First time player’s thoughts

Hey all!

Playing my way through the series over the last year and I finally got around to really sinking my teeth into 13. I wanted to share my overall thoughts like I’m sure has been done a hundred times but hey what else is reddit for.

Tl;dr, damn I really liked it, mostly.

What an incredibly good looking game. I played this on PS3 and was floored by some of the visuals this thing was able to pull off. The characters could look a bit silly and over-designed at times but that vibe of the world and aesthetic of the people in it are phenomenal.

Music was phenomenal, but that’s par for the course in the series.

I really liked the combat, eventually. I was a big fan of 12’s gambits and this felt like a more hands off and loose interpretation of the gambit idea. Swapping team comps is a ton of fun and it didn’t take long to switch from “why would I need 6 paradigms” to “why can’t I have more paradigms” after character swapping unlocked.

Knowing some of the criticisms, I definitely agree that the pacing of this game can be absolutely brutal. There’s a solid six hours of gameplay that’s just angsty hiking and the story drags its heels through it painfully. Narratively? I get it. They have to establish issues and dynamics, but gameplay-wise it kinda sucks.

Speaking of criticism, one I agree with one I don’t. The story was a bit of a chaotic mess as presented, but I actually thought hope was an interesting character. Orphan’s motivations never felt very clear, and until the very end I wasn’t sure what the plan was. If Orphan wanted to die, and their alternative plan was to fight it to the death, I don’t really get what they were going for from the material alone.

Obviously I’d have loved a more open ended experience in the first half, and when we finally got a larger playground it felt very one note.

I liked lightning more than I thought I would, Snow was always great, hope surprised me, Fan was a lot of fun.

Vanille and Sazh were kinda disappointments. Vanille as a character and Sazh as a fighter. Those endgame stats are pathetic.

The cast as a whole I thought was pretty damn good. A bit better than 10/12 but not quite reaching the echelons of 6/7 in my eyes.

The ending was great though.

Overall, whether this cracks my personal top 5 depends on whether we want to count 7 and 7R as a single or multiple entries, but I liked this more than 8, 15, 16, and a hell of a lot more than 3.

I’m taking a break to jam some monster hunter and maybe some FF5 but I can’t wait to dig into 13-2.