Well, FFXIII finally got here from GameFly and wow am I totally not surprised at how much I dislike it. This game could give Hideo Kojima a run for his money on the cut scenes of DOOM. The cut scene to game play ratio is so out of whack it was more like watching a movie, but every 30 or 40 minutes it kicks you back to the main menu so you gotta smash some buttons to get back to the movie.
And my predictions for the game were pretty spot-on. Once again we are in medias res (starting after the story began) and we have to wait for any semblance of back story. Of course seeing as we're playing an FF game, we can pretty much assume there is an evil overlord/corporation ruining Happy McHappysville, and our main character is trying to stop them. Oh, did I mention the main character's name is Lightening? *head desk*
Lightening is joined by Hope, Snow & Vanille. Oh my god I wish I was kidding. Snow is, of course, our main male love interest and can summon a motorcycle. Vanille is -- you guessed it -- the quirky, hyper, kawaii girl who spouts off random bits of cutesy dialog that, at times, make zero sense with what is going on around her.
Which brings me back to my point about the Final Fantasy Archetypes: they are being worn to death. Carl Jung said that once an archetype is named as an archetype, it ceases to be an archetype and devolves into a cliche (that's not the exact word he uses but I'm not going to dig out my Jung book right now, thank you very much). Ever since FFVII, the standard FF characters are becoming more and more obvious. FFX was, I think, the pinnacle of "I see what you did there," with Tidus being so similar to Cloud, I was humming the Patty Duke theme song in my head.
I thought I understood why SquareEnix does this: because it creates a sense of familiarity. We instantly like certain characters and dislike others because we recognize them as who they are like. "Oh that guy? He's cool, he's like Sephiroth." But now the standards are wearing themselves so thin, they're not like a character, they are that character, only somehow more annoying. Vanille is Rikku on meth. And Rikku wasn't even Rikku, but a character who was like Yuffie, only somehow more annoying. See the pattern here? I imagine if you truly hated yourself, you could devote 48 hours to playing every FF game from FFVII - FFXIII and watch the slow, hateful devolution of the character types. I thought it was courtesy to the players, but now I understand it's just plain laziness. FF is milking their own brand faster and harder than Lucas with Star Wars.
And once a-fucking-gain with the ridiculous clothing. I like to think the designers of the game are failed fashion students who spend too much time at Harajuku Koen, and target their angst towards the players by finding the most garish color combination and draw lines of fabric that defy so many laws of physics, I'm worried they're going to disrupt the space-time-continuum, and call it a day.
I got about 7 hours into the game before I realized I don't hate myself this much. I story and dialog are mundane, the characters are trite, recycled garbage, and the game play is a joke. When the game does decide to let me play, the combat is ridiculously juvenile and simplistic, and somehow feels completely at odds with the most complex, convoluted upgrade system I've ever seen in my life.
No. Just no.
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