The Shrine

I am not very far into the game, but the usable characters so far are Serah and a guy who looks like he is out of Kingdom Hearts.

* Serah uses a weapon that is essentially Fina's Cupil from Skies of Arcadia, although it is a Moogle instead.
* The game is filled with dialogue, it seems where ever I go there are people talking. It is a nice addition, but honestly, it seems like a lot of work for a small payoff.
* Time travel is a part of the game - although I am not sure how far the range will be - at this point, it seems like it could be up to a 700 year range.
* It's no longer long corridors anymore, it appears that there are a lot more fields/locations, similar to FF10. No overworld like previous FF games though
* There are quick time events - although, they are a little different, they allow for choices, I am not sure if I am a fan of this sort of stuff in RPGs, it is more of an adventure game thing. The quick time events are done better than any game I have played outside of games where they are part of the core game.
* There are lots of choice dialogue sequences, again, something that is more of an adventure game thing.
* Battle system appears to be the same as FF13, with some additions and enhancements. I am not really at all sure a lot of details about it so far. It is very chaotic feeling; I haven't learned how to optimize it yet - but it looks like it will be a lot of fun.
* There is a sort of a Dragon Quest 9 style encounter system now (enemies spawn, and the player can run up and attack them, or run away, etc..), rather than just scripted encounter events, monsters will randomly generate (and there is a story reason for this). There's a bit of Earthbound in there too, if you surprise the enemy (run up and smack it with your weapon) you get a green encounter (with bonuses on your side), otherwise both running on head on is a regular black encounter (or yellow in this game), and a red encounter if the enemy gets the jump on you (the enemy has bonuses against you at the start of the battle).

Not much more to say on it right now, but the bulk of reviews seem to give it 8-9 in score, with a few really low scores by review sites which I think reflects more on their lack of objectivity than on the quality of the game. So far it seems like an 8.5 is a fair score, as I would rate similar games (like Xenosaga 1, 2, and 3) as higher at this point. Although, as I have said, I am not very far into the game at all; I doubt my opinion of the game will drop, but it might go up.

This game is AAAAWWWWWFFFFFUUUUUULLLLLLLL

I'm going to beat it, though. It has 3 things that will keep me on it until the end -

1. Skippable cutscenes and dialogue . Anytime anyone opens up their stupid mouths, I cringe at the amount of INTENSE MELODRAMA or over-exposition which is followed by the naive protagonist going "oh, so you mean... (followed by an additional explanation of the long, over indulgent story point that just happened)". I really feel like JRPGs feel like they need to hold my hand or give me too many tutorials or just make me feel like they are talking down to me the whole time. I think Zelda: Skyward Sword was the one that I really made the connection on what was happening and why I was starting to feel frustrated with a lot of japanese games.

2. Easy mode for combat. Guys, there are 12 seasons of Murder She Wrote on Netflix right now, and Linda Hamilton is in the next episode. I don't have time to pay attention to the same combat from ff 13 with the most minimal changes, when I could be watching J.B. Fletcher visiting her extended family and solving crimes.

3. Mass Effect costume DLC.

I think one of the major reasons for the tutorials is because of how many people didn't know how to play games that weren't simplistic. Final Fantasy 8 is a good example of people complaining about having to draw all magic, or complaining about why grinding levels doesn't drastically increase their power. The tutorials were in the game, but were optional from the menu. Xenoblade had a ton of tutorials as well, but without them, many inexperienced RPG players would be more lost than they were in FF8.

Anyway, ultimately, I put FF13-2 and didn't finish it =P

I think the problem with FF13 in general is that it is trying too much to appeal to western audiences. Same problem with Resident Evil 5 and 6. The best RPGs out of Japan are generally those geared towards traditional RPG fans - and Final Fantasy just doesn't seem to be one of those anymore.

The need for a tutorial is usually because the game is poorly designed.

MMORPGs are some of the most complicated games from a design point of view and a lot of them started with a tutorial that basically just tells you how to attack and how to select an ability. But for the most part MMORPGs have an intuitive interface and even when you've the hopelessly bloated stuff they at least tend to organize everything in a menu that you can eventually navigate through to find what you need (might take a while).

Don wrote:The need for a tutorial is usually because the game is poorly designed.

MMORPGs are some of the most complicated games from a design point of view and a lot of them started with a tutorial that basically just tells you how to attack and how to select an ability. But for the most part MMORPGs have an intuitive interface and even when you've the hopelessly bloated stuff they at least tend to organize everything in a menu that you can eventually navigate through to find what you need (might take a while).

MMO RPGs also expect players to play for insane amounts of time, so any complexity can usually be learned in that time or by consulting others. Although, I am not sure I agree with your statement based on my own experience. Just about every MMO RPG I have played has hours upon hours of tutorial quests; Ultima Online is the only exception I can think of offhand. I played about 10-20 hours of World of Warcraft and was still in the tutorial quest phase. In fact, I can't even think of an MMO RPG I played where I actually made it past the tutorial quest phase (again, outside of Ultima Online).

WoW may have a lot of starter zones but it's not really the same as the tutorial. It's not like you'll fight this enemy and then time magically stops and it'll say: "Click on the 1 button for Sinister Strike!" You won't find some random bogus situation where your health gets dropped down to 20% so they can teach you how to use your cooldowns. The tutorial quests basically just tells you where your trainer is, where the gryphon tamer is, and how to move around and everything else is on your own. Now the Death Knight starter zone has a lot of contrived situation just to let you use your abilities and that can be viewed as a tutorial but even then most of that time is probably wasted on just explaining what vehicle combat is (which is more like a gimmick than a core gameplay element).

You spend a lot of time playing a MMORPG but most of that is figuring out how your skills interact together and the game doesn't tell you that using skill A should be followed by B and then C. You're just supposed to figure it out, and in a reasonably designed game like WoW it's supposed to be easy to figure most of this stuff out. In a game that's not you can always just search the Internet instead because you'll probably never figure it out on your own.

Which gets me back to my first point. In an RPG like FF8 which made almost all the tutorials optional (by being accessible through menu or via the fictional Internet that can be accessed from computers in Balamb Garden's classrooms), many players just made the assumption that the game was as simple as FF7 - when there were a great deal more options available to the player. To this day I still see people complaining about all these useless items they get in FF8, or that there should be an easier way to get magic than drawing it. FF8 is not an overly complex game, it is only confusing largely due to the presumptions of players based on earlier titles.

Xenoblade essentially explained this same refining system in must-play tutorials and it gets praised by many sources as the best RPG this generation.

Although, I actually tend to agree that the more simplistic and intuitive a game is the better approach. I am actually tiring of all these games getting into needlessly complex systems. I agree that a very well designed game can do more things and remain intuitive: Chrono Trigger, for example, does a great job in sneaking in some more complex gameplay mechanics; but, the game is no less intuitive, and the interface is no more complex than Dragon Quest 4. I actually wish that more games took the Chrono Trigger route.

Well in FF8 there's really no way for you to even come to the conclusion of say more of a spell = better stat junction until you experimented with it, and of course there's no way for you to know all the random stuff can be refined into spells.

Now in a MMORPG there's a lot of items with obscure purposes too but usually they'd have a tooltip like 'used for XYZ' precisely because it's impossible to figure this stuff out otherwise. The game can be complex but you don't need to have a tutorial if the interface makes sense.