Yes, we choose to pronounce it "Tie-dus" and not the official pronunciation "Tee-dus".

I want to also point out something about FFX, and it's that the linearity makes sense in the context of the plot. It's a pilgrimage, there is only one path. Every summoner goes on it, just like Yuna and her party.

"FFXIII is a straw. FFX...is a silly-straw." That sounds so stupid and funny, but it's like, the BEST analogy and 100% accurate.

X uses a very convenient trick that Tidus isn’t expected to know everything and his culture shock is the player’s - it makes the infodump a lot less... awkward, and they even play with it by withholding information from Tidus and the player about Yuna’s expected fate. FFX is just a better told story, and my guess is that the guff in XIII isn’t the linearity, but the pacing and the padding.

As the old saying goes: show, don't tell. I remember playing both these games for the first time. Within 15 minutes, I got a grasp of FF10. It SHOWED me what I needed to know - the main character, the basic premise, the main mystery, combat system, and the villain. FF13, on the other hand, felt like reading a textbook while trying to learn French at the same time.

FFX: Lulu's Victory Pose Player: SOLD!

In FFX, you're just as confused as the protagonist. As it all unravels, the world is gradually fleshed out piece by piece, for us and tidus respectively. FFXIII on the other hand has everyone in on the story except for you, and it remains that way throughout. I really think that's the key difference.

I hear that after FFX’s release, there were college courses dedicated to understanding the mechanics of Blitzball...

10 was a masterpiece of storytelling. It was both beautiful and sad. The world, the characters, the music, everything.....just utterly perfect.

I think one thing worth mentioning is that in FFX, Tidus has zero knowledge of Spira. This results in all of these interactions with NPCs that end up educating Tidus AND the player on the world of Spira. In other words, they're taking advantage of Tidus' cluelessness as an opportunity to build the player's understanding of Spira through interactions with people in that world. The problem with XIII's story (and XV's as well, in my opinion) is that NOBODY really understands what's going on. Interactions with NPCs provide next to nothing regarding the world or story, and you're left with this weak-ass data log that is feeding you info through some 3rd person narrator. In both games, it all culminates in this "pulling back the curtain" sequence late in the game where everything is supposed to become clear to the player. FFX does this progressively, with Tidus realizing that Yuna is trying to sacrifice herself, realizing that his father is Sin, and that he is just a dream created by Yu Yevon. FFXIII, on the other hand, feels much more abrupt, and even when the "true villain" reveals himself late in the game, it just leaves you thinking to yourself "what the fuck is happening right now".

FFX and FFXIII are both guided tours, but X is a vacation, where XIII is a facility inspection. FFX says "Oh, we're just playing Tiddlywinks over here, wanna play?" where XIII feels like "This is the Tiddlywink sector, see Tiddlywink, under subsection NCC-1701-D for more information." I think the difference is, that S-E remembered they were making a Video Game when they were making FFX. There are all these little side activities to do and things that flesh out the world. While the normal video game suspensions of disbelief have to occur, the player doesn't mind these because its an open invitation. "Have fun play game." They didn't let the linearity get in the way of having fun.

I really didn't mind XIII's linearity as I get that it's because of their "fugitive" status. What I didn't like was how they shove the whole story so fast I'm choking. The lore of the Gods in XIII is amazing though. It's just they rush things up.

I completely agree. I played X when I was only like ...idk, 10? 12? I may have missed some finer details as a kid but I understood the overall story and world. I tried to play XIII AS AN ADULT and I was so confused, I had no idea what was going on. The terminology in the game was so ridiculous, I felt like the writers were just trying to make themselves sound smart. The story jerked around and I couldn't finish the game. I had no feeling of connection to the characters, their purpose, the story or ultimately - the game's world. THAT is why I dislike XIII. The fact that it is linear has nothing to do with it. In fact, X is arguably my favorite FF title. A successful game needs to build the player's understanding of the world organically through the story and character interactions. A datalog is a piss poor attempt to cover up lack luster story and world building.

FFX allows you to BACKTRACK at any given point in the story once you finish Luca. You can literally run all the way back to Besaid if you want to. 13 just closes the door behind you with each new area.

Tidus role in FFX is very important due to him having no knowledge on the world he was transported into similar to the player thus making the game much more fun to explore FFXIII don’t have that advantage and the way the story is told can only be appreciated if you play it several times or read a lot of data logs

Man how I loved FFX I didn't care about how linear it was. And I really loved the environment. Besaid Island with lots of ruins from the civilization wiped by Sin. Same with Miihen Road, when you stop at Rins, and watch that cool sunset on the ocean with the big ruins faraway. Zanarkand was really well designed, and so were their ruins.

i fcking love me some final fantasy 10

Y'all mind if I _become cocoon's enemy?_

The "interlude" at Hope's house was the first moment I felt genuinely *good* playing FFXIII. I agree the game needed more times like those. The majority of the game was constantly being bombarded by enemies and chased by the authorities and it was just boring and tiring. You have to have up and down times to have a well paced game/story, or you will just become numb to the action and it doesn't have meaning.

"It's very ironic for a game themed around fighting against fate, to have such a linear system." Sums it up.

I invested more time in playing Blitzball in FFX than in FFXIII as a whole.

For me the "linearity" mainly comes from the feeling of being "trapped" in the story. For example you are stuck in an area and have to fight your way forward. That's what really bugs me, I never feel like the characters are safe: no breather, no peaceful moments, no optimism. The main issue for me was the lack of towns. FF13 just felt like a really long struggle

X's linearity is built into the plot in a much more convincing way. Yuna and her guardians (sans Auron) feel helplessly trapped in her journey of sacrifice, so the linearity feels like a natural part of that tragic story. XIII just doesn't do this. At all. And the linearity feels like a grind rather than a natural consequence of the setting.

I'd say that the terms in FF13 can quite easily be *inferred*. I remember my first time playing through it and not being confused at all; I just inferred that the Fal'cie are demigod-like beings, based on the way the characters spoke of them; with fear and (albeit reluctant) reverence. The L'cie, I inferred as being affiliated with the Fal'cie in some way, since they both end with the suffix "cie", although of course it wasn't confirmed for me until Chapter 2 or 3. The word Cie'th seemed to take after the word "wraith" and actually, the game pretty clearly spells out what they are in Chapter 2, when you first encounter them. Tl;dr, FF13 tends to tell its story between the lines, so you have to infer a lot as you play. It might also be that I'm coming from an Asian perspective on gods/divinity in general, where we have different and sometimes esoteric names for the different tiers of gods and goddesses that make up chinese/indian/japanese pantheons. Having "weird/vague" terms for divine entities isn't an unfamiliar idea for us

A huge aspect that makes X feel less linear is also just that there are multiple villains too that make it feel like more is going on. XIII is sorely weak in the villains department. Your focus is always solely on surviving and then solely on killing Barthadelus while in X your overall focus is killing Sin but also saving Yuna from being kidnapped, beating Seymour, etc.

I put about 40 hours into 13 and your quick 30 second description of the game gave me more info about the game then I ever got in those 40 hours of play time.

Something else that I appreciate about FFX is the fact that you're never really forced to go forward, but you WANT to. Sure, there were some times where you literally couldn't go backwards, but I rarely encountered these, because I was so intent on finding the next Aeon or figuring out more about what was going on that it didn't matter. In addition, having the areas be short but unique made them all the more memorable. When you're finally going back to all the old areas, its fun remembering where you were in the story at that point and how your characters evolved. Also, knowing the story and playing the game again, a lot of scenes and lines that seemed insignificant gain a lot more meaning, like Rikku suddenly wanting to say something when Bartello lost Donna cause she knows what happened to her, but ended up just saying, "I just wanted to wish him good luck." Small things like that made the story more compelling.

FFX was made by people who knew the heart and soul of what made a good final fantasy game. They weren't just making a game, they were making something they were passionate about and they wanted to share that with the rest of the world. That's why whenever I go back and play it, I can always relate in some way or another. For lack of a better word, the game spoke to me. It resonated with me like few games ever can. FFXiii in my (opinion) were made by people who had a dead line to meet, who lost focus and passion for the median they were working in, whose end goal was to not tell a story but to try and squeeze every last dollar out of the consumer as possible with pointless future sequels. But hey that's just my opinion.

FFX is great because like tidus the player is clueless as to what's going on making the story very simple to understand. when you are explained how something works and are still not 100% on board with understanding it tidus feels the same way until you see it for yourself happen. The battle with sin on the highroad is a good example as you see how powerful sin is and understand more how sad the sending is

Something else that bothered me about the world-building was immersion. Characters in Spira behave as if they're informed by their culture and history. People in Cocoon behave like people from modern day Oregon. Spira is just much more richly conceived while most of the levels you go through in XIII have little bearing on the story.

"It boils down to this, FF13 is a straw, FF10 is a silly straw" I like this guy.

Final fantasy 10 simply tells a better story way better in a better environment. The story is do well fleshed out and throws key scenes at you left and right at perfect moments that its hard to beat nowadays.

It takes a master class story teller to make a story beloved by all. "" It takes a smart storyteller to use complicated words. It takes a smarter storyteller to use simple words instead."

Spira = living breathing world and culture Cocoon & Pulse = HD wallpapers with flavor text 13's world just felt like disposable backdrop for the characters to have their moments in. I'd say the most telling part is how Cocoon & Pulse are just outright gone by Lightning Returns. Nobody seems that interested in the lost world either, and even Nova Chrysalia is treated as a throwaway land by the story. I see FF10 as a masterclass in worldbuilding, while the 13 trilogy consistently fumbled it.

I think its the love story between Tidus and Yuna that is the real focus in ffX. This love story steadily evolved and became strong. Oh....and that ending scene. Well it is unforgettable even 16 years later.

Man just hearing that FFX music.... guess I gotta play it... again...

Great video. One thing I'd also highlight, is that the routes on FFX felt connected and you saw the change in scenery. Even with something vastly different and seemingly disconnected like Maclania Woods was commented on to be so. Letting you enjoy it as something unusual to be in awe of. You also went back and forth between them, further enforcing the fact that they were neighbouring areas. Whereas all of FFXIII's routes for the first 20 hours felt disconnected from one another. All looked unusual (Artificially so, with no explanation on why they were like they were) and you didn't go back. Making them feel like levels in a platformer.

In ffx you actually visit places and feel like a real person. In ffxiii you just walk along corridors with different walls.

As a 13 fan, I agree entirely with this, but I always loved this game more than any other (even 7) because I just felt like I understood the story, characters, etc. But, that’s probably mostly because I actually read the datalog...

It always bugged me when I hear people complain games being ‘too linear’ as if in and of itself is always a negative aspect. You’ve done a great job in showcasing how a linear game could be done either exceptionally well or poorly.

XIII is like FFXs laughing scene, but for 60 hours.

All jrpgs tend to be linear, because of the story. The problem is how they deal with that, or masked given some "liberty" to explore. FFX had everything going for it, the first truly 3d FF with voice, the graphics, the lore of Spira, characters, etc. And let's not forget, the popularity of MMOs, open world rpgs, and FFXII also divided the fans, I think mixing all of that affect how fans saw FFXIII.

What made FFX so good was that yes, the game was linear, but the entire game's story was designed around that with the pilgrimage and all. This wasn't a game for you to wander around and do small things. There were small things for you to do, but they were basically on the path. It was about seeing diverse places, wondering what beautiful area you were going to be exposed to next, what kind of monsters, hazards you were going to face. The game did such an amazing job with those hazards and effects, like the lightning in that one stormy area. In FFXIII, you weren't drawn on that single path. You were yanked around like you were on a chain. The game screamed for explanation such as the theme park. I'll never forget reading about it in the game and being so excited. "Is this FFXIII Gold Saucer? Do I finally get to wander around a bit?" No. It was just another instance of the game yanking me in another direction. Boring, overly gigantic and uninspired locations made the high encounter rate seem like torture. I just wanted to play to get to the next area, only to find that it was the same thing with different graphics. Because it was an FF game, I would try to push through. Then, when it finally does throw you out in the open, suddenly it goes from this super linear path to this wide open area. I was given no indication of where to go or what to do to advance the story, getting 1-hit by monsters and such. I finally got what I wanted, but the entire single path experience drained so much that I had no patience to figure out the rest of the game or look at online walkthroughs. So I quit and never turned back.

I found FF15 to be quite enjoyable. The characters resonated with me. The game was very linear, but the intent was that these 6 people were L’Cie and time was their enemy. Their fate is sealed, thus the linearity until post-game. The chapters were impeccable too, better than ff15, composition-wise. the backstory of each character is carefully built and you see how the fate of the 6 individuals intertwined. The flow is flawless, and that’s what got me to keep playing until the end past all the boring battles, because I was rooting for these characters. *This* *game* *is* *story* *and* *detailed* *enriched,* *rather* *than* *gameplay.* I took the time to read all the datalogs lol, and I do think they could have done a better job integrating some of the history. I read a datalog about Paddra Tsu Yeul and I was like “who tf is this and why should I care?” But then after playing FF13-2 I realized who she was and was able to connect it back to the first game. Enough can be said able the games mechanics though in all honesty. The story in FF13 is very well nurtured, especially if you get to play the trilogy in order through FF13-Lighting Returns, the game hits on some touching topics, relatable themes and arguably real-world issues. The way the series envelopes your emotions in not just simple tactics like character deaths, sacrifices, tragedies, and loss. It instead carries you through of what it means to be alive, to keep fighting through despair, how not to give up when the going gets hard, but also how hard it is to stay alive, and how to live with your demons. In conclusion lol, FF13 tells a story that players who stuck around to listen will never forget. However the way it was presented and delivered is very debatable.

I was inticed by XIII because it has a lot of similarities to X. But I could barely finish it. And I've finished X four times.

You've brought up a lot of good points, some I didn't even think about. I loved both Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XIII. One thing I really liked about the linearity of XIII is that it fit the plot. X's plot allowed for them to take their time. Yes, bringing the Calm would be better sooner than later, however they could go at their own pace. XIII however, they were all fugitives. Why would a bunch of wanted criminals stop by a casino and have some fun? They wouldn't stop and talk to townsfolk because they don't want to be recognized. But once they all get to Pulse, where they are no longer being persued, the game opens up. It makes sense to the narrative.

Another thing I like about the sphere grid is that, if you want, you can just follow the linear character path if you don't feel like investing a lot of time in the Sphere Grid.

Final Fantasy X has a point to every area, both in narrative and in game play. You always know what you're doing and where you are by the time the introduction is over, and each stop along the way informs the setting, your next destination, and the characters. Even new mechanics and wrinkles in the combat system continue to be added until the mid-late point of the game. You move through these areas with reasonable speed, no one location ever outstaying its welcome, but all making at least a tiny impression. Tiny little hidden nooks and crannies encourage exploration even in the tight corridors of your path, and several distractions from the weight of the main characters' duties and trials dot the landscape in the form of mini games- the largest of them being Blitzball, which literally serves as one of the few distractions the natives of Spira possess from Sin and their terrible existences in-universe. You're on a pilgrimage for the majority of the story, so your path being a line makes sense. It opens up at the end when the characters break from the path set for them that had been leading into the vicious cycle at the core of the setting. The leveling system is similarly linear (less so with the Expert Grid), but also presents many opportunities to break from the linearity through the use of keys, teleports, etc. By roughly the same time that the game's world opens up, you'll reach the end of each character's natural path, leaving you with nowhere to go but to break away from that path if you hadn't. These moments exist to perfectly coincide with the characters deciding their own stories. The linearity in Final Fantasy X has a thematic point, and is accounted for in the game's designs. Final Fantasy XIII very much wants to recapture what people loved about the games before it. Its chaotic opening sequence with the player thrown into the action is reminiscent of Final Fantasy VII, and Lightning of Cloud at the beginning of the game, while the structure of the levels is VERY similar to X's in that it's heavily linear and only opens up near its end. But it does so without understanding how its predecessors did it and why. In VII, you have only one point of view to follow, and the game organically introduces you to the jargon of the setting- Mako Reactor, SOLDIER, AVALANCHE. The terms used in ways that explain their nature or role in the setting, aside from the fact that several are near self-explanatory (SOLDIER obviously being military-related but different from a regular soldier, AVALANCHE evoking disaster and destruction, Mako 'Reactor' some energy source). Despite characters never explicitly sitting each other down to provide a dictionary explanation, the player catches on well enough to follow the action. XIII's opening jumps about constantly between multiple view points, fails to define its terms or even use terms that evoke ideas that can be used to grasp the situation. What's a l'cie? What's a fal'cie? Aside from Cocoon's enemies, I mean? It takes its sweet time telling you, and on many terms and locations all throughout the game, you have to dig into a dictionary the game shoved into the menu to learn anything, if there's anything to learn at all. X does an excellent job of pacing its plot and character development. XIII does not. It follows the same idea of breaking the game up into defined chunks, but many times the characters and plot don't advance in these chunks; they merely repeat the same information and character beats over and over. It feels like they had no idea of how they wanted these stories to be presented, made a few dozen possible takes, and then ran out of time and funding and just shoved them all in out of a hope nobody would notice. The areas are visually different, but have no real game play variation to set them apart or mechanics to introduce. No side quests, no mini games, nothing for the stretch. Character customization of meaningful capacity is non-existent. Even when the world DOES 'open up', there's not much to do aside from what you've already been doing, and the combat system really does not have the depth to keep it fresh after 20 hours. The linearity does not serve the plot, in fact it damages it. Your characters are fugitives on the run, and they don't have much in the way of plans about how to survive or escape. Each new area is pretty much just whatever was nearby in their aimless running, so why is it all so linear? There's no reason to be in a given spot for most of the game. The locations themselves aren't even explained or fleshed out much beyond whatever is in the datalog. Even the main antagonist's motives are shoved into datalogs. XIII does what it does purely because a previous game in the series did them, or because the game is trying to subvert things previous games did for the sake of subversion. Tools exist for specific purposes, and the same goes for narrative tools. Just like you don't hammer a nail into wood purely for the sake of hammering a nail into wood, you don't use plot structures and beats purely because someone else had some success with what they were using it for.

As someone who has never played a Final Fantasy game before, I'm intrigued to play FFX... XD Would that be a good starting point?

Seeing Brotherhood crossed with whatever kind of swiss army knife looking thing Lighting uses makes me think of how well they represent their games. Brotherhood is straightforward with some flair, like the hilt, pommel, and random hook at the end. X is very easy to understand and get stuck into. Lightning's gunblade is way overcomplicated, I don't know where it starts or where it ends. Kind of like how XIII's world building is described in the video.

FFX has Auron, that's enough lol. He's such a badass wandering spirit.

I finished FFX and FFXIII. FFX ending made me cry. FFXIII ending made me wonder if I missed something, like understanding WTF is going on. Up to this day I still don't remember what this game was all about or what was the point of the story. Loved killing those giant dinossaurs on the only open field, though.

Here's one thing they differ in that really got to me after thinking about both games: Do you care enough about the world to bother saving it? In FFX, absolutely, as you met a great many NPCs who were good and/or interesting people. You get to explore the settlements and talk with people at your leisure. Even after being branded heretics, there are still people who support you. In FFXIII, you spend a few minutes with the NORA crew, and there's Serah and Dajh that are in crystal that your crew won't shut up about, but that's it, 40 hours go by and every other NPC you meet dies (usually by attacking you). You also have to shop "online" instead of talking to a living person, and there are no people at all on Pulse (the Datalog strikes again here, there are actually some interesting lore bits about the last people on Pulse that aren't "discussed" in-game). The rest of Cocoon hates your guts, and you never get to connect with anyone, so why bother? If you never get to meet anyone else in the game, then you're relying completely on having your main cast be super interesting and likable (which FFXIII's is not). At least FFXIII lets you skip cutscenes, so its speedrun is almost 4 hours faster than FFX's.

FFX was the last ff game that I truly enjoyed and played many times but when it comes to the ff games after I’m not a big fan.

I just plat 13-2 last yr. Do u have any content like this about 13-2 or Returns?

In X you can revisit areas. In XIII they limit how far you can level up according to the story. Also I liked XIII better when it was called Xenosaga; a game ironically with more freedom than XIII

*E N E M I E S O F T H E S T A T E*

FFX is my favorite and the story is excellent. I really enjoyed FFXIII but the story was defintely harder to follow

This video is amazing. Something you forgot to mention about the FFX's Sphere Grid is the ability to recreate the Spheres. You can fill the empty nods to make your characters stronger but you can also delete the slots already on the sphere to either replace the ones that have low stats upgrades to stronger ones or just delete it to weaker your characters for testing maybe? or challenges although I guess starting a New Game would make more sense. Years ago, I made a college research paper about the same topic and covered most of what was presented here haha (For those wondering, the teacher liked it, but I don't remember what was the topic and how I chose it)

I love both games honestly. Yeah, I get attacked every time I say I enjoyed FFXIII lol but I will admit, I agree with EVERYTHING you said about FFXIII, but for some odd reason, I can work around these things. As someone who likes FFXIII, I can honestly see why people didn't like it. But I still love both X & XIII. You deserve WAY MORE VIEWS AND SUBS MAN! This video was great! :D

I'm surprised you didn't also mention the ability to backtrack. I think it makes a huge difference especially as things change with the story moving on. People excuse XIII for not allowing that because they were on the run. However, that applies to FFX as well. They just changed the npcs and invironments slightly and it made the whole world feel more real and less like a hallway.

That was always something I loved about X's story, was how Tidus and the player discovered new information and learned about the world together. That's one of the biggest differences between X and XIII for me: XIII feels like it builds a world around the story it wants to tell, and so it forces all these confusing things about its world to try and make that story itself, and you never feel like you know enough even. X's world is well-defined and interwoven with the story in a meaningful way that makes both the main plot and the world of Spira absolutely masterful in execution. It boils down to this: X was built so that every piece would fit together perfectly and create something complete and seamless by the end of it, between the main plot, the world, and even its characters. XIII feels like they focused on the basic structure of the story and MAYBE the characters (some of whom feel weak in terms of personality and development tbh) and then slapped on a world to try and fit around the awkward shape that the story was, and it just didn't quite fit in all the most important places.

I'm a new gamer of final fantasy. My first one was 10, it's still my favorite. I mean I played every final fantasy and they are two games that I like before final fantasy X (V and VI). X, was amazing and I can come back to it and still enjoys it. X-2 is very good imo. XII is huge and there is so many things to discover, great too. And XIII, the story is entertaining and characters are great for me, some scenes are so well made, you can deny that. In the end of the day, it's juste a matter of taste

I feel like most of XIII's decisions were made based on backlash to XII; the Paradigm system is an extremely stripped down, minimized version of the Gambits, the linear level design was a response to the really meandering open fields of Ivalice, and the story being hidden away in datalogs feels like a response to the dry political exposition of XII's plot. Personally, I loved XII, largely because the plot was so political and the levelling/party structure was so unique and different, but a lot of people I've talked to seemed to just not enjoy it and felt it was confusing/overwhelming, so when they made XIII, it feels like they were trying to strip down and streamline the design of the game, but went overboard and ended up giving you an emaciated husk of what a JRPG is supposed to look like.

Another problem with the crystarium in XIII is that it seems to be ant me. I'm a grinder. I LIKE Becoming an uber badass early into the game. Yet it level caps you based on what section of the story you are in. You literally can't be max level until like chapter 10+ IIRC. to those that don't like grinding or don't care either way, its whatever. But to me, it was a definite negative. In my opinion, If i want to spend 200 hours in the map and 1 hit the first boss, thats my choice. in my opinion if you are going to hard cap me, don't be direct about it. do it the way some other, notably western, games do it and don't have the enemies respawn. don't want me being too high level by a certain point? don't freaking allow me to fight unlimited enemies. simple as that. don't have the level system itself do it. I don't want to FEEL restricted, even if i actually am. I think you should always give the player the illusion of agency even if their is none.

Brilliant. Everything I ever wanted to say about the comparison distilled into a tidy video. Also I approve of your Tidus pronunciation. 100% thumbs up.

13 trilogy was my first game into final fantasy, as a newcomer i was able to understand the game and bare,y looked at the datalog although i did only for parts like falcie history etc. imo its not really that complicated for me. yes ffx has done better in parts of storytelling and progression with lore n all i agree. especially with game leveling design and pacing. ff13 throws u ina loop quite a bit but i always got the jist of it hahah. each game is gonna be different of course, diff gameplay, camera angles, etc. learning to appreciate the flaws in 13 made me love it more. again i agree with everything said in this but it does sound 13 gets shitted on too much?? compared and the degraded instead of giving some bitsa props for what it did right. but i dont wanna sound like a weirdo and be like peeps gotta do that i juist wish it was given more appreciation even if its bad at least for the music and design (not linearity). i love both games and see both flaws in each and appreciate for what they both are and do.

You’re forgetting a VERY IMPORTANT FACT. And that is....MUSIC! The music in ffx was AMAZING at building the right atmosphere whether it be admiring the wonder of spira...sympathizing with the characters and yunas role as a summoner....celebrating victories against the Luca Goers as the underdog. The storytelling of ffx was done so well at evoking emotions that made the game so much more enjoyable. I’m a pretty hardcore ff fan and i found I had a hard time trying to like ffxiii. It just didn’t come natural like all the other ffs offered unfortunately. Great video.

X is linear but for some reason it didn’t bother me in X, I couldn’t tell you why, it was paced so well and you add your characters as you go along rather than XIII where all your characters split up until quite near the end of the game

FF13 has major potential in its narrative, if there were maybe some mechanic where you could win the public over do you could open up side missions(or expand the lore without the use of the datalogs) then that’s be fantastic. But as it stands, 13 is a modern Icarus tale

ff 13 makes such a good impression in the prologue. i like it when prologues introduce many questions at first and throw you into the story without much explanation at first. and i also dont mind prologues to be simple and linear. but then almost the whole game basically is structured exactly the same way and you are always wondering when it will finally make sense or not insult your intelligence in its leveldesign.

I liked your comparison between X and XIII's main cast and side characters. You also said "the story in XIII makes more sense if you're already familiar with the world of cocoon". I actually found both of these issues from XIII to be just as present in XV. The side characters don't flesh out the world much at all, and the entire plot seemed like it was written for the developers -- the people who already knew everything about the game and could write an ultimania about it -- rather than the consumers. It's sad that all they learned from XIII was that they needed to pull back on the linearity.

Great video. Another thing that I've always struggled with when it comes to XIII's story are the gobbledygook terminology, compared with X's terminology which very much has a grounding in the real world. X uses terms like Sin, Calm, Fayth, Aeon, which are all derived from descriptions (mostly with religious connotations, running with the themes of the game) from our own world, so we can immediately relate to it and utilize our own understanding of the real world terms within the context of the world of Spira. Even Spira is explained as being derived from spiral. It's a brilliant example of cleverly used terminology in a fantasy setting. XIII on the other hand, whilst it does use Cocoon, Pulse, Purge etc, the story is very much centred around the terms Fal'Cie and L'Cie. I've tried looking up whether these are in fact derived from a preexisting terms but have found nothing, so I can only assume they are completely made up (or at least something so vague that hardly anyone will know - if anyone does though I'd be very interested to find out!). It's why the characters have to keep reinforcing what a Fal'Cie and L'Cie are, purely to try to get these terms to make some form of sense to the audience. Basically, while XIII did have a lot of potential, it never did itself any favours. Had they used terms we as the audience could immediately relate to, they could have filled all the time wasted on characters repeating that Pulse L'Cie are "enemies of Cocoon" with more story content and world building. Sadly, a lot of this is sidelined and just shoved into the datalogue.

FF13 was missing Sakaguchi. Even though Spirits Within bombed hard, he should have never left the company. Dude was way too hard on himself. The company was on its way to bankruptcy, and he was the engine that brought the company out of the dark ages and skyrocketed around FF7.

That Besaid island theme just gives me chills. Good video

Another point to make is that in FF13, the game actually caps your level each chapter, so there is no point of running around and enjoying the game battles, cause it stops all progression for you. Boss fight too hard? Too bad, figure out the exact strategy you need to win.

I suspected FF 13 would suck when I was reading an interview where they basically said they were looking at what worked in FF 7 and just finding ways to incorporate it into 13. They didn't ask WHY certain things worked, which is why you have characters and settings that don't really seem to make sense or fit with the rest of it (I.E Lightning is basically Cloud, they start on a train because that's how 7 started, there's a casino because 7 but it doesn't really do anything)

It also focuses way more on the cities you encounter and personifies them, they are each relatable characters in the story. Your party literally visits a place in the world that has its own role. All I remember from 13 is empty halls that were separated by empty open areas and more empty Halls. Whereas 10 had the perfect ratio and literally broke the progression into segments, each one separated by a big city node that shows a different way of life. Each one gives the player the chance to relax and satisfies the need for exploration at your own pace before you set back into the story. I have completed 10 many times. And just hearing the theme song at 1:07 brings a surge of nostalgia and longing to return. In contrast, I got the the last chapter of 13, and for the first time ever as a final fantasy veteran, my characters weren’t strong enough to get through it. Because It felt like I was doing a chore. I put the game down there and have never picked it up again.

The one thing I find interesting though that was not mentioned was that in FF13 the more accessibility to the system (the remaining paradigms) and the ability to move away from the linear path come at points in the game where narrative the characters are given more choice. When the character believe they only have one path it's just non-stop hallways and I believe the designers in interviews reflected as such. The "hallways" were meant to make you feel like the characters in that you felt you only had one way to go. When the characters gain some agency within the story you see that they gain access to their initial paradigms. During Chapter 10 the characters unlock all of their paradigms as they accept that there isn't just one way of doing things. Then the world stops being nearly as narrow when they see that they have more control over their future and it coincides with the events following Chapter 10 (I'm using chapters and vagueness for the sake of any spoilers). It's a neat narrative mechanic, it's just one that I feel did not work in the games favor as they'd hope. Where these narrative choices were plagued with so many good points made by Design Doc in his video. The hallways were painted beautifully, but none the less there was no character there. NPCs didn't really exist. Side characters that were there were hardly involved in the game itself beyond fulfilling a narrative beat. FF10 on the other hand filled those hallways with flavor, recurring characters, and history. You still felt pushed forward, but the world felt filled in. FF13 could have benefited from a lot of more recurring NPCs even if they were the same 2 Psi-corp guys constantly getting in the way (ala Biggs and Wedge from FF8). I liked FF13, the combat system developed into a fast paced romp as you took on harder and harder challenges after Chapter 10 when everything really becomes unlocked to you. Now, while FF games deal a lot with their combat system and that carries a lot of the main play of the game, the narrative and story has to mean just as much to the game and I think their design choices in 13 for the story and how it was represented wasn't really well done.

Wandering flame is such a nice song

FF10 has its problems, but theres no denying its a fantastic RPG. The difference between FF10 and FF13 is Hinorobu Sakaguchi. Without him Sqaure fucked it all up. Square fucked FF13 up by spending too much money and time on the Fabula Nova Crystalis project. They couldn't justify all that time and money on one game, so they split FF13's mythology across 5 games. Thats why the story was so thin, all we had with FF13's was nonsense like: "Its our Focus, Serah said so". Every few cutscenes the same dialogue is repeated over and over and over. The story never moves forward like FF10; the cutscenes are there to placate the players until the end of the game; when we finished the game, we were told that FF13-2 would continue FF13. So there was no intention on Squares part to tell a complete story in one game, the story was designed to span 5 games, hence why they coulnd't explain the story in FF13, they could only develop the characters, because the characters were disposable. The story however was not.

A very nice video, you nailed down every single point! Fortunately for FFXIII, the fancy hallway is just too pretty that it distracts me from the convoluted story and superlinear world, I like the game but it could be a lot better I finally understand the story after finishing my second playthrough which for most people is just not gonna happen and reading through the datalog is something 90% player won't do after all

Thank you so much for this video. I'm in the minority in that I actually liked FFXIII, but I also recognize that it is incredibly (INCREDIBLY) flawed, especially compared to earlier FF games. I would often compare it to FFX, but I could never articulate it in the way that you did in this 15-minute video. Thank you for putting a voice to this comparison.

Really good video - I've been thinking of doing this comparison for awhile but you've just about covered everything I would say and much more, and in a way more professional manner. Top notch! Also thanks for saving me from playing FFXIII again.

God, thank you for putting my thoughts on FFXIII into words. FFX is like a novel with evenly spaced chapters, FFXIII is like a 500 page run-on sentence. PS: Thank you for pronouncing it "Tie-dus".

FFX have a better storytelling, even though you know what to expect in the next chapter. (you know that you will defeat sin since the beginning of the game, you know that Tidus fall in love with Yuna since he first met her, etc) FF XIII? You didn't even understand "why Lightning do this, Why Snow do that, why Hope hate this, why Vanille love that" for the first half of the game. You didn't understand what is fal cie, what is L'cie, differences between Cocoon Fal Cie and Pulse Fal Cie (seriously i though Fal Cie like some kind of evil organization at the beginning of the game)

The chrystarium was kinda fun if you set about min/maxing all characters. The order in which you upgrade nodes is important to get the most health, mp etc out of each one. Took a while to wrap my head around it but once I had it figured out it was pretty amusing. =)

The problem with XIII is that it's a final fantasy game. The unfortunate truth is ff games will always be compared to previous games. I tried to play XIII, but couldn't get past a few hours because it didn't feel like a ff game. A year later I went back and convinced myself to not think of it as a ff game. I ended up thoroughly enjoying it, and spent dozens of hours getting all the items and the best weapons.

Best video yet! I went thru and watched the back log in the last couple days as I was doing some cleaning. Love the content keep it up!

Goddamn... just those opening 10 seconds of Besaids theme fill me with nostalgia and a sense of home, and I barely even played ffX. That theme is absolutely perfect for what it needed to be.

The most damming problem of 13 was the melodramatic drivel everyone made speeches at each other. Wasn't a natural character interaction in the first 10 hours. Didn't help that the game auto played itself like a rail shooter where your only interaction was choosing which rail and mindlessly pressing x.

I agree somewhat but at the end of the day it depends. Me personally I didn't care for blitzball at all and hated it when the game forced me to play a round of it in order to progress. I also hated the puzzles as I thought they were slow and boring with most them just being "move sphere here and repeat" Music and art design is what made me forget about linearity in both games. I play jrpgs for their plot so XIII not forcing me to do any random shit I didn't care about was welcomed.

I wonder if the pacing of XIII was hindered due to how the game wrote itself into a corner with a time limit of turning into a cie'th and constantly being hunted down in Cocoon.

Based on how it was described - I expected pulse to be literally hell. Instead, it's just the Australian outback.

I also can see how people live on a daily basis in Spira, I don't know how the average day in Cocoon goes because it feels like there's literally nothing there but scifi buildings and some people attacking.

It's also worth noting that, unlike FFX which doles out it's story organically through the gameplay, the areas you play through in Final Fantasy 13 are almost always narratively interchangeable. Ask yourself at any point while playing FFX "what am I doing here" and you'll usually have an answer that's relevant to either the plot or to the characters. Ask yourself the same question while playing FF13 and more often than not the answer is usually just "to get from point A to point B".

Enemis of Cocoon. Edit: I like how easily X let you make overpowered characters. Not easily as in "no effort," but as in "We won't stop you." My Yuna started out the best healer, but by the end of the game she had all of Lulu's best offensive magic and then some. Powerful magic, powerful summons, and powerful healing spells made her the cornerstone of all three of my full playthroughs. I played XIII for around 20 hours, most of which was spent grinding because the game is poorly balanced on top of being poorly designed.

IM SO GLAD I FOUND UR CHANNEL THRU MY RECOMMENDATIONS, YT searching still sucks tho but youve made my friday dude

Amazing video. I have Covid and was trying to decide on which one of these games to devote a weeks time in. You just sold me on X. Thank you. Keep these videos coming.

I was pissed with FF13's bizarre plot choices. Because the characters never explained where they are, where are they going and where they fell into, I honestly thought the frozen lake was a new world that when I went to ffwiki to understand what the hell Coccon is supposed to be I was spoiled what happened to it in the ending. It was that bad.