A letter to Square

[SkyeWindbinder]

A reasonable approach would lead to judging a game according to what it is, not according to "expectations".

It also helps enjoying games a lot more, which is something many forgot in the past decade.

It's fine judging a game for "what it is" and all that. But the thing of it is, FFXIII was a Final Fantasy title. Fans of the series have come to expect certain things from an FF title. It's really not our fault, it's just what we've been given for years as Final Fantasy fans. You can't not put that there in a big roman numeral production of a Final Fantasy game and expect fans to just "go with the flow". No, we're going to nitpick about reasons why the game isn't "Final Fantasy" enough. Again, it's not our fault, we were given games for years with little repeated details in the series that have come to define the experience of playing Final Fantasy games. Many of those details are reasons that Final Fantasy fans are, in fact, fans of the series.

I, personally, think that FFXIII deserves a 6 out of 10 as an rpg, but as a Final Fantasy, it deserves maybe a 5. It was an okay story (I guess) and the visuals were pretty. But it didn't have the feeling of a Final Fantasy. It was closer to being a Final Fantasy than "The Spirits Within", but only barely.