FFXIII post-endgame thoughts
Apr. 4th, 2010 07:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
joiedecombatI beat FFXIII! Shockingly enough, the boss fights get a lot easier after you spend about 20 hours of play time tooling around Pulse cleaning up Cieth Stone missions and racking up ridiculous amounts of CP. Who would have thought.
I have to say, the ending of the game seemed kind of anticlimactic to me. Upon contemplation, I think the emotional climax of the game may really be somewhere around Chapter 9 or so. After that the characters mostly have their act together emotionally, but the plot gets pretty loose, in comparison with the much more effective storytelling of Chapters 7 and 8. Even without the last-minute time out for extensive sidequesting, the endgame therefore kind of dragged, and lacked the impact that I got out of FFs VIII, IX, and X.
Also: this thing they've been doing in FFXII and XIII about not having a single clear main character is not really doing the storylines any favors. I liked all the main characters in FFXIII, but I think if they had decided early on whether the main character was going to be Lightning or Vanille or Fang (or whoever), it would have allowed for a much stronger resolution. It's not like they have to sacrifice characterization on the rest of the party to do that - FFX didn't.
The game also never gets around to bothering much with the secondary characters either, sadly, which disappointed me. I'd have loved to see more of Cid Raines, Rygdea, and Yaag Rosch. (Especially Rygdea. I choose to believe he's okay out there somewhere after the end FMV, helping out with the cleanup or something. Why only three scenes for Rygdea, Squeenix?)
Overall, I liked it, but it didn't grab me the way earlier games have. I'm still debating as to whether I like it more than I liked FFXII or not; I'm inclined to say yes, at least slightly, by virtue of having a better-developed main cast and a mostly more interesting combat system. (And Snow's shirtless scenes, which they were kind enough to flash back to in the end sequence.)
I have to say, the ending of the game seemed kind of anticlimactic to me. Upon contemplation, I think the emotional climax of the game may really be somewhere around Chapter 9 or so. After that the characters mostly have their act together emotionally, but the plot gets pretty loose, in comparison with the much more effective storytelling of Chapters 7 and 8. Even without the last-minute time out for extensive sidequesting, the endgame therefore kind of dragged, and lacked the impact that I got out of FFs VIII, IX, and X.
Also: this thing they've been doing in FFXII and XIII about not having a single clear main character is not really doing the storylines any favors. I liked all the main characters in FFXIII, but I think if they had decided early on whether the main character was going to be Lightning or Vanille or Fang (or whoever), it would have allowed for a much stronger resolution. It's not like they have to sacrifice characterization on the rest of the party to do that - FFX didn't.
The game also never gets around to bothering much with the secondary characters either, sadly, which disappointed me. I'd have loved to see more of Cid Raines, Rygdea, and Yaag Rosch. (Especially Rygdea. I choose to believe he's okay out there somewhere after the end FMV, helping out with the cleanup or something. Why only three scenes for Rygdea, Squeenix?)
Overall, I liked it, but it didn't grab me the way earlier games have. I'm still debating as to whether I like it more than I liked FFXII or not; I'm inclined to say yes, at least slightly, by virtue of having a better-developed main cast and a mostly more interesting combat system. (And Snow's shirtless scenes, which they were kind enough to flash back to in the end sequence.)
