This is by far the most disappointing FF i have ever played.
Allow me to rant.
Quite honestly, being a fan of FF for a very long time, i had high
expectations for this game(Thats right i played
FFIV,FFVII,FFVIII,FFX,FFXI,FFXII and FFXIII) and i was let down with
FFXIII.
The previous FF's at the least had a direction the
story was heading, like stopping sin in FFX, preventing an all out war
in FFXII, stopping Sephiroth in FFVII whereas the story seems to be
heading nowhere at all in FFXIII(only thing is being branded a l'cie and
figure their focus, other than that the story doesn't really propel
forward.)
And then theres the lack of conventional towns, what
made me disappointed in this regard is that conventional towns in my
opinion with NPC interactions(which FFXIII lacks) makes the world feel
more alive and there is nothing much to do except run from point a to
point b in a linear fashion(FFX was linear but you know where you're
heading, you know what you're suppose to do).
The world doesn't
feel alive in FFXIII ,the mythology isn't fleshed out very well and
it felt like a series of disparate level strung
together with
cinematics, rather than an actual world.
There is also the lack
of a central villain which in my opinion, for a final fantasy game at
least is very important. In FFVII it was Sephiroth, in FFVIII it was
Edea at first till Ultimecia, in FFX it was Sin for the most part , in FFXI online it depends on which story arc you are trying to complete and in
FFXII it was Vayne Solidor.
Overall FFXIII lacks a proper
story direction, it lacks interaction with NPC's, it lacks an actual
atmosphere that makes the game feel alive and it felt like a grind fest
and combat after combat with cutscenes and cinematics slapped on for the
most part.
Not everything is negative as the music seems to be
pretty good while the battle system rocks.
Personally i felt X and XII were the best of the series and i expected XIII to surpass that, instead XIII in my opinion became one of the weaker games in the series.