Final Fantasy 13

So I've been recently getting into the Final Fantasy series with the Final Fantasy 10 games and wanted to play other games in the series, but I have been seeing some ppl talk shit about the Final Fantasy 13 games. The question I have to ask is that are the FF13 games really as bad as people say they are?

@mariokarthero: they're more linear than previous entries, and have a super simplified combat system. By comparison to previous titles, they're lacking lacking in major ways.

I don't think they are more linear than previous title. final Fantasy always been linear outside of the bref moment you are free to explore to get all the super good weapons.

It is true that the battle system is probably the easiest to master of them all if you have good combination of job for the situation at hand.

A lot of people found Lightning to have no emotion, Vanille to be annoying with her Japanese voice and Hope to be hopeless most of the time.

I did love it and got the plat for it, just like XIII-2 and Lightning returns.

But if you don,t mind NES/SNES/PSOne graphics, you should play VI, VII Tactics and IX, IV is also quite good

Yes they're actually that bad...

Combat is boring and simple, it plays itself, the story sucks and all the characters are lame. The game doesn't get fun until they let you free roam, but by then you've lost the will to keep playing... most painful 30 hours of my life

I rather enjoyed the combat (well...the boss battles, since the fodder battles were dull), and the linearity didn't bother me too much.

What bothered me were the story and characters. They were simply rubbish. Lightning is completely insufferable, Snow is an idiot who seems to actively be trying to get everyone killed, Hope is a whiny kid, and Vanille is an idiot with an atrocious accent.

I didn't care at all about their plight...and for the entirety of the game, the characters have literally no idea what they are doing or whether they are actually helping anyone.

The storytelling itself is nonsense, none of the villains are developed enough for us to care, and there are heaps of bullshit 'the power of friendship saves the day' moments.

So...would I recommend it? Maybe. The gameplay is fine. It's pretty to look at. It really depends on your tolerance for lowest-of-the-low JRPG storytellint though.

I really enjoyed them myself although I haven't played Lightning Returns yet. The linearity didn't bother me and I liked the characters, story, and combat.

@Archangel3371: Lightning returns is very different than the previous installement as you only control her and they remove the "job" which feel weird at first but it is really well made, offer a lot more customization, it sometimes feel like a dressing simulator haha.

The story is what is interesting in the last episode, well it was for me and the ending was quite good too.

So I've seen to gain some knowledge on what you guys liked and hated about the games. Some of you liked it, others had some gripes with the game. I may check out some gameplay footage of it, but from what you guys have said, I might not be missing much. I might just avoid the FF13 games altogether if it is like that. I doubt I would wanna waste hours and hours playing a game with a poor story along with crappy characters, linearity and a poor combat system. Thanks guys for your opinions!

XIII-2 was better than XIII, and the combat system seemed pretty interesting to me. The music is insane and the environments are pretty memorable too.