Final Fantasy XIII

First published on 20 May 2010. Updated on 4 Jan 2011.

I once saw a comedy skit on TV with two Japanese people sitting behind a secret partition in a Japanese restaurant eating steak with cutlery, laughing at all the westerners struggling to eat raw fish eggs with chopsticks. I'm convinced Final Fantasy XIII is the same kind of joke. No other videogame I can think of makes you feel like you're actually wasting your life like FFXIII does.

You see, I'm 15 hours into the game, and every time the game asks me to save my progress, I scream at my TV "what progress!" 15 hours in and I still have no idea about the story, I still have no idea what is going on between the characters, and no idea what, if anything, I have achieved. Other games give a sense of achievement from levelling characters, discovering interesting plot developments, exploring the world, or beating the game with skill or intelligence. If nothing else, they're just a fun diversion for a few hours. Final Fantasy used to be like that, but FFXIII eschews the good stuff for a linear path from one easy fight to the next where you press one, maybe two buttons, followed by a ridiculously cheesy cutscene, then swapping characters for another path of easy fights and more preposterous cutscenes, then usually a boss fight so hard you turn the console off in disgust. It's an absolute chore to get through the game, with the levelling of characters stats basic and linear.

I know there will be FF fans out there that will curse and claim that it apparently gets better after hour 20, and I simply don't get it. But the fact I got 15 hours into this boring, linear crapfest of a title is an achievement I'm proud to admit. I've got much better things to do with my time, and so do most average people.

Even if the average person is a fan of the Final Fantasy series, I'd tell them to go play FFVII or FF Tactics, or Lost Odyssey, or Blue Dragon, or Persona IV or Resonance of Fate. Avoid FFXIII unless you find yourself stuck in a room with a console, a TV, and absolutely nothing better to do for the good part of 30 hours. Even then, I'm convinced you'll have more fun peeling the paint from the walls.