It's not, but I'd like you to explain why you think it is in more detail.
How about you explain something instead of just saying "no you".
They're not. I mean, you pretty much invalidate this statement in your next sentence.
They are and no I don't.
Explain how this is good game design.
How is it not game design to literally design a game where any combination of characters can see a player of any skill level through to the end? That's basics of good game design.
I disagree. FF XIII's fights never gave me an issue, nor did they evoke any thought, nor were they fun. Once I discovered the dominant strategy, which took all of maybe two seconds after gaining access to paradigm shift, the fights immediately became a grind. Here's my EXTREMELY ACCURATE recap of how combat went up until I stopped playing, which was roughly 2/3rds of the way through, around the the time that you get access to the free-roaming section.
The person who didn't even play the whole game or experience the full bredth of the combat system is going to sit here and try to say they know how good the combat system is.
This is not an interesting or engaging feedback loop. It's genre confusion at its finest, and marks the point where Final fantasy completely abandoned the core principals of its combat system.
No, that was Final Fantasy 2. And then again in Final Fantasy 3. And then even again in Final Fantasy 8 and 12 and
The game was about as mechanically complex as a spinning top. Even my father, who was well into his fourties and couldn't handle any sort of strategy game at the time, was able to breeze through XIII almost as easily as I could. The game being 'easy' is not a criticism, but there's nothing satisfying about watching 30 second cut-scenes, mashing A, and going through pseudo-epic boss-fights that don't have many - if any - unique mechanics to set them apart from one another.
Says the one who didn't even make it to the end of the game. If you think the boss of, say, the Sunleth Waterscape and the boss of the Gapra Whitewood (both of which you would have experienced) don't have unique mechanics then you're just flatout lying and wrong. Use as much anecdotal evidence as you want, if you just mash A then it's not my fault you don't get anything out of the combat and if all you care about is being as slow and ineffective as possible then mashing A is core to the Final Fantasy experience.
If games like FFVI, FFXII, and FFXIV were the best combat experiences the series had to offer, FFXIII is at the bottom, not accounting for the very first entries in the series.
The best combat experience the series had to offer was 10-2. 6 wasn't even a good combat system.
The entire game is a slog of the exact same combat routine, recycled over and over, which is not all that different from other games in the series. The key difference between XIII's combat, and the slower paced combat of other games, is how automated everything is. You don't make choices as much as you sit back and revel in your ability to mash A while things explode in front of you. The amount of decisions made are minimal, and by extension, the game fails to be engaging.
Yeah, the other games in the series all had the stagger mechanic and attack boosting and maintaining stagger chains and even air juggles. I forgot about that in FF 7.
The paradigm system is a terrible malformation of the gambit system introduced in FF XII, a game with a more polished battle system where you actually have control over the automated actions that your party members take.
No it isn't. FF12's system was nothing like paradigms. FF12 didn't even have a good system until they turned it into a job system. You're not turning Vaan into a black mage at the push of a button, you're unlocking the ability to buy things to program Vaan into following the simple notion of "weak to fire use fire on thing."
FFXIII's Combat plays itself, and that's not a good thing.
Far less so than FF12 where some of the best methods of getting through things is having absolutely no player input.
If all you did was hit auto battle then congratulations, you played on baby mode for babies instead of experiencing the quicker pace the game is built around. There's a reason battles are graded. Every target time can be improved upon by a considerable amount if you actually bother to use your paradigms and attack boosts in a decisive manner.
So basically:
If you're gonna be a reductive ass about it and not even attempt to discuss it then why did you even ask me to give my reasoning.
I... Disagree immensely.
Really? That wasn't clear.
I don't know what the ending is, but based on your approach to the story, I'd likely be one to disagree. But Final fantasy has always been pretty good at tying up its games with satisfying endings.
The ending is that Fang and Vanille form Ragnarok and turn to crystal in order to save Cocoon from crashing into Pulse, thus fulfilling the Focus of the party and thwarting the plot of Barthandelus of causing a cataclysmic event in order to summon their Maker by offering a massive human sacrifice. Serah and Dajh are freed from their stasis and everyone is happy and reunited and Cocoon realizes that their reliance on the fal'Cie was in fact a Bad Thing. The heroes have successfully slapped the notion of fate in the face by literally killing their God. The sequel then immediately undermines this by making it so that everything in the game was actually because of the goddess Etro meddling in human affairs because she takes pity on them and her good meaning actually winds up just getting a bunch of people killed anyway.
I was making the point that the sequels took the themes of the first game and shot them in the face.
Narrative is bad, gameplay is bad, characters are bad, everything is contrived garbage to that point that I could probably argue FF XII's story to be better, even if that game's characters are just as terrible.
The only argument towards this you've come close to making is the gameplay. I gave you three valid reasons why I like the game. You don't like it. Nothing I say will change that and it's clear you're not interested in actually discussing it since "no thing bad" is easier.
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