Final Fantasy 13

Well, it only took me what, 6 months to finish this game?

And it wasn't for lack of trying, believe me.  I kept shying away from playing it, because to be blunt, it wasn't that great of a game.  The graphics were fantastic, I can't argue that.  The combat was certainly innovative for a Final Fantasy.  Music, while not blowing me out of the water like some of the other scores in the series (e.g. 6, 7), was in general very good.  I guess my overall problem with Final Fantasy 13 is that, well...I don't feel like it should have been given the title.

By that I don't mean to say that the game isn't worthy of being called a Final Fantasy or anything so idealistic.  Quality factors into it, but not in terms of a rating from 1 to 10.  What I mean is that the elements of a game which a Final Fantasy is expected to do well, the essence of what made Final Fantasy games so great, is either glossed over or poorly done in the thirteenth installment.

It's not the linearity of FF13, nor the deviation of the battle system.  In fact, I applaud both as evidence that Square-Enix, or at least persons working at Square-Enix, have retained their testicles in the face of an industry all too prone to taking the easy way out in order to cash in on a successful franchise.  I harbor no doubts that Square cashes in on Final Fantasy, don't worry.  But if that's all they had wanted to do with 13 they could have put a lot less work into it.  While I would have liked more control over my party in battles, the strategic element offered by the paradigm system was legitimate and enjoyable.  The fights ranged from overly difficult to ridiculously pathetic, but that's a reasonable result of implementing a new system that you haven't had time yet to tweak.  The closed-corridor areas were disappointing purely because I'm accustomed to being able to explore the amazing worlds that Square creates.  [Aside, sorry Enix, but it'll always be Square first to me].  And I will admit that it was easier not to get lost in myriad side-quests because of said linearity.  Easier.

No, my beef with FF13 is that a Final Fantasy should have two things done well: story, and characters.  Square has missed the mark on both of those in consecutive games now in my opinion, and it's now officially a problem. I forgave them 12.  I looked past Vaan, although it was difficult.  I should have forced myself to see the degradation in primary protagonist from Tidus to Vaan, but the series had always been so good to me I let it go. 12's story was uninteresting and vague at best, irritatingly confusing at other times.  Characters like Balthier and Ashe were halfway decent, but still fell well short of the mold of greats like Kain, Locke and Aeris.  A little bit of intriguing character depth was flashed, but almost immediately burned up into obscurity.

13 is worst still, and this troubles me.  I understand that Square generally panders to its Japanese audience.  Really, I do.  But classics like 4, 6 and 7 were targeted at a Japanese audience as well, and yet they still managed to be excellent even in our western eyes.  A good game will bridge audiences easily if presented well.  Square either failed to realize that emo J-pop culture cliches whose every other line is a neanderthal-ish "uhhh..." do not translate very well across the eastern pond or simply face-planted in their efforts to make them appeal to loyalists of the company who are neither twelve years old nor fucking retarded.  I think that's what offends me the most.  Square has, for the second time, served up a decent if somewhat bland story wrapped in a thick shell of shitty dialogue and transparent, dull characters.  Dead Naughty Dog writers could come up with something better.

That bears repeating: a corpse sitting in Naughty Dog's studios could create better characters and dialogue than what your guys spent 5 years doing.  Five years!  I can't get a junior fucking programmer's position with Studio Hobo out in the dumpster behind Denny's, but somehow Square has hired the writers who came up with this drivel.

Square has one recourse out of all this.  They built their precious little game engine for the PS3 in order to show off all those fancy graphics, and I will grudgingly admit that sort of effort can skew a project's resources to the point where it will negatively impact other aspects of the game.  Which is why Square has one more Final Fantasy to convince me that they still know how to present coherent text and multi-faceted character development to people of high school age and above.  If they continue their descent into this weird form of senility, I'm pretty much renting from that point on, if I even deign to spent the money on a rental.

Please, Square-Enix (who's a good widdle Enix?), I know you can do better.  You still have some of the major players who've been with you since the glory days, and we're far removed from the time when money was an issue for you.  I know you have the resources and the vision to recapture my imagination.  All it takes is to afford the proper care for the core tenets of Final Fantasy: great story, great characters.

Love,

Dirty

p.s. Also could you design a game system where I don't have to buy a goddamn strategy guide or look up a FAQ online just to figure out how to not feel grossly underpowered without spending a bajillion hours on the game?  Seriously, you only need to convince me to spend 50 or so hours in there for me to blow my sixty bucks.