*Elicit
And FF13 will never be remade or put center stage again because it fucking sucked, lmao
:^(
I'm not gonna get all hysterical and say it's the worst game ever made or something, but it's probably the worst mainline Final Fantasy game. The battle system is just micromanaging combat instructions via pre-determined roles so your characters can play themselves, The Hallway is insulting, the story is nonsensical to begin with and it was told in such a way as to minimize any chance of understanding what the fuck is going on without spending hours reading log entries. Lightning is also one of, if not the, least interesting FF protagonists.
Motomu Toriyama got 3 games to try and sell people on 13 and the height of his work was mediocre at best. FF13 deserves everything it got.
I genuinely can't imagine something that would fix the issues of FF13 that wouldn't involve fundamentally changing both the mechanics and story of the game, but I'd be interested to hear people's theories.
The linear as fuck level design until you're about 45 hours into the game is probably one of its biggest sins yeah, especially with how great the art direction music and graphics are, only a few areas actually have interesting design until the game lets you explore space Australia on your own, but by that point the story has taken a back seat to farming and doing missions.
It's especially bad because there's no one to talk to, no shops or towns, or actual side quests or chocobos to raise. And the party never hangs out like older FF parties did. You spend the entire game by yourself running place to place. It makes contextual sense in the story but we never get involved or get to know anyone outside the party. It makes the quest ring very hollow outside of certain character beats.
If there was someway to skip animations or maybe load in pre-made combos from the player instead of selecting them in the shitty menu I feel like the combat would flow better. 13-2 and Lightning returns improved this somewhat but a bigger problem is that the linear world and no random encounters will force you into lots of fights you don't give a shit about. It's cool to see free roaming monsters on Gran Pulse that you can choose to ignore but again that's after like 50 hours of forced battles.
13-2 had way better gameplay, progression, and level design but the story is time travel nonsense and all the characters from XIII are either completely different or dead.
The ability to tame monsters adds a lot more variety and choice to combat, and both main characters have very apparent strengths and weaknesses that make them good in some roles and bad in others. There is way more customization and and a feeling of meaningful progression.
That being said it feels very sad having much more choice and better level design in XIII-2 only for it to recycle assets from the first game with shittier graphics, worse presentation, and "trendy" quick time events and wannabe Mass Effect dialogue trees. None of it hits the same and with the plot revolving around time travel, it feels like none of it matters either.
What an unlucky trilogy.
XIII was made by almost the exact same team that made X, and I think that shows in that XIII still mostly "feels" like a Final Fantasy, just a sub-par one because they flubbed the development in trying to switch to HD. XV is a huge mess because it restarted development like 3 times and swapped out most of its dev team by the end, with its final director being a guy who only directed handheld spin-offs before and comes off like a corporate suit who's never actually played video games himself. And XVI just doesn't even feel much like a Final Fantasy game, and everything I've read of what game Yoshida likes makes it sound he doesn't even really like RPGs much.
13 is very 10 esque, but 10 had side characters, and minigames, and lots of fun charming elements. 13 just has staggering monsters and nice music.
I really hope they go back to the basics soon, Final Fantasy isn't really groundbreaking anymore, it doesn't have to be. If they were willing to strip back all the bells and whistles and go back to something closer to 9, or 5, just have fun combat and a charming story.
