Just to get things out of the way, I am really enjoying the game, and find it to be superb looking -- especially the CGI --, though some of the textures can be inconsistent in terms of quality. The combat system is pretty unique, and definitely has some depth, and is fairly entertaining on the whole. The storytelling has been good as well... and I find it to have that weirdly complex quality that you can expect from some of the better futuristic-fantasy themed manga. The soundtrack is also quite superb, and I have found many of the characters to be endearing.
Having said that, the game is LINEAR AS FUCK. It is literally a narrow point A to point B game. Just to give you an idea... think of the last two Modern Warfare games... now imagine a game more on the rails than those...
Here is the thing. When you define a game's genre, you think of the things that that game does particularly well.
You would never call games like Half-life or Call of Duty RPGs, but you would certainly call those games first person action games, because that is the defining characteristic of those titles.
A game like Call of Duty is linear as hell, but we don't care, because it offers stellar twitch based action, and takes advantage of the linearity to employ some great set pieces.
What is it that FF13 excels at? Is the action good enough to carry the game on its own?
The game I'd like to compare Final Fantasy 13 to is Mass Effect 2.
Mass Effect 1 was a pretty hardcore RPG, with open maps etc.
Mass Effect 2 was a total turnaround. It didn't have an inventory system, it had no stats building, and the character skills were kept to only five. The game was also quite linear. While the 'town' areas were quite open, there was never any action to be found within. You couldn't simply walk from the towns in ME2 to the actiony areas like you would in ME1, and instead had to load those areas through the NPC conversation choices. The actiony areas were on-the-rails map-less areas similar to those in first person shooters like Half-life or Call of Duty.
And while there was some concern voiced over Mass Effect 2's trimming of the RPG fat, the game was overall critically acclaimed despite being a HUGE departure from Mass Effect 1.
Why is that? Why did the critics love Mass Effect 2, yet generally find FF13 to be disappointing?
The difference is that Mass Effect 2 excelled at the third person action elements to the point where it was as good if not better than most action games. It was story driven, yes, but it was a story driven action game, and not quite an RPG. ME2 may have gotten dramatically linear as compared to its predecessor, but it used that linearity to put together some of the most memorable and breathtakingly awesome setpieces I have come across in a game. Had the action in ME2 been terrible, or as average as that of its predecessor, the game would have been panned by the critics, because it didn’t excel as an RPG.
In the end you judge ME2 as an action game, because that's only user controlled aspect where it offers depth. The fact that it does it better than most action games is beside the point.
Final Fantasy 13, is not an action game in the slightest. It is still an RPG, and that's why I can understand why the linearity is disappointing to so many. Its action and storytelling are very very good, but are they good enough to define the game on their own? It depends on the person, really. That's why the scores are so all over the place.
Not every RPG has to be an open world affair like Oblivion, but RPGs need some sense of exploration. Even a game like Diablo was basically all dungeon crawling, but it always had a sense of exploration and what not. Its action was always given much needed breaks with periods interacting with the NPCs in the towns etc.
Final Fantasy games always have had some sense of exploration. They've always had towns, while I haven't encountered any in this yet!
I really do like FF13. I think the action stuff is pretty fun, and the mechanics are fairly deep... and I am a sucker for the storytelling... but I just can't give it a full recommendation.
I remember reading that the developers of the game took inspiration from the linearity of Call of Duty.
I think the developers were pretty stupid. It is like a family car having the fuel consumption of a muscle car, yet not justifying it with that level of power.
The developers of FF13 did talk a lot about using the linearity to employ better storytelling and greater set pieces, but I haven't seen any. In fact, I haven't seen much justification of FF13's course of direction. There is nothing the developers couldn't have done, that they did with FF13, had the same game been more open. There are tons of little scripted cut-scenes that are very good and push the story nicely, but they could have been inter-weaved in a more traditional RPG quite easily.
Anyway, I bet it sounds like I dislike the game, which I don't. I am really pleased with it, because I am enjoying the strengths of it, but I am just saying that I can see why people are disappointed.
