Sigh. Three days since I last played FFXIII, and I still have no drive to play it again.

A lot has happened since the previous blog. A lot in regards to my opinion, I mean. In terms of the game, even though I played seven hours longer, and got through three whole chapters, nothing has really happened at all. It’s a been a long, boring, drawn out and linear experience, and frankly I’ve almost reached my limit.

Before I delve into the blog, I have to admit that a lot of previously unknown information has come to light, drastically changing (and explaining) my perception of the game. The main revelation being: the director of FFXIII is the director of FFX-2!!!

I cannot believe I never looked into this. The director is just as important in gaming as it is for movies. I was basically setting myself up for disappointment! This knowledge explains so much about the game’s design, that everything is starting to make sense. The over acted characters, Vanille being so erratic and overly girlish. The J-Pop music, why the Paradigm system is so reminiscent of the dress spheres. And mainly why the game is so freaking awful.

Further uncovered information included:

* Sales of the game has dropped so significantly in Japan, as returns and trades become so numerous, that stores have stopped accepting it, since they can’t resell it.


* The completely obnoxious and self absorbed sounding launch party, where a number of representatives from famous Western game developers were invited to celebrate the release of XIII… only to be subjected to Square staff pointing out all the short comings with their games, while talking about how awesome and amazing FFXIII is.

 * The utterly terrifying inclination that director Motomu Toriyama might make FFXIII-2!!

I’d forgive you if you ran screaming from the room at this point. It’s quite possibly the worst idea I’ve heard since… well, since X-2. Why do they insist on extending the most boring FF universes ever created? Did anyone ever feel attached to the X world in the same way they felt connected to ANY of the worlds before it? Hell, I felt more love for the old 2-D ones then I did for X.

And now XIII-2? Frankly there’s only one hope left for the Fabula Nova Crystallis series: Versus. If it disappeared after that, I would be quite happy to pretend it never existed. Cocoon and Pulse… maybe if we got to SEE more of the world then just a series of long corridors, and then a very large grassy field. At the moment it’s got nothing on Ivalice or Gia. ****, those worlds feel alive.

Urrghh. Well, that’s enough about that. After all, usually I don’t let outside sources affect my opinions of games. The developers can be as corrupt and money hungry as they like; as long as the game is good, I won’t care. The key part there being, ’if the game is good’.

So let’s move on and see what has happened in the game so far to cause such a drastic drop in opinion.


           

Possibly the shortest chapter since the introduction, chapter five consists entirely of Lightning and Hope walking along a linear path in a blue crystal forest, riding up elevators, riding down elevators, fighting enemies, and experiencing cut scenes.

In short? Ninety minutes of completely boring gameplay. For a game so obsessed with graphics, you’d think they’d put more effort into their level designs. The same pathways, layouts and environmental obstacles that the characters need to jump over are repeated roughly every fifteen minutes. Perhaps just mirrored so they look less identical to the last ones.

I find it hilarious that one of the features of the level is to “follow the lights” that appear on the path. Lightning says it as if it’s essential we do this; like if we wander away from them we’ll get lost. A nice thought… if we had the option. It’s entirely impossible to get lost on a pathway that’s four feet wide and has every incorrect direction blocked.

There was a lot of character “developing” cutscenes, but all that will be studied more indepth later. As it is, chapter five ends with a huge fight against… some plant or insect or something… can’t remember, didn’t make an impression, and we’re whisked off to chapter six.

         


Back with Sazh and Vanille, one thing is starting to become really obvious: I am getting well and truly sick of being forced to use only two characters, with the bare minimum of Paradigms. Most of which are far from effective when fighting enemies.

Chapter six takes place in a green forest, where you run down an extremely long and narrow path filled with enemies. Wait, didn’t I just write something like that? Only it being a blue crystal forest? Anyway, the game attempts to mix things up slightly by introducing a weather changing device: hit it once to make it rain, hit it again to make it sunny. Certain monsters of varying strengths appear depending on the weather, either blocking your progress or your way to items. It’s different, but only a mild distraction.

The next part of Sazh and Vanille’s journey takes an interesting twist. It’s like the game realises “Wow, people might actually be getting bored here. Maybe we should throw something harder at them?” It does this by dropping an optional group of beasts in your path, resembling giant Armadillo. One’s it claims are very difficult with two people.

Thanks to it forcing you to use two of the weakest characters, the fight is pretty tough. Until you figure out how to do it. It’s here I discovered that Vanille’s Saboteur ability has the same affect as a Commando’s melee on the stagger bar; only raises it slightly, but causes it to degrade much much slower. Given how bad of a Commando Sazh is, this became a mandatory method for winning the fights quickly. Which leads me to a question:

What the hell kind of battle system would expect you to do that? I discovered it because I was trying to sabotage the thing while it’s armour was on, which results in failure 90% of the time so I had to keep trying. It was only while doing that I noticed the stagger bar change. To win, Vanille just kept casting despell and deprotect on the creature over and over, even though the status changes had taken effect long ago. It just makes no sense. A completely illogical way to win a battle, and explains why a number of other players I talked to had no idea that Saboteurs did that either.

The first half of the chapter ends with a battle with two huge beasties… made easier by the fact that their major attacks actually hurt each other. Huh? I didn’t even kill one of them, he got wiped out by the other. Weird. Moving on…

Part 2 takes us back to Lightning and Hope, who are trying to sneak into Hope’s home city. At first it’s suggested that this may be some sort of stealth mission, sneaking from place to place without getting caught. No such luck. It’s “charge in and kill”, just like the previous levels, only it involves going through some rusty pipes.

It’s in this section that Lightning has her personality changing “ephiphany”. And holy crap, it’s so awkward and weird I don’t even know how I’m going to explain it later on. It happens though, and apparently there’s more to come. I can safely say I’m dreading them.

After a gruelling three and a half hours, I finally reach the end of chapter six, with Lightning and Hope getting sprung by the military, and seconds from capture. Until an old friend decides to drop back into the story at last.

             


Snow to the rescue! Our hero zooms into the fight on his brand new Shiva-cycle, and proceeds to wreck the joint with a multitude of icicles. It’s a pretty cool cutscene, that’s for sure. Then, just to make things more dramatic, Lightning pushes Hope towards Snow and legs it. Yeah, cause that can’t end badly.

This level consists entirely of Snow and Hope running down a narrow city path filled with enemies. Every now and again there is a cutscene where Hope stares accusingly at Snow, says accusing things to Snow, and makes accusing noises, but never actually gets to the point. And this continues for roughly two hours.

When they finally reach their inevitable confrontation, it’s just as weird as the moment with Lightning. What the hell is going on here? Who are these writers, and what are they smoking? Their idea of drama is just… strange and skewed. Or maybe just Japanese? Though in all the anime’s I’ve watched and JRPG’s I’ve played, I’ve never quite seen revelations, epiphanies and encounters quite like these. For starters, the others usually made sense.

After getting interrupted, ensuring that the “You killed my Mum!” drama continues for another three chapters, we zip back to Fang and Lightning. Fang kindly fills us in a little on her and Vanille’s origins, takes a beating from the always emotionally irrational Lightning, and sadly, doesn’t reciprocate by smashing the rude *****'s face in. Oh well, maybe later.

They then rush off to rescue Snow and Hope, but frankly by this point I was so sick and tired of the game after seven hours of the same thing over and over, I had to switch it off. From what the guide book tells me, I was nearly at the end of the chapter anyway, so whatever. Close enough. I get the feeling I’m not missing anything.      

                       


Literally the only thing keeping me from taking this back to the store and using the dough to pre-order Resonance of Fate is the knowledge that if I don’t ever finish it, I’ll be inundated forever by fanboy’s saying “But it got so much better! It got amazing! You’ll never know because you didn’t play it! You’re an idiot!”

And you know they would. Unless I complete this blog and document every goddam reason why I’m not enjoying the game, people will think I just “missed something”, or didn’t give it a chance.

It’s pretty fair to say that at this point, I’ve had enough of the game. It’s slow, it’s boring, it’s unnecessarily restrictive with it’s forced two-man parties, linear gameplay and complete lack of anything imaginative in terms of levels, puzzles, exploration or challenge. It’s quite possibly one of the most mind numbing FF experiences I’ve had, and I thought it couldn’t get much worse then VIII or X-2.

In fact, the one good thing that’s come from this game is the renewed respect it’s forced me to have for the titles I previously disliked in the series. X is looking great to me now. In fact, if given the choice, I’d rather play X through completely then spend another fifteen hours going through the first eight chapters of XIII. Hell, even attempting VIII again sounds appealing.

But I must admit; this all sounds a bit odd given the evidence I’ve stated above. Is that really enough to make my opinion drop so drastically?

In short, no. My issues with the story, characters, pacing and writing are so numerous that I’ve had to make a separate blog, devoted completey to their analysis. That will be up within the next few days, given that I have social commitments (not to mention God of War 3 just came out). Man, FFXIII is going to be lucky to see anymore action this week…