Final Fantasy XIII Catch-All

Can't wait for this game. Been a fan of the series for so long...

Good thing I have Dragon Age to tide me over until then.

Kehama wrote:

And slightly back on topic... I haven't played any FF games since FFX though I used to consider myself a Square fanboy. I even made myself like their movies. I noticed they released a FFX-2, one of their first true sequels (aside from Gameboy titles) that I'd noticed. Just to play catch-up, FFXI was MMO only, right? Then FFXII was a regular ol' FF game? Any story continuation in any of those or are they back to the "new world, new characters for every game" style?

FFXII did take place in Ivalice, the same world as FF Tactics. However, it was centuries after the events of that game. As such, there were mentions of it, but never any direct correlation as I could tell. Then again, I haven't finished Tactics yet.

Grenn wrote:

FFXII did take place in Ivalice, the same world as FF Tactics. However, it was centuries after the events of that game. As such, there were mentions of it, but never any direct correlation as I could tell. Then again, I haven't finished Tactics yet.

Also same world as Vagrant Story, and to a lesser extent FFTA and FFTA2.

And then XIII will be the same world as Agito XIII, and XIII VS, and whatever else gets made. Dunno what the world is called though.

gbuchold wrote:
Grenn wrote:

FFXII did take place in Ivalice, the same world as FF Tactics. However, it was centuries after the events of that game. As such, there were mentions of it, but never any direct correlation as I could tell. Then again, I haven't finished Tactics yet.

Also same world as Vagrant Story, and to a lesser extent FFTA and FFTA2.

And Crystal Defenders R-1 and R-2.

Grenn wrote:

FFXII did take place in Ivalice, the same world as FF Tactics. However, it was centuries after the events of that game. As such, there were mentions of it, but never any direct correlation as I could tell. Then again, I haven't finished Tactics yet.

I assumed FFXII was centuries before FFT.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

I assumed FFXII was centuries before FFT.

I'm not an expert, but all indicators go FFXII (centuries pass, magic races die off) FFT (centuries pass, magic is largely forgotten) VS (centuries or more pass, society is modernized) FFTA/2. I ignore Crystal Defenders purposely, as being minigames, they're without chronology. Sorry to be off-topic, I just like any excuse to talk about Vagrant Story.

I could never find references within the various Ivalice games to the other ones. The only obvious one is in the PSP version of Tactics, but that's a new addition and an obvious easter egg.

gbuchold wrote:
SpacePPoliceman wrote:

I assumed FFXII was centuries before FFT.

I'm not an expert, but all indicators go FFXII (centuries pass, magic races die off) FFT (centuries pass, magic is largely forgotten) VS (centuries or more pass, society is modernized) FFTA/2. I ignore Crystal Defenders purposely, as being minigames, they're without chronology. Sorry to be off-topic, I just like any excuse to talk about Vagrant Story.

That's the way I've read it. I believe Matsuno said something to that effect in an interview before he quit FFXII's dev team.

It makes sense, really. Vagrant Story seems to take place in a different part of the game world, though. And yes, VS is always worth plugging into any thread or conversation!

ahrezmendi wrote:

I could never find references within the various Ivalice games to the other ones. The only obvious one is in the PSP version of Tactics, but that's a new addition and an obvious easter egg.

Well, I remember a trailer for FFXII described it as "a time when airships plied the skies, blotting out the heavens", which I think is how Mustadio described the machine age in FFT. I have little else to base the chronology on, but, hey, it just makes sense.

In terms of chronology it does make sense, especially given where the final events of FF Tactics take place. I was merely saying that the games don't have specific references to each other, only vague ones through the world, mostly things like what you pointed out. Aside from Balthier appearing in Tactics on PSP, there's never any talk in the newer games about the older ones. Of course, the only game this would make sense in is probably FFTA, since it's supposed to be modern era, at least initially.

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/1...

After reading this (I trust Kohler) I am not interested in playing this game at all. It is taking everything I *hate* about Final Fantasy and making it larger and throwing away everything I like.

I guess I need to wait until Dragon Quest X releases for my big console JRPg.

Ulairi wrote:

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/1...

After reading this (I trust Kohler) I am not interested in playing this game at all. It is taking everything I *hate* about Final Fantasy and making it larger and throwing away everything I like.

I guess I need to wait until Dragon Quest X releases for my big console JRPg.

Erg. That definitely has tempered my enthusiasm for FFXIII. I *like* having freedom of trying to go different places. Overworld maps. Hidden areas / treasures. Heck, even crafting stuff.

I am taking this guy with a huge grain of salt. Just because he chose to play the game that way doesn't mean it's the only way to play it. Judging by the article, he didn't have much in common with my run through with FFXII, either.

We run into this all the time, and RPG's are the worst about it because of the complexity of the systems. I got in a row with a guy on Wikipedia because he tried to assert that you could not buy Teleport Stones at all in the game when there are several places to buy them once you get past a certain point.

Like the guy who tried to tell me that Manhunt was a sneaking game where you got in trouble for killing extra people and I was watching my son kill everyone in the level just so he could go kill his target in peace and have it not affect anything at all. I mean, you could sneak through. But you sure didn't have to. All the games in the Metal Gear series are like this, too. You can either just kill them all and not care whether they get sorted or not, or you can sneak around popping people with the trank gun and not kill a soul.

I've missed entire features too - I finished Eternal Sonata entirely and was halfway through a play-through with my daughter before I discovered the multiplayer capabilities of the game.

I'm not saying FFXIII's not linear. I'm not saying it's not story heavy. But I have some doubts as to the magnitude of the issue as he presents it.

momgamer wrote:

I've missed entire features too

Only on my 2nd time through Chrono Trigger did I realize you could run.

I'm on full-lockdown towards FFXIII, so I'm just skimming, but I'll say that every FF starts off with a lengthy linear section, and that if there are no special areas full of awesome gear I'll eat all of my hats (1 ski, 2 trucker, 2 patrol, 1 fishing, 1 skally).

That article gives me pause, but I just realized that if it was a $60 movie DVD, I'd probably still buy it on release day, such is my fondness for the brand. They'll need a few stinkers in a row before I give up on it, such is my accumulated goodwill.

I do know that in my experience, much of the time I spend in a Final Fantasy is on stuff that only opens up when I'm an hour or so away from completing the main storyline. So I don't think a chapter count is an adequate measure of how far you are in the game. In Final Fantasy X-2 (the only other Final Fantasy with chapters?) I'm pretty sure I spent as much time in Chapter 5 as I did the other four chapters combined.

While it certainly cooled my ardour some, I'm still hesitant to take it at face value. I'd rather wait and see. SpaceP makes a good point though; generally the first 15-20 hours of any FF game is pretty much on rails with little ability to do exploration writ large. Shoot, FFXII stuck you on rails for quite a while unless you really went out of your way to explore.

I'm still very excited for this. The weird thing is, I have rarely finished a FF game. I finished IX and X, but none of the others. I get so far in, and try to do all the sidequests and just overdose on them. Generally, I still get more than my money's worth out of them, since I tend to spend about 40 ours minimum on each of them. Who knows, maybe this is the next one I will finish!

Jeremy Parish has an interesting take on the linearity of the game. Personally, as a dude who LOVES western RPGs with lots of options, the idea of FF XIII being linear isn't really a big deal. That's not strictly what I'm looking for when I play a Final Fantasy game.

Certis wrote:

Jeremy Parish has an interesting take on the linearity of the game. Personally, as a dude who LOVES western RPGs with lots of options, the idea of FF XIII being linear isn't really a big deal. That's not strictly what I'm looking for when I play a Final Fantasy game.

It's not that I don't like linearity. On the contrary, I like a significant amount of it in my JRPG experiences. I also like the illusion of branching side paths, or larger areas to explore.

It just seems that the FFXIII gameplay experience has very little user input (at least from Kohler's initial impressions). I will likely still pick it up, because I'm a sucker for the pretty JRPG games. Not to mention that the Final Fantasy brand triggers a lot of nostalgic feelings about older games.

Hard to say, but in the rush to get quick impressions out I find most early Final Fantasy write-ups end up clashing with their final thoughts after the game is finished. Same thing happened with Final Fantasy X imports back in the day.

Seems like every Final Fantasy takes a good six to eight hours to really roll up the sleeves and get into the intricacies of the battle/skill systems. Sounds like that's how this one is shaping up too.

Tyrian wrote:

It just seems that the FFXIII gameplay experience has very little user input (at least from Kohler's initial impressions). I will likely still pick it up, because I'm a sucker for the pretty JRPG games. Not to mention that the Final Fantasy brand triggers a lot of nostalgic feelings about older games.

That's the same thing everyone said about FFXII and the Gambit system, though, and they were dead wrong. Just because the guy in the first article feels overwhelmed and is using AutoBattle every fight because he thinks he can't do better on his own, that doesn't mean that's the best way to get through the game. For someone who can handle the Active Time Battle System, this doesn't look like anything out of whack.

And as for Mr. Parish's comments, he's probably about a quarter of the way through the game. I can't think of an FF game that doesn't work this way. You're stuck ground-pounding for a while, and then at some point in the story you earn the way to move between areas and explore on your own. Did you find the Omega Dungeon in FFX? Sanubia Sands? Same thing. Judging by where that point was during the other games, he's about half way there.

I feel sorry for these guys. Reviewing RPG's like this is just so hard. They're under deadline pressure to get it done in the same timeframe as you would with Devil May Cry, and that just isn't possible. The way the ramp up the game mechanics and the story means the game isn't the same all the way though and it takes four times as long or more to get through it all.

Hey all, I just started playing the game last night. I'm about 2 hours in. In general, I agree with Kohler's gameplay analysis (although the diehards on GameFAQS who have already finished their first playthrough *guarantee* that the game gets less linear like right at 20 hours or so; which also kinda rubs me wrong that people are releasing "reviews" before they complete the game, but that's neither here nor there), but I'm having a fun time. I'm 2 hours in, and there's still no levelling/XP system introduced yet (but I'm still in the prologue).

In short, I'm liking it far more than FF 12, although getting me to like it as much as or more than FFX will be quite an effort, as that's my favorite of the series. At least the world and characters are far more memorable than 12 was already.

If anyone's interested in seeing me post my thoughts on my first playthrough (spoiler-free and all), then feel free to subscribe to the "ff12" part of my blog: http://kitkowski.com/?cat=8

I'll also post some thoughts here from time to time.

-Andy

OK, I'm about 4-5 hours in at this point, and they just upped the ante in the story. We haven't seen this level of multiple-character-focus since FF6 (in terms of "there's one character who is listed on the cover as the protagonist, but you control all of the characters at one point or other, and see deep into their personal character stories"). While you spend a lot of time playing as Lightning, I figure about 40% of the game now I've had to control Satz, Vanilla, and Snow as the lead.

...and it's not just "another leader pops to the front of the line and everyone falls in line behind them": I mean that the characters often get separated, and we get to explore the world as each character in their own little fictions. It's pretty cool, actually.

So far, the world and characters have really grown on me. Far more memorable than FFXII.

Diamond Sutra wrote:

the diehards on GameFAQS who have already finished their first playthrough *guarantee* that the game gets less linear like right at 20 hours or so; which also kinda rubs me wrong that people are releasing "reviews" before they complete the game, but that's neither here nor there
-Andy

As a person with limited playing time it rubs me the wrong way that a game doesn't open up until 20 hours in!

farley3k wrote:

As a person with limited playing time it rubs me the wrong way that a game doesn't open up until 20 hours in! :)

Sorry, farley, but that has traditionally not been the FF demographic.

Reading all this and reviews have got me nothing but more excited. I only ever played the FF to get to the next dialogue portion anyway. I guess we will see, I find it hard to believe they would cut all that stuff out completely from the game. Again, what do I know?

farley3k wrote:

As a person with limited playing time it rubs me the wrong way that a game doesn't open up until 20 hours in! :)

Well, I'm a Gamer with Job as well , but make sure not to equate "open roamable game world" with "the game".

The previous games in the series were for the most part just as linear (even FFX, my favorite), it's just that FFXIII just "stretches the dungeon into a line". On the other hand, Saints Row II was a wide-open roaming environment, that I was completely bored with in 2 hours.

There's also plenty of ways to have a customizable experience throughout play: Deciding how and in what order to level up your characters ("Do I aim for Lightning's Attack Optima powers, or do I go for the next ability node on the Blaster Optima?"), how to configure your equipment (which you can enhance with treasures and 'level up": Yeah, your weapons and accessories can gain levels), etc.

But more than the other games in the series, I think that FFXIII is probably the best game for a Gamer With a Job: Not commenting on the story/characters/system here (I want to get through the game first to make sure my opinions hold through hours of play), just the gameplay setup:
*Save points every 10-15 minutes of gametime.
*Save points after every major cutscene or chapter end.
*The save points double as "shop/customization point", so you don't have to go out to do an adventure, then backtrack 10-20 minutes to your lair/town to go to the shop (or travel across the world to that One Shop that sells that One Thing you were looking for), rather you can shop for items or sell stuff at every save point.
* You can pause during any cutscene (Start).
* You can skip any cutscene (Start-Select).
* You can skip any transformation sequence or summoning animation (Select)

So my buddy Travis is going to love this when it comes out in English: With two kids and a high demand high tech job (I have the latter, but not the former), he barely gets 20 minutes a night to play games. Since FFXIII is perfectly chewable in 15-20 minute chunks, he doesn't have to worry about getting 30 minutes in then losing all his progress because some problem at work or with his kids required him to shut down his system and walk away.

Anyway, just wanted to make sure that people weren't equating "the freedom to travel wherever in the world you want" with "the actual gameplay". Currently I'm 6 hours in, and deeeeeeeep in the story. I have yet to get to my first "town", although two of my parties (each party of two; yeah a lot of the beginning of the game the party is split up for various interesting reasons) are very close to two different towns. But the meat of the game is all around.

Wow... Sounds like a new experience. I for one am extremely excited. Thank you Diamond for explaining some stuff to us, without ruining anything. I am all the more excited then I was before.

I for one, still can't wait for this. I take just about every opinion on it with a grain of salt. No 2 gamers are alike, people are going to like and dislike things on their own. I can say that Square Enix is one of the software companies, maybe only rivaled by Blizzard, that have yet to disappoint me.

BTW, a friend of mine (and huge FF buff) on one of my other favorite boards (RPGNet) was asking about the ATB system (unfortunately there is only "Normal" and "Slow", no "Stop/Pause/Wait" mode), and commented that he liked to have deep control into each maneuver by each member of the party, so the idea of "you only control one character at a time" was a little off-putting to him. Here was my rebuttal (in short: Your "one character" is actually 3 characters - Optimas/Paradigms - disguised as one character):

(reposted from another forum)
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The AI and actions:
1) The AI is superb. If I have a companion tagged as a Healer in the Optima system, the AI knows that if *I* go down, it's Game Over. So if we're both hurting, and they're hurting more than I am, they'll still heal me up first.
2) Libra is your friend (the "give me information about the monster" spell/effect in most recent FF games). In previous FFs I used it every once in a while, like on boss fights or if I couldn't outright guess the enemies' weakness. But in FF13, it's crucial to Libra every new monster you meet for the first time: Even if you yourself as a player know that Monster X is weak against Water and Immune to Fire, your companions in Blaster mode will still shoot Whatever at the monster: Fire, Water, Electricity, etc. But if you do Libra on the monster and see the weakness, CLICK, all your party members are instantly on the ball, shooting blasts of whatever they are weak against at it, and not bothering with immune/strong-against attacks.

Switching Roles/Optimas ("Paradigms" in the Eng version)
Instead of worrying about exactly what the other characters do, you switch their roles. In one battle against a large group of minions I might switch roles 3-8 times or even more if they're strong. All the roles change at once, so you can't say "Hope, become a Healer!",instead you have to save a slot for an Optima loadout of "Attacker (Lightning) - Healer (Hope)", or "Attacker - Blaster", or "Blaster - Enhancer", and all the members change at once.
Anyway, this means that if you want your white mage to do white mage stuff, change their optima to do white mage stuff, and as above (good AI) they would do exactly what you would have been doing with them anyway.

Army of One:
On top of that (and this was my main point of the response, sandwiched between all this other stuff to make the battle/optima system make sense), your single character is actually a collection of 2-3 characters. Lightning is (currently, that is: She might gain another Role later) an Attacker (heavy hitting damage, but no combo increase), Blaster (black magic to do moderate damage but drive up the combo meter), and Healer (White mage, basic enough). In the space of one single battle against moderate enemies (not even boss fights) you'll be switching Optimas several times in one battle: For a two-person party, "Blaster- Blaster" to drive up the combo meter on a "heavy/high-HP" monster, then "Attacker - Blaster" to keep the combo gauge up and stablized while you get ready for the Break. Then "Attacker/Blaster - Healer" as you take damage and heal up without spending Potions, then maybe "Attacker - Enhancer" to cast Shell/Protect to lessen damage, then roll back to Attacker-Blaster or Blaster-Blaster again until they're dead, etc.

Every time the lead switches Optima, you get to choose what you do next: Which abilities you use, how, and on which enemies. Or you can opt out with the "Attack" option which has the AI pick some optimal attacks/moves for you.

So inside one single character, you have 2-3 characters INSIDE that character. Lightning is Tidus, Lulu (moderate) and Yuna (weak) rolled up into one. If you controlled every character at all times, you would be actually controlling up to 9 "roles/characters" inside a single 3-character party at once.

So for that reason, I think the argument of "but I only control one character" is not problematic. In any other FF game, one character would be 2-3. They just turned up the heat on monster powers and strategies required to beat them quickly.

(cutting to avoid tl;dr)