Rate it

[Celeras]

Enough time has set in for people to be objective. Lets see it.

[Sign]

I gave it an 8. It was a good game, I enjoyed it a lot but there was a few things that could be improved upon. Graphics were amazing and I still recommended the game to several people, just lacked that special something that makes a game a 10.

[dejet]

Lots of things they did well, For one I dont mind the *HP* reset/no MP it was very odd to start off but grew on me when it could take a few goes at a normal mob to get the hang of it.

Have to say I wish they would of made things a little faster paced at the start, and wish that there was more of a city style area to move around in, even if it was only one go at it. I wish they would of added a system to give more control over your party, tho it was a nice system.

The screen where it makes you attack, I hate. I dont know why they did it, to give us a taske of the past? Dont like how they moved away from the free roam in fights too.

The stroy was good, as where the growth of each person. The summoners I loved ~_~

Overall I would give the game a 8/10 maybe 8.5/10

Small things could of made it a very strong game, in the end I had fun, player a large amount of time; and do see myself playing it again.

[Raen Ryong]

Gonna give it a 9/10. Thoroughly enjoyable experience despite its flaws and some of the best character interactions I've seen in a long time. Did not disappoint at all.

However, its flaws mean I can't give this a 10/10. It has my favourite battle system in the series by far and with some further tweaking, such as:

1. Allow changing of character controlled during battle, perhaps Star Ocean style
2. Main character death != game over
3. Option to turn off the first Paradigm Shift animation of each fight
4. Deeper customisation system (Dark Cloud 2's please)!
5. Better balancing of gil
6. Much higher droprate on essential items for development such as Trapezohedron, and make it so the enemies in question are not susceptible to Death.
7. Less linearity. I don't believe it's as big a problem as people suggest but the game would be better without it.

Etc.

[dejet]

Less linearity, was a big thing to me, I dont mind that it opens like it does, but I just wish at the end maybe after saving the world it opens a city or something. ~_~ to me it sucked.

[Raen Ryong]

OH, also: big deal. Item sets please. You had them in Dissidia... I hate having to change from zerg gear => reduction gear => status protection gear (when initially fighting Sacrifices for instance) etc so often: should give us options of sets!

[ArchDizzle]

I gave it a 9. It has moved into my top 3 Favorite Final Fantasy games. Like people have already said it did a lot of stuff right and has a good foundation for them to build on and improve upon some of the minor shortcomings the game had. Really would like to see a sequel that had a few tweaks and let us explore more of the story and areas of Gran Pulse/Cocoon.

[Yuri-G]

nine. completely amazing, but some very basic flaws keep it from hitting a 10 - mostly the ally AI. it's not even that it's bad, but it's not customizable at all, which hurts. for example, SYN AI is very good, usually bringing out Haste first (which every RDM knows is the right way to do it) but then if an enemy's Libra says it has strong physical attacks, the SYN will do Protect next. sometimes I don't care about the damage, I just want to Bravera to get the battle over with ASAP. MED AI is notorious for frustrating moments too. a gambit system or even the ability to switch the leader like in Star Ocean/Tales games would be fantastic.

my only other problem is some of the random story moments. Jihl's death was a huge WTF? the main villain doesn't really feel convincing unless you read the backstory and understand what exactly Orphan was, and why Cocoon was created. and Rogg or Rosch or whatever his name was could have been a hell of a lot more fleshed out. someone compared him to General Leo and I had to laugh because they had about the same amount of screen time, yet Leo's sacrifice was infinitely more moving, because they gave him such a strong personality.

[Rokku]

6/6.5, but with no decimals it came down to just doing 6.

Wasn't the worst FF game out there, wasn't the best. If we were going purely on the combat system of the game I probably would've rated it higher, like an 8 or a 9, but when you combine most of the flaws already mentioned (especially character control in battle, and flaws with the AI) along with the other story related ones (a person shouldn't need to read through a compendium just to understand what in the hell is going on half the time), it's just not that great.

[Katlan]

Gave it an 8... Loved the game and I spent plenty of time playing it. Well over 100hrs and I still need TH and to 5 star all missions. Yeah it had some flaws, but I didn't grip over them.

[Lucavi]

It gets a 7 from me. I understand why they did everything they way they did with the linear beginning and whatnot, but just because I understand it doesn't mean I agree with it. This was a game for FF fans, and pretty much FF fans only, which I don't necessarily agree with.

That being said, the graphics were, of course, excellent (for a PS3 - I would have preferred it on the perfection that is PC; I hate seeing jaggies from lack of AA), the score, especially songs like Sabres Edge, was right up with previous entries in the series, and the plot was actually pretty good. I really enjoyed the flashback-esque day sequences, and I enjoyed the amount of lore they threw out there for one's reading pleasure.

I feel like the game was incomplete, though; that there were a lot of spaces where you could almost tell that they had more to say or do, but cut it out due to pacing or space or whatever. I'd like to see the full game sometime.

It was good, and while I won't be playing it 30 times again and again from start to finish like I did with FFIV, VI, VII, and Tactics (which is my ultimate determining factor in how much I like a game), I'd recommend it to someone should they ask.

On a side note, it was good to see another brotha' since Barrett, even if he was a little silly at first.

[Hyan]

Story was OK. I felt the the presentation was lacking though. I didn't really get the same impression from the cutscenes as what the compendium told me.

Audiovisuals were fantastic as you would expect. From art style to animation to menus.

Combat system was fun, kept me hooked 'till the end.

Lots of great adjustments were made that I liked. Restore HP/MP after every battle, tougher encounters, magic classes actually being useful at endgame...

And even though the item customization system is quite simple, I prefer it to overly complex one. I just don't have the patience to learn all the tricks for every crafting system out there in every single player game. This one was pretty good.

I liked how the endgame opened up and that you could clear everything on a single playthrough. However, I didn't like how the best weapons were upgraded via mindless farming. I would have preferred something like the system in X instead. Also, not nearly enough über tough mobs out there.

Linearity was a plus for me. Being a perfectionist but also prefer playing games only once through, not having to look at the guide every minute to see if I missed something important was great. I could do everything the game had to offer but didn't have to stress about it.

Overall I'd give it 8/8.5, it's not the best SE title I've played in recent years but still, it's quality stuff.

[Moridam]

i'd give it a 7 or an 8 i think. enjoyable overall, but there were lots of things that just plain irritated me. the often idiotic combat AI and positioning, aversion to allowing players to obtain reasonable amounts of gil, insipid pop vocal tunes integrated into normal gameplay(!!!!!), sentinel seemed almost entirely useless outside of a small handful of select battles, endgame being essentially a 30-40 hour long exp/gil grind...

i dunno, good game, but definitely not great.

[Katlan]

Oh yeah, main reason I didn't give it a 9 or 10 was because of the story. Story was very well done, but the way it was presented (in game) was horrible. You had to read the datalogs to really understand what was going on most of the time (not that it's inherently a bad thing). And while the voice acting was top notch, they very rarely showed much range of emotion, so I felt like I had to figure out if they were angry, happy, ect...

Seriously, did you ever feel like Hope was determined to get revenge on Snow actions? He said he wanted revenge, but that was all... no actual display of emotions (or at least to any believable lv)

[Hyan]

Oh yes, the VA's were great. I never felt like it would have been better to hear the dialogue in original language, so it was a good "dub". Could have been better, but for non-native english speaker like me it was good enough.

[Raen Ryong]

Seriously, did you ever feel like Hope was determined to get revenge on Snow actions? He said he wanted revenge, but that was all... no actual display of emotions (or at least to any believable lv)

What about his RAEG face when Snow says something like "let the dummies do the fighting ... it is if you get killed"? Then he just ominously holds Light's knife behind his back ...

Video for reference.

[Celeras]

Story wise, the only thing that was a miss for me was the ending. Not to say that it was bad, but if it would've ended with

Spoiler: show

them actually all being turned cieth

I would've liked it a lot better. Only reason being that it was a major WTF moment that got turned into 'oh..ok'. Just thought that would have set the table nicely for versus.

[Nevex]

9.
It's not my favorite FF but it's pretty damn high on my list.
Best main cast of characters, best battle system (I'm going to have a hard time trying to play FFI-X now, they all seem so damn slow after playing XIII), ok story, great music, great mix of strategy and action-oriented battles (Bart fights in particular), epic boss battles, wonderful envirorments.
Summons are useful without being utterly overpowered like in FFVII/VIII/IX/X, villains are not that good but this game's story focuses on the characters' personal stories so it doesn't matter much.

I don't care about the linearity and lack of towns, considering the game opens up during Chapter 11, but I do mind the lack of extra content; there isn't much to do other than hunts and weapon upgrading once you finish the game, which is the main reason I can't give this game a 10.
Oh and as mentioned in this topic there are a few minor flaws here and there like the occasionally stupid AI, lack of real superbosses and the "first paradigm shift animation that takes forever and often gets you killed" issue.

Overall I'm pretty happy with this game and I'm looking forward to a sequel.

[RPGTyrant]

I gave it a 10, and I can justify it with this being exactly what I wanted in the next main series final fantasy. From the first time the Fal'Cie were introduced I was just completely pulled into the world, and I really really like the lore that they've built in this game. Sure there are flaws here and there with the battle system, but the story, style, graphics, characters, music and background lore of the game was way more than enough for me to completely overlook any flaws the battle system had. Even considering getting a tattoo of the mark of the L'Cie as my first tattoo, I just liked the lore behind it and the style of it so much, it's one of the symbols that really sticks out of all the FF's.

[Mjd]

I gave it a 6,


It lacked a real epic feeling to for me. It truly felt like I was playing a movie. I'm losing my faith in the whole Final Fantasy name. Graphically however, the game was beautiful and the battle system was amazing. The story sucked, I'm sorry but it felt so forced it was unreal.