FFXIII-2

[Tyrath]

Yeah from reading his review I don't get how it merited a 5. 8ish seems to be around the ballpark from what I've seen from some reviews.

[vadre]

To be honest, I hope the poor story (because it really is bad from what I've seen) gets emphasised a lot throughout reviews if SE is taking these things on board. Seriously, why the fuck are they still letting that guy create stories for games? He's terrible, and they should really know that by now.

SE needs to get some new project directors, it seems like their current ones just aren't up to making modern games a lot of the time (Tanakariyamaetc).

Edit: 5 does seem harsh, though.

Spoiler: show

Edit2: The more I think about it, the more disappointed I am with XIII-2's direction in story. Why didn't they carry on the more grounded themes of XIII? The cast were vulnerable and despite the somewhat poor storytelling, it was communicated relatively well that they were struggling a lot and had a huge burden. XIII-2 strips it all away, turns at least 2/6 of the old cast into superheroes (since when was Hope a genius who could create planets?!) and bodges a new time-travel mechanic that absolutely came out of now where (the FNC mythology was obviously altered between the making of XIII and XIII-2 with that little explanation video to try and explain what they were doing). The epilogue that came out originally suggesting that Lightning just ran off deciding the others had too many commitments to help had much more promise, it could've been about Lightning struggling on the crazy world of Pulse and how the human population are facing new challenges, possibly ending up with a a new recruited team who face the decision of having to take up the burden of becoming L'Cie again to beat down Lindzei (and maybe Pulse?) to stop Buniberzei returning. Or something.

Anyways, mini-rant over.

[Spira]

Very harsh review lol. But when ure going in with a clear bias then that's what usually happens.
One thing remains clear tho, gameplay is solid in this one compared to XIII.

Worst story, lol... Very subjective and when it comes to fantasy there really isn't a good yardstick because what may seem contrived to one can be brilliant to another. I've honestly never thought of FF stories to be that great anyway. XII to me was the most immersive/believable tho. Often its the characters that draw me in..

Anyway my NA import copy of XIII-2 supposedly ships in today. I'll get to see how good it is soon. Not like it'd matter when I'll platinum it anyway

[vadre]

Yeah it should definitely be qualified that the benchmark for FF stories isn't exactly stellar, although that in itself isn't justification, a company as big as Square Enix should be able to get a very competent group of writers together to create the stories, but that doesn't seem to happen. I always find the transition from XII to XIII to be odd, considering that despite flaws in it's story (again), Ivalice had an air of quality throughout the settings and voice acting that was such a good blend, it's such a shame they moved towards a more anime-esque approach in these later games.

If XV is a game that can strike a balance between the best bits of XIII (battle system, character development to an extent) and XII (world development, scripting, characters barring a couple of wannabe leads) I'd be pretty damn happy. Sort of a shame the art director of XII appears to be committed to XIV at present.

[Katlan]

Only thing that sucks, that I didn't realize, is you can only have one save per playthrough? That's terrible . I had so many saves in XIII and it was great for replaying the game since I could just swap to a save at certain moments that ha my characters OP and overleveled. On my most recent playthrough I skipped all mobs and everything I could lol

[rezn0r]

didn't this get a perfect Famitsu score? and trust me I'm not a fanboy or one of those (what's that word for a non-Japanese person who is obsessed with Japanese things?), but that must mean something... right? I'm just surprised to see a 5/10 when I was under the impression that the foreign release got extremely high reviews. I haven't even finished FFXIII but I have been really looking forward to going back to it and jumping right into this one when everything else (Skyrim) I'm screwing around with was done.

[Alkar]

Only thing that sucks, that I didn't realize, is you can only have one save per playthrough? That's terrible . I had so many saves in XIII and it was great for replaying the game since I could just swap to a save at certain moments that ha my characters OP and overleveled. On my most recent playthrough I skipped all mobs and everything I could lol

You can replay any part whenever you like. Having one save file is honestly not an issue.
Also when they announced the autosave feature it should've been obvious.

didn't this get a perfect Famitsu score? and trust me I'm not a fanboy or one of those (what's that word for a non-Japanese person who is obsessed with Japanese things?), but that must mean something... right? I'm just surprised to see a 5/10 when I was under the impression that the foreign release got extremely high reviews. I haven't even finished FFXIII but I have been really looking forward to going back to it and jumping right into this one when everything else (Skyrim) I'm screwing around with was done.

Yes, Famitsu gave the game a 40/40 score. Either way these guys gave XIII a 7 I think so the 5 is honestly not justified. Everyone agrees that the game is pretty much better than the previous one for a few different reasons.

[Burningthought]

didn't this get a perfect Famitsu score? and trust me I'm not a fanboy or one of those (what's that word for a non-Japanese person who is obsessed with Japanese things?), but that must mean something... right? I'm just surprised to see a 5/10 when I was under the impression that the foreign release got extremely high reviews. I haven't even finished FFXIII but I have been really looking forward to going back to it and jumping right into this one when everything else (Skyrim) I'm screwing around with was done.

Otaku, perhaps?

[Katlan]

Also when they announced the autosave feature it should've been obvious.

you act like i read up on this stuff =p

[Tyrath]

There are games that have autosave that let you have multiple saves..

[Aevis]

that retailer specific dlc stuff is so strange. here in switzerland, i get noel's weapon and omega but there is no mention of extra costumes.

[Lordender]

Lol what a surprise, someone slamming the story for being bad, what else is new ;/

[Nevex]

The only noticeable difference between this review and Famitsu's is that one bashes the plot and the other one praises it.
The inability to have multiple saves is annoying but I'm sure there are ways around it.
Still, even if the story is complete and utter garbage you can't give a game 5/10 just because of that.
The reviewer says that 5 is the "middle" score, no it's not. The middle score should be between the worst and best rated FFs, something like 8.
He's also a hypocrite because he says he doesn't want to piss off either haters or fanboys while his score is clearly biased towards the former category.

I have my doubts that the plot is going to be that bad though, it will most likely be your average FF plot that is about a group of young heroes fighting a great evil, which includes virtually all of them except FFXII (which actually had a more original plot for FF standards).
I can understand criticizing the plot because this formula got old, but to say that it's clearly worse than the other FFs when they're extremely similiar each other is bs.

[Arelian]

How is 5 not a "middle score" on a scale of 1 - 10.

Edit: He also talked about how he disliked the music. It's also possible he, gasp, highly values story in his RPGs (Y'know, what the genre is known for) so the low score is perfectly reasonable if he, as a reviewer, did not like the story one bit.

You guys are so goddamn quick to defend the game you won't even admit when there's a fault. Even if it is a subjective one.

Also, Nevex, Final Fantasy games cannot be judged against other games? That's the most asinine thing I've read tonight.

[Nevex]

Pretty much anything from 1 to 4 is considered garbage and 6 is considered "acceptable but there's a lot of room for improvement". 5 is considered below average or outright bad. In the eyes of anyone 7-8 is considered average.

I suspect the guy wanted to give the game a harsh score before he even started playing it but then he realized that he lacked any solid arguments to support that (just look at the summary of the good and bad points - nobody in their right mind would think that it's a 5/10 game if there wasn't a huge "5" above) so he played the hatemail card which is a very unprofessional move from his part.

He goes as far as saying that he can't give the game a high score because he would be accused of "contributing to the downfall of the series" (how the hell is this guy still writing reviews?), so he has to give a middle score, which implies that there are worse rated FFs than XIII-2. Well, there are no FFs that have received such a harsh score so far. Even FFX-2 which is considered one of the worst FFs because of the plot alone has a rather high metascore.
What's even more funny is that FFXIII got a 8/10 from that very site and general consensus is that FFXIII-2 is overall the better game.

There are just too many inconsistencies to make 5/10 seem like a believable score.

[Burningthought]

The breakdown:

• X360 Magazine UK - 90
• Official Xbox Magazine - 90
• Game Informer - 80
• Playstation: The Official Magazine (US) - 80
• Play UK - 80

Sources:
http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-...fantasy-xiii-2
http://www.metacritic.com/game/plays...fantasy-xiii-2

Needless to say the game is being well received even though it hasn't scored as well as the rest of the main series.

[Hyan]

FF games aren't well received or poorly received. They're always the best thing evar or the manifestation of Hitler.

[Spira]

Anyone familiar with game reviews will know that 7 is the middle score. 5 is the bottom of playable. Anything below 5 is garbage you don't touch at all. Beyond redemption. In other words, any game that is average will sit between 6-8, which most games do.

Game review scores work on a bell curve; it's not linear.

That said, you already know its an unprofessional review because he bases too much of it on expectation, comes with too much biased prejudgment and isn't objective enough to see the value in things he doesn't like about the game.
When doing reviews, it's fine to state your poison, but equally important to point out things that are others' meat. If u can't do that, then it's not a fair review.

[Nevex]

I just read that reviwe more carefully and I have to say that it's not as bad as I thought at first, it's just the score that is completely wrong and doesn't even back up the review itself.
One thing that caught my interest:

The utilization of time travel is done particularly well — so much so that it might even draw complaints from Chrono fans that this mechanic wasn’t saved for a third game in that series. The story itself is convoluted and silly, but wow is that time travel pulled off well. There’s some great post-ending content that allows the player to continue zipping all around time and space, finding new areas and making sure to explore the old ones to the fullest, which will not be easy.

which is precisely what I was expecting. Time travel plots are bound to have inconsistencies to a certain degree, but as long as it works well from a gameplay standpoint I can't really blame them for that. If FFXIII-2 is capable of doing so then it has served its purpose and gave its contribute to the series as a whole.

[Appie]

There are games that have autosave that let you have multiple saves..

You can make multiple saves, but only in the historia crux menu, this new save will also be used for the autosave from that point.