12 Abusive Video Game Sequels That Completely Missed The Point

12. Final Fantasy XIII

To be fair to Square's flagship franchise, Final Fantasy has undergone countless makeovers over the years, becoming a major household commodity when it moved to the PlayStation for Final Fantasy VII and enjoyed the huge technological upswing that the platform allowed. The seventh, eighth and ninth games were all major critical and commercial successes, and if the move to the PS2 with Final Fantasy X wasn't quite as assured, it was still a very respectable entry for the most part. The key to these games was the immersive storytelling (even if it didn't make a lick of sense half the time), and likeable characters. This eventually hit a brick wall with Final Fantasy XIII, the first FF game on the PS3. Though the game was visually stunning and boasted arguably the best battle system in the franchise, it fell flat with the most important elements: the story and characters. For starters, the game has you following a linear path for the first 15-20 hours of play, which is the exact opposite of what Final Fantasy should be, and then the story itself is extremely dull and directionless, not beginning to hit its stride until the half-way point of the game, by which point most players probably stopped caring. And then there's the characters, who take the series into a whole new dimension of emo. Final Fantasy has always been pretty overwrought, with most of its characters behaving like hormonal teenagers, but I was left liking one single character in this game, and that's Sazh, the afro-laden dude who lets a Chocobo nest in his hair. As for Lightning, she's a boring husk of a protagonist, one who is difficult to warm to and certainly not up to the standards of the series' best heroes. And then what? Square Enix made two spin-off games that just about nobody wanted, rather than pouring themselves into Final Fantasy XV as they should have.