Requirements
Steam Achievement: Master’s Seal: Everyone must have a complete Crystarium.
Bounty Hunter: Complete all the L’Cie Stone missions.
Steam Achievement: Adamant Will: Defeat a Long Gui.
Tri-Disaster: For three “main” characters, they must have only starred items equipped and one of those items must be his/her ultimate weapon.
Character screenshots
Steam Achievement: Master’s Seal: Everyone must have a complete Crystarium.
Bounty Hunter: Complete all the L’Cie Stone missions.
Steam Achievement: Adamant Will: Defeat a Long Gui.
Tri-Disaster: For three “main” characters, they must have only starred items equipped and one of those items must be his/her ultimate weapon.
Character screenshots
Random comments
I have…a history with FFXIII. I originally wanted my Final Fantasy shrines to end at X, since I hate subscription MMOs (XI) and it’s proven exceptionally hard for me to get through XII. I also hate some specific aspects of XIII, such as Shiva being 2 robot chicks who turn into a motorcycle. The battle system is…something I still don’t quite enjoy. But for some reason that even I don’t quite get, I wanted to experience this game, and when I finally got through it, I found that it had grown on me.
The stuff I noted above I still don’t like. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have fun with this game. The only character I still don’t like is Hope for whatever reason. I guess I still instinctively dislike Snow, though I really wouldn’t be able to tell you why, since his thick-headed altruism and undying loyalty to his love for Serah are actually quite commendable.
So, look, I don’t really have any qualms about adding FFXIII to the shrines when looking at it by itself. The only thing holding me back is the fact that I’ll probably never shrine or even play XI, meaning this list now has a discontinuity, but I think any outside observer will tell you how idiotic that sounds out loud.
One thing I will say, though – I hate most of the music in the game. It’s not that the music is bad; instead, it’s that I found a lot of the tracks too dreamy and mellow. They’re like lullabies. When I’m marching through a fantasy world brutally killing monsters, I want pump-up music, damnit.
By the way, I finished the game with every Steam achievement except for the one where I need to have gotten every item in the game, because fuck that.
Character award: Lightning
Fang’s a close second, but Lightning won out because her character develops more than Fang’s does. Lightning basically starts out as a female version of Squall – an antisocial loner. By the end, she opens up to the other protagonists, especially Snow, and redoubles her determination to protect her sister.
Also, watching her obliterate enemies in cutscenes never gets old. In-game, Army of One looks amazing.
Villain rating: bad
Okay, so this comes as a by-product of the story making…very little sense. Orphan is the main villain, but he just sort of appears at the end, announces his desire to die by your hand while…also trying to kill you? The villain leading up to him isn’t much better. You could consider Barthandelus the kind-of main villain, but he spends most of his time hamming it up with long monologues that don’t really explain what he wants or why he wants it. Like, he wants to kill everything to get God’s attention, but to do that, he wants you to kill him too, which means even if you got God’s attention, he wouldn’t be alive to see it.
Also, why does Barthandelus need you to kill everyone, anyway? Couldn’t he just manipulate the citizens of Cocoon to kill each other? In fact, he does exactly that toward the end of the game.
Oh, and who designed these guys? Barthandelus’s true form is some sort of big car-thing with singing faces flanking his main face, while Orphan is some sort of 3-headed giant sword that turns into a clock?
Gameplay rating
I’ll say up-front I don’t like the battle system. It’s so fast-paced that every time I want to input manual commands, I feel like I’m wasting time. The Paradigm system is basically the Garment Grid system from FFX-2, except I didn’t mind the Garment Grid because I could basically ignore it. Here, your characters can only heal in the healer role or buff in the support role, etc., so if you had a dedicated healer when nobody’s hurt, you have a character sitting there doing nothing, being inefficient.
…which brings me to my main gripe about this game’s mechanics: time. Every battle ends with a score rating, which depends completely on how quickly you finish the battle. I hate timed missions. This is why I didn’t make 5-starring all the missions and the final battle requirements…but I accomplished those anyway because I’m an obsessive completionist.
I have…a history with FFXIII. I originally wanted my Final Fantasy shrines to end at X, since I hate subscription MMOs (XI) and it’s proven exceptionally hard for me to get through XII. I also hate some specific aspects of XIII, such as Shiva being 2 robot chicks who turn into a motorcycle. The battle system is…something I still don’t quite enjoy. But for some reason that even I don’t quite get, I wanted to experience this game, and when I finally got through it, I found that it had grown on me.
The stuff I noted above I still don’t like. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have fun with this game. The only character I still don’t like is Hope for whatever reason. I guess I still instinctively dislike Snow, though I really wouldn’t be able to tell you why, since his thick-headed altruism and undying loyalty to his love for Serah are actually quite commendable.
So, look, I don’t really have any qualms about adding FFXIII to the shrines when looking at it by itself. The only thing holding me back is the fact that I’ll probably never shrine or even play XI, meaning this list now has a discontinuity, but I think any outside observer will tell you how idiotic that sounds out loud.
One thing I will say, though – I hate most of the music in the game. It’s not that the music is bad; instead, it’s that I found a lot of the tracks too dreamy and mellow. They’re like lullabies. When I’m marching through a fantasy world brutally killing monsters, I want pump-up music, damnit.
By the way, I finished the game with every Steam achievement except for the one where I need to have gotten every item in the game, because fuck that.
Character award: Lightning
Fang’s a close second, but Lightning won out because her character develops more than Fang’s does. Lightning basically starts out as a female version of Squall – an antisocial loner. By the end, she opens up to the other protagonists, especially Snow, and redoubles her determination to protect her sister.
Also, watching her obliterate enemies in cutscenes never gets old. In-game, Army of One looks amazing.
Villain rating: bad
Okay, so this comes as a by-product of the story making…very little sense. Orphan is the main villain, but he just sort of appears at the end, announces his desire to die by your hand while…also trying to kill you? The villain leading up to him isn’t much better. You could consider Barthandelus the kind-of main villain, but he spends most of his time hamming it up with long monologues that don’t really explain what he wants or why he wants it. Like, he wants to kill everything to get God’s attention, but to do that, he wants you to kill him too, which means even if you got God’s attention, he wouldn’t be alive to see it.
Also, why does Barthandelus need you to kill everyone, anyway? Couldn’t he just manipulate the citizens of Cocoon to kill each other? In fact, he does exactly that toward the end of the game.
Oh, and who designed these guys? Barthandelus’s true form is some sort of big car-thing with singing faces flanking his main face, while Orphan is some sort of 3-headed giant sword that turns into a clock?
Gameplay rating
I’ll say up-front I don’t like the battle system. It’s so fast-paced that every time I want to input manual commands, I feel like I’m wasting time. The Paradigm system is basically the Garment Grid system from FFX-2, except I didn’t mind the Garment Grid because I could basically ignore it. Here, your characters can only heal in the healer role or buff in the support role, etc., so if you had a dedicated healer when nobody’s hurt, you have a character sitting there doing nothing, being inefficient.
…which brings me to my main gripe about this game’s mechanics: time. Every battle ends with a score rating, which depends completely on how quickly you finish the battle. I hate timed missions. This is why I didn’t make 5-starring all the missions and the final battle requirements…but I accomplished those anyway because I’m an obsessive completionist.
I get why the battle system appeals to some people, but given that my favorite game in the series is FFV, where your goal was to build characters who could each do a variety of things at any given moment, complementing one another, the Paradigm system comes across as the exact opposite of what I like.
Difficulty rating
This game is hard until near the end because the game artificially limits your level progression. You can only grind levels up to a certain point until you finish a chapter, at which point the game allows you to advance a little more until you finish the next chapter. It’s a downright idiotic feature.
“Well it prevents a player from simply over-leveling the content.” – kids these days
You know that back in my day, when games didn’t do this sort of thing, people still went through FF games with their own rules just to challenge themselves, right? No leveling up. No learning skills, e.g. no Sphere Grid from FFX. Starting weapons only. Solo runs. Developers didn’t need to force constraints on players because people came up with ways of challenging themselves on their own. Developers could put stupidly overpowered mechanics into their games, such as Knights of the Round in FFVII, because players could just choose not to use them if they found that feature too broken.
Kids these days. Now git off mah lawn.
Storyline rating: questionable
I followed the plot because I’d looked it up on the internet prior to playing the game. Had I not done that, I think I would’ve been lost. Also, the ending is basically deus ex machina where everything ends happily ever after even though the world is literally ending after you defeat the last boss. Hell, before you fight the last boss, the entire party except for Fang and Vanille turns into zombies…but then they get better for no discernible reason?
Quote award
“All you care about is death’s release. So take it, and leave the rest of us alone. We don’t think like that. When we think there’s no hope left, we keep looking until we find some.” – Lightning
Lightning tells Orphan off before the final battle. For reasons I’m not going to go into here, this quote was my favorite part of the entire game.
Overpowered award
Nothing, really.
Final boss: Orphan, whose time has come (see what I did there?)
Difficulty rating
This game is hard until near the end because the game artificially limits your level progression. You can only grind levels up to a certain point until you finish a chapter, at which point the game allows you to advance a little more until you finish the next chapter. It’s a downright idiotic feature.
“Well it prevents a player from simply over-leveling the content.” – kids these days
You know that back in my day, when games didn’t do this sort of thing, people still went through FF games with their own rules just to challenge themselves, right? No leveling up. No learning skills, e.g. no Sphere Grid from FFX. Starting weapons only. Solo runs. Developers didn’t need to force constraints on players because people came up with ways of challenging themselves on their own. Developers could put stupidly overpowered mechanics into their games, such as Knights of the Round in FFVII, because players could just choose not to use them if they found that feature too broken.
Kids these days. Now git off mah lawn.
Storyline rating: questionable
I followed the plot because I’d looked it up on the internet prior to playing the game. Had I not done that, I think I would’ve been lost. Also, the ending is basically deus ex machina where everything ends happily ever after even though the world is literally ending after you defeat the last boss. Hell, before you fight the last boss, the entire party except for Fang and Vanille turns into zombies…but then they get better for no discernible reason?
Quote award
“All you care about is death’s release. So take it, and leave the rest of us alone. We don’t think like that. When we think there’s no hope left, we keep looking until we find some.” – Lightning
Lightning tells Orphan off before the final battle. For reasons I’m not going to go into here, this quote was my favorite part of the entire game.
Overpowered award
Nothing, really.
Final boss: Orphan, whose time has come (see what I did there?)