Well, I finally finished the main part of the game this morning after beating Orphan (at last).. And I'm wondering (without giving any spoilers away) what everyone thought of the storyline? Personally, I was disappointed and rather annoyed with the ending, it was not what I expected to happen..

If someone took a vote on FFXIII I would definitely not list it in my top five favorites of the series, that's for sure.. Yes, the graphics were, as always with SquareEnix, beautiful, but graphics alone does not make for a great game.. I did not find the characters very likable, with the exception of Vanille (a bit whiny though) Fang and Snow, although he was hardly given a decent part in the story (he reminded me of Kimarhi in FFX, he should have been a powerhouse in the game but was not)..

As in FFXII the story, to me at least, was given the short end of the stick, while graphics was where the designers chose to put most of their efforts.. I also found the Crystarium a bit of a bore and cumbersome to boot.. That damn controller constantly backing up and going down or up the layers and not being able to see at a glance any unused crystals without backtracking was frustrating too..

The weapon and accessory upgrading was horrendous and I still don't understand it well even after playing the game through.. I only ended up upgrading one weapon per character and a few needed accessories..

All in all, it will be a long time, if ever, before I would want to pick this game up and play it from beginning to end again as I have done with other FF games, although I will probably continue to play it now for awhile just to complete the rest of the missions (I did about half of them before taking on Orphan)..

This Final Fantasy falls far short in story and characters then any that I can recall and I've played them all since the first one came out for the old NES back in the early 90's.. It's a shame, this is such a beautifully visual game but with not much else to recommend it..

This is just my opinion, I wouldn't for a moment expect everyone or even anyone to agree with me..