FFXIII - Last impression (spoilers obviously)

Aurongroove

The ending was great.

It's a real pity seeing the ending and sitting through the rest of the storyline, you realize that they've actually have come up with a great story, and told it in the worse possible way.

I'm no writer but I could have easily plotted it out better.
(there are some spoilers reguarding over arck plot below but nothing major, and nothing about the ending)

the writers should have spelled out right at the beginning

"IT SEEMS OR FOCUS IS TO BECOME RAGNAROK AND DESTROY COCOON, THAT'S THE PLOT AT LEAST"

as it is now, it's sort of like playing FFX but without Yuna or the team explaining "I'm on a mission to become a High Summoner and defeat Sin".
The team spend half the story line changing their minds

"lets destroy cocoon", "let's save cocoon", "**** it lets just become Cie'th" "lets look for a way to get rid of our brands" "let's stand around spouting crap and then punch Snow" "we have to fight that watchamcallit guy with the bird" and "No, let's do the opposite of that last thing we said, also Snow? Take this! <punch, stab etc>".

If the player had a more solid understanding of what was supposed to be happening, or even of the hero's plans in plain english

"I don't know weither our focus is to save or destroy Cocoon, oh the torture"

the writers almost seem to forget they have to reveal the plot clearly and definatly and not have it look like a whim of one of the heros, but the main thrust of the effort in order for the player to know when they are deviating and when they are not.
For example in FFX there's a very clear sence of deviation from the expected story once you refuse to sacrifice a guardian and instead kick Yunalesca ass and look for a different way to destroy Sin. you feel like you've genuinly opened out of the expected plot into unknown territory.

In FF13 they never really nail down the plot, it's like a giant suspention began at the first few hours which lasts until the ending where everything else is compleatly up in the air, and all the crap that happenes chapters 2-12 is not important: it's just a group of six or so idiots constantly changing their minds between the following two dualities:

A: Go for focus or look for way to lose brand: hope/ no hope
B: is our focus to destroy or save Cocoon: hope it is/ hope it isin't

the resolution was great, but again, it;s a shame they didn't plot it as well as it deserves, with definitive "this is the plan then" it just comes out a promising intro and a beautiful ending with a confused muddle of middle bit.

OxfordComma

I agree with most of what you've said. On paper, FF XIII's plot sounds excellent, but it's actually presented pretty badly. They never flesh out any of the details on anything in the storyline, and

there are seemingly no plot twists, no big revelations and no decent villain. In fact, very little actually happens at all in the game!

It seems like SE were afraid people would get bored if they made the story too complex, so they filled it with melodramatic character development instead.

It also bothered me that a lot of the game's most interesting ideas are "borrowed" from (read: stolen directly from) FF X.

One of the characters becoming Ragnarok, a mythical beast? Where have I heard that before?? And the entire concept of Orphan as the final boss is almost identical to Yu Yevon. Not cool.

Any one else notice that

after a certain point in the game, they seem to abandon the whole flashback thing completely?

I liked the ending, however,

even though it didn't really make sense, and the characters end up doing EXACTLY what Barthandelus and the rest of the fal'Cie wanted them to do, and yet everything works out ok in the end... ???

... I also grew to like the characters a lot (except Snow and Vanille), but I felt pretty disappointed overall. And it could easily have been a lot better.

Raze_them_all

It's idiotic.

1. They're told they'll destroy orphan and destroy cucoon. Why the hell would you go to the place then.

2. Why the fup would orphan fight them as it clearly states it wants to be destroyed.

3. Why the fup would they kill orphan and destroy cucoon when they spend the whole bloody game saying they'll save it. ARGGGHHHHHHHH

4. I bloody hate this game.

OxfordComma

^ Careful with the spoiler tags! I know there's a warning on the thread already, but just in case...

Raze_them_all

When something says spoilers obviously it makes the need for spoiler tags retarded as the people come into a thread that clearly states here will be spoilers

Memnoch

I actually agree with Raze about the story. The ending wasn't great, just because they threw a twist on it at the end doesn't make it great. If the twist had worked and the rest of the ending been coherent then MAYBE it could have been great.

In fact, it's STILL unclear to me why they decided to destroy orphan in the end. And then Fang and Vanille suddenly have the power to become Ragnarok at will it would seem.

I also thought the characters we're bland and boring. In every previous final fantasy(xcept 12) I've felt a strong connection with the characters at some stage or another. With 7, it was with almost everyone, they were such great characters (and no Retr0, I don't give two cents whether cloud was meant to be more emo in the Japanese version or not). In 8 again, despite the emoness, you get involved with the characters, even Siefer, despite the fact that the story careened horribly at the mid-way point. 9 again had some really fun characters, Vivi, Garnet and Steiner. 10 imo had some of the best characterisation with 7. Auron was just pure kick ass, Jectch, even though we barely saw him was the perfect bad boy turned good. Even Wakka, with his annoying voice, the silent warrior Kimhari (though I never used him), and Lulu, oh so biting.

In 13 I'm sorry to say, none of the characters stand out. There are brief moments, that maybe there's a brief spark, with Sazh and perhaps a little with Snow. But for the most part it's horribly forced melodrama.

My biggest criticism of the game however, is that the world FEELS lifeless. Ironically, this is MORE the case when the game opens up and you get to Gran Pulse. The lack of towns really kills the atmosphere. You hardly ever speak to any NPCs, and when you do, it's in the form of some contrived cutscene. I didn't really notice this as much on cocoon because of the pace of the game, but it really irked me later on.

I still enjoyed the game, and still finished it. The gameplay is good. I like the battle system, though the cryartium is really just levels under a different name that gives you the illusion of being something different, but you're never really forced to make a choice and the choice never really impacts your gameplay in any significant way.

Also, the bloody Eidelons are useless, and what's with the lame transformers. Eidelons that turn into motorbikes and cars? Give me a frikking break. Did anyone ever even use these in a fight? The only time I use them at all is to chop Adamantoise's legs for late game farming, or to wipe the slate and heal up in a tough fight (eg neoochu). I remember back when KOTR kicked butt, in most other games having the eidelons was actually useful, but in this I'd ratehr be saving my TPs for Libra.

What about the lack of minigames? From the chocobreeding and racing in 7, t the card games in 8 and 9 and finally Blitzball in 10. These served as essential diversions and a break from the game and were a lot of fun to boot. 13 really suffers without one.

The music was solid, except for the stupid Leona Lewis crap at the end, but that's neither here not there.

Also post game farming. Which I don't mind, but the ridiculous money farming, where you may or may not get the drop you need, it's too mmorpg like for my tastes. And kind of frustrating.

Finally, the sadest indictment of this game for me, is that this is going to be the FIRST final fantasy (barring 12) that I won't be playing a second time. I played 7 like 5-7 times. I played X 3 times. 8 3-4 times and 9 2-3 times. Typically, I'd finish the game first, then play through again trying to get all the secrets and then ultimately play through one last time with a walkthrough/guide.

Not only is there no need to do that with 13, I don't think the game would be enjoyable enough to warrant it.

A barely above average 7/10 for me.

Raze_them_all

Memnoch wrote: »

I actually agree with Raze about the story. The ending wasn't great, just because they threw a twist on it at the end doesn't make it great. If the twist had worked and the rest of the ending been coherent then MAYBE it could have been great.

In fact, it's STILL unclear to me why they decided to destroy orphan in the end. And then Fang and Vanille suddenly have the power to become Ragnarok at will it would seem.

I also thought the characters we're bland and boring. In every previous final fantasy(xcept 12) I've felt a strong connection with the characters at some stage or another. With 7, it was with almost everyone, they were such great characters (and no Retr0, I don't give two cents whether cloud was meant to be more emo in the Japanese version or not). In 8 again, despite the emoness, you get involved with the characters, even Siefer, despite the fact that the story careened horribly at the mid-way point. 9 again had some really fun characters, Vivi, Garnet and Steiner. 10 imo had some of the best characterisation with 7. Auron was just pure kick ass, Jectch, even though we barely saw him was the perfect bad boy turned good. Even Wakka, with his annoying voice, the silent warrior Kimhari (though I never used him), and Lulu, oh so biting.

In 13 I'm sorry to say, none of the characters stand out. There are brief moments, that maybe there's a brief spark, with Sazh and perhaps a little with Snow. But for the most part it's horribly forced melodrama.

My biggest criticism of the game however, is that the world FEELS lifeless. Ironically, this is MORE the case when the game opens up and you get to Gran Pulse. The lack of towns really kills the atmosphere. You hardly ever speak to any NPCs, and when you do, it's in the form of some contrived cutscene. I didn't really notice this as much on cocoon because of the pace of the game, but it really irked me later on.

I still enjoyed the game, and still finished it. The gameplay is good. I like the battle system, though the cryartium is really just levels under a different name that gives you the illusion of being something different, but you're never really forced to make a choice and the choice never really impacts your gameplay in any significant way.

Also, the bloody Eidelons are useless, and what's with the lame transformers. Eidelons that turn into motorbikes and cars? Give me a frikking break. Did anyone ever even use these in a fight? The only time I use them at all is to chop Adamantoise's legs for late game farming, or to wipe the slate and heal up in a tough fight (eg neoochu). I remember back when KOTR kicked butt, in most other games having the eidelons was actually useful, but in this I'd ratehr be saving my TPs for Libra.

What about the lack of minigames? From the chocobreeding and racing in 7, t the card games in 8 and 9 and finally Blitzball in 10. These served as essential diversions and a break from the game and were a lot of fun to boot. 13 really suffers without one.

The music was solid, except for the stupid Leona Lewis crap at the end, but that's neither here not there.

Also post game farming. Which I don't mind, but the ridiculous money farming, where you may or may not get the drop you need, it's too mmorpg like for my tastes. And kind of frustrating.

Finally, the sadest indictment of this game for me, is that this is going to be the FIRST final fantasy (barring 12) that I won't be playing a second time. I played 7 like 5-7 times. I played X 3 times. 8 3-4 times and 9 2-3 times. Typically, I'd finish the game first, then play through again trying to get all the secrets and then ultimately play through one last time with a walkthrough/guide.

Not only is there no need to do that with 13, I don't think the game would be enjoyable enough to warrant it.

A barely above average 7/10 for me.

Oh god so true, Who in their right mind would play through a 15-20 hour tutorial twice...

OxfordComma

Memnoch wrote: »

My biggest criticism of the game however, is that the world FEELS lifeless. Ironically, this is MORE the case when the game opens up and you get to Gran Pulse. The lack of towns really kills the atmosphere. You hardly ever speak to any NPCs, and when you do, it's in the form of some contrived cutscene. I didn't really notice this as much on cocoon because of the pace of the game, but it really irked me later on.

I couldn't agree more - this really bothered me. I didn't like FF XII at all, but at least Square Enix created an interesting world that it was easy to immerse yourself in.

Cocoon feels totally artificial and lifeless. Even the cities basically feel like very pretty corridors.

Xluna

Still on Chapter 12,giving it a break for awhile. So after all the "it gets awesome after fifteen hours,honest!"," It does'nt need towns to create an athmosphere Xluna" and "The battle systems so intuitive" bollocks:D, can we agree that this was a big anti climax and yet another step backwards for the F.F. franchise? Also,was it worse than 12?

Raze_them_all

Xluna wrote: »

Still on Chapter 12,giving it a break for awhile. So after all the "it gets awesome after fifteen hours,honest!"," It does'nt need towns to create an athmosphere Xluna" and "The battle systems so intuitive" bollocks:D, can we agree that this was a big anti climax and yet another step backwards for the F.F. franchise? Also,was it worse than 12?

A big fat ****ing yes. Square-enix officially raping and flogging a dead horse with continuing this series which has been forgettable since 10


Edit: Which makes me cos I frickin loved 5-10)

Xluna

Raze_them_all wrote: »

A big fat ****ing yes. Square-enix officially raping and flogging a dead horse with continuing this series which has been forgettable since 10


Edit: Which makes me cos I frickin loved 5-10)

I know how you feel. I loved 5-10,even have a soft spot for X-2 but when I heard XI was going to be an online MMORPG I was like " WTF,this is FF. Leave that stuff to the yanks Square!" 12 had a battle system kind of similiar to a MMORPG and Crisis Core was'nt turn based either.
I thought this would be a return to form in glorious HD and on both consoles but no-it's more like an interactive movie than an RPG.

Hopefully Square will remake FFVII on the PSP and maybe release a multi format final fantasy collection compilations with updated graphics. 1-6=compilation one. 7-10 as compilation 2. That,and, a Dragon Quest game on both 360 and PS3 would make me happy. I've given up on Square going back to their roots. I'm actually glad FFXIII Versus is'nt going to be released on 360,as it will be crap but I'd be compelled to buy it.

Raze_them_all

When 7 is remade it'' either save Square enix from bankruptsy or not. It's the only way it'll be re-made imo

CodeMonkey

How are they flogging a dead horse when they're all pretty much standalone games? Maybe they really should just get rid of the numbering system and just use the Final Fantasy name with a sub name like Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles.

FF13 is definitely poor in terms of story, pacing, atmosphere etc but it's a little unfair to always compare it to the things you loved in the older FF games. A lot of things were done right, it's an above average game at least.

Do you really just want a rehash of old ideas? As retro loves to point out, FF7 has many many flaws and too many of you are looking at the older games with rose tinted glasses. I wouldn't rate FF7 that much higher than FF13. People also forget their attitude to games 13-14 years ago when FF7 came out would be quite different to today.

I would rarely replay a game these days unless it's a remake on a portable console like ds or the psp. Too old to be wasting time on replays.

Xluna

CodeMonkey wrote: »

Do you really just want a rehash of old ideas? As retro loves to point out, FF7 has many many flaws and too many of you are looking at the older games with rose tinted glasses. I wouldn't rate FF7 that much higher than FF13. People also forget their attitude to games 13-14 years ago when FF7 came out would be quite different to today.

I would rarely replay a game these days unless it's a remake on a portable console like ds or the psp. Too old to be wasting time on replays.

It don't think it's unfair to compare it to things which the staple of FF games,and in some cases rpgs in general for decades,especially when it was easier just to implement them in the first place.It was'nt that long ago I replayed FFVII and I still loved it. All games have their flaws,which is another reason why a remake would be great,to iron out these flaws. I honestly can't understand how anyone could think any FF game from 5-10 is only slightly better than XIII.
I'd rather have a rehash of old concepts that were good than new concepts which suck just for the sake of change.

An interactive movie/RPG is not the way to go imo. It's obvious they're pandering to the mainstream to maximise profits,which they're entitled to,but it leaves long term fans of the series very dissapointed. Such is life,roll on the new Dragon Quest game.

Memnoch

Xluna wrote: »

Still on Chapter 12,giving it a break for awhile. So after all the "it gets awesome after fifteen hours,honest!"," It does'nt need towns to create an athmosphere Xluna" and "The battle systems so intuitive" bollocks:D, can we agree that this was a big anti climax and yet another step backwards for the F.F. franchise? Also,was it worse than 12?

Well, I still think it's worth playing through till the end once. There are some okay bits to the story. The game play does get better and better and the fights tough and interesting and challenging, which is good. The battle system IS clever and I enjoyed it a fair bit.

SquareEnix did innovate a lot with this game, sadly not every innovation worked as well as it could/should have. As for 12. I don't even consider that a FF game so there is no comparison.

I'm just trying to decide why they left out towns and why they made the whole thing so much of a corridor. I wonder if it was too costly, with the level of graphics required to spread out an area more and have more optional areas? But then they do have a lot of option crap on Gran Pulse, so I don't know.

Memnoch

CodeMonkey wrote: »

Do you really just want a rehash of old ideas? As retro loves to point out, FF7 has many many flaws and too many of you are looking at the older games with rose tinted glasses. I wouldn't rate FF7 that much higher than FF13. People also forget their attitude to games 13-14 years ago when FF7 came out would be quite different to today.

Those so called "many many flaws" are highly debatable. I thought 7 had great characters, really fun game play, I loved the materia system. I loved all the side quests and mini games. And I thought it had a fantastic story with some wonderful subtlety. A well crafted, detailed and immersive world.

It's ludicrous to talk about it being a "little better than 13," and is a symptom of people trying to tear things down for the sake of it IMO to sound clever about it. Maybe you didn't enjoy 7 that much or wouldn't now, but a lot of people did and do, and their opinion is just as valid as yours. (except twilight fans, zombies the lot of them or should that be vampires).

Mr. K

So...this is the FFXIII bashing topic? I finished it last night and thoroughly enjoyed it for the most part. The world and characters were interesting, with decent voice acting. The script wasn't always great, but that's usually the case with J-RPGs.

The linearity was my main problem, there was a little by way of wandering. That's one thing XII did so well, I enjoyed exploring Ivalice. A Golden Saucer style area would have been amazing in XIII, there was even an opportunity to make something like that out of Nautilus (the place where Vanille and Sazh see the parade). There wasn't enough variety (or activity) in Gran Pulse. Towns would've made a huge difference.

Mark Hamill

I posted my review on the first impressions thread, I'll repost it here with a few changes for things I've remembered since:

Final Fantasy 13 is a highly polished turd. There is just no other way for me to put it, it was pathetically bad on so many fronts, with hd polish to try and hide the truth (warning-endgame spoiler tastic):
1)The story was just a god awful mess, it couldn't figure who it wanted the bad guy to be for most of the game, it kept introducing concepts earlier in the game with little or no explanation for what they meant and it honestly took me till about chapter 10 to figure out the entire game so far was on a giant inside-out egg (the vile peaks confused me, I was under the impression they where piles of leftover material left over from the construction of cocoon, and yet they where left on cocoon?). The ending was just insanely stupid-when they figure out what the bad guys plan is (their focus to kill Oprhan and destroy cocoon), they decide not to follow through with it and spend the last few chapters swearing blinding that they wont follow through with it. However, every thing they do in the last few chapters, leads them straight to Orphan where they decide to kill Orphan in order to save cocoon, knowing full well that this will destroy cocoon. WTF!!?? The only reason this doesn't destroy cocoon, is that two of the characters completely out of the blue decide they can meld together and transform into some huge creature which catches cocoon out the air and props it on a crystal spike in a horribly messy and convoluted cg sequence. Its just awful.
2) The characters. Why is there 6 charcaters? Besides padding out the scenes and giving an excuse to go down more linear corridors (and in one case, just make orgasm noises during battle), what do Hope, Vanille and Snow actually do? All the game really needs is Lightning (for Serahs story), Sazh (for Dazhs story) and Fang (for Oerba and Ragnarok), even the crystarium would still be balanced out with these characters. Its as if they showed the execs the first three characters and the execs asked which one was the strong, dumbass cliche, which was the irritatingly upbeat cliche and which was the irritating little sh*t cliche, so they went and arbitrarily added more characters to fill the cliches.
3) The World. Partially because of the linearality, partially because of the lack of towns with npcs, but also, imo, partially because the lack of any background information on any of the enemies in the datalog (its all weakness and health), the makers of 13 completely failed to make Gran Pulse into a fully realised world. There is no real scale to the areas you traverse, Gran Pulse is essentially a field, really no bigger than the world maps of 6,7,8 or 9, while all the "cities" you go into are simply overly long linear corridors. I think even a little back-story on the enemies in the datalog screen would have helped flesh out the game, but theres none, like Lightning never shuts up saying they are all "just another target", most later enemies being almost nothing more than palate swapped versions of weaker ones you meet early in the game.
4) The gameplay. This was one of the better things about the game sure (the only reason I could finish tbh), but even this is terrible in places. A lot of the restrictions in the gameplay are there because if they weren't, the game would be far too easy and thats not the sign of a good battle system eg not being able to switch main character during fighting, only having six paradigms and having switching paradigms break the flow of gameplay usually to the enemies benefit (stagger bars decrease while the paradigm switching animation plays). Also some of the roles are nearly broken-Sentinal is damn near useless, and medics have this irritating habit of only doing one cure at a time if everyones health is in the green (This could be just me not paying attention properly, other people said they dont do this).
5) Post game gameplay. One thing the game did well was keep you characters fairly balanced throughout (with respect to skills and stats). You didn't need to grind at any point to keep up with the crystarium (I fought every creature I encounter only once, up to chapter 11), and the max stats at each point made you fairly powerful while keeping the battles still fairly interesting (in part by having status effects actually usefull). However post game, this balance gets kicked in the nuts in favour of making you grind for the millions of gil you'll need for upgrading weapons and the millions of cp you'll need for leveling the last stage of your characters roles in the crystarium. Grinding is not fun :mad:. Fighting the same boring enemies over and over again for hours at a time in order to get strong enough to fight the big bosses is not fun :mad:.
6) Gestalt Mode. I honestly believe that the only reason for getsalt mode is for the video sequence in chapter 12 (or the end of chapter 11) when you return to Eden and interrupt the race. I cant think of any other reason why having two ice women scissor each other into a ridable motorbike would be put into this game, its just insanely stupid

I still have almost every other final fantasy that was on the play station, but 13 went the way of Crisis Core and Derge of Cerberus-straight back to the shop, (traded in for God of War 3)

AnCapaillMor

Liked it, currently farming CP and gil in pulse after finishing it. My only gripe is the lack of locations and the lack of gil. Too much bloody farming to get the gil,i can beat adamantoise in my sleep now(and still no bloddy Trapezhodron).

Raze_them_all

Oh another thing I didnt like. The severe lack of battle items. there's what 1 type of potion that's ****, never gets used after maybe what 2 hours? Where's the hi potions, xpotions and so on. Yes I know there are elixers but thye only restore tp in battle, how crap

AnCapaillMor

There's so many healers there was never really a need for potions. I kinda rathered liked the less items, nothing worse in the other ones than wasting a few seconds scrolling through a load of items.

Raze_them_all

AnCapaillMor wrote: »

There's so many healers there was never really a need for potions. I kinda rathered liked the less items, nothing worse in the other ones than wasting a few seconds scrolling through a load of items.

Games too easy though. Seriously healing up after every battle eliminates the need for any kind of strategy.

Used to be a major decision when to use stuff to heal once you were out in a big open field, in this it's like, Wow I nearly died.....run around for two seconds straight into another battle

Xluna

Mr. K wrote: »

So...this is the FFXIII bashing topic? I finished it last night and thoroughly enjoyed it for the most part. The world and characters were interesting, with decent voice acting. The script wasn't always great, but that's usually the case with J-RPGs.

The linearity was my main problem, there was a little by way of wandering. That's one thing XII did so well, I enjoyed exploring Ivalice. A Golden Saucer style area would have been amazing in XIII, there was even an opportunity to make something like that out of Nautilus (the place where Vanille and Sazh see the parade). There wasn't enough variety (or activity) in Gran Pulse. Towns would've made a huge difference.

The main reason I found the game so dull and devoid of athmosphere and charm was the fact that there's no towns and a lack of locales. And yeah the lack of items-hell the lack of everything really(except cutscenes). It just felt so dumbed down and a massive anti climax.

Sazh was o.k. but Lightning was dull beyond belief. It's like she did'nt have a personality,at least with Cloud there's all that introspection and self psycho analysis through Tifa exploring his sub conscious. So they did'nt make her uber girly and a hyper emotional female stereo type,o.k., but did they have to go to the other extreme and turn her into an emotionless robot?(I'm on Ch. 12 so maybe there's a big change in her personality towards the end.)

The gameplay just felt like an a driving game or a rail shooter,so damn linear.

F1ngers

Mark Hamill wrote: »

I posted my review on the first impressions thread, I'll repost it here with a few changes for things I've remembered since:

Final Fantasy 13 is a highly polished turd. There is just no other way for me to put it, it was pathetically bad on so many fronts, with hd polish to try and hide the truth (warning-endgame spoiler tastic):
1)The story was just a god awful mess, it couldn't figure who it wanted the bad guy to be for most of the game, it kept introducing concepts earlier in the game with little or no explanation for what they meant and it honestly took me till about chapter 10 to figure out the entire game so far was on a giant inside-out egg (the vile peaks confused me, I was under the impression they where piles of leftover material left over from the construction of cocoon, and yet they where left on cocoon?). The ending was just insanely stupid-when they figure out what the bad guys plan is (their focus to kill Oprhan and destroy cocoon), they decide not to follow through with it and spend the last few chapters swearing blinding that they wont follow through with it. However, every thing they do in the last few chapters, leads them straight to Orphan where they decide to kill Orphan in order to save cocoon, knowing full well that this will destroy cocoon. WTF!!?? The only reason this doesn't destroy cocoon, is that two of the characters completely out of the blue decide they can meld together and transform into some huge creature which catches cocoon out the air and props it on a crystal spike in a horribly messy and convoluted cg sequence. Its just awful.
2) The characters. Why is there 6 charcaters? Besides padding out the scenes and giving an excuse to go down more linear corridors (and in one case, just make orgasm noises during battle), what do Hope, Vanille and Snow actually do? All the game really needs is Lightning (for Serahs story), Sazh (for Dazhs story) and Fang (for Oerba and Ragnarok), even the crystarium would still be balanced out with these characters. Its as if they showed the execs the first three characters and the execs asked which one was the strong, dumbass cliche, which was the irritatingly upbeat cliche and which was the irritating little sh*t cliche, so they went and arbitrarily added more characters to fill the cliches.
3) The World. Partially because of the linearality, partially because of the lack of towns with npcs, but also, imo, partially because the lack of any background information on any of the enemies in the datalog (its all weakness and health), the makers of 13 completely failed to make Gran Pulse into a fully realised world. There is no real scale to the areas you traverse, Gran Pulse is essentially a field, really no bigger than the world maps of 6,7,8 or 9, while all the "cities" you go into are simply overly long linear corridors. I think even a little back-story on the enemies in the datalog screen would have helped flesh out the game, but theres none, like Lightning never shuts up saying they are all "just another target", most later enemies being almost nothing more than palate swapped versions of weaker ones you meet early in the game.
4) The gameplay. This was one of the better things about the game sure (the only reason I could finish tbh), but even this is terrible in places. A lot of the restrictions in the gameplay are there because if they weren't, the game would be far too easy and thats not the sign of a good battle system eg not being able to switch main character during fighting, only having six paradigms and having switching paradigms break the flow of gameplay usually to the enemies benefit (stagger bars decrease while the paradigm switching animation plays). Also some of the roles are nearly broken-Sentinal is damn near useless, and medics have this irritating habit of only doing one cure at a time if everyones health is in the green (This could be just me not paying attention properly, other people said they dont do this).
5) Post game gameplay. One thing the game did well was keep you characters fairly balanced throughout (with respect to skills and stats). You didn't need to grind at any point to keep up with the crystarium (I fought every creature I encounter only once, up to chapter 11), and the max stats at each point made you fairly powerful while keeping the battles still fairly interesting (in part by having status effects actually usefull). However post game, this balance gets kicked in the nuts in favour of making you grind for the millions of gil you'll need for upgrading weapons and the millions of cp you'll need for leveling the last stage of your characters roles in the crystarium. Grinding is not fun :mad:. Fighting the same boring enemies over and over again for hours at a time in order to get strong enough to fight the big bosses is not fun :mad:.
6) Gestalt Mode. I honestly believe that the only reason for getsalt mode is for the video sequence in chapter 12 (or the end of chapter 11) when you return to Eden and interrupt the race. I cant think of any other reason why having two ice women scissor each other into a ridable motorbike would be put into this game, its just insanely stupid

I still have almost every other final fantasy that was on the play station, but 13 went the way of Crisis Core and Derge of Cerberus-straight back to the shop, (traded in for God of War 3)

Spoiler tags not needed.

Game was meh for me, enjoying the side quests though.
Always enjoyed the additional bosses/ultimate weapon searches.

AnCapaillMor

Xluna wrote: »

Sazh was o.k. but Lightning was dull beyond belief. It's like she did'nt have a personality

Yeah she as bad but still nothing compared to the broody plank that was squall. She annoed me to no end and Snow i just wanted to kill.

CodeMonkey

Memnoch wrote: »

It's ludicrous to talk about it being a "little better than 13," and is a symptom of people trying to tear things down for the sake of it IMO to sound clever about it.

I hate it when people put FF7 up on a pedestal instead of looking at it and the new game objectively so maybe I wasn't being entirely fair on FF7. It's my knee jerk reaction to the FF7 fanboy-ism. Having said that, I loved FF7 as a kid and I replayed FF7 and FF6 when I spent a few months in the hospital a few years ago. I enjoyed FF6 a lot more. I felt the story, dialogue, characters from FF7 very cringe worthy and the graphics didn't age well.

Maybe you didn't enjoy 7 that much or wouldn't now, but a lot of people did and do, and their opinion is just as valid as yours. (except twilight fans, zombies the lot of them or should that be vampires).

Didn't mean to imply that other people's opinions aren't valid.

landsleaving

Not quite finished but close enough. I really enjoyed the game until I left the main area in Gran Pulse. The linearity didn't get to me, I just ploughed on through happy as larry. Then I got a glimpse of this amazing, huge area full of monsters, some that could kill me in seconds. Fun.

So I leave, assuming, like say, 7,8,9,10 etc. that I'll get to go back many times before the game is over, in an airship or something to level grind and do sidequests. Turns out I have to wait until the game is OVER for this. That is ridiculous. It's like having the best bit of a movie after the end credits. I'm bored of the linearity now towards the end and want to explore, but the battles are too long and its taking an age to get anywhere. If the game had just stayed open I'd have loved it, and I'll probably love it again after I finish it, but I'd have appreciated the side quests being open and the characters being totally open to levelling up before the end.

carbonkid

Ive been lookin forward to the promised land of non-linearity...now i hear you only get this for a short time?...that sucks

landsleaving

The promised land is a lie. I was like you once, young, naive, innocent. Now I'm cold and callous, broken by the lie that is Final Fantasy XIII.

Seriously though, it's not that bad, just spend ages in pulse, don't move on for a good while and enjoy the freedom, I didn't realise but you know better

seraphimvc

Mr. K wrote: »

So...this is the FFXIII bashing topic? I finished it last night and thoroughly enjoyed it for the most part. The world and characters were interesting, with decent voice acting. The script wasn't always great, but that's usually the case with J-RPGs.

The linearity was my main problem, there was a little by way of wandering. That's one thing XII did so well, I enjoyed exploring Ivalice. A Golden Saucer style area would have been amazing in XIII, there was even an opportunity to make something like that out of Nautilus (the place where Vanille and Sazh see the parade). There wasn't enough variety (or activity) in Gran Pulse. Towns would've made a huge difference.

the story of (J)RPG is what makes me love my (J)RPG games!!!

while i havent have the chance to play ff13 due to some matters of life are going on now(going to graduate in 1 month!!!!:eek:) but i think we all kinda see this coming after we have seen many of the pre-released footages(take a look of the thread we discussed before ff13 released), so no surprise at all when i read this spoiler thread .

in fairness i will still give it a go, and i am pretty sure it is an above average RPG too - is just the thing that when i look at a new FF coming out now,i need to remind myself that the good old FF who grew up with us players is no longer there.

a quote from the article of interview Final Fantasy XIII in Edge:

We ask Kitase if, as he settles into his 40s, he ever thinks about those members of the Final Fantasy audience who have also grown up with the series. After all, even those players who only joined the fanbase with the seventh game in the series, the first to make a truly global impact, are now entering their 30s. Surely the expectations of these players and the things that they look out for in games are different now to what they were ten, 15 years ago. Is Square Enix interested in changing the tone or theme or style its output to meet these changing needs of the audience?

"I actually think that it's a very natural thing for players to grow out of the Final Fantasy series," he answers. "In terms of the age group we target with each new game, it remains the teens to 20-somethings. That said, you're right in saying that some of our staff have been working on the series for many years. They are having new experiences and growing and they inevitably do bring those new ideas and perspectives to their work. In Final Fantasy XIII, for example, we have a greater spread of older characters in the story than we have had in the past. Satzu is older, has a family and is not really the kind of character one would normally encounter or play as in the series. But, that said, I think it's better that we keep the focus on the young generation rather than ageing the series' appeal. If players choose to stick around and continue playing the games as they grow older then that's great, but hopefully new generations will find the appeal, grow up with the series and then pass that down to the next generation as they themselves grow older".

you see,i was so sad when i read that thing from Edge.
the whole thing can be summed up as:

's*ck it up guys!time for you old kids to move on!!'

well sorry and byebye SquareEnix:D
my hope now is all on Sakaguchi's Last Story:D (speaking of which,i still to get a cheap dirt x360 for lost odysey,pm me if you do!!)

Mark Hamill

F1ngers wrote: »

Spoiler tags not needed.

Cool, fixed my post.