f13.net

So.


Snow is kinda shit and I'm actually digging the black dude. Which is funny since, you know, he keeps a baby Chocobo in his hair.

They crafted towns for this game for sure, you just don't need to go in them. To elaborate on my previous statement in other thread, this is an improvement (using them as set pieces for cut scenes).

Crystalarium is a terrible skill system. Shoulda stuck with the Zodiac system or just, you know, TREES with point values. It may just be the layout, but godawful design. Overdesigned, imo.

My Snow complaint is kinda bland, but up until the crystalarium, it was pretty much perfect. Shame to fuck up such a primary system.

Sazh is cool. Bit of a pessimist though.

I like the crystal thing.... I like the idea of immediately making improvements with any available xp points.. instead of waiting to level up.

I'm liking Sazh and Lightning, can deal with Snow, need somebody to slap some sense into Hope before he completely devolves into Shinji from Evangelion, and I think Vanille's voice acting is going to drive me insane.  It's not *bad* so much as just really damn strange.

I just learned from the manual that you can press SELECT to restart a battle from the beginning (all items restored), which is an interesting feature.

Anybody have any idea what I can safely sell?  If I sell "components" or whatnot, am I going to miss out of some crafting system later on or kick myself for trading stuff for gil?

I sell credit chips.

And nothing else.

I've sold all components. I'm doubtful there's any other way to make gil.

Oh, and for all the tutorials they've put in, they could have done one on this.

[edit] speaking of tutorials... once they're over with, the game does get a little harder. not sure how far you guys are, but i'm starting to die regularly now (I think my characters are lvl 3 or 4).

Haha.....


Just got the upgrade station feature.. So yeah, good on yall for saving your shit.

Probably won't play until later tonight, but I turned off last night getting my ass seriously kicked by Odin. This can be very difficult, after all. I even know what he's weak to, but I didn't make a dent.

Note: Zantetsuken does not insta-kill all enemies.  :oh_i_see:

OK, so Odin was a cinch (I was just tired), but that poppy headed boss is the first real bitch.

For reference, it never did.

"The bird says no"

awesome moment

The ship designs are cool. Even if this isn't necessarily a space opera, it conjures up the term.

I read that they plan on basing games in this world for awhile (forgot what it's called).

The giant moon/ecosystem is Cacoon and the planet below is Pulse.  I'm already halfway through and there's no signs I'll be going to pulse anytime soon so there's a whole nother world unexplored. This would make sense if they're basing other games there but it'll probably be their second teir games DS/PSP or even 14

Oh those are the worlds. I mean the universe as a whole. I googled it... it's called Fabula Nova Crystallis. Apparently they plan on all FF titles being in it for the next decade.

The games they're making in this world is the Fabula Nova Crystalis saga.

    * Final Fantasy XIII (PS3, Xbox 360)
The one you're playing.

    * Final Fantasy Agito XIII (PSP)


    * Final Fantasy Versus XIII (PS3)

More:

So there we are.

As far as I know, Final Fantasy, after these 3 games (and XIV notwithstanding - different team), is going to be put on hold for a while.


Edit: Shame they never named the Final Fantasy VI World (only referring to them as the World of Balance/Ruin). FFXIII is just a goddamn pretty FFVII world. I'd prefer they keep expanding Ivalice, but I guess we'll get that with FFXIV. Too bad they don't toss it forward 2,000 years and just say it's the World of Ruin.

Like I said, second tier titles.

On Agito:

As for Versus, it uses the white engine/crystal tools that FFXIII used and is being made by a full team led by Nomura credited as: Director, Concept Game Designer, Character Designer & Base Story

So, whatever dude. These aren't like Last Remnant or, god forbid, Infinite Undiscovery.

More like X-2  :oh_i_see:

Well, X-2 was good. But two, it was an extension of X's world and characters. Those above are tied together loosely only by Nova Crystalis' crystal theme. Completely different worlds/sitations than XIII though.

Okay, weapon upgrading unlocked after ch4 boss.  Discovered that crystals can add inventory slots for more accessories.  Crystals are getting pricey (300-500cp/ea) now. 

The Sazh+Vanille+Hope Party of Suck improved massively when I got to trade Hope out for Lightning.  Physical attacks again and much less whining.

Haha.. you say that, but wait a couple of more hours... you'll get more Hope. I'm stuck at this point myself.. not sure I should elaborate, but this boss is a bitch. Still can't beat the poppy head thing (its lvl 59, and I only have two party members).

Poppy headed thing requires CONSTANT paradigm shifting. Commando/Ravager back to Commando/Medic and so on.  Also make sure to libra the boss so your secondary character will always pick the right magic to cast on when he switches his resistance type.

I did libra, but I noticed this last time around that he'll cast correctly, so long as it wasn't a previous type of attack in queue. The poppy head basically projects/announces what form he's shifting to, so it doesn't seem to matter.

With that in mind, I decided to use the points for Odin instead..... who got absolutely creamed. wtf

I think another problem is that I've spread too thin on upgrading weapons. Maybe Hope and Lightning aren't strong enough. :(

FUCK!!!  :ye_gods:

Man, almost got him down but those tosses are killer. I've tried this battle over ten times at least... I just need a little extra... something.

[edit] This fight is so whack I'm thinking of restarting the entire game and optimizing shit to a T.

I'm getting stomped by Odin repeatedly.  I fear for when I hit the boss you guys are griping about...

Spark rings.
Aegisol, Fortisol.
Dualcast.

Get a protect and shell in there if Hope has it.

Rav / Med / Med if that's an option. Chain as much as you can too.

Fang is perhaps the most rational and well-balanced character in a final fantasy ever.  I will go ahead and say this right now, she balances out the suck that is cloud.

Also odin is fairly easy since you get exp/whatever eidlon thingy when you heal as well.  Go healer/healer for most of the fight then go ravage/ravage when he throws up his shield, no items necessary

Cloud? Do you mean Snow?

If so, I don't think Snow sucks per se... he's just immature and stupid. Lol.. Which is not exactly the same as a sucky character per se...since he's purposely written with those flaws.

Or basically, I can appreciate his part, even though he's not likeable. Not everyone can be cool like Light and Fang.

Anyways... I beat that boss. It takes a lot of conserving/holding back from attacking to win.

No, I mean cloud...who was always a shit character that people latched onto cause they loved 7 or grew up with it but he is probably the worst FF protagonist ever with his emo bishounen douchness.  Snow isn't bad, you're right he's immature and when you finally see the hope/snow confrontation you can empathize with both of them so it makes them both seem less annoying.

Had spark rings.  Forgot about *sol (has been unnecessary for normal fights, is useful for big battles).  Managed to make it through after a couple tries.  Mostly had Rav / Med and flipped to Rav / Rav when I could.  I didn't seem to ever knock much off the gestalt bar with healing, so it was a battle against time to do enough damage with magic while not dying.

I took this guy down on the first try (compared to Odin which took like 7-8 attempts for me).  Both Lightning and Hope had nicely upgraded weapons, two accessories, and all skills possible unlocked at that point (I got turned around a couple times on my way to the boss and picked up some extra CP that way -- only I can get lost in linear levels...).

Had agisol and fortisol on and alternated between Com/Rav and Com/Med until he staggered and then down he went.

Lol actually I think I'm starting to like Snow  :awesome_for_real:

Gotta love his complete obliviousness. "Don't worry. Your hero is back!" /cue guitar music.

Hope: ....

That made me smile too.  He's almost too upbeat to hate.

Chapter Seven is starting to get me pretty enthused about the game.  I'm getting the hang of paradigm shift as a big driver of combat flow, and the characters are getting enough secondary paradigms that I can put together more effective combos.  More skills are unlocked, have had a chance to upgrade items a bit and unlock more item slots, and I have a good feeling about Fang so far.

Also fun: just noticed that the Shiva Sisters blow Snow a kiss when they depart.

I'm at chapter seven, party is Snow & Hope at the moment. Falco Velocycles are constantly raping me with their gatling gun attack. I know I'm supposed to go SEN/MED when they start it and then provoke + steelguard that gatling gun attack with Snow, but it seems I'm not very good at timing it or may be doing something else wrong. Maybe changing battle speed will help, going to try that next.

edit: it helped a bit, now I managed to kill one on third attempt (with battle score 0). Hopefully there won't be tons of these around.

You can select which paradigm is the default from the configure/edit menu, if you want to always start with something conservative.

I found having com/rav com/med sen/med was useful -- drop to com/med or sen/med for a round or two if you're taking a lot of damage.

I have to spoiler this IN the spoiler thread.

I agree, it gets even better once Fang is in.. not solely because of her. Just the team dynamic in general.

Does it look like they're toning down the gfx just a bit for the gameplay bits, and then suping it all up for cutscenes? The faces definitely seem more detailed.

Some of the cutscenes are definitely pre-rendered, and they pull out all the stops there.  Wouldn't surprise me if they had higher quality models for in-engine cutscenes too.

Hope just confronted Snow about the death of his mom and I'm not even halfway through.  Maybe the angst-o-meter will click down a couple notches now ^^

But none of this is "video" right? Some of it almost looks as good as the FF movies. I wonder if the PS4/whatever Xbox is next will be able to render gameplay like that. There's a scene for example with the blonde Psicom chick, as she waiting by a ship that looks very movie like to me. I thought some of MGS' faces were cool, but this game is a trip.

Also, in the equipment screens, both Light and Fang look cooler than usual. Those are obviously clips.. but I wonder if it's the same engine..

Some of it is video (pre-rendered, compressed with some modern video codec).  Apparently the xbox360 version uses lossier codec settings to make it fit on three DVDs instead of one BDROM, and the artifacts are much more noticable there. 

I do notice however that there's accurate/localized lip syncing, even in gameplay mode. Even with random npc's. Is that not hard to do nowadays or something?

Blonde psicom girl is hereto known as Cleavage McBooberson.


On the third disc now and they've opened up all classes to all characters but if you wanna start in a non-regular class its gonna cost you a LOT of cp.

Easy, but not cheap afaik.

There's a scene where snow has to take his shirt off and I noticed(shut up) that not only is he ripped, the level of detail was pretty astounding. Also, gotta love anime where badages =  healed, no matter how severe the injury, just slap bandages on it.

Heh yeah that scene convinced me that I needed to skyrocket his strength stats.  :oh_i_see: He's over 300 now.

No, seriously.. Id been playing Light as Commando heavy for too long... no reason why she had almost as much STR as him....also, she was already mage like in the beginning of the game,right? What was up with the lightning powers? Haven't seen them since.

By the time you get a third party member having a sentinel becomes mandatory even on trash fights.  Right now my party makeup is light/fang/vanille though i should prolly sub hope for vanille but i still dont like him. also, sazh gets haste which is probably THE best buff in game

This had me confused at first too -- a friend pointed out that she was part of the military, which uses various magic-as-technology devices (AMP/manadrive/etc), and that Sazh broke her anti-gravity whatsit early on while trying not to be left behind.

I saw some speculation elsewhere that the boost-enemies-up-into-the-air stuff was an artifact of the anti-gravity magic device thing being a part of gameplay that they ended up not using.

So, at a scant 25 hours in the world opens up and you go to pulse. I have no airship yet but I did catch a glimpse of a world map in a recent tutorial(they just added special monster missions) So I'm thinking you do get in the air soon enough.

Thinking about it, FFIV and VI didn't open up for real until about 20-30 hours in also. That is if you took your time in towns and such. I think having towns and the like and walking from one location to another on the overworld map SEEMS more open than FFXIII but it really, really isn't. FFIV is Town -> Land -> Cave -> Destroy a Town -> Desert -> Town -> Cave -> Desert - Town before you even have an idea you'll be able to talk to Cid. FFVI is even MORE on rails.

It's all about illusion here folks, but the more things change the more they stay the same.

Which, in some instances, you need to do some wandering around before finding it.  Whereas in XIII, it goes Tube -> Tube -> Tube -> Tube seemingly ad infinitum.

We only wandered around because it was amazing and magical when we were young. I could draw you a map with arrows for those two games and tear through it in no time flat. It is essentially tubes, just not tiny tubes. I'm not defending FFXIII, I'm just throwing the rails complaint/30 hours til open world as a reasonable one out the window.

It's a perfectly reasonable complaint, there is no room for deviation whatsoever.  It's like playing a side-scrolling action game.  Most NES games had better level design than this.

There's no room for deviation in the other games except a chocobo forest, going backwards, and wandering around getting into random fights. The complaint about level design is fair, but the complaint about the linearity is sort of a wack one.

FFVI, once you hit the World of Ruin, allowed for the most deviation in the series I think in that when regathering your party you have some freedom in the order in which you go in.  I seem to recall a little bit in FFV also but I've only played through it once and it was a long time ago.

Your deviation comes with pulse, it really is final fantasy by the numbers.

"Oh look giant dinosaur thingies wandering around the vast expanse, let's try and attack one of them!"

Dead in one hit

"I missed you final fantasy"

You had some deviation before that in the World of Balance, but yea, you're just making my point for me: That's 40+ hours into the game.

Outside of the job system, FF5 was pretty bad, not to mention the world isn't even worth talking about. So linearity or not, it's sort of irrelevant. (The beginning of that one was very linear as well, just like all the others).

Well yeah, I'm agreeing with you.  Honestly don't have any issue with FFXIII's linearity.  My only real issue with the game so far is with the character development (from a story aspect).  You get at least some background on Lightning and Snow fairly early which is good.  Hope's sole defining characteristic for much of the early game however is "I want to bitch out Snow, and should have done so within the first chapter or two of the game but this is inexplicably being drawn out as a long subplot".  Vanille alternates between annoying and tolerable for me, but again, there's no real background for her, presumably because every time she opens her mouth to do anything other than laugh, she hints that she has some connection to Pulse.  Sazh at least doesn't have a tendency towards annoyingness that Hope and Vanille do, but like Vanille, there are only really vague hints as to his background.

I don't expect every detail about a character to be revealed early, but five chapters and about 8 or 9 hours in, and half the cast still feel a bit like blank slates to me which is making it hard for me to form a connection to them.  Still enjoying the game a lot though (will still be putting it down for a bit once God of War 3 comes out though).

One thing I realized is that most levels in earlier FF's are tubes too -- but due to how level design was done, they're tubes wrapped back and forth on each other to fit in a rectangle.  The levels in FFXIII are actually much more scenic and interesting if you don't spend all your time looking at the mini-map in the upper right of the screen.

I'm glad we're finally done with random encounters.  Always hated random encounters.

We were done with them in the last iteration.

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/gdc-10-final-fantasy/62834?type=flv
"Did you see the Steelguard?  The Steelguard was pretty cool!"

Given that I'm 20 hours in, in chapter 9, and I believe there are still some game systems not available to me yet, I fully expect to hit the final boss at the end of the game only to see a tutorial dialog "About Final Boss Battles."

Chapter 7 was pretty great.  Chapter 8 was filled with guilt, depression, and despair, all in a cheery themepark.  I think we're finally past the whole Snow/Hope angstfest, though I do wonder wtf Hope's deal with his dad was... I mean his dad seemed like a pretty reasonable and supportive guy when we finally met him.

A friend comments: "also how huge a dudebro snow is. he is broseidon, ruler of the broceans."

Are the weapons with ability modifiers (belladonna wand, paladin, procyons, etc) worth leveling up after you've already been leveling a main weapon?  Or should I just sell/disassemble them?

Weapon upgrading seems like the only thing I'm afraid of fucking up.

The fake trailer 1-up or whoever put up had the best scenes of Snow yelling stuff like "BRODUUUUUUUUSKIIIIIEEEEEEE." It was pretty fantastic.

Many JRPGs aren't very deep, or made for exploring.. but Final Fantasy never was especially. They were always focused on story and linearity.. so in a way, I'm not missing much here. This is the same thing - they just finally are aware of it, and got rid of anything that wasn't conducive to that. It'd be nice if a few things weren't thrown out, but I'm still getting what has always defined a FF game either way. I'm sure there's a way of implementing more side quests and towns and such side by side with the goal of keeping the pacing of a story working well, and they'll probably revisit that stuff again in some future game. As it is though, I can't say I'm bored with how they did things.

---

I've let the game linger on at times while I walked away, so I have no clue how many hours into the game I'm really in. I'll say that I encountered the Sanctum leader though.. not sure what hour mark that is.

[edit] Some weapons are worth upgrading if you really want the character to focus on few things. I have Snow using the str heavy weapon, for example. As for the other effect based weapons I don't know. I've lvled Belladonna up, but it just modifies Str and Mag. It doesn't debuff better or anything,

when you have weapons and items equipped and you press one of the four buttons in the equipment screen it goes into greater detail on what they do. belladonna essentially makes debuffs more likely to land on the target.  I'm still a bit confused as to what "stagger lock" does, it sounds bad though but I could be wrong.

Well, I just wondered if they really had that great of an effect or if it's worth the bother at all.  Only time I've had trouble with debuffs is on a shelled creature and the debuffs would land when you staggered it.

Not sure I like this game a lot.  Yeah, I have played far worse, and it does have a lot of great elements... just not sure I like them a lot.  Weapon upgrades don't make sense to me yet.  The 3D sphere grid is annoying to navigate.  The camera is bothersome.  Storywise, it's like VIII and X.  I'm tempted to call this one X-3 instead of XIII.  Also tempted to replay XII.

Mechanical bombs are cool, though.  Looking for mechanical cactaurs now.

This is a general rant on the first few hours.

Until around chapter 7 you can keep your crystal grids maxed out (until they open up to more levels at the next boss battle) pretty much by just fighting every encounter in each zone.

In chapter 9, I'm actually "grinding" a little partway through because I want some cash for upgrades (lots of drops of incentive chips that sell for 2500) and because I'm feeling a little underpowered for the first time -- this lets me unlock some more skills and practice a bit more.

My understanding (based on the SA thread) is that when the game opens up when you get to Gran Pulse, all characters get the remaining 3 roles unlocked, but the cost to level the other roles is pretty crazy high.

I like that it's not trivial to level every role for every character (but you *can* do it if you really really want to and don't mind some crazy grinding), and that the exact set of abilities, etc, unlocked is a little different for each character. 

There's only one character I really feel like expanding and that's Vanille. I need another Synergist + Ravager + Medic like Hope. Small preference... I don't really dislike Hope. At least not anymore.. he's gotten cooler. But Vanille's better.

Anyhow, Light, Fang, and Hope are the best team, power wise. I'd rather replace Hope with Vanille. And maybe often change Fang with Snow, who has a boatload of hitpoints more than Fang --- but Fang seems to dish it out faster than Snow in Commando mode. Snow and Sazh for some reason seem kind of slow as Commandos.

Light is perfect as she is as a balanced Commander/Ravager.. I just hate manually playing the Medic role.

Yeah, I *hate* manual medic.  The AI does a much better job.

That's a relief.  I keep thinking I am getting old.  I have even set auto-action as default, although I feel dirty.

I just played through the crystal forest level where Hope and Lightning get to be friendly and Hope's "Project Nora Phase One Complete" statement come through.   :oh_i_see:

I have my default set on auto as well.  The trash mobs don't take much though and I can just hit X.  The only time I manually input attacks is when I see a clump and use Blitz.

Started using upgrade and got Light's weapon (I chose the one I was using at the time) to level 9 and it's a beast.  It really stands out when playing other character how much overpowered it is.  Thank you Rasix (I think it was you) for going over briefly the upgrade system.

I'm hating this part of the story because you only have two people in your party and sometimes combat just takes way too long.  Fun game so far.  Work will suffer due to being up until 2am last night.

I liked that part because both characters sort of become more a little more complex. Before that, Light was a hardass.

Some trash mobs start getting a little tough, to the point that you want to avoid some. Not that they're all hard, but some have a crapload of hp, switch modes, heal... and some of these tougher ones don't even give much xp to bother.

Story wise it's fine, I agree.  I just want a full party so I can kill stuff faster instead of sitting watching my APB fill up and everyone standing around.

So, I just beat up Pope Fal'Cie Redux.  I'm guessing if I want to really max out my characters and get ultimate weapons I'm going to have to back track and hang around Gran Pulse somemore instead of jumping on the ship?  That seems like a somewhat longish trek back.

After you "beat" the game you're given the opportunity to continue playing. There's also two convinient warp portals for Eden and Gran Pulse at the point where you start the post game play. I hadn't done more than two or three of the stone missions during my story playthrough so the PG+ (post-game plus) has been pretty entertaining

Faultwarrens end bosses are just ridiculous.  I think I'm going to port back to Oerba and just finish the game.

The strats I've read for them are just stupid, either relying on "Lucky Break" or Death.

The Titan missions are pretty difficult. I was able to finish them with my post game party but I can't imagine beating them without the benefit of the extra Crystarium stage you unlock after "beating" the game. I suppose you could cheese some of them with Vanille's Death spell but others are immune to that (hello Attacus!). The B mission against the giant Cactaur is rediculous. I don't see how I'm going to beat it without seriously leveling all the alternate roles for my characters. Even with the Growth Egg that's going to take a long time :/

This game has the dumbest ending of any FF, ever.

It was fun though, thanks to the excellent combat system.

Unpossible.  Now I have to have to finish.

Finished this up over the last few days.

tl;dr - Game was fun. But JRPG plots are "Not for me".

The combat was fun. Obviously nothing groundbreaking, but fun. I was not super thrilled at the fact that everyone shared the same pool of skills. I would have preferred some more variety.

While the game was obviously beautiful, high production values, polish, etc. It really didn't feel cohesive at all.

The game basically amounted to: walk down a hall, kill some shit, watch your party banter about something stupid. Rinse & Repeat. Throw in a few FMVs and some forgetable and pointless antagonists (Lets make the main villian the Pope for no apparent reason!) and I guess you can call it a day.

Having said all that, actually finishing it means it must be better then 8, 9, & 12. Because I never did finish them.

I almost finished 12, but then my brother in law stole it.

Anyway, I just started chapter 10, as in, I saved as soon as I beat 9 and havn't played since.  Is there any good grinding to be had?  I heard chapter 10 is awesome for it.

I beat 12, I wish I hadn't.

I'm up through chapter 11 now, and rapidly losing steam.  At this point I might as well push on to the end, but starting around chapter 10, the pacing of the story went all out of whack, and I'm starting to lose interest now that even random encounters are taking multiple minutes.

That's chapter 11.  10 is the Ark but 11 is Gran Pulse, which has about 33-36 side missions that can be done before moving on towards the end.  Some of the later missions will probably require you to beat the game and unlock the last round of upgrades since there's a lot of HP you can get from that.

Just hit chapter 11 and did one mission.  I found a video about CP/Gil farming in Chapter 11.  Apparently there is a spot in the NW section of the map that lets you get 6600 cp per fight.  I think I found it, it's two mobs attacking it each other but I didn't try it because I head off to bed last night.

Are there any good strategies for after hitting Ch11?  Grind to point X, or a decent set of items to grab or something?  I hate missing stuff.

You can't really miss anything since it gives you a clear game save when you beat it.  You can return to Gran Pulse after completion.

Yeah I know, but I'm not going to go back.  But I want to do some of the cool stuff a long the way.

Well, you should be able to do some of the initial Faultwarrens missions, so that leaves you being able to do missions up to around 40.  The end chain of those (trial of the titan) will kick your ass.  Of course, if you do all of them up until Oerba (mission 28) as you advance, you won't be missing much, but you can teleport back and do those handful remaining before it gets too hard.

So I finally took a few hours and finished the game tonight.


Fuck. What a dumb story.  I had to read something on the internet that summed it all up

I mean the trash leading up to the last boss was harder that the last boss.

I spent 20-30 minutes on the 2nd last boss.  The one that can randomly KO people.  After 30 minutes of fighting, I have him down to like 20% and he KO's Lightning.  Fuck.  Game Over!  FFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!

So I start again and this time Van lands a poison.  Really guys?  Poison?  He dies in 5 minutes to fucking poison?  Fuck you.

The ending was cliche and predictable I suppose.  I really wish I understood the story because it was fucking just not explained at all and I could be assed to read a datalog on my TV from my couch.

Shit game.  


Fuck FFXIII.

There is an accessory called the Growth Egg that doubles your CP.  It is the reward from mission 55, and you can get it at the end of chapter 11.  The stone is in Oerba village.  The monster is in an area off the highland, that is accessible by Chocobo.  It is very powerful, but you can kill it with Vanille's death spell.  

I got this, and then I ran around for a while killing the Adamantoises with Death to get trapezohedrons.  So when I went back to do Chapter 12, my characters were godlike and the rest of the game was easy.

I ended up looking at a weapon upgrade FAQ because there's nothing intuitive about that system, and the alternative was to just save, do stuff, and then reload and try other stuff to see what worked best.  I really hate using FAQs for video games, and one of the things I really hate about Final Fantasy is game systems that are arbitrary rather than logical.  I also think it sucks that it isn't clear what a lot of the weapons do, and you have no idea when you start upgrading a weapon what you're going to end up with.  I'm also not a fan of having lots of missable stuff that you would never know about unless you look at FAQs.  

According to the internet, the most efficient way to upgrade weapons is to farm gil and buy lots of the same items.  You buy 36 of the same kind of cheap organic material, which gives you a 3x multiplier, and then you use a stack of mechanical components to level your item to level * in one shot.  Once you are at a point where you can farm a lot of gil, the 50k gil Ultracompact Reactor is the most efficient mechanical component, providing more exp per gil than anything else in the game.  Also, once you get one Trapezohedron, you can level a Vanille or Fang weapon to Ultimate level * and then dismantle it for three traps.  This is much more efficient than buying traps for all your characters if you like ultimate weapons.  

But farming gil for ultimate weapons eats a lot of time farming, and will provide you with so much CP in the process that the end of the game will be fairly anticlimactic, especially if you have Growth Egg.  Someone mentioned the Orphan fight taking half an hour.  It took me like five minutes because my characters were all 'roided out.    

I get kind of OCD about these games, and when there is an ultimate weapon that I can obtain, I want to go get it.  It's a shame that the process of getting the weapons in this game is repetitive grinding; it's worse than the planet scanning in ME2.  

Also, the story makes no goddamn sense.  


I think this Final Fantasy had a really good combat system, and I thought paradigm shifting felt much cleaner than the automated command list from FFXII.  But the whole JRPG concept is feeling a little threadbare.  The removal of towns in favor of the datalog and the shops in the save points was really a concession that towns in these games have always been nothing but places to sell junk, buy goods, and get clumsy expositional infodumps.  The distillation of the game world into a series of linear hallways really exposes the illusion of past "free roaming worlds" that gave you little freedom other than the possibility of choosing which order to do certain quests, or the freedom to wander around aimlessly getting into random battles.  And the long static cutscenes feel archaic.

Playing Final Fantasy XIII really makes me appreciate how earth-shatteringly good Mass Effect 2 was.  The game world felt organic, the narrative was driven by complex characters rather than vaguely-defined lore-gods, and there was a real sense of player choice in story outcomes.        

  

Don't know where to put this for those on the fence about buying or waiting for a lower price, but $30 for FF13 at Kmart (http://deals.woot.com/deals/details/ef8e45c1-20f9-4a27-a7c0-de9235ffb70f/square-enix-final-fantasy-xiii-ps3-and-xbox360-on-kmart#14). Just add to cart and  the price is reflected. No limit on the discount.

PS3 Link at Kmart (http://deals.woot.com/deals/go/ef8e45c1-20f9-4a27-a7c0-de9235ffb70f)
Xbox Link at Kmart (http://redirectingat.com/?id=1999X557044&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kmart.com%2Fshc%2Fs%2Fp_10151_10104_018V002084278000P&sref=http%3A%2F%2Fdeals.woot.com%2Fdeals%2Fdetails%2Fef8e45c1-20f9-4a27-a7c0-de9235ffb70f%2Fsquare-enix-final-fantasy-xiii-ps3-and-xbox360-on-kmart%2314)

I just tested them both, ps3 still working, xbox was showing out of stock. That seems to be hit or miss all day though according to the woot comments. I'm looking for other games that may have this discount, not seeing anything yet.

The story in this game is terrible and confusing.  You have to do a lot of side reading to get it.  I think I posted something a few weeks ago from another forum that explains it.

Yah, it's pretty bad.  I'm surprised they went with this story when putting out this game.  The entire game hinged upon pushing the narrative forward at the cost of other elements, but did so with a story that had people scratching their head if they didn't pause and go read up.  Hell, even the character motivations and interpretation of their situation didn't make much sense most of the time. 

It was a great attempt at completely plot driven JRPG, they just picked a really bad story to implement it with.

They've been pretty terrible at telling stories since FFVII.

If the story had been better, the game would have been better, but a story that plays out in almost exclusively in lengthy, noninteractive cut scenes feels pretty antiquated when compared to newer methods for building narrative into games. 

I read every data log up to chapter 4-5ish.  I still didn't understand things.  I thought the story telling was fine in 9, 10 and 12.

FF12 had a good (if totally derivative) story until 3/4 of the way in, and then when they tried to switch over from the Empire vs plucky Rebels storyline to gods and pawns it all fell apart. I've heard that, not coincidentallly, a lot of the FF12 developers left 3/4 of the way in!

FF13 has no story. It tries to have one but it has no beginning, end, or narrative other then OHCRAP RUN. What exposition exists is more often then not nonsensical.

Since this is already a spoiler thread, my problem with FF13's 'story' in a nutshell:

I still don't know wtf the last boss was supposed to be other than "generic evil god-like thing with a pseudo-hymnal soundtrack". The fact there was no post-game "here's what the hell just happened to you" quest journal update is probably not a coincidence.

The game killed off 2 of my characters at the end. OK, I hated one of them but I sort of liked the other.

There wasn't much of a resolution past the immediate end. OK, I get it, Cocoon looks like the Yoshitaka Amano concept art at the title screen now. Clever, ha ha. But... what happened to everyone? What happened to the society you were supposedly saving?

No explanation for so many things introduced throughout the game, even in the endless quest journals. Why the hell is everyone in Gran Pulse dead? Did they kill each other? Did Cocoon kill them? Who knows. All through the end sequence crystal shards are floating in the air, and characters remark "Hm, this could be meaningful!" Never explained. At the end, 2 of the supporting cast are returned from crystal stasis. No explanation why, or why the 2 cast members who just WENT into crystal stasis weren't released. What, did they trade places? Who knows.

But the biggest problem I had:

The ENTIRE game is set up as you resisting your fate and the manipulation of the 'gods'. You're told that your fate is to kill Orphan, the "AI" energy reactor that powers the world that humanity lives on, that you will destroy the world, and that nothing you do can change that. You bravely rebel! Screw people telling us what to do, screw "gods" manipulating humanity and pulling the strings behind everything, we're going to be masters of our own fate, we're going to transcend our curse, we're going to find the people responsible for this and KICK THEIR ASS!

So, of course, the end game boss is you killing Orphan and destroying the world, literally doing everything that you were manipulated into doing by the 'villains' throughout the entire game.

Either this is a very dark, Asian view of free will or someone *really* did not think this through. I strongly suspect the latter.

I'm impressed you remembered that much.  As soon as I was able to say "I beat the game", I wiped everything from memory.

Except that they managed to do it without accidentally summoning the even bigger god that was supposed to reboot the world.  I think.

I'm past the point where I think it's my fault when something confuses me.  I'm smart, and I understand how stories work.  You do too, and so do most people here.  If something baffles me, it's because it's a shit story that makes no sense.  Whatever Orphan is supposed to be never had an explanation.  The model was kind of cool looking though.  

Also, space-pope was just a horrible villain.  His motivation made no sense.  His plan made no sense.  I don't even understand why he wanted to end the world.  


It looks like they got evacuated and went to Pulse.  I don't know what happened to the other Fal'cie.


None of this was coherent.  I think that everybody was supposed to end up dead, and somebody chickened out on the bummer ending at the last second.  I thought that crystal stasis and cieth were the two options, so there shouldn't be a happy ending for these characters.  The only compelling thing about these characters is that they struggle against the demigods even though they are doomed regardless of the outcome.  If there's a way out their fate, needs to derive organically from the story.  The game is like sixty hours long, so it's not like there was no time to make sense.  I'd overlook the holes in the mythology if there was an emotionally satisfying conclusion, although I was never really emotionally engaged in the characters.  


I'm fine with the characters getting duped by the bad guys.  It makes sense that they are forced inevitably to their focus despite the fact that they want to resist it.  The problem is that our only explanation of what is going on is the expository speeches the bad guys make before turning into boss monsters, and they're apparently lying most of the time.  

I think they went back to Cocoon because the evil pope said he was going to engineer the fake Pulse invasion to dupe the Sanctum military into destroying the world, but that turned out to be bullshit, and he was just trying to force Fang and Vanille into a room with Orphan, which is the real thing that ends the world.  And then that happened, but the world didn't end for some reason, and it was really pretty.

Personally, I'd have bought Fang and Vanille using Ragnarok to stop the end of the world, if doing that turned them into Cieth for failing their focus, and left the rest of the party in crystal stasis, since their focus was to get Fang and Vanille to Orphan.      

We do love a train wreck, don't we.