Final Fantasy XIII Retrospective - A Game Fighting Fate Against Itself

look i know this video is a long one but the scope blew up like a kickstarter campaign that made five times its budget as i was making it i started out trying to make a retrospective of final fantasy 13 and ended up jumping down a rabbit hole that i had no idea existed i think this stuff is really interesting and chances are you do too because according to my analytics most you are literally me what i'm saying is i recommend sticking around i hope you do at any rate now let's get started i don't think it's a stretch to say that final fantasy 13 is one of the most controversial final fantasies to ever release despite reviewing and selling well at a time fan reception has been let's say not very kind to it and it's pretty infamous within its series i mean it's the only mainline final fantasy not to receive a remaster of any kind on modern systems having to settle for a half-assed pc port in 2014 it's also one of the only final fantasy games i hadn't played twice before this video sharing that award with final fantasy 2 5 and 8. so uh what am i doing here why make an extensive video retrospective of final fantasy 13 almost 12 years after its original release in case you hadn't noticed the way i do things i like to have a strong reason for choosing the games i go over in the case of final fantasy 13 it's because i've started to notice a trend of people treating this game more softly in recent years that and i'm gonna be real i'm just not satisfied with the current state of criticism for the game it usually starts and ends with its linear so it's bad or insert name of feature makes it not a final fantasy game despite that feature probably also being in a previous final fantasy game that just ain't gonna cut it for me so i had to find out for myself for the record i played the game when it came out and while it didn't blow my mind or anything i didn't hate it however it was only like the fourth final fantasy game i'd played at that time it was actually playing through 13 that made me decide to go through the entire series back to back starting from the first one as i wanted to see what it could really offer i'm like over a full decade away from those memories though so i thought there's no better time than now to take another crack at it with my full adult brain and i'm taking y'all with me because this is gonna be a trip what started off as seeing if final fantasy 13 deserved a second chance ended up being a deep dive down into the inner workings of mid-2000s square next that led to an existential crisis about what it even means to create a video game why is final fantasy 7 remake in the corner there you ask we're gonna get to that trust me like usual i'll go over the setting and some brief bits of story but i'll give you an official warning before the spoilers start so you're good there with all that said i want to get right to the good stuff so let's jump in to final fantasy 13. final fantasy 13 originally dropped on the brand new hd 7th generation consoles near the end of 2009 2010 in the west it might be an absolutely foreign concept nowadays what with how notorious square enix is for doing this sort of thing but final fantasy games didn't always used to come out a decade after their announcement up until the ps3360 generation they used to be pretty regular with three mainline games per system from the nes to the ps2 despite originally being planned as a ps2 title final fantasy xiii released hot on the heels of 12 relatively speaking with a gap of only three and a half years separating them probably to show off the new hardware the game opens up with a cgi cutscene featuring our main character lightning taking out a bunch of armed soldiers on a train she teams up with another main character saz takes out the first boss and the game begins properly so what's going on here final fantasy 13 takes place on the floating world cocoon a shell-like structure that people live on the inside of i'm just thinking it works something like halo if you rounded the whole thing out cocoon stands in opposition to the lower world pulse both cocoon and pulse are inhabited by two races the dominating god like falsey and the average everyday humans despite the power gap between them both the falsey and humans were created by the same maker and have coexisted with each other for thousands of years centuries before the start of the game a few falseh got the idea to create a paradise for humanity free from the harsh everyday existence pulse offered and created cocoon while a few people were more than happy to take them up on the offer many refused the plan and decided to remain this would split the other race in two with the cocoon falci and pulse falci becoming two completely different entities each working towards maintaining their own world tensions between the two worlds started to escalate when the cocoon falls sea invaded pulse or resources to build their shiny new dyson sphere cocoon and pulse don't like each other you see with pulsing cocoon as evil and corrupt and cocoon seeing pulse as hell on earth this would lead to a conflict known as the war of transgression with the pulse falci and cocoon falsey throwing wrists at each other using their new tools the lacee even though they were created by the same maker falci have a sense of superiority over the humans i mean no [ __ ] right kinda treating them like pets turning a human into a lacy is an extension of that when a human is turned into a lessee part of their body is branded with the lacy mark and they have two options option one is to fail their orders known as their focus but doing so means that they'll be turned into a zombie-like husk called a seat sounds like a raw deal but the next one's a lot better option 2 is to fulfill the falsies orders upon which they'll be rewarded with eternal life which actually means they're encased in crystal for all eternity did i say a lot better i meant [ __ ] in a different way kind of a lose-lose but if i had to pick one i guess i'd go with being a seath because at least i could stick it to the normies as a zombie or something lucy are the only people in this world that can use magic and are basically even super powers in order to carry out their falsies will you might have noticed something in that explanation the seas are a trope reversal of the warrior of light thing final fantasy 1 started being branded a warrior of light signifies that you're a chosen hero going on a divine mission same with being branded a lacie technically the only difference is while falsey and lucy who drink the kool-aid think becoming illusion is a divine honor or something from an outside perspective like a player you can see it's a pretty raw deal clever play on a common rpg trope there the war transgression ended when a pulseless sea turned into the mythical beast ragnarok attacking cocoon and damaging the outer shell but failing to destroy it completely the war would end and the situation quieted down in the years that followed but the citizens of cocoon were terrified of anything that had to do with pulse worried that one day they would try to invade again afterwards to repair the floating continent the cocoon falci would do the thing that in no way went horrible last time and used raw materials taken from pulse these raw materials were known as vestiges which were mostly thought to be harmless curiosities from another world the events of our game take place when the pulse falci anima is discovered in one of these vestiges in response to this the governments immediately quarantined off the city where the vestige was discovered and announced it would purge the people in it to the lower world a pulse a move heavily supported by the pulse-fearing population our main characters lightning saws snow veneer and hope all find themselves wrapped up in this purge for one reason or another and through their individual circumstances mostly through the attempted rescue of lightning sister and snow's fiancee sarah they all end up in the vestige where they come face to face with the pulse falci there's also one more character fang but we'll talk about her later they're turned into pulseless by anima and are given their option destroy cocoon or be turned into seath now i don't know about you fellas but i found the backstory for this world and the setup to the plot to be really interesting the idea of these god creatures using humanity to settle their grudges like an alternate universe pokemon battle as well as the inherent hopelessness that comes with being able to see paints the picture of a world that hangs on a fragile balance and that world building only gets better as the game goes along which we'll talk about it uses its shiny techno future aesthetic as a facade it never outright says it's a nightmare world taking place in the literal end times you gotta connect those dots yourself you'll get a better sense of this when i talk about spoilers near the end so just keep it in mind for now it's a bit early to get into criticism but you might be wondering how i know all this backstory about the world a common complaint levied at final fantasy 13 is that there's a dedicated section in the menu called the data log where all this information is hidden instead of telling you through the story the game expects you to go through the data log to untangle the lore like you're reading dark souls item descriptions to find out why a boss wears a funny hat part of this review involved me going to a bunch of different places where complaints are posted so i can get multiple perspectives to understand where each is coming from trying to be as fair as i can here i don't think this one is too much weight to stand on my main case is well i haven't read the data log at least not past the extent of getting footage for it and i was still able to tell you all that about the world i can remember the conversations the characters have in game explaining this stuff and some dedicated people have made compilations of screenshots documenting exactly when this backstory is told throughout the game what i will say though is that when there's smoke there's fire and you could say the backstory being presented out of order through characters conversations is a flawed way to convey it and you might not be wrong about that this is my second playthrough of the game and i beat it in about 10 days this time around not leaving big play gaps for me to forget about plot details so i will say that i'm more well versed in the world than your average player is even if that's the case everything is organized by category in the data log with extra detail should you want to use it i don't think it hurts the game with its inclusion at the very least i think this myth is busted but don't you worry we'll be going over a lot more criticism before this video is up speaking of contentious topics let's talk about final fantasy 13's gameplay i don't think the active time battle system needs any introduction but 13's version of it feels kind of like stepping into an alternate universe where hiroyuki ito the creator of the system veered left and set a right you got this atb bar that's slowly filling up in sections and you can queue up commands to execute so long as you have the necessary meter your atb bar starts with two segments but it'll get longer as the game goes on for example gaining a third when your characters become a lessee you can wait for it to fill up to max or you can press a button to execute the actions you currently have listed now that's all in theory in practice final fantasy 13 moves fast and the cursor defaults to an auto battle button that you'll be tempted to smash that'll usually fill up your queue with the most appropriate commands for the situation key word there usually i know what you're thinking just don't use it and i'd agree but it just sits there tempting you begging you for that click your characters usually have so many attack options and the atb bar fills up so quickly that filtering through to manually select them will end up with you sitting with a full atb bar as you scroll down the list choosing attacks honestly it's pretty lame that 9 times out of 10 hitting auto battle is the optimal way to play similar to final fantasy 12 you only directly control your lead character in battle but unlike in that game you can't issue the others commands directly they'll be doing their own thing and roll through the same commands your auto battle would have chosen for you in that situation this was a design decision likely made because manually cueing commands for one character was tough enough doing it for all three would need you to move like one of them professional starcraft players with all that said you might be thinking how does final fantasy 13's battle system involve strategy when 80 of it is automated well that's where the game's defining feature the paradigm system comes into play the game has six roles commando your standard damage dealer ravager your magic user synergist your support spellcaster saboteur the debuff specialist medic the healer of the group and sentinel the tank you set up paradigms using a different combination of these roles and you can freely switch between them during battle you're required to switch up your strategy so often because of a mechanic you might know if you played final fantasy 7 remake the stagger system unlike in 7 remake the stagger system in 13 isn't a binary on off thing enemies take damage according to the multiplier and the stagger bar until they break at which point you can wail on them as that number climbs higher and higher you can also launch them into the air which has the advantage of making it so they can't attack you there's this cool little meta game you can do where you're timing your attacks to juggle them for as long as possible about that stagger bar ravagers will build it up quickly but you need commandos to stop it from depleting thing is you can't just be on full blast at all times you'll get smoked in final fantasy 13 there's a big emphasis on controlling the battle you want to maintain your control of it at all times using the paradigm system if you get tunnel vision and go guerrilla brain on the enemies for too long your control the situational slip at which point you have to switch to a full defensive paradigm until you can wrestle that control back this all folds back into how final fantasy xiii handles its difficulty you see previous final fantasy game encounters aren't really difficult in a vacuum the difficulty comes from a constant balance of resources as you trudge along a dungeon or a world map if you use your strongest spells for every fight yeah sure you'd wipe the enemy out in seconds but you'd run out of mp or any other resource by the time you reach the boss on the other hand if you save your mp and only use regular attacks the enemies have more opportunities to get hits in which means you have to spend your healers mp or use items to patch up you're constantly walking a line to make sure you can get through an area before you hit empty my favorite example of this is mount gagazet from final fantasy 10. it's a long trek through a mountain pass where each individual encounter isn't overly difficult but you go so long without a chance to refuel you feel like you're stretching every character to the limit it gives a great sense of accomplishment and relief when you finally push through to the other side in final fantasy xiii your character's healed to full after every battle and mp isn't a limited resource so to create difficulty most enemy encounters have a good chance to kill you you're required to engage with the paradigm system otherwise a random encounter with some jobbers can leave you on that game over screen something that probably won't happen in a lot of other games in the series unless you have an out-of-body experience mid-battle or something i'm more on the side of the prior games in the series but putting all this together means that 13 does manage to keep you paying attention for at least like 50 of its fights this also rolls into how money and weapons are handled in previous final fantasy games gill is something i'm going to term as a primary resource you need gill you can't beat the game without it it's essential to getting better equipment and items in final fantasy 13 the vast majority of weapons and accessories are obtained naturally as you progress you could probably do some kind of challenge playthrough where you finish the game without spending a single piece of gill and not even suffer for it enemies don't even drop gill in this game at best they drop an item that you can sell for gil you can skate around this whole gill thing because in final fantasy 13 you don't really get better weapons each weapon is kind of like a side grade to the others they all have their own unique passive ability but they all get more powerful by upgrading them of course the most efficient way to obtain these upgrade items is to spend a bit of hard cash but you get plenty for monster drops as well similarly to most other design decisions made by the game so far it's not an inherently bad mechanic it's just kind of weird and tough to swallow at first you can tell that this mechanic was made to quote fix a perceived problem with the rpg genre other final fantasy games usually have you switching out weapons pretty regularly and you do sometimes run into the issue without the weapon with the ability you want can't compete damage wise with a new weapon you found even when you do find a weapon that provides the ability you want with a competitive damage output you'll likely be throwing it away for a new one in about an hour 13 solution does technically solve that problem but its design kinda encourages you to pick a single weapon and stick with it you can choose equipment optimally tailored around preparing for a certain boss fight but the game's encounter and drop rate is balanced around you being able to properly maintain about one weapon per character of course the best way to better prepare for fights in final fantasy games is to level up and get stronger and a tier 13 introduces its bootleg version of the sphere grid from 10 the chrysarium you know how this goes after every battle you're an exp and the former crystarium points you can then cash those points in in the crystarium each year characters available rolls is listed and you can spend the points in the different trees for abilities and stat boosts the crystarium is a lot more linear than the sphere grid you only usually have a straight track with a few offshoots but you can choose which roles to prioritize and spend your points in for a bit of variety look i don't know how to describe it but despite its simplicity there's something mesmerizing about the cycle of fighting enemies earning exp and slowly building up each character's crystarium there's also nothing better than the dopamine hit you get when you save up a massive amount and then dump it all at the same time basically the final fantasy equivalent to dumping boiled chicken and protein shakes down your character's throats 13 also gets an award for smart [ __ ] decision of the year by giving your characters exp equally whether they participated in battle or not this means that you can freely swap between characters whenever you want and you're not completely screwed when the game forces you to use a certain set of benchwarmers it should be important to note that you don't get access to the paradigms until chapter 3 and prior to that the battle system makes a terrible first impression for the first two chapters your characters basically have two options a single attack for single targets or an area attack for groups the auto battle won't do a perfect job at choosing the right one so i guess most of the strategy in these early hours is knowing when to queue up the area attacks for max efficiency the problem is chapter one is like five one-on-one boss fights where your only option is to press the attack button for minutes at a time there's no ambiguity for the auto battle button here so you're hitting the same button over and over it gets to the point where you want to get up and do the dishes or something just for a little bit of stimulation combine this with the fact that your characters don't gain exp until chapter 3 and it's understandable why the well was poisoned for a lot of people at the start you can feel the game wasting your time it does get better once you clear that first hurdle but man who was sitting there thinking yeah that's good ship it one other issue is that for the first third or so the game your party members are paired up in twos this is great for character development and interaction but in a game with three party members you're basically out 33 of your available strategy it's stuff like this where i can see why most people regard the first 10 hours of this game as a tutorial the battle system has merits and i'm willing to give credit where credit is due but you spend quite a while without the ability to use it to its full potential if you do manage to push the battle system to its full potential you'll notice that final fantasy xiii has a ranking system because i guess why not add a feature that's mostly found in character action games what the hell is this while i don't care too much about its existence personally what's interesting about a ranking system is what it ranks you on better put what does final fantasy 13 consider to be optimal play well i hope you weren't expecting much because it literally just ranks you on your battle time with a small multiplier for a pre-emptive attack using some arbitrary formula based on the enemies you fought and the number of them you could wipe this whole screen out the game except for the part where it tells you how much exp you earned and lose nothing from the experience also this is kind of a nitpick while i'm not usually too bothered about not being able to move your characters in battle i can't describe to you how many times my sentinel would plant their ass beside the medic draw the enemies towards them and then the medic would get hammerfisted to death by association it's really not a bad battle system it just could have been improved so much with a few minor tweaks in fact you can say that about pretty much everything i just mentioned about the gameplay it's not perfect some of the design is questionable but i don't think that makes it terrible it was clear that they were trying to tackle a lot of perceived issues with the rpg genre when designing 13. there's nothing here that i'd say change the future of role-playing games as we know them but there's nothing i can condemn as actual garbage either it's a series of experiments that are honestly not bad for a first pass at changing the formula i know it's not staggering praise to be like well at least it's not complete garbage but a decade later you can appreciate the effort that was put in to innovate the rpg genre that wasn't just the standard make it an action game solution that most developers do today as times passed we've seen most big rpgs go for an action game hybrid route with a split between them and traditional style games final fantasy 13 was trying to innovate within the genre and while you could argue that's a good or bad thing during that generation of consoles a lot of people weren't confident that the turn-based rpg was going to survive the passage of time hindsight 2020 we've got some really good traditional style rpgs coming out nowadays but outlooks for the future were way different in 2009 final fantasy xiii's innovations weren't exactly received warmly i'd say a non-insignificant factor in that though was many people were worried that this was the direction that rpgs were going to take from now on or at the very least the direction final fantasy games were going to take from now on we know now that's not the case but it was a legitimate worry at the time one thing about final fantasy 13 that was true in 2009 and remains true now is that the game looks really good visually yeah there are some things that stick out remind you that you're not playing a modern game the hair looks kind of wacky there's some muddy textures and i can't get the image of the character's terrifying sausage fingers out of my mind like seriously what was it about the fingers that they just couldn't get it done right i don't like that but with the resolution and frame rate bumped up on the pc version you can kind of squint your eyes and forget you're playing a game from literally 12 years ago i'm really surprised with how well it holds up now but just imagine how hard it set the standards at the time the environments are well detailed varied and colorful there was clearly a lot of effort put in into making each area look unique and i can only really call out a few that fall below par the character designs are some of the time jrpg protagonists that look like they were specifically made to be someone's favorite character but i can't say they look bad it's also kind of cool how they're physically present with your lead character on the map outside a battle due to the technology of the time previous final fantasy games just had the other characters slide out of your main one whenever a battle starts like some kind of twink matroshka that being said the ai's pathfinding could use a little more work either that or i think the pressure finally got to saz the facial expressions and mouth movements look a little wonky since this was before using mocap was a regular thing for video games but again kids who were like 4 when this game came out can legally drink in most of europe the cg scenes though god damn these still look incredible and the animation is near perfection square enix was top of the industry in this stuff and it really shows this might be a foreign concept to most people nowadays but for a good while cg cutscenes like these were kind of like a reward for playing the game don't get me wrong i dislike when monotonous cutscenes drag on as well but whenever the screen went dark in final fantasy 9 and you could hear the disc start spinning to load up an fmv you knew you were in for a good time one hill i will die on is the music in this game slaps and i won't have anyone tell me otherwise look i get it nobuoematsu transcended humanity his music is and always will be number one and i wish i could hear his version of the game's score as well but this game's composer musashi hamauzu studied closely under uematsu for almost a decade and was even brought into square by the man himself that's a good enough resume for me once you accept the fact that the composer is different you can really start to appreciate the way the music itself is different in a good way hama uzu is a classically trained pianist and a lot of that shines through in 13's tracks which are a lot more heavily piano focused than previous games in the series you've got a fantastic battle theme that slowly swells up before reaching a crescendo the calm gentle melody of the main theme and i don't know what a sunlith waterscape is but i'm into it [Music] some main themes are repurposed a few too many times but that's not always a bad thing for example lightning's theme includes elements of the battle theme but the instruments used in the way they're played end up creating a song with a totally different mood it turns a bombastic hype theme into a track with a hopeful yet somber tone perfect for a character who struggles to justify her choices [Music] this video will obviously be full of final fantasy xiii's music so pay attention to some of the background tracks and tell me what you think about it other than the music the sound effects are pretty standard but i do have one weird issue to bring up there are these pre-rendered cutscenes that are somewhere between an in-model one and a cg one for some reason the audio during them sounds like it's being played through a discord call or something i'll play a few seconds for you to listen to see if you get what i mean hopefully youtube doesn't compress the audio so much it's not noticeable and i just sound like a crazy person [Music] audio foibles aside the game has an attention to detail that's really strong this is one of those games you can really tell that some of the development team got their jobs done before the others and just spent the rest of the time polishing we're almost there just a little more for example there's this neat little animation that plays for each character and slowly fades out whenever you enter their status screen reminder this was almost a full decade before persona 5. the characters the sea brands subtly change over the course of the game signifying that they're running out of time speaking of running out of time seeth are really creepy when you're first introduced to them they make these unnerving noises and attack by just kind of flailing at you my favorite thing though is that they're some of the only enemies that can use items in battle let that sink in for a sec they still use items like people as if they're holding on to some shred of humanity damn that was a nice touch from the gameplay designers i also mentioned how most characters start off with two atb charges and gain a third when they become a lessee however prior to that in chapters 1 and 2 venile already has three atp charges foreshadowing that there might be a little more going on there the game also does something incredibly smart by making you face enemies that put up a tough fight for you in chapter 2 prior to becoming a lacie in chapter 3 as well and you absolutely stomp them it uses gameplay to hit home that despite the fall c essentially condemning you to two different flavors of dye you've become so much more powerful than you were previously since that's a good enough transition for me to start talking about the main characters let's go a little deeper into our party most final fantasies are about a group of very different people uniting under a single goal but it's pretty clear in the early hours that the cast of final fantasy 13 are not friends just a bunch of people in the same unfortunate circumstance they argue they fight and they eventually split up since they each have their own idea about what's the best way to solve their problem lightning dislikes snow because she's always put on a cold tough front to protect her sister sarah then snow shows up sarah gets turned into a lacie they announce they're getting married and all hell breaks loose yeah it's no secret why these two don't see eye to eye saz is just some normal dude trying to do right by his kid who's been detained by the government so when lightning shows up on his purge train he sticks to her as his best bet for escape but he gets frustrated when he realizes she'll drop him at the first chance she gets snow likes the idea of being a hero but quickly comes to the realization that he's unable to handle the responsibility that comes along with it venile puts on a happy front but in reality she's slowly being crushed by the weight of the guilt she has for the things that she's done all those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain hope is 14 years old and has had everything taken away from him and he believes he knows who's to blame he struggles with that desire for revenge slowly turning him into a person that he's not these characters are very clearly not perfect people they're flawed bitter and untrusting it's by accepting these flaws that they grow to overcome the challenges placed before them a lot of this is done through an appointment with their personal therapists their idolans creatures that appear to see when they're on their breaking points and this game's version of summons after defeating an eidolon in a sort of puzzle boss fight you can use them in battle yeah no i don't think i want to talk about how sazes turns into a literal car hold up does that say gestalt by confronting their idolans in battle our characters gain the resolve to overcome their faults and keep pushing forward wait wrong game now the question is do a lot of these character moments hit the mark [Music] some more than others i'll give you an example it's not really spoilers since it happens in the first half hour of the game but snow is like a little bit responsible for hope's mother's death let's set the stage she's got a hold of her as they're hanging off a broken bridge but she asks him to drop her and protect her son who he doesn't know is hope at the time snow loses his grip and she falls into the abyss below with hope looking on from afar only being able to see snow dropping his mom while hope originally just wants to ask snow to explain what happened he eventually lets the feeling stew until he wants to get revenge on snow for when he sees his murder see the thing is while i was watching the scene with snow and hope's mom i was thinking how it would play out better if say he was holding on to her on the edge and then a ship showed up and starts firing at them this would put snow in a situation where he could continue to hold on to her knowing that they both might fall or drop her and make his escape really hammering home how his ideals of being a hero for his own ego leads to other people getting hurt which is a main component in his character development this isn't what happens though we see snow literally doing everything in his power to save hope's mom even at the point she lets go of him and is actively trying to fall he does everything he can to try and lift her back up the thing is the game continues as if he dropped her to save himself snow continues as if he dropped her to save himself you could argue that it's snow's interpretation of the events but it kinda doesn't feel like that it feels like the game's writing doesn't match with what previously happened and i think i have a good idea as to why that is the way this game was written was pretty ass backwards at least for the first eight chapters final fantasy xiii director matomo toriyama wrote most of the plot and characters in the early stages of the game a few years into development writer daisuke watanabe joined the staff toniama basically had the events of the plot hammered out but needed watanabe to fill in how those events happened he provided watanabe with a rough outline but basically threw him a used color by numbers picture book while tonyama had his own vision for the characters watanabe had to make some changes in order to put the pieces together the end result is it kind of feels like you have two people playing tug of war regarding how the story unfolds you don't notice it a lot of the time but when it sticks out you can really feel it i don't have any proof of this next statement but let's use that last snow hope situation as an example it kind of feels like toriyama wrote something along the lines of snow causes hope's mom to die then when watanabe's filling in the plot he says something like that doesn't sound very in character for snow and makes it as much not snow's fault as he can the thing is we're still following toriyama's plot structure so eventually mismatches start to show up resulting in this whole tug-of-war feeling alright it's time to take on the big daddy of final fantasy 13 criticism it's linearity the game's main sticking point for a lot of people is that it's linear it's a hallway it plays itself etc etc let's get into this a little bit being the first final fantasy for hd systems the teams struggled to make open environments like they did for the previous entries the game justifies this by making it a final fantasy game where your characters are always on the run being unable to return to areas you've already visited being pulseless fugitives the gang can't exactly make a pit stop at the nearest spoons for a pint so towns a series staple were also cut this is immediately noticeable when you first start playing the game and you realize save points are also where you're gonna be doing all your shopping like it's some corporate dystopian future amazon kiosk how does this design translate to the map layouts i'll throw up a few clips and map screens so you can get an idea of what we're talking about here but here's my take it's linear there's no denying that but i think it's a bit of an exaggeration to call it a hallway there are definitely a lot of maps that can be considered a hallway but for every cherry-picked example of that there's a cherry-picked example of one that isn't i think it's an agreeable point that final fantasy 13 pre-chapter 11 is about as linear as final fantasy 10 is and i don't see that game getting crucified for that [Music] the question of whether linearity is inherently bad game design is a complex one and it's a topic that many people are likely to have differing opinions over i hope though that after the flood of subpar open world checkbox mission climb tower reveal map games of the 2010s we've gotten past the more open equals better game mentality open or linear a game should be designed to complement the format it chooses what i will say on a personal note is that while i'm not a fan of open world checkbox mission list games i think the final fantasy series as well as most other rpgs in general had struck a good balance in design with previous entries let's take final fantasy 7 as an example you start off the game in an area that's not too unlike 13's chapters 1-10 before venturing out into the open world from that point on dungeons do take you down a semi-linear path but you're always swapping between open and closed level designs 13 lacks that balance it's either always on or always off and i think that's a big factor as to why the game feels as restrictive as it does i will say that i don't think they needed to commit this hard to the concept areas like palumpolom and nautilus have clear moments of quiet time where there are no enemies and you can just walk around the problem is there's nothing really to do here would it have been that hard to implement a physical version of some save point shops here and there a few npcs to talk to an in that you can stay at that would obviously have no purpose for healing your character's health but maybe we could get an optional cutscene where lightning asks hope if he likes crepes or something just anything you know i know this is a symptom of a troubled development cycle but it really does hurt the game overall there's two areas where you can just walk around and interact with things in the environment to learn more about them and honestly doing so kinda felt like coming up for air the game plays like this except for a single chapter which to be fair is the longest chapter accounting for about 40 of my total play time and contains almost all of the side content now look i'm gonna be a big enough person to admit that i was full of [ __ ] you might have heard the common complaint that final fantasy 13 only gets good 20 hours in they're talking about chapter 11 which takes place on pulse and it's the first truly open area of the game sorry for another final fantasy 10 comparison but prior to my replay of the game for this video i used to disagree i'd say it's just a boring circle-shaped area that's like saying final fantasy 10 only gets good at the calm lands yeah uh i don't know what i was thinking either i was on pulse for like a grand total of three minutes before i realized how full of [ __ ] i was while i do disagree with the statement that the game only gets good 20 hours in since i don't think the previous for the record 15 hours it took me to get to pulse was bad it really does turn into a whole different game that's not hyperbole it literally felt like something completely different pulse has an absolutely massive open area with side areas that interconnect with each other seriously it takes literal minutes to walk from one end of the archlight step to the other you also don't have a single path to go down you can generally explore wherever you want the game won't arbitrarily gate you off from areas if you're strong enough to beat the monsters there it's fair game there are optional cutscenes you can see in any order depending on the order you tackle the different areas you get side quests which are honestly not that compelling plot-wise but they offer a good excuse to fight new enemies and get stronger this chapter is like a full two or three points better on a 10-point scale than the rest of the game i know realistically the whole game couldn't be like this but it's a shame that more of it wasn't toriyama would justify the linear game design at first saying it was just westerners complaining because they were used to more open games and uh i don't know what was an open game at the time like elder scrolls 4 oblivion or something and like my dude what that is some premium copium you got going on there it was quickly becoming clear that something else was happening behind the scenes so what was going on what happened here well before i go over the last bits of story in the ending of the game it's finally time to talk about the elephants in the room jack and daxter ratchet and clank square next 10 years ago in botch development cycles name a more iconic pair i don't think any studio was more notorious for long development cycles than square enix was final fantasy xv kingdom arts 3 it used to be the case that if square enix announced something there was a good chance you wouldn't be seeing it for a decade it might surprise you to know this but despite final fantasy 12 releasing on the ass end of the ps2's lifespan 13 was originally meant to release on the system as well switching to the ps3 likely created a lot of hurdles for the team but one thing you gotta remember about this console generation is that developers loved making entire engines from the ground up for a new game final fantasy xiii was gonna run on square annex's brand new in-house crystal tools engine okay but this doesn't necessarily have to be a death sentence right square enix is a big studio with hundreds of talented developers surely they can handle it and i hear you i hear what you're saying but what if they did their best to make it a death sentence huh in what must have been an internal mandate for bad decisions this engine also needed to be flexible enough to support a bunch of very different games as well remember fabula nova cristalis yeah it felt like the games that eventually released in that cursed series wanted nothing to do with it by the time they came out crystal tools needed to not only support final fantasy xiii but the entire fabulou nova crystallis lineup and final fantasy 14 at the same time that means this engine needed to work with the trilogy of 13 games 14 15 and type 0 and it all had to get done in order to push 13 out just a few years after 12. and after doing a bit of extra digging it turns out it had to support dragon quest 10 as well because i mean why not at this point yeah talk about a tall order the clock was ticking and despite development for 13 going on for years at this point the team didn't have much to show for it and eventually they had to shove something out the door this led to a lack of unified vision for the project where they just threw manpower at it to make it in time for the release date in particular this game had a lot of artists and i mean a lot of artists disclaimer i'm not too familiar with the optimal staff composition of development teams but in a team consisting of just over 200 people 180 of them were artists one art director isamu kamikokurio said they had enough cut content to make a full another game something that to me says we went through most of the development not knowing what we wanted this to be the team at square enix also had a desire to keep this game secret this was a brand new entry in a world-renowned series after all it was a secret so well kept that they forgot to tell the playtesters until the final stretch of the game's development this means they couldn't implement any of the feedback the playtesters gave not to mention they took the poison we want to appeal to western audiences pill honestly anyone else noticed that japanese games got a lot better once they stopped trying to appeal to a certain audience and just went back to making good games basically final fantasy 13 was hindered by a rush development cycle and a lack of outside opinions on what would make the game good too many decisions were made by too few people and ultimately the game suffered for it but there was something else it feels weird talking about a bad localization in a game from 2009 look i have immense respect for localizers it's a tough job that a lot of people don't fully grasp the difficulty of because they think it's just turned japanese words into english words it's well known that the final fantasy series has had an unfortunate history of poor localizations especially seven but this was a case of the attitude at the time pre the year 2000 no one really considered how much work localization required so translation staff were usually paid in pennies and given three weeks to localize hundreds of pages of script but we passed that point a long time ago right how can final fantasy xiii possibly have a bad localization especially after final fantasy 12 was specifically recognized as being a high point for localization in video games look i don't go out of my way to find bad localizations i swear they find me but we got a big one here because of the way the game was constantly cutting and adding content during development the script would be translated and the english voice lines recorded only to have the rug ripped out from under their feet a week later i was playing with japanese audio and english subtitles so it was really easy to pick out a ton of cases where the two would be saying something completely different i'll give you one notable example of something that stuck out to me it's a scene about two hours into the game with snow and sarah watching the fireworks remember sarah is a licie who's probably only got a few days left to live at this point she sees the fireworks and remarks the snow it's like our own private heaven snow replies let's see them together next year too snow's determination takes sarah by surprise she cries and the two kiss there's a lot of emotion in this scene despite snow not being able to see by this point and by all means should be sarah's enemy this line implies that he's sticking by her and will do whatever it takes to free her from her fate committing to see the fireworks next year this isn't some untranslatable mythical japanese concept so i was confused when the english script was changed to all i need is you [Music] why would that make sarah cry it only made sense once i realized that it was likely the original japanese script probably did say that at some point and was changed later the entire english voiceover was re-recorded wait for it five one two three four five full times during localization they were also provided with the bare minimum resources when doing the localization because of the whole this game is top secret so y'all ain't getting the details thing so entire character personalities were lost in transition the translators were basically just given a piece of paper with the dialogue on it they weren't shown the scene that contained the i don't know important context of how everything played out until a much later date then once the voice director finally saw the scene and directed the actors it was highly likely said scene would end up being changed on the japanese side which means they would have to fly blind again as a result you get things like lightning being far more emotive in the japanese version okay future me here coming to tell you a fun fact while editing i just looked it up and it turns out lightning's last name pharyn means thunder yeah that's right lightning's name means lightning thunder i am going to lose my goddamn mind a lot of people say vanille whose name is vanilla in japanese by the way is an annoying unlikable character but i didn't think that at all during my playthrough edgy hope is just as bad in both languages though there's this one thing with snow's gang that makes me slam my palm into my forehead every time i think about it you see snow's gang is called nora this is meant to be important because hope's mother's name is also nora nora in the gang is short for noraneko which in japanese means stray cat snow's crew was full of people who didn't really have anywhere else to go for one reason or another so they stuck with each other i guess it was decided that this was too radical of a pun for the side of the globe that invented gears of war to understand but how do you change it without losing the double meaning of it being hope's mom's name well for the western release of final fantasy xiii they changed nora to stand for no obligations rules or authorities like what what not only does this make my sides cringe into orbit it changes them from a group of misfits just trying to stick by each other to some gang of cool kids who don't listen when their parents tell them to stop playing quake 64 at 10 pm on a school night lightning is right when she calls it a stupid acronym now don't get me wrong i can appreciate that the localizers were caught between a rock and a hard place having to bring over a pun that was made for another language but man that's an l i'll tell you that for free the english localization director and the japanese sound engineer were both pretty quick to realize that [ __ ] was on fire but it was too late to course correct the damage was already done the best they could do was to make sure that this wouldn't happen in future games now there is one more thing about this game i have to mention none of this is concrete it's all my opinion but it's a pattern i've noticed the deeper i researched into final fantasy 13's development if you've watched a few of my videos you'll know i don't like speculation so i wouldn't be dropping this take unless i was reasonably sure of it the further down the rabbit hole i got the more this started to make sense so i'm going to share this take with you i think that final fantasy 7 remake had a negative impact on final fantasy xiii now before you haul me off to the town dump for saying a game that wouldn't exist for another 10 years impacted this one hear me out i'm gonna flash the core staff for a few final fantasy games on the screen see if you can notice any similarities got it that's right the same team that made final fantasy 13 also made seven remake this is further confirmed in this chart by user bringpeanutbutter on twitter for now i want you to forget all about the other teams and think only about arse truly over here looking at this we can tell that 7 remake isn't actually sequel to 15. it's best considered as a sequel to 13. when people say 7 remake is an improved more action focused iteration on 15's gameplay it isn't it's an iteration on 13s when people say it feels random that the stagger mechanic from 13 made its way to 7 remake it's not really it's the same staff putting the same mechanic they came up with for a game they made directly beforehand into a new one this may be a poll but to me the inclusion of the stagger system in 7 remake is like the developers leaning into my ear and saying see we had good ideas now we're going to put it in the game you want so you're forced to like it arguably of all the final fantasy games ever to release the two most similar games are 13 and 7 remake i mean 7 remake has more in common with 13 than it does with og7 i hosted a poll about people's favorite final fantasy game way way back and 7 remake was the winner while you and i both know that this is mostly because it's the latest one to come out it really makes you think that the difference in reception between 7 remake and 13 is literally running the spectrum of best to worst now obviously there's a ton of things the games do differently saying they're the exact same is like taking an apple and an orange and going ah yes fruit but with the same core staff same chapter based linear structure with occasional open areas where you do side missions same stagger system same ai controlled party members and hell even the crystarium system made a triumphant return you can see that there's a clear parallel between the two games this isn't ragging on 7 remake like i've said throughout this video i think a lot of 13's changes were good on paper even if maybe not the best when actually executed i'm trying to raise 13 up not bring 7 remake down but putting that aside for a second for all this to make sense we have to establish why 13 and 7 remake have this tethered relationship in the first place to set the stage demand for final fantasy vii remake was on apex during this time i often go back to a quote from tim rogers someone who probably makes the best game videos on youtube and that you should definitely check out because he's way smarter than i am he tells the story how the first man in line on final fantasy 12's release day was asked to say something to the camera to express his feelings about being the first person on earth to hold this brand new entry in the final fantasy series as if he had been practicing for this moment for years he turned to the camera and deadass said standing next to the man who painstakingly made the game he just purchased please remake final fantasy 7. why was the timing of this important well obviously no one was asking for a 7 remake on ps1 and final fantasy 10 was in development before people even knew you could put a 2 at the end of the word playstation it wasn't till about 12 came out when 7 remakes influence would begin to seep into square enix the final fantasy 13 team wasn't locked in a box separated from the rest of the world they knew how much people demanded a final fantasy vii remake before its official announcement in 2015 demand was skyrocketing over it especially fueled by the fact that square enix would put out a cutscene of the train mission as a tech demo for the playstation 3 in 2005. sidenote why would you do this for a game you had no intention of making at the time that's not just kicking the beehive that's taking the beehive cutting a hole in the bottom and wearing it as a hat then for good measure punching the beast it was because of this tech demo final fantasy xiii's production would be moved from ps2 to ps3 even still it was no secret in the square enix offices which game people really wanted imagine as a creator you want to move forward and take this series in a new direction but the thing people really want is something your company made over a decade ago i mean the sheer demand for a 7 remake in particular could probably cause a crisis at existential levels what's the point of making new thing if people just want old thing you might already know that 13 has a long history of being compared to seven the techno future setting the anti-government stance of the characters i mean if i had 10 cents for every time someone called lightning female cloud i could probably buy an unopened can of the final fantasy 13 energy drink off ebay i wouldn't drink it because i'm struggling to think of a worse way to die but it'd be nice to keep on the shelf until decades of fermenting turns it into a makeshift grenade but i digress what i'm trying to get at is i think 13 was made to be the proverbial final fantasy 7 killer in square enix the game was designed to be similar enough to 7 for fans to draw comparisons but they wanted it to be so good no one would even need a 7 remake anymore i'm not saying it was designed by committed cobble together for the direct purpose of slapping the seven desires straight out of people's brains but consciously or not it feels like a lot of things in this game were made with the intent of now how can we make this better than seven the game constantly feels like it's trying to one-up something it's hard to explain but if you play it for yourself and keep an eye out for it i think you'll see what i'm getting at this design philosophy would obviously end up hurting the game in the long run damaging its identity that being said i think we're to blame as well not like you or me specifically i mean the collective wii like i said final fantasy vii remake demand was out of zenith showing that ps3 tech demo was like one of those plot devices where a dude summons a monster and loses control of it before you ask yes i'm thinking about final fantasy 10 again in 2009 people didn't want fabulonova crystallis they didn't want a bunch of loosely related spin-offs they wanted seven remake [Music] anything that came out under the perceived level of quality people thought seven remake would be was torn apart of course we as individuals wanted new games but the collective mass slamming square with emails weren't the people asking them to continue exactly as they were doing you know what i'm saying when 13 released it dropped like a red balloon and a ball pit i went over all the changes it made to the rpg genre in the gameplay section of the video and while i don't think they're awful changes in retrospect look at them again while remembering the collective demand for a 7 remake that lived up to the expectation that everyone set out for it people hated the changes 13 made to the rpg genre and there's a big worry that those changes could become the standard looking back now like olympus gods with time machines we know that this wasn't what happened but put yourself in the shoes of someone at the time this caused pushback over 13 to spill over the edge it was doomed to be received in a time where emotions were flaring high 13 isn't a standout of the series sure but irreconcilable trash i don't know about that it's at least the third best jrpg on xbox 360 or something you're free to express your personal taste over the changes of the game made to the rpg genre i know i sure have and i think there's a lot of room for debate while i don't agree with a lot of the changes 13 made i don't think they tank the game and i at least think it makes for an interesting game to play because you can't find the stuff 13 does anywhere else this reception started a snowball effect that ended up like the metaphor with the monkeys and the banana on the ladder after being told for so many years not to touch 13 no one does with the original reasons why not mattering anymore i mean hell square edits won't even touch it i'm not exaggerating when i say every single other final fantasy has had a formal re-release except this one while i think it's great that it's been put on pc given its all-time peak of 8 000 players it's safe to say not many people revisited their opinions on this one when it dropped i doubt for the past 10 years a single human being has come across and played final fantasy 13 before stumbling upon its reputation and i've seen stuff like this happen before am i saying if 13 suddenly got a lot of eyes on it now it'd be the stealth best game in the series no not even close but you can at least see where i'm going with this and believe me when i say i'm not ragging on 7 remake while my thoughts on that game are long and complex and no we can't get into it now have you seen the length of this video the actual game itself has nothing to do with this when i'm talking about the years 2005 to 2015 when i say final fantasy vii remake i'm talking about some theoretical daydream game that didn't even exist at the time that's how big of a shadow the hype for that game cast to sum this all up i think the timing of final fantasy xiii's release played a not non-insignificant factor in its reception it's not anyone or any game's fault it's just the way it was in the late 2000s maybe just maybe it deserves another chance to be looked at with fresh eyes i know i've definitely benefitted from the experience particularly if you like 7 remake the uh real 7 remake i mean it might be worth checking out just to see where the dna for that game came from but i mean i wouldn't blame you if you don't square enix certainly looks like they don't want to touch it again after a trilogy of 13 games that's a three final fantasy 13 games not a trilogy made up of 13 games yep i don't know it's confusing the developers would wash their hands of that number completely and move on to seven remake never looking back oh uh right we still got a whole ending of the game to go over here don't we almost forgot about that what with the whole you know uh thing we've gone over pretty much everything else at this point so all that's left to talk about is how the story plays out i won't take too much time with it since i've kept you around for a long enough time already but if you've decided to play the game for yourself go to this timestamp if you want to remain spoiler free got it all right they're gone it's just me and you three fellas now hope and lightning returned to his hometown where they meet fang our sixth main character she reveals that her and vanille are actually pulselessy from the lower world village verba from centuries ago during the war transgression they were given a focus to transform into the great beast ragnarok and destroy cocoon due to venile having strong pull out game and bailing at the last second they only managed to crack its surface which is why cocoon has a wound scar thing on it their focus technically complete they're turned into crystal until the falci decides they need him to have another go at it which was conveniently enough 13 days ago [Music] vanilla wakes up with her memories but fang doesn't vanille keeps their task of secrets and she's not too keen on doing the whole try to kill millions of innocent people thing again fast forward to present day vanilla puts two and two together from saza's stories that she's the reason his son was turned into a lissy when this is revealed to him by the queen of underused villains who cares what's her name he confronts her ultimately he decides against capping her with his lego guns but the pair are captured fang sees live footage saying that the pair are going to be executed so the team mounts a rescue mission after busting them out they're riding pretty high right now things seem to be going right for them it's on their escape they run into primark deisley the leader of cocoon the pope reveals himself to be the false ebarth angelus and explains to them that their series of w's on their attempt to change their fate was actually a carefully crafted path laid out before them sit down for this one while the cocoon falci said they were building cocoon as a paradise for humans they actually had an ulterior motive surprise right cocoon was meant to be a human factory of sorts remember i said that falci and humans are beings made from the same creator humans have the ability to grow and evolve falsey were all powerful but stagnant to call mummy dearest back into the world the falsey planned to raise a massive human population on cocoon then destroy it the mass sacrifice would shove the gates of the afterlife open and call the maker back into the world the time to crack that [ __ ] like an egg had come up but the problem is by nature of being cocoon falci they couldn't destroy cocoon directly instead they used that dormant pulse falci from the first chapter to create lacie whose focus was to destroy cocoon who they would then guide towards that goal from the shadows our six protagonists are those pulseless sea and upon being told this they start to lose their nerve especially snow who realized that when sarah was turned to crystal by completing her focus that focus wasn't to protect cocoon like he believed it was it was to bring together the people that could destroy it after beating this game's version of sid there he is by the way say hello they find a ship with the ability to go to pulse they decide to opt out of the whole destroy cocoon or become a creature deal and with pulse being the place the fallacy that curse them originated from they figure they can find a way to remove the brands there so the gang heads to jurassic pulse which is as advertised a savage world where the beasts rule and the strong eat the weak [Music] [Applause] help me help me they came here to solve their lucy issue but they're coming up empty at every turn their brands have almost progressed to their final stage and it's clear they've only got enough time to try about one more thing before it's lights out vanilla and fangs suggests they try heading to araba and given that it seems to be their best bet they make the journey i'm all level with you airbus is such a great area man it's some of the best environmental storytelling in the entire series you see while you journey to cross pulse you occasionally came up against seath enemies but araba is full of them after vanilla and fang failed to destroy cocoon the pulse falci must have started getting desperate they started massless entire populations but with no means to destroy cocoon after losing the war the people would have no choice but to sit back and wait to turn the pulse falci didn't care humans meant nothing to him they just wanted to win their war walking around erba you get the sense that the people of pulse people you've been told are savage monsters that are the total antithesis to everything the peaceful cocoon stands for aren't actually all that different you walk around their kitchens to see how they ate you find their toys vanille's vacuum cleaner thing you walk around their schools you see the remains of their trains and highways and it all just shows how literally normal their lives were but it doesn't matter now they're all gone the people of cocoon live in fear of an enemy that doesn't even exist anymore and think about that for a second remember how i said this was a depressing post-apocalyptic-esque nightmare world other than the people of cocoon humanity is essentially extinct if the cocoon falsey go through with their plan humanity will be completely and totally wiped out the best part is is that this is all told to the player through the environment there's no melodramatic flashback or anything to shove it in your face there's no scene where lightning looks at the camera and goes we really are the last of us or anything like that you're given all the details and you gotta put the reality of the situation together yourself is final fantasy 13 the dark souls of jrpgs someone call that it's like dark souls twitter account over here both sides of humanity cocoon and pulse were ruled by cruel gods sustaining them but ultimately robbing them in their fates barthandalis appears to the party in pulse and getting desperate he reveals that since they won't play along he set up a series of events that'll throw cocoon into civil war using sid as a puppet foregoing his need for them and its destruction the party gets the sense that they're being manipulated into returning but they decide if they're gonna die they might as well do it protecting their home and they go back to cocoon the key to destroying cocoon is to destroy the falcy that rests at its core orphans so they head there to stop it from being taken out in the chaos once they get there though they learn that this goes way further than a few falsey wanting to reunite with mummy orphan itself was created only with the purpose to die and summon the maker meaning cocoon to its core was created from the ground up to be destroyed the party decides that there ain't no way for humanity and fallacy to co-exist and raise their arms against barthandlis who merges with orphan turning into this weird mother father-son type thing you fight the boss who they gave an instant kill attack and a gamer if your party leader dies it's game over yes i love smt but it eventually gets the upper hand the party starts seething out save for vanilla and fang with orphan torturing the former to force the latter to turn into ragnarok and destroy cocoon fang figuring that the falsey have never lied to her before or something starts the transformation but is too weak to make a dent alone she's eventually called back when the illusion fades and the party stands with her resoluting their goal they stop fang from destroying orphan and therefore destroying cocoon by reversing her transformation so they can destroy orphan and therefore destroy cocoon like is walking away not an option or what now whatever [Music] after the final boss is defeated cocoon starts falling apart and i guess at this point our characters realize they might have done a big oopsie and not had a plan for it venile and fang decide to take the l to save everyone else and transform into ragnarok but instead of destroying cocoon they create a crystal pillar to break its fault oh hey look everyone it's the logo they managed to succeed avoiding a literal humanity-ending disaster but as a result are trapped in the crystal pillar for eternity the other four are safe on the ground impulse and are reunited with their loved ones they decide to honor their friends sacrifice by living as free humans no longer shackled by the uncaring will of the falsey creating a new home for themselves on pulse strengthened by their resolve they look forward to their future a future filled with hope and endless possibilities and then lightning falls down a hole and disappears i wish i was joking just gonna wait a sec for the no spoiler people to come back but we'll talk about that [ __ ] next time i'm pretty familiar to how final fantasy has evolved over the years it's an incredibly important series to me and it likely is to a lot of you as well is 13 gonna be on the top of a list of the best final fantasy games no i don't think it is it made a lot of changes to the rpg genre as was thought necessary at the time but innovations don't get a free pass to being good just because they're different instead i think 12 years later what is important is fairly evaluating these differences and which are positive or negative especially since we know now that they wouldn't become the standard like was feared at the time for a variety of complex reasons some legitimate the gut reaction to 13 was strongly negative playing it now it's almost hard to believe that it wasn't still is considered to be a terrible game that no one should touch i don't even think it's at the bottom of the mainline final fantasy series a group of 15 mainline games or even the worst one is still at least a 7 out of 10. i know that doesn't sound like heaping praise and i'm trying not to give 13 too much credit here but let me put it this way final fantasy 13 is an underrated game that was mostly a victim of circumstance and a troubled development there's some stuff to dislike sure but there's a lot of stuff here that's pretty good as well and from trends i'm seeing online i think more and more people are slowly coming around to that idea do i think final fantasy 13 is gonna have some huge renaissance and finally dethrone god of war and some pole ign slimes out nah i'm not expecting some phantom thieves change your heart [ __ ] to happen do i think you should play final fantasy 13 well it's complicated if you're someone only finishes 10 games a year or so maybe you should give it a pass if what i've said today interests you and you're all right going into a game you know isn't perfect then i'd say what do you have to lose sometimes i think we gotta play a flawed game or two it can really give a perspective that you won't get if you only smash out games that score over 90 on metacritic my final fantasy 13 back of the box quote is this game ain't perfect but i sure did like it lastly if you've made it this far and are still watching thanks this is a passion project that i put a [ __ ] ton of effort into probably more than i should have the fact you stuck around to hear this means a lot i'm gonna do final fantasy 13 2 and lightning returns as well but those videos aren't going to come close to the length of this one 13 2 is a game i remember detesting when it came out but it seems a lot of people think it's the best in the trilogy or something we'll see how i feel after a replay of it drop a cheeky little sub if you want to keep up with that anyways that's all for today till next time [Music] you

Channel: BrandoSP

Views: 481,592

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Id: Y0kw7CorRrc

Length: 62min 55sec (3775 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 19 2021