Final Fantasy XIII

[DarthPaul]

Where do I begin...

I am 11 hours into this game and still wading through the tutorials. The story feels like a rehash of FF3 with new characters and a steampunk decorator.

This is not so much a game as it is some developers magnum opus. I can feel the reluctance to let me have any freedom for fear that I will mess up the masterpeice they are trying to unfold. The battle system is contrived and awkward and the characters...the characters are actually relate-able.

Well fuck they got one thing right so I guess it isn't all bad.

What do you guys think?

Worth $60 bucks? I say no.


EDIT: Music...the music is...not bad, but not good either. So-so.

[Kaijyuu]

Final Fantasy hasn't had good character development since 6. So if they got something right there, well, good.


And the combat can't be worse than 12.

This is not so much a game as it is some developers magnum opus. I can feel the reluctance to let me have any freedom for fear that I will mess up the masterpeice they are trying to unfold.

Define "freedom." If feel you're getting railroaded to the story, welcome to JRPGs. If it's as linear as 10 was (or more), I can certainly sympathize though.

[Zypher]

surprisingly my friend is passing on FFXIII because he feels that the battle system is a step backward from FFXII.....yea

now if you'll excuse me i need to go and continue cursing my fate that i still have yet to own a current gen console

[Bastard Poetry]

COPY PASTA!
-----------------------------------------------------
Ohhhhh man. I just spent the last 4 hours at a friend's house, watching FFXIII in action, and all I can think is: my timing for starting an Anti-Final Fantasy Week was perfect. (http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessa ... c=53818282)

FFXIII.

Garbage.

Complete and utter garbage.

When I tried to attack it for being too linear, saying that it was too much like FFX (in the sense that it is mostly "walking between scenes of a lengthy movie,") I actually had to listen to someone defend it with the argument, "I like when I can just get through the boring battle stuff and get back to a good story."

!?

That's what BOOKS ARE FOR!!

I loathe newer games for this very reason. Pretty graphics and "movie-like" plot sequences DO NOT make for compelling gameplay. In fact, FFXIII is easily the worst offender I have ever seen of a game that has no gameplay to it whatsoever. The maps are just as noodle-shaped as many of you have probably heard, and often-times even noodlier. The battle system was easily the most boring, mindless, unintuitive battle system I have ever seen in any RPG, ever. In fact, get this: Some of these people I hang out with actually tried to justify their hatred for FFXII, (which, as many of you know, I'm quite fond of), using the old criticism that they couldn't stand how the battle system pretty much did all of the fighting for you. Fair enough; to each his or her own. However, let me go ahead and set the record straight on this one here and now: the Gambit system of FFXII was optional, and put the focus on strategic AI builds if you wanted them. FFXIII only allows you to control one character (note: you don't even have the option to control the others!) (EDIT: At least it didn't appear like you could, from where I was sitting) and it puts the focus on the "strategy" (ie not strategic at all) system of selecting which awesome, amazing, pretty combo to use next. In other words, if you decide that, for this particular round of attacks, you want them to fire off two Aero spells and one Fire spell, you can select that combo and they'll go crazy with wind and fire! WHOOP. DE. Die.

Further, every major character in FFXIII seems to have been created by taking every dull, uninteresting character Nomura has ever created and vomiting them back up as hybrid clones, or "anal babies," as my good friend Hamsterfall calls them. Female-Cloud-in-Ashe's-Clothes meets up with Stereotypical-Black-Man-With-Afro and Redhead-Selphie and Blonde-Irvine-Who-Stole-Seifer's-Trenchcoat in order to save the world from.. something. I couldn't follow the plot because I was too distracted by how wonderful it felt to jam paperclips into my finger nails. Plus, even though I didn't see it during this visit, I'm sure I had seen Wakka's-Baby-Brother-Benny in one of the publicity photos. Oh, and at one point, Blonde-Irvine-Who-Stole-Seifer's-Trenchcoat got punched in the throat by Paine-From-X-2-Wearing-Rinoa's-Dress-Only-Black.

The only thing FFXIII has going for it: I saw all of this on an HD TV, which I've actually never seen before because I could care less about televisions. So yes, if you're the sort of person who likes slipping into a drooling, catatonic state via obscene, Michael Bay-like levels of eye-candy, FFXIII is "like totally amazing." Otherwise, apart from thirteen-year-olds looking for some, ahem, realistic side-boob-motion-in-HD, I can't see how this game could possibly appeal to anyone with an IQ in the double digits or higher. It has that whole cyber-punk style that VII and VIII had, except after 4 hours of watching fight after fight and scene after scene of robots and bigger robots fighting with lightning and slightly-greener lightning, I'm ready to kick my old fascination with cyber-punk into the darkest corner of the closet and pretend like I wasn't into that sort of stuff when my future kids dig it out and start making fun of me.

I'm going to hold off on my official star rating of the game until I get a chance to either play it or experience it in greater depth, because it isn't fair to completely judge the game on a mere 4 hours of spectatorship, but I'm already leaning towards a 1 or 2 out of 10. This has the potential to lift VIII off the dirty floor of my rankings.

Discuss.

[Kaijyuu]

I can hardly trust someone's opinion who hasn't completed the game (much less played it). Then again, I haven't played it either so...

I was kinda hoping for a DMC/GoW battle system hybridified with FF12's. Ah well.


EDIT:

When I tried to attack it for being too linear, saying that it was too much like FFX (in the sense that it is mostly "walking between scenes of a lengthy movie,") I actually had to listen to someone defend it with the argument, "I like when I can just get through the boring battle stuff and get back to a good story."

!?

That's what BOOKS ARE FOR!!

Oh, shut up.

Games are multimedia. That means they're comprised of more than one part; nothing is all important and nothing is worthless. Gameplay is arguably the most important part, yes, but certainly not the only thing.

Games with a crappy story are mostly forgettable.
Games with crappy visuals/sound can be unimmersive and unsatifying.
Games with crappy gameplay tend to be boring as hell.

Miss one of those and you can still have a good game. An example of a game with terrible gameplay that still manages to be quite worthwhile: Earthbound. There are examples of great games lacking one of the other two, too.

[Bastard Poetry]

Hmm.. you must have missed that part where I intentionally held off on giving the game a star rating because I, admittedly, haven't played the game. However, I saw enough to give my initial impressions on how unbelievably stupid it looks. If you have a problem with that, consult your nearest dark little box to curl up and cry yourself to sleep in, because that will accomplish about the same amount as your attempt to argue with my criticisms of this regurgitated shit.

And don't tell me to shut up. Perhaps I should have said "That's what MOVIES are for!" instead of books, but the point I was making was, I should like to think, made. My criticism of FFXIII (and most newer games) is that they are intentionally made easier to allow the player to breeze through a quick 10 feet of "action" in order to get back to the 30 minutes of movie-sequences. If I wanted to watch a movie, I'd watch one that doesn't require me to walk between scenes. Gameplay is everything, and FFXIII (along with most newer games), doesn't appear to have any. I cared, in FFVI, when Kefka destroyed the world because I spent time crawling across that insanely difficult Floating Continent to try and stop him, and later had to race against the clock to escape for our lives. When the game makes you earn the advancement of the plot, it has tension. When it just has you move forward to the end of the line, and takes over from there with nothing but flashy, action movie sequences, it's a choose-your-own-adventure without the "choice."

[Kaijyuu]

consult your nearest dark little box to curl up and cry yourself to sleep in, because that will accomplish about the same amount as your attempt to argue with my criticisms

Gonna have to agree with you -- trying to argue with you would be pointless indeed.

[Vanya]

I have to say that, thus far, I've been unimpressed with FF13.
I'm an old school gamer and pretty visuals mean a rats ass to me.
I hate the level of technology in it as much as I did in FF7 & 8. More so, actually, because they had to drag the summons into it.
I was tolerant of it FF12 because they at least gave me another piece of the Ivalice mythos, but enough is enough.
I can't comment on the story much as I haven't played it. However, the character design does seem very much like the old characters were put in a blender and poured into a new glass. For that I can just replay the older games or FF4:tAY.

Seriously, what does this game have to justify calling it Final Fantasy? I'd really like to know. I'd like to be given a reason to play this game.
In the mean time, it looks like I'm gonna do without Final Fantasy for the time being since I have no interest in FF14, and the other FF13 gaidens are action or card battle games that I'd sooner wipe my ass with then ever boot up.

[boomkick]

Final Fantasy is just a brand name that sells. They can call it anything else, but then it wouldn't sell as much (or as well as slapping the Final Fantasy tag on it).

[Xifanie]

I have to say that, thus far, I've been unimpressed with FF13.
I'm an old school gamer and pretty visuals mean a rats ass to me.
I hate the level of technology in it as much as I did in FF7 & 8. More so, actually, because they had to drag the summons into it.

You have to understand the RPG era is over. SNES and PSX RPGs were the best... then it just started going downhill.

That's why I'm trying other genres.
I'm getting Battlefield 2 soon. A friend suggested that I come by to try it and it was really fun.
I like fighting but don't like console fighting games, so WinMugen is Win for me.
Been years since I last played a good game comparatively to the year it was released.

[formerdeathcorps]

I have to say that, thus far, I've been unimpressed with FF13.
I'm an old school gamer and pretty visuals mean a rats ass to me.
I hate the level of technology in it as much as I did in FF7 & 8. More so, actually, because they had to drag the summons into it.
I was tolerant of it FF12 because they at least gave me another piece of the Ivalice mythos, but enough is enough.
I can't comment on the story much as I haven't played it. However, the character design does seem very much like the old characters were put in a blender and poured into a new glass. For that I can just replay the older games or FF4:tAY.

Seriously, what does this game have to justify calling it Final Fantasy? I'd really like to know. I'd like to be given a reason to play this game.
In the mean time, it looks like I'm gonna do without Final Fantasy for the time being since I have no interest in FF14, and the other FF13 gaidens are action or card battle games that I'd sooner wipe my ass with then ever boot up.

I'm younger than you and I agree completely with what you just said.

Replace the era of the RPG, and you turn video-games into the very thing that the moralist critics have always warned and feared: a TV substitute (with all the choice of a TV; 1000 different titles/channels, almost all the same idiocy, just in different flavors) with more graphic violence, language, and sex.
Why do else do you think derivative spin-off hacks are so popular on the internet?

[boomkick]

This may sound idiotic but if you just lower your standards just and bit and payed attention to only the good things they did within the game, then it becomes very enjoyable (i personally liked the battle system and the graphics, so those are the only things I payed any attention too). Enjoying any game is to try to make it so that its flaws don't overshadow the effort they put into certain parts of the game.

[Asmo X]

In all fairness to that one guy, attacking the game for being too linear is a signal that you might be a person of mild intelligence. Every game deserves to be judged on its own merits. Yes, even a Final Fantasy game. There are many games out there that would suffer if they were non-linear and many games that use it to extraordinary advantage. One method isn't intrinsically superior to another.

[Vanya]

This may sound idiotic but if you just lower your standards just and bit and payed attention to only the good things they did within the game, then it becomes very enjoyable (i personally liked the battle system and the graphics, so those are the only things I payed any attention too). Enjoying any game is to try to make it so that its flaws don't overshadow the effort they put into certain parts of the game.

If you have to do that to enjoy a game, then that's a sign that it is a bad game. A good game's merits outweigh it's failures.

[Zeio]

Game is lacking too much in the content department to be considered a solid title of the series.  I realize they wanted to make it visually stunning, but they just consumed far too many resources that could've been spent elsewhere making the game overall more enjoyable.

From people who have made end game, they're saying all the 'extra' content is just grinding gil to upgrade to everyone's ultimate weapon and *gasp* fighting more battles.  No mini-games, no nothing.  Just more battles.

Wow.  Just wow.

[Kaijyuu]

If you have to do that to enjoy a game, then that's a sign that it is a bad game. A good game's merits outweigh it's failures.

Eh... depends. Some games have great ideas floating in a sea of crap. It may be worth it to dig for the good if the good is good enough. Also, games can be terrible at first but pick up later (valkyrie profile is a great example of this: 30 minute long incredibly boring intro, but an excellent game after you get out of the first dungeon and figure out what to do).

Not saying it is either of those here -- again, I haven't played it.

[Criss]

surprisingly my friend is passing on FFXIII because he feels that the battle system is a step backward from FFXII.....yea

now if you'll excuse me i need to go and continue cursing my fate that i still have yet to own a current gen console

if only i knew you in rl.. you could possibly have borrowed mine for weeks, months if you needed....
my ps3 is sitting in my closet collecting dust....
quitting job to start school = cant afford any games......

[DarthPaul]

30 fucking hours into this fucking game and it just got fucking good.

All the "fuckings" signal that the linearity was what was holding it back.

No that I have freedom it feels like a decent rpg. Nothing more, but nothing less.

And the 30 hours that lead up to it means that this game needs an archive save to have any replay-ability whatsoever.

Also note that I was still getting tutorials in hour 26.

[Bastard Poetry]

In all fairness to that one guy, attacking the game for being too linear is a signal that you might be a person of mild intelligence. Every game deserves to be judged on its own merits. Yes, even a Final Fantasy game. There are many games out there that would suffer if they were non-linear and many games that use it to extraordinary advantage. One method isn't intrinsically superior to another.

Attacking the game for being too linear is my way of saying this game isn't worth my money. It has nothing to do with whether or not I have "mild intelligence." I play Final Fantasy games to become immersed in a new world; not to let it hold my dick while I leave a trail of piss to the next movie sequence, you know, in case I want to go back and watch sparkly things happen again. For my money, it's total bullshit.

[Vanya]

I downloaded the Crystal Bearers not too long ago. I think I'll play that.
At least that game doesn't pretend to be something it's not.