Metareview: Final Fantasy XIII

Don't you be hatin' on Edge cause they flying low and dangerous with their scores.


They're being "Edge"y!

Edge-y...

...

...

...I GET IT!!!!

Do you guys get it? The...Edge...and they're...

...

...sigh...

i played FFXIII for about an hour. I agree with the rating. the story telling is non-existent for the time that i've played, which makes it hard to relate to the characters. no story, no relatable characters just translates to pressing up on the analog and jamming on A and occasionally using potions.

the joystiq review said it'll take another 14 hours of play before it gets interesting. no thanks, i have better things to do.

now where the f is persona 5?

I give it a 4 out of 5 reach arounds. Edge is just being edgy.

Edge hates on everything, I never count their review as legit by any stretch. It's like if you took Yahtzee Ben Croshaw's advice for every game you'd only ever play games from Valve.

Even gamers in Japan didn't really liked it. All other JRPGs sold way well more than FFXIII. Almost all stores still have a huge amount of stock and they're already discounting the game at half price.

http://kotaku.com/5469394/retailer-slashes-final-fantasy-xiiis-price-in-half

I haven't played Persona 4 yet...sad considering its sitting in my house still in the wrapper....along with Black and a few other PS2 games....

Persona 5 would most likely be an PS3 exclusive tho.....

"i played FFXIII for about an hour. I agree with the rating. the story telling is non-existent for the time that i've played, which makes it hard to relate to the characters. no story, no relatable characters just translates to pressing up on the analog and jamming on A and occasionally using potions."

This goes for just about every FF game I've played, besides 9. If an hour is all you're willing to give it I don't see how you can play any story based game with a tutorial portion or long winded exposition.

I still haven't been able to start FF 7 because I haven't been able to get past the beginning. Is that the game's fault? Maybe, but I'm willing to admit that it might just have something to do with me as well.

Edge scored FFX poorly as well; they gave it a 6. I thought X was great. I'm only a 2 hours into XIII so far, but I like it.

Sinai,

So you played FFXIII for an hour and tossed it aside, but you're chomping at the bit to play a Persona game, the last of which the first FOUR(!) hours were literally just walking from place to place and pressing the "X" button repeatedly.

I just don't get it...

I see where they're coming from, I'm already cringing far too often at the dialogue and the voice acting. Does every character also have to be constantly making tiny moaning sounds while they stand there? There's often 10 awkward, annoying little "unh!" sounds between sentences, it's genuinely distracting.

The EDGE review is 110% correct

@sinai

Then you must have played it for about 5 seconds, because I only just unlocked the paradigm shifts, and the story already has me spooging.

@sinai If your time is so precious then you shouldnt of even tried FFXIII in the first place since it has been pretty obvious that it takes well over 80 hours to do everything.

Im only about 5 hours in, and I must say the story has not "grabbed" me yet, but Im gonna give it time as I'm sure it will get better.

You say you agree with EDGE with their rating(which is fine, not everyone is gonna love the game) but I think you fail to realize that the people at EDGE played it for way more than 1 hour before coming to that conclusion.

@sinai,

i don't think your opinion of this game matters, not because you don't like it, but because it's a 45+ hour game and you expected everything to pop within the first hour. don't play rpgs because you're obviously not patient enough.

You know in math when you got the outlier out of all the numbers you had and didn't use it towards the total percentage, yeah, guess what, edge should and as far as I am concerned is an outlier.

@Ballistic H =
the opinion of "all the japanese gamers" was heavily exaggerated by westerners reading stuff written on sites like Sankaku by trolls (half of whom didn't know much themselves). the reality is the reaction to FFXIII was no worse than what EVERY final fantasy has gotten pretty much since VII.

Final Fantasy has always gotten mixed reviews online from the range of those who love anything that comes out to those that hate it just because FF is the popular kid in teh school yard and they think it makes them look cooler to hate the popular kid.

thats not fanboyism (for those of you that i can tell with my internet psychic powers are about to throw that blanket retort). thats the literal truth, FFXIII's consumer review scores were no worse than the FFs for the past 10 years, so what does that tell you about how much weight you should put into them? what does it tell you that FFXIII's average reviews on japanese sites have actually gone UP as time has past tell you bout that initial wave of negative reviews?

as for your claim that every other jrpg has outsold FFXIII, just get out of the room right now cause clearly you know nothing and are whipping things out of the air. no seriously, there's no point debating if you're going to just whip out blatant BS like that.
for the others around here wondering, there's been no other JRPG thats even broken 1 mil other than Monster Hunter this gen in japan, nevermind hit over 1.8 (last i checked). FFXIII so far is THE BEST selling jrpg in japan (most likely, worldwide also)

By the way everyone's reacting, you'd think that EDGE just told Square Enix that they had just lost the Mandate of Heaven.

I dont understand why people are giving FFXIII shit, i mean yea it is getting bad scores, but there are more good scores than bad scores.

More like Edge actually knows what they're talking about same with TeamXbox.

Seems redundant but I'll say it anyways. If your taking into account reviews from any source prefaced with the name "Team" is safe to say they are not unbiased.

Suffice to say that this game while being a serious departure from the series, is still a pretty good game. The battle system in particular is extremely well executed. Not to say this game is any better or worse than they might let on, but really if you are at all interested, you should take the time to read the actual reviews before making a conclusion. You may come to the same conclusion, but you will know that you have done so of your own volition.

Oh look at me, I'm edge, I give bad reviews with inconsistent opinions, because, hence the name, I'm edgy and cool. Subscribe now kiddos!

Yeah I agree with reson8er. Read the Edge review first. It actually compliments Final Fantasy XIII as much as they criticize it. The main gripe they seem to have is that you have to suffer through the tedium of the first 25 hours to enjoy another 25 (which is correct). Doesn't seem to add up, does it? I wouldn't want to play the game again either (after the first run), just because of the first 25 hours I'll have to go through. If you take that flaw in the first 25 hours out of the review, it'd certainly worth higher score than a 5, I'll admit that.

Just some quotes to show you:

"Then it all goes right. Your party decamps to Pulse, a sprawling, slightly-more-open world beneath Cocoon, and the real FFXIII begins to emerge."

"FFXIII is uncommonly beautiful, with a background fiction as rich as its story is poor, and at its beating heart is a battle system that stands among the genre’s finest."

"suffer through the tedium of the first 25 hours to enjoy another 25 "

I completely disagree. I started to enjoy the gameplay right when you got to Lake Bresha and they introduced the paradigm system. (Which is about 45 minutes in)

I guess I should point out here that Edge game it 5/10. Which is the same as 50/100 in pure math terms, but not at all the same when the 0-100 scale is so top weighted - anything under 70% is considered failure and anything under 60% is total failure.

In other words, you just can't convert the Edge score from the 10 scale to the 100 scale like this. It's quite a reasonable review if you read it.

I guess I should point out here that Edge gave it 5/10. Which is the same as 50/100 in pure math terms, but not at all the same when the 0-100 scale is so top weighted - anything under 70% is considered failure and anything under 60% is total failure.

In other words, you just can't convert the Edge score from the 10 scale to the 100 scale like this. It's quite a reasonable review if you read it.

"It's quite a reasonable review if you read it."

I had a math teacher say I got a reasonably good test score, and when she gave me the paper, it was a 65.

I don't think Edge's score is all that reasonable, and it really does undo anything they said in the review to counteract backlash.

I kind of agree with your assessment of the weighted score Sizer; though some people still might not see it that way (after all these years). I certainly don't always, I realize sometimes a 6.0 or 60/100 games can be fun too. The review is indeed quite reasonable; it's not like they just start out bashing the game and never stopped all through the end.

@Traceur_Ryuk: Well, it's good for you that you enjoyed it (no sarcasm), but it's apparent that casual gamers that aren't fans of FF series already would not find a lot of enjoyment in going through the first 25 hours just to unlock FFXIII's complete potential.

People need to remember this isn't high school. Most reviewers don't review based on a A, B, C, D, F scale (with the exclusion of 1Up). 5 out of 10 is middle of the line. It doesn't mean "hellishly horrible." Consider this: If it were 2.5/5, would there be such bad reactions?

My understanding of a 5/10 means the game has a specific audience that will enjoy it, as well as a specific audience that won't enjoy it.

"If you take the bad scores, the game has good scores!"

Where have I heard that before?

The whole gaming industry doesn't follow the same scale of review scores, so saying it is like school is stupid. Each teacher is given a set of goals that the students must accomplish to get a certain grade. Each reviewer has their own way of reviewing.

Let me give a good example...

Games like Shrek The Third, Spyro, Bladestorm, Fantastic Four, etc, got 5/10 reviews. To compare FF13 to that level is just wrong. I have yet to delve too deep into the game and can already tell it's not worth a 5/10. I can't say it's a 9/10 or anything, but 5 is just murdering it.

@ A1B2


You mad? Did a JRPG kill your family?

Wiizer, you mad. Did Edge kill your family?

Even Eurogamer bitch slapped the game with an 80/100. I'm afraid now, very afraid.

@Spike

You are comparing games of completely different genres to one another, not to mention assuming that the same staff member reviewed each title. Just because game A and B received score X doesn't make them equal at all, unless you have some yet to be revealed detail where the reviewer said "If you don't like FFXIII, try picking up Bladestorm instead!"

Doesn't matter what games I use as an example assuming that reviewer is not basing the game off of another. The point I am making is games with that low of score generally are considered not so great. And to be able to say that those games I listed suck, but FF13's still good despite the low score, is just asinine. A review is a review. A quality of worth, no matter what game scores I compare.

Edge gave Valkyria Chronicles a 70/100, and that game was easily 100/100. So counting for their margin of error, FF13 should be 80/100; not great but not horrible.

When I was writing I always scores on the concept of mathematical averages, not the public education method. 5/10 is middle of the road average. No game can be reviewed its own merits, it must be looked at in competiton with alternate games that cane be purchased and played. If I gave a game a 5/10, that would mean remarkably average, about half the population of alternatives is better
and the other half worse.

When dealing with reviews, the number (or stars or tomatos or whatever) is functionally useless. If it wasn't for major sites like Metacritic that drove readers, I would have campaigned hard to get rid of the numbers entirely. All numbers do is invite the population of morons to judge the entire review over a single digit (see most of this post for evidence). Reading comprehension is surprisingly poor over the Internet. I can guarantee that someone will read this comment and make a half-cock remark while missing the entire point (and even entire sections).

Read the review. Numbering systems are not standardized and as such should be ignored. I know it's hard, but reading may reverse the mental decay that's apparent in the video game community.

@Spike Spiegel: Well your gripe at first was the review score. If as you said later on, "A review is a review." Then I'd say you should follow your own sentiment and read the review instead of hinging the entire criticism on the review score.

You consider a score of 5 as bad, and the game was good regardless of the review. Edge's reviewer seems to think the game is good as well, but he/she also seems to consider that forcing the player to go through TWENTY FIVE hours of it just to get to the juicy part of the true potential of FFXIII makes it a bad game. It's a situation of negative outweighing the positive.

Read the review and get the point (which is that they do not hate JRPG or RPG, as your first statement).

Could you tell me a game you loved that got a really low score? I'm just wondering for my own knowledge. I like MAG a lot and it got pretty low scores. That's the only one I can think of.

Honestly, I enjoy quite a few games that reviewers hated.

Red Steel, Matt Hazard and Darkest of Days were all decent games that I played through and enjoyed. Especially Matt Hazard. I don't understand why it gets so much hate.

I enjoyed beautiful katamari, and it's got like a 73 on metacritic...

Because reviewers are not real people. They are obviously robots sent from the future with the sole purpose to destroy your video game buying habits.

I enjoyed Avatar (the game). It's pretty fun and a beautiful sight to behold in 3D. The complaints for the game have merit, but it's not near as bad as led to believe.

uh they are real people. You think real people are all going to have the same opinion? "Real people" include fanboys rating it a perfect 100 and others rating it a complete 0. Youre supposed to take advice from people that share the same interests as you, and that applies to reviewers, if you find yourself agreeing with IGN or Gamespot or god forbid Eurogamer a lot then those are the reviews you should be paying attention to.

This is why, unless I'm familiar with the way a source generally scores things, I ignore the score completely and just read the review for content. Even then it helps to be familiar with the reviewer so you know if they are being too nitpicky or too lax when talking about a game's problems. When I'm looking for an opinion on a game I generally go to a wide variety of reviewers whom I'm familiar with so I can gauge how I might like it in relation to how they felt about it.

or you could just ignore the scores and read the details. I saw that gametrailers gave god of war a 90% which is respectable, but after I heard them talk about it, I was like, "This sounds like 120%!"

I normally hate FF games but I hear this one is very linear...so now I'm a little interested.