Final Fantasy XIII

I thought long and hard about how best to approach this review. With over 500 hours and counting spent with this game, there is so much I can (and will) say about how phenomenal and inspiring it is. However, the sheer amount of critical baggage the game has makes it difficult to communicate these things without feeling like I'm speaking to deaf ears. FF13 is one of the most misunderstood games I've ever encountered. So much of the criticism I've read about it is founded upon narrow expectations of what a role-playing game should be like. This isn't surprising, as JRPG audiences have for decades proven to be a conservative bunch who react to experimental titles with apprehension at best and contempt at worst. While there's nothing wrong with having a preference for traditional JRPGs, I believe the scale of this conservatism is unhealthy, and has fostered an environment where developers are afraid to be creative. For this reason, I feel it's best to break down the biased preconceptions that have led to FF13's stained reputation, in order to create a clean slate upon which its merits can be displayed.

To begin, it's necessary to touch upon the uncertain definition of "role-playing game." It could be argued that its usage in describing "games in which you increase character statistics" is a bastardization of its original meaning in the context of traditional pen and paper role-playing games or western computer RPGs such as Ultima. Japanese RPGs commonly have players take on the role of pre-existing characters, and some will argue that this is a valid form of role-play. After all, most JRPGs allow the player a degree of interaction within the framework of their pre-existing characters. I'm not going to provide a take on what the correct usage of "RPG" should be; the aforementioned arguments are brought up only for the necessity of context. I call FF13 an RPG only due to the lack of a better term, but I'll be the first to admit that this requires stretching the term to its absolute limit. It's impossible to even use the argument that you're playing the role of a pre-existing character, because FF13 does not allow interaction with other characters or agency in the story. Players looking for a role-playing experience will be understandably disappointed in this game, but FF13 offers an alternative: it focuses all of its interaction on combat. It's not a game where you play as a character. It's a game where you use characters as tools. This distinction is important to make, because the entire experience is built to support an extreme emphasis on combat. Anything that distracts from this emphasis is cut without compromise, including towns, npc interaction, exploration, and the ability to role-play as a character. It's only with the bastardized definition of "game in which you increase character statistics" that FF13 could remotely be considered an RPG, but does that make it a bad game? Of course not. In fact, its removal of traditional RPG elements is a large part of what makes it so phenomenal. FF13's combat is easily the most unique and satisfying system in the series. Focusing the game entirely on combat was the best decision the dev team could possibly have made, as it cuts out downtime and provides a slick, fast-paced adventure with impeccable pacing.

In some ways the design philosophy is more akin to an arcade shmup than an RPG. You run through a linear stage fighting carefully designed enemy mobs, battle a boss at the end, and move on to the next stage. The arcade influence is made even more obvious with the inclusion of a score and rating system for battles. The faster you complete battles, the higher your score, and thus your rating. A higher rating provides better drop rates for rare items and refills more of your TP, but most importantly the timer shows exactly how well or poorly you're playing. The developers are clearly implying that the point of this game isn't to simply survive each fight and move on until you're done with the story. No, it's to be as fast and clean as possible, always trying to improve your times and your scores. This brings me to another common criticism of FF13: that the game "plays itself" or that it's "auto-battle to win." Admittedly, it's not that difficult to beat the game and see the ending. In most battles you can get away with safe, slow strategies to survive, but like I said, survival isn't the goal. You can credit-feed an arcade game to reach the ending, but no one with a brain criticizes arcade games as being "credit-feed to win," because it's understood that arcade games are meant to be played for score. No one criticizes shmups for being "hold down a button to shoot," because it's understood that there's much more involved to get a good score than simply shooting at things. Likewise, playing FF13 well requires much more than simply selecting auto-battle to attack, or letting your party AI handle the enemy. Aggressive chaining, interrupting enemy actions, stagger-cancelling dangerous attacks, and manipulating character positioning are just a few techniques that require careful, deliberate control of your team to execute, and will help improve your times. There are some really neat mechanics to exploit such as passive effects of roles, buffering actions into other roles, conditional chain modifiers, and ATB refreshes. I've only mentioned tactics used in battle, but there's a lot of strategy to exploit in your setup as well. Having only 6 paradigms really forces you to strategize in advance for each fight, planning out the flow of the battle to determine which paradigms will be most advantageous. Synthesized abilities add an additional layer of strategy to equipment, as it can be worth equipping certain weapons or accessories for their synthesis class rather than their stats or passive abilities.

What makes all this strategy feel truly rewarding is that target times for battles are not fixed - they scale based on your stats and those of the enemy. You can beef up a character's strength all you want, but since the target time will decrease accordingly it's not a free ride to a 5-star battle rating. The most important factor is always your strategy, not your stats. This means that you can strive for 5-star ratings even with low stats, and conveniently enough you're free to abstain from increasing your stats if you so desire. Challenge runs of FF13 are a lot of fun. Unlike most Final Fantasy games, there are no cheap broken strategies that you can use to cheese the game, so you need to make use of all your tools wisely, understanding their situational utility. A great challenge for a first or second playthrough is to get a 5-star rating on all the Cie'th stone missions with stage 8 Crystarium (the level you have access to when you first arrive on Gran Pulse). While Cie'th stone missions are commonly considered to be post-game content (when you have stage 10 Crystarium), all but two of these missions can be played even before unlocking stage 9, and you can simply abstain from making use of stage 9 before completing the last two. Doing this should give you a good taste of how much depth there is to the combat, since you'll need to rely more on strategy than stats to survive some of the more dangerous missions. Recently I've been doing a Secondary Roles Only challenge (only secondary roles may be developed in the Crystarium, and only secondary roles may be used in battle). This has also been a lot of fun as it forces you to take each character out of their element, survive with low stats, and work with some unusual paradigm combinations (there's only one Ravager available for example). Despite being a very linear game, the depth of the combat gives FF13 a high replay value. It unsurprisingly has a robust speedrun community thanks to the game's emphasis on speed and execution. It's perhaps a little unfortunate that it's possible to beat the game without seeing how deep you can get with the combat when going for the best times, because it may have prevented some players from exploring that depth enough to appreciate the system.

No debunking of FF13 criticism can be complete without mention of hallways and corridors. Yes, this game is a hallway simulator. It's extremely linear. I already touched upon this earlier when I compared FF13's stage design with that of an arcade shmup, but I'd like to expand upon that further now. I genuinely believe it's to the game's advantage that there is no exploration, and you're merely shuffling along from one fight to the next. Like everything else in the game, it places the focus on the combat, and to back it up the encounter design is absolutely fantastic. Enemy formations present dynamic challenges that players must recognize and adapt to. Daemons use debuffs and aggressively interrupt you with combos, Armadillons have high chain resistance and protective shells that can be removed by staggering, Behemoths can activate a second stronger phase at low hp and heal to full hp in the process, and so on. Different enemies require very different tactics to deal with efficiently, including exploiting their gimmicks. For example, aggressively raising chain percentage on behemoths without dealing much damage, then blasting through their remaining hp before they can activate their second form. As you get further in each stage, the combinations of enemies become more complex and expect efficient multi-tasking and prioritizing from the player. The restrictive access to abilities and characters up until chapter 10 gives the battle designers a clear framework to build off of. It's known exactly who your party leader is, who else is in the party, and what abilities you are able to learn, so encounters can be carefully balanced around that to be engaging. Some have interpreted the restrictive access to tools as a "30 hour tutorial," a criticism I've never understood as the game stops providing tutorials after the paradigm system is introduced in chapter 3. What the game does do is ensure that your entire toolkit is useful for almost every encounter in the game. Interesting, well balanced fights are not tutorials. Restrictions on party composition and character growth are not simply there to teach you how the game works; they serve to provide unique challenges in each chapter. With so many engaging fights, I don't need or want exploration. As a matter of fact, when I get to Gran Pulse I always end up dreading all the running around between Cie'th stone missions, as I just want to get to the battles. When a game does combat as well as FF13 does, it's a blessing to be able to focus purely on fighting, so the hallways are a godsend. To criticize this game for being linear and full of hallways is to ignore how it uses this design to its advantage.

At this point I think I've made it clear that the designers of FF13 were not trying to make a game that falls within RPG conventions. By their own admission, their goal was to create something new and different. It's disappointing to me that when JRPG developers get creative and make something unique, it's usually met with derision rather than open-mindedness.

Last but not least, we come to the story. People have many complaints, including unlikeable characters, confusing narrative, and an over-reliance on the datalog for information. The characters all have deep personal flaws. Namely, their unhealthy obsessions with particular goals lead them on morally questionable paths, or are used as coping mechanisms to block out painful thoughts. Hope becomes obsessed with taking revenge, and nearly murders Snow. Sazh is so desperate to save his son that when his son turns to crystal he has no will to live and tries to commit suicide. Vanille runs from all her problems and responsibilities, putting on a cheerful facade to hide her inner pain. The cast could hardly be described as admirable (aside from Sazh, arguably), but that's also what makes them feel genuine. They're human, just like us, and the way they come to terms with their flaws feels real and believable. Lightning doesn't come to terms with how unhealthy her mindset has been until her coaching of Hope turns him into a reflection of herself. When she realizes this, there is no immediate resolution, and she doesn't know how to proceed. A healing process needs to occur, and these things take time. Players may not agree with the actions of the characters, but their inner turmoils are honest and relatable.

FF13's dialogue contains a large amount of jargon. Cocoon, Pulse, PSICOM, Guardian Corps, Sanctum, fal'Cie, l'Cie, Cie'th, Focus; the list goes on. It's easy to be overwhelmed by these terms at the start of the game, but they are explained in cutscenes within the first few chapters. Cocoon society's fear of Pulse, the world below, is discussed at length within the context of justification of the Purge. The Purge was enacted by PSICOM, an army division controlled by the Sanctum which Lightning, a Guardian Corp member, is distrusting of. The concepts of fal'Cie, l'Cie, Cie'th, and Focus are discussed in chapter 2, where we see firsthand examples as the party are branded l'Cie themselves. At no point do any of these terms need to be referenced in the datalog, since they are explained in a natural manner in the story itself. It's true that terms are often initially used in dialogue before they are explained, but this is necessary to make dialogue feel natural and convincing in a society where these terms are common knowledge. For some players, that initial alienation may cause them to turn to the datalog seeking answers, but after a couple hours with the game it should become abundantly clear that explanations will be provided when the proper context appears in the story. The datalog serves as a reference guide for forgetful players, or those who spent time away from the game and need a refresher upon return. It does not replace explanations in cutscenes. The only aspects of the story which are not explained are some mythological lore which is only hinted at in vague terms in the Analects of the datalog, unlocked by completing certain Cie'th stone missions on Gran Pulse. This is intentionally left obscured, as the characters themselves do not know the mythology. Their lack of understanding the implications of their actions is what leads them to trigger the fall of Cocoon, and it's only by Etro's divine intervention that this is prevented. By keeping the mythology obscured, players are made to feel like a participant in this universe; a universe in which fal'Cie and humans alike have been orphaned by the gods. It also provides an opportunity for imagination in the interpretation of the Analects, as their vague wording leaves room for players to form their own theories (at least until they play the sequels, which spell everything out for better or worse). I really like FF13's story, and the way it was presented felt respectful of the player's intelligence.

I think that I've addressed most of the common complaints about FF13, but there are two more things I want to touch on: visuals and music. The art direction is stunning. Isamu Kamikokuryo has a wonderful mind for creating gorgeous alien landscapes and cities. The arrival at Eden comes to mind as one of the most inspiring moments visually, as the player looks down at the surreal architecture below. The Gapra Whitewood's synthetic biodome with its soft blue hues walks a fine balance between uncanny and beautiful. The environments never stop looking breathtaking. The music, courtesy of Masashi Hamauzu, features some of the most beautiful ambient tracks I've ever heard, including Sulyya Springs, The Vestige, and The Gapra Whitewood. Will to Fight and The Sunleth Waterscape are also standout tracks for me. Hamauzu is probably my favourite composer of video game music, and FF13 features some of his best work. I feel a little bad for him, because he has made some truly incredible music for games that are woefully misunderstood. Just look at Unlimited Saga as another example.

I admire the developers of FF13 for having the confidence to release a game like this. It's obvious that it was made with a vision of something new and different than traditional RPGs, and the final product reflects that vision without compromise. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the game's sequels, which explicitly tried to address player feedback and failed to expand upon the things that made this game special. It was as though the developers started putting their trust more in the audience's vision for the series instead of their own. That's not to say that they're bad games. I like 13-2 and Lightning Returns, but I consider them to be deeply flawed works which hurt 13's legacy more than they celebrate it. I won't go into more detail here since they each deserve reviews of their own, and I already wrote a review for 13-2 a while back which you can view on the 13-2 page. As for Lightning Returns, I'll write about it some day in the future. I hope a time will come when audiences become more receptive to experimentation within JRPGs. Developer creativity is alive and well, but the market just isn't ready for it yet.

I seem to be one of the few defenders of Final Fantasy XIII: the game that probably shouldn't have had Final Fantasy in the title, isn't super awesome, but is still pretty good. As anyone who really knows me can tell you, I've been a long-time series fanboy. I'm not proud of it, really, but what can I say? Final Fantasy has always appealed to me on a basic level: these were my type of games and still are today. I legitimately enjoy all of the first ten games to varying degrees, which as any big fan of the series likely knows, are the ten games that involved series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi. Separating the creator of a series from it can have mixed results. While there have been plenty of success stories, something is bound to be lost in translation. In the case of Final Fantasy, it's not that something has been lost: it's that the developers don't get Final Fantasy or don't care for the old games and are just making role playing games and forcing Final Fantasy paraphernalia in to them to make them sell.

Final Fantasy has always been about change. Each new game has a revised or updated combat system and something that separates it from the previous titles. Until the eleventh game, however, I wouldn't have used the word 'change' so much as 'adaptation' or 'evolution.' Dragon Quest always stuck to its roots and continued polishing, and I'd argue that on some level Final Fantasy did too; it was just better at hiding the changes. Consider Final Fantasy VII, the most successful game of the first ten. While it takes place in a wildly different setting from previous games and had a more gritty cyber-punk setting than previous entries, the core mechanics are just an improvised version of those seen in Final Fantasy VI: Materia is an evolution of Espers, the ATB is much the same, and Limit Breaks came from VI too. We can split hairs on some major differences, but the point is that fans of one game know what to expect on some level when they jump from one to another. They like the games because there are familiar elements that link them, but there's enough wiggle room for each to be its own creative entity.

Final Fantasy XI changed all of that. This wasn't a refinement of previous Final Fantasy gameplay: it was an online game with moogles and chocobos in it. I (and certainly not just I) was always confused as to why it had 'XI' in the title when games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Mystic Quest had succeeded by just using subtitles: that did a good job denoting these were spin-offs and not the comfortable entries in the series everyone expected. Since XI, there has not been a Final Fantasy game that I think sits comfortably with the rest, and it's why I have no problem saying "Final Fantasy died when Sakaguchi left" is my head canon. XII is drastically different from X, to the point where I can't even say they're part of the same genre. And XIII, while it does have some things in common with XII, still feels like an entirely different beast.

While I clearly have issues considering Final Fantasy XIII a part of the series, I do think it's a good game. Not a great one, mind, but one I enjoyed playing and am now sad has gotten milked to death and tarnished by terrible sequels. Everyone who criticizes the game concentrates on a few issues: long, narrow hallway map design, hold X to win gameplay mechanics, 40 hour into, terrible plot. They never talk about Sazh; come on, Sazh is the man. None of this other than the plot bothered me while playing the game, and I firmly believe the combat criticisms are in error. In fact, I think Final Fantasy XIII has an extremely fun, fast-paced, strategic battle system. Like in the Fire Emblem series, you play the role of tactician here, assigning sets of jobs to your team ('Paradigms') and adjusting them to fit battles in the areas you travel through. The six classes do a great job covering basically all combat types used in RPGs without a lot of map/space-oriented mechanics: big damage, softening things up, status effects, buffing, healing, and tanking. I do wish there was a way to slow down the action and make more coherent choices from time to time, but considering that FFXIII was innovating in its move to distill its combat system in this way, I'm willing to give it a pass. Just for the record, I think Xenoblade Chronicles handles this form of combat a little better.

FFXIII spent a lot of time (not 40 hours, but yes, probably an excessive amount) introducing mechanics slowly in the early chapters. I guess I'm just a moron, because I actually appreciated this: I didn't fully comprehend the new combat system until around the time the game stopped feeding me tutorials. I can imagine this hurts XIII on replay, but I haven't replayed it so I can't judge.

The long, narrow hallways and lack of towns and NPCs are an interesting case. I understand where the hate comes from: it sucks to see conventions we're used to defied and replaced with what seems to be lazy design, and I'll certainly admit the map design could have been a lot better. That said, if there is one thing I appreciate about these odd design choices, it's the lightning pace Final Fantasy XIII plays at. While I used to love exploring RPG towns as a kid, nowadays I find myself wanting to get on with things, and XIII does that exceedingly well. Final Fantasy XIII-2 added towns back in and they were terrible, for the record. When you have a game with a story presented as a long, action-driven narrative, removing pointless downtime can actually improve the experience. It's akin to playing a game on an emulator with fast forwarding: you already know that old man at the item shop isn't going to tell you anything significant, so why not skip through what he's saying? XIII skips the old man by not even having him around, and I don't really have a problem with that; I don't want all games to skip past NPCs and such, but it does work here.

However, I do want to express how much I hate this game's storytelling. It has some cool ideas but executes them in the worst ways. I still don't understand anybody's motivation in this game, especially the villain's. The words "L'Cie," "Fal'Cie," and "Pulse" are only fully explained in data logs you might never even know exist, and I kept playing the game hoping for an explanation and never got one. While I think there's something to be said about throwing the player in to the water with no idea what's going on, one thing FFXIII could have had to smooth things out for players was a character who was unfamiliar with all these big, fancy words. Or better writing in general. Final Fantasy XIII's ending may be the worst deus ex machina I have ever seen. On the other hand, I have to praise a lot of the first half of the game. I enjoyed playing what was essentially a travel narrative about six bozos who are often at odds, and it was especially interesting seeing the dynamic between Lightning and Snow (who planned on marrying Lightning's sister, which she disapproves of). All of the character drama is actually pretty cool, but once you get in to the game's larger plot everything becomes stupid anime excess without a lot of substance. The quality of the plot reflects that of the game: it's patchy, but there's a lot of good stuff there if you're willing to wade. Still, this isn't Final Fantasy as far as I'm concerned and I wish it were not masquerading as such.

With the lowest Metacritic score and highest first week sales of the series, the audience surrounding this much anticipated Japanese role-playing game is clearly divided. From the time I spent with the game, I feel it’s safe to say that if you love the series up to the unorthodox 12th entry you’ll enjoy the series first foray into HD.

It’s hard not to dedicate this entire paragraph to the game’s stunning graphical power, art direction, and soundtrack — it’s a tour de force and it’s a shame that Xbox360 players were cheated with a visually inferior version (badly compressed cutscenes, gameplay presented in 560p instead of the true HD of 720p.) As you might’ve read elsewhere, 13 chops the fat off the series’ formula. No towns, no world map, and no direct control over party members. Once you accept that there are 12 other entries in the series, each as diverse as the next, the sooner you’ll embrace 13’s inventive design that favors strategy and momentum rather than level grinding and exploration.

The story is convoluted to the point where the first ten hours will be incomprehensible if you don’t dedicate some time to reading the entries in your database and it’s becoming harder to accept the subpar dialog of the series, but the challenge and spectacle around every corner will remind any series veteran why a series that is so incongruous from title to title holds a place in our heart.

Problems arise as the game goes on and the combat becomes repetitive and easy to a fault, leaning on a rating system instead of actual challenge. The world that was so innovative reveals itself to be a mish-mash of concept art that has no flow or reason. Endless highways float in the sky and a gigantic zoo outside a town throw logic to the wind. Like the absurd abundance of zippers and accessories Tetsuya Nomura gives his characters, the world of FF13 favors style over substance and immersion.

It may not be worth sticking with to the end but the mindless aesthetic and fast combat is enjoyable in small bursts.

Final Fantasy is my favorite franchise of all-time, I've been playing them since the first one was released on the NES back in 1990. It feels weird that I have waited all this time to play this entry, but it just didn't have the best reputation and was a little scared that it wouldn't be Final Fantasy anymore. I was left disappointed by XII and XV, so I sort of expected to feel the same about this one since it's generally considered the poorest modern entry. Well I'm glad I dove in and gave it a chance, I really enjoyed the game and I would say it's actually my favorite since X.

Keep in mind that you do have to come in with an open mind and not expect "classic" Final Fantasy systems. They were trying new things here and I can see someone being disappointed if they wanted a classic style JRPG like Dragon Quest or Persona, it's definitely not that. Also if you want a big open world and towns to explore, this game also doesn't have that. The path is linear and the decision making on where to go is mostly simple, at least until the very late stages of the game. The combat system isn't quite either a Fight/Magic turn-based that you might expect, it's got a unique system with Paradigm that assign automatic combat styles. There's also a strong lack of itemization with just weapons and accessories, I did kinda miss gearing up into this one. But all in all, I think all of those things work in the games favor.

Perhaps fans wanted something different out of games back in 2010, but the fact that its linear is pretty good in my opinion. Not that I want every game to be like that, but I think everyone has now suffered the overload of Ubisoft open world games with huge maps and tons of pointless activities to do, so sometimes a game where you are just heading straight forward feels pretty refreshing. You are doing a little bit less of exploring, but this is compensated by doing a lot more fighting and tactics. The mechanics of the game are introduced at a steady slow pace, but once you've reached a certain point you get more freedom in choosing your own party members and their respective paradigms. That's also when the real challenge begins as the later half of the game is some of the hardest JRPG that I played, but it's a lot of fun.

The battle system is just excellent and will have you constantly changing between your preset paradigms every few seconds. Different enemies have different strategies on how to defeat them and you'll will need to adapt your strategy prior to many difficult bosses. And your ass is going to get handed by them and make them feel a little bit impossible, but it's almost like a puzzle where you really have to fit the puzzle pieces correctly... when looking up guides I noticed that no one really had the same strategy for particular bosses, so there's definitely a lot of possibilities to be successful. It's not only bosses that are hard, some of the common enemies too can totally wipe you and leave you wondering what the hell are you doing wrong. While the game might not appear to be too hard at first, the difficulty definitely ramps up and you'll have to use all your knowledge of the battle system to defeat enemies.

For a game released in 2009, the graphics are very impressive. It's one of the best looking games of the PS3 era, just really sharp character models and environments. Since there's not much "freedom", I guess the devs could focus more on getting those aspects perfectly. The story is wild and over the top, but that's what we like into these FF games anyway. The game was definitely ambitious with the use of technology, but also they went with a lot of risks by removing so many classic Final Fantasy elements. But it works, cause a lot of the other things not present would not feel too important in this particular experience. It's a little crazy to you expect for AAA games to be safe and all, but Square Enix kinda went the opposite way and I guess that's why many longtime fans were not pleased with it.

I still feel like FF X-2 is the "final" proper Final Fantasy game, the one where it still feels like you are playing the classic way. After that all the games are trying out weird things and trying to find their identity, this is definitely one of those games. But it's great and I loved my time with it, perhaps it was a little overlong but I think it paid off staying until the end. I am looking forward in playing the sequels now, but they will have a high bar to measure up to with this one. If you are still on the verge of trying out this one, I would recommend doing so (bearing in mind that this is a different experience) and I think it aged quite well and plays totally fine in 2022.

I find this game bad in many of the same ways i find 10 to be bad.
Bad writing, bad characterizations, cheesy voice acting, unimaginative dialogue, too much linearity, over the top character designs, overly convoluted plot that makes no sense and lacks cohesion full of random nonsense and contrivances that don’t contribute anything, bad level design in part because of the excessive linearity. The focus on long winded cutscenes that drag on too long without saying much of any importance in between running down lifeless corridors is another irritation for me. I also found the upgrade system to be unnecessarily overdone and tedious, much like 10’s. The low replay value is another issue I have with the game. An RPG should have good replay value. I find this game and 10 to be hard to return to because I don’t find much of anything to like.

Given their reputation as dilligent experimenters and trendsetters in developing Final Fantasy, it's rare to find Square Enix looking beyond their borders for inspiration with Final Fantasy XIII. At best, its systems were pale imitations of prior games (containing restrictive versions of both FFX's sphere grid & FFV's job classes), and at worst borrowed the wrong ideas from their contemporaries (repetitive real-time menu battle arenas a la Star Ocean, flashy burst damage system, game over on party leader death, etc.). Only the Paradigm mechanic is worth salvaging; essentially a glorified version of battle tactics but applicable mid-combat in set groups of three classes instead. While novel, its effect made battles even more linear, turning boss fights into tedious pseudo-puzzles demanding specific strategies at specific times. The hysteria surrounding its linear progression is overblown by those somehow unaware of FFX's similarly controlling experience.