Final Fantasy XIII for Xbox 360 Reviews by Gamers

Let me preface this first by saying that I'm not a FF loyalist by any means. I enjoyed FF V and VI (aka FF 2 & 3 on SNES), but that was last FF experience I had prior to this.

Now, I will say this - FFXIII was the biggest waste of my time for the following reasons:

1) Unlikeable characters - I did not care for any of them. They were all forgettable, and none of them really had an interesting storyline to follow. Fang was as good as it got, but honestly, for as cool as they tried to portray her, I still didn't care.

2) TERRIBLE gameplay - I don't know how the progression from VI to now was, but I will say that there are so much less options from a game that came out nearly 15 years ago, which is a terrible sign for any franchise. Spells & Callers are totally irrelevant now, since all you have to do is hit the Auto-Battle option, and then MAYBE use a caller if you don't have any potions or phoenix downs. There was nothing particular spectacular about the spell abilities you gain (Libra and Dispelga were the only ones I used throughout the gameplay). Because Light was the main character, as long as my party was lead by her, I would be able to complete 95% of the game w/o much problem. The crystarium classes were cool for a time, but overall, they weren't anything special. The classic RPG exp. points system > this attempt at something new.

3) What was the story again? - I have no idea what I just did after spending 70 hours of playing. Yes, they give you datalogs to read through in case you didn't understand the cut-scenes, but the story is so bad that you won't even understand the datalogs. L'Cie, Fal'Cie, whatever. I didn't care after 10 hours, and I had another 60 hours to go.

Only positives were the graphics. Cut-scenes, though confusing in content, looked great.

I expected a lot of my return to the franchise, and I was greatly disappointed. I'm staying away from this franchise til I hear they got it right.