rionaleonhart | I Think We All Knew I Wasn't Going To Keep The Project On A Reasonable Scale.

For each of my major fandoms, I do a short writeup talking about how it fits into my fandom history. A fandom qualifies as 'major' if I've written five fics for it, or ten thousand words across at least three fics.

I wasn't sure at first whether to count Final Fantasy XIII, as most of my wordcount for it comes from With These Signs Upon Our Souls, a Final Fantasy VIII/Final Fantasy XIII fusion that only actually features any XIII characters in the last couple of chapters. But I've just remembered that I did a writeup for Animorphs, which also qualified mainly based on fusions, so here we go!

I'm going to steal part of this writeup from the Final Fantasy XIII page I recently added to my Final Fantasy VIII website.

('There's a part of me going, Hey, if you added the Balamb Garden flight deck, you could let visitors fly to locations from other Final Fantasy games. Please stay calm, Riona; let's at least try to keep this project on a reasonable scale.'

rionaleonhart, 16 April 2024)

Final Fantasy XIII series

I was really excited by the early trailers for Final Fantasy XIII. It looked so gorgeous! Lightning seemed so cool!

Before the game came out, though, I read a scathing review of it, which deflated my enthusiasm. The news didn't get any better once the game was actually released; the fans seemed to hate it. It was a real shame, but the universal opinion seemed to be that this game was terrible. Maybe I wouldn't play this one.

Half a year later,

squeemu played Final Fantasy XIII and summed up their reaction as 'holy crap, possibly my new favorite Final Fantasy?'

I was surprised and intrigued. This didn't fit anything I'd heard about the game! By all accounts, Final Fantasy XIII had no redeeming features. But Squeem had enjoyed it, and I respected Squeem's opinion more than I respected a bunch of strangers on the Internet.

I first experienced Final Fantasy XIII at the age of twenty-two. I didn't have a PS3 at the time, so I watched a playthrough on YouTube.

I loved every moment of it. I loved the characters, the concept, the music, the visuals. I felt silly for letting other people's opinions discourage me; I love Final Fantasy VIII, after all, and that's a game that gets a lot of criticism as well!

My favourite aspect was the character dynamics. The game really takes the time to build up different relationships within the party. It's also fun to have negative dynamics within the party as well as positive ones; I haven't played many RPGs in which some party members outright hate others!

As soon as I got a PS3, I played Final Fantasy XIII myself, and I still loved it just as much with a controller in my hand. It's a game with a tightly limited scope; it's pretty much all battles and cutscenes. But they're great battles and they're great cutscenes, so I had a great time.

I don't love the sequels as much as the original, alas! Final Fantasy XIII-2 was fun, but I felt it did everything slightly worse than the original: the removal of stat caps made battles less strategic, the two-person party meant you couldn't have the fun variety of character dynamics, the non-linear story meant that relationships couldn't develop in a satisfying manner. I wasn't really a fan of Lightning Returns, which not only stripped away the party completely but made the protagonist dull by removing her emotions, although I did hugely enjoy how ridiculous the ending was.

Favourite character: Not an easy choice! Even if there are individual characters I love more from other titles, Final Fantasy XIII has my favourite overall cast of characters of any Final Fantasy. But I think it's probably Sazh. He's a nicely balanced character - warm-hearted with a cynical streak, funny without being reduced to comic relief - and his plotline with Vanille is one of my favourites in the game.
Favourite pairing: Serah/Hope, but only in Final Fantasy XIII-2. When Hope first sees Serah after she travels to the future, he's so excited, and then he gets embarrassed about his own excitement; it's pretty cute! I like the weirdness of Serah going from a world where Hope is younger than her into one where he's older, too, and it could be interesting to see her dealing with the complicated emotions of developing feelings for someone else while her fiancé is missing.
Number of words written: 30,547, technically, although most of those words don't actually feature any Final Fantasy XIII characters! If I count only the parts of my writing that include characters from the game, the wordcount comes to about 7,000.

Snippet: For a while, I toyed with the idea of writing a series of ficlets about Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy VIII characters interacting, set after With These Signs Upon Our Souls. I never got far, alas.

“So,” Zell says, carefully, “I’ve been watching you fight.”

Snow breaks into a grin. “Yeah?”

“Did you have any, like, martial arts training?”

“Totally self-taught,” Snow says, proudly.

Yeah, that makes sense. “It’s just, I had training at the Garden, and the way you hit things... you could hurt yourself.”

Snow pauses. “Well, it’ll still hurt the bad guys more, right?”

“Uh,” Zell says. “Maybe? I guess?”

“Don’t worry about me.” Snow claps him on the shoulder. “I’ve been fine so far.”

“Yeah, I get that, but have you ever had a broken thumb? I have. It sucks.”

Snow just looks at him for a moment.

“I mean,” Zell says, quickly, “I’m not trying to overstep or whatever. You can do your own thing. It’s not my business.”

“What, you think I’m pissed off with you?” Snow asks. “It’s fine. I’m just thinking, maybe you teach me what you know, I show you some of my moves.”

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh, I think I remember watching at least the beginning of this on youtube! I'm pretty sure I never finished it, but I did find Lightning very cool.

Lightning is very cool! I love that her solution to finding herself in a situation with no good outcome is 'well, I'll just go and punch God in the face'.

I love that trait in protagonists! One of my favourite game series is the Xenoblade series, and a lot of god punching happens in that. It seems like a good way to solve problems.

That's great, I'm glad you were able to enjoy it in the end! It really bugs me how quick gamers can be to decide a certain entry in a series is objectively bad, and there's no nuance or admission that different players like different things.

It's such a great game! It's a real shame it has such a rough reputation. I'm glad I was persuaded to give it a chance, and I'm glad that experience left me a little more open to trying out games even when they're getting a kicking from the fanbase.

Hey, if you added the Balamb Garden flight deck, you could let visitors fly to locations from other Final Fantasy games. Please stay calm, Riona; let's at least try to keep this project on a reasonable scale.'

Counterargument: you should go ham on your keyboard and write about every FF game on your website so I can read it. ♥

Good news, unless you're me: I think I might have to! I've got XIII and XVI sections up already, and I can't stop at only two other games; that's just going to feel awkward.

Your next poll could be which game to write about next!

I'm so glad you were able to enjoy the game! I hate when scathing reviews for otherwise great properties deflate people's enthusiasm for things.

Thank you! It's an experience that really helped me approach other divisive works of fiction with an open mind.

I have gradually come to the conclusion that I would like to play as many things as possible without knowing what randos think about it, because my tastes are mine and people are often stupid, lol. (Which is to say, I also love XIII for a lot of the reasons many people seem to hate it. Also paradigms are legit one of my favorite gameplay concepts.)

I agree with you that -2 is less good, but on the ohter hand it has Caius and he is my favorite kind of antagonist (virtue gone horribly wrong!!)

I also love XIII for a lot of the reasons many people seem to hate it.

This really sums it up. I like the linearity! I like the flawed characters! Your 'play things without knowing what randos think' approach sounds like a very sensible one.

The paradigm system is so good! It's so fun and fast-paced and strategic, and the crystarium caps mean you always need to put some thought into your battles. I'm bewildered every time I see someone claiming the game just plays itself.

Paradigms, to me, just mean abstracting the strategy of the commands I would manually input if I didn't have them, and I like the way that speeds up battles and makes them flow. (I mean I will also absolutely sit here putting in commands one by one when I'm playing one of the older games, and those would feel wrong to me if I was doing something paradigm-like.)

I dunno, I think a lot of people have the two viewpoints at war where they want new/fresh/different but they also want all the things that FF means to them (usually based on where one entered the series) and either can't articulate or refuse to acknowledge that the tension between those two things is significant.

FFXIII is around the time I stopped having time to replay games (versus having restarted VII/VIII/X/XII like a billion times lmao) so I only ever played it once, which may contribute to me being less nostalgic about it compared to the aforementioned FFs. I was definitely critical about its linearity at first, but looking back it's like, I don't have the patience for these hugeass open world games anymore, I like having direct, straightforward instructions where to go!! So you know what, points back to XIII for not having 5000 fetch quests.

You're right the characters are the main draw of FFXIII, I think they're a really interesting cast and I loved the drama between them. Hope trying to kill Snow was so funny sjdhfksjfds like Serious but also funny. And Vanille is one of my faaave FF characters of all time, I roleplayed her for a pretty long time I loved her that much. Her dynamic with Sazh was so interesting.

(I never did play either sequel, but it seems like I'm not missing out on much??)

A series of crossovers with the VIII and XIII characters would be fun, the underrated game gang's gotta stick together 👀 And I'm glad you're adding extra pages to your site for the other FF games haha, be ambitious!!

I don't have the patience for these hugeass open world games anymore, I like having direct, straightforward instructions where to go!!

Exactly! Sometimes it's nice just to play through a story from start to finish, rather than doing five million irrelevant things on the way.

Hope trying to kill Snow was so funny sjdhfksjfds like Serious but also funny.

You're not wrong! There's something almost sitcom-esque in the way he's constantly prevented from having an actual conversation about this until he eventually snaps and goes 'OKAY, MURDER TIME.'

I Think We All Knew I Wasn't Going To Keep The Project On A Reasonable Scale.

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