Final Fantasy XIII: Platinum Hits

So this game has been out for a week now, and the reviews for this game are greatly exagerating the cons, giving little light to all the things this game does right. The two grievances that are being exagerated are the Xbox 360 graphics vs the PS3, and the linearity of the game. First lets deal with the graphics, since I think this complaint is the most insignificant. *in no way should you go buy a PS3 just in order to experience this game at its fullest!!!* This game was made for the PS3, moded to the XBox360, so there are subtle differences in the graphics. The video is compressed on the xbox360, but has a higher framerate than the PS3, but unless you are a unrelenting, anal-attention to detail freak, I don't think you would notice. I played it on my 47" HDTV on my Xbox360, and I can honestly say it is a next gen graphics kinda game; it looks absolutely amazing, and the FF artwork and enviroments are in full force in this one, beautifully rendered and fluid. Now I was hanging out at my friends house who just bought this game on his PS3, and he was playing it on his 46" HDTV, which is an LCD just like mine, but I believe his has a faster processor; and as I watched him play the first hour of the game (which is mostly cutscenes) I could distinguish no real difference to the experience I had on my 360, except maybe the hair looked a little bit better in motion, but nothing to lead me to believe the PS3 version to be superior. I get it, the PS3 owners are unhappy that Microsoft is getting a peice of the pie, understandable, and if you want to claim your version to be superior, thats fine, but its not a game breaker, or shouldn't be unless your a fanboy one way or another, its a ridiculouse argument to pursue, and should just be avoided. BOTTOM LINE: You will enjoy the graphical awesomeness of this game no matter which system you play it on. The next argument is a little harder to address, but should not sway you into avoiding this game. The complaint has been that this game follows too much of a linear path, and removes much exploration from this strong RPG franchise. Now I have played final fantasy games since I was 5 years old, and they have always been greatly geared to wandering around towns, talking to NCCP, trying to find objectives and missions to advance the story line. Now I know this is one thing that has made the series great, but I don't feel that removing the wasted hours of wandering around towns trying to advance the story has hindered the RPG elements of this game at all, if anything I think it has improved it greatly and made it a much more enjoyable experience. Now this is coming from a guy that has been bored with this franchise for awhile now, the wandering had gotten to be an astronomical waste of time, leveling up characters and barely advancing the story, playing stupid card games and other B.S. that offered little to the actual game other than a waste of time without reward. Now I have spent 10 hours on this game so far, and I hear the game takes 50-60 hours to complete, and I am in no way feeling skimped on because I haven't had to wander aimlessly. The direction to take is usually clear (provided by an onscreen mini-map), with different paths to walk and explore with dead ends and 'orbs' to find, but the main path remains clear and easy to find. As I've progressed the exploration has increased more and more while keeping the main story line in focus, it eventually gives rise to greater areas of exploration, but nothing like the FF games of the past. It is genuinely a 'new' expereince, for better or worse depends on the gamer and what you want out of a FF game. Even with a more 'linear' path, the basic RPG elements of the game flourish. The combat system has been improved, and offers a fresh take on an old favorite. You only control one party member durring combat, the other party members are controlled via A.I., which die hards of the series will scorn at, but it makes combat faster with less decision makeing and more sword slashes. You are able to control what the computer controlled players are doing by a system called 'paradigm shift' which allows you choose their battle style focus, i.e. strictly attack, defend, use magic, or be a medic, which you can change their focus at any time in real time to strategically alter the progression or outcome of a fight. This is really cool because it gives you enough control to give the fights strategy and depth, but doesn't overload you with commands and keeps the fights moving and entertaining to watch. You are able to chain up your attacks in this fighting system, so as your chain gauge charges in real time, you can input a string of different attacks and watch them get carried out all at once,which is really cool when you can do 3 or 4 attacks in one turn. There are multiple routes to leveling up your players ( you have 6 playable characters total) depending on your focus. You unlock abilities and such based on a certain battle focus, then in battle, whichever focus you are using you will have those abilities available to use i.e. when your in your medic focus you can use cure, when your in your attack focus it might be unavailable for that character. You can unlock abilities for all 6 characters in whatever area of battle focus you choose, developing each individual how you see fit. The RPG elements are still in full tact in this game, just presented differently, in a more user friendly fashion if you will. You level up your characters, find and acquire new items, equip and develope your characters how you see best, and send them into battle to watch beautifully rendered fight scenes that are as much fun to watch as play. Don't think that because you have a more linear story line that the content isn't there, it is!! There are plenty of side quests and missions to complete, even after you complete the main game. The adventure is definetely that of a Final Fantasy epic, and your personal taste would tell you wether you like the storytelling capabilities of Square or not, thats a personal preference in my opinion, but it is true to the story of any final fantasy game, a monumental epic, with exceptional graphics and a real good voice cast ( except for Vanille ). I think fans of the franchise and newcomers alike will enjoy this game. It has plenty of content, and you deffinetely get your moneys worth in it. Xbox 360 users rejoice, our version is just as good as the PS3's, if they want to argue over theirs being the superior version, let them After all, we all need something to feel good about. :O)

I'll make my review concise as possible. Yes, the game is linear in scope. And yes, the game is very Japanese in nature. But linearity is by no means a bad thing, and with Final Fantasy XIII it helps unveil the story Square Enix tells in a very cinematic and enjoyable fashion. The story definitely won't be for everyone, as it has been said in many interviews already posted to date. Yes, it can be very melodramatic at points. Melodrama personally puts me off as well; but that melodrama is far from grating enough to write off a game of this grand of a scope. I've seen both games in action across both consoles. I'd like to dispel the belief that the 360 version is 'vastly' inferior to it's Playstation predecessor. They're both of equally gorgeous to play firsthand. The Playstation version is indefinitely clearer in resolution, but in action such a difference could never be fathomed if not set side by side (in which case some might not even 'tell' the difference side by side). The granduosity experienced throughout the game's gorgeous environments and extremely detailed character models are a must to experience across either platform. The gameplay has been my favorite across the Final Fantasy genre to date (I've played everything in the series exluding III, and XI). For me, it feels like Chrono Cross/Xenosaga meets traditional fantasy combat (and those games pose as my favorite when it comes to turn based battle systems). It's fast paced, you can link combos in a fun and equally fun to 'look' at fashion. The battle system is also strategic enough to appease long time fans of the series, as for when Optimas (Paradigm shifts) are unveiled a whole new slew of options are introduced. This is also where the linearity helps the game in scope. The battle system opens up at the same pace of the story, introducing core mechanics at a pace that 'anyone' can understand them. For some it may seem cumbersome, but as a whole, Square's method of unveiling the combat works well. Overall the game is indeed is fun, and almost a must-buy for any JRPG/Final Fantasy fans out there. Yes, the game can be linear, and yes the game opens up semi-sluggishly; but you're enjoying your time while traveling down that 'linear' path, being immersed into a game at a pace that's appropriate for what Square Enix has created. Sidenote - Vanille and Snow are equally obnoxious in the Japanese versions. But both characters grow on you. And if they don't...well. Mute your television whenever either opens their mouth. In all seriousness, experiencing the game's story alongside these characters, even if you dislike them in the beginning, makes the game all the more engrossing. Hopefully everyone who purchases the game has as much of a good time as I did/am.

As a long-time Final Fantasy fan, I should start off by saying that my favorites in the series are Final Fantasy VIII, IX, and mostly X. X-2 was all right, but not my favorite. Given that information, you could probably glean some of my points of reference and personal taste. Now, the style of FF XIII was a bit of a departure in some areas. The battle system is one area that some people seem to hate. At first, I thought I wasn't going to like it much. I mean, it's really based around "Auto-Battle" (or Auto-Heal/Auto-[insert role here]); true, you can choose your abilities specifically, but only for the party leader. Still, it's really not based upon choosing every action, in my opinion. At first I though, "Okay, that's dumb. I *WANT* to be a part of these battles!" This stems from misunderstanding the intent of the new Paradigm Shift battle model. In fact, the battles are really based around changing paradigms from a customized list which, in turn, changes the party members' roles on the fly. For instance, you might enter battle with a Relentless Assault paradigm active for full offense, but quickly switch to a Diversity to heal up a little while still attacking. That's just one example, and the choices are pretty diverse once you get into the game a bit. The battles also tend to be a sort of race to the finish, throughout the game. You'll try to push yourself to "Stagger" an enemy for increased damaged potential and to possibly make your enemy less dangerous, for a quick finish. This is just the tip of the iceberg, but don't expect a Final Fantasy X style of turn-based battles with chess-like strategy. It's a bit more like speed-chess, and you sit on a razor's edge balancing damage and defense while trying to defeat your enemies in an optimum time frame. Certainly, the battle system isn't for everyone, and I do feel that it gets a bit tedious as you go through the harder zones. Some battles drag on and on if you're using the Paradigms that you prefer (you have some freedom of choice here, but there are certain set-ups that would probably get you through battles faster--that is, if you happen to have your party set up that way before you encounter the enemy). And of course, you feel obligated to slog through the battles so that your Crystarium (the way you level up, sort of like the Sphere Grid of FF X) isn't too far behind, which would gimp you for the battles to come. Overall, I like the battle system, but certainly don't LOVE it. I can see they tried something new here. As a side note: I don't care for the summoning system in this Final Fantasy. It somehow feels weaker and more limited than ever before; I mean, you only have one character who can summon in FF X, and yet you have much more freedom and power in that summoning set-up. The graphics hardly need mentioning, I feel. They're excellent; certainly the pinnacle of Final Fantasy graphics thus far, as should be expected. I can't think of too much to critique on this issue, but perhaps some spell effects get lost and unappreciated given the fast-paced battles. The music is decent, I'd say on par with FF XII, but not as good as some others in the series. A couple of tracks were mediocre, at best, and even seemed to clash with the environment/tone of the chapter. The storyline and gameplay are very, very linear up until about...25-30 hours into the game, as you might have heard. This can be a huge downside to many "Western" gamers. Frankly, I did find it off-putting in some cases. Still, it does make for a very compelling storytelling experience, but the constant cut-scenes and CG movies can be grating. For what it's worth, I do enjoy the story, and there were a couple of unpredictable "No way!" moments, which I feel are hard to achieve (I can always see things coming a mile off). Those moments are very satisfying to me. I've tried not to give anything away in this review, I like to make them bare-bones. Given the VERY low price of the game nowadays, I wouldn't hesitate to pick up a copy and give it a try if you're a Final Fantasy fan, or (again, the cheap-o price) even if you want to try a new type of game. If you like it, they have even released a much less linear sequel to continue the story!

All the people complaining about the linearity of the game need to stop. They have no idea just how much design and production really costs, and if Square tried to satisfy everyone, not only would we never actually see another FF game again (they would never leave production), but Square would go bankrupt trying to satisfy everyone. I'm a designer with designer friends and friends who make video games for a living and they all say the same thing; quit complaining and enjoy. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Now, that being said, the plot is classic Final Fantasy, the graphics are beautiful and the controls are old school FF with a new school twist. Trust me, play the early games for Nintendo and you'll see what I mean. Honestly, I love the twist. I wish the battles gave you money, but you can't win them all. I'm only a few hours into it, and while the plot is so slow to get moving, I can't help but stare at the other two discs in the case and smile. That is the beauty of the FF series, they take their time with the plot and character development. They build up the plot, you start off doing one thing and wind up doing something completely different. It's a beautiful style that's been working quite nicely for Square all these years. I can't really say much about the absense of the world map, mostly because I'm patient enough to wait for it to happen (Remember FF7? Took 7 hours of game play before we reached the world map, didn't it?). And just from reading the booklet that came with the game I can tell you that there are side quests (honestly, am I the only one that reads the manuals? I can't be). All in all, it's a pretty amazing game all things considered, we have stellar graphics, Yoshitaka Amano graphics no less, gorgeous music, an interesting cast, and a nice conflict. All we need are a guy named Cid and some moogles and we'll be in business. But like I said, I'm patient, and I have faith that their coming. This game is nothing short of a feat of engineering, and an excellent story at that. Do I wish some things had a little more meat to it? Yes. But I also respect Square's bottom line, and I can appreciate the shear amount of work that goes into creating something like this. So go ahead, get the game. It's a beautiful story with lovely characters, just be a little patient and you'll be more than satisfied.

I've been an avid fan of the Final Fantasy series since Final Fantasy 4, 5, and 6 were released in the United States. It's been nearly twenty years that I've loved this series... and this is the last Final Fantasy game I will play. It's not that I'm not open to a new installment of the series, but rather that the last two games have been so unpleasant that I'm unwilling to take a chance until someone whose opinion I trust tells me "No, it's okay, this new game is NOTHING like 12 and 13". But this review isn't about Final Fantasy 12, which I played about 75% of before deciding I had better things to do. It's about Final Fantasy 13, a game so beautiful that I mistakenly gave it a chance to be fun. Five hours into the game, I have a glimmer of an understanding of the story; there are these giant demigod-like entities called Fal'Cie, which will on occasion choose people to become l'Cie, whose sole purpose is to carry out some mission (called a Focus) and then turn into crystal. Apparently, that's a good thing, unless you're from the neighboring planet that everyone seems to hate even though it would appear that there's no way to actually travel between the two. Being a "Pulse l'Cie" when you're on the planet "Cocoon" is apparently grounds for everyone to simultaneously decide to hate you. After those first five hours, I hadn't had any fun. "Okay," I thought, "It's just setting me up to have fun later. It's not like Diablo 2 or anything, where the early game is a bit tough and not as fun as the end game, but I guess I expected some fun since I really enjoyed the early game of Final Fantasy 7 and 8." So I kept playing, leveling my characters up on an unusually linear, well-defined, completely boring new skill system, which seemed a lot like the Sphere Grid from Final Fantasy X but without any of the ability to deviate from a single path and do something interesting. Nope, you picked a tree and filled out some passive benefits (like +life) and some active skills (which were only available when your Paradigm used that particular role for that particular character). I got about 15 hours in, and still wasn't having fun. I realized that much of the reason the game wasn't fun came in a two-fold double whammy of boredom: first, the story was complicated and difficult to follow. Unlike Final Fantasies 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and a little bit of 10, this game didn't introduce a clear opponent: you're just some outcast group of people (surprise! that totally never happened in the 7 games I just mentioned!), running away from the nebulous and vast forces of some rather powerful militaristic organization. The problem was that it wasn't clear where you were going: why was I going on this obnoxiously linear path? Where were the side quests? In fact, where was the MAIN quest? At 25 hours in, I hadn't figured out what the MAIN quest was, other than to not carry out their Focus (that thing the fal'Cie told l'Cie to do). But there weren't any side quests to do for entertainment or side story, just keep running. That's where the second kicker comes in: despite some heavy monotony and/or predictability in former Final Fantasy games, at least the combat was fun. Final Fantasy 4, 5, and 6 were okay in this regard, but had some charm and the comedic story deviations were worth it. Final Fantasy 7 and 8 had great combat, and 9 returned to 'okay'-dom. FFX had interesting combat; some parts good, some parts bad, but definitely on par with 7 and 8. Final Fantasy XIII had none of that. You pick a "paradigm", which selects roles for ALL of your characters, and whichever characters you aren't controlling automatically cast spells on an enemy using some kind of seriously deterministic algorithm for deciding which spell to cast 3-6 times in a row. Which is completely different from what your character does, which is continue tapping the A button to select "auto-battle", which instructs the character you're controlling to do the exact same thing that your allies are doing: use an algorithm to figure out what attacks to perform on an enemy. Oh, wait, that's the same thing. Whoops. So we've got a monotonous, difficult to follow story that makes no sense, characters you'd rather see die for their wimpy whining than follow along on their misguided quest to not be l'Cie, and combat that you'd rather run away from because it's so boring. It's now 45 hours in, and I'm not sure why I played for 40 hours longer than I decided the game wasn't fun. Probably because it's a Final Fantasy and I was a hardcore fan. It has to get fun at some point, right? So I finish the game. It took me about 60 hours because I got sidetracked on a hunt system similar to the Marks of FFXII, which were only marginally more interesting battles because I had to use OTHER paradigms. After 60 hours of playing the game, start to finish, I hadn't had any fun. None. At no point did I say to myself "This game is good, I totally want to play it". No, as an idiotic loyal fanboy, I said "This game is a Final Fantasy, so I want it to be good, so I'm going to keep playing it". It wasn't good. 60 hours of my life spent playing a game I hate. Lesson learned: when Hironobu Sakaguchi, the guy who designed the Final Fantasies up through 9, jumps ship, it's time to abandon the series. No more Final Fantasies for me. On the flip side, Lost Odyssey (a game created by Hironobu Sakaguchi) was an excellent game. You should play that instead of Final Fantasy XIII, which was awful.

( SOME SPOILERS BELOW. ) I've edited this review to be less tl;dr for people. I am not taking FFXIII-2 or LR into this review. Good parts: -Square attempted something different. ( You and the rest of your characters are a ticking time bomb and people are scared of you. ) -Characterization. ( Lightning is not a Cloud-clone. Whoever keeps suggesting this is stupid. ) -Battle system. -Graphics. -Music. ( The best part of this game for me, to be honest. ) -Customization. -The dub not being terrible. ( No one sounds like Yuna from FFX's first release. ) In the middle: -The villians. ( What they did with Jihl is pathetic and robbed everyone of a good fight. ) -Unresolved plot ties. ( I'm looking at you, Fang and Vanille. ) -The 'summons'. ( Hit or miss if you like the transforming theme in the summons. ) -Certain character arcs. -Dialogue. Some is just awkward translating from Japanese to English. -How they dealt with iconic stuff from FF's past. ( Spells, weapons, and even names are referenced in FFXIII. ) -Blend of scifi with fantasy. ( Again, personal taste if you like or dislike. ) -No towns or classic trips to a town. ( Done on purpose for the game's theme but makes things feel lonely later on. ) -Monster difficulty spikes at certain locations in the game. The bad: -Extremely linear. ( This was probably the most glaring fault of the game. ) -Lack of being allowed to backtrack. -Weird plot holes. -The weapon and accessory upgrading part is very complex and grindy. ( We're taking 100+ hours if your RNG sucks. ) -Takes too long for the entire party to get together. -Lack of story arc or quests for characters later in the game. So should you get this game? I'd say yes, though I cannot defend it from the first few hours. It's a bit of a mess and almost feels like you have training wheels on for too long. But underneath is a very good game that offers a great amount of challenges. Yes, it's linear. And yes, some of the characters are annoying. But compared to a few past titles for this series, there is visible character growth in everyone. FFXIII offered a lot of content to pursue after I'd completed the game. It's very grindy and sometimes frustrating, but it also kept me engaged in playing longer. Spending more time doing stuff in a game like this means you get more bang for your buck.

To start out this is the first ff I've ever played and completed. I'm not here to call it linear because I was never bothered by that. Sure you couldn't wander off and explore but you also couldn't get lost. I loved the story and the characters, they drew me in and got my hooked. Sometimes I'd be at the edge of my seat and sometimes I'd be falling asleep. I found a lot of the bosses to be very challenging, I raped the retry button, haha. It took me just about 60 hours to finish this and every hour by hour was a sight seeier, the graphics are top-notch and beautiful all throughout the game. Also if you replay the game you'll see just how much the characters and game progressed as time flew by. Nevertheless I still see hate comments on how the characters weren't developed or had nothing unique about them, I disagree 100%! Next is the game play I never got bored by it and half the time it was very challenging. I personally loved the new fighting system and always felt rewarded when I got my cp. The summons all came in handy and made some impossible fights possible even though they all didn't do much damage but they all fill up your health at the end so that's the main reason I used them. I did feel like they could have put more ability's in command and give us more tp, only five bothered me....I mean come on it's on odd number. Well I really can't hate on this game only love even though some hard boss fights might have caused me to say I hated it and some other things..lol so overall I give this fun and challenging game 5 stars straight from my heart. One more thing this game also brought out my emotions and for the price Amazon has $14.99 that's a steal and I recommend this game to any gamer willing to take the challenge! :]

When I first played FF7, I fell in love with it and the RPG genre in general. Throughout the years, I come to expect that each version of FF will offer both an awesome cinematic experience, and intriguing game mechanics. FF13 offers the awesome cinematic experience, but the game mechanics seem to be out of date. When FF12 came out, I felt it was an interesting approach: it offered the same cinematic experience, but at the same time it attempts to keep an open world going and a sense of modern-ness. With FF13, it's a bit of a step back from everything. The familiar ATB system has returned (though a form of it was used in FF12), the familiar touch-the-enemy-to-battle is back, the linear gameplay straight-shot-A-to-B is back, and the game is severely simplified to the point of near mindless repetition. Comparing to FF12 it seems the series has taken a major turn for the worst. Not saying that FF12 is the best, but I am saying that with FF12 at least they were attempting to recognize innovation with modern times. When I think of an RPG, I think of one thing: control. Controlling how my characters develop, controlling where to go, what sort of equipment I need, how I should fight an enemy, etc. While most RPGs base off these ideas, FF13 has severely hindered user control and instead replaced it with automation. Nearly everything is automated: 1) You can't control other characters. You can select what character to be your "main" at any point, but once it's battle time, you can only control your main, but you cannot switch to other members mid battle. You MUST allow the AI to control it and it normally does a good job. Also if your main dies, the game is over. You cannot revive your main character, but you can revive the other two. This was one of the worst feature I have ever seen in a game and felt like I was playing Persona 3 or something. 2) You can only have weapons and accessories. That's right, that's all you get! By the end of the game, you'll probably have 3 slots open for accessories, but even then it really doesn't matter as you can defeat the game without it. But it offers no variety to game play set up. 3) You have defined roles and they're unlocked at various points in the game. Basically the game breaks down into a job-class system. You got your attacker, magic user, healer, buffer, debuffer, and tank. The problem is each character's jobs are given to you at some point in the game. Like at the start, each character has 3 jobs, and as the game progresses, you're able to make them stronger by investing points into each of the jobs. After each battle you get certain points that you can use to invest into each job class. The problem is the game is broken up in chapters and on each chapter you can only have a certain number of points invested into your jobs before it's maxed out - and it's easy to max out. So basically if you max out a role at some chapter in the game, you just have to wait until later to unlock further into the class. In other words, the game controls when and how you can develop your characters. Until the end of chapter 9, you basically have very little control even for your jobs, and even then at the end of the game you won't be able to unlock the final stages of your job until you load the clear file. So in other words, you have to beat the game once just to unlock an entire job. 4) The battle is OVER simplified. Basically you can either input controls automatically or you can allow "auto-battle" which will either attempt to find the best attacks against the enemy, or attempt to figure out what the best attacks are (depending on if you did a scan of the enemy). So this basically means you can Auto-Battle your way through, and even if you manually enter your attacks, you'll find it very repetitive. So every battle, you're doing the same exact "Auto-Battle." You could Auto Battle your entire game and not worry ever about wasting time. The main strategy in battle is to make sure your characters are in the right roles. Like for example, my main battle party is Lightning, Hope and Fang. I usually have Lightning and Hope as magic users and Fang as a warrior. This combination works well 99% of the time. 6) No leveling! Besides the role leveling, you don't earn experience and level at all. You can only go off your stats. Interestingly if you unlock a stat in one class, it's applied to your character. So this means if you have health increase to your magic class, it's applied if you choose a warrior class. Only specific abilities is tied to a class. 7) You don't earn money in battle. That's right, there isn't any form of currency after battle. Of course, this presents a problem for casual people, but for those who seriously need money for upgrading or whatnot, can get money from items. For example, some monsters drop an item that by itself is worth nothing, but when you go to a store, you can sell it for large amount of money. 8) No interactions! FF13 is set in this huge world. You're an outcast though, so it makes a little sense, but overall, you have very little interaction with the inhabitants of FF13 if at all. I don't think there is any way to initiate a conversation and throughout the entire game you rarely speak with others, even your own team. They may make comments about the environment from time to time, but other than that, they do little to no talking. Overall the game is simplified too much for me. At first, I felt like giving it up, but I kept playing. Overtime it sort of grew on me. While the game is over-simplified, I sort of grew attached to it. The story itself is rather generic, but I sort of fell in love with the main character: Lightning (the woman on the front cover). She seems tough and neat at the same time. Quite possibly the only interesting character. I have my xbox with the Lightning wallpaper and if you 5 star the last boss, you get to unlock her picture as your profile picture. I felt this was cool and I managed to unlock it and now my theme is complete! As far as other characters, they're rather annoying. If I had to line up the degree of annoying, I'd go with: Vanille as the top annoying character due to her voice and her "happy" theme but at the same time just annoying, Sazh since he's such a cry baby, Snow as this guy makes little to no sense at all, and then last is Hope as he's just going around trying to act tough but at the same time, I'd just like to put him and Vanille in a box and drop it off. Fang is pretty cool character, but she looks like an oily surfer/beach goer of some sort. It's almost like if you stood next to her and breathe in you'd jerk in reaction to the salt contents. Then again, the only thing kept me going was the Lightning character as she's the most interesting. Plus she got her sister, Serah, who she's trying to protect which makes her pretty cool in my book. So overall the game is overly simplified. Great cinematic, one cool character Lightning, and that's just about it. I rank that it's fun to play Lightning even though it's too simplified, but it's still wonderful experience for anyone playing. I played for about 70 hours myself and had a great time. However, others can complete the game in about 30-40 hours if even that.

Este es uno de los mejores juegos del genero de rol creado por Square Enix. Una agradable mezcla de elementos clásicos e innovadores. con excelentes gráficos y estupenda música. Solo un detalle: En el titulo menciona que es "Standard Edition" pero mi copia resulto ser "Platinum Hits" Esto no tiene importancia para mí que solo pretendo disfrutar del juego, pero las personas que coleccionan Juegos podrían molestarse al no recibir una "Primera Edición"

Some people don't like the game and the Paradigm Battle System takes a while to get used to, but once you get the hang of it and the Crystarium it offers lots of options to level up your characters. The linear nature of the game can be a little boring at times, but then they also allow you to do a lot of optional missions. In total you can easily spend over 60+ hours playing this game, and the graphics, story, music, etc. are all very good. With Final Fantasy 15 coming out soon, if you can get this on a bargain, I would recommend it for any RPG fan as it gives you a lot of gameplay for very little money now.

Magnifica entrega de la franquicia, excelente jugabilidad y gran juego, lo remiendo, los gráficos son excelentes, la entrega llego en el tiempo prometido sin ningún problema.

FFXIII is an amazing cinematic JRPG with gorgeous visuals, a solid cast and a great battle system. Gran Pulse is breathtaking! Unfortunately FFXIII looks terrible on the 360 with low res graphics and inconsistent framerates. However, on an Xbox One X, FFXIII receives a massive upgrade to 1080p looking like a current gen remaster making the game look as gorgeous as it should be. Highly recommend this title on Xbox One X or PS3.

Love the game should’ve been an easy 5 stars. This is the second time I bought it, because my last set was lost in a move. Played through disc 1, got to big boss Falcie battle and beat it and then...... cannot save and Unplayable second disc. Did all the usual things but no good. Very disappointing