Final Fantasy XIII - Why I've (Temporarily) Lost Faith in Square Enix

Square Enix, formerly known as "Square Soft," was once a colossally successful video game publishing company. Square created greats such as (previous) Final Fantasy games, Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Dragon Quest games and more. If any company could create an enthralling role-playing game that captured the minds of gamers, it was clearly Square. To this day, many gamers swear that Final Fantasy VII is one of the greatest games of all time.

I had been following Square's games for some time when I decided to make the purchase of Final Fantasy XIII - Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross to name a few titles I had indulged in. So what could go wrong? Honestly, I had never any reason to doubt their capabilities as a company, and the quality of all of their games were superior to many on the market (with the exception of some problems I, and many others, had when a plethora of Final Fantasy XI characters were hacked; that's another story, though).

So I started my journey in Final Fantasy XIII. I'll admit, the game was polished very well, graphically speaking. The quality was so good, in fact, that it was like watching a movie at many points, especially during the cinematics. That's about the only good thing.

The bad overshadowed the good too much; the game was very linear. In previous Final Fantasy games players could explore vast lands, go on their own to grind for experience points and generate revenue by selling items that enemies dropped. In this game, however, exploration had diminished... practically completely. There was no deviation from the linear Final Fantasy XIII path. At first I thought it was only for the beginning, surely, but it wasn't - I played a handful of hours, testing the games' capabilities and complexity (or lack thereof).

What else? Character customization was superficial. You could build their stats, yes, but only such small ways it wasn't really "customization." Customization, to me, is having the ability to mold a character the way that the player wants. For example, assigning special elements and magic to characters in Chrono Cross.

Lastly, I could have went to the movies if I wanted to see a movie - there was too much automatic dialogue and cinematics compared to watered down game play. While these cinematics (and graphics in general) were impressive, I buy games for their quality of game play. In fact, many gamers do, which is why so many gamers played the original Counter Strike for so long, rather than move onto prettier-looking games that were on the market.

So, for now, I have lost (temporary) hope in Square Enix. As gamers, we need that feeling of an open world and exploration, whereas Final Fantasy XIII basically gave you gamer tunnel vision. I, personally, hope that Square Enix drifts back to their roots; it'd be especially impressive if they created a new Chrono game, too!