FINAL FANTASY® XIII

you love it, or you hate it. i love it. game still looks superb even after so many years (due to its stylistics, not graphical fireworks, even though refreshment with modern mods is highly advised), battle system is very fun (even though could be a lil boring after long hours), plot is AMAZING, characters very likeable, voice acting top notch. it's simply a very good game.

Great game, second time playing it, first was a decade ago. Steam version keeps on crashing. overall great story and good for nostalgia.

I played the original of Xbox 360 to death back when it released. The original E3 trailer that had the fake gameplay to get people interested was what had me gripped to play it initially. I do have a long history with this game going through a lot in life and maybe that helps me have a soft spot for it, but I can't stress how much I enjoyed playing it all over again.

There was a tinge of fear that I may dislike since the internet is pretty vocal about it's issues. I won't say that I can completely dismiss them as there are definitely too many fights, not enough variety in activities and there is a SEVER lack of towns.

Yet almost none of it prevented me from being completely engrossed in it's cast, music and turn based combat. Building out the crystarium for each character and building teams to strategize for each fight only got more and more interesting as I went through the game. Granted it takes a LONG time for it to completely open up, but still held my attention long enough.

If you have a Steam Deck I HIGHLY recommend playing it portably. Some areas do dip in frame rate, but the ease of picking it up and putting it down helps with a lot of the poor pacing of fights. It's much more bearable to do a few fights, save, put it down and come back later.

Overall I still love this game. It's the most 10/10 6/10 game I've ever played.

It took me a while to get into FFXIII as it is quite different being more linear and having a different ATB system. The story is a bit confusing to begin with and the pacing is a bit too fast in my opinion, but it does end up making sense and getting better in the second half, and I still enjoyed playing the game regardless. It may not be the best entry in the FF mainline series, for many reasons, but is still an FF game at heart. Interested to see how FFXIII-2 pans out.

17 hours in and game no longer launches. Have user patch, 4GB update and DEP disabled. Redid all of it+ reinstall and it just won't start.

FF13 is actually very good and people are just dumb for hating it.

I used to be the biggest hater of FF13, certainly bigger than you, back when it came out and for several years after. I saw it as the decline of FF, a giant hallway simulator that focused on graphics to attract the CoD fanbase of players for a no-substance movie of a game that you just spam X to win in, without actually playing it.

But then I gave it a fair shot when it came out on Steam and I ended up falling in love with it. The combat feels a lot better than I expected, the linear maps do well for its hyper-focused story which does open up later for tons of side-content that's actually fun and rewarding to do, and it shares a lot of similarities to FF10 in good ways. Is it the best FF? No. But it's far from the worst. The story is extra compelling if you're a Noticer.

I replayed the game again a couple of years later with a different party setup and build, and loved it even more that time, finding different ways to play. Each character has their place and each weapon has different styles. I definitely recommend it if you have the balls to admit when you're wrong about something and can enjoy an objectively good game despite already deciding beforehand you don't like it. I can't say the same for 13-2 though, I didn't enjoy it at all and couldn't even finish it, which killed my desire to play Lightning Returns. But FF13 it self is really good and the story wraps up just fine, so there's no need to play the sequels. And still has great replaybility. Think I'll try a third run again and use an even different build for another party.

EDIT: Also, I never had any issues with the port. Never crashed, runs at 60 FPS, looks great on highest settings. I've played through it on two separate PCs, neither of which were high-end, and like I said I've played since near launch with no mods. So anyone complaining about bad port or it's buggy are just dumb with computers and don't know what they're doing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Great game but not the best FF out there. didn't like how there is 13 chapters and 10 of them felt like a tutorial.
although had heaps of fun and kept me hooked for a week.

Fantastic story and characters backed up by an amazing combat system that rewards you for playing smarter.

Turn off the mini-map.

I'm really glad they never made sequels to this game, I can just imagine Square Enix ruining this story and world to put out cheap sequels.

I waited many years to replay this game to completion since its release. Being a long time FF fan, mostly enjoying the classics (7-10) it had been a long time since I decided to give this a proper play-through. It starts very modestly, at first it feels very linear and takes a bit of patience to get though the beginning areas and progress to a point in the story where the characters, environments and the general story really start to shine. Previously, I hadn't had the patience to progress too far, but now I have I realise how fantastic it is in all facets.

Getting to Gran Pulse felt like a monumental effort after progressing through so much of the more 'linear story' but it was truly rewarding. The shear amount of content there alone is astounding. Even the end game grinding (whilst tedious with the Gil farming, and the RNG on the Adamantoises' is frustrating) is rewarding in its on right. All of the Cie'th missions and their ratings can be pre-planned well. The Treasure Hunter achievement is a gruelling achievement, especially since you genuinely have no need for most of the weapons/accessories you need to level up. JRPGs of this era have these soul-crushing end-game grinds and that's part of the oddly alluring charm imo.

This game has a fantastic and cohesive story, engaging characters that whilst they take a while to develop are very relatable and well developed. The artwork and graphics are top-notch and still shine today. All in all a fantastic game worth the investment of your time, even in 2024 it is shoulders above some of the most recent RPGs!

Criminally underrated instalment of FF.
This has a beautiful story, in a interesting world, with fantastic characters, such as the often slept-on Lightning, who has one of the best character arcs of any FF protag.

The game itself is very good. One of the best Final Fantasies I've played.

I had only the last boss to kill, and then the game decided that it won't want to launch. Did some googling and seems I'm not the only one. It seems most people never found a solution to this issue.

SE, please fix this port.

cool but atleast give us the english dub option because NOT EVERYONE CAN UNDERSTAND JAPANESE

very good FF geting old so does the combat mechanic ...
Story is awesome but players need to be patient
lot of stories before you get full control of the game and exploration system

Despite the fact the first few (8 chapters) is technically the tutorial of the game and the fact the game progresses SO SLOWLY with the hall simulators, the story is engaging and progressing with the "tutorial" gameplay and with more characters keeps me engaged. I really like the crystarium(?) function, looks really cool when upgrading my characters like that.

Although i don't really want to recommend the game because of the reasons said above. But idk, give it a try lmao. It's really a hit or miss.

first ever final fantasy game i heard it bad reviews at first but personally i luv it only played 4 hours but luving the story it's a rough start to learn the story & learn more about later but fun over very lininer but i luv games like that

Funny game. The overall plot is uninteresting. The main villain is vastly underdeveloped. The villain’s goal to meet the Maker via sacrificing Cocoon doesn’t feel inspiring in particular. The problem boils down to the villain having no real ties to the main party. This wouldn’t be a problem if the characters’ internal conflicts were stronger, then we could at least say the plot was an excuse for great character moments. There ARE some interesting character scenarios such as Hope’s conflict with Snow and Sazh’s guilt towards his son. However, the other character dilemmas presented were either undercooked or not too interesting to begin with.

Gameplay-wise, this IS a corridor simulator during the story. This didn’t bother me too much, however. Besides perhaps FF12, it’s not like Final Fantasy dungeons in past entries had THAT many exits in a given room (i.e. multiple paths to explore). There are other series to play if I would want exploration as a focus point. I get it though. It can be visually jarring at times for a path to be conveniently shaped like a corridor because it can hurt the player’s immersion and the passive world-building. I will say that this game arriving directly after FF12 probably didn’t help it.

So…why am I still giving this a thumbs up? It’s because of the optional content that opens up at the end. The optional content isn’t particularly challenging or innovative, but it does have a relaxing quality to it. If you get this game on sale, it would be worth getting through the story parts to get to the optional stuff.

There are some aspects of the optional stuff that are difficult to figure out organically (i.e. weapon upgrading in particular comes to mind), so a guide would be in most players’ interest. I wish it wasn’t this way though. Honestly, this is a problem for the entire series. I mean, how are players supposed to organically know that they need to perform 200 lightning dodges (FFX), a 12 hour speedrun (FFIX – even worse if played on the original PS1 hardware because you had to open the disc tray to skip cutscenes LOL), NOT open certain chests to get the best weapon (original FF12 NA).

Your mileage may vary with this one. I’d say as long as you’re not expecting high art and kinda want a game to kill some time over, give it a shot. It might be a funny game to bond over with a friend watching because the characters can get a bit melodramatic and campy. For some, not taking a game seriously is a problem in and of itself – and I get it. But for this entry, we gotta work with what we got. Or you could just not buy it.

Funny memory…I remember being hype for Jihl in the trailers leading up to the original 2009 release. You can probably imagine how that went when I played the game.

I really enjoy linear story telling in the sea of open world games. I enjoy the paradigm based battle system. Not the best system ever but definitely (IMO!!!) best of all the FF games I have played. FF13 is not for everyone, but it is a great game. I was surprised how the visuals still look stunning in 2024. It's credit to its art direction. Soundtrack is excellent as usual.

The soundtrack, gameplay, characters and graphics (with a Nexus HD mod) still make this game and unforgetible experience 2024.

I've either played or beaten all of the mainline Final Fantasy games so how does this one stack up? Let's start with the positives.

As far as graphics go this one is a big jump compared to the previous entry FF12 and they still hold up today. The cutscenes are also well done and look fantastic.

What about the battle system? This entry uses something called the Paradigm system. This allows the player to assign a specific job for up to three characters and there can be up to five sets of these combinations. You can assign two medics and a sentinel (someone with high defensive to take high amounts of damage) or they can have two commandos and a ravener (magic spells) to stack up damage when an enemy is in stagger (meaning they are vulnerable). If it sounds familiar its because its similar to the Dres-sphere system from FFX-2 where a player changes jobs mid battle. This is also something I enjoyed about the game as it allows flexibility to the player and doesn't force them to commit to something they might regret later in the game. The battle system here is solid but there are a few problems I'll mention later.

Now for the negatives

The story in this game did have its moments but overall I felt it was lacking. The game seems to cycle through who the main antagonist is and said bad guy usually disappears for a long time and we aren't sure what their motivations are or what they even want to do. The short of it is that you here labels thrown around like Licie and Falcie but I honestly didn't know what that meant or why it was relevant. We know that most people live in a place called cocoon but not sure why the heros need to save it or why its destruction is imminent. It seems they wanted to throw in elements from the earlier games like the team becoming outlaws (FF7, FF8) but it lacked coherence and honestly I remember little other than what was mentioned here. Its worth noting that there are 20-30 min long cutscenes that end up being pretty yet boring and overlong but the main problem with them is that for being so long they aren't useful to the story.

How about the characters? Just like 10 they're either boring or annoying. But Lighting was okay if not a bit Mary Sue-ish and Fang seemed alright but Saz was one of the more interesting ones who offered plenty of charisma.

As far as the environment goes that's where we also run into trouble. There aren't any towns to explore or dungeons for that matter. There is something close in Chapter eight but there's nothing to interact with. Stores are all self contained inside the save box. Having towns to explore, NPC to talk to really helps the play experience and it drags down the world building but level design coincides with the environment so I'll mention it here too. These levels aren't just linear but little more than what amounts to long endless hallways. Running down these and fighting can be fun for an hour but it gets really monotonous to play and after only a few hours exhaustion sets in.

So I'll close with the gameplay aspect. As I just mentioned the game play is repetitive and its because this game is paced so poorly. Having people that expel useful bits of information about possible tips for gameplay or where to find something, possibly they could just help build the world and story by giving that information. That might be part of the problem with the story too. But this 36 hour long hallway was simply too much for me. Overall the experience is dragged down by not just poor characters but also poor pacing and a story that doesn't work.

Go ahead and skip this one.

Let’s be real—Final Fantasy XIII is great and all, with its gorgeous visuals, epic soundtrack, and some pretty intense battles. Then you're greeted with the actual goddess, the queen, the embodiment of perfection in pixel form Serah Farron. Forget saving the world every time she shows up, my heart does more flips than a chocobo on caffeine.

I'm revisiting this game after YEARS ago completing it on PS3. I knew getting it on PC I'd get the best visuals possible: boy was I in for a treat! Yes, I'm using a 4090 gpu, and I'm sure any of the current gpus are fully capable of giving the best this game can give... but seeing how the gameplay footage far exceeds what's on the cut-scenes I was pleasantly surprised! And I enjoy how straightforward the exploration/battles progress, not too much to fuss about. Even though it's one of the least loved of the Final Fantasy's..... It's one of my favorites!

Such a great game made even better with the FF13fix and HD fix mods.
I have a Logitech Cordless Rumblepad 2 and it took me hours to figure out how to get it working with force feedback.
You will need x360ce, FF13fix mod, and HidHide. Add the ffxiiiimg.exe into x360ce, map the buttons, enable force feedback, make sure Get Xinput state is checked make sure Enable Controller is checked, and set the rumble to "constant2" at 100%. Pay attention because every time the focus window changes then x360ce will select a different application. To test rumble, you may need to test with the x360ce application selected in the x360ce application (yes, I know!). Don't forget to turn on vibration on the controller with the vibration button. Make sure all the settings and mappings are also saved onto ffxiiimg.exe application from your steam library selected in x360ce because it switches to this when you launch the game. Restart x360ce after saving your changes. Add x360ce.exe to HidHide exclusions and hide the Logitech Rumblepad Controller (all 3 checkboxes). You need to do this because you need to get the game to latch onto the emulated xbox game controller instead of the actual controller so that the Force Feedback/Rumble works. The actual game controller is DirectInput and the emulated game controller created by x360ce is Xinput which is what the game needs to latch onto for force feedback and rumble to work. And there you have it, Force feedback in Final Fantasy XIII with a Logitech Cordless Rumblepad 2!

Long hallways and exploration aside, fantastic story great characters and fun gameplay. I think the the goods surpass the bad. Its a good game and a fine addition to the Final Fantasy Franchise and for the price is more than worth it.

It requires a fix to run better, it requires a mod to remap controls, it handholds you for 15 hours, the plot is cheesy.
And yet I still enjoy it, there's no other RPG quite like it.

The constant stuttering issue makes me unable to enjoy the cut scenes. Audio stuttering issue happens on fields, too. Kind of regret buying it twice on PS3 and Steam.

Damn, was this a great game when there wasn't anyone screaming in my ears about how bad it was and how FFX is better.
FF fans am I right? But in all seriousness, I absolutely loved this game. The story and the world were so interesting, and the characters were the absolute highlight of the game. The combat takes a while to click with you but once it does DAMN is it fun. The game has some seriously frustrating segments, most notably bosses that almost feel as if they weren't even tested to begin with, but all in all it's a lot of fun and very rewarding to go through.
The port, however, isn't perfect, with many, and I mean MANY fps drops throughout entire sections, which is a bummer, but nothing game-breaking like in the next game.
Totally recommend if the linearity doesn't brother you, it sure as hell didn't for me.

Final Fantasy XIII holds its own with an amazing soundtrack, fast, yet intuitive battle system and high production values for any JRPG. The game is very different from classic games in the franchise, but remains a unique, challenging yet memorable experience worth playing through. It was my first FF and I loved it.

Never played it more than an hour back in the day when it released because it didn’t fit the FF mold I was accustomed to. Actually a pretty good game, story is decent and the ATB mechanics aren’t as bad as I remember. Glad I gave it a shot although it gets grindy about halfway through so had to get a trainer because i’m a grownup with a job so I don’t have the time or patience to grind crystarium points, gil and items. Other than that it’s a good game.

pretty much a movie and action game without that much action
camera is weird but you get used to it

One of my Top Favorite Final fantasy games , i would always love to come back and play this every time . 10/10 would recommend!

Game lost my save after 13hrs and could not find it anywhere on my system. It's just gone. Also the story is insanely complicated and just throws made up words at you from the start.

The game crashes a lot if doing anything other than just running the game. Trying to stream it has been a nightmare, from the constant crashing to voice acting not being picked up by the stream. I enjoy the game, when it works, however i cannot recommend this to anyone unless you are willing to mod it or deal with crashes.

[quote]

THE GOOD

THE BAD

SCORE: 80%

This has been one of my very favorite Final Fantasy games of all time since it released on the PS3/Xbox 360 in 2009! I will indeed continue to sing its praises until I am no longer here!!! Fantastic game!!!!!!

Rolled credits on Final Fantasy XIII for the first time since 2009. It reads as so much more humane, revolutionary, loving, and queer than it did to me then. That’s me growing.

While this is not my favorite Final Fantasy game of all time, it's an enjoyable story for the most part. I didn't love all of the characters or the eidolon system. The scenery and graphics in general, even as old as this is now, still looked great. Personally, I also prefer an "on-rails" world versus an open world because of how much time open world games can suck up, so I liked that this still followed a limited path.

Issues:
Controls were hard to acclimate to on keyboard. Once I switched to a controller, it felt a lot more natural.

Linear, but excellent battle mechanics and characters.

What to say about Final Fantasy 13? Honestly, it is hard to decide wether to recommend the game. overall probably yes, but it is a close thing.
Final Fantasy 13 still looks absolutely gorgeous. Graphics are great, animations fluid. Music is of similar quality no complains here. Cutscene direction is great. Overall the movie part of the game works great.

That brings us to story-telling. And the foundation is great. I liked the characters and once the plot revealed itself it is actually quite interesting. But that brings us to the problems with it.
The beginning is absolutely atrocious from the story-telling perspective. A massive action spectacle but completely without context. You have no idea what happens, why it happens or why the few things that are told you are even relevant. Exacerbated is this by everyone knowing and no one is telling the player what is going on, also the PC cast being vague about their own motivations.
Also, throughout the game certain things just seem to happen without reason. While most can be explained with a plot reveal halfway through the story, not all of them can, especially what happened around the final boss battle.

Which brings me to gameplay. Some other players seemed to really like it, I am not one of those. However, I disagree with the problems usually stated by the game's haters. FF13's problem is not that it is linear. It it, but so are many other great games. It lies in a lack of diversity of the things you do during along the way. The game consists in Walking, Fighting and Cutscenes. That is all. And in fights, outside of boss fights you barely ever need to do anything beyond choosing the right Paradigm (combat roles) and then select "Auto-Battle". And it is not even a true auto-battle that would allow you to walk away. It is only for one action sequence. Then you need to select it again and again. Overall you just do too little, and that is boring. The game shines in most of its boss battles though. Constantly switching through paradigms, making decisions based on the ever-changing situation is fun and engaging.
But due to its leveling and equipment upgrade system the game forces you into the boring grind of normal foes.
The leveling system - the Crystarium - appears to offer you choice how to develop your characters by choosing which paradigm role to invest your points in but for most of the game this is basically an illusion. The game limits progress per role and unlocks more of it bit by bit. And it gives just enough experience points that by the time the next unlock happens you should be just about finished with everything in all roles a character has currently available. Only towards the endgame when all roles are available for everyone this changes. But unless you are interested in endgame side quests by that time it does not matter anymore.
Furthermore, the leveling system only unlocks after your characters become "L'Cie" probably 2 hours into the game. A bit too long, in my opinion. Also the paradigms shine most in a full party of 3, but for most of the first half of the game you are forced into groups of 2 with further dumbs down normal encounters.
Now to the equipment upgrade system. This system needs a f***ing guide. It is rather complex but utterly unexplained. Simply put you need to spend items to upgrade your equipment pieces, loot from battles falls into 3 categories, human enemies drop items sellable for money, beasts drop body parts, machines drop synthetic materials. Upgrading equipment with beast parts gives little experiences to the equipment but increases a bonus multiplyer for the next item turn-in. Synthetic materials do the opposite, a lot of experience but they lower the bonus value. So, what you are supposed to is give beast items until the bonus is maxed and then bulk turn-in synth parts. But nothing in game ever explains this system. Furthermore, once you reached an item's highest level most items can be upgraded to an item with higher potential, but its level gets resetted, making it initially weaker than what you had. How do you do that? You upgrade it with a special material, one of several such materials. Which one? Get one and see if it was the right one. Otherwise you cannot use it. Oh, did I mention they are usually rare drops of powerful monsters or forbiddingly expensive shop items?
This whole system screams "Massive Grindfest", it is terrible. Luckily, you can get through most of the game with minimal interaction with it. Only post-game and achievements seem to truly need it.

Did I forget anything else of import?

This brings back all of the memories of my joining of the final fantasy franchise. As linear as it is it still packs quite the punch when it comes to story and character growth. The leveling system is really fun as well. I love this game and would recommend to anyone.

A decent Final Fantasy.

Story can get complicated if you're not paying real close attention, or don't read the lore in the datalog. Gameplay is fine, though I felt it got too autonomous to the point where all I had to do was press A. (Set my paradigm to Solidarity during that one mandatory fight with the Adamanchelid; I was able to do my laundry successfully with one hand and away from the screen. You'll win eventually with some paradigms and decently leveled characters). The final boss was OP? It had an unavoidable, insta-kill ability (50% chance of success) on one of your three characters. This I wouldn't mind, if it only targeted the other two members, but it can also target the leader. So you can basically end up losing near the end of a long fight, no matter what and have to try again. I don't know, never found a strategy, so I just maxed everyone and ended it ASAP.

Music is great. Character design is cool. Overall, I recommend it.

the price for this pretty hallway simulator game is kinda okay, but for now i can only recommend to buy if its on sale. still in the first hour of the game (so i might edit this review later), and its kinda annoying that i cant change the camera sensitivity. combat itself doesn't feel as dull as i expected, but its still feel lacking something.

it might be a nice game when it was initially released (2009 if im not mistaken), but right now there's many competing titles that provide better jrpg experience.

this might be not a good starting game if you're new to the Final Fantasy franchise.

when my current game roster is more cleared of good games to play instead of this one I might try it again, but what I played was just incredibly dull

This in my top 3 FF games, amazing gameplay and characters. Did I mention this game is gorgeous and especially with the HD project packs and models on nexus mods.

10 hours in and yes I am deeply enjoying this game. Basically Ive played 7(og), 10, and tactics and enjoyed them all. I decided to play this game mostly because of the soundtrack, which is incredible. I used to play the ffxiii soundtrack while playing other games.

Playing on a PC, I NEEDED to mod this game to make it stop crashing. There are 2 different patches that I needed to install before it worked. I guess original memory size is only 2gigs, so anything over makes the game crash instantly. However, since i was already modding I decided to also install the HD Textures pack.
The game now plays and looks incredible. Just amazing for a 15 year old game.

I sort of wanted to play this one for its combat system before I play the most recent ones/remakes. Although many people complain about it's linear progression in the early game, I found it very smooth with all the fantastic cutscenes and VA.

I like the characters more than any other rpg I've ever played. Good crew and I'm actually invested in the story, which isnt always easy for me.

A completely disjointed story, underwritten characters, unimpactful flavor text, undeveloped world.
Atrocious gameplay, unbalanced completely, useless drops, excess of dull shops where nothing can be purchased because no enemy drops currency. A game that encourages tapping one button endlessly and nothing else, the only interactive mechanic being blocked behind a delay that has atrocious game feel. Most battles are extremely easy or unfairly hard. Summon system blocked behind story beats and cumbersome to the point of uselessness.
A sense of emptiness is all that pervades after the end. The game merely stopped.
My experience with the game has been a "dead dove do not eat" joke.

The combat feels very different from what I'm used to and while that can be frustrating, its also nice in its own way. I'm loving the art and characters; Mostly how foolish but sweet Snow is. As for the story, I can't say much yet being only 7 hours in but its got my attention. I mean, it started off with a government sanctioned slaughter of an entire district and our hero's being forced into the service of what they believe is basically the embodiment of evil...

great version of the game. looks better than it did on PS3 or XBOX 360. If the game freezes every few seconds, make sure that if there's a controller plugged in and turned on. Mine did this and I felt like i'd never figure it out.

Way underrated entry in the franchise. I love the combat system, the graphics, music, art style, etc. I love it.

The graphics are amazing, the combat is really fun, and the music is incredible.

Unfortunately, what I usually love most about the series is the story and this one didn’t catch my interest at all. It’s too confusing and not interesting enough for me to bother looking it up to understand it better.

The characters look cool, but other than that are either forgettable or annoying (especially Vanille, what an insufferable character)

Super linear, which didn't really bother me, but I love exploring and that isn't an option here.

Overall good game, good enough.

Overall Rating: 3.5/5 Stars

Pros:

Stunning Visuals: FINAL FANTASY XIII boasts impressive graphics with beautifully designed environments and character models. The art direction is top-notch, creating a visually captivating experience.
Engaging Combat System: The game introduces the Paradigm Shift system, which allows players to switch between different roles during battles. This adds a layer of strategy and keeps combat dynamic and engaging.
Strong Narrative and Characters: The story, while complex, is rich and emotional, focusing on a group of characters each with their own motivations and backgrounds. The character development and relationships are well-explored, adding depth to the narrative.
Excellent Soundtrack: The music, composed by Masashi Hamauzu, is one of the highlights of the game. The soundtrack complements the game's atmosphere and enhances the overall experience.
Linear Design with Focused Storytelling: The linear nature of the early game allows for focused storytelling and a strong narrative drive, which can be appreciated by players who prefer a guided experience.
Cons:

Linear Gameplay: While the focused storytelling is a strength, the game's linearity can also be a drawback. The first half of the game is highly linear, with limited exploration and a feeling of being guided through corridors, which can feel restrictive.
Complex Storyline: The story can be difficult to follow, with a lot of lore and terminology that may overwhelm players. The narrative unfolds slowly, and some players might find it hard to stay engaged.
Lack of Traditional RPG Elements: Fans of traditional RPG elements like towns, NPC interactions, and side quests might be disappointed by their limited presence in FINAL FANTASY XIII. The game focuses more on combat and story progression.
Slow Start: The game takes a while to open up. The initial chapters are heavily tutorial-based, which might feel slow and tedious to some players.
Recommendation: I recommend FINAL FANTASY XIII to fans of the series and those who enjoy story-driven RPGs with strategic combat systems. Its stunning visuals, engaging combat, and strong narrative are worth experiencing, despite its linearity and complex storyline. However, players who prefer open-world exploration and traditional RPG elements might find the game less satisfying. If you appreciate a well-crafted story and are willing to invest time in understanding the lore, FINAL FANTASY XIII offers a unique and memorable experience.