Let's face it since the merger between Square and Enix, Final Fantasy games have really started to suck...bad. Last Final Fantasy I enjoyed? FF 9

That was less assinine that I was expecting it to be actually...

The game DOES get good at about the 15-20 hour mark and most of the previous suckage with the characters is in the service of "character development" and once they "develop" they become very, very likable. But Mr. Croshaw was right about one thing, this is NOT good storytelling, especially not for a videogame.

Also...

I KNEW IT! Nobody dislikes FF6!

This is one of the reasons why I liked Dragon Quest 8 so much. You start the game, fight a short training battle, and then you're instantly told what your quest is going to be for the rest of the game. None of the wandering around waiting for the plot to start that seems to occupy the first halves of pretty much every other RPG; you just turn on the power and it's "Oh hai the king has been transformed into a monster and the princess into a horse, let's try to change them back kthxbai."

Of course, you do find out that things are a bit more complex than that later on, but your initial goal is never really invalidated. There's no point in the game where you have to stop and ask "Okay, why didn't the game just start here and skip all the tedious setup at the beginning," which is pretty refreshing.

Meh, expected better.

Yahtzee's gonna have 8 pages next week (i think).

Edit: nope two weeks

EmmerikXXII:

Machines:
Never played a FF game in my life, but that was as predictable as they come. Even before seeing the same point re-iterated for the fifth time with different wording.

The Kangaroo:
If Jim Sterling got flak for only playing up until the last boss fight, I wonder how much flak Yahtzee will get

It's Yahtzee, people will tell him he's a unique genius and boycott the game.

This. As much as I like Yahtzee, I'd like to see people start thinking for themselves instead of hanging on his every word.

ITT: Yahtzee fans.

Not ITT: Final Fantasy Fans.

i'm a FF fan, and i was actually excited about this review. but meh.

Well, it DOES get better as you go. But yeah, it should have been better from the beginning. Too bad you didn't find the strength to play further in, (lol).

Everything said here is true. (I have so far played about 8 hours of FFXIII. I have yet to understand what the fuck is going on as well.)

- The whole combat system business is SHIT. Why can't I walk up to people and hit them by pushing a button? Why must I remote-control my stupid-ass character to do stuff?
- All characters suck, except Lightning (because she hits people when they start talking too much bullshit) and maybe Sazh because he doesn't whine so much. But EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER is a complete fucking whiner. Especially Hope. I "Hope" this annoying bastard falls off a cliff and dies at some point in the game. At that point, I will throw a freaking party. (Okay, there was a point where Lightning left Hope on a rock in the middle of nowhere - unfortuantely the others came to the rescue... BAH!)
- Endless fucking corridors. Why am I even playing these? I just walk from point A to B and bonk some random enemies over the head, and there is ALWAYS a cock-block boss at the end of every
chapter which is ten times harder than what I've faced previously.
- Vanille's VOICE! Vanille TALKING AT ALL! AAAAHHHHH!!
- The cutscenes when the characters talk. WHY MUST THEY TALK! All they do is spout clichés like "Heroes don't run from fights!" and "We can't give up now!" The most useless ones are the ones where they just stop to say "Oh man, I need to rest *heavy sigh, sits down*" and then tell eachother how tired/old/young kids they are.

Sometimes I think FFXIII would've made a better movie. If nobody ever talked, because the writers sure as hell don't know what they're doing.

And why do I keep playing? Because I'm a sincerely hoping for that part when the game actually picks up and I know what the fuck is going on (and when I get out of the stupid damned Corridors of Endless Doom...

Nice review, time cards broke the flow a bit but it was good.

I've never really liked any final fantasy's after 10, if you could only ge through 5 hours on 13 I don't think I'd make it to the first boss battle.

I approve this review.

Thank you for saying this out loud. I bought FFXIII on launch day, played it for about 8 hours, then put it aside because quite frankly, all of my JRPG senses exploded and need a couple of weeks/months of repairs before they can function again.

What is the point of sticking a 20 hours linear dungeon corridor hand-holding beat'em up in front of what is supposed to be a RPG? And to introduce us to an "Easy Automatic" battle system and a set of awful, papier mache characters? Drive-by dialogue what? This is supposed to wow us and make us play on? Or is it some kind of "filter" to weed out the amateur masochists from the pros?

Still. Paid good money for this game. So *sigh* I will probably digest it completely over time. But, the intial part certainly has to be swallowed in small doses. Especially when things such Vanilla and Hope are hopping down the dungeon corridors...

Congrats on the Mana bar!

I liked how he bashed up the ditzy bitch in the end credits, don't blame him shes as annoying as hell

canadamus_prime:
Yeah, I thought Final Fantasy VI was the peak of the series too.

Ditto.

The Kangaroo:
If Jim Sterling got flak for only playing up until the last boss fight, I wonder how much flak Yahtzee will get

Who's Jim Sterling?

Like Dragon age FF13 is a more simple than it should be action game disguised as a AAA RPG............

Vorpal Chill:

canadamus_prime:
Yeah, I thought Final Fantasy VI was the peak of the series too.

Ditto.

FF9 was the best mechanic wise FF6 story wise.

I honestly agree with a lot that was said. The pacing for the first 10-15 hours or so is absolutely horrible, and you have little to no idea of what is going on.

Right now I'm 15-16 hours in, and the characters are (finally) starting to flesh out and have some substance other than the obvious stereotypes. That being said, it taking that long was a bad choice, but I still enjoyed it.

Loved the review! funny as always.

Archemetis:
I played for 30 hours, because I was really anticipating the game and oddly I enjoyed it, I intend to complete it too, someday.

But even I would be lying if I were to say that Yahtzee got most if not all points right on the money on this one.

Although I would've preferred an opinion built up on a worthwhile amount of time spent with the game.

Granted he hasn't got the time in a week for the full 50+ hour experience but somewhere between 10 and 15 hours would've been reasonable.

As for the exposition:

totally with him on that one...PHA+PGltZyBzcmM9Imh0dHA6Ly9mYzA3LmRldmlhbnRhcnQubmV0L2ZzNzEvZi8yMDEwLzA3MS83LzAvTWluaUdhbWVzX19fMDI1X2J5X1RlaF9HX21hbi5qcGciIGFsdD0iaW1hZ2UiLz48YnIgLz5ZZXMgSSBhbSBhd2FyZSBpdCdzIGluIHRoZSBnYW1lIG1hbnVhbCBhbmQgdGhlIGRhdGFsb2dzLCBidXQgdGhhdCBkb2Vzbid0IGV4Y3VzZSBhIGxhY2sgb2YgaW4tc3RvcnkgZXhwb3NpdGlvbiBvbiB0aGUgbWF0dGVyLjwvcD4=

Nice comic, I remember that part well, but I only died once there against Superpope. Anyways, am I one of the few people that actually had the plot put together by the time you were given the ability to shift through padagrims of whatever they are called? Heck, I didnt even have to read the primers to understand it.

Ugh, Thank ye gods I was able to trade this turkey back in and get MOST of my money back. I've played FF games since the first one came up and I have to say, this one was a bore. Boring combat, plus very long and boring cut scenes and HORRIBLE characters. On a plus side, the graphics are nice (Even more so on the PS3 version).

lkevil:
I love it when Yahtzee completely destroys a game. . .

Except he didn't. He just basically said, "I hate JRPG games and didn't have time this week cause I was helping people get drunk*. Still, I'm under contract, so take the bland repeat of me talking about hating JRPG games."

There have been games he has done a good job taking to the cleaners (see Tabula Rasa or Spore or SSBB) and this isn't it.

*A noble effort and a much better usage of time than any game.

how did you go with out chewing off your face

I don't care what game it is if you have to trudge through 20+ hours for it to get good (as I've heard from other reviewers not just Yahtzee)it's a terrible game.

Loved the bit about the stove. Nice analogy.

I've been hearing this game is not only bad as games go, but bad as Final Fantasy games go. Even look at the game from a great distance it's easy to see that turning a franchise known for great sprawling environments full of lots of weird arse monsters to grind and reducing it to a bunch of linear corridors is just madness.

PayJ567:
Wow, Was I the only one to find this episode.....Alot worse than usual?

I mean if you've got a load of work to do with other stuff do that, take a week off from making this show or something.

Well what can I expect from free entertainment.

Totally agree with this. Its pretty common knowledge that FFXIII is a long game. Playing for five hours, calling it shit even when its meant to be 50 hours is kind of ridiculous really <<;

Massive ZP fan, but if you don't have the time... Stick with the stuff you do have the time for maybe? :P

Let's face it, noone actually expected him to play up to chapter 11, did they... Anyway, I hope that bar goes well enough for him to be able to relax a bit and get more into the games that he is reviewing, because the "valid point - to - comedy" ratio went from 50/50 to 10/90 in the last few weeks and that kinda sucks.

Commissar Fuklaw:
This game is bad and you should feel bad for liking it.

I'm sure it is to you. I love this game.

Why are people saying that the game starts to be fun twenty hours in?

In twenty hours, you could play two games that are fun all the way through.

Why shouldn't a game be enjoyable from the beginning?

Screw bias when JRPG's are involved. I always hated them and I always will. Hail Yahtzee! :)

Arkhangelsk:
Eh, I thought it was a pretty bad review. Even though you have the boredom threshold of 12 picoseconds, you could at least give it a bigger chance and give it some more substantial criticism. The nitpicking was more present than the actual criticism.

Still, it was pretty funny, I know you do this for comedy, so I will still get FFXIII, despite all horrible things said.

I think 5 hours is more than fair to give any game a chance. If it takes 5 to 20 hours for the story to kick in and the gameplay to get good, then that's not good game design. I know many gamers think that longer is better (especially for RPG's) but I'd rather play 2 hours that's good all the way through (ex portal) than 20+ hours of padding.

But like others have said, we don't watch Yahtzee to make buying decisions, we just enjoy watching a brit go crazy XD

Congrats on the Mana Bar. Glad its doing well.

But honestly, this review was something I expected... As I played, I saw exactly what Yahtzee would hate and I knew exactly what he was going to say about it...
Unbiased... I am SO sure... ¬.¬

Funny though...
With the erotic fanart though.... it's Final Fantasy... if there isn't one picture of the "kooky" girl getting her pumpkin tits out or being raped by tentacle monster du jour then it's not a Final Fantasy game, is it?

What Yahtzee has touched upon here is that he seems to (inadvertedly) realize that games need the quality to "last" the gamer long enough 'till the very bloody end. I think "customer satisfaction" might be one way to put it.

I made a promise to myself I would not be playing this game, It hasn't been hard to keep as I got sick of final fantasy a while ago.