Final Fantasy XIII for PlayStation 3 Reviews by Gamers

Final Fantasy XIII felt like an attempt to remake FFX in terms of basic storyline and game play. However, it fails to even come close to fulfilling the legacy of this or other previous Final Fantasy titles.

Story: 1
You will spend the first several hours of the game at a complete loss as to where the story is going. In fact the story won't make much sense at all, unless you spend the time to read the majority of the entries in your glossary, as very little of its contents are actually woven into the narrative of the story. The revelations of the storyline that should be intriguing are painfully predictable.

Character: 2
The characters feel as though they stepped straight out of a soap opera: overly dramatic and emotional to the point where its nearly sickening. Always at each other's throats, you'll hear them reiterate the same speech again and again at each cut scene. Any development seems to be forced and fake, changing the character's personality without apparent reason.

Game Play: 1
The game plays itself, with little interaction from you. It features the "auto-attack" function which picks the best method of defeating the selected foe. While you can choose your own attacks, you'll waste time that could lead to your death. Instead, the game play tries to focus on switching the job classes of your characters to keep your attention. You will probably only use this function to bring out a healer or in a boss battle. The weapons and accessories have a leveling system, using items to give them experience and gain levels. This can be time consuming and expensive.

Sound: 6
The music is decent, and there are a few good melodies, but nothing comparable to past titles. The voice acting was decent for a JRPG, but the spoken lines are saturated with forced drama to the point they are laughable. This dampens the effect of the voice acting.

Graphics: 10
This is where the game truly shines. Its scenes are breathtaking and has some of the highest quality graphics to date.

2000 characters is far too few, here is the very short version.
The game looks and sounds amazing. It's like a cg movie.
The story is interesting and the characters are probably some of the most likable (as a whole) in a long time.
The gameplay starts off interesting. It's fast paced, real-time managed with action gauges. Characters have roles, which makes it feel a bit like an MMO (not what I want in my console rpg), but at first is very manageable. Teams start designated, but after 15 or so hours (I might have left my game on for a bit) you'll be able to use whoever you would like. Roles are managed by paradigms, prechosen role groups designated outside of combat. Unfortunately, it gets to the point where every combat is decided by your ability to have the right party members at the right time. Dying isn't too big of a deal with the "retry" option, which will put you at the point right before you died. A lot of the battles had me dying to something obnoxious when encountering a new enemy, retrying, changing paradigms and finishing the battle with a good rating. They also seem to love elemental/physical resistance mixups. Making it incredibly difficult to stick with a group you like or even a well-rounded paradigm set. Eventually it gets to the point where every combat is obnoxious elemental matchups, needed debuffers instead of buffing characters, needing tanks that can switch to specific elemental damage, etc. You only control the lead character, the rest are cpu controlled (based on role) and often take actions that aren't really the best choices. They won't make obvious mistakes like casting fire spells on fire immune monsters, but failing to 'tank' properly is a normal occurrence.
In the end, it just felt like work. This is the first FF game that I just got tired of playing. I don't want my relaxation time to feel like a second job. I love difficult rpgs (7th saga, wizardry series). This just felt like even when given a choice, there wasn't one.