[ SECRET POST #2231 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2231 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 086 secrets from Secret Submission Post #319.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[rionaleonhart]

I love Final Fantasy XIII - it's got my favourite cast of any Final Fantasy game - but I have to confess that it's severely flawed. The battle system is great and the character interaction is great; the problem is that it's absolutely nothing but battling and character interaction, with perhaps two incredibly half-hearted one-off attempts at a minigame (the Chocobo chick hunt and the thirty-second vehicle section). Pulse, despite opening the map up a bit, really drove home the lack of variety: all these Cie'th missions, and every one of them is 'go to this place and kill this thing'. The exploration and sidequests and minigames in XIII-2 were a breath of fresh air.

Personally, though, although I think XIII-2 is better as a videogame, I like XIII more. I felt that, although XIII-2 had stronger gameplay than its predecessor, its plot and characterisation were weaker, and character is what I play the Final Fantasy series for. That's just me, though, and I can definitely understand why people would prefer the sequel. It all depends on what you value (and personal taste, obviously, because others who play for character might have found the characters of XIII didn't appeal to them).

I also think that the battle system is a bit better in XIII. The Crystarium limits annoyed me at first, but playing XIII-2, which didn't limit Crystarium development, made me realise how important they were; the limits forced you to use strategy in boss battles, rather than just levelling up and hitting the boss a lot. That said, speeding up the paradigm shifts was a great idea.

I suppose what I'm saying is that Final Fantasy XIII is flawed as a game, but as a story I love it to bits. All the characters! All the inter-party relationships! All the concepts! (I want to write a million 'oh no everyone's a l'Cie!' AUs for all my fandoms.) I do like XIII-2 as well, but I think the characterisation suffered because of the two-person party; Noel and Serah only really had each other to bounce off, so we didn't get much of an idea of their personalities outside the context of each other. The Sunleth Waterscape 300 AF was one of my favourite parts, because adding Snow to that dynamic gave Noel a new dimension. (Making it less linear also had an adverse effect on characterisation; it's difficult for the game to develop Noel and Serah's characters and relationship smoothly when it doesn't know what order you're going to play some of the episodes in.)

Er, sorry for rambling! I just really love XIII, which is frustrating when so many people hate it and even more frustrating when I know they have a point.

[supermanda]

This post is amazing! I'm huge on character when it comes to video games, film, TV, etc. so this was nice to read :)

[(Anonymous)]

+1 and a round of applause! XIII is not my all-time fave but I wholehearyedly agree with all your points.

[(Anonymous)]

XIII is the only game in the past 7 years that I've managed to wrote over 5000 words on why it is flawed, yet it had the soul that I've never seen elsewhere. I can list all the things wrong with it, but it has drawn me in, and fundamentally altered me, in ways that no other games have.