Final Fantasy XIII

[Rasix]

Is it bad that I have zero interest in this game?

It's another FF.  I'd expect some people to have stopped caring by now.  They haven't been great games since the SNES.

Edge tends to use the entire 1 - 10 scale like you're supposed to.
(Someone really need to make a new "Amiga Power"-type mag or website. IIRC they once gave one game 2....percent. Why 2%? Because they felt it was more insulting that a 'gimmick' 1% score would be).

Yes, but in the current state of game reviewing, it's just attention whoring.  Ones and twos can't really exist in a commercially released product.  It'd have to be someone crapping into a box containing a disk with a virus infested version of "Hello, world" (some games get close).  This really isn't even using the scale like you're supposed to, it's reinventing it in order to garner attention.  Are they going to give out an 11 for something they really love or go into the negatives for a game that dares to not be robot-fucking-jesus?

[stray]

Is it bad that I have zero interest in this game?

No. It's prettier than everything though. Combat system is cool. It's different than many things out. You might be missing something.

[Draegan]

Is it inferior on the 360 or something?

Yeah, I can't quite figure out why you would go through all that trouble when you could just buy it for the console you own.

Maybe Draegan doesn't know it's out for 360. Let's not tell him.

Oh sweet so Demon Souls and other games are coming out for the 360 too?

[Quinton]

About 6 hours in and the combat system is just wearing me down.  I'd like finer control over what's going on than I get by switching gambits so the other characters in my party change what abilities they use.  Without either direct control (like older FF titles), or more input into the AI (like the gambit system in FF12), I feel like I'm just not doing much here.  It looks pretty but it's just not very engaging.

The story is not exactly grabbing me either.

I'll probably keep slogging through it a bit more to see if things improve, but it's feeling pretty meh.

[Cyrrex]

Well, to be fair...you could slow it down and input all the commands yourself.

[Quinton]

You can't input all the commands -- only the commands for your party leader.   Unless I'm wrong and you *can* control the entire party, in which case I'd be interested in knowing how to do that.

[stray]

Just wait.

You'll won't be getting the micro-management you're looking for, but you'll apply more tactical thinking all the same as time moves on. 6 hours in? You're just about there.

I rather like the story though. It kept me going.

I agree that this hand holding goes on a bit too long though.... OTOH, I know someone and his gf who haven't played FF in a long while, and it seems to be the kind of a long ass tutorial suited for people like them. They're not complaining.

[Cyrrex]

You can't input all the commands -- only the commands for your party leader.   Unless I'm wrong and you *can* control the entire party, in which case I'd be interested in knowing how to do that.

Good point, you cannot seem to control the others.  One of the things that bugs me is that you can't seem to even switch who the party leader is at this point in the game (or can you?).

[stray]

Later on, you apparently can. As I've been saying though... the story is king. Not YOU. Or your choices.  So, whatever happens to be driving the narrative will dictate your party leader. I don't expect anyone used to RPG's liking that though, since the basic expectation of RPGs is that you get to make choices. This however is not an RPG, and if you get past that, all is well. 

As for micro-management.... seriously... you'd get your ass killed later on trying to manage multiple party members with the kind of bosses presented to you. Too much.

Not trying to be an apologist or anything.. hope it doesn't come off that way.

[Quinton]

Well, I'm not giving up yet, but I hope the story steps it up a notch.  So far it is not terribly impressive or coherent.  At least only two members of the main cast are compulsive whiners, so that's a plus.  At some point are the "bad guys" more than a government, random soldiers, or random monsters?  Do they have any actual motivation or are they just cardboard cutout evil and/or puppets of evil?

[stray]

No, not cardboard generic evil..err.. or whatever. Without spoiling anything, you've probably already gathered that the story is basically about racial/cultural fear. I've only run across one character now from the other side (i.e. a villain), and it's kind of unsettling how calm and good he is. He's just driven by fear.

[stray]

I think I'm in total agreement with the 1 Up review. It's honest about the differences and chopping off of features, but takes this game on it's own merits.

"The series stripped down to little more than story and combat. As such, the quality of the game is entirely contingent on the quality of those two elements. To its credit, they're among the best the series has ever seen."

It could be said though that this makes it more of an action-adventure than an RPG. Err...except the combat itself is not action adventure. Feels like FFX on steroids.

[Rasix]

I'm not sold on the plot yet, but it's still early.  Most of the characters are pretty solid.  Sazh is great and his baby chocobo is one of the most adorable things I've ever seen in a game.  Snow is lame, however, and I'm not sure they can salvage him.

The venom being being spouted, especially by butt-hurt fanbois still pining for a FF7 remake (boy, there are a lot of them.  Am I the only person that really didn't care for FF7?), is actually staring to get kind of funny. 

[stray]

I've noticed the venom even extends to Leona Lewis being on a soundtrack. Like it's a fucking death knell for the series. Must be coming from the same weeaboos I saw opening night.

It's not a bad song. I can hardly care if her "fan base" doesn't tie into Final Fantasy's fanbase. How fucking weird, man.. They're out of hand. Maybe Square should alienate it's playerbase.


I generally like everything from 7 through X-2 equally.. just not 12 (so far don't like it at least... still haven't put enough time into it).

[Lakov_Sanite]

I actually like snow, he's kind of a naruto character which can be good or bad depending on your tastes. It's hope that makes me stabby though, little emo douche epitomizes everything bad with jrpg's.  Also about 10 hours in the difficulty 'really' ramps up.

[stray]

Hope has gotten a little better.

He's emo === but he's a self-aware emo  . ...and knows he's needs to get his shit together.

[Quinton]

I like most of the characters.  Hope annoys the crap out of me.  I got enough Shinji Ikari style sniveling when I watched Evangelion back in the day.  The character interactions, even just the little bits of background chatter while you hike around, are generally very well done.

[Xurtan]

Snow and Hope annoy me. Snow less so now that he has stopped the "I'm a HERO!" bullshit. We'll see if Hope stops being a whiny little bitch, its still early.

[Cyrrex]

I thought Vanille was going to annoy me, but yeah, it's more been Hope up to this point.

Oh, and I just had the Odin fight.  My experience was like yours, Stray.  He kicked the living snot out of me the first time, and I was like "oh hell, this is going to take a while".  And then I proceeded to kick the shit out of him in the next bout.  Odd.  I was then a little disappointed upon summoning him to find that he didn't really help me all that much, but for now I'll chalk that up to not understanding how to use that gestalt system yet.

[stray]

He's most effective running his course almost to the point of death... then press square.. go through the moves where Light is on the horse.. not sure how many moves are available in that mode.. but you'll end gestalt mode with the triangle button.

[Cyrrex]

I kinda figured that hitting triangle would end it, but then I expected more than 470 points of damage.  I have Lightning doing far more than that on a turn.

[stray]

I would kind of prematurely press triangle sometimes, but you have to build up the stagger gauge for it to be an effective ending move.

[Quinton]

I'm starting to like the game quite a bit as of chapter 7.  More systems and abilities available.  Hell, even Snow is growing on me a little bit, and maybe Hope will sort out his angst before halfway through the game... that'd be a nice surprise.

[Falconeer]

So far, I am loving everything BUT the combat. It doesn't really make me feel in control. Nothing worse than watching the ATB bar filling before anything happens, nothing worse than fighting the UI to get the skills/optimums I want before my band gets whacked, nothing worse than actually have to look at bars filling and unfilling (ATB, party HP) instead of the action on screen. I even tried slowing down the ATB, and that made things slightly clearer but even more sluggish and goofy since the ATB fills slower and there's more time watching without doing nothing. I know it's mere seconds, but it's horribly MMO-ish to have to wait for "cooldowns" of sorts instead of having your chars unleashing whatever you want them to unleash when you hit a button. I find myself hitting triangle all the time so I can at least act as soon as the first segment is filled. Finally, the whole "delayed" chaos on screen doesn't give me time to appreciate animations, weapons, enemies, spells, nothing.

Oddly enough, turn based combat felt more satisfying to me as opposed to this fake action mode. This isn't "neither meat nor fish" as they say in Italy.

Everything else I am absolutely in love with so far, but the combat is disappointing to me.

[Quinton]

It wasn't until chapter 6 or 7 or so that I really got used to the combat.  Having enough roles available to each character so that you can have a reasonable collection of role combinations for paradigm shifts helps a lot.  Now I tend to use that bar-filling-time to assess the situation and decide if I'm going to paradigm shift or not for the "next round" as it were.

I'm still getting a feel for if using triangle to execute early is worth it (sometimes it obviously is, but I don't know if it isn't a drawback some other times), and I need to verify that going into the paradigm shift menu (L1) doesn't cancel the current queued actions (I need to experiment a bit more) until you actually make a selection.

A lot of it was that combat didn't feel right, and then at some point it kinda clicked and now it doesn't bother me much.

EDIT: If you think of the ATB bar as your MP bar and that there are no non-special attacks (but there are  *extra* special attacks using your TP that build up from battle to battle), maybe it makes a bit more sense?

[Quinton]

Vanille's VA (talks about her FF13 experience starting around the 1m44 mark): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0YaQnUOu4k

"and it's all... basically I spend my hours in the booth going <various high pitched laughs etc>"

[Draegan]

Edit:
I moved this to the spoiler thread.  Oops

[Yegolev]

Without delving too much into anything, FF12 was a joke ON ALL ACCOUNTS compared to this one,

I disagree.

Good:
Looks great.
I get the "you're on the run" feel thanks to streamlining/tunnels.
Paradigm system is a good combat system.
Party members are acceptably intelligent during combat.
Eidolon tests are interesting versus traditional "beat the shit out of it" tasks.

Bad:
Camera rotation sucks.
Crystarium difficult to navigate.
I want more information on the Upgrade system.
Gradual introduction of gameplay mechanics is gradual.  Very.
Don't tease me with airships.  Just don't.

Meh:
Grinding for loot seems not worth it, then again it serves to propel me forward instead of spending three weeks on the Veldt.
Someone got FFVII in my FFX!
I miss towns but I don't.  Weird.  Towns would feel out of place in the narrative.

[Draegan]

I do not miss towns and having to run around and talk to people and visit shops and be worried I missed something and spend an hour poking around.

[Falconeer]

I love not having to manage my health between combats, I love NPC talking to me as I approach them instead of having to menutalk them and see if they have anything new to say. Cristallium is not so cool, and I miss more classical levelups mechanics. Story and character and setting are among my favourites ever. Bliss.

It's me, I hated Final Fantasi XII. That MMORPG feeling was disgusting to me.

[Quinton]

I love that if I get completely hosed in a crazy boss battle, I can just SELECT and retry it rather than having to slog through an hour of random encounters or cutscenes after restarting from the last save point.

I think the whole "no death penalty" thing is great because it encourages me to push my limits in combat and not be needlessly conservative.  Combined with the fast pacing, the ability to choose your encounters (no random battles), and no need to burn MP/items/etc to heal up after combat, it allows every battle to be a self-contained world of crushing your foes (or winning by the skin of your teeth).

If I could keep one feature from FF12, it'd be the gambit system -- I'd like to be able to tune the AI for the non-controlled party members a bit.  It's pretty good as-is (certainly good enough that the game is enjoyable), but I'd love to be able to tinker.  I admit it, I am a software engineer, and the FF Programming Language amused me.

[Yegolev]

I never got the "FFXII feels like MMORPG" thing that I kept reading.  I don't know that it is worth a huge discussion at this point but I really don't see it.  I assume it was due to the lack of random encounters and separate battle screen.

[Quinton]

I never got the "FFXII feels like MMORPG" thing that I kept reading.  I don't know that it is worth a huge discussion at this point but I really don't see it.  I assume it was due to the lack of random encounters and separate battle screen.

If "feels like an MMO" means lack of random encounters and no separate battle screen, I want more MMO feeling in my RPGs!

[Rasix]

I think the "it feels like a MMO" was mostly aimed at the feel of the combat.

For upgrading, here's a helpful hint:

Every component with a "tooth/claw" icon (mostly organics) will add to the bonus exp for an item. 

Every component with a "bolt" icon will subtract from the bonus exp an item gets.  These have the most overall exp and are mostly mechanical/electrical components.

So, a good strategy is to use a lot of bonus exp components until you get a 2x exp bonus, then unload a huge stack of "bolt" icon components.  You can get several levels this way.

Now if I could only pick what items to level up.  I'm starting to get some weapons with bonus abilities but I've already got weapons with 10 levels on them.  Bleh.

[Yegolev]

The upgrade components are what I mean when I complain about the grind.  CP are easy to get, materials far less so.  I tried to grind for a bit but the effort required to PERHAPS get a component was a bit much.