FINAL FANTASY® XIII

[i]asterisk signs are used for minor details and notes[/i] ---{ Graphics/Design }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☐ Masterpiece ☐ Beautiful ☑ An original artistic direction ☐ Good ☑ Decent ☐ normal ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS + some interesting biomechanical enemy designs +- kind of a shame that majority of the game is set in some sci-fi structures - the open wilderness as well as the backgrounds look pretty nice - obviously the pre-rendered cutscenes are alright, but in actual cutscenes/gameplay, you'll notice pretty quickly the low-res models and textures (especially arms/hands and hair) ---{ Gameplay }--- ☐ Won’t ever touch any other game anymore ☐ Very good ☐ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☑ Mehh ☐ Tic Tac toe is better ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't +- the game doesn't have a classic level system, instead characters that aren't in your active party still gain skill points sounds nice on paper, but then you realize that you can't even make your own team until almost the end of the game + some encounters afterwards still force you to use specific characters +- most of the time, you'll get split into smaller groups (just 2 characters instead of full party), it's interesting for first few times, but then it just gets kinda annoying and makes some enemy encounters really annoying - missing even just one character can make them harder/slower to beat - the game actually opens up only in chapter 11 - it's not actually too bad, but most people probably already quit before getting to this part, and then it goes back to linear right afterwards - basically the whole game is extremely linear and constantly paused with both shorter and longer cutscenes with just few seconds-minutes long fighting/walking inbetween - while the paradigm sounds like a nice mechanic - having anyone do basically any role you want, in reality it feels A LOT more limiting than if each character had their set role like in previous games - repetitive missions - basically all about killing specific monster in specific area - endgame feels like they copied whatever enemies they could think of and put them all in one fight, combined with bossrush * on keyboard, the Escape key is automatically set to quit the game and can't be changed. Can mess with muscle memory from other games * the movement during combat adds a pretty nice feeling of action compared to previous games where you just had a static left and right side * Vanille is pretty metal (the double devil horns sign) * paradigms don't save when you change party members ---{ Replayability }--- ☑ A one-time experience ☐ For achievements ☐ If you wait a few months/years (or with mods) ☐ Definitely ☐ Infinitely replayable (or almost) - for me the game has almost no replay value because of it's gameplay flaws (mainly) Would probably just watch some video for story recap instead ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☐ Very good ☐ Good ☑ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf +- the dub is pretty good but it can sound quite low quality (especially during cutscenes) - some sound effects can sound quite generic - no audio settings ---{ Music }--- ☐ Just filling noises/No music ☐ Trivial and uneventful ☐ Decent Soundtrack ☐ Good and/or fitting the game's artistic dispositions ☑ Great ☑ Memorable ☐ Peak ☐ Transcending whispers of a forgotten world + great soundtrack as always, but since I haven't played all the FF games, I can't really compare where it would stand for me. Definitely more memorable than the 15 soundtrack imo ---{ Audience }--- ☐ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☐ Grandma + the story as well as overall difficulty makes it probably more suitable for older teens/adults ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☑ Potato ☐ average ☐ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer +- low system requirments but also there aren't really any settings you can adjust graphically except shadows resolution - some areas/cutscenes just randomly drop FPS, getting at 20FPS at times ---{ Game Size }--- ☐ Floppy Disk (<1gb) ☐ Old Fashioned (1-9gb) ☑ Workable (10-49gb) ☑ Big (50-100gb) ☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive ☐ You will want an enitre hard drive to hold it - takes 57.6gb a lot bigger than you'd probably expect only because there are two versions of each cutscene (for english and japanese dub) * deleting the cutscenes for the dub you won't use will lower the file size to 37.7gb ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ My 90 year old grandma could play it ☐ Just press 'W' ☐ Easy ☐ Medium ☑ Hard ☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ☐ Team Ninja games + unlike previous games, you get automatically healed inbetween battles +- while normal fights are pretty easy, basically just having to use auto-battle, fighting bosses/Eidolons can get really annoying - especially if the currently played character dies (point below) - getting game over because Lightning (or other character you currently play as) faints during battle feels like pretty artificial difficulty element, never really liked it * personally the combat system felt pretty off for me and I guess I never really understood how it should be played "properly" - a lot of enemy/boss encounters felt a lot harder because of that probably ---{ Grind }--- ☐ Nothing to grind ☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☑ Required for achievement hunting ☐ Isn't necessary to progress ☑ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second live for grinding - will probably need to grind a bit to progress ---{ Story/World }--- ☐ No Story ☐ Some lore ☑ It's there for people who want it ☐ Bizarre ☑ Average ☐ Well written ☐ Good ☐ Very Good ☐ Leading to more in-depth researches/thoughts ☐ Lovely ☐ It'll replace your life - the game doesn't really explain too well some of its terms (fal'cie, l'cie, pulse, etc.) - would be better if you had an option to see everyone's backstory as an option instead of forced if you're invested in the lore/story, you'll probably have to read the ingame datalogs rather than waiting for the game to give you the info straight - not completely story related and don't remember how it was in early-game, but feel like the characters in a lot of the late-game cutscenes feel pretty stiff - characters just keep on giving up and then hyping up again ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee (<2 hours) ☐ Short (3-10 hours) ☐ Average (11-25 hours) ☑ Long (26-50 hours) ☐ I have to ask my boss for vacation time (51-99 hours) ☐ To infinity and beyond (100+ hours/doesn't have an "end") + took me around 30 hours to beat the game ---{ Achievements }--- ☐ No achievements ☑ Obtainable just by playing ☐ Requires multiple playthroughs ☐ Some grind ☐ Significant grind ☑ Too much grind ☐ Requires co-op/multiplayer ☐ Requires DLC(s) ☐ Can't be obtained anymore ☐ Hard to obtain (specific playstyle/challenge) ☑ Completionist ☐ Missable ---{ Bugs }--- ☐ Never heard of ☑ Minor bugs ☐ Fixable ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ☐ Hollow Knight - sometimes blackscreen after loading save ---{ 4 / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☑ 4 ☑ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☐ 8 ☐ 9 ☐ 10 ☐ 1̷̤̃1̸̢̤͗̓ Unless you're a fan of the series, just don't. Probably the only game I've played so far where I'd willingly uninstall it right before finishing it. At first the gameplay is pretty alright, but then you realize that it just keeps going on, and on, and on....until you realize that it's literally been 2 hours of the one same looking corridor and reskinned enemy encounters, then multiply 5x. It feels like this should've actually been like a movie/series (similar to Kingsglaive, Brotherhood or Advent Children) with the ammount of cutscenes and rather lacking and very linear gameplay style. I think that the world/story can be interesting, but unlike something like Death Stranding, it's just not good enough to make up for the gameplay.