Final Fantasy XIII-2‽ Catch-All

You mean they didn't cover that in the 30 hour tutorial?

ClockworkHouse wrote:

You mean they didn't cover that in the 30 hour tutorial?

I'll be honest, I didn't get past 20 hours, so it might have been covered in the remaining 10. Last time I played I was battling my 2nd Eidolon, and it was kicking my ass.

I think it's covered fairly early on. I never did it because I found navigating the menu to be too slow for accomplishing it.

Opening 20 minutes of the Japanese version:

ahrezmendi wrote:
Grenn wrote:

I loved the combat in X-2. Save+ added about 60-70 hours on my already 80 hour game. As for XIII, I liked it a lot better once I found you could instantly queue up previous actions. That only took 10 hours to figure out.

How do you do this? I'm about to go back to playing, and I would really like to know. Tell me!!!!!

When you finish the game, it should give you the option to start a game+ that wasn't there before. All you lose is your lvl. Same items, dresspheres, garment grids, and lvls in those dresspheres.

Well trolled, Grenn. My compliments.

Dammit, I thought I was giving supercilious advice.

Everything is wrong!

Grenn wrote:

Everything is wrong!

Nothing is permitted.

With all the comments.. I was bummed by XIII, but liked X, X-2, and XII.

Downloading now, playing tonight. Guess I'll tell how I feel about the game.

Manach wrote:

With all the comments.. I was bummed by XIII, but liked X, X-2, and XII.

Downloading now, playing tonight. Guess I'll tell how I feel about the game.

And now, I want to buy the game. My girlfriend saw me playing the demo and said : "We are getting that game." Hope the demo is as nice as the game.

I'm about 8 hours in and loving it. They made the bad into good and the good into better. 40/40 is warranted.

BishopRS wrote:

I'm about 8 hours in and loving it. They made the bad into good and the good into better. 40/40 is warranted.

Excitement level +1!!!

I'll be picking it up this weekend, and starting a playthrough with my wife next week.

BishopRS wrote:

I'm about 8 hours in and loving it. They made the bad into good and the good into better. 40/40 is warranted.

So no more super-squeaky-annoying Vanille or whiny-Female Doggoy-emo Hope? No more music with godawful vocals?

Everything else I've heard about the game is quite promising, but I've been concerned from reviews that these elements aren't improved.

Hope is older and apparently less emo.

garion333 wrote:

Hope is older and apparently less emo.

SOLD!

Never again will I believe anyone who tells me a Final Fantasy game is 'good'.

Farscry wrote:

So no more super-squeaky-annoying Vanille or whiny-Female Doggoy-emo Hope? No more music with godawful vocals?

I've come to ruin your morning!

That's a real song from the game. Here are the lyrics, which really are required reading. Sorry about the caps but that's how I found them, and it's pretty appropriate.

Final Fantasy XIII wrote:

GAS ‘EM UP WITH THE GREENS AND LET ‘EM GO
STAND BACK, STAND CLEAR AS HE PUTS ON THE SHOW
SO CUTE YET FIERCE IS HE FROM HELL?
I CANNOT TELL YET I DON’T EVEN WANNA KNOW

SO YOU WANNA BE A TRAILBLAZER
KICK UP DIRT LIKE A HELLRAISER
TAKE THE REINS BUT DON’T REACT SLOW
IT’S TIME TO FEEL THE FORCE - OF THE CHOCOBO!

SO YOU THINK YOU CAN RIDE THIS CHOCOBO?
GOT CHOCOBUCKS? YOU BETTER PUT HIM ON THE CHOCOBO
SADDLE UP IF YOU THINK YOU CAN RIDE THROUGH THIS RODEO
ARE WE IN HELL? I DUNNO TO THE (“DARK LET’S ROLL” OR “DARK CONTROL”)

COME IF YOU THINK YOU GONNA HIDE THIS CHOCOBO
EVERYBODY’S GONNA WANT TO RIDE YOUR CHOCOBO
IT’S CHOCOBO (?) IN THE CHOCORODEO
GONNA RIIIDE’M STRAIGHT THROUGH HELL IN THE CHOCOBO RODEO

YEAH

LET’S RIIIIIIIIIIYAH (ride)!

Bonus, for your Vanille fix the moogle you roll with is quite annoying. That's just a staple of Japanese voice acting that you can either endure or not.

All that said, I'm still kind of tempted to get it from Amazon.

4xis.black wrote:

Never again will I believe anyone who tells me a Final Fantasy game is 'good'.

Final Fantasy VI is pretty amazing. Does that count?

Blind_Evil wrote:
Farscry wrote:

So no more super-squeaky-annoying Vanille or whiny-Female Doggoy-emo Hope? No more music with godawful vocals?

I've come to ruin your morning!

To be fair, the chocobo music has always been terrible, and the two chocobo cuts from the XIII soundtrack were by far the worst in the game. That's like pointing to a cereal commercial James Taylor wrote and deducing that he's a terrible musician.

Blind_Evil wrote:
4xis.black wrote:

Never again will I believe anyone who tells me a Final Fantasy game is 'good'.

Final Fantasy VI is pretty amazing. Does that count?

I DO NOT BELIEVE YOU.

Minarchist wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:
Farscry wrote:

So no more super-squeaky-annoying Vanille or whiny-Female Doggoy-emo Hope? No more music with godawful vocals?

I've come to ruin your morning!

To be fair, the chocobo music has always been terrible, and the two chocobo cuts from the XIII soundtrack were by far the worst in the game. That's like pointing to a cereal commercial James Taylor wrote and deducing that he's a terrible musician.

I actually liked Pulse de Chocobo, in the same way as that jazz version of the Chrono Trigger soundtrack.

I cannot in good faith say anything positive about Five Finger Death Punch singing unironically about chocobos. Other than "hilarious."

Minarchist wrote:

To be fair, the chocobo music has always been terrible, and the two chocobo cuts from the XIII soundtrack were by far the worst in the game. That's like pointing to a cereal commercial James Taylor wrote and deducing that he's a terrible musician.

The old chocobo bossa nova is perfectly serviceable, and a couple of its renditions are IMO quite charming. The earliest ones worked, in part, because they fit thematically with the chocobo mechanics (freedom from random encounters! Light! Breezy! Good contrast with world map music!).

Here, in my humble opinion, is the difference between Nintendo and Square. Nintendo takes a similar theme (say, the invincibility music) and harkens back to it where appropriate in terms of the game mechanics and aesthetics, tweaking your nostalgia receptors a bit in the process. Square takes chocobos and puts them everywhere for no reason because they believe some players' latent fondness for chocobos will somehow amalgamate with their stupid bullsh*t to make it un-stupid.

And here is one difference between Atlas and Square. There is a lot of music in America, and there is a lot of music in Japan. Some Japanese music resembles/influences American music, and vice versa. Sometimes what is popular in one place WAS popular in the other, like 10 or 20 years ago. And sometimes that music bears an uncanny resemblance to the widely-reviled work of Celine Dion. Atlas makes smart, remarkably-broad soundtrack choices like the Persona 4 battle theme. Square, apparently, was only waiting for the age of large storage media and 16-bit PCM audio so they could plaster their games with garish instantly-dated mid-90s 'My Heart Will Go On' nightmare ballads (Show me there's still hoooope... Show me it's not oooo-KEYCHAAAANGE).

Essentially Nintendo is Steven Spielberg, and Square is George Lucas.

Also:
-Moogles look stupid in 3D
-Moogles sound stupid when you give them actual human voices
-Moogles are kind of stupid in the first place
-You probably shouldn't make a Moogle one of the main party members for the above 3 reasons
-Remember what I said about erroneously expecting latent, decontextualized feelings of fondness to un-stupify your bullsh*t?
-FF15 might possibly be in preproduction right now, As such, I suggest the developers scrap their 'chocomoogle' protagonist and her associated theme song 'My heart strives for Chocomoogle destiny'
-Ku-KWEH-po!

Blind_Evil wrote:
Farscry wrote:

So no more super-squeaky-annoying Vanille or whiny-Female Doggoy-emo Hope? No more music with godawful vocals?

I've come to ruin your morning!

Oh. My. God.

4xis.black wrote:

...so they could plaster their games with garish instantly-dated mid-90s 'My Heart Will Go On' nightmare ballads (Show me there's still hoooope... Show me it's not oooo-KEYCHAAAANGE).

I hate that they put vocals to it, but that's an incredible theme (well, 3 themes, actually). I will brook no argument on this subject. It's used masterfully throughout the game in a myriad of ways.

Also, there's no key change in that theme.

EDIT: also also, that theme is better known as "The Promise". I don't think that "Serah's Theme" even appears in English form on any of the soundtracks.

Minarchist wrote:

I hate that they put vocals to it, but that's an incredible theme (well, 3 themes, actually). I will brook no argument on this subject. It's used masterfully throughout the game in a myriad of ways.

Also, there's no key change in that theme. :P

I just... I think Final Fantasy games have become my Kryptonite.

IMAGE(http://leafprobably.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/wonder.jpg)

garion333 wrote:

Oh. My. God.

I'm pretty tickled in particular by the song's weird "Chocobos of the Devil" theme.

"So cute, yet fierce, is he from hell?"

I might spend $5 to see how many times the singer laughed mid-recording.

Can we talk about playing the game? Goodjer catch-all threads aren't about sh*tting on a game and it's fans.