A game trying too hard to look like something it's not. Graphics is the only item on it's list of successes.
Before clicking the back button and disregarding me as a raving lunatic, finish reading this paragraph to get some understanding on why I don't like this game in the slightest. Normally, when a game is bad, I just label it as such and move on, but I've encountered a large number of people who think this is a game worth defending. This just has me completely baffled, because no matter how I look back on my experiences with this terrible game, I just can't see how it could possibly be fun. Okay, now you can click the back button and disregard me as a raving lunatic. If you wish to keep on reading, however, then enjoy.
FFXIII and me got off on the wrong foot when it started off with an opening cinematic that was gorgeous, uninformative, and would have been a blast to play through. Throughout my brief experience, FFXIII kept on doing this, showing me all the ripe, juicy action scenes that I didn't get to participate in and leaving a bunch of measly fights that were far too easy with the game's flawed combat system. The combat is very similar to Chrono Trigger, where you have to wait for a gage to fill up before taking any action, but the difference between these two games is that Chrono Trigger's combat actually works! FFXIII gives each character multiple actions and lets them cut loose once a gage for each action has filled up. Normally, this would be OK, but to pull off a time based mechanic like this, the options have to be simple and easily accessible from the menu, neither of which apply to the Final Fantasy series as I know it. The game tries to work around this flaw by including an auto-attack feature that chooses all the best options for you, which just makes combat too easy and boring. The only challenge involved is knowing when to change the AI behavior to handle the current situation, keeping in mind that FFXIII finds it necessary to include an unnecessary flashy transition every time you do so for the first time in every battle. Not to mention this is the only game that uses some form of turn based combat system and gives you a game over whenever the current party leader dies. The frustration only compounds as you quickly learn that the party leader is the only person you get to control directly. This alone makes turn based combat frustrating; imagine playing a Pokemon game where you immediately loose every time your lead pokemon faints. The game would get unbearably frustrating just a short ways in.
Of course, all these gameplay related problems would seem so insignificant if the game offered more. Every good game that comes to mind, and a bunch of bad ones, too, always have multiple gameplay mechanics that keep the game varied and interesting. Final Fantasy XIII lacks this key component of any good game, forcing you to work with an unbearably flawed combat system or running around as a member of the unlikable cast, occasionally pressing the A button to interact with objects on the map. Even the occasional quick time event would have spruced things up quite a bit. Instead, Square Enix seems to be sending a pretty obvious message here; they want to make movies! Gameplay here was no doubt cut back to improve on the graphics that makes everyone look like they have runny noses and freshly applied lip balm. No matter how good the graphics are, the characters will always look bad because they need to constantly blow their noses to get rid of that shiny mucus. Which actually leads me to another point against Final Fantasy XIII; none of the characters are remotely bearable. There are plenty of reasons to hate each person involved in this plot, and very few reasons to have any emotions that are otherwise different. Lightning is unpleasant, to put it bluntly. Snow is your typical dumb jock. Sahz is your typical black sidekick, right down the weird afro. Vanille is completely insane. Hope is full of enough angst to make Sasuke from Naruto look very positive. And Fang is obviously completely obsessed with Vanille in every way *nudge, nudge, wink, wink*. I'm not even sure any of these characters experience any sort of character development; it seem highly unlikely since they are so dynamic to begin with. Even their names are quite stupid, with Hope being the only normal name. The only other Hope I know of is a little girl who plays one mean clarinet, and she would be offended to be associated with a moody little boy like this. Then we finally have the story, the only place where this game could possibly stand out. Well, Final Fantasy XIII fails to create an interesting and dynamic story that keeps the player engaged. Right from the get go, you'll have absolutely no idea what's going on, and the game continues to move forward while giving you very little information about what you should already know at this point. I barely understood what was happening at all throughout the story during my five hours in hell, and that was because I refused to waste game time reading about stuff I wasn't interested in. The game fails to adequately inform you of what's going on, and still expects you to stay interested in it's confusing plot, boring characters, and terrible gameplay. Not to mention everything here is linear in every aspect. The corridors are completely linear, the story can only be going in one direction, and you, the player, don't get the option to choose who's in your party for hours on end.
That just leaves the graphics as the only piece of this gigantic train wreck that can possibly meet any standards. Despite being quite well done, there are still some flaws in the graphics that simply irk me. Square Enix felt the constant need to draw attention to every character's slightest movements, creating this huge jumble of closeups of people with mucus falling out of their noses. It gets quite annoying when the game attempts to make every still shot worthy of being in the directors best works catalog. In the end, I'm not going to tell you to completely avoid this sad excuse for a game. There are obviously plenty of people who like this, for reasons that are completely unknown to me, and for all I know, you might like it to. My advice would be to rent it, as you should with all games you are uncertain about, so you can give the game a shot and tell all your friends with 100% certainty what your exact thoughts are concerning this badly designed game.