10 Video Games That Were Scored Way Too Highly On Release

3. Final Fantasy XIII

IGN: 95 Gamespot: 90 Eurogamer: 100 Remember when Square knew what the hell they were doing with the Final Fantasy franchise? Before that awful Spirits Within movie tie-in that had nothing going in common except the name, before titles like Dirge of Cerberus attempted to cash-in on one of the coolest side-characters you'd ever come across, and before cack-handed attempts at transforming the franchise into an MMO had become a thing? It had a damn good run did Final Fantasy - for ten straight titles no-less - as even if you really didn't like X's Tidus to the point of turning it off, it still retained the series' trademark combat and overall tonality, feeling like a joy to explore and become indulged in, despite the often awful voice-acting. For XIII though for some reason following the previous iteration's relatively positive reception and a new spin on combat that attempted to visualise turn-taking whilst also letting you run around the battlefield, XIII did away with this in favour of slapping some menus over the top of a Kingdom Hearts-style active battle mode. Add that to environments that funnelled you down one pathway and a cast of characters about as memorable as the tattooed chick in Watch Dogs, and this remains one of the steepest divides between critical reception and user-reviews going.