>>718923139
XIII (and it's spinoffs as well) are really interesting because they are this big culmination of all these interesting ideas that fucking sucked in execution.

They wanted to create this big extended universe of lore with Fabula Nova Crystalis, but then had you read everything to understand the lore of the world to tell it's own story rather than create a game to introduce that world.

They wanted to create their own in-house engine to power their games for years to come, with XIII being the poster child, but it was on the generation of hardware that was bullshit hard to work with alongside Square Enix's ability to fuck up said engine, leading to years trying to get the product in order in the first place.

They wanted to create a fighting system mimicking Advent Children in style and aesthetic, so they made the game almost an auto-battler, pushing ATB to it's limit and regulating player input to "press button to attack" and "change class on the fly" they even added a fucking auto attack chooser for you, that's how fucked it was

They put so much effort into the game but it was all poorly misplaced, to the point the other Crystalis games only share tangential links and naming conventions or downright were rewritten into other stories.

And I fucking love XIII but it's a mess.