In March, Square-Enix finally unleashed a Final Fantasy title for the current generation. It had been a long time coming and has a lot to live up to being an entry in one of gaming’s most cherished franchises. Was it worth the wait? This part is easy: no, it wasn’t. I realize I may have just pushed the rage button in many long-time series fanboys, but there are some very compelling reasons as to why this game does not do the franchise justice. What follows is an attempt to present the issues in a reasonable manner, but it pretty much breaks down into a rant by the third or fourth paragraph.

Two of the most important parts of any RPG, and especially a Final Fantasy title, are story and characters. Final Fantasy XIII does a terrible job in both respects. Right from the start the player is thrown into a chaotic scenario with little to no explanation as to what is going on or why they should care. The game makes no attempt to tell you what’s happening or who these characters are that you’re controlling. It doesn’t help that the majority of the characters aren’t likable in the least; another big problem for an RPG. If I don’t even like the main characters, what’s going to make me care about the rest of the game and what happens to them?

This is probably the game’s largest failing. You’ll play as several characters throughout the game, but the supposed “main” character is the female protagonist Lightning. First of all, that’s a stupid name; second of all, she’s a complete bitch. I kept hoping someone would just punch her square in the face and leave her behind the rest of the journey so she wouldn’t ruin any more of the story sequences. No worries there though, even without Lightning around to play Debbie Downer, there are plenty of characters left to hate; for instance, Hope. Hope is a young boy that watched his mother die after Snow, another oddly named character, failed to hold onto her as she dangled from a bridge – how dramatic. Instead of being thankful that Snow did everything he could to save the woman, Hope turns into a whining little jackass that acts like he wants to confront Snow about what happened, but then every chance he gets, he just gets intimidated and backs down.

As if a whiny little kid and a heroine stuck in perpetual PMS mode weren’t enough, we get to the character who is truly the worst of a bad lot: Vanille. Wow; I almost don’t even know where to begin. Vanille plays the role of the optimistic go-getter in the game. This might seem like a nice change of pace given the morbid outlook on life most of the other characters possess, but Vanille somehow manages to be the most annoying of all. First, her voice is just terrible. The high-pitched squeaks sound like a chipmunk doing an impression of a Japanese porn idol climaxing. Perhaps this would be forgivable in small quantities, but she just does not shut up – ever. It doesn’t matter what she’s doing, she’s making some sort of stupid noise to go along with it. It doesn’t matter if she’s fighting, walking or just turning her head; if she’s even thinking about moving she’s either giggling like an idiot or moaning inappropriately.

To be fair, not all of the characters are horrible. Snow, despite having a dumb name and looking like he should appear on Is She Really Going Out With Him?, is actually a pretty likable guy. The same can be said for Sazh, the guy with a chocobo that lives in his hair. In an otherwise horrendous cast of characters, these two stand apart from the crowd.

Unfortunately, I’m not done tearing this game bit from miserable bit. The combat system is atrocious and so boring it makes licking cardboard sound like a good idea. You do next to nothing in a fight. You simply queue up moves and the game runs them for you. Unlike past games in the series, you don’t even have to really pay attention to what moves you’re doing; fighting is almost completely on auto-pilot. The game makes use of what it calls paradigms. A paradigm in FF XIII is more or less just a battle style and they essentially break down into two types: offensive and defensive. The only “strategy” you need to employ is switching to an offensive paradigm when your characters are healthy and a defensive one when they’re not. Seriously, that’s the extent of it. If a character is getting low on HP, you don’t have to use a potion or healing spell on them, just select a defensive paradigm and the game will do all the healing for you.

A lot of hubbub has been made of the game’s linear play style and with good reason; there is nothing to the game. You just run, pretty much straight forward, get in some fights along the way and eventually you come to a spot where you’re treated/subjected to another nonsensical bit of the story. This is where the game again makes a major departure from past Final Fantasy titles. There is no opportunity to explore the world at your leisure and that’s a shame because visually, this is a beautiful game.

The graphics are truly the only impressive thing in the game. The textures are amazingly detailed and the character renders are equally incredible. The special effects and animations look fantastic and some of the environments, such as a crystalized ocean, are simply awe-inspiring. It’s too bad the game is a complete let down in every other respect.

I can say without hesitation that this is hands-down the worst game in FF history. I’m not saying it’s bad by Final Fantasy standards, it’s terrible by any measure. It is so bad that I didn’t even finish the game, or come any where close to doing so. I played for about seven hours and simply could not take it any more. Cliché characters, sleep-inducing combat and gameplay coupled with some of the worst voice acting in video game history were enough to turn me off. As mentioned earlier, Snow and Sazh are good characters and the actors did a great job with them, but the other characters are just horrible. This isn’t the fault of the actors and actresses though; they were just given dull characters to portray.

I’ve heard a lot of people say “Dude, it gets awesome about 25 to 30 hours in!” Well that’s great, but as far as I’m concerned, if I have to play through thirty hours of garbage to get to any redeeming bit, then the game still sucks. Life is too precious to spend a day of it, let alone more, playing a below-average game.

For reference, I played the PS3 version of the game. With that Supposedly being the “good” version, I can only assume the 360 version is equally horrendous. In case you haven’t guessed by now, my official recommendation is to not waste your time with Final Fantasy XIII.