Everyone has their favourite Final Fantasy. Many love Final Fantasy 7 because of how much of an impact it left with its transition to 3D, and just because it was their first. There are those who love Final Fantasy 9 because, well, Vivi. As messy as it was, you can’t help but love those boys in 15. But there is possibly no more divisive a Final Fantasy than Final Fantasy 13.
For years, I heard nothing but complaints about the game. ‘Corridor’ is a word that would give some a horrible flashback of their playthrough, many called Lightning ‘a cold copy of Cloud’, and some simply didn’t like that the game got two sequels. So, when I saw that Final Fantasy 13 was on Xbox Game Pass over the holidays, I knew there was only one thing I could do: find the truth. And you know what I found? Shock horror: a pretty great video game.
Now, right off the bat I will say this: some of those aforementioned corridors are pretty long. The game definitely could have made a few cuts here and there, no doubt about it. But my first point of frustration with the decade-plus of criticism I’ve been hearing is that the waves of negativity surrounding the game completely washed away any discussion that could dig into how good the gameplay is. Over anything else, it introduced the Paradigm system, a gameplay mechanic that requires you to switch your characters between different roles.
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