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[hateradio]

It's a prequel novel that reads like fanfiction but nonetheless does a better job of setting up the characters and their motivations than the game itself. For mysterious reasons the writers decided to bury important information there and in the datalog instead of putting that stuff in the game.

They would have taken another year and a half to put all that in, that's why :<

 

[Pooya]

Hahaha, exactly. Need a datalog entry for that ending. Shit.

to be included in FFXIII-2,

Spoiler

Maker has a lot to answer for!

 

[Fimbulvetr]

to be included in FFXIII-2:

Spoiler

Maker appears, explains everything, and is killed by FOXDIE.

Fixed.

 

[Cep]

I don't disagree with any of that, but you're still talking about battles (and character progression/modification, the other really important aspect of RPG gameplay for me) for the most part. I don't think towns are necessary, or even fun really, and I'd much prefer interesting enemy/terrain variety and difficulty within the battle system. I'd like every effort to be made towards making dungeons interesting if a game has them (see FF13 for an example of how not to do that) but I don't think they're necessary either.

You've watched that more than once?!?

Uguu~I'm left-handed. :lol I don't know why I find that funny.

Yeah I agree.

I like towns, but I have no problem with them not being there.

But the lack of good dungeons is the biggest issue. I mean really, they should have been twice as good this time around.

 

[Styles]

Got the Platinum Trophy in 93 hours. Was missing a titanium bangle and wind charm.

 

[Dedication Through Light]

Finally started the game yesterday. I am about 6hours in right now, and i am surprised. I thought i was going to hate it. Dont get me wrong, i dont like it that much either, but it plays alright, considering i was prepared for worse.

The thing i really really hate though, is Hope and Vanille.... oh god. And then you are forced to play as them, why would SE do that if not to piss you off? At least Vanille is kinda hot, makes it less terrible to endure. Hope is just useless though, hope (lol) is he not that much important in the story.

I can never stress how awesome Hope was for me on my team and for in the story, lol.

 

[User 10639]

Yeah I agree.

I like towns, but I have no problem with them not being there.

Towns can be there if they're really great, like Rabanastre. Most of the time I find them tedious.

But the lack of good dungeons is the biggest issue. I mean really, they should have been twice as good this time around.

Especially considering that this game is basically a dungeon crawler... the poor dungeons really hurt.

 

[Caj814]

So for the past 5-8 hours of the game(currently on Ch.12)I found Fang/Hope/Vanille to be the best combo for just about everything(healing,damage,chains,buffing,debuffing,tanking).Are there any better party configs once everyone is maxed on the Crystarium?

 

[Lince]

got 6 dark matter spoils in 30 minutes, this is way easier (and more fun) than farming those damn traps... and thanks God for the elixir, saved my ass when fighting Long Gui for the trophy (got it first try) :lol

and never forget: cast death with Vanille -> immediately switch from SAB to COM -> 500 - 999,999 HP in your face !

 

[Cep]

So for the past 5-8 hours of the game(currently on Ch.12)I found Fang/Hope/Vanille to be the best combo for just about everything(healing,damage,chains,buffing,debuffing,tanking).Are there any better party configs once everyone is maxed on the Crystarium?

I found that to be my favorite as well.

Occasionally putting Snow in as a Sentinel and Lightning as a Medic really are the only exceptions.

 

[toastyToast]

So I finished the game about 20 hours ago and I've almost maxed out the Crystarium (1 role left for everyone), I've found pretty much all I have been is killing turtles for money, CP and traps.

Why the hell did they so integral to the end game? At least let us make money some other way, drops for ultimate weapons I can deal with since they've always been around but the same drop for every weapon? Couldn't there be an assortment of large beasts? I don't dislike the game itself but the end game is atrocious.

I have a few marks left once I'm done I'm shelving this game for a long time.

 

[vazel]

Datalog doesn't really tells you more than what you see in the cutscenes, but there is a good chance you don't understand what happened in the scene you just watched, in this case reading datalogs is helpful but you won't miss much.

I haven't played far into the game but from what I've played so far there is exposition in the datalog that does not show up in cutscenes.

 

[ZephyrFate]

It's a bit unfair to use FF7's Midgar as that was the only imaginative or worthwhile part to the entire game. There's more atmosphere in Midgar than in most games out there -- not many games outside of, say, Blade Runner, have perfectly encapsulated modern dystopia, not in a wasteland (like a Fallout) but in a world heading towards it, slowly sapping away at its own misery and myopia. It's a bit unfair to use Midgar, which is arguably one of the best 'cities' ever envisioned in games, and compare it to XIII which has an entirely different focus and, for the most part, shies away from the dystopia.

The gameplay of XIII is enough for me to put it above nearly every other FF game outside of IX, which it cannot touch with a million foot pole.

 

[BocoDragon]

You know the age old "show the readers, don't tell them?"

For games, I feel it's "let the player experience the game, don't show/tell them about it".

If I'm missing 45% of the story due to not reading some stupid encyclopedia, then it's not a good story to begin with. That's like handing out cliffnotes to a crowd of people who are about to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Fuck. That.

Adages like "show don't tell" have traditionally applied to linear narratives like books or movies. In those mediums, you either have a character explain some aspect of the world verbally, or you have a scene which indirectly communicates this information visually. With gaming, we have player interaction. You don't have to be shown or told... the player could also just "find" a story detail through his interaction. For the first time we have the ability to cut all exposition out of scripted scenes and place it into a format where the player can discover these details at their own leisure. It actually frees the narrative from talking heads and having to be beat over the head with visual clues about every aspect of the world.

Not that this is some objective improvement for storytelling. Not every game should do this. But I wouldn't condemn this style of story as worse... I actually find it refreshing that there is a wealth of added backstory that isn't beat into my head through cutscenes or NPCs... I can read it when I feel like it. Check out tidbits of the story on the way to switching my weapon. It's not unreasonable for an RPG game that already relies on spending time in a menu.

The datalog also helped SE pull off the early in media res scenes IMO. They started talking about Fal Cie and L'Cie and they had the luxury of not having unrealistic exposition dialogue "oh, L'Cie are.... blah blah blah". Everyone knows what L'Cie are in this world, there is no Tidus outsider character to give a reason for why the story is explaining everything to you about the world. The datalog lets them cut the talky BS and present the ultradrama.. then we can discover the meaning of those terms in detail if we desire, as a Cocoon native would already understand. IMO anyone who said that Fal'Cie/L'Cie were meaningless terms should have hit that datalog 20 minutes into the game. It's not like it doesn't remind you everytime it updates.

FFVIII used this encyclopedia in its storytelling as well.

I wish the LOTR movies had a datalog. :lol No idea what was going on in 9+ hours of that thing..

 

[Skilletor]

What is so difficult to understand about the story in FF13? I've only opened the datalog to get rid of the exclamation points and I'm not confused or lost at all. It's a shitty story and it's told very poorly. Every character is an anime archetype and I knew from the getgo how they'd evolve throughout the game. The ingame lingo isn't confusing because they repeat the stuff so often.

 

[User 10639]

So people can discount towns all they want, but every single time it comes off as a shallow attempt to control damage. Either that, or they don't REALLY give a fuck about imagination and just want the game to be fed to them.

You make good points, but give me a fucking break here. I have been plenty critical in this thread; why would I need to run damage control? Unless I worked for Square Enix, that is.

So for the past 5-8 hours of the game(currently on Ch.12)I found Fang/Hope/Vanille to be the best combo for just about everything(healing,damage,chains,buffing,debuffing,tanking).Are there any better party configs once everyone is maxed on the Crystarium?

That's the battle team I use, only problem being Vanille's horrible battle noises (oh god, the moans) because she's too useful to boot from the team otherwise.

 

[AgentOtaku]

Adages like "show don't tell" have traditionally applied to linear narratives like books or movies. In those mediums, you either have a character explain some aspect of the world verbally, or you have a scene which indirectly communicates this information visually. With gaming, we have player interaction. You don't have to be shown or told... the player could also just "find" a story detail through his interaction. For the first time we have the ability to cut all exposition out of scripted scenes and place it into a format where the player can discover these details at their own leisure. It actually frees the narrative from talking heads and having to be beat over the head with visual clues about every aspect of the world.

Not that this is some objective improvement for storytelling. Not every game should do this. But I wouldn't condemn this style of story as worse... I actually find it refreshing that there is a wealth of added backstory that isn't beat into my head through cutscenes or NPCs... I can read it when I feel like it. Check out tidbits of the story on the way to switching my weapon. It's not unreasonable for an RPG game that already relies on spending time in a menu.

The datalog also helped SE pull off the early in media res scenes IMO. They started talking about Fal Cie and L'Cie and they had the luxury of not having unrealistic exposition dialogue "oh, L'Cie are.... blah blah blah". Everyone knows what L'Cie are in this world, there is no Tidus outsider character to give a reason for why the story is explaining everything to you about the world. The datalog lets them cut the talky BS and present the ultradrama.. then we can discover the meaning of those terms in detail if we desire, as a Cocoon native would already understand. IMO anyone who said that Fal'Cie/L'Cie were meaningless terms should have hit that datalog 20 minutes into the game. It's not like it doesn't remind you everytime it updates.

FFVIII used this encyclopedia in its storytelling as well.

I wish the LOTR movies had a datalog. :lol No idea what was going on in 9+ hours of that thing..

Well put man

Looking forward to this as Amazon finally shipped off my copy.

 

[ULTROS!]

Although FFX and FFXIII are similar in terms of... Mapping? I found more life and beauty in FFX for some reason.

 

[BocoDragon]

FF8 didn't use the encyclopedia style datalog for storytelling.

In a sense it did though.

I don't think it was explained in a game scene why Dollet's communications tower was an outdated form of technology abandoned due to radio interference from Adel's satellite coffin, and how it forced Galbadia to invade them in order to broadcast a worldwide message... for example. :lol All of that stuff was revealing in the in-game encyclopedia along with a bunch of other backstory (including the game's creator myth and how it related to sorceresses!)

Obviously XIII relies on the datalog more heavily though. It seems right in line with them stripping out exploration, healing after battle, all that.

 

[ZephyrFate]

I have no love for 8 nor any of its environments. IX is just perfect, so that's a no-duh sort of thing. The Forgotten City was great, if only for its music, but Midgar just came out of absolutely nowhere in its awesomeness.

Towns are pretty much just filler now with XIII's ridiculously addictive gameplay.

 

[DimmuBurgerKing]

That's the battle team I use, only problem being Vanille's horrible battle noises (oh god, the moans) because she's too useful to boot from the team otherwise.

The big WTF moment for me was the first time I witnessed Vanille's screaming orgasm scene after demanding that Hecaton bring out the "big guns."

 

[User 10639]

No, I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about FF13 apologists who seem to have to support every decision of the game. As Magnus said a few pages back,"I don't mind it, so it's amazing!" :lol

Haha, OK, we're still cool then.

That said, if you're going to make a rpg with as little variety as possible, do it right. Also, making the game 15-20 hours as opposed to 40+ would go a long, long way in terms of quality.

This I definitely agree with, but I think devs are scared of making an RPG "too short" or w/e. But I'd prefer a more compacted and memorable experience over a drawn-out, overly repetitive one. Most single-player games are too short; RPGs are sometimes exhaustingly long. And honestly, towns or not, most RPGs do not offer enough varied gameplay to justify a 40+ hour length. I think meaningful roleplaying can easily be done in a shorter amount of time, too, so that's not really an issue as I see it.

But enough about that. I'm just a bitter guy who is completely disappointed his once favorite game series is now completely unrecognizable.

You've got to learn to let go, mang. This is what Metal Gear Solid 4 felt like for me. :lol

Well, those few seconds are so funny and the whole thing is so laughably bad that sometimes I can't help myself. Plus, I linking to it as seen above.

I must admit that I may have watched the ending of School Days once or twice on Youtube for shits and giggles, so I really shouldn't judge.

 

[ZephyrFate]

FF went 'unrecognizable' after IX. IX was the end-all of the series and everything afterward has just fallen apart.

 

[BocoDragon]

I miss details like that. I guess they don't matter anymore, just like towns and variety.

I love RPG towns, and your FF7/8/9 pics above are like candy.. but I fully expect them to come back in future FFs. I don't think the XIII experiment is set in stone for future games any more than getting Gil from a "SeeD salary" was. I wouldn't judge XIII's changes as being representative of "the direction for the FF series".. it's just one game.

 

[hateradio]

But wait, let's remember now guys. Towns don't matter, they're just filler. I guess generic robo dogs and robo soldiers and caricature villains are enough to satisfy the modern Final Fantasy "fan".

Pretty much, not to mention that the corridors weren't even as interesting or dynamic as X's, if I say so myself.

It was usually a city, a subway, a rocky terrain, a long hall, or some mix; then you have Pulse but I'm so picky because the colors are so bad and the contrast is awful. Also the surroundings aren't really distinguishable.

Except for Ch 12,

Spoiler

but then it's still a road of some kind

. :lol


There was no life to Pulse or Cocoon, I mean there was the

Spoiler

tarnished city Oerba, but it wasn't that interesting either

, it just looked boring, like a rusty trailer park.

 

[ZephyrFate]

It's okay, I'm right.

 

[KTallguy]

I just said that because I'm sick of reading,"Since when did towns or other stuff add anything to these games?" and I know these fuckers are full of bullshit.

I think towns as locations to visit are great, and I think they provide a good ebb and flow to the pacing. I do think that being forced to trek back to town to stock up, or having to talk to a bunch of NPCs in a specific order to progress is annoying as hell (looking at YOU DQ!).

I liked how FF12 towns were done the most. FFversus13 will have towns and world map and shit, so I think we'll be OK.

I admit that looking back on it, FFXIII was mostly corridors, but looking at the environment and soaking in the story of each location was fun in it itself.

It's been about a month since I beat the game and I still remember enjoying it! That's something, at least! I have ... little to no memory of FF9, in comparison :lol

This is why I'm pretty positive FF versus 13 will be the real FF13.

Praying to Shiva, here

 

[BocoDragon]

It's explained. When the tv station in Timber becomes active, they say radio waves hadn't been used since the war and that it was the first broadcast in years. And that the reason Galbadia took over the satellite in Dollet to begin with was so they could transmit that message in Timber, because with radio waves they could broadcast to the whole world.

100% from memory, without using an in-game encyclopedia. I don't even REMEMBER an encyclopedia in FF8 and I've played the game 99999 times.

So I have no clue what you are talking about.

Well from the type of person determined to skip XIII's encyclopedia I'm not surprised you completely missed VIIIs. :lol

Well rest assured, it's there, and it added to the detail of the game world immensely when I played the game 10 years ago.

Did you know that VIII's world now communicates through HD cables because of Adel's space-interferance? Do you know who the Great Hyne was? It was all detail from the encyclopedia.

It's small compared to XIII's datalog, of course, but this is a very similar example from ten years ago. This concept has been done before.

This is why I'm pretty positive FF versus 13 will be the real FF13.

I hope the FF game overworld they were talking about copying was XII!

 

[Cep]

FF went 'unrecognizable' after IX. IX was the end-all of the series and everything afterward has just fallen apart.

Oh you and your irrational FF9 love.

 

[ZephyrFate]

Oh you and your irrational FF9 love.

I know, I'm right.

Edit: Oh Himuro, no one has ever said that before, that is so original, god, you are so fresh, that is JUST so fresh

I have never heard anyone say that about FFIX before. Never. I am surprised at how you're bucking trends! God... you are just so imaginative.

 

[BocoDragon]

I know, I'm right.

Edit: Oh Himuro, no one has ever said that before, that is so original, god, you are so fresh, that is JUST so fresh

I have never heard anyone say that about FFIX before. Never. I am surprised at how you're bucking trends! God... you are just so imaginative.

:lol

 

[M°°nblade]

Bullet holes spread fully across a wall, showing signs of struggle in the past.
A rotting church which houses one of the few places flowers can bloom in a poluted city.
A forgotten capitol that once housed an ancient race of people thousands of years ago and also the final resting place of the main heroine.
War has come to this city and the party has to do battle in an never ending surge of rainfall. Morbid all around.

What does 13 have? Nice and shiny corridors. What an interesting and captivating world. Even when the game tries to make me care (Pulse) I don't give a shit. It's just a bunch of monsters running around.

What's your point? That you want FF to go back to prerendered 2D backrounds with invisible random encounters?

But, it's not fair to compare! And yet FF13's world continues to be about as imaginative as a Transformers movie. What's the story of FF13's world? I dunno. They make robodogs and have robo soldiers.

But wait, let's remember now guys. Towns don't matter, they're just filler. I guess generic robo dogs and robo soldiers and caricature villains are enough to satisfy the modern Final Fantasy "fan".

The datalog is kind of a replacement for the NPC conversation. In previous FF games you had to press a button in front of an NPC to learn about the world. Now you press a button in the datalog menu. While this certainly lacks a virtual-social aspect, it does the job of explaining the story of the world.

 

[User 10639]

FF went 'unrecognizable' after IX. IX was the end-all of the series and everything afterward has just fallen apart.

I'm kind of curious as to why you think IX is the end all be all of the series. Is it the incredibly slow battles that draw you in? The villain who wears a codpiece/thong?

This is why I'm pretty positive FF versus 13 will be the real FF13.

Ehhh, I don't trust Nomura, and unless it's a rare exception like Demon's Souls, "action RPG" is typically code for "repetitive button masher." Plus, the artwork released thus far for that game is the definition of generic and lame.

 

[leng jai]

Himuro's post count in this thread: 301. Lol?

 

[ZephyrFate]

I'm kind of curious as to why you think IX is the end all be all of the series. Is it the incredibly slow battles that draw you in? The villain who wears a codpiece/thong?

Ehhh, I don't trust Nomura, and unless it's a rare exception like Demon's Souls, "action RPG" is typically code for "repetitive button masher." Plus, the artwork released thus far for that game is the definition of generic and lame.

Nope: It's the Shakespearean undertrappings, the 'game as a play' thematic, the visuals, the gorgeous music, the charming story and characters, the epic movies...

and Vivi.

 

[Cep]

How does one check the post counts again?

I forget.

 

[M°°nblade]

How does one check the post counts again?

I forget.

You click on the number of replies of the thread that's shown next to the 'last post' name.

Himuro has truly taken 'vocal minority' to the next level. I guess he had enough gaf points to learn the army of one ability. Whiny bitch level 5.

 

[BocoDragon]

How does one check the post counts again?

I forget.

holy shit.. even being number 7th most prolific poster scares me! :lol

 

[ULTROS!]

Hey, I'm the 40th and I rarely visit this thread. :lol

Anyway, how do I get easy and lotsa Crystarium Points at Chapter 13 (post game)

Spoiler

the boss-monsters pre-Nathex gave me around 32,000 but I can't fight them anymore

?

 

[ZephyrFate]

Growth Egg, King Behemoth and wolf fight. 13.2k a fight that takes all of five seconds to beat.

 

[RadioHeadAche]

I'm kind of curious as to why you think IX is the end all be all of the series. Is it the incredibly slow battles that draw you in? The villain who wears a codpiece/thong?

I could not tell if he was a female or not. I went back and forth a few times on that until I discovered that Kuja was, in fact, male. He is pretty, though.


On a FFXIII note, do all eidolon battles involve a "doom" counter?

 

[firehawk12]

Hey, I'm the 40th and I rarely visit this thread. :lol

Anyway, how do I get easy and lotsa Crystarium Points at Chapter 13 (post game)

Spoiler

the boss-monsters pre-Nathex gave me around 32,000 but I can't fight them anymore

?

If you're going for easy grinding, I'd go for mission 24, simply because you get gil along with 12k CP per battle.

On a FFXIII note, do all eidolon battles involve a "doom" counter?

Yup.

 

[DangerousDave]

FF13 is probably the most repetitive rpg I have ever played, and I have played a shit load of rpgs.

I recently replayed FF X.

Unskippable random battles each 10 seconds, composed basicly of "attack" and, from time to time, elemental magic for some enemies, in a slooooow turn based gameplay. Then, entering the menu, skills, and use Lulu or Yuna to heal the damage.

And basicly the same linearity of FF XIII, but with wider roads, forcing you to go in diagonal to avoid losing chests. And, yeah, towns composed by four people (a seller, a guy who doesn't say anything useful, a chest disguised of NPC, and an NPC that you need to talk to continue advancing).

 

[RadioHeadAche]

Yup.

Well burn my biscuits.

 

[toastyToast]

Anyway, how do I get easy and lotsa Crystarium Points at Chapter 13 (post game)

Spoiler

the boss-monsters pre-Nathex gave me around 32,000 but I can't fight them anymore

?

That's probably the best spot in the game. The other option is to start killing turtles which give 40,000CP for about 2 minutes work. Alternatively you can continue with the behemoths near the Mah'habbara (sp?) exit of the Steppe.

 

[Yoshichan]

Fuck I want to play this game again and I've 100%:ed it twice... I love it.

 

[Thrakier]

I completly agree with Himuro. Towns make RPGs to RPGs, imo. They enrich the role playing aspect, make the world alive, make the journey and the world believable. FFXIII is just corridor after corridor with no connection.

 

[Rpgmonkey]

I recently replayed FF X.

Unskippable random battles each 10 seconds, composed basicly of "attack" and, from time to time, elemental magic for some enemies, in a slooooow turn based gameplay. Then, entering the menu, skills, and use Lulu or Yuna to heal the damage.

And basicly the same linearity of FF XIII, but with wider roads, forcing you to go in diagonal to avoid losing chests. And, yeah, towns composed by four people (a seller, a guy who doesn't say anything useful, a chest disguised of NPC, and an NPC that you need to talk to continue advancing).

What I've learned from this is that in the nine-ten years between X and XIII, this team has apparently learned/improved almost nothing.

 

[M°°nblade]

What I've learned from this is that in the nine-ten years between X and XIII, this team has apparently learned/improved almost nothing.

Except that they revamped the slow battle system into something fun and actually challenging, eliminated the unskippable random encounters and included 'real' dungeons with well placed savepoints. You can even skip cutscenes this time.
Overall it's an improvement imo.

 

[RadioHeadAche]

Except that they revamped the slow battle system into something fun, eliminated the unskippable random encounters and included 'real' dungeons. You can even skip cutscenes this time.
Overall it's an improvement imo.

Removing random encounters certainly is an improvement. I despise them so much. I'm surprised they remained in so many Final Fantasy games despite Chrono Trigger working so well without them. Are there people who actually enjoy random encounters?