Final Fantasy XIII Catch-All

(cont): Problems/Dissonance:

Differentiation: The "problem" with the above from a FF historical perspective is that there is no role which is totally exclusive of other roles. In other words, in this game you don't have One Healer, One Black Mage, One Armor-Breaking Fighter, One Trick/Buffer Fighter, etc. Well, then again in FFXII (and X-2) you didn't so much have that either, as anyone could do anytihng. and even in FFX you could jump grids a little to pick up other abilities. But all previous games had you balance a party and carefully choose Person X to do healing and protection, then Person Y to do buffs, then Person Z and AA to lay the smack down, etc.

In FFXIII, though, all characters are "multiclassed", even if they have primary roles and weaker roles. For example, Lightning starts out as an Attacker, and later gets Blaster (which is not as powerful for her as it is for Satz, or her own Attacker abilities, but still a valid role for her), and then later again gets Healer (which is really weak, but she can at least Curea the party in a pinch: Which I never thought I'd use until I got to the "Hope and Lightning travel around alone together" segment, where half the time you control Hope).

But what it comes down to is this: Even if their elemental affinity is different (stronger with water, electricity, fire, etc and sometimes excluded from taking the opposing element), all of the Il'Cie (all of the PCs in your party) can use combat magic. So every single person in your party can throw fireballs, basically (as a Blaster), without MP drain (instead it takes more action slots to do the more powerful spells). It kinda takes away from the magic of previous games, where there usually was One Person who could do the Magic Stuff, and One Person who was really good at taking damage, and One Person that was really good at slicing and dicing.

At least they tied this "everyone can do magic" bit into the setting: Once you have your Geas from the Fal'Cie, you become superpowered, but you're also cursed: Fail in your geas and you become an inhuman gibbering monster, succeed in your geas and you become frozen forever as a crystal. Not pretty either way.

Hopefully that makes sense.

There's already a walkthrough on youtube. Must....resist....

Grenn wrote:

There's already a walkthrough on youtube. Must....resist....

Why...Why do you tell people these things? We still have two and a half months!

Grenn wrote:

There's already a walkthrough on youtube. Must....resist....

You are evil and must be destroyed.

Luckily I'm in the server lab today so I can't view video. We'll see how long my resolve lasts once I get home.

Jerk.

He isn't evil. If he was evil he would have posted the link.. That would be evil.

Why if it is the Japanese version does it say "new game" "load game" and "config" on the first screen? Did the Japanese not have a word for "game" until they met westerners?

So today I got a email with the code for a baby chocobo avatar award, I used the code and I look forward to seeing what it looks like.

farley3k wrote:

He isn't evil. If he was evil he would have posted the link.. That would be evil.

Why if it is the Japanese version does it say "new game" "load game" and "config" on the first screen? Did the Japanese not have a word for "game" until they met westerners?

You're a bastard and I'm not clicking that link. Either it'll be a kitty cat dance and I'll rage, or it'll actually be the walkthrough and I'll spend the next 3 months drooling.

AnimeJ wrote:
farley3k wrote:

He isn't evil. If he was evil he would have posted the link.. That would be evil.

Why if it is the Japanese version does it say "new game" "load game" and "config" on the first screen? Did the Japanese not have a word for "game" until they met westerners?

You're a bastard and I'm not clicking that link. Either it'll be a kitty cat dance and I'll rage, or it'll actually be the walkthrough and I'll spend the next 3 months drooling.

You'll be drooling. Or wanting to throw things at the kid who's talking all the way through it.

Blackout. I stand by my blackout. Trailers only, I say!

Lothar wrote:

So today I got a email with the code for a baby chocobo avatar award, I used the code and I look forward to seeing what it looks like.

WANT!

Oh, after a friend asked about my thoughts on the WIRED article, I posted a full counter-point over on my blog (replicating here http://kitkowski.com/?p=41 )
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There’s a preview of sorts of FFXIII over on Wired. It’s not really all that favorable, but then again he hadn’t reached the “open” part of the game yet, and seems hung up on comparing the gameplay to other titles in the series. I’ve seen a few such pre-finished reviews (also over at Kotaku)… It’s kinda bizarre. I mean, I get that people (like me!) would be blogging about going through the game, thoughts and all, to drum up interest or shout it down, but since FFXIII is going to be the biggest game of 2010, and there’s a 3-month window between the release in Japan and release in North America, it seems that all the big entertainment reviewers are clamoring to say something – anything – about the game before everyone else does. And this is just more of that.

In short, here’s my counterpost to the Wired review. Note that as I discuss this, I’m now about 10 or so hours into the game (I think: I’ll need to check my hours back at home later). Note that I’m really enjoying it thus far: The gameplay, the story, the characters, and so on. However, I realize that later I might *not* like the game. So I’m not on the fanboy bandwagon; I’m keeping a wary eye open and all. Anyway.

FFXIII is too film-like: So when it comes down to it, the Final Fantasy series, at least all of the ones I’ve played, have never been all that hard. Sure, a lot of them contain *really hard optional monsters*, but the main story has been easy enough that I could power through with a little grinding and totally unoptimized characters and equipment. Compare that to, for example, the Shin Megami Tensei games (the core games like Nocturne, not the easier Persona offshoot): One random battle after another, 10 seconds from one battle to the next, and at any given time the smallest random encounter can kill you.

No, for a long time the series has all been about “Flagship-ing” and “Spectacle”: To show the world what Square (later Square Enix) could do with the latest in technology, millions of dollars and genius, overworked and burned-out coders/artists. They’re long. You can stretch them out to 80, 100, 160+ hours by attempting to “get all the gear” or “beat all the hidden optional bosses”, but what it comes down to is that the FF series from a very early time (and solidified with FFVI) tried to be a Movie That You Play. This is no different, just that they have the technology and resources to make the movie bits that much more awesome.

Save Points Everywhere: Save point, fight, cinematic, save, boss, save point, long cinematic, “do you want to save now?”, another long cinematic, save point. As a Gamer with a Job, I’ve got no problem with that. For the last month I’ve been playing FFX-2 again (second time through; played FFX about 4 times through), and I’m surprised at how spaced out the savepoints are, and how all those random battles between one point and the next can really add up. In other words, I don’t mind a save point every 10-15 minutes, because in the old world of 25-30 minutes between points, if I have to do something, go somewhere, Right Now, I’ve lost that much progress. My friend Travis, who is in the same condition as I am just with 2 kids, is going to love FFXIII for that feature.

The Killing Tubes: It’s been said elsewhere, but dungeons in previous FF games have been an illusion: A sprawl of grinding through random combats with the illusion of choice. Here, they basically have the same amount of content, just stretched into a line. Through making the game more linear (dispelling the illusion of choice: Remember FFX? You really had no say in where you went or what you did until about the 70% mark in the game, when you get on the airship), they do away with the need to wander around in sprawling dungeons, grinding on random fights in order to beat up the next boss. Yeah, FFXIII completely did away with the need for grinding (but left options for it anyway if you want), and if it means keeping the path as more of a (gorgeous) straight line, then I’ll bite.

He calls them “monotonous”. Certainly there were parts where I thought it was a little too long, particularly one part with Lightning and Hope in this really long relatively cinematic-light stretch in these experimental monster gardens. That was the only time it got tedious, though: And after that, the game has done an awesome job with mixing it up so there’s little monotony: You’ll play as these two characters over here for 30 minutes, hit a major plot bit, then play with those two characters over there for 20 minutes, hit a plot point, then find out what the fifth character’s been up to, and so on.

Even within the aforementioned “Lightning and Hope” bit, they have you play as one character as the Leader for one half, and the other character as Leader for the second half. This means that you have to adopt all-new strategies for the next set of battles.

That’s way less monotonous than being in a dungeon with some illusion of choice (but only one real path to the boss enemy anyway), having to fight one random battle after another every 10-15 feet, where the monsters are all the same each time. FFXIII does a good job so far of mixing things up, making them more challenging, or challenging in a new way, as you go through “the killing tubes”.

You Only Control One Character: I’ll post about this in a bit (lifting what I said in a post on RPGNet), but each character has a number of roles, 2-3 to begin with (and later gameplay vids I saw show that it looks like ALL characters can access ALL roles) called “Optima”: Attacker, Blaster, Healer, etc. You shift in the course of one battle between 2-3 or more sets of different role loadouts. Anyway, within your one character you are a Fighter, Black Mage, White Mage, Blue Mage, and Rogue, and you shift back and forth during a battle. So in reality, you are control, of “one skin” which is comprised of what would be called “2-6 characters” in any other game. At the highest levels, you have 18 characters in your party: They just wear 3 character skins. Again, this would have been apparent to the Wired dude if he got further before rushing to be the first to post.

Optima/Paradigm System: They talk a bit about it in the Wired article. This element, plus the enemy’s Break Meter, really adds a new depth to battles which didn’t previously exist. Before, monsters had hit points, armor, damage (they did to you) and strengths/weaknesses to magic. But in the end, it still comes down to a sort of non-time-tactical “pick the element they’re weak against”, and “do the most damage, perhaps weakening armor first”. With the Break Gauge, you need to do the balancing of “Do I pound on this guy, or do I aim to break his Break Meter?” Lots of enemies can only fall once you break their Break Meter, and that requires strategy all in itself: You need Blaster optimas/roles to consistently do damage to Break Meter (Attackers and other roles don’t drive up the meter, but keep it where it is, only the Blaster role brings the monster closer to Break). Problem is, that you can’t just turn all your dudes into Blasters and let them rip: You’ll see in battle vids that when Blasters hit an enemy, the Yellow Break Bar will rise, but then it will start falling slowly. It starts falling faster and faster and faster if Blasters are the only ones hitting the monster, until it drops and the combo is lost. So you need at least one Jammer or Attacker to hit the monster to “stablize” the bar: So an effective combo with three characters is 1 attacker and 2 blasters: The blasters drive the bar up for a bit, and right as it starts to drop the attacker hits and “freezes” the bar. Meanwhile, you’re getting pounded with attacks, so you need to switch roles to characters who are Healers and Enhancers for HP and defense, while at the same time taking care to switch back to an Attacker to hit the monster again while its Break bar is still up there, or you’ll lose the combo.

This kind of critical timing strategy just didn’t exist in previous FFs. You just had to know that “this enemy is weak against Fire” or “that enemy has Armor we need to break at some point”. Now, you have a time-based strategy element to juggle with all the rest. It’s really clever, and adds a tactical depth to the game.

Retry the Battle: I can restart the battle in the middle because I didn’t know the right strategy against this new enemy (or biffed my timing when trying to heal up) and ended up wasting 2 Phoenix Downs (now costing 1000) and 3 Potions, where before my only opportunity would be to soft-reset my game, reload, and get all the way back to this point again? Where is that “bad” again?

Conclusion: So hope that sheds some light on things. For the most part, I love a lot of the changes. There’s a few things that I quibble with (will post later), but for the most part I found the Wired take to be truthful yet exaggerated, perhaps simply to be the First Person in Entertainment Journalism to say Something Big about FFXIII in English before other websites beat Wired to it.
---

A new English language trailer.

I love FF but I think I will rent this one. Something about it just doesn't feel FF to me so I want to play it first and see how it goes.

Digging the voice acting, for the most part.

I'm pretty stoked to see what an A-tier JRPG in this generation can be. I liked Lost Odyssey (a whole lot), but that has been it, and you can't really call something great without other worthy competition to compare.

I was originally wanting to purchase this, but I think it will be a gamefly game for me.

The new trailer, well, I'm not fond of the voice given to Lightning, but the enemies (especially the librarian dictator woman) are much cooler, IMO. Also, the song is terrible. I nearly stopped watching it about halfway through because I found it utterly annoying, and they were showing tons of story clips. I don't mind that, but the second half of the trailer? If you can tune out the song then the battles overshadow everything else. I enjoyed watching the fights, whether CG or in-game, and look forward to having some fun with it. Tons more action in that second part.

Being linear means if I rent it for a month I won't regret giving it back when I'm done.

trueheart78 wrote:

Also, the song is terrible.

Wait, wait...a JRPG features a terrible pop song?

...

"The first angel sounded his trumpet, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down upon the earth. A third of the earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up."...

SpacePPoliceman wrote:
trueheart78 wrote:

Also, the song is terrible.

Wait, wait...a JRPG features a terrible pop song?

...

"The first angel sounded his trumpet, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down upon the earth. A third of the earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up."...

The trailer Farley links to is fully english, with an english song playing as the "theme" music, I guess. I'd much prefer a japanese pop song over that piece of tripe.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

No, I saw it, and I agree, bad song. But that's a trope of the genre.

Gotcha. But seriously? Who picked that? That trailer alone pushed it from a "probably gonna buy it" to "definitely gonna rent it long-term" status, and I blame that song for a decent amount of my decision.

No, I saw it, and I agree, bad song. But that's a trope of the genre. I think the last JRPG I played that didn't have some awful song in it may have been FF7.

Actually, I don't think the Suikodens had any.

I'm still on lockdown with this game, I put my blind faith into the Final Fantasy series, and the only one that really burned me was X-2. It's pre-ordered from amazon and that won't change

Not gonna click that link. Not gonna. We've got months and I'm not going to do it.

Solidarity, blackout brothers!

I don't think there's been a Final Fantasy # game that I haven't loved playing, and based on that, I'm sold. Sqenix have enough of a balance in my cred-bank to get a pass on this one.

I'm also thankful that Mass Effect 2 is out later this month, as that will keep me from pining for FF.

Yes, Mass Effect and Bioshock 2 to both keep me busy until Final Fantasy arrives.

Jonman wrote:

I don't think there's been a Final Fantasy # game that I haven't loved playing, and based on that, I'm sold. Sqenix have enough of a balance in my cred-bank to get a pass on this one.

See, that's the thing. I loved the 16-bit games, and have made it 30hrs into #10 but just got tired of the battle system. I have X-2 and XII, should I attempt those instead?

Does FF13 bode well for me or should I just focus on the DA expansion instead? Because I am enamored with FF6.

trueheart78 wrote:
Jonman wrote:

I don't think there's been a Final Fantasy # game that I haven't loved playing, and based on that, I'm sold. Sqenix have enough of a balance in my cred-bank to get a pass on this one.

See, that's the thing. I loved the 16-bit games, and have made it 30hrs into #10 but just got tired of the battle system. I have X-2 and XII, should I attempt those instead?

Does FF13 bode well for me or should I just focus on the DA expansion instead? Because I am enamored with FF6.

I can't speak to XII - I've been PS2less since it launched, so I've not played it. X-2 was the dogs doodads though, loved that big time. You may well run into the same problem with getting bored after 30 hours. To be honest, that's a problem that's going to bite you for any RPG though, Dragon Age included, I'd imagine.

Jonman wrote:

I can't speak to XII - I've been PS2less since it launched, so I've not played it. X-2 was the dogs doodads though, loved that big time. You may well run into the same problem with getting bored after 30 hours. To be honest, that's a problem that's going to bite you for any RPG though, Dragon Age included, I'd imagine.

I can speak for XII. I liked it more than X. The battle system was a pretty strange fusion, and I didn't dig particularly deeply into it, but I generally play RPGs that way--find a few things that work, then bulldog my way through. But I loved the texture of the world, enjoyed the characters, and ended up putting nearly 100 hours into it hunting down all the NMs and trying to scheme my way into some of the cooler gear.

I'd agree, getting bored with the system after 30 hours is going to be an issue in any RPG.

Diamond Sutra, we are on complete ends of what we enjoy about Final Fantasy. I HATED the WB drama story that was FFX and I really liked FFXII because the story, characters, and gameplay were so much better. You're killing my buzz even more!!!

Just a quick note to folks who don't like the Theme Song:

I'm on the second to last chapter. There's been plenty of CG movies and cutscenes. But none of them were a long drawn-out "4 minute music scene" (ala the kissy scene from FFX with "Suteki da ne" in the background) featuring the theme song. There were some shorter scenes (fireworks scene(s)) which featured the theme song played very very low in the background, pretty much inaudiable over the speaking and action. But nothing cringe-worthy.

In general, I think FFXIII has some of the best background and fight music of any previous FF game (although it's hard to beat "To Zanarkand"). It has some tracks that are clearly the best of the series, but it also has one single track that is possibly the worst of the series: Elevator Cabana Music at the Yashas Mountain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo3O_... . But for the most part, it's awesome (like the Sunleth Waterscape, soundtrack clip here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JC1n... ). I didn't even feel I was grinding at times because of the upbeat pop power ballads.

I've heard people complaining about the choice of English song, wanting them to stick with the original Japanese theme "Kimi ga Iru Kara" (Because you were There), which is like wanting to trade a brown turd for a brownish-green turd.

Anyway, I'm on the second to last chapter, and I'm still loving it. Storywise, I gotta say that X (or X/X-2 combined) is better, but the story here is still pretty solid, far better than most in the series. And the gameplay is just downright challenging, action-packed and fun.

trueheart78 wrote:

...and have made it 30hrs into #10 but just got tired of the battle system. I have X-2 and XII, should I attempt those instead?

The story of FFX is my favorite of the series. The story of FF-X as an add-on makes FFX even better, more complete. That's why FFX is "my favorite of the series", but even I won't go back to collect those goddamn blue butterflies and thousands of "glass shatter! random combat!" moments.

But yeah, the combat of FFX, and the random combats, tend to get tedious. FFX-2 was more action packed, but still all the random combats (the fact that you'd hit a random set of unavoidable monsters every 10 steps in places) were jarring and annoying at times. Still, it was fun.

FFXIII combines the cool levelling mechanic of FFX with a style of combat that's even more action-packed and involved than FFX-2, pretty much IMO the most exciting combat of the entire series.

Also, (jokey voice) NO ONE SHOULD ATTEMPT XII (/jokey voice).

OK, ok, it's not *horrible*. I actually preferred the weird gambit combat (which you could still override at any time and do all the inputs yourself) of FFXII to the tedious random battles of FFX, but the story was warm oatmealy flavorless mush, the character and setting designs were about as new and inspiring as Yet Another Castle #32 from Oblivion.

The story, characters, development, and action of FFXIII is far better than XII. If your time is at a premium, I'd skip that one completely. I'd still recommend FFX-2 because I'm a fiend for it, but ONLY if you played and finished FFX. The combat is better as I mentioned above, but honestly if you didn't follow the story of FFX through to the end, the magic of FFX-2 - which takes all the main characters, all the secondary characters, and even all of the 3rd-string characters that you see in just a few scenes from FFX, and shows how they grow, develop and change through 2 years of "world time" - just doesn't come through. The combat is a shell which carries the story, and without the story it's just a bunch of button mashing.

Does FF13 bode well for me or should I just focus on the DA expansion instead? Because I am enamored with FF6.

I played DA from front to back, but found that game teeeeeeeeeedious, boring, conventional (storywise, that is; combat was interesting at times and pretty involved). So our tastes probably don't add up, so my recommendation either way is probably not going to match your interest.

Jonman wrote:

I can't speak to XII - I've been PS2less since it launched, so I've not played it. X-2 was the dogs doodads though, loved that big time. You may well run into the same problem with getting bored after 30 hours. To be honest, that's a problem that's going to bite you for any RPG though, Dragon Age included, I'd imagine.

Actually, I made it through 1 playthrough of DA (48hrs) and am about 12hrs into my 2nd. It's never felt like a slog. Even ME took about 25 and I've considered restarting that, as well.

In FFX I was more about hoping for something great on the other side of the obstacle each and every time, especially as this 30hrs has felt longer than Mass Effect and Dragon Age. The pacing and/or reward for area completion of the Bioware games I think I'm enjoying much more, because in FFX I've made it to Mt. Gagazat(?) and am just feeling like they want me to ride this roller coaster forever.

While I loved the system in XII, and I really loved it, I felt the story was a bit weak. I feel that the FF series does much better when presenting new and original stories and not being kind of stuck in a preset world. X-2 did it well because it was, I feel, a continuation of the previous story. And while I greatly enjoyed FFX, I really disliked the combat system. I'm a fan of active time battles. That's why X-2 really struck a chord with me. That and you can be a samurai. Also you get a pet monkey. And you can be a gunner. All in the same battle.

And FFVII is a great game. A little dated, but they were really finding their sea legs with the idea of polygons. It's a huge game with tons of content and hidden stuff and airships which is what the FF series does best.