Why FFXIII has turned me off from SE (and FFXIV)

(Level 75 FFXI character for sale! 6x 75s! Comes with XIV alpha/beta account!)
So, this is a big rant against the latest company to join my list of "companies that do horrible, horrible things and should die in a fire and hopefully will go out of business once everyone wakes up" - Square-Enix.

SE is the 2nd company to join the list.

I've been a SquareSoft fan since a friend of mine introduced me to both Chrono Trigger & Final Fantasy III (VI) for the SNES. I've played every Final Fantasy game between that and the latest version, including X-2. However, SE has finally pushed me over my limit with 13 & the latest additions to 11.

Final Fantasy XIII Critique
Sad part is that I see FFXIII as an indication of what SE considers to be content... both for FFXI, FFXIV and future Final Fantasy games... Let's go over what really rubs me wrong about this game.

Gameplay
I'm sure everyone has seen the jokes about FFXIII being completely linear... This link has a picture that shows the map from the first 6 hours of the game, and let me assure you, that continues for the next 40 hours. Even funnier is if you look at the very bottom of that image you see that there is a shortcut you can take to skip some of the linear sections of the map!

The actual "gameplay" of FFXIII consists of running through these very linear maps, getting cutscenes at certain points of the map, and combat. There isn't any actual gameplay outside of combat. There are no mini-games, you can't talk to people and find out about the background or side plots. At least in other games you get to talk to NPC characters, find out more of what is going on, and there tend to be more to do other then just fighting.

You get access to one "mission/side-quest" in chapter 11, when the world "opens up". The missions involve.... performing tasks for various NPCs I guess? However, these tasks are simply to travel through (highly linear) different parts of the open world and kill specific mobs.

Combat itself consists of:
- Setting up "paradigms" outside of combat... this is basically a simpler version of the "gambit" system in FFXII. You can choose between a mix of offensive, tanks, debuffers, buffers and healers
- Switching between paradigms... which mainly consists of going all out offensive, then switching to healing whenever your party is low on HP
- Beating up a mob with 5 million HP when your characters do between 1-10k damage per hit
- Mobs doing around 1k damage per AoE swipe to characters that have between 3-5k HP, ensuring that you will constantly be switching between healing and offensive paradigms
- Auto-Battle

The first few times you paradigm shift, it seems really hectic and fun. However, once you get to some of the stupid boss fights which take a good 10 minutes to fight, all that repetitive shifting between healing and fighting just becomes plain boring. If you set up a mixed paradigm, you can literally get away with pressing X and doing something else while waiting for your game to finish playing with itself.

Add to that the following things for exp:
- In chapter 10, they literally tell you "well, this next zone is for us to grind exp to get stronger... let's get to it!"
- Starting in chapter 10, the CP (aka. exp) requirements for each small upgrade skyrockets from being around 500-1000 per ability to 8000-12000. Each fight gives you between 1000-3000, including the small fry that take under a minute to kill.
- Remember those linear maps? Well, not only are the maps completely straightforward, but they REPEAT CONSTANTLY so that you fight the same mobs over and over again to just grind exp... with... maybe a short 10 second cutscene in between
- Oh, and chapter 12, the CP requirements bump up yet again for each level.
- And finally... you *have* to grind exp in order to finish the game. At the 45 hour mark, I got bored of all the grinding and decided to try to finish the game instead of killing the same mobs over and over again. Nope... I wasn't strong enough. I was making progress on the final boss, but SE has a hidden timer on the boss so that if you take too long, it'll give you a "Doom" status and kill your main character. You pretty much have to grind exp to finish it. I finally gave up and borrowed Kuraikaze's save game (with almost 80 hours of gameplay) to finish the final battle.

That's just exp for your characters... what's "new & innovative" for FFXIII is that you also have exp for your weapons! Each weapon you get, you can upgrade using components that you buy with gil. So, for weapons:
- You have to upgrade separately from your characters
- Whenever you get a new weapon and want to use that... well, there goes all the gil you just sank into the old weapon
This leads to pretty much sticking with one weapon for the whole time you play FFXIII -.-

Gameplay is a complete failure in FFXIII. Combat itself is boring and extremely repetitive. There is no exploration whatsoever in the game, and there is actually no gameplay outside of the boring combat itself.

Plot
It's hard to talk about plot without giving away too many spoilers... I'd say that I am highly disappointed by this plot. I usually enjoy JRPG plots due to some twists or a curious background or reasoning behind things. Maybe the characters actions and motivations might be interesting, and usually there is some big plot twist somewhere. The ends usually give you a sense of satisfaction and completion.

FFXIII's plot has the following problems:
- Most of the details in the plot are hidden in the "Datalog" that you have to stop and read. Yes, the details are not explained in the gameplay (or lack thereof) or in the cutscenes, but are explained in great detail in the datalog that you have to read. They should just publish FFXIII in a book.
- What's worse is that after training you to read the datalog, some parts of the plot are exposed in the datalog before they happen in cutscenes. Imagine going to the movies to watch Citizen Kane and seeing in the movie poster right outside the theatre "how the sled named Rosebud confused a bunch of people".
- The motivation of the characters, especially in the end is confusing. It's like watching a disaster in the making... Many times, you'll go.. "wtf are they doing?" and "aren't they doing exactly what they said they did not want to do?" Best analogy I can think of is a bunch of children all talking about how you shouldn't run with scissors while running around with scissors in the corridors screaming about how they shouldn't run with scissors...
- The ending is a complete cop out, falling into the magical "humans > all" and have magical powers so THERE! The end!

Sadly, the world itself, background and characters actually had a lot of potential. The individual motivations and internal conflicts of all 6 main characters was well presented. Too bad the overall plot, motivations for the main storyline and presentation fell completely flat.

Music & Graphics
I'll have to give SE this... they do know how to make pretty graphics and have good composers working on their side. The soundtrack for FFXIII is quite energetic and catchy. The overall theme from the game can be heard in various variants throughout the game. Battle music is completely different from previous games, and they... they added words to the Chocobo theme... Yes, the chocobo music in this game has lyrics. You can hear the english version here. Be sure to listen to the end xD

Cutscenes are beautifully rendered. They've come a long way since even Advent Children. However, some of the combat cutscenes are much too crowded... too much going on at the same time, making it difficult to even see what is going on. The actual in-game engine is also surprisingly good and there was very little difference between the pre-rendered cutscenes and the in-game engine.

Unfortunately, this ends turning FFXIII into a mere barely interactive movie. If they had cut out the gameplay entirely and made FFXIII into a 2 1/2 hour movie, I'd actually pay to watch it and most likely enjoy it. Too bad they saddled it with tacked on barely thought out gameplay.

For anyone even considering playing this game, I highly recommend that you not bother and instead goto http://finalfantasy13ultima.com/ and just watch all the cutscenes. You aren't missing a thing. I can't wait for Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation to give a review on this game.

So what does this have to do with FFXIV?
I believe that what I've seen in FFXIII is a horrible indicating of what SE developers believe is "content". It appears that SE has spent all their money hiring graphic artists and didn't bother hiring anyone who knows how to make a game fun.

Consider that FFXIII's gameplay consists entirely of:
1. Running down straight corridors
2. Combat consisting of pressing "X"
3. Repeat 1 & 2 for about 80 hours, 20-30 of which is simply filler material before you can fight the final boss

Now, let's look at the latest addition to FFXI. Just taking the new "Trial of the Magians" questline as an example wasting time for the sake of wasting time. I've gone over some of the findings myself in my previous post and put up some estimates of what sort of time waster it is. Let's see what other people have said:

- From FFXIOnline.com - WHM task consists of:
    Kill 100 Treants under a weather effect.
    Kill 100 Spiders under Fire, Lightning or Light weather.
    Kill 100 Arcana under Light Weather
    Kill 100 Beasts with Holy
    Get 10 Bottled Pixies
I'm not sure where you can even get light weather + Arcana... and... wow, killshot with Holy :o
- From Allakhazam.com - NM hunting

    I had an alliance of 75s in Tahrongi camping a level 20 Dhalmel NM. SE is nuts.

SE seems to enjoy wasting people's time. If anything, I'd say that raising the level cap to 99 is nothing but a blatant attempt to get people to waste more time by grinding through days, maybe weeks worth of exp per job to cap exp, AND to level your subjobs. Exp in FFXI for me now consists of lining up things to watch on Hulu and hitting the same macros over and over again.

It has stopped feeling like a game and more like... boring dull work.

And... let's look at FFXIV. SE has already stated that leveling and jobs in XIV is based on your weapons. They certainly seem to be liking the system. Considering that they've basically recycled the character designs, environment from XI, just updating the graphics a little, it wouldn't surprise me if they're going to recycle the weapon exp system from FFXIII, or even from the new "Magian" system from XI.

So... it would be really funny to start up the FFXIV alpha to see a combined weapon system from XIII and XI where you have to feed your weapon lots of gil-based components, and kill hundreds of thousands of mobs to level up enough to fight a nice big boss which... drops another weapon which lets you start from square one all over again.