Finished FFXIII. Won't go into a ton of details so as not to spoil anything. Should be a safe read for all!
Music: Meh, almost nothing really stands out here. Granted my speakers have been having issues which hurt the bass a bit, but didn't seem to offend the songs so much as explosions. Lacks the memorable songs that pretty much every FF have had. (Even 8.) 3/10
Plot: Okay so... if you just read all the chapter reviews, the plot is pretty straightforward and solid. The problem is, they don't explain the plot well with the actual words. The ending also... doesn't make a ton of sense. (Not the end end, but right before the final boss end.) Still Vanille/Fang plot and Sazh plot were good... I just wish someone with a brain had written the dialogue because it could have been a pretty awesome concept. 5/10
Characters: Sazh is awesome. Vanille/Fang end up being pretty damn cool outside of voice acting that I learned to live with. Lightning/Snow aren't too offensive. I know Gref would disagree with that, but I dunno... Lightning seemed to be pretty damn human. She got angry instead of being rational, she changed her mind often, but usually with at least some reason. (Although a couple times it was annoying.) Neither were great characters... but they weren't awful. And then Hope. Hope was the character who didn't need to be in the game. After his initial issues he became the Rikku of the group. GO TEAM WE CAN DO IT. Still, I'll give them a pretty solid. 8/10 (Once again, real writers to fix the Lightning/Hope dialogue would have helped a ton. I *should* have really enjoyed this cast.)
Battle: Started slow. Most games give you an intro area, but this one was a bit long. Not pre chapter 11 like people have been saying, but still... yeah. Also, 2 character battle got old too fast. It was fun once I got to 3, but that was only for like 60% of the game. 40% is a long time to be using a not full party. So 3/10 for 40% and 8/10 for 60% is... 6/10
Bad guys: The 3 main human bad guys were all pretty cool, but... they all seriously lacked screen time. The big bad boss dude had screen time, but lacked the cool factor. Also, this game threw way too many fucking "giant robot/giant monster" bosses at you. I mean, games will have random bosses, but this was ridiculous. Of the 6973409 bosses in the game, maybe 3 or 4 would be rankable. Too much time for random bosses + not enough plot for the badasses = 3/10 for bad guys.
Side Quests: Missions is... not as cool as the Monster Arena. The Chocobo game is also kind of lame compared to some of the others. Also, the rewards from these quests are 94.3% garbage, which is never good for side quests. I will probably beat the missions eventually, which says something good, but mainly because I'm hoping it unlocks more Sazh/Chocobo plot. 5/10
Weapons/Accessories: I like how they do weapons in this game. There is no GOD weapon for each character. You actually have to... you know... make sacrifices/choices. The downside is that it's ridiculously hard to tell which weapons will be good late game without Gamefaqs/Guide. The accessories is pretty generic. It was kind of nice not having to store 8 kinds of armor for each character, but the lack of variety in accessories is a bit dull. The hidden bonuses is a cool idea, but doesn't play much of a factor. (Except for autostagger, which is all kinds of random win.) 6/10 for this area.
So... despite these somewhat low scores, my overall rating is going to be a 7/10 I think. I was critical of each aspect, but to be honest, it's the first RPG since Disgaea 3 to hold my interest for any time period. That says something even if no particular area of the game amazed me outside of the pretty graphics.
