That being said, it did have some amazing aspects to it. The battle system was like nothing I've ever played before. They shed the micromanagement of your party that has always been inherent in a FF game. Instead of telling party member 2 to cast fire 3 and party member 1 to beat a baddy over the head with a sword, you directly control only the party leader. Even using the term "directly control" is a bit misleading. You can select each individual attack for the character to carry out, but the battles move so fast that that type of game play is a recipe for destruction. Instead, you find yourself constantly selecting the "Autobattle" option. This will make your character carry out the most effective attacks against an enemy. The strategy comes from assigning your party to "paradigm" roles. Like 'the guy who hits stuff' or 'healer' or 'magic-dude'. So the battle system I found to be really fun. Not really a "final Fantasy" battle system, but really fun and exciting none-the-less. The music was really awesome also.
Here's the bad. I did not give one single shit for the characters, who were the same tired old archetypes from every other FF game. The game was too long. I finished the game in about 60 hours. That's WITHOUT doing the tedious hours of super boring extras. It also takes roughly 20 hours before the game finally takes off the training wheels and lets you start playing the way you want to play. The game is also completely linear, but that's less of a complaint from me than it would have been 10 years ago. It's more of a statement of fact. But here is the complaint. The character progression takes the form of a "Crystarium" which is this game's version of the "Sphere Grid" or "License Board" from FF X or FF XII. The trouble with the crystarium is that it is almost completely linear for each character. You do have some modicum of customization,, but it's pretty much a cameo.
I could go on about Final Fantasy XIII, but I won't. I hit the major points, and that's all I care to go over.
