BEDA 29: XIII Is Not As Good As VII Because...

Man, I am such a liar.
Two things I lied about in the past 24 hours:
1. That the blog I wrote yesterday would be a work in progress.
Nope! It's done. Aside from a few spelling and grammar mistakes I cleaned up just now, that blog is over with. We're moving on.
2. That I would write about something more interesting that Final Fantasy XIII today.
Nope! You get more of the same. Sorry, Dad.


Lindsay asked me last night what rating (1 to 10) I would give Final Fantasy XIII, and I must say I was hard-pressed to answer her question. I mean, what constitutes a 1? What constitutes a 10? Can it be a 9? Is it that close to a perfect game? But then, when considering the entertainment value overall, it must get points for being such a long game, right?
Well, here is my answer:
It was good, but it was no Final Fantasy VII. And nothing ever will be.

FF VII, both because of the game's quality and the time in my life that I played it, will never ever be trumped for best video game in my eyes, ever. It will never be touched. No other game will ever come close. Every aspect of that game was perfect for me. It is the bar by which all other games must be judged, and typically while I play a game I am thinking on some level "This is not as good as Final Fantasy VII because..."

XIII is not as good as VII because XIII leaves very little to the imagination. All the characters speak with voices instead of text. They are extremely well animated and spend a lot of their time in movie cut-scenes rather than silent, text-based, visually unimpressive segways with awesome music playing in the background.

XIII is not as good as VII because the scope of XIII is too narrow. Literally everything that happens in XIII happens in 13 days, and half of those are flashbacks. This amount of time is completely insufficient to build the plot, the lead-up, the sense of a quest, and the camaraderie between the characters. VII's flashbacks span decades and the game-play itself progresses over what feels like months.

XIII is not as good as VII because there was no world map. By nature of the game I understand that going to different towns and flying around in an airship was impossible, but still. I'm just saying. In VII you got to explore THE ENTIRE world. This freedom of space combined with the passage of time made the scope of VII so enormous that after you played for 60 hours, it really felt like you had played for 60 hours. I'm all for linear games, I don't like side-quests, but XIII's extremely linear storyline and narrow world map made the game feel sort of small to me despite the 54 hours I spent on it.

XIII is not as good as VII because VII's materia system was absolutely perfect and Square should just stick to it and stop messing with other bullshit leveling systems.

XIII is not as good as VII because of Sephiroth. Period.

Alright, I'm done talking about Final Fantasy XIII now. For real. That's all I had to say about it.
And that said, it still was a really amazing game and I really enjoyed playing it. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys FF games. Unlike that piece of shit XII.
It's just, you know, not as good as VII.

Tomorrow is my final blog in BEDA! Woo!