The RPG that was supposed to define a generation has a bad reputation. But the truth is Final Fantasy XIII did more than a few things right.

The excitement was palpable when Square Enix first took the wraps off Final Fantasy XIII in 2006. As the heir apparent to a then-dominant RPG series, it was expected to define RPGs for the next generation in much the same way as its predecessors.

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Final Fantasy XIII Has a Very Good Battle System

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Final Fantasy XIII Gets Difficulty Right

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Final Fantasy XIII Has Sazh

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Final Fantasy XIII (Mostly) Learned From its Mistakes

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And then... it didn't.Today, it's hard to think of a series with more baggage than Final Fantasy XIII. But as we get ready for Lightning Returns -- the ostensible series finale -- let's step back for a moment. Let's forget about the state of RPGs, and Final Fantasy XIII's lengthy development, and all of the other tertiary issues that have turned Final Fanatsy XIII into more of an idea than an actual game. Pretend that stuff doesn't exist.The fact is Final Fantasy XIII and its sequels did some things wrong, but they also got a lot of things right. And it's those things that deserve to be remembered as much as Final Fantasy XIII's missteps, if only so that future games can build on what the series started.The very first thing to remember...The foundation of any good JRPG is a strong battle system. After all, combat comprises at least a third of the typical JRPG experience -- the other two-thirds being story and exploration. Without interesting combat, you have a pretty boring JRPG.Final Fantasy games have long had good battle systems, and Final Fantasy XIII is no exception. Building on the old Active Time Battle System of yore, it features a system akin to ice hockey, in which four lines featuring different combat roles are rotated throughout the battle. Typically, there will be a defense line, a healing line, a magic line, and an attack line, and the key to success is rolling them out at the exact right moment.It's a simple concept that's relatively easy to grasp, even if Final Fantasy XIII spends roughly half the story trying to explain it. And it does a good job of toeing the line between quick random battles and deeper strategy for boss encounters. Magic and physical attacks are nicely balanced in Final Fantasy XIII, with magic being used to drive up an enemy's stagger meter and physical attacks doing actual damage. Summons also appear as limit breaks, playing an active role in the battles without becoming over-powered, as they are in plenty of previous Final Fantasy games.Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Lightning Returns both build on the concepts introduced in Final Fantasy XIII. The former introduces monsters that can be swapped in and out of the party; while the latter overhauls it completely, making it twitchier and faster-paced but still retaining the basic concepts that make it work in the first place. In that, it proves to be both a high-quality and surprisingly flexible battle system, capable of sustaining three solid games.This excellent battle system wouldn't really matter if FF XIII wasn't tuned properly, however. But luckily...Final Fantasy XIII's difficulty is in just the right spot. Boss battles in particular are challenging without being overly frustrating, forcing you to learn the ins and outs of the combat system to succeed. Very rarely can you brute force a boss battle in Final Fantasy XIII - most of the time you need a plan.In that, Final Fantasy XIII is surprisingly unique among Final Fantasy games. Final Fantasy VII through X all have challenging bonus bosses to fight, but their main campaigns are by and large a breeze to complete. Not so in Final Fantasy XIII, where multi-stage story bosses like Barthandelus can test even experienced RPG fans. It's these encounters where Final Fantasy XIII is typically at its best.Also to its credit, Final Fantasy XIII plays around a bit with the old reload-a-previously-saved-game structure. If you die, then you will automatically revive at a point near where you fell, which cuts down on needless backtracking. As a concept, it works surprisingly well, since it encourages you to try one more time without impacting the overall challenge of an encounter.And like before, Lightning Returns takes this concept and builds on it. If you die, you can still revive at a nearby checkpoint, but you lose an hour of in-game time in the process. So the question becomes: Reload a previously saved game or sacrifice an hour of time? It doesn't have a tremendous impact on boss encounters, but it does raise the stakes in normal enemy encounters quite a bit, since you don't want to screw up and lose an hour to a Flan.That Final Fantasy XIII is such a balanceed experience is partly due to its artificial pacing, with the first game being the most guilty of gating progress and keeping players on track. But to Square Enix's credit, both of the sequels manage to retain much of that balance while being much more open-ended experiences. For that reason, Final Fantasy XIII's biggest strength after its battle system is its approach to difficulty.Still, the best battle system in the world can't redeem an iffy story. Here, FF XIII does stumble. But the game still contains one of the best Final Fantasy characters ever written.Final Fantasy XIII rightly gets flack for its terrible plot threads, which typically substitute word salad vocabulary and platitudes ("I'm a hero!") for real character development and plot. But on the other hand, it also has Sazh -- better known as Final Fantasy XIII's only sane person.When Sazh was first revealed as a black character with a substantial afro housing a chocobo chick, fans rightly assumed the worst. But with the help of a first-rate localization, Sazh became the party's voice of reason -- the dad less interested in saving the world than getting back to his son. He's older and more mature than the rest, willing to call out the party for their various ridiculous statements. And as time goes on, it becomes clear that he's something of a tortured soul -- a normal guy caught up in circumstances well beyond his control.Most of Final Fantasy XIII's cast members have their strong points as well, of course. Though Lightning is ultimately one-dimensional, the conflict between her sense of obligation to her sister and the discomfort she feels with being material is somewhat interesting. Vanille and Fang likewise have good chemistry. But with the possible exception of Serah, Sazh is the only character who comes off as an honest-to-god human being.In addition to being the story's moral center, Sazh's relationship with his son serves as the emotional core in a story that is otherwise pure nonsense. No, one good character isn't enough to save a plot like that of Final Fantasy XIII, but it at least makes it somewhat tolerable (at least when he's on screen). And in a good story, a memorable character like Sazh can elevate it into something special.FF XIII has real issues, to be sure. But, importantly, Square Enix learned from those issues.The last point that should be remembered about Final Fantasy XIII before burying it for good: It mostly learned from its mistakes.When Final Fantasy XIII was first released, RPG fans were appalled by its ridiculously slow pace (20 hours before it gets good!) and near total lack of exploration. Maps of the dungeons -- essentially corridors gussied up with some nice scenery -- quickly made the rounds on the internet. It was an interesting experiment, but after four years of waiting, most fans deemed the experiment a failure.But then Final Fantasy XIII-2 came around; and while it wasn't perfect, it did have exploration and real, live towns. Lightning Returns further built on what XIII-2 started, introducing concepts like the in-game clock and sharpening the battle system. For all their flaws, both sequels demonstrated a surprising amount of self-awareness in admitting that the original game was something of a failure, and reacted accordingly.For big budget games like these, this is surprising, to say the least. To be perfectly honest, if Square Enix had wanted to recoup their original investment, they could have just released the same game twice more with some new items and a few tweaks to the battle system. Instead, Square Enix not only revamped many of the original's base mechanics, but completely changed their basic structure. One wonders how much overtime the poor programmers at Square Enix pulled to integrate a real-time clock and day-night cycle into the existing Final Fantasy XIII engine.It's that more than anything that suggests that Final Fantasy still has a future. It shows that Square Enix hasn't throw in the towel yet, and that they can learn from past mistakes and make better games. Something very similar happened with Final Fantasy XIV, which went from unmitigated disaster to a surprisingly solid MMORPG. It suggests that there's reason to hope that Final Fantasy XV won't be half bad.In the meantime, while it's doubtful that anyone will claim Final Fantasy XIII as their favorite in the series, it still has its merits. In its excellent battle system in particular, there are the seeds of a great RPG. Hopefully one day another developer can take those seeds and make something truly special.

Kat Bailey is a freelance Pokemon Master. You can follow her on Twitter at @The_Katbot