Forums > Submission Feedback > zippdementia's Final Fantasy XIII review

B-r-r-r-r-rum! Open up, gamers! Here comes the airplane!”

LOL!

This looks like one of your better works. Really enjoyed all the clever and subtle jabs at the game's story (or lack thereof).

It really sucks not having RPG staples since as towns, NPCs, and the like. I don't think I would enjoy this game at all.

I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?

Thanks for the feedback, Randxian!

Note to gamers: when someone shoots you in the face, they aren't "gay." They are "psychopathic."

Hi Zipp. Given that I fisked this review of yours, you may be able to assume your other one "made it." I found your and Genj's reviews interesting, but I had suggestions for both. Lots of times I write these critiques more for myself, to get myself going on my own writing, so let me know if you don't really need/want it.

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Fisking your FF13 review here. It's what I like to do when I'm bored at work.

"Is pretty amazing"

My principal said, 'Emo, Emo, Emo.'
I said 'I'm the one in the middle, you lousy drunk!'
-- Emo Phillips

Wow, now this is what I call feedback! Thanks for all of this, ascuhltz! I'm gonna take some time to look this over. Chances are I won't make changes to the current review, but I always take your advice to heart for future projects.

Thanks again!

Note to gamers: when someone shoots you in the face, they aren't "gay." They are "psychopathic."

"Being betrayed by an NPC you’ve met maybe twice in the game doesn’t carry much weight to it, despite the full string orchestra playing in the background."

Hahahaha. :D Brilliant.

I'm missing a... fake intro-line of some sort, I think. Something that makes the review seem as if it opens normally.

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I just kinda leapt right in, yeah.

Glad to hear you laughed. The story really is bad and I'm glad I'm not the only one here who thinks that. It means sanity and taste still reigns on the site.

Note to gamers: when someone shoots you in the face, they aren't "gay." They are "psychopathic."

Nah, the story kicks ass and is difficult to reasonably fault except perhaps in the form of a complaint of its lack of linearity. The characters are what's bad. There's a massive difference.

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality

"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world2

That's a strange thing to say about a game in which 90% of the exposition is comprised of the six characters you loathe so much stopping in their tracks and talking about themselves, amongst themselves.

You exist because we allow it. And you will end because we demand it.

If you tuned out what the characters were talking about to the point where you honestly believe that their discussions had no value except to explore their characters, then you obviously missed out on most of the plot. A small percentage of the dialog was about personal fears and dreams and such. The bulk of the conversations were spent establishing the paramaters of a thoroughly fascinating world and culture, in between the more blatant bits of exposition that moved things along toward an intriguing conclusion.

As with so many other portions of the game, the story was freaking awesome but it didn't slap you in the face and demand that you pay attention to it. It's definitely a new way for a Final Fantasy game to tell a story and that's really what most of the complaints that I see leveled against it appear to boil down to. One could reasonably make the argument that Square-Enix should have dumbed down the plot and set it on a more linear path to make its contents more obvious to the masses. I wouldn't argue that. Suggesting that the plot is bad because it requires some involvement from the player--emotional and otherwise--though, that's just crazy. This isn't a movie, after all. It's a video game.

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality

"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world2

I vaguely remember you mentioning something about how you look for an intriguing setting in a good story, and to that end I can understand where you're coming from. FFXIII has a fascinating setting. But come on: This is an extremely character-driven plot. The bulk of our knowledge is learned either through conversations between the six main characters or through flashbacks of the six main characters. Even when they were casting their feelings aside and developing the narrative, they were doing so through their own experiences. So while you obviously found a way to enjoy this story without liking the characters, I don't know how you did it.

Reading over the plot summary in my roommate's guide made the story sound very cool, but that's only half of it. The story needs to be presented well, and FFXIII doesn't do that. Fracturing the narrative and gambling so much on the players' emotional connection to the lousy cast of characters didn't work out.

But hey! That's just me.

You exist because we allow it. And you will end because we demand it.

I have to agree with Suskie here. I also think that it's hard to claim that the story doesn't demand your attention when a game is as linear as FFXIII is. The only thing you can do in the game is beat some battles and then move in a straight line down the environment. At the end of that environment you are shown a cutscene. Sometimes you will have segments of this that actually don't have battles, but are just walks between two different sets of scenes. That, to me, is the sign of a story driven game.

Note to gamers: when someone shoots you in the face, they aren't "gay." They are "psychopathic."