Hello everyone, for this blog, I thought I would steer away from game reviews for something thats part question and part rant.
As you can guess from the title, its regarding the newly released FF13-2 , which presents a dilemma for me , which I think applies to quite a few people.
For the record, Im not speaking from a position of nostalgia, I personally do not believe a game ages, but I do not necessarily look at the past with a rosy view, there are good and bad games in every generation , and sometimes , sequels are better than the originals (Im looking at you Virtua Fighter 2)
to understand this question , one has to go back some 10 years ago.
At that time, I had just gotten my PS2 (after seeing and playing MGS2 at a friend's house) and the first game I bought for it, was Final Fantasy 10 . I like RPGs, I like the Final Fantasy series, and so FF10 was a logical choice for me.
It was a worthy purchase, as FF10 became one of my favourite RPGs. Sure it wasn't perfect, the dialogue was occasionally cheesy, sure Tidus looked and said stupid things, and sure Seymour had a name that would fit the Captain of a boat , but overall it was a great game.
What FF10 did right , was pacing, and how much freedom it gave you. Game developers have long contended with this issue, how much freedom to give to the player? give too little, and the game becomes a conveyor belt, give too much , and it becomes inconsistent. FF10 in my opinion , gave just enough freedom to explore , and enough things to do , while keeping a consistent plot and narrative.
We then move on to FF10-2 , I will admit it, I pre orderd that game, I liked FF10 that much , I mean , more FF10 , can't be bad right?
The problem with FF10-2 had to do with it being very much a worse FF10 that was more cheesy (in a bad way), and the plot was weak , even with the branching paths , it still bored me, and made me wonder if more attention was paid to Yuna's behined , than to the game's plot. Instead of Tidus trying to find his home, it was Yuna trying to find Tidus , just nowhere near as interesting. The combat was nice though , which is really what saved the game from being outright bad, and pulled it into the mediocre area.
I never played FF11, as Im not much of an MMO fan , but when I first heard about FF12, I bought it on the first day it was released. Screenshots for the game, showed the game would be very different to anything else in an FF game.
sadly, different didn't mean good.
The game did have amazing production values, no doubt , it looked amazing for a PS2 game, the music , while uninspiring at times, was overall pretty good.
Where I believe Square Enix went wrong, was trying to force an MMO-like game, into a single player JRPG.
MMO games are , by their nature, social games, you interact with others, part of the fun is making new friends and travelling a digital world with them , you don't need a strong sense of consistency, nor do you need a great story, you and your friends make your own story.
FF12 tried this, it gave you a huge open world to explore, you could go pretty much anywhere you wanted, the first time I saw the vastness of the world, I thought "wow, this is going to be epic".
However, the story, tried to do the nearly impossible thing of telling a consistent plot, overlaid a huge , open ended world.
The characters lacked any sort of personality, at most times I wasn't sure who was the main hero , or what were their motives, and just for fun , Vaan looked like the product of Tidus and Yuna having a child, who was apparently an Aladdin fan , dressing exactly like him (is there a Disneyworld in FF12?, DLC idea)
The game also tried a very political plot that just didn't mesh with anything.
now of course, some would say "but the Elder Scrolls is also open ended, and its fun" , which is true, but then , Elder Scrolls doesn't attempt to tell a good story, the main plot is pathetic, but the side quests and extras are what keeps the game going. FF12 didn't have too much of that, Animal hunting got boring after a while, and tried to pretend like it had a consistent plot to tell, it really tried to be a first person MMO game.
The combat itself was ok , it was either super complex, or super simple, depending on what approach you took
and added to this was the license system , which really forced you to guess. You couldn't just equip a shield or a sword , you had to unlock it on a grid, not knowing where it was.
After this , one would expect me not to buy FF13, but I did, I still felt I should give Square another chance, especially since I did like Crisis Core on the PSP (though Dirge of Cerberus is mediocre at best, CC was a great PSP RPG, limited, but quite fun for what it was)
At first, the game was great, initially the plot seemed interesting , you were thrown right into the action , the combat was interesting , the battle system honestly reminded me of Panzer Dragoon Saga in some ways, the music was good, and all of this was encased in some of the best visuals Id ever seen for any console game.
However, things quickly turned around when I saw the linearity of the initial part of the game didn't end, and just went on and on. it wasn't just linearity, it was a "walk forward and occasionally jump somewhere" type of linearity.
It seems to me , that Square tried to address the inconsistency issues with FF12 by making the game more linear, but talk about overdoing it. there was literally nothing to explore until the very end of the game, its almost like "you survived this? here is some breathing space", almost like the devs realized late into the game's development, they essentially put the player on a conveyor belt , that turned into an endurance marathon.
The story was better in FF13 , I will give it that, the characters had a bit more backgrounds , the story was more interesting , but it still bored me pretty quickly, I didn't mind that Hope was a crybaby, I didn't mind Vanille's rather occasionally silly voice , I even didn't mind the fact you need an encyclopedia to understand the game, but pretty quickly, I found myself losing interest in the story , not helped by silly terms and concepts which occasionally confused even me. the story started off well ,but lost me at a certain point.
Although I could say that I also got sick of characters getting recycled to some extent, Vanille was really an updated Rikku in many ways, which in turn felt like a less trecherous Selphie (FF8) , Lightning was really just a brooding, cold character like Squall or Cloud.
now I understand repetition and recyciling are inevitable, but it really started to get old.
the thing that once again saved the game from being totally mediocre, was once again , the combat, which in some ways felt like a modern Panzer Dragoon Saga, although at times it did lead you to just press "attack" and do nothing else.
did I have more fun with FF13 than I did with FF10-2 and FF12? arguably yes, but not by a whole lot.
of course, some people might be asking "why are you being so harsh" or "why do you place so much importance on the story" , well.
1 ) This is Final Fantasy, which for alot of people , is the RPG by which other RPGs are judged by , so for it to only be , ok, its odd. almost like a student which gets an A+ for years, and then all of a sudden gets a B , hes not stupid, and arguably there are many dumber students than him, but he will view it as a failure, especially since he now finds there are smarter people than him.
2) This is a JRPG, story is a crucial part of it, a JRPG with poor storylines , is like a fighting game with bad collision detection it works and can sometimes be fun , but it takes away alot from the game.
And now we come to FF13-2, Ive been hearing this game is improved over FF13, Ive been hearing about time travel , a better plot, monster catching.
but then I have to ask , what if its just hype? what if I end up feeling even more stupid for buying it? is my money better spent elsewhere?
you know the saying, "fool me once , shame on you, fool me a 2nd and 3rd time, still shame on you, fool me a 4th time , shame on me" , and Im afraid thats what happened, insanity is defined by doing the same thing over and over , while getting bad results.
Am I still going to get FF13-2? maybe , but unlike the others where it was an almost day one purchase, I will have to think a while before spending money on this one.
so this was my rant of sorts regarding this subject, if you read through this and survive, you deserve a medal 
so what do you all think ? are you planning to get FF13-2? anybody feel the same? different? or am I just complaining for nothing?
also , if you did buy the game, what are your initial thoughts about it?
thanks for reading 
