so I beat FFXIII.

[seventhe]

and my first thought is, "Awesome! I'm done with that and now I can replay FFVI!" >.>

This should not be my reaction to beating the most recent FF game.

Final Fantasy XIII is an amazingly awesome game wrapped up in a thick gigantic blanket of garbage disaster bullshit. It's about 1/3 addictively enjoyable, and 2/3 horrible. This doesn't average out to make it an average game. It is simultaneously great and shite. This takes talent!! I actively loved parts of it and thoroughly loathed others. I feel very confused about it.

Playing the ending was ridiculous. I was working my way through Eden's [whatever] and Orphan's [whatever] and I got to the last bit where the lady statues start flying around and making warps and I am just like, what? WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK---- WHO ARE THE LADIES? WHAT ARE THE STATUES? ARE THEY SUPPOSED TO BE--- AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHAT THEY ARE???-------?? And then every time I walk somewhere or somewhere else a statue appears, does some fancy shit, warps me somewhere else to beat a goddamned miniboss and then THE ENTIRE STAGE REARRANGES ITSELF. AUGGGGHHHHHHH

So then I finally beat THAT BIT and I am successfully warped beyond, and the final stage of this game is this cool clinical hall spotted with floating couches. THERE ARE FLOATING COUCHES. IN THE BOSS' HOUSE. AT THE END OF THE GAME. WHY ARE THERE COUCHES

THEN I get into the final hall and THE GODDAMNED POPE BRIDE APPEARS. FUCKING BARTHANDELOUS. There's some conversation I don't really get and then he turns into a thing and I fight it and beat it and then he dies and SAZH DELIVERS THE BEST LINE OF THE GAME:

"Hey! Put a lid on it!"

^^^ SAZH HAS SUMMED UP MY FEELINGS ON FFXIII FOR ME.

AND THEN

THE FUCKING OWL DIVES INTO THE WATER AND THE SECOND BOSS APPEARS

Now okay - I have played a lot of FF games; I know by now that the final boss isn't the "final boss"; it's pretty much expected that there will be multiple bosses in a row. THAT'S NOT WHAT I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH.

WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH THE OWL. WHY DID THE OWL MAKE ORPHAN APPEAR. WHAT IS THE OWL

So then Orphan shows up. There's some more talk about shit. Basically what I am getting from the game is that Barthandelous wanted us to kill Orphan, and Orphan definitely seems to want to commit suicide by Lightning, but we are still going to fight and kill them both, BECAUSE REASONS????? There's some "it's gonna save the world" and then some "we choose our own destiny!!!!!!!!!1" and whatever

then Orphan dies, and there's some stuff with Fang and Vanille and Cieth everywhere and I'm still kind of stumbling over the entire story here. I simultaneously loved and hated Fang and Vanille's story and I'm afraid to say that I would have liked it 200% more if I had had the option to turn off Vanille's voice acting???

So anyway, I beat Orphan, Fang does her thing, but then everybody comes back anyway. because reasons?

THEN ORPHAN COMES BACK AS A CREEPY BABY FACE ON A WHEEL. THAT'S LAUGHING AT ME.

FFXIII, MY FRIENDS: THE POPE BRIDE AND A CREEPY BABY FACE ON A WHEEL.

There's so much HOWWWWWWWWWWWW and WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT wrapped up in my feelings on this ending.

Overall, I liked and disliked the game, like I said. I came to really enjoy parts of the battle system, eventually: I love Paradigms and the concept behind them, and it really did make battles strategic at a level I really enjoy and can get into. However, the thing about "if your party leader dies the entire battle is lost?" FULL FUCKING STOP, I HATE THAT, AND I DON'T CARE. IT'S UNFAIR AND STUPID. I don't care if you can "Retry" the battle. I don't care if you're supposed to know and be prepared. Fuck that. It's dumb.

I didn't really understand the story, and I'm not sure I like that I was 'supposed' to be keeping up with the Datalog - that's cheap storytelling, IMO. I loved some of the characters, especially by the end, but I couldn't care enough about the party as a whole to really get invested. And I couldn't keep track of so much of the rest of the cast -- seriously, when I fought Rosch I had to look up who he was and why I should care, and then during the final battle someone said, "Dysley?" and I actually yelled out loud, "DYSLEY? WHO IS DYSLEY?"

I'm not sure I'll make it back to doing the missions - even though the missions were one of the most enjoyable parts of the story since they were just fun smashing time with Fang, Sazh, and some other people - because I'm just not sure I'm invested enough.

But some parts of it were so awesome that I can't just say, like, "Don't play it" -- because it was actually pretty fun. In the middle.

Comments

[thene]

It's very much a 'because I'm a Metal Gear fan' thing, but he way I read it is as meta about games. FFXIII is an FF game with an MGS plot, end of.

Cocoon is a gameworld. It's completely artificial and only exists so things can die there in order to make characters level up. It's fake and disposable. What happens there is a game. The objective is to kill a thing that is designed to die in order to fulfil the conditions of the game. For the game characters, there is no way out of the scenario.

This isn't textual as such and FFXIII-2 messes with this theory (ALONG WITH MANY OTHER PERFECTLY FINE THINGS) but I got the vibe that Gran Pulse was deserted because all the people had become l'Cie, ie, videogame characters. FFXIII is a game about how gameworlds are ridic phoney and a single group made up of game characters can't really function, and a society made up of game characters will just die.

And why do they try to kill Orphan even though The Patriots the fal'cie will win if they do? Because they're game characters and if you, the game player, really wanted the characters to not do stupid things you need to stop playing. (This is totally a Metal Gear thing - there are two different moments in MGS games where a character tells you to switch off the console, so I am used to that being A Thing.)

I really hated the game over if party leader dies thing. :/ They took that out of FFXIII-2, if it's any comfort, and made a few other tweaks such as making paradigm shifts faster.

[seventhe]

I'm going to have to think about this~! I can already tell that FFXIII will become a fun fandom for me to write in, mainly because (I feel like) there are all these great holes just waiting for me to explore. (I tend to write more for games that have holes or maybe didn't make sense - FFIV? FFVIII? - rather than ones that feel "complete", like FFX or FFVI.)

[thene]

IA - it's why I can't write for FFX and can barely write for FFVII. They're too good.

I've not done that much with FFXIII yet, but it needs to happen. There's so much wrong and I love it all, and I am pretty sad at how few people appreciate it.

[seventhe]

I just read something that said the statues in the creepy disjointed red clusterfuck of a dungeon were Eden.

My mind: she is blown.

[thene]

Oh wow, I never knew that!

Lightning wanting to kill Eden was one of my favourite lines in the game. It's a declaration that her destructive ambitions are bigger than Sephiroth's, what's not to love? Also this. This is Lightning, always.

[seventhe]

I guess I don't really know whether it's a canon interpretation or a theory! But even if it's just a theory, I was like: huh. wow. Especially since those floaty statues are what brings you to the minibosses - and then eventually what lets you pass to Orphan. Mindfucky. I like it!

ALSO YES.

[auronlu]

That was me extrapolating from the datalog, which says Eden is the CPU Fal'Cie of Cocoon controlling everything (even giving orders to Barthandalus), and then we get dropped into a funky CPU virtual-computer space with those floaty statues who are guarding the pathways through the CPU-space, so they are parts of Eden. Or avatars of Eden. Or something.

(FFXIII-2 uses a similar landscape for a sentient all-powerful CPU computerspace serving the same function as Eden.)

Also, the Final Fantasy Wikia interprets those figures as Eden, or else "servants of Eden."

[auronlu]

I mostly wrote FFX because X2.

I mean, my longfics are all about THIS IS HOW THE WORLD SHOULD HAVE GONE.

[thene]

hahaaha, I got into writing MGS fanfics because of MGS4, because it was so unsatisfying that I needed fandom to fix it for me.

[zen_monk]

I KNOW RIGHT?

It's like the ending wants to cram as many meaningful and deep messages as possible without a foundation to back it up or meaningful dialogue that has the characters reacting to it in a way that is personal to their own messages and stuff!

DID WE PROVE THE VILLAIN WRONG? (I personally don't think so.)

WHAT IS THIS REBELLION HAPPENING THAT HAS THESE MEANINGFUL SIDE CHARACTERS DYING (Something happened in Cocoon, and it had little to do with a bunch of l'Cie showing up randomly.)

BYE CID, WE ONLY KNEW YOU AS A BOSS BATTLE.

Crazy dimensional warps everywhere, man! That place has crazy architecture and then couches! And why is battle system still so easy, and yet difficult to manipulate?? I am perpetually confused and also kept at it because there must be secret somewhere....

Yeah, that game.

[seventhe]

Dude:

LEGIT HAD TO LOOK UP WHO CID WAS.


DON'T JUDGE ME

[ser_pounce_alot]

15 hours in, i had no idea who anyone was, refused to read a dataloge just be getting vital story the game should have been giving me and cared about no one but sazh. lol your thoughts sound like my thoughts, except that you actually managed to finish it.

[seventhe]

It's really sad because the FFXIII battle system actually ended up being one of my favorites ever - I liked it even more than FFXII and that's saying something - I loved the way the mechanics worked and I could have happily trudged along doing nothing but fighting battles forever. However, it took so long to get to the point where even the battle system made sense to me, and I'm not sure who at S-E thought that was anything resembling a good idea.

[ser_pounce_alot]

that was the only reason i played for as long as i did! i was like la la but i'm abusing paradigm shifts so that i'm constantly hitting things oh wait story oh fuck it, fight more.

[novel_machinist]

Have you played any of the Drakenguard games? If you did, then the ending makes more sense, strictly by not having a bunch of giant babies wandering around trying to kill you in a maze to get to the final boss.

[lassarina]

I too loathe the "MC dies, you're fucked" even though I am well trained by Atlus on how the fuck to deal with it at this point.

I would like to talk to you a lot about Fang/Light/Vanille perhaps >.>;

[seventhe]

Like I said above, I can already tell this could be a good writing fandom for me, mainly because it has that "confusing/incomplete, but still interesting" feel to it that I love so much.

[owlmoose]

You have hit on one of the things I hated most about this game: endgame! Here we've been pressing forward, told that letting Orphan die would be this terrible thing that would destroy Cocoon, and then suddenly Lightning and co. are deciding that the next thing to do is to kill Orphan? Wait, what? Where did this come from?

And guess where you have to go to find out Lightning's reasoning? IT'S IN THE DATALOG. Never discussed in game, no. It's buried in the goddamned datalog.

I do love the characters and can see how this would be a great world for fic to fill the gaps, but there was just too much incoherent messiness for me to get invested in the long term.

[seventhe]

I just wrote up a long bit about characters, and I think this is a theme about my feelings for this game: a lot of things got "wrapped up" in a way that I think was supposed to feel "monumental" and "conclusive" and I am a little disappointed at the lack of messy fallout. (I was initially trying to write about relationships - romantic and otherwise - that I wanted fic about, but in doing so I struck upon the fact that so many of the interpersonal relationships were a lot more interesting to me before they were 'resolved' in the game. And I feel like the ending was the same way.)

[thene]

I struck upon the fact that so many of the interpersonal relationships were a lot more interesting to me before they were 'resolved' in the game.

IA. Particularly Lightning & Snow, and Snow & Hope. It was the pent-up melodrama that I most adored about this game. This may be why I wound up liking Fang/Lightning quite a lot - they don't have that resolution, exactly.

[seventhe]

That's exactly who I was talking about - especially Snow/Hope, because that one was really a surprise to be in that I cared very little about both Snow and Hope alone (not that I disliked them per se, just mostly that I liked other characters better) but I was really interested and invested in their super messed up relationship thing. And then suddenly everything was great and all of that interpersonal tension was gone. noooooooooooooooooo bring it back I like my ships with a little bit of badtouch okay

[thene]

Ohh yesss. From very early on, Hope and Snow were my least favourite characters but that segment of Palumporum in which your party is just the two of them was awesome, omggg you are actually literally trying to stab him in the back and I don't know who I want to fail more ♠♠♠♠♠♠♠ And one can always headcanon that the hard feelings don't go away that easily :)

ETA: I feel like that's kind of the point, too. You are meant to hate Snow and Hope, because in a normal JRPG one or the other of them would be the main character: either the big brave blond guy who just wanted to save other people and be a hero, or the traumatised teen on a revenge bender. I think I was meant to enjoy seeing them taken apart, and I did.

[auronlu]

" I think I was meant to enjoy seeing them taken apart, and I did."

One of the best things about this Curate's Egg of a game is that it takes a lot of classic JRPG tropes and STICKS VOODOO PINS IN THEM STABBITY STABBITY.

[thene]

This. Truly, this.