Final Fantasy XIII is a game that divided a fan community. I've seen people claim that it is one of the best Final Fantasy's, and people claim that it is the worst Final Fantasy game in the entire series.

My opinion is something more down the middle. The game has objective issues. The lack of any kind of ability to save paradigm decks for various battle teams is criminal. The fact that if your party leader dies it means game over is obnoxious.

The remaining critiques tend to come down to personal preference. For example, linearity. It is true that the game is very linear for roughly 20-25 hours. This is not, however, something that can be held up as a flaw in my opinion. The themes of XIII are ones of freedom, destiny, and choice. To that end, there is a very nice meta-textual parallel that the game opens up when the l'cie decide that they will make their own decisions in violation of their focus. The restrictive leveling system is, to a degree, irritating if you like customization, but I really appreciate the sense of power that each upgrade imbues. The only reason I do not consider these to be "flaws" is that they are creative decisions that make a meta-textual connection with the themes of the story.

There are a few complaints I have that I have seen very few people complain about, and they mainly come down to difficulty. The game is either mind-numbingly easy, or it suddenly hits you with a difficulty spike that requires you to completely rework your paradigms. Chapter 13 is a particular offender here, with some encounters being harder than the hardest fights in the game. In my opinion, a way to counteract this would have been tightening up the balance so that either paradigm decks can be used without too many changes, or one that required reworking of paradigm decks to be a constant factor of gameplay. The difficulty is not what I would call ideal.

The characters and story in this game seem to be of mixed repute. I found the story really interesting, personally. The jargon-overload that the game front-loads you with can be intimidating, but you do eventually start to get a hang of it. The characters themselves are some of my favorites in all of Final Fantasy. My favorites are Lightning, Sazh, and Fang. But I think that the main reason the story and jargon get criticized can be best explained by comparing with Final Fantasy X. Tidus, love him or hate him, is an outsider to Spira. He, and by extension the player, are introduced into the world of Spira through a stranger's eyes, and the expository scenes are believable and work very well. XIII, however, lacks any real outsider characters. There are a few who could have been good options (Vanille and Fang come to mind), but most of the XIII characters are so in and of the world they inhabit that exposition would feel very unnatural.

One thing that I think should be universally recognized, however, is the soundtrack. It is FANTASTIC. Masashi Hamauzu is one of my favorite Square-Enix-associated composers, and I am a huge fan of his work in SaGa Frontier 2 and Unlimited SaGa. Final Fantasy XIII has a distinctly eclectic style, which admittedly sounds less like any of Nobuo Uematsu's work in the franchise. But I defy you to listen to "Blinded By Light" or "Snow's Theme" and not be taken in by the sheer versatility on display here.

The best way I can summarize my time with Final Fantasy XIII is as thus: I came in disconnected from the hype, expecting something...different from prior Final Fantasy games. I came out genuinely emotional at the ending, really connected to the characters, and thoroughly glad I spent time playing it. If you try to avoid being tainted by overly negative or positive opinions on the game, you too might find something really interesting in this game.