Fabulous Final Fantasy Franchise Discussion Catch-all

Chimalli wrote:

Just picked up FFXII on the PC, I've never really played it but, have heard good things. Are there any tips before I start playing that I will need to know?

We’re playing it this quarter in the JRPG club. Thread

Now that I have a bit of experience with X (which I didn't like) and XII (which I did), I decided tonight to revisit XIII. It's one I've stumped for over the years, but without having played its two immediate predecessors, I didn't feel like I had the full context to understand all the complaints about it.

(Some things I also simply won't be able to get my head into, like what it may have felt like for XIII to come out but to also be still waiting for Versus XIII, then-Agito XIII, and the whole Nova Crystalis concept.)

Coming to XIII after XII, I get it. Not that I think XIII is a bad game (in many ways, I think it's better than XII), but its mashup of Lost, H.P. Lovecraft, Greek tragedy, and dystopian sci-fi is a huge departure from the steampunk Star Wars vibe of XII. XII's gambit system also gives a stronger impression of control over your AI companions even if that's largely illusory and limited.

I get now that players got something very different than what they might have expected. The trend lines for the industry and the franchise were toward an open-world game; MMO structure; and seamless, action game-like transitions between combat and exploration. XIII wasn't any of those things, even before you get to some of the structural and narrative conceits that will still frustrate if you're not prepared for them.

Ironically, it seems like Versus XIII, even in its nascent form, actually was all those things people expected to see. If Square-Enix had seen it as the mainline game and XIII as the spin-off, and had devoted resources accordingly, I wonder how the reputation and fortunes of the franchise would have fared differently.

Have you tried X-2? I thought that was much more fun than X, and the Dresssphere system might be a closer analog/precursor to XIIIs Paradigm system.

There was a tangentially related discussion on Monday's Waypoint Radio episode regarding the Civilization series and why many long-time fans felt isolated by the radical departures from the series' formulas with the 5th and 6th installments. If I recall correctly, X was also fairly polarizing at the time due to the removal of ATB and the change to a seamless 3D world resulting in a restrictive linear experience (aka the first "grind tube").

I'm not 100% sure if the industry in 2004/2005 was even aware that trend-lines were heading in the direction of open-world (and I'm still not convinced that's actually what fans really want in RPGs in general right now). Take a look at Dragon Age: Origins for example as a contemporary example. Both games were announced to the world in 2005 and released in 2009. Both games are about as traditional as you get for their respective developers and lack the modern open-world trappings that would come with later installments in 2014 and 2017. (Also good god Inquisition came out in 2014! :shock:) I expect that XIII's design went the way it did largely because it was the X team rolling with what they knew worked in X/X-2 rather than trying to do any sort of responding to what the fans may or may not have wanted.

I'm not sure that a different allocation of resources would've changed XIII's reception. It probably would've gotten Versus XIII out the door but knowing Nomura's team it probably would've been a lot closer to Kingdom Hearts in structure than XV's open-world. I also think there would've been a lot of push-back on VS XIII as to how it didn't "feel like Final Fantasy" given the action-oriented combat.

merphle wrote:

Have you tried X-2? I thought that was much more fun than X, and the Dresssphere system might be a closer analog/precursor to XIIIs Paradigm system.

That makes some sense as the dresssphere system is deeply rooted in the Job system but the ability to switch spheres mid-combat adds the XIII feel to the mix (even though it was probably intended as a callback to X's ability to freely swap party members).

One of the things I remember being prominent about XIII at the time was efforts to make Lightning into the new Cloud. There was definitely a desire to go back and rekindle the same love people had for VII, which itself begins in a fairly linear Midgar. I mean, I don't know how I wasn't aware of it, but my first impression of FFVII was that the entirety of the game took place in Midgar. It was a shock when I left and it became a much more familiar Final Fantasy. XIII is evidently sort of the same, but because FFVII still had branching paths in its dungeons (sort of) in Midgar there was still a sense of traditional RPG-ness to it.

Or maybe because some of us were young enough, or because it was people's first experience with a JRPG, nothing seemed unusual.

I've still yet to play XIII, and I was becoming more apathetic by the time it was announced, so all I had was a single friend trying to convince me it was worth playing and getting little more than a shrug. For me the only thing that sold me on FFXV was the aesthetic, and I can't really tell you why since so much of it is not unlike the departure that FFVIII took, and I hated everything about VIII. I hated its look, I hated the Junction system, I hated the story...

Maybe for everyone that jumped in with VII and wasn't yet done with the franchise like me, XIII was for them what VIII was for me.

I dunno. It's a weird franchise with a weird fandom. I can only imagine also that Square was wringing their hands trying to figure out how to appease new trends in Japan where consoles were beginning their decline and making the Western audience happy who was going to be the major source of your sales.

The general structure of Final Fantasy games (and Chrono Trigger) in the mid/late 90's was to have a very linear first 20-30 hours which explodes out into a globe traversing non-linear segment in the back half or last third. This was largely established by V's quest for the legendary weapons or the post-apocalypse section in VI after you acquire the airship.

Where XIII really flubbed things for me is that the Cocoon "open-world" segment is not terribly interesting to me. Or at least compared to what the series had done in the past with that type of transition. Which puts me largely at odds with much of the talk about XIII because that seems to be the section most people liked.

shoptroll wrote:

Where XIII really flubbed things for me is that the Cocoon "open-world" segment is not terribly interesting to me. Or at least compared to what the series had done in the past with that type of transition. Which puts me largely at odds with much of the talk about XIII because that seems to be the section most people liked.

Same here. That part of FFXIII really annoyed me. I don’t see what it added except to make the game longer and I just wanted to get on with it by that point.

I actually remember enjoying the beggining of FF13, the later half I didn't find as enjoyable.

The thing is that it's not that the pre-X games were much less linear, they just did a better job of hiding it. Think about IV: for most of the game, it presents you with this huge-looking map, but at any given time there's only one relatively narrow path that you can travel on it. But it still FEELS like you're exploring the world, even as the only way you can go is where the developers want you to.

Part of the problem may have been the switch to true 3D. When the camera is mostly behind your back, it's harder to hide the fact that you're only really traveling in one direction: forward.

It doesn't help when you have a map or mini-map showing the tiny, straight paths. The older titles may have been linear for 95% of the game, but you could traverse wide swathes of land. Once we get to tight corridors you begin to see the constricted paths.

So, yeah, 3D didn't do any favors in that regard.

Oddly enough YouTube's algorithm fed me something potentially interesting and relevant.

The one thing I'll note on his comparison is that the FFX "Expert" Sphere Grid was not the original Sphere Grid that everyone experienced. He doesn't reference the original, only the Expert, and I know the Expert grid was intentionally built in such a manner to make it easier to break and experiment whereas the original Sphere Grid was more linear. While it did release with the international version (if I recall correctly), it wouldn't have contributed to people's feelings towards X being more positive than XIII.

I don't think it entirely invalidates his points (my time through FFX back in High School I ended up getting Kimari on someone else's track and couldn't figure out how I did and ultimately he was pretty damn worthless as a result, meaning he was still built to be a "Blue Mage" of sorts), but I think it's worth noting.

garion333 wrote:

It doesn't help when you have a map or mini-map showing the tiny, straight paths. The older titles may have been linear for 95% of the game, but you could traverse wide swathes of land. Once we get to tight corridors you begin to see the constricted paths.

So, yeah, 3D didn't do any favors in that regard.

Yep. One of the things I've gotten in the habit of doing with modern games is turning off the mini-map when I can. I feel like they take away from the game more often than they add to it.

hbi2k wrote:

The thing is that it's not that the pre-X games were much less linear, they just did a better job of hiding it. Think about IV: for most of the game, it presents you with this huge-looking map, but at any given time there's only one relatively narrow path that you can travel on it. But it still FEELS like you're exploring the world, even as the only way you can go is where the developers want you to.

Part of the problem may have been the switch to true 3D. When the camera is mostly behind your back, it's harder to hide the fact that you're only really traveling in one direction: forward.

The later Final Fantasy games also don't switch scales the way that the ones prior to X did. In those games, you'd jump out of a town or dungeon to a world map, and suddenly you were moving across vast fields, over mountains, through forests. An area that was essentially just one flat bucket with one entrance and one exit felt so much more expansive because the scale of that place is suggested to be so much larger.

I've noticed this while playing games from Silicon Studio and Tokyo RPG Factory, which do keep that town-to-overworld scale change, and they do feel a lot larger. You're exploring whole continents! Even if effectively you're just going to one of two possible destinations, the other of which is the place you just were.

I remember there being a lot of excitement before X released that they were doing away with world maps. Along with separate battle screens, it seemed to be a universally-cheered goal of Squaresoft's projects. But in some ways, it hurt more than it helped.

I'm in complete support of the idea that the old fashioned world map had virtues, particularly in adding to the sense of scale and masking the linear nature, or even just putting a little psychological remove on it even as you're aware of how linear it is. Even those wide spaces that exist for the sake of having a wide space have virtues, I think--there's a hefty premium today on open world games justifying their open-world-ness by making sure "stuff" is in those spaces, which honestly is probably the right direction to go, but simply moving across a large plain can create that "epic journey" sense.

My recollection is that X was very well received and esteemed by people who aren't me, but that could have just been my bubble, and that it was a lot of people's first JRPG. I'll have to watch ces' video later, but I met the early criticism of XIII's linear nature with "Y'allz lapped that sh*t up from X, and hated XII!"

My issues with XIII's early segments weren't the linearity, in part they were that the paradigm system was built for three, but the game kept forcing you to use it with two, like they'd given you a trike and required you to balance it on only two wheels while you learned how to use it. Additionally, the obscuring "Cie" terminology--had they just banked a bit on existing FF nomenclature and said "There are Eidolons, who select Thralls, who are cursed to become The Fallen or are rewarded with death," I'd have been much happier in all those cut scenes.

Heck, one of my gripes with the remaster of XII is that the open world isn't really an open world, but a bunch of interconnected corridors with some extra walking around spaces. I tire of frequently hitting loading screens in the game because I lose the open world feel when I still have to exit the map by a handful of pathways.

Yeah, XII was hardly open, but it at least had multiple corridors leading you to the exit.

I don't think Eidolon or Esper would quite work to replace fal'Cie (especially since there are ALSO Eidolons in XIII), but I agree that the terminology needed some work.

The fal'Cie remind me most of Lovecraft's elder gods: vast, ancient, and indifferent, constantly squabbling, frequently using human intermediaries. Final Fantasy doesn't have anything quite like that in its bestiary.

The closest I can think of are Ultimicia from VIII or Garland from IX, but while they were both timeless, they were still essentially human. Maybe Sin? I admit I'm a bit unclear on what Sin is.

In any case, none of those things has a type name. But fal'Cie was not a good choice for it.

The issue wasn't " fal'Cie" by itself, it was in combination with "l'Cie" mixed with Pulse, Caccoon and Sanctum. It was basically jibberish even after reading the codex.

Oh, sure. It was bad terminology all the way down. I was just saying there's not an easy and direct replacement for fal'Cie.

I also wouldn't lay the blame squarely on Square-Enix (no pun intended) for that sort of writing, either. One of my earliest posts on this forum (and I believe in this thread) was my frustration regarding the insane terminology every game needs for its systems to make them sound fancy and insane. Watching plenty of anime from the past 10-20 years, it was kind of a fad across a lot of the medium. It's not just a special attack, it's the Quantum Bloodlight Overdrive System, derived from the Wailing Stars Supernova Technique and other such inanity.

In true Final Fantasy fashion, Squenix was just trying to one-up everyone else's efforts on that sh*t.

I never felt like I had a sense of place in XIII either, of where the different areas I was visiting were situated relative to each other. That's something that a world map can do a good job of giving you, but even without that, other titles have done it better. You think about the first disc of FFVII, where yeah there's no world map, but the cut scenes show you how they city's laid out and give a real sense of place to everything. The slums are physically underneath the Plate, the Mako Reactors are evenly spaced around the outer ring of the city, etc. There was a sense of how it all fit together that was missing from XIII.

hbi2k wrote:

You think about the first disc of FFVII

I get the point you're going for regarding Midgar but it stuns me how many people misremember Midgar being the entirety of the first disc. The first disc went right up to Aeris' death and I think shortly after.

Spoilers!!!!

Spoiler:

...kidding :P

ClockworkHouse wrote:

(especially since there are ALSO Eidolons in XIII)

I totally blanked on this, because they mucked that up a bit, too, by having some traditional summons/espers/eidolons be summons and others be cies.

And I should say this is just all about the terminology, the idea of a human society built and supported by but also subservient to weird techno-mystical maybe AI systems but also maybe gods is super bizarre, but still cool in a way I expect out of the modern day FF and JRPGs in general.

I know I'm in the minority, but I did enjoy XIII for the most part. Although I never beat the game I always end up stopping right at the 'open world' chapter. I enjoy that the game tells a story and I enjoy the fact that it limits the distracts and pointless mini-games. I do agree that the game could use work in a lot of the terminology and how they deliver the meaning of the terminology. The combat system is fun to a point and I wish they would unlock it earlier in the game. Part of the reason I think I fall off the game at that point is that I feel finished with it. The leveling system is just a straight path, and allows for very little personal touches to it. But, XIII is the Final Fantasy game I play if I want to just mindlessly walk through a game and not have to think about what markers I have to get to find the secret item to unlock the hidden button where I can get the ultimate weapon in 15 hours is, which if I pass up I can't get until another 30 hours when I can maybe go back.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

And I should say this is just all about the terminology, the idea of a human society built and supported by but also subservient to weird techno-mystical maybe AI systems but also maybe gods is super bizarre, but still cool in a way I expect out of the modern day FF and JRPGs in general.

Absolutely! The story and the setting in XIII is one of my favorite's in gaming. It's just not as well-communicated as it could be.

I played a bunch of FFXII the past few days. I played the first half twice during the original release (I'm terrible at finishing modern FF games.) I couldn't believe how little I remembered, which ended up being a plus since it's like playing a whole new FF game. The main thing that struck me was how much I liked/missed the Gambit system. The biggest turnoff with FF13 was how the combat boiled down to mashing the same button to activate obtuse skills over and over. Even if you went manual, there wasn't any explanation of which skill should be used and why. I feel this was in direct response to people complaining about FF12 "playing itself" while offering an even worse system with button mashing.

Anyway, it's been nice to get into a more classic JRPG where they've gone back and balanced out the crappy JRPG elements. I've already made the "wrong" choice on a few of my character's jobs, but the game isn't hard enough to make me want to start over. The new multiclass system also mitigates this. The game already had a grinding mechanism that rewarded shorter periods of focused grinding, but the addition of the 4X speed has made this part of the process actually enjoyable. It's fun to find a good grinding spot, and after 15 minute or so, you get to unlock a new set of skills. The boss' erratic difficulty is evened out a bit by making the grind a more natural and less punishing part of the game.

I'm getting close to the point where I bailed last time. We'll see how it goes.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

My issues with XIII's early segments weren't the linearity, in part they were that the paradigm system was built for three, but the game kept forcing you to use it with two, like they'd given you a trike and required you to balance it on only two wheels while you learned how to use it.

I would expect part of this might have been due to focus testing or something that made them think the system was overwhelming. It's also no the first time they've slow-played rolling out systems. Final Fantasy VI doesn't introduce magic beyond Terra/Celes until about 10-15 hours in even though it's masked really well by the plot.

In hindsight the way XIII teaches you how to play is very similar to how Xenoblade Chronicles 2 operates. You are fed a little bit of the systems at a time and between tutorials you are given time to play around with them before getting a new layer added on top of it.

Delbin wrote:

The biggest turnoff with FF13 was how the combat boiled down to mashing the same button to activate obtuse skills over and over. Even if you went manual, there wasn't any explanation of which skill should be used and why. I feel this was in direct response to people complaining about FF12 "playing itself" while offering an even worse system with button mashing.

They explained the Ravager / Commando thing I thought pretty decently. You use the Ravager's magic spells to increase the stagger counter while the Commando uses physical attacks to slow down the counter's decay rate. The Auto-Battle AI will generally vary things up a bit to respond to monster elemental weaknesses but that's generally how things work.

It's not so much button mashing as letting the computer optimize the stuff you'd be doing anyways. Persona 5 has a similar option mapped to R1 which will automatically select the appropriate persona, skill, and target for you in a fraction of the time it normally takes in previous games.

One thing that's been interesting for me is how my appreciation of the gambit system in XII has changed as I've played.

When I started, I was super excited about it. It felt deep, flexible, and—above all else—empowering. I felt like someone had snuck a programming puzzle game like Human Resource Machine into an RPG.

That feeling has gradually faded. First to determination: I'm going to crack the way to make this work. Then to resignation: this doesn't do what I want it to, but it's still cool. And finally to frustration and disappointment: there are so many missing features, oversights, contradictions, and bizzare limitations that it's crushed my enthusiasm.

XIII's paradigms feel like pre-built, more intelligent gambits. I'd rather have had those.

I agree completely.

Know what's even better? Dresses.

Is this where I come to talk about FFVII remake release dates that we don't have yet??