Name: Final Fantasy XIII Review – The Worst in The Series?
Item: Final Fantasy XIII
Rating: 78
Author: Bartosz "Resurrect" Wiktor

In anticipation of the upcoming Final Fantasy VII Revelation I thought it’s great time to see how’s other titles hold on after many years.

My choice was between FFX-X2 HD Remaster and FINAL FANTASY XIII (at the time of choosing I didn’t know I’m about to play an entire trilogy).

Interested by the female MC – Lightning – I’ve ultimately chosen the thirteenth main entry of the series.

FINAL FANTASY XIII

Release Date: October 09, 2014

Genres: Role-playing (RPG), Adventure

More Info

While downloading the game I did my research – read and watched a couple of reviews – which made me question my choice.

Many said this game is a complete mess, characters are bland, the plot is underwhelming, and described it as one of the worst in the series – but after I beat Final Fantasy XIII, I was shocked.

The World of Final Fantasy XIII

I’m going to be honest with you all – almost every FF game has something in common and I’m not talking about Chocobos, characters named Cid, or the naming of magic spells.

Every game starts with total chaos, no world introduction, characters are tossed at us like a wooden sword in generic RPG.

At first it might be a big turn-off, but when you’re familiar with it, there’s this weird feeling that only Final Fantasy games evoke and it’s one of the strengths of the series. You know that at the end everything will fall in to place and make the journey worth the effort.

Final Fantasy XIII is, of course, no exception. We start the game as Lightning and Sazh, fighting our way through many soldiers, machines, and other threats.

We learn that our target is to kill l’Cie – those are this world “plagued” people which are granted “focus” – it’s their mission that they have to fulfill otherwise they turn into monsters without conscience or free will.

That’s just a short summary of the setting, but it is a really subtle foreshadowing about the game’s theme – fate.

Reading other reviews, I had the feeling that something that reviewers were missing was how XIII describes and portrays fate. If we think about it – it’s something that we cannot change, every action will bring us to the same ending.

Lighting and the crew’s journey says otherwise.

Locations That You’ll Remember

Later on we explore other parts of the world – Grand Pulse, Cocoon, Caves, and many more.

And let me point that, Final Fantasy XIII was first released on 2010 on PS3 and Xbox 360. The way how graphics hold up is incredible.

Credit: Square Enix

At times it feels like really hardcore Sci-Fi but if that’s your cup of tea, you’re gonna love this one.

Even though FFXIII is a mostly linear experience, it provides us with opportunity to focus on level design and sometimes you just have to stop and admire how astonishing the views are. The cutscenes are also top notch.

Meet the Crew

Like in almost every Final Fantasy, we’re getting to roll with a bunch of unique characters.

As mentioned earlier, our main protagonist is Lightning – an ex-Guardian Corps sergeant on a mission to save her sister Serah, accompanied by Sazh – a father and airship pilot.

Not so later on we also meet Snow – the leader of NORA, a vigilante group a bit similar to Avalanche from FFVII – who is also Serah fiancé.

Fang comes into the spotlight a much later, so to avoid unnecessary spoilers, that’s all for her introduction.

The next ones are younglings; Hope – a 14 year old boy driven by revenge and grief (no spoilers), and Vanille – a bit of an enigma, for the first few hours she barely talks about herself or her past.

So we’re getting a bunch of weirdos and it’s not an insult. Every character brings something different to the table, their own motives, past, emotions, and perspectives.

I think that Square Enix made an amazing job in developing those party members. You can clearly see how they change over the course of the game.

I think Lightning and Hope are the best examples.

At first, our main protagonist is cold, trusts no-one and doesn’t want to be dependent on others. However, she slowly transforms from an “I can’t change anything” type of girl into a trusting, caring and much brighter person that doesn’t care about fate, because she believes that her actions can effect a real change.

Same goes for the aforementioned Hope – who was one of my most hated characters – he starts extremely dependent on others, at times incredibly annoying, and driven by hatred. Everything changes when he meets Lightning and they start to help each other. Hope becomes more confident, stronger, and driven not by the past but by an eagerness to change his fate.

I love their connection and how one influences the other. It’s something refreshing in this day of gaming, that not only the events in the game develop character but also the party members itself help each other to fight their struggles, share their pain and try to overcome what’s holding them back.

Is Linear Design Bad?

One of the main problems that fans had with Final Fantasy XIII was the “change” of its formula – from an open world with many optional activities to a linear adventure where we have nothing else to do but go from point A to point B with occasional fights along the way.

It’s a bit weird, because the beloved FFX-X2 is also linear game but no one is seeing that as a bad thing in its case.

For me, the choice of this type of experience is spot-on for XIII.

Fate is FF13’s main theme – if you imagine what fate would look like – isn’t it actually the linear path that brings you to the expected point?

You can try to do other things on this path, but the ending is going to be the same. When you understand that, then the way Final Fantasy XIII is constructed makes sense.

After gaming for almost my entire life I must say – we need more games that are created like this one.

Here we’ve got a story to unfold, characters to meet, and a world to explore at a pace that creators created for us – and it works wonders when you let it flow.

Gameplay Holds Up Really Well

I really loved the way fights in Final Fantasy XIII feel. At the beginning, it’s pretty easy uncomplicated, choose an ability, then a target and bam! you won.

Simple right? Especially since you only control one character, while others are controlled by AI (partly but I’ll explain it a bit later).

After a couple of fights we learn about Paradigm System – it’s something like choosing a right tactic on the fly – because FFXIII is not a turn-based game, it’s an active-turn-based.

Similar to Final Fantasy VII, every character has their own ATB bar which gradually fills up and after a segment is filled you can cast a spell, attack or throw a buff for your party.

What’s so addicting in Paradigm System is the rhythmic feeling of every fight. You can beat the game without changing classes/stances once, but it’s not optimal and would result in the need for extreme grind.

Every Paradigm changes the class of character into a different one – for example Lightning’s first style is Commando. Its main purpose is to keep the Stagger Gauge up so it doesn’t fall to 0, and when the Stagger breaks it deals incredibly high physical damage.

Revenger is the opposite, it deals magic damage and fills the Stagger bar incredibly fast, but it does n’t keep it from dropping down. So if you choose the party of three Revengers you can stack the Stagger really fast but if you’re not able to fill it there’s a real chance you won’t do it without one Commando.

There’s so much to do with this system and the game is constructed in a way where you really need to think about which skills you’re going to unlock on each character.

One thing I didn’t like was the story-locking class levels.

You can get Commando to level 2 and without progressing the story and beating the boss you will stay on that level. At times it feels like game is pushing you towards throwing points into class you don’t want to invest in.

But for game from 2010 this system still holds up and works incredibly well.

What’s wrong with Final Fantasy XIII

Despite how many good things there are to talk about, it’s time to mention the more tedious and annoying aspects.

The Grind. There’s a lot of it. Even if you choose to play on Easy, sometimes you just need to farm up to upgrade gear or get more points in a skill tree.

About upgrading weapons… it’s the worst part of the game. Materials are incredibly limited and not so easy to gain without THE GRIND. Only in the late game are we getting a chance to obtain more Gils (currency) to buy materials to upgrade.

The game also keeps putting new weapons in chests scattered around the game and you often fall into FOMO – upgrade this weapon or wait for another to come.

It’s because the gear not only serves as boost to Magic and Strength but also comes with unique passive abilities that can change how a character is going to perform during combat.

Also the upgrading system doesn’t tell you that there are two different kinds of materials which serves different purpose. So you can use everything you’ve got, to learn later that it’s not how you should be doing it. Peak design.

Also some fights are straight-up unfair and lead to frustration.

Eidolons for example – those are not your typical fights.

You’ve only got a limited time to end them or it’s game over, you need to find out what strategy fits each fight and it can take a few times before you identify what’s actually working.

For example, guarding for the entire fight leads to winning a certain encounter. It’s just bad design.

Same goes for the bosses, If you’ve got a party that has no Saboteur or Synergist, it can take up to 20 MINUTES to beat them.

Is FFXIII a Good Entry Point?

It depends. Yeah, very diplomatic I know.

If you love the “Sci-Fi with magic” theme, this one is going to be a blast for you. If you want a game with a pretty good combat system, interesting characters and plot, Final Fantasy XIII is also a great option to consider as entry point.

On the other hand if you’re looking for something with less chaos, more grounded and a less complicated fighting system, maybe consider making it your second Final Fantasy game.

For me it was an incredible game that hooked me fast and strong. I’ve beaten it after a bit over 40 hours and I loved most of it. Not THE GRIND though.

Final Fantasy XIII also made me appreciate this series even more and made me give FFXV one more shot – and I’m in love.

That’s the strength of the series in my opinion – when you find the one that you end up loving, it opens the doors for the other ones.

Final Fantasy XIII is not a must-play, especially for newcomers, but it’s a mandatory game for everyone who fell in love with the Final Fantasy series.

Oh and just so you know, the XIII does not end on one game, there’s still XIII-2 and Lightning Returns to explore!