Final Fantasy 13 out now

[Julius Seeker]

Is anyone here NOT getting this one?

[SineSwiper]

I am. Later. Trying to slow down a bit after absorbing Mass Effect 2 and Bioshock 2. It's too bad God of War 3 is only on the PS3. (Or maybe I'm fortunate it's only on the PS3.)

[Lox]

FFXIII is pretty far down my list at this point. I'd rather finish Bioshock2, start GoW3, or Red Dead Redemption, or maybe Just Cause 2, or a bunch of other stuff.

If anyone plays it, I'd love to hear reactions and thoughts though.

[Shrinweck]

I'm having it delivered today... Fed Ex usually gets here late-ish, though so I'm not really expecting it until between 2 and 5PM. Not counting 11 I haven't played one since 7 so I'm kind of excited (360 is my first console since the N64)

[Kupek]

Jeremy Parish reviewed it over at 1up, but this writeup on his blog might be a more insightful piece on it.

[Julius Seeker]

Got it. The store guy also said that the 360 version is not in high def, for those of you who need to get the best graphical version.

[Eric]

This is the most fast paced Final Fantasy I've ever played. The combat is very very fun.

[Shrinweck]

Yeah I agree completely, Eric. Very optimistic about liking the ever loving hell out of this game.

[Blotus]

First impressions:

- I hate Tetsuya Nomura more than ever. Every character so far aside from Lightning looks retarded.

- Auto battle... I press X a lot.

- Dialogue is abysmal, and there's no exposition. Fal'Cie, l'Cie, PSICOM, PURGE etc... don't bother explaining shit just throw it all at me!

I'm sure I'll dig it in time, but right now it's just pretty nonsense.

Intense nicotine cravings do not a patient Blotus make.

[Shrinweck]

The best exposition offered by the game certainly is loading a saved game from the main menu. I think Snow looks alright, too. Sazh looks kinda dumb but I think that's just the part he plays. We are talking about a world where white women can jump and black men just fall.

[Julius Seeker]

Fucking awesome!

Yeah, the battle system is excellent. This is how ATB should be done. For more advanced players, it's kind of slow at first, but you can definitely see how it is going to work VERY well. What Eric said is true, fast paced is right.

Formula is similar to a lot of Xenosaga, fairly straight forward; although less dense in story. For the first bit you are just sort of thrown in the middle of stuff and it's revealed what is going on (but reading the instructions first gives a very good idea of the context).

I am very much enjoying it so far.


Characters are all very cool so far. Right now I look at it this way:
Lightning = female Squall (whose hair was cut by a 3 year old)
Vanille = Selphie + Michelle from American Pie
Snow = Irvine


Currently I am slaughtering a bunch of Wels.

[Shrinweck]

I'm only two hours in and I already want to hit mute whenever Vanille is talking. Otherwise lots of fun.

Edit: Also, yeah, I'm excited about the combat getting more complicated. Hopefully not TOO much more complicated... I've already had an instance with the first boss where I was half a second late with timing my potion usage.

[Julius Seeker]

Huh? Vanille is my favourite character so far. I like Aussie accents though.

Anyway, I'm probably a bit further. Quitting for the night now though.

One other thing, everything is voice acted, but there's a lot of reading material in the datalog, which is essentially the exact same thing as it is in Xenosaga. I always enjoyed that aspect of Xenosaga, the story could move forward; but there was always lots of info that the player gained access to a the game progressed which added a lot of extra depth.

[Eric]

How in god's name is Vanille your favorite character.

[Don]

I really don't like the games where they have to give you a background info so they can throw you random acronyms and technobabble. You can throw some stuff with a good world view. For example the SeeD in FF8 may or may not have been an abbervation for anything. It's not needed because you know they're just some kind of elite guys trained to do stuff. On the other hand in Xenosaga there's one point it says Virgil is addicted to XYZ, and there is absolutely no way you could've known XYZ means 'eating Realien brains'. The only possible way you can figure this out is read the in game addendum. That is stupid.

The need for a 'background info' is basically just poor storytelling. For example if I say "time to execute plan Omega" you shouldn't have to look up in some kind of game encyclopedia plan Omega means use antimatter missiles combined with materia magic. Now if after I said that someone self destruct something then it'd be fine to never explain what it was because it'd be obvious that's what the plan was.

[M'k'n'zy]

I wish I could say I was impressed. I want to be impressed, but so far, the battles are putting me to sleep. I'm only about 4 hours in, so hopefully they will consist of me doing more than hitting X, occasionally hitting the l button, and on rare ocasions using a potion, otherwise flashy or not they are gonna keep boring me to tears and I wont finish the game.

[Julius Seeker]

How in god's name is Vanille your favorite character.

She's got the most positive and outgoing personality so far; and she's funny.

[Zeus]

First impressions:

- I hate Tetsuya Nomura more than ever. Every character so far aside from Lightning looks retarded.

- Auto battle... I press X a lot.

- Dialogue is abysmal, and there's no exposition. Fal'Cie, l'Cie, PSICOM, PURGE etc... don't bother explaining shit just throw it all at me!

I'm sure I'll dig it in time, but right now it's just pretty nonsense.

Intense nicotine cravings do not a patient Blotus make.

I'm about 2 hours in and those were pretty much my exact impressions. I'm hoping it does a reverse-FF7 and eventually gets better. And the battle system so far is boring as shit, X and Auto Battle are all I've used so far. But they haven't even introduced the magic system so I'm assuming this whole opening part is just the beginning.

[SineSwiper]

I really don't like the games where they have to give you a background info so they can throw you random acronyms and technobabble. You can throw some stuff with a good world view. For example the SeeD in FF8 may or may not have been an abbervation for anything. It's not needed because you know they're just some kind of elite guys trained to do stuff. On the other hand in Xenosaga there's one point it says Virgil is addicted to XYZ, and there is absolutely no way you could've known XYZ means 'eating Realien brains'. The only possible way you can figure this out is read the in game addendum. That is stupid.

I think it's a helluva lot better than trying to cram that information into dialogue. I hate audience surrogates, because they usually ask basic questions that everybody in the story should already know, but the audience doesn't know. If they did that in Xenosaga, they would turn into infodumps and detract from the story.

Again, it's an interactive game, so it was easy enough to use your character to reference the material on your UMA. Much more realistic than the damn surrogate characters. And I much rather have a story with more detail than less, so I loved the encyclopedia.

[Flip]

Yeah i agree, too much dialogue is just as bad as some bad guy explaining his evil plan to himself in a room just so the audience can understand whats going on. Its more effective and better story telling to SHOW what you need to know and keep things in the dark until then.

Scenes i hate 1
evil henchmen walk out of room leaving mad genius alone.
Evil Genius: "i cant wait to kidnap that girl and hold her hostage forever until i get milllllions! bwahahaha"
/scene

Scenes i hate 2
Chief: "Time for plan Omega"
Rookie: "Thats the plan where we send up anti matter missles to intercept the mega womp bomb!?"
Chief: "Exactly!" (didnt you read your fucking brief)
/scene

[Lox]

Yeah i agree, too much dialogue is just as bad as some bad guy explaining his evil plan to himself in a room just so the audience can understand whats going on. Its more effective and better story telling to SHOW what you need to know and keep things in the dark until then.

Scenes i hate 1
evil henchmen walk out of room leaving mad genius alone.
Evil Genius: "i cant wait to kidnap that girl and hold her hostage forever until i get milllllions! bwahahaha"
/scene

Scenes i hate 2
Chief: "Time for plan Omega"
Rookie: "Thats the plan where we send up anti matter missles to intercept the mega womp bomb!?"
Chief: "Exactly!" (didnt you read your fucking brief)
/scene

Wouldn't it be great if a game had something similar to Scene 2 and then the Chief yelled at the Rookie for not being prepared and had him removed from the mission?

[Flip]

Anime is notorious for this over sharing of info, too, to explain whats going on. I hate it! Arg!

[bovine]

I'll get this game when it hits $20.

[Oracle]

I'm a couple of hours in on the XBOX360 version.

First, I can definitely tell it's not 1080p, or even 720p for that matter. I can see horizontal scan lines in the characters' hair (i.e. the last 1/3 of Lightning's hair length). Otherwise, not too much of a tip off that it isn't in high def. Game is pretty enough, so not a major complaint.

Backstory: Read the manual for the game first. Clears up some of the terminology.

Combat: Can't wait for it to get more complicated. Autobattle -> X is all I've been doing. It picks the AoE attacks when there are more than 1 enemy. I'm not really sure how magic works yet. I just picked 'Ruin' 3 times in a row, and it seemed effective enough. Is there any drawback to using magic? Is there an MP gauge that I'm not seeing?

Dialog: Acceptable. Not great, but I've been put though MUCH worse English voice acting.

Appeal: Definitely has me looking forward to playing more. I still have to finish BioShock2 (I'm in Lambs' home sector right now), but I can see putting that off to get more of a taste for FFXIII.

Aside: I haven't looked into the FFXIV MMO much, but in a futuristic world like FFXIII, I could see it being fairly interesting.

[Flip]

I didnt like FF12 for the reason that as you progress the game gets MORE automated by acquiring those commands that "Heal character X when HP<10%". That seemed weird to me, to do less the further you got.

Every FF, hour 5 was nothing like hour 30.

[Kupek]

I didnt like FF12 for the reason that as you progress the game gets MORE automated by acquiring those commands that "Heal character X when HP<10%". That seemed weird to me, to do less the further you got.

You performed less manual actions, but you strategized more. That was the intention, anyway. The focus of the gameplay in FF12 wasn't in moment-to-moment battle minutia, but in overall strategy. You essentially programmed your characters. I loved it, because I started making rules for the kind of buffing spells I would never use in other FFs - regen, haste, libra - because for any given turn, I didn't consider it worthwhile.

Once you had over six gambit slots and a few dozen gambits open, there was lots of freedom to experiment. I found that even seemingly minor things had a big impact on how battles progressed. For example, everyone had at least one healing rule, but only the designated "healer" had their healing rules placed higher than their attack gambits. This ensured that person would place healing themselves and others as a higher priority than attacking. Similarly, I made some of the buffing spells higher priority than attacking (such as regen or haste), but others lower priority than attacking (such as libra). I also made use of multiple healing rules in different orders to deal with varying levels of urgency.

Put another way, I did less manual interaction with my characters, but I did far more thinking than I had ever done in a FF battle system.

[Don]

I don't know if it'd be any better if it was like:

Shion: "Is he (Virgil) addicted to XYZ?"
Some guy: "No way? Commander Virgil eats Realien brains?"

But at least I'd know what it means. In a lot of stuff in Xenosaga I certainly don't care enough to look it up, and from the player's point of view Shion could've easily said: "Virgil is addicted to crack" and then you'd totally miss the point, and it's unreasonable to have to refer to an encyclopedia to just know what the heck a conversation is about.

In this scene presumably eating Realien brains is something that is both:

1. Well known.
2. Tend to be frowned by the society.

Therefore it might make sense if you go pass someone holding a sign like 'XYZ is not a disease, but a crime against Realiens" because he's working for equal rights for Realiens. Now they don't even have to specifically tell you XYZ really means eating Realien brains, but at least that'd be enough to know it's doing something nasty with Realiens.

As far as I can tell most of the time when they refer to something without explaining, all it does is to make something sound fancy because it is clearly impossible from the context of the game to figure out what it meant.

For example when FF7 didn't need to tell you like SHINRA is a bad mega company that pollutes the earth. It was kind of obvious by just seeing the Shinra logo and reactors spewing out stuff. This is a good way to intergrate the world. Clearly everyone in FF7 knows what SHINRA is, and they don't need to point you to an encyclopedia on what SHINRA did because you can see the stuff they're doing immediately.

[Julius Seeker]

It seems a few people are confused about FF13's backstory. Look at the Datalogue accessible from the main menu, it holds all the info you need. Further explained above in this post.

Anyway, in Xenosaga (which also used that system), if you didn't care enough to read up, then it is not exactly essential that you do in order to proceed. Personally, I read (and probably re-read) everything I could, I loved that series.

[Don]

The information in Xenosaga wasn't essnetial because the story was stupid. For example it really doesn't matter if you knew Virgil eats Realien brains or was addicted to crack because the character is so irrelevent and shallow it wouldn't matter either way.

[Shrinweck]

First impressions:

- I hate Tetsuya Nomura more than ever. Every character so far aside from Lightning looks retarded.

- Auto battle... I press X a lot.

- Dialogue is abysmal, and there's no exposition. Fal'Cie, l'Cie, PSICOM, PURGE etc... don't bother explaining shit just throw it all at me!

I'm sure I'll dig it in time, but right now it's just pretty nonsense.

Intense nicotine cravings do not a patient Blotus make.

I'm about 2 hours in and those were pretty much my exact impressions. I'm hoping it does a reverse-FF7 and eventually gets better. And the battle system so far is boring as shit, X and Auto Battle are all I've used so far. But they haven't even introduced the magic system so I'm assuming this whole opening part is just the beginning.

If you're two hours in you haven't been introduced to paradigm shifts yet. They make the game a LOT more difficult at times because you have to constantly shift the roles of your party in order to debuff the enemy, buff yourself, and do magical/physical damage. I just had a timed boss fight where I probably had to juggle paradigms a dozen times in order to keep my party alive while still getting enough attack chains to win in the given time. It took me five tries, two of those involving me getting killed outright in seconds.

All I can say is that I'm already getting impatient for when I can finally select who I want in my party. While it's a great learning experience for stuff I would have probably ignored and needed to know later, there are strategies that I'm just better at employing with different characters (JUST GIVE ME LIGHTNING at least! Damn!). At the very least it is keeping me from over-specializing for the most part.

Vanille is growing on me and while I don't really mind the Australian accent (obligatory "Is there even an Australia in this particular universe? And also why do Romans get portrayed with English accents?" questions) I hate the pitch the actress speaks in. Still, her dialog is pretty good and she does provide the best comic relief. I'd have to say I'm sick and tired of taking care of kids in my jRPGs. They're always fucking annoying, shy, pansies who scream stuff like "I need to be stronger!" and "I'm not holding you back, am I?" clichés. Hope is probably my least favorite character in the game. At least Karel in Tales of Vesperia was funny and carried huge ass weapons.

[Zeus]

I'll get this game when it hits $20.

I paid $30+ tax for it, will get to play it for a week, then trade it in for $65+tax. Really the only reason I'm playin' it this week :-)

[Blotus]

~10 hours in and it's still feeling like a chore. Can't wait for this A-to-B-to-Cutscene bullshit to end.

Battle system is slowly becoming more interesting though!

[SineSwiper]

I didnt like FF12 for the reason that as you progress the game gets MORE automated by acquiring those commands that "Heal character X when HP<10%". That seemed weird to me, to do less the further you got.

Every FF, hour 5 was nothing like hour 30.

I loved it for exactly that reason. Best RPG engine ever. I just which the AI was smarter, like being able to use the Nihopalaoa (reverses status effects with items) properly with the commands, and having the ability to use more than 10 commands.

However, the story more or less sucked. The only high point was the Ancients, and they fucked it all up. The ending was pretty anticlimactic and overly predictable. Actually, I was hoping to be surprised with a different twist on the ending, but was disappointed when the ending you knew about halfway into the game was actually the ending that came to pass. And this coming from the same team that did the awesome story on FFT?!

[SineSwiper]

The information in Xenosaga wasn't essnetial because the story was stupid. For example it really doesn't matter if you knew Virgil eats Realien brains or was addicted to crack because the character is so irrelevent and shallow it wouldn't matter either way.

The story was "stupid" because you didn't bother to read the backstory. Hell, did you play all three games? Virgil was a fairly major character in X3.

[Julius Seeker]

The information in Xenosaga wasn't essnetial because the story was stupid. For example it really doesn't matter if you knew Virgil eats Realien brains or was addicted to crack because the character is so irrelevent and shallow it wouldn't matter either way.

OK then Don =P

Taking a plot point that does sound very strange out of context isn't going to convince me of much.

Whatever your opinion is. I felt Xenosaga was an excellent story, one of the best of any game. I also really loved the UMN, for any subject I wanted to know more about, it was right there. If you felt it was stupid information, then that lack of enjoyment is just unfortunate for you.




Final Fantasy 13, I hit about 8.5 hours yesterday. The battle system is really shaping up (like we knew it would!). By the way, pressing triangle mid-combo will allow your character to execute moves before the ATB is maxed; I just sort of stumbled on that when experimenting with buttons.

The villain (or the guy who I assume will be the villain)kind of reminds me of the Patriarch from Xenosaga.... It is interesting to note that the Gods of the world are named after powerful GF's from previous games: Eden is the contact between humanity and the Fal'Cie; Phoenix is the sun for the cocoon world (which is the human world inside of a giant spherical shell. Anima also makes an appearance early on as one of the Gods seen as Evil from the world below (sort of seen like Hell or the Surface world in Skies of Arcadia). There are also Eidolons as well, which are the more humanoid GF's (Shiva being the first (and an obvious early one, so this isn't really a spoiler), I have a second one already who I won't mention yet for those not far enough...).

The world is very interesting, and like Skies of Arcadia, I can't wait to see what the surface world of Pulse is all about. Is it really like the depths of deep sky, or is it a beautiful world?


Anyway, without spoiling too much (since this is EXTREMELY early info); the Fal'Cie (God) Anima acts as sort of a vampire (as do all of the Gods from outside of Cocoon). Any person infected gets an emblem marking; and they have a focus to complete. If they fail to complete it they turn into a Wel-like creature (look like large undead things from Xenogears). So effectively, they need to complete the will of the Underworld God, which as the populace understands, is to do something bad against the floating world of cocoon.

[Julius Seeker]

And this coming from the same team that did the awesome story on FFT?!

Matsuno was driven off the project about halfway through. LOTS of lost potential on the game there.... Though from what I understand, if he would have had his way FF12 would have been out sometime last year. The part of the game I didn't like was that it was obvious that there were huge gaps in places like towns (and probably story and characters) that you knew were missing.

[Julius Seeker]

Anyone else catch the Dylan Thomas reference from Sahz "You don't seem the type to go quietly into that goodnight"?

[RentCavalier]

I remember when FFXII came out, and GameFAQS had two factions form--one who thought that Matsuno being sacked was a travesty and that they would have GLADLY waited two more years to get a superior game, and another who had been sick of waiting and were very glad to have the game right now. The first group became really prevalent, but I always thought it was a good question.

Would you be satisfied waiting, say, five years for another franchise game to come out rather than the typical, what, three? Longer for, potentially, higher quality in every respect?

[Don]

The information in Xenosaga wasn't essnetial because the story was stupid. For example it really doesn't matter if you knew Virgil eats Realien brains or was addicted to crack because the character is so irrelevent and shallow it wouldn't matter either way.

The story was "stupid" because you didn't bother to read the backstory. Hell, did you play all three games? Virgil was a fairly major character in X3.

You're basically using the argument the author said it's important so it must be important. Just because Virgil turned out to be important character later, doesn't mean he was anyone important in the first Xenosaga game. This means there was no particular reason you'd ever pay attention to what he did in the first game, and you should not have to rely on the UMN to know why he is even relevent.

In Naruto when someone dies, they usually have an obligatory flashback scene to remind you why this character mattered or that he had a trouble past. In Xenosaga you'd just see the said character die and you'd know have a new entry in your UMN telling you about why that guy was actually important. Xenosaga, at least the first part, absolutely cannot stand on its own without the UMN, and it's not because of any inherent limitation of the medium or ability. The game heavily relies on outside information to tell its story (for example, Jun Uzuki not only requires the UMN but also requires that you know from earlier that he's supposed to be the Citan look-alike). Now if the goal was to create only a game where the story makes any sense to those who read the UMN and played Xenogears, I guess you can say it did a good job. But otherwise, no.

Timothy Zahn's Star Wars books are a good example of how to actually integrate unknown concepts in a foreign universe without needing a cheat sheet. For example when Thrawn executes a well-known strategy in his universe, he doesn't just say 'do the XYZ manuever now!' with no info whatsoever. There isn't a self-explaining henchman that tells you what the XYZ maneuver really is, but Captain Pelleon will generally give you enough rough details so you at least had an idea of what's going on. There was a scene where Luke Skywalker was loading up some stuff to jam a tractor beam, and after he did it Thrawn would be like: "Oh the rebels pulled the XYZ trick on us" and you can easily infer whatever Luke had on his X-Wing was involved in the trick. Now you can say the Thrawn trilogy is a book, but nowhere does its alien terms actually needed a specific page to explain. You can easily infer what all the stuff they're doing is supposed to be by just reading the dialogue/action from the participants.

[Zeus]

Would you be satisfied waiting, say, five years for another franchise game to come out rather than the typical, what, three? Longer for, potentially, higher quality in every respect?

Hell yes. It's always better to wait longer if you want a quality game. Batman Arkham Asylum was supposed to be released about 10 months before it was. Thank the lord it wasn't 'cause that extra time allowed them to polish the game to become arguably the best straight-up action game of all time. The extra year plus for MGS4 was incredibly well spent too. What about all the Zelda delays, did anyone complain about the games when they came out?

[Julius Seeker]

I am a little confused as to why this game was said to have no towns?

That's a misleading statement as there are actually towns; just towns without traditional shops (you access them throughout the game at "vending machines"). Towns are there, but so far places you pass through, explore and talk to random civilians if you want, and trigger story scenes by entering certain locations.

More accurately, FF13 has towns without traditional shops.

[M'k'n'zy]

I'm into chapter 6 now. Battle system still boring me to tears. So far Sazh is easily my fave character.

[RentCavalier]

Got this game yesterday, I'm in Chapter 6 or so (The Deadlands).

I'm digging it a lot. The battle system is starting to open up and I'm finding it interesting enough to keep me going--shifting Paradigms and setting up classes and combos is pretty fun, kind of like a more refined--or perhaps more focused--version of the Gambit system from XII.

I don't mind the linearity much either. And while the writing is wonky as hell, the story itself is actually quite engaging, and for the most part I like the characters (Though, seriously, Hope needs to die in a fire god damn he is the embodiment of all emo). Sgt. Johnson--I mean, Sazh--is totally awesome and should be the star of this game.

The afore-linked review by Jeremy Parish really helped me when playing this game, since I know that it is meant to begin slowly and ease itself into all the various gameplay modes and whatnot. The graphics are also amazing, even on the 360 version.

[Zeus]

I'm into chapter 6 now. Battle system still boring me to tears. So far Sazh is easily my fave character.

You like Token.....sorry, Sazh? The chocobo is cute but he's irritating as fuck

[Flip]

I'm into chapter 6 now. Battle system still boring me to tears. So far Sazh is easily my fave character.

You like Token.....sorry, Sazh? The chocobo is cute but he's irritating as fuck

Ha, at least he isnt a 'I'm gonna wreck you foo!' Barret. That would be a little more token.

[SineSwiper]

Would you be satisfied waiting, say, five years for another franchise game to come out rather than the typical, what, three? Longer for, potentially, higher quality in every respect?

Fuck yes.

[M'k'n'zy]

I'm into chapter 6 now. Battle system still boring me to tears. So far Sazh is easily my fave character.

You like Token.....sorry, Sazh? The chocobo is cute but he's irritating as fuck

To me he is the only character that wasnt cut out of a cookie cutter mold, and they did his emotions better than any other character, you can just see the conflict in his face has he is faced with this situation, I just think they played him out really well so far.

[Don]

There's no guaranteed taking more time would've yielded a better game, though.

[Zeus]

I'm over 8 hours in (near the end of the bio area) and I have to say, I'm absolutely shocked how bad this game is. I'm not even angry or frustrated, just shocked. Really, other than the graphics, there is no real redeeming features in this game up to this point. The story is disjointed and horribly written (don't make translation excuses, it's a good translator's job to fix those; Working Designs showed the way back in the day), the voice actors BLOW ENORMOUS chunks, the music is putrid, the characters are all emo fucksticks who I wish would just die, and the battle system is a neat idea but ultimately shallow and broken (reminds me of the Xenogears system with some FFIV mixed in). I keep hearing how much better this game gets as the battle system opens up and the storyline is flushed out a lot more so I keep going. I haven't played a FF game since FF9 and I really wanna give this one a fair shot. But how long do I have to wait?

You guys that have gotten further in the game, does it actually get better? If so, how?

[RentCavalier]

Wow, such vitriol! I'm having the exact opposite reaction. I think the characters are actually quite engaging, and even the ones whom I didn't like at first are growing on me in new and interesting ways. Really, the emotions on the faces and the engaging, energetic voice acting has drawn me into the story, and I'm genuinely excited to see what happens next.

And the music isn't THAT bad. I find it kinda relaxing, most of the time. Not Uemetsu, but then again, who is?