Okay, after constantly playing it for around two weeks (around a few hours each day only) I've finally finished the story the Final Fantasy XIII. This was one of the games that I wanted to play and was the first game I started playing on the PS3. The impression I got? Wow, it is a long game and felt dragged on. I still liked the game, but it wasn't as great as I would have expected, and the story wasn't that great either. So, the same complaints as many have said, the first ten chapters were very linear, in that you are walking in a straight line to the marker (although Chapter 10 wasn't as bad), fighting monsters and watching cut scenes where the story unfolds.
This brings me to my first specific complaint, there are way too many cut scenes, it's like you get one every few minutes, it wouldn't be so bad if they were awesome, but most of the time, they weren't that absorbing. Overall, they're not great that you are hooked into watching them, but they're not bad where you get distracted and look at some other stuff. Some are good, and probably the best cut scene in the entire game would be this one.
The story was a mess at times, and hard to understand in the beginning, but I do love some of the elements in this created world. Now that it's over, a lot of what the player has to go through doesn't feel that important, and like a waste of time. It seemed like a major part of the story was just events chained after one another, and there wasn't some deep thought put into it. The ending was good though, and I loved the way how the world of Cocoon and Gran Pulse ended up, it was quite breathtaking. It was also a bit sad, since it would have been awesome if everyone stayed the way they are, it just seemed that Vanille and Fang were kinda cheated. The soundtrack complemented what happened on screen really well, my favourite would be the battle theme (just wait until the violin chorus part...), but when the English theme played during ending, it was perfect.
The opening up of the game at Chapter 11 wasn't as great as what I made it out to be after reading about it on the internet. Sure, the game opens up greatly, but it wasn't as fun as I expected. I did like exploring the world and doing the missions, but it sure did not make up for the hours and hours (twenty five hours for me) trekking beforehand to get up to this point.
The graphics are where this game shines, the cut scenes are great, and the environment of each section are brilliant to look at. I particularly like the forest chapters where it was quite amazing to look at.
Game play was pretty good, I'm still kinda against each role limited to only actions in that role, I still prefer the older systems where characters can attack and heal and you get to control the characters. It just seems a step down from Final Fantasy XII in that you don't get too much influence over the actions of your other characters and the transition to a separate battle screen. It's still enjoyable to use, just annoying that it takes forever until the game allows all the features to be used.
Then there's the Eidolons (or Summons), did they have to make them able to transform? It feels so weird, because they look so organic, yet transforms into something that doesn't look like they could have. I mean, Transformers are awesome, but it just somehow feels wrong in a Final Fantasy game.
In my opinion, boss fights are the best thing about this game, they're so fun. However, most of them are fairly easy, I think I only died in one boss battle, and I am not good at playing games.
All of the characters are annoying from the start, I found it really hard to like them, but as the game went on and the story progressed, most of them are okay. The only ones that I still find it hard to not cringe when they appear are Vanille and Snow. I think my favourites would have to be Lightning and Hope, followed by Fang and Sazh. However, by the end of it, you do start to care what happened to all of the characters.
It seems that everything I say is a negative on the game, but I think I enjoyed it, just not as much as I wanted to (and I had too high expectations). To be honest, I don't think it deserved some of the absurdly high scores of some reviews, maybe a 7/10 since it's still a decent game, just be prepared to spend hours into it and probably get bored when you're halfway through.
At least I can say I am looking forward to XIII-2 (which seems to be shaping up as an awesome game, correcting all the flaws of this one), and can't wait to play that.
Edit: so, 101 game hours later, I've finally got the Platinum Trophy after getting all the other trophies (or Achievements in the Xbox version). Took this long since stupid old me sold all the stuff that I found during the earlier parts of the game, and I had to farm monsters in order to get the money (gil) to buy them all back. I can say, that was very annoying, when you're fighting the same monster again and again and again, with the stupid drop rates not being high enough dragging the process so much. Anyway, now I can finally put the game down (I guess when you do a cost per hours I played ratio for this game, it was a good deal...) and finish something else, not sure if it was worth it in the end...
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