cashew | 13 years later, still defending FF13

Final Fantasy 13 came out in 2009, and now, 13 years later, looking back at what SquareEnix managed to offer us in the interim, I maintain that FF13 continues to be one of the better entries in the Final Fantasy franchise.

Is it the best? No. That title still belongs to FF7.

Is it the second best? No. That's FF10. (Even if I think 10's character is better written.)

But FF13 certainly is not the worst entry in the FF franchise by far. No, that honor goes to FF15. But I'm not here to shit on a game I hate, I'm here to defend a game that I think has been unfairly maligned.

Oh, and no, FF13-2 was not good and Lightning Returns is a terrible thing, fuck your fanservice obsessed brain.

Final Fantasy 13's story is not nearly as obtuse as some gamers like to pretend it to be. Nor is it as pretentious as gamers accuse it to be. But then again, can you really trust the pretension assessment from a group of people that can't even identify the three act structure?

No, you cannot.

The story of FF13 can be roughly summarized thusly: Cocoon is a sky colony that holds the last enclave of humans. It is a society ran by an oppressive theocracy that lies to its citizens about its history and the war that led to the near extinction of the human race. Meanwhile, Lightning, an ex-soldier that served in the security forces under the theology, is trying to save her sister from deportation for bearing the mark of an opposing god. In trying to save her sister, she is forced to work with: Snow, her sister's boyfriend; Vanille and Fang (pronounced fah-ŋ), two outsiders who got forcibly relocated into Cocoon; Sahz, an ex-pilot who is trying to save his son from the same fate; and Hope, a kid who doesn't want anything to do with this. Their journey threw them into the path of a god that branded the party members with its mark. The mark means the party has a limited amount of time to break Cocoon, or face the fate of turning into zombies if they fail the objective.

Spoilers, they succeed.

However, in the process of trying to accomplish their divine mission — albeit resentfully, because none of the party members actually want to destroy the only home they know, and Vanille and Fang don't really care one way or another, they just want to avoid becoming zombies — the party slowly discovered the truth behind Cocoon's power structure and the lies they've been fed about the formation of their society. In an attempt to escape from the pursuing enemy, the party broke out of Cocoon and landed on Gran Pulse, the planet around which Cocoon orbits. On Gran Pulse, the party finds out even more about the truth behind the religious war that led to Cocoon's formation, the PR campaign to keep the humans servile, the origin of the god that controls Cocoon, and the destroyed human civilization from which Vanille and Fang originated. Armed with the truth and tired of being the playthings of the gods, the party marches back to Cocoon and fights Orphan, the god of Cocoon, and finally crashes the entire colony into Gran Pulse, bringing humans back to the planet from which they originated.

Are there plot holes? Sure. Are there some really poorly paced moments? Definitely. Are certain antagonists introduced then thrown away for no reason? Yup.

But at its core, FF13 is still a coherent story with a cohesive theme, something that can't be said for the likes of FF11, FF12, or FF15. FF13's characters are also far more fleshed out than some of the NES and SNES era games, like FF1, FF2, FF3, FF4, and, it hurts me to say this, FF5. It's a real toss-up between FF6 and FF13, given that FF6 detracts from character development by having 14 party members, with the likes of a Moogle and Yeti among the ranks. (Look, I get that non-human party member is pretty core to the FF franchise, but you cannot tell me Mog was a deeply developed character.) And honestly, FF13's characters' confusing motivation is really no worse than what happened in FF8. Other than losing to the likes of FF7, FF10, FF9 (and very, very few JRPGs can live up to those games in the first place), FF13's story is easily as good or better than the rest of the Final Fantasy entries.

FF13 is a story that wrestled with the relationship between humans and the divine, but it is also a story that explores the nature of parenthood and mentorship. Lightning, our protagonist, is forced to become a guardian for her younger sister when their parents died early. Sahz is literally a father trying to save his son. Snow tried to lead a rebellion against the oppressive government, but being a young-ish person, has no idea what he's doing and had to face the consequences of his inexperience. Hope has to deal with losing a mom he's relied on and a father he feels alienated from. Vanille and Fang are outsiders who lived far longer than they should thanks to becoming branded by the gods hundreds of years ago and have wisdom to share with their party, but are reluctant to do so because they're scared of revealing their Otherness. The party navigates their strange, ad hoc alliance awkwardly, trying to understand their hierarchy to one another, while working under the stress of a countdown timer that they can't read. In the end, everyone had to understand their limitations and learn to trust and rely on the other party members to pick up the bits that they can't carry.

And the ultimate confrontation was between the party and a "god" that treats humans like pets, a plaything to pamper when the god feels benevolent and to abuse when the god has a bad day. This guardianship is one that lacks basic respect or a sense of responsibility and that's why the party must break away, gain their independence, reject the authority of the divine, and establish a life and future of their own making. (And if you're getting a sense that the story is saying theocracy is bad even if god exists...well, yeah.)

The other major complaint against FF13 is the "linearity".

...

I could go into a long thesis about how the Final Fantasy franchise had always been a very linear experience that essentially broke down to town-dungeon-town-dungeon-repeat ad nauseum, and the only thing FF13 did was take away the town part of this repetition, but honestly, I'm not even sure this criticism is in good faith. If anything, I'm pretty sure it's not the linearity so much as the extreme accessibility that has the gamers freaking out.

Because that's what FF13 is: an extremely accessible game. It follows a very FPS-esque goal-oriented style, where the game points you in a direction and tells you to kill everything in your path until you hit the boss fight. Rinse and repeat. It is a design that is hyper invested in the combat. All the variation and strategy and planning is in service of the combat portion of the game, with very little in terms of hunting down optional equipment, crafting, or other mini-games to switch up the mode of interactivity. It also means the story must progress at a very regimented pace, with no freedom to take a break from the plot.

It is because of this linearity that allowed FF13 to have one of the tightest difficulty curve, because you literally cannot grind your way past the boss fight and have to learn the battle mechanics. Western JRPG gamers have been clamoring for "more challenge", which is exactly what they got, and they hated it.

The reality is, gamers wanted the facade of challenge without actually having to learn the battle mechanics. They want to get rewarded for pushing A against every inch of the room, looking for secret weapons that will make the battle easier, rather than actually strategizing and learning how to play the combat. They want to have the reassurance that if they put in time, they will be able to succeed, without needing to actually figure out the combat mechanics.

And frankly, I'm actually OK with that attitude. But don't mistake wanting to get rewarded for spending time playing the game with "the game was too linear". FF13 was a JRPG that you couldn't finish without understanding the underlying mechanics and the game isn't going to hold your hand teaching you how to use all the buffs, debuffs, status effects, etc. in the most optimal way. It's up to you to figure out how all these skills come together in a cohesive strategy. Which brings me to...

...Don't even try to tell me the combat was too easy. Yes, in the early chapters you can get by just letting the AI pick whatever skills. But that was never the core mechanic. Setting up the tactical layout (aka paradigms), and knowing when to switch paradigms on the fly was more important than meticulously choosing each skill. The game didn't ask you to memorize the strengths and weakness of each mob, but, instead, you had to figure out when to go on the defensive, when to go on the offensive, and when to go balls-to-the-walls dps. You couldn't rely on chugging ethers and potions to get you out of a prolonged fight. And if you set up your paradigms incorrectly, you'll face defeat. Finishing the combat quickly will get you better star ratings and increased drop rates, so you were incentivized to learn how to optimize your team for risky, high-damage strategies rather than falling back on a safe, defensive style that chipped away at the enemy.

Combat difficulty is the one area that FF13 exceeds its predecessors unequivocally. Without truly understand the mechanics, you were simply not going to get very far in this game.

Finally, I'm done listening to people complaining about the "unrealistic" outfit that Lightning wears. Because I didn't hear anyone complaining about Terra's leotard or Tifa's tank top or Rosa's sheer stockings or Cecile's spiky armor or Bartz's flimsy tunic. Final Fantasy isn't exactly known for "realistic" looking armor, so this is hardly something unique to FF13. Especially when this is one of the few times when the female characters aren't dressed in male-gaze pandering bikini armor with minimal (for an FF series) sexualization. Don't fucking trot out your suddenly "feminist" sensibilities as an excuse to shit on the first Final Fantasy female protagonist. It's disingenuous and I can see the bad faith from a mile away.

(And no, Terra is not the first female protagonist. She was the McGuffin who barely got a character arc.)