most of them all the way through. Final Fantasy XIII however was a chore. It took me three tries to get into it and even the third time was not a charm. I purposely pushed my self all the way to the end and beat it but I did not enjoy it.

First of all the story I think was interesting but felt sort of rushed somehow. Your entire journey through almost exclusivly just hallways and many fights in between, the non party characters you meet you see once or twice and then you get PLOT TWIST they betray you but honestly you barely met them so not really a shocked as the scene made it out to be. There is no build up, things just happen. At least that how it felt for me. So Meh to the story,

Combat feels so bad and I feel its hard to messup combat when you have a whole series of other final fantasy games to look back on. You get a party of two or three people but you only ever get to control the leader character. You can set up paradigms outside of battle which are basically assigned class roles and you can set up up to five of these. In battle you swap between the paradigms based on what you need from the situtation like healing or buffs but remember this switched EVERYONE so plan carefully. I hate this system cause if I set up a character with the medic role to heal, I better hope they heal the leader first if they low cause one hit and its instant game over. Thats right if your leading character dies there no chance for a revive, its just game over. You can however revive your other party members though. I just hate this system so much, it feels dumbed/water down making it feel simple and basic and yet frusterating cause you kind of just have to hope your party members have your back when you switch them. Its like your driving a car capable of doing it all, but if you needed to turn right you got to shift to a very specific gear to turn right and then switch gears again in order to go back straight meanwhile only in certain gears can your passengers turn on the AC or Heat as needed but you got to hope they will do it when the time is right. That is how the paradigm system feels like. Its like what i can do is restricted all the time.

Weapon upgrade system is a bit confusing but not terrible. I just don't care for it. Instead of requiring specific components to upgrade weapons and gear you can use really any of them. Instead you give weapons and gear EXP and depends on the components you use to level them up. Keep in mind the amounts vary based on the gear so you kind of have to trial and error look through all the items. Some items will give you exp multipliers too so you want to use them first then your big exp gain components next to make use of the multiplier. Personally just don't like this system.

Map design good god is terrible. The entire game you never get to just explore a town or a city, its all hallways. Very liniar hallways. Sure they may have nooks here and there with a item but otherwise, they are just one long hallway every chapter with enemies inbetween. No serieously, you dont get a more open map for actual exploring till chapter 11... theres only 13 chapters in the game. Thats 10 chapters of going down a hallway. It is such lazy map design. Theres no shops in the game except at save station. The save station is your shop. There is no sidequests to break up the gameplay ether till chapter 11 and they are a chore. There is 64 side quests but they all work the same, you can have only one quest picked up at a time, you have to abandon or finish the quest if you want to pick up another. They all have you (GO TO THIS LOCATION AND KILL THIS CREATURE) to complete. You will be exploring the same parts of this open map over, and over, and over, and over, and over again and again. Its tedious. Not interesting. Boring.

Music in this game is good though. Decent anyways. Nothing that really catches though. No memorable tracks for me.

Graphics are very pretty at least and its easy to see how this helped showcase PS3 graphics back in the day.

The port runs a little choppy as for performance. There is fan made mods you can use to help improve its performance and from my understanding a requirement to make the second game playable at all. I didn't notice anything to terrible without the mod, but the mod definitely improved things.

I am hoping the second game is funner as this one was not great. I have no intentions to coming back for a fourth time. If the second game is too boring i will move on to playing something else entirely I think.

I just cant recommend Final Fantasy XII. If the second game really as fun as ive heard, then I may just suggest watching the cutscenes on youtube of the first game and go to the second game. Personally Ill be finding out for my self if the next will be worth it or not.

Never understood why this entry got so much hate. Absolutely loved this game on ps3 and love it even more now that the frames aren"t locked. From the crystal clear cutscenes to the now non fuzzy battle sequences i highly recommend if your looking to replay this gem

-Gameplay Mechanics: A
This game has some of the best turn based fighting that I have ever played. You can tell this is an advancement from the battle system from Final Fantasy 12 however the Paradigm system really is a great dynamic. Really the only thing that lets it down is the fact that if the parties "leader" gets knocked out its a party wipe. What a stupid mechanic! i understand having a party leader for narrative and plot purposes, but that handicap is beyond awful.

-Story & Narrative: D-
While the overall story does have some memorable moments, overall the plot is terrible. Confusing & quite dull, it really is a low point for a Final Fantasy title. Easily the worst that I have experienced from any the mainline games that I have played thus far.

Character development is really not engrossing with some occasional exceptions sprinkled in. It probably does not help that with the exception of Sazh, each of the main characters seem to do nothing but be unlikable for the first half of the game. While these characters ultimately end up being somewhat memorable and have their own individual charms, they are all underdeveloped & hamstrung by a terrible & confusing plot & simply glacial character development. Also the main antagonist is extremely dull & forgettable. Has to be the worst one for a mainline FF game.

-Graphics & Visuals: S
For a game that came out in 2010, this game still holds up incredibly well today. I did end up installing mods to increase the main character assets & Topaz AI upscaled 4k FMVs & pre-rendered cinematics since the PC port has the issue of using heavily compressed versions of them, and there are a LOT of videos. Felt like half this game was watching videos. That being said, mods or not, for the time this came out its amazing.

-Sound & Music: S+
One of the best soundtracks for a video game. The only time it is not good is during the ending cinematic, with some god awful sappy English pop love song. Completely out of place for this game and a complete contrast from the music of the rest of the game. Terrible choice and I suspect only a problem for the North American release.

-Performance: A
I know upon release the console versions of this game really pushed the PS3 & Xbox 360 hard and to its limits. Granted I have a very overpowered system for what is needed to play this PC port (Ryzen 7 7700X/RX 7900XT/32 GB DDR5 6000/WD Black SN850X), I was able to play at native 4k 60 FPS without any issues. There is way to go higher than 60 FPS, but considering it was not locked at 30 like FFX I will not complain.

-Technical Stability: F
Really awful PC port. i know this is a 2010 game, but even today Square Enix struggles with releasing great PC ports into the wild. Really a shame. I played it with and without stability mods and it just hangs up & crashed quite frequently. Any time you alt tab or minimize the screen you will grit your teeth because there is roughly a 50% chance the game will crash when the window is reopened. Luckily the game has a good amount of frequent save points.

-Replayability: C-
There certainly is a good amount of optional side quests & end game content. That being said, with how linear this game for the first 75% of the story, & how overall lackluster this plot is, I would not be inclined to want to replay this title.

The game is extremely linear for a FF game, and the first half of the game is super restrictive & you are forced to have to play in 2 party squads which is annoying because it does not increase the difficulty & all it does is draw out the fights to near annoying time durations. It is not awful, but I doubt I personally will ever play this game again.

Overall, Final Fantasy XIII is a mixed bag. The visuals & audio are elite, with battle mechanics that are among the best for its genre. It's let down by its awful plot, linear world exploration, party leader dependency, & underdeveloped characters. While its worth a play through, I can't give it any high accolades beyond that.