I have my game paused not because I find boring a linear story. What I find boring is the same type of combat again and again structured the same in all levels. I liked the combat dynamic, but I find the levels more and more tedious with endless combats in which I get bored because they are all the same but at the same time I cannot get distracted because the combat dynamics demand constant changing of roles between the characters, which became a chore. I'm really interested in the story and I like some character dynamics and visuals, but got so tired of doing the same again and again in each level that I don't have fun anymore.

13 is probably the most fascinating game to pick apart either positively or negatively, the sad thing is the majority of discourse around it is reductive like the overemphasis on linearity because the actual issues are harder to parse or the defenders using the terrible "it opens up after 7 hours" defense and worse often devolved into flame wars. While there's thankfully a lot more thoughtful critiques coming out now the early days of drowning any disection in flame stuck and even now there's pretty much always at least a couple people in every comment section about it using the game's bad reputation to personally attack its fans or an overzealous fan trotting out the "you just don't get it" tripe.

Wtf this game was a masterpiece bro, especially 13-2. 13-2 is the real final fantasy 13. This game is literally a better version of ff16

Need more sidequests, extra dungeons, and the such. Also, if they cannot provide airplanes for us to revisit previous places, teleport portals should do the same trick

The problem with 13 I think was the datalog. it threw made up nouns around like candy and expected you to read everything to understand it. And of course the comparison between 13 and 10 when it comes to linear design is there. Personal gripe though was auto battle. The most efficient method at almost all times was libra 2 times, auto the whole fight.

The one time I remember FFXIII had a switch up in gameplay was that March of The Dreadnughts (Pulse Armaments) mandatory minigame. If the game had some more moments like that, like maybe actually using the airships or something, it would spice up the experience. Nautilus could have been a nice play to add a few small minigames or sidequests, like the Gold Saucer from VII. It would make the game feel more alive like every other game. The freedom in Final Fantasy games is what most people enjoy in exploring their worlds.

Considering you get a mech for each character as the story progresses I wonder why they didn't think of some racing/traversal minigame that let's you use the Eidolons as unlockable characters.

i always heard ppl trashing the protagonist - lightning, the most saying she's boring but i also heard ppl calling this game a "hallway simulator". i didn't play the entire 13 trilogy but i have played 13 part 2 and the finale i never had a chance to buy part 1 of FF 13. i think it's just ppl anting to complain just for the sake of complain and the take of ff 13 part 1 being a "hallway simulator" is hypocritical and u can't really take them seriously. these are the same type of ppl that will copy and paste someone else's opinion because they can't form an opinion on their own.

I tried really hard to get into it but after reaching chapter 4 i just don’t think i can get into it

26:48 @ArthurGunnerson how about NO? Combat system was a big step down after FF12 with its perfect gambit system and full control over your party at all times. And seamless field/battle scenes of course. Hell, even FF8 with its junction system, broken as it is, is still better than 13, because it gives you much more customization of practically everything. 13 was a huge disappointment as a game, and that's largely because of the battle system. 13's battle system is really a no-brainer. Make everyone a Ravager, rack up combo, then switch everyone to Commando. If your health gets low, switch everyone to Medic. If the enemies are strong, at the start of the battle switch everyone to Synergist, then Saboteur, then do the 3xRavager - 3xCommando. It's that simple. Zero strategy (OK, it's one strategy that works every time). It doesn't even compare with elaborate materia system of FF7, or junction of FF8, or actual job system of FF5. And how stupid is that I can only control the leader? And that I can't switch the leader? Everyone else are on autobattle, and that makes it impossible to take on hard bosses unless you really overlevel yourself, 'cuz partner AI is stupid and doesn't always take the best action, especially if you need prompt healing. And don't even get me started on Game Over every time leader dies! In what timeline would that be a good game design decision? Listen, 13 is shit. There, I've said it. It's a shitty game and a disgrace of the series. It was made largely by the same people that made FF7 and FF10 before, but 7 and 10 did not suffer from such crappy decisions. And they were on a technically less advanced consoles even! And its direct predecessor FF12 had seamless battles! There is LITERALLY not even one redeeming quality to 13. Too bad we had to suffer three of them in the end.

Great work man! I hope this catches on

Great video!! Hope the algorithm blesses you, cuz this is amazing!

Great video

0:03 minor spelling error, video ruined.

Really good video!

Amazing analogy of persona and its deep meanings, hope to see other stuff like this in the future 🙏

Love the video!!! I'm a huge fan of XIII.

I only play 13 and never try the other ff13 game...how about 13-2 and lightning return?? The problem still same?

I literally had to restart the vid 3 times because I kept hearing moor mersion

I disagree. Diagetic design isnt naturally better than menus. I think thats a severely arm chair dev thought lacking QA experience. Loving the channel.

13 has issues imo but it isnt boring. It's a good game great even. It's battle system with a plastic of x2 and ATB2.0 would be incredible ino

A big issue i had with the game is A lot of what going on or understanding What is even happening require you to read the Compendium Which if what going on is not drawing me in or interesting why would i care about the lore

I literally love that classic menu micromanagement. Why can't people just speak for themselves??

This conversation feels very reminiscent of the much older 'invisible vs visible editing debate' in film. Invisible editing describes cuts that occur between two visually similar scenes, so that the transition is almost unnoticeable. It's done to create a smooth, immersive experience for viewers. Visible editing, on the other hand, calls attention to the jumps in time, subject, or setting, and reminds the audience that they are, in fact, and audience. Fundamentally, both of these debates hinge on the question: "to what extent should an audience be aware of their place as a viewer?" I don't think being reminded of your role in the seat of the player - something that menus inevitably do - is a intrinsically bad thing. Abstractions are core to video games as a medium, and that's not a weakness. In fact, the primary way we interact with games is *through* abstractions. Mechanics, systems, even just the simple act of manoeuvring of a character through a physical space is how we connect them, no matter how much you try and hide that. If menu's are inhibiting player's ability to do so, then yes, your ideas here would be great! Lethal company especially; that game zeros in on its physical space. Incorporating its menus into that environment is genius, because, like you said, it feels like part of the game world, instead of some layer on top of it. The social link menu idea could work phenomenally as well. Skeuomorphism (making a design resemble a real object that shares it's function) helps with both readability, and personal investment. But I think it's narrow-minded to assume that's always the case. LISA The Painful, for example, is quite possibly the most the most "immersed" I've ever felt with a game in my life. It's a brutal, hard-as-rocks RPG. To even stand a chance at beating it, you need to make expert use of your items and recruitable party members. However, the game will often stop you at key points, and force you to choose between losing all of your items and currency, a party members life, or a limb from your main character. A choice between all of your consumable healing/damaging items, or an expendable collection of skills with barely a backstory chosen through a clunky, default RPGMaker 2003 menu should not be a difficult choice, but through LISA's excellence, it *is*. It's built through its mechanics to make you rely on these things, not because you hypothetically care about your belongings or teammates, but because you, the player of this RPG, desperately need these abstract, transparently video game-y things to even beat it. LISA is not being dishonest, these are virtual possessions - It knows that, and you know that - but you still need them to complete it. It forces you to think about your role as the player to emotionally invest you in the story it's trying to tell, and to put you in the head-space of your main character. What I'm trying to say with that tangent is this: something is lost when we're always trying to make the audience forget they're an audience. Lethal Company's invisible menus are great because they keep you firmly grounded in the physical space core to its gameplay. LISA's visible menus are great because they force you to emotionally engage with it in very visceral way. Games have abstractions. We should try and make games that create emotionally fulfilling experiences because of those, not in spite of them. Great video btw, I loved it :) (P.S: Play Lisa the Painful. It's a great game that, through it's excellence, challenged my fundamental beliefs of game and menu design - which happened to be very similar to yours)

There is one other key difference between X (and older FF) and XIII corridors, and that is random encounters. It is one thing to go through a corridor knowing that every step might turn into combat, and a totally different dynamic when you run down a corridor knowing nothing will happen unless you interact with the visible enemies.

13th issue isnt the linearity. The issue is the plot is so contrived and difficult to follow without having the video game equivalent of a thesaurus to make it understandable. At no point in the first 30 minutes are we given a clear reason why any of the main characters are worth following or that the empire is worth toppling. Not giving players more to do outside of combat makes the world feel really flat too.

Thank you. It's not boring.

Lol remember legend of dragoon having some fire ass music in the menu!!!

Linear is vastly superior for storytelling but the game has to open up properly about 80-90% through to allow exploration just like FFVI. Use that model of linear storytelling up until a certain point and you're always golden. XIII is underrated but XIII-2 is the weakest game in the entire series, just personal opinion.

This made me think of the suitcase from the mario and Luigi superstar saga where it opens up into an inventory screen or Ni No Kuni's spell book which is part of the story but you can also just open it up and read it in game. Idk why I found that so cool. But I did. They didn't have to put so much effort into that spell book.

FF 13 is one of the few things where I just don't agree with the majority opinion at all. I was fully immersed in the game and fascinated by the lore. Had an amazing time with the game and while I do recognise some issues people have with the game, I'll always be somewhat confused as to why people dislike the it so much.

Sons of the Forest is another good example of menu minimization you could check out!

This game will always be near and dear to me and I still will get my PS3 out often to replay it to this day because believe it or not, it is the game that got me into Final Fantasy back in 2009. This game is a black sheep of the franchise but regardless of the arguments on linearity or story, it is one my favorite in the series.

Ff13 was the first Final Fantasy I played and the only reason I bought it was cause I liked the box art. I think it’s the reason why I even like RPGs, I had played some before I never really got into it. Back the most RPGs were pretty linear so I didn’t even register that some people would find that boring? I thought the game looked amazing on a PS3 and I loved the music, I liked the story and the character drama, and it really came to my surprise when I got older and got more into the Final Fantasy community that 13 is the one people shit on the most. I felt that very same way about 15 and then 15 ended up being another one most people complain about. And then again with 16 😂. Normal consensus seems to be anything after 10 is eh. And that sucks cause I actually think anything BEFORE 10 is really boring and hasn’t aged well. Besides 7 and 8.

Why I didn't play FF13 and returned the game after just a day: Vanille. Most. Annoying. Character. Ever. I salute you guys who played through the game and loved it. Ya'll are better people than I am.

Linear isn't boring, a game that's more movie than game (and a terrible movie on top of that) sure is. 13 is pure ass

I always liked the final Bowser boss fight in Super Mario World. Also 3D Mario has somr good bosses. But yes, Mario lacks good 2D boss fights

I completed this game. Really loved the music. You hit the nail on the head about the meme, "It's linear." It's not a real criticism, but rather a side effect of what happens when your story is so bland the only 'excitement' is the hallway.

I loooooooved this game. I wish they’d release a ps5 version so I could at least play it again.

I love the game since it was my first ff game. And it saddens me that it could have been better if the crystal tools engine hadn’t been such a problem that it sunk ff into development hell until recently with ff7remake and rebirth. It could have been even more incredible since it had potential, but alas it is what it is. At least we can look forward to not having ff games be hindered by dev tools, since most games just moved to unreal engine and most of the teams now have plenty of experience with it.

TY, I keep reading linear story in the flaws section, and I'm like, who decided linear is always bad? Literally all movies are linear, and some of them are good.

I really don't give a shit about immersion. I care more about ease of use. A lot of the ideas here give me a damn headache just thinking about it. The Persona game menus are the best and near perfect the way they are because they're easy to use, give almost all relevant information in one place, they look cool as hell, and it actually feels so fun to use. Literally, the only thing I would change is including s-link availability under the social link tab, but it's not really a big deal.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake had something similar for healing as you suggested for Persona games You open a small submenu where you could select skills/items to use on the fly, without stopping gameplay But on the downside, you could cast one spell/throw one potion at the time, not really letting you queue them up FF7 Rebirth fixed this, letting you use items from the menu screen, which is much faster

31:33 Nothing wrong with that style of auto battle combat. If done well it can provide a very fun and unique experience like how FF12 has its own audience.

30:07 That's the thing its not meant to be interactive. Intentionally 100% just like how FF12 system was best when at full auto battle. You either like that style or you don't. 12 was a single player MMO style with lots of build variety so it managed to get it's own niche fanbase with the Gambit System.

Kingdom Hearts 2 is also a linear hallway RPG but the reason why it gets away with that design is because the gameplay was unique and fun. FF13 combat was actually a reduction of previous Final Fantasys combat. In Final Fantasy 1 you could fully customize your party from having all White Mages to having No Healers. There are a myriad of ways to approach Final Fantasy 1 which is why it was able to become such a huge series. It was the freedom and ease of building the character you want that helped make it what it has become today. The Command Synergy Battle System was very similar to FF12 Gambit System where the party members were on auto-pilot for the entire fights. Letting you have absolutely no need to control them once you have all the proper Gambits setup with the right equipment. This was done so you can have the feel of controlling a whole party at once as you micro manage any problems and situations that might arise when they fight. A lot of RPGs are linear but most don't feel like it because of how authentic the gameplay journey feels. If you look at FF13 combat it's not a very party centric combat system. Oftentimes having one party member overtake the entire situation as soon as they summon and thus making the rest of the party take a bench. It was also a poorly planned and paced combat system as it incentivizes spamming commands rather than carefully studying and choosing the right tactics because of how all your damage and focus is centered around the Stagger mechanic. The movie-like story telling is actually the only objective trait that made FF13 a failure. It was meant to be a lower budgeted game. So these cinematics killed any success the game hoped to achieve. That's why they had to make two sequels to even make their money back. Lucky for them Lightning is a very popular character regardless of 13s overall presentation so they managed just fine in the end. If the game had less story and less cutscenes not only would it help the pacing but it would've made the game a financial success. Which is why people hate this game to its very core. They willingly gimped it by not allowing it the bigger budget it deserved so it's no wonder it wasn't amazing. They didn't want it to be amazing. Then to give reference to the time of its release Halo 3 was already 2 years old and MGS4 had come out a year before.

Having played all of the Fabula Nova games, I have a feeling that XIII would have been a solid game had they not tried to spilt the lore (and dev focus) imto 3 games. This is only made clearer after playing FFVII Remake, which plays very much like if you combined XIII, XV, and Type-0.

13 was so dreadfully boring, it's the only final fantasy I couldn't bring myself to play. Big reason why it was so common to find in used game stores around release and for years after it

FF10 is the most linear of them and no one sees it.

In your video, I noticed a lot the menus of some older games just look really ugly and barebones. Comparing it to newer games, things are better, but then you have the standouts like P5 and it makes you think...How come? The menus are cool, snappy, easy to look at and easier to use - but it's really distinct. In a way, shouldn't it be immersion-breaking? But then you see this everywhere in the game. It's integrated in its entire style, from its textboxes and shop menus, to choices you make, to battles. You see this everywhere, so when you see it in the menu, it is still stark and different because of the character model, but it never feels jarring. The most you're gonna get is even more enjoyment as you quickly flick through and see cool shit happening on your screen. Atlus isn't special in using style to immerse players. Most games already do this, but a lot of them fail at making it as unique. Atlus does THIS style with Persona 5. P5 is red, white and black. P5 uses sharp edges, and only a select few fonts. P5 uses these patterns. I feel almost certain that you could take a screenshot and zoom in on some random part of the UI and people could tell its P5. To conclude, P5 excels in UI design, because its uniqueness becomes a foundation of the game's immersion. You aren't just watch a story unfold and playing a JRPG. You're playing Persona 5. Again, everything is considered as part of the experience, not just the parts most people usually mean by immersion (gameplay for example). It's interesting to see a game confront its meta like this. There's a a lot of misunderstanding comments, so I'll make it clear just in case. This is to add to the discussion of UX (User Experience) in games. Atlus makes the act of playing a game immersive in itself, to the point where you can acknowledge you're just looking at a screen and still have fun. Like a way of escaping into reality. Games should focus on stuff like this so every experience with a game is memorable and leaves you looking forward to play again. Nice video, this discussion is a goldmine where we all care about enjoying ourselves as much as possible in the time we have.