I saw the debut trailer for Versus XIII back in 2006 and the quality of this game was thus in question to the last minute. The director change to Tabata undeniably saved this troubled production but it's very clear that he still needed another year to complete his ambitious vision. The game is divided in 2 parts. The first half is a fun road trip that put exploration first. The ultimately large game world is a bit more fractured into closed off "arenas" than i would have liked. You will need to rely on Chocobos or teleportation to get around, as your car can only go on roads and mostly drives itself. The slightly weird battle system frankly feels like a step backwards, as even the problematic XIII trilogy had a better ones. They should have gone with a true hack and slash battle style, instead of this "tactical" Kingdom Hearts approach, yet it works fine enough. The graphics, soundtrack and voice acting are great. As long as you use the superior Japanese VAs and i noticed that the translation takes many liberties, as the subtitles are based on the English script. Characterization is where the game shines, so on to the "boyband". All 4 are some of the best characters SE ever brought to life. The story is fairly engaging too, as long as you kept up with the media-tie ins, as neither the world nor the boy's backstories are properly explained. This half of the game barely features villains and i just kept going on hunts, went fishing or hunted the royal arms. Luna, her guardian and Aranea (i cheated her into my party) are further great female characters but the mechanic Cindy turned out to be the sexist otaku bait all expected in the end. None of them are seen all that often though. I ended up spending 60 hours till my quest log was all out of missions and on i traveled to the Venice equivalent of the game. The second half took me about 10 hours to complete but i will admit that i could 1-hit-kill half my enemies at this point due to being overpowered. Most of the game's surprisingly dark story is told here and what a skeleton it turned out to be! Characters randomly show up and disappear without warning. The open world returns to the "running down corridors" design of XIII and i had to look up a fan explanations to understand what even happened. And most imploringly why it happened. Meaning that SE published a 2nd Xenogears, with the difference that this borderline broken 2nd half was still fun. My investment in the characters ultimately made me focus on the good sides, even if i rarely played less complete games. The much dreaded Chapter 13 was actually a slightly flawed highlight (your 1 weapon is a bit too weak), as enough of it is finished to understand what happens and the survival horror atmosphere was a welcomes change of pace. The game's finale is thankfully a masterpiece, so the team at least focused on landing the ending. I then returned to the open world and spend a final 20 hours on doing endgame quests and getting my Platinum. I will never deny that the game shouldn't have been shipped in this from but the devs are focused on delivering the necessary patches and content to fill in some of the blank canvas. I lastly finished all offline FF games + most spin-offs. FF XV could have been a top 5 entry if the game was done but the finished product is still a modern RPG highlight and ultimately a success, after 10 years in development hell. 8,5/10
