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LttP: Final Fantasy XIII

ULTROS!

ULTROS!

People seem to like me because I am polite and I am rarely late. I like to eat ice cream and I really enjoy a nice pair of slacks.
Just wondering, what's the purpose for your character's stagger bar? I remember seeing them but a character getting staggered has never happened to me before.
 
S

scy

Member
Really could have just been, "I can handle myself"-esque line; "Moms are tough" comes off cheesier. It's a perfectly fine and tolerable line, though. To seriously quit on the game due to that is pretty hard to believe.
 
S

Syril

Member
scy said:
Really could have just been, "I can handle myself"-esque line; "Moms are tough" comes off cheesier. It's a perfectly fine and tolerable line, though. To seriously quit on the game due to that is pretty hard to believe.
Click to expand...

Given that it was a scene focusing on Snow, I'm sure cheesy is what they were going for.
 
Joei

Joei

Member
Anticitizen One said:
This was the game where fans finally released they outgrew the franchise.
Click to expand...

I don't know if it's outgrowing the franchise per se, but just that that the dialogue was horrendous in this game. I remember sitting there hearing the lines and thinking of these guys at their desks smirking while writing this drivel. Some of the lines wouldn't have been so bad in the 2D era without VA, but with VA we can see and hear just how ridiculous some of this crap is. One more point I can make is how come I didn't feel like I outgrew the series with 12, but with 13 I would?
 
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viciouskillersquirrel

Member
Anteater said:
Those who hates that line are terrible people, they're probably the same people who likes Noel and hate Snow, don't worry about them.
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Who is Noel?

It wasn't anything on par with the FFX laughing scene, but it was a cheesy, awkward line that could have been translated much better. It's cited because there are a lot of moments, especially the grunting noises and the moments where the characters want to say things but avoid doing so at the last minute by making a noise that simply don't translate from Japanese without sounding unnatural. They did an OK job in translating, but a terrible job in localising.

Also, I wasn't involved in FFXIII threads prior to playing the game, so I went in fresh and even then, that line stuck out for me.
 
S

Seik

Banned
I just went back in the game this week, I was stuck against Vanille's eidolon since launch, I kicked my ass and decided to grind the shit out of my team, I want to finish it before XIII-2. I finally beat him...the game is not all that bad...I used to hate it after been stuck at this bastard.

Dat cut-scene in the beginning of Chapter 12 is just so eye-candy, jaw-dropping graphic goodness.
 
R

RedSwirl

Junior Member
Man, Chapter 11 has really started do drag, going back and forth on all these quests. Yeah it's a little more liberating than just going down a corridor, but overall not much better than the rest of the game previous.
 
B

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
RedSwirl said:
More or less. Didn't Kitase confirm that the franchise was still primarily aimed at teens?
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I think that statement made me rage when I first heard it.... but now I think "of course it is" and there's nothing wrong with that. FF is always a silly, adventurous fantasy. Do we really need mature elements in FF? Not particularly. It's on the level of Star Wars (OT), LotR... whatever.. it's not necessary going to improved by featuring themes of infedility, suicide, murder, or whatever it is that "mature" means. It's basically saying that it's a "family/for all ages" story... and that's just fine. Adults should still be able to enjoy it... if they understand what it really is.

But "being aimed at teens" is no excuse for bad writing... and that's the main problem here.

The heroes can be idealistic, and the villains can be vaguely "saturday morning" evil... but they have to have coherant motivations, with coherant plot points.

You can't hide behind shit writing and then say, "it's for kids". Disney wouldn't stand for that, and neither should Square Enix.
 
D

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
ULTROS! said:
Here's my main party:

Fang/Lightning/Hope

Com/com/rav (default)
Com/rav/rav
Com/rav/med
Com/com/med
Sab/med/syn
Sen/med/med

This works out every time for me unless it's the long gui or the final mission.
Click to expand...
I love talking about party sets. :D

Let's talk about party sets. This was my party for Chapter 11. It was dope.

Hope/Vanille/Fang:
Rav/Sab/Sen
Rav/Rav/Sen
Syn/Rav/Com
Rav/Sab/Com
Syn/Med/Sab
Med/Med/Sen

Extra for fodder: Rav/Rav/Com (I replaced Syn/Med/Sab with this Optimum when Pulse turned into my playground rather than battleground).

My Chapter 12/13 Optima set was:
Hope/Vanille/Fang
Rav/Sab/Com
Syn/Rav/Com
Rav/Rav/Sen
Rav/Rav/Com
Syn/Med/Sab
Med/Med/Sen

Er, you can imagine my surprise when Chapter 12 opened up where
I had to use Lightning and her Eidolon to boot. Outside of that one tutorial battle where it taught you to use it, I never used it before. And I took Lightning out of my party after you were able to use all the party members, so I ended up controlling not one, but two people I barely used at that point (Snow? What is this moron doing here?).
.

My turtle parties are in this post.

scy said:
Glad I'm not the only one who straight up went dumb on that. Highwind's high damage made it irrelevant a lot, though; half the time I used it ended up being the final attack of the fight anyway so I never realized until things started surviving.

Due to the way Sazh's attack works, as well as his long attack animations, his ATK is a bit misleading.
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"Oh hey, the Adamantaimai is in break mode, let's spam Highwind!"
"Why isn't the Adamantaimai in break mode anymore? Must have a special ability to take itself out of break status."
"Now I'm gonna defeat it." *spam Highwind*
"WTF is this nonsen--..."
Different game entirely, but this was me for a while. Er, not out loud, of course.
*tries a few more times*
"...It's Highwind, isn't it? Dammit, Fang."

Though I never found myself saying this. FFXIII is a perfectly competent game gameplay-wise in comparison.

Eventually I got tired to doing postgame content in the JP version. When I obtained the EN version, I just decided to plat the game because I need to have that one perfect save for each RPG, and I couldn't leave things undone even if I didn't really enjoy the game. >.>

ULTROS! said:
Just wondering, what's the purpose for your character's stagger bar? I remember seeing them but a character getting staggered has never happened to me before.
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It increases healing potency and duration of buffs. Not useful by the time you actually try to make a difference so don't worry about it.

Fimbulvetr said:
People who hate Snow? You mean people with good taste?
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:D
 
A

Anticitizen One

Banned
Joei said:
I don't know if it's outgrowing the franchise per se, but just that that the dialogue was horrendous in this game. I remember sitting there hearing the lines and thinking of these guys at their desks smirking while writing this drivel. Some of the lines wouldn't have been so bad in the 2D era without VA, but with VA we can see and hear just how ridiculous some of this crap is. One more point I can make is how come I didn't feel like I outgrew the series with 12, but with 13 I would?
Click to expand...

Maybe that you developed and that gaming changed so much in the years between 12 and 13?
 
B

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Anticitizen One said:
Maybe that you developed and that gaming changed so much in the years between 12 and 13?
Click to expand...

No.. He's got a point.

The Matsuno XII dialogue was genuinely well written, and you might as well say its for adult listeners.

XIII was more like a Shounen manga for teens.

If you want to make the case that most FFs have had Shounen-level dialogue, that's fair, but XII was certainly of an unexpectedly mature dialogue level, that may have delayed the "outgrowing FF" phenomenon you have put forward.

And the fact that XII exists gives me the right to demand that FF try for more than just kids anime shit... They've flirted with it before.
 
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Raitosaito

Member
BocoDragon said:
No.. He's got a point.

The Matsuno XII dialogue was genuinely well written, and you might as well say its for adult listeners.

XIII was more like a Shounen manga for teens.

If you want to make the case that most FFs have had Shounen-level dialogue, that's fair, but XII was certainly an unexpectedly mature dialogue level, that may have delayed the "outgrowing FF" phenomenon you have put forward.

And the fact that XII exists gives me the right to demand that FF try for more than just kids anime shit... They've flirted with it before.
Click to expand...

Someone who understands!
 
A

Anteater

Member
I think it has to do with the heavy focus on character drama in this game, the previous entries have them too but they were a bit more subtle with other stuff to go with them, not to mention 7-9 had no voice acting, in this game you usually have 2 characters (or more) face to face acting out their lines like a japanese tv drama the majority of the game.
 
B

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
I just want to say that I have no problem with the sappy, Japanese melodrama of XIII. I didn't think the style of the dialogue was "bad", per se. It's just anime.. an Asian soap opera with lots of overwrought lines. It's part of the territory. Obviously it will turn off a large percentage of the Western audience (and some Japanese, I'm sure), but it is what it is. Maybe it should be tweaked for mass appeal, but that's not my call... and it doesn't set off warning bells in my head for whatever reason. There's an appeal to it, for some of us.

My main concern was that the posturing, the drama, was EMPTY and undeserved. The storyline didn't actually merit such ultra-drama. It's like the melodramatic angst was a foregone conclusion of the cutscene design.... but they didn't actually back it up with story beats that necessitated such pained, dramatic posturing. That's why you seem to have characters fighting with each other for no reason, even plotting murderous vengeance (Hope), for things which really seem kind of minor and weren't explained very well.

I think we'd all rather see characters who are lighthearted, upbeat heroes (a la the first Star Wars).... but when the story actually necessitates dramatic exchanges, then turn on the angsty conflicts and dramatic line readings.

I generally think XIII is a case of being less than the sum of its parts. It's like they wanted to engineer a really angsty story, with an otherworldly scenario design, but there's something hollow when they put it all together... because they went about it backwards. Start with the story first, and earn your way towards real drama. Empty, pretensious melodrama is kind of revolting.
 
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RedSwirl

Junior Member
Yeah, really not liking Chapter 11 more than the rest of the game up to this point. They've just traded linearity for backtracking. It still doesn't alleviate the game's main problem of being an essentially dead world filled with nothing but battles. If I were Square Enix and had to deal with this kind of game design, I would have at least tried to turn it into a decent loot dungeon crawler.

BocoDragon said:
No.. He's got a point.

The Matsuno XII dialogue was genuinely well written, and you might as well say its for adult listeners.

XIII was more like a Shounen manga for teens.

If you want to make the case that most FFs have had Shounen-level dialogue, that's fair, but XII was certainly of an unexpectedly mature dialogue level, that may have delayed the "outgrowing FF" phenomenon you have put forward.

And the fact that XII exists gives me the right to demand that FF try for more than just kids anime shit... They've flirted with it before.
Click to expand...

I think the issue is that XII isn't really a Final Fantasy game so much as a Matsuno game. It fits in with Tactics and Vagrant Story more than it does the other FF games.

But yes, most Final Fantasy games, and really most Japanese RPGs in general, are basically Shonen manga in game form, just like most WRPGs are basically fantasy novels in game form. In that context you gotta ask yourself, what are the best-written Shonen manga to draw on? In the game space I personally think Grandia II and Skies of Arcadia were quite well-written as far as characters go, but that's just me. Skies particularly because they aren't so melodramatic all the time. In fact that entire game's dialogue is quite lighthearted. Grandia II developed the interactions between its characters a lot more than most of what I've seen from FF. Persona 3 and Persona 4 are also great examples of how to properly balance a character cast. The latter especially is an excellent example of a good plot executed on a small scale.
 
ULTROS!

ULTROS!

People seem to like me because I am polite and I am rarely late. I like to eat ice cream and I really enjoy a nice pair of slacks.
Did you have a specific party for fighting Shaolong Guis, Dark Schala? I know my party is completely different as compared to the Long Gui party. IIRC, my Shaolong Gui party is like this:

Fang/Lighting/Hope

SEN/SEN/SEN (default)
SEN/MED/MED or MED/MED/MED
SAB/SYN/SYN
COM/RAV/RAV
COM/COM/COM
SEN/MED/SYN (or something, I know I didn't use the last one much)
 
D

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
ULTROS! said:
Did you have a specific party for fighting Shaolong Guis, Dark Schala? I know my party is completely different as compared to the Long Gui party.
IIRC, my Shaolong Gui party was like this:

Fang/Lighting/Hope

SEN/SEN/SEN (default)
SEN/MED/MED or MED/MED/MED
SAB/SYN/SYN
COM/RAV/RAV
COM/COM/COM
SEN/MED/SYN (or something, I know I didn't use the last one much)
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Yeah. Two of them until I got Lightning's Ultima Weapon and started using her for Army of One.

Shaolong Gui Party 1:

Fang/Vanille/Snow

*Syn/Sab/Syn (buffing/debuffing)
Sen/Sen/Sen (essential for the first round of Quake. Switch to it when he stomps or casts Ultima)
Rav/Rav/Rav (Beefing up Break Gauge to kill leg)
Com/Rav/Sab (continue casting Daze; drive up Break Gauge)
Com/Rav/Sab (this is set up twice for ATB cancelling)
Med/Med/Med (precaution; if it's dazed, switch to this immediately to get health back up)

Equip:
Fang: Pandoran Spear/Calamity Spear, Gaian Ring, Genji Glove, Power Glove, Power Glove
Vanille: Malboro Wand, Gaian Ring, Weirding Glyph, Magus's Bracelet, Collector Catalogue
Snow: Paladin/Winged Saint, Gaian Ring, Gold Watch, Sorcerer's Mark, Connoisseur's Catalogue

Another thing to keep in mind is that I started fighting these things while trying to transition between Tier-1 and Tier-2 weapons, so... fights were harder than normal.

After getting used to fighting the Guis and recognizing their patterns, and also after getting Lightning's Ultima Weapon, I decided to change things up.

Shaolong Gui Party 2:

Lightning/Fang/Sazh

*Syn/Sab/Syn (Lightning to cast an En-spell on herself (any En- spell, I didn't care since you're getting Imperil on it) and Fang; this has a purpose if you get Imperil on it)
Sen/Sen/Sen (turtle against the turtle)
Rav/Rav/Rav (Beefing up Break Gauge)
Com/Com/Sab (continue casting Daze; drive up Break Gauge)
Com/Com/Sab (ATB cancel)
Med/Med/Med (heal when monster is dazed -- didn't attach a SEN to this because the SEN will provoke it, bringing it out of Daze, and causing me problems)

Equip:
Light: Ultima Weapon, Genji Glove, Power Glove, Power Glove, Gaian Ring
Fang: Calamity Spear, Genji Glove, Power Glove, Gaian Ring, Gold Watch
Sazh: Fomalhaut Elites, Gaian Ring, Collector's Catalogue, Connoisseur's Catalogue, General's Belt

Way easier with this setup because Sazh's casting speed is slow, slow, slow, omg... it's way helpful.


As for the Long Guis, I went with... (lol, just trust me on this one because it works)

Light/Vanille/Fang

*Syn/Syn/Syn (quick buff before it does its first stomp or Quake to move onto Tri-Sen)
Sen/Sen/Sen (turn into a turtle to fight the turtle)
Rav/Rav/Rav (drive up Break Gauge quick to get those legs down)
Sab/Sab/Sab (debuff quick to get those legs down)
Com/Sab/Com (hit that thing hard and debuff it) LOL, I ran to my PS3 since that didn't seem right. If someone's SAB, they'd stop debuffing after they finish doing all they could. The correct Optima is Com/Rav/Com. Makes more sense.
Com/Med/Med (healing quickly while maintaining break gauge)

Equip:
Fang: Calamity Spear/Kain's Lance, Gaian Ring, Genji Glove, Kaiser Knuckles, Kaiser Knuckles
Vanille: Malboro Wand/Nirvana, Gaian Ring, Weirding Glyph, Weirding Glyph, General's Belt
Light: Ultima Weapon/Omega Weapon, Genji Glove, Kaiser Knuckles, Gaian Ring, General's Belt

I guess by my weapon selections, you can see that I value buffing/debuffing the most.

As for the first time I downed a Long Gui, I kinda cheesed it and used Smokes and Elixirs since I didn't put the effort into learning a lot about the intricacies of the battle system at the time. I can't remember what I used for that one at all. I think it honestly might have been a Hope/Vanille/Fang party for some reason.
 
N

Nert

Member
I have many problems with Final Fantasy XIII, but I really like the battle system. Having buffs and debuffs not only be useful, but also having them be usable on bosses, was refreshing. The autobattle/paradigm combination makes easy fights less tedious (no need to individually select "attack" over and over again) while also making boss fights more hectic (some of them had me shifting paradigms every 10 seconds). There are no random battles, and you can immediately retry fights upon losing. Awesome.

The only flaws I can really find with it are more related to the game's core issues (it takes forever to get full access to the party and all of the jobs, for example).
 
R

RedSwirl

Junior Member
I'm seriously thinking of just hanging this game up and YouTub'ing the rest of it so I can try out XIII-2 and see if that's any better.

I'm still in the middle of Chapter 11 doing the stone quests on Gran Pulse. Can anyone tell me if the game actually get's much better after this, or how much there is left in the remaining two chapters? What I'm playing now isn't really much better than the previous 10 chapters.
 
A

airmangataosenai

Member
Augemitbutter said:
it was tolerable in japanese with subtitles.
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Yeah man, totally.

"Moms are tough." is a terrible translation of "Moms are tough."

Either way the hate this line gets is idiotic, Sazh for some reason skates by with little hate but he's every bit as cheesy as Snow, and at least with Snow the game acknowledges he's a dumbass and rewards us with seeing him get punched in the face multiple times. Never happens with Mr. Sunshine and Rainbows. Apparently we're supposed to like him because he's a single dad.
 
F

Fimbulvetr

Member
airmangataosenai said:
Either way the hate this line gets is idiotic, Sazh for some reason skates by with little hate but he's every bit as cheesy as Snow, and at least with Snow the game acknowledges he's a dumbass and rewards us with seeing him get punched in the face multiple times. Never happens with Mr. Sunshine and Rainbows. Apparently we're supposed to like him because he's a single dad.
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Yeah, Sazh gets some pretty horrible jokes (is it me, or did all of the characters just love to make horrible attempts at passive aggressive comedy?) and some awkward ass exposition (yes Sazh, Lightning does in fact know that l’Cie who fail turn into Cie’th. Literally everyone on the planet knows this).

On the other hand, Snow is constantly more annoying and his lame character arc does a complete 180, completely invalidating itself, for no real reason.
 
S

SpaceBridge

Member
I need to admit something: the first time I played XIII, I got to chapter 11 and lost interest or burnt out. Mainly because for the first 30 hours your pushed along in this "point A to point B" narrative. Second time I played it, I used a game guide, and it helped get over that hurdle in Chapter 11 of "what do I do now". It made the game much more enjoyable, believe it or not.
 
D

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
Fimbulvetr said:
Yeah, Sazh gets some pretty horrible jokes (is it me, or did all of the characters just love to make horrible attempts at passive aggressive comedy?) and some awkward ass exposition (yes Sazh, Lightning does in fact know that l’Cie who fail turn into Cie’th. Literally everyone on the planet knows this).

On the other hand, Snow is constantly more annoying and his lame character arc does a complete 180, completely invalidating itself, for no real reason.
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The bolded struck me as dumb, dumb, dumb. I know it's to let the player know that part of the mythos, but if everyone knows about this on Cocoon, then this information could have been conveyed to the player a little better somehow rather than reiterating it to a playable character who knows about this stuff already (she's part of the army, for crying out loud).

And not to mention that Hope completes his character arc in Chapter 7, and then they undo all of his character development because--oops!--they forgot to give him a transformer back there too.

RedSwirl said:
I'm still in the middle of Chapter 11 doing the stone quests on Gran Pulse. Can anyone tell me if the game actually get's much better after this, or how much there is left in the remaining two chapters? What I'm playing now isn't really much better than the previous 10 chapters.
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You don't really have to do all of the missions. You can just move on through Mah'habara. The last two chapters go by pretty quickly.

I didn't like how the narrative just fell off a cliff in Chapters 10 and 11 at all. And the cutscenes in Chapter 11 seemed... disjointed. Like there was a segment of the game that was supposed to be in there but was taken out.
 
RpgN

RpgN

Junior Member
Fimbulvetr said:
Yeah, Sazh gets some pretty horrible jokes (is it me, or did all of the characters just love to make horrible attempts at passive aggressive comedy?) and some awkward ass exposition (yes Sazh, Lightning does in fact know that l’Cie who fail turn into Cie’th. Literally everyone on the planet knows this).

On the other hand, Snow is constantly more annoying and his lame character arc does a complete 180, completely invalidating itself, for no real reason.
Click to expand...

It really sounds like you're looking too much into it and nitpicking for the sake of it. It doesn't sound weird when Sazh explains this to Lightning when she was acting like an idiot without a cause or explanation (at the time), kind of reminding her wether she hit her head or something.

I'm not sure at what part you're talking about Snow (chapter 10 when he doubts himself?). It doesn't feel like no real reason to me or a complete 180.

RedSwirl said:
I'm seriously thinking of just hanging this game up and YouTub'ing the rest of it so I can try out XIII-2 and see if that's any better.
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It sounds like FFXIII is not a game for you at all really, because chapter 11 is supposed to be the point that rewards the ones who didn't like the first half, which is really a weird way to look at it. Why force yourself playing through the majority of the game when you know you're going to like one chapter in the end?
 
Perfo

Perfo

Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
BocoDragon said:
it's not necessary going to improved by featuring themes of infedility, suicide, murder, or whatever it is that "mature" means.
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You can look at Dragon Age to understand what gamers think of maturity in games: sex, tits and blood. I can stay with my Final Fantasy and being called an immature then.


BocoDragon said:
My main concern was that the posturing, the drama, was EMPTY and undeserved. The storyline didn't actually merit such ultra-drama. It's like the melodramatic angst was a foregone conclusion of the cutscene design.... but they didn't actually back it up with story beats that necessitated such pained, dramatic posturing. That's why you seem to have characters fighting with each other for no reason, even plotting murderous vengeance (Hope), for things which really seem kind of minor and weren't explained very well.
Click to expand...

That's true though. Sometimes the drama was there just to be there and for no other reasons. Felt unnecessary.
 
V

viciouskillersquirrel

Member
airmangataosenai said:
Yeah man, totally.

"Moms are tough." is a terrible translation of "Moms are tough."

Either way the hate this line gets is idiotic, Sazh for some reason skates by with little hate but he's every bit as cheesy as Snow, and at least with Snow the game acknowledges he's a dumbass and rewards us with seeing him get punched in the face multiple times. Never happens with Mr. Sunshine and Rainbows. Apparently we're supposed to like him because he's a single dad.
Click to expand...

I liked Sazh before I found out he had a kid. He's just likeable.
 
G

Gambit

Member
I completed XIII for the first time yesterday.

Honestly, the game is very strange. At first the story starts out ok (it`s never brilliant), but the game is so limiting. In hindsight my favourite story segments were the beginning, up until and including Lightning travelling with Hope, and Sazh with Vanille. Maybe until the first Barthandalus fight. But you never have control over party members, your crystarium is VERY limited and the fights involve little strategy.

Later on the system opens up and improves, but the story turns into an absolute nightmare. They throw around terms without explaining them, but do explain "easy stuff" like the above-mentioned Cieth comment.

The first half the game system is the biggest flaw, the second half it's the story and complete lack of characterisation (even undoing character arcs that have already been completed).

I think from all the FFs I've completed, at the moment XIII is my least favourite. It might change when I think about it with more distance, but atm it's true. It just has so many problems. And when they improve one area, they worsen another.

The same seems to be true for XIII-2. Improves a lot, does a lot worse.
 
H

hteng

Banned
Box of Bunnies said:
I'm in the majority that enjoyed the game more or less the whole way through but it definitely had some missed potential, especially in terms of the villains.

FFXIII_Jihl.jpg


We hardly knew ye.
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yea.. she's very sexy looking, really like her design, looking for her doujinshis.
 
D

Diablos

Member
I really enjoyed XIII. The story is pretty bad, and the linearity, given the game's development cycle, is just lame to say the least. You look at the game for what it is, and really, it should have been able to come out in 2008. Clearly S-E was having some legit internal problems (and probably still does). I once heard on a 1Up Podcast that a someone on the FFXIII crew was tasked with designing a rock for a cutscene for two weeks. One rock. For two weeks. (12/2/11 Episode of Games, Dammit for reference, 31:41). That's pretty terrible. I don't know if that is entirely credible, but I wouldn't be surprised it was.

So why do I still give this game high marks? What made me enjoy it so damn much was the battle system, and that was really the meat and potatoes of this game. I found it to be a lot more fun than anything in the FF that preceded it, and it seemed to strike the perfect balance of automation while still retaining control of the battle tactics and specific commands. I'd have to say it's the best since FFVII (my all time fav) and Tactics. I also think that it has one of the best OST's in the series (easily top 3), and really pushed gaming music foward. Hamauzu is absolutely brilliant.

FFXIII-2 from what I read and have been told only improves upon what I already loved about XIII, so those are all welcome additions. The linearity has been addressed too. I probably won't have any need to play XIII after this as there's more to do, while retaining the battle system.

And of course the story apparently still sucks, but that's no surprise; it's a continuation of XIII so it's not like they can just disregard the fundamentals of the way in which the story has been told thus far. Time traveling should keep it exciting enough, even if it still doesn't all come together. Oh well, it's a JRPG; rarely are they executed well. FFX had the last plot in the series that was actually good/respectable in my opinion, but honestly not since FFVII have I felt like Square had an idea of what the hell they were not only writing, but implementing into the game as it was developed.


Trent Strong said:
Best part of FF 13 were the sex noises Vanille made while fighting.
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You mean the entire fucking game every time she spoke? Worst VA in a FF ever, I'd have to say. At least for a main character. She was really important to the story (not like that says a lot), but the VA ruined everything.

Sazh and Fang were my favorite characters. Lightning is pretty one-dimensional, but doesn't degrade the already crappy plot and semi-crappy cast one way or another. Vanille is pretty good, but again, the VA ruins it. No problems with Hope. Snow, however, is one of the worst characters in FF ever.
 
R

RedSwirl

Junior Member
Dark Schala said:
I didn't like how the narrative just fell off a cliff in Chapters 10 and 11 at all. And the cutscenes in Chapter 11 seemed... disjointed. Like there was a segment of the game that was supposed to be in there but was taken out.
Click to expand...

That's the problem though - there wasn't really much of anything happening in the narrative in the first 10 chapters. All of that is devoted just to getting caught up on the stuff that happened before chapter 1, with a bit of character development being the only thing that really happens in the present.

RpgN said:
It sounds like FFXIII is not a game for you at all really, because chapter 11 is supposed to be the point that rewards the ones who didn't like the first half, which is really a weird way to look at it. Why force yourself playing through the majority of the game when you know you're going to like one chapter in the end?
Click to expand...

Well first of all having to go through that "first half" in itself is a problem, but I just don't see how chapter 11 thus far is "better". The game is still "okay" if you keep yourself engaged in the combat system, but the only change that chapter 11 seems to bring is optional backtracking.

There just isn't enough to do in Final Fantasy XIII. It's a very bare game compared to its predecessors.

Diablos said:
I really enjoyed XIII. The story is pretty bad, and the linearity, given the game's development cycle, is just lame to say the least. You look at the game for what it is, and really, it should have been able to come out in 2008. Clearly S-E was having some legit internal problems (and probably still does). I once heard on a 1Up Podcast that a someone on the FFXIII crew was tasked with designing a rock for a cutscene for two weeks. One rock. For two weeks. (12/2/11 Episode of Games, Dammit for reference, 31:41). That's pretty terrible. I don't know if that is entirely credible, but I wouldn't be surprised it was.
Click to expand...

This is probably why too. Gamasutra did a pretty in-depth postmortem on this game: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/30640/Exclusive_Behind_The_Scenes_Of_Square_Enixs_Final_Fantasy_XIII.php

Basically, SE just got hit with the same problems as every other Japanese publisher. They got sort of blindsided by the onset of current gen consoles and didn't know how to really produce games on them. FFXIII was originally going to be a PS2 game, and they spent 18 months restarting the project as a PS3 game. The demo they showed in 2005 (or 2006, can't remember) was a target render.

You say they maybe should have been finished in 2008, but that's somewhere around the point where they had just figured out what kind of game they wanted to make. According to Gamasutra, it wasn't until they put together the playable demo that they all came together and said "this is what we're building".
 
RpgN

RpgN

Junior Member
RedSwirl said:
Well first of all having to go through that "first half" in itself is a problem, but I just don't see how chapter 11 thus far is "better". The game is still "okay" if you keep yourself engaged in the combat system, but the only change that chapter 11 seems to bring is optional backtracking.

There just isn't enough to do in Final Fantasy XIII. It's a very bare game compared to its predecessors.
Click to expand...

That is exactly my point. A lot of people kept telling others to keep playing until they reach chapter 11 and have all the freedom and optional missions. I'm saying that it's silly going on about it that way, the people who liked playing through the early chapters, might like chapter 11 more but I don't think it's going to change people's mind that don't like the game to begin with, since it's just more fighting basically.

As for me, I don't think chapter 11 is better. I enjoyed the first half more and think this chapter is just as good for different reasons. It felt like a nice pace to finally have a huge land to explore, with different missions to tackle, riding on chocobos and that sort of stuff.

It is a very bare game compared to its predecessors. That disappointed me for a while, but it's still a good game. The battle system is strong enough to like the game, and it excels at other things. It's a fine game with missing content sadly.
 
turnbuckle

turnbuckle

Member
Man, I just found out I can't get 100% on the accessories/euipment trophy. I ended up selling some elemental bangles at some point late in the game and there's no way for me to get them again. I have everything else, upgraded to at least an ultimate for every character and got their alternative weapons to the second stages, maxed out every accessory and dismantled it all just to make sure I wasn't missing something...and still can't get 100%. It absolutely has to be an elemental item I stupidly sold without upgrading.

Putting over 100 hours in and just got slapped in the face lol.
*sigh*

So now I'm missing two trophies. Wouldn't normally matter but that means I'm missing two themes as well. It's not really a big deal, but when I tackled the game with the idea of being a completionist it's a bummer.


As for the game, Chapter 11 was a great bit of relief from the constant corridors but I liked the battle and crystarium system enough that the corridor style didn't really bother me too much. It's pretty easy to just burn through that section if you want. The marks component of the game was a bit cumbersome though - especially without a guide. There needed to be a faster way to get from one place to another. The few warp stones and chocobos weren't enough to avoid making it feel like a slog.
 
D

Dunan

Member
RedSwirl said:
More or less. Didn't Kitase confirm that the franchise was still primarily aimed at teens?
Click to expand...

He did, but "still" is the wrong word. It would be more correct to say, after Hiroyuki Ito specifically mentioned (during the last entry) wanting to keep veteran fans interested and re-attract those who may have drifted away from the franchise, that Kitase was lowering the age of their target market.

Or that he was preemptively covering for the juvenile story he and Toriyama had concocted for FFXIII and wanted to give fans over about 25
OK, 20
advance warning of what was coming.
 
S

scy

Member
turnbuckle said:
Man, I just found out I can't get 100% on the accessories/euipment trophy. I ended up selling some elemental bangles at some point late in the game and there's no way for me to get them again. I have everything else, upgraded to at least an ultimate for every character and got their alternative weapons to the second stages, maxed out every accessory and dismantled it all just to make sure I wasn't missing something...and still can't get 100%. It absolutely has to be an elemental item I stupidly sold without upgrading.
Click to expand...

Off-hand, there's no one-time only items in all of FFXIII. The closest are the Elemental rings that can only be obtained twice in total (either by finding them or disassembling the Absorb charms you find on Pulse). If you sold the base rings AND the absorb charms then, yes, you're SoL :/
 
D

Dunan

Member
ULTROS! said:
Just wondering, what's the purpose for your character's stagger bar? I remember seeing them but a character getting staggered has never happened to me before.
Click to expand...

Ultros, I remember wondering the exact same thing. I kept expecting that there would be battles where I had to keep my own team from getting staggered, and by the end of the game I was just assuming that they reserved that stuff for the high-level Cieth missions, which I never attempted.

It would be pretty disappointing if they never once made use of that mechanic.
 
R

Roto13

Member
Dunan said:
Ultros, I remember wondering the exact same thing. I kept expecting that there would be battles where I had to keep my own team from getting staggered, and by the end of the game I was just assuming that they reserved that stuff for the high-level Cieth missions, which I never attempted.

It would be pretty disappointing if they never once made use of that mechanic.
Click to expand...

It's to increase the potency of healing spells and the duration of buffs.
 
F

Fimbulvetr

Member
RpgN said:
It really sounds like you're looking too much into it and nitpicking for the sake of it. It doesn't sound weird when Sazh explains this to Lightning when she was acting like an idiot without a cause or explanation (at the time), kind of reminding her whether she hit her head or something.
Click to expand...
That was the point of that scene as a whole, yes.

But when he starts talking about Cie’th, the obvious point of that bit of dialogue is to tell player what they are, because there’s no actual reason Lightning shouldn’t know this stuff already. It was all very blatant and obvious. Adding a rhetorical “right?” immediately after doesn’t suddenly make it sound natural.

Now, when he mentions that there’s no way to turn a l’Cie back into a human, that comes off much more naturally because it flows well with the rest of that bit. It sounds less like Sazh is explaining something to the player(even though he still is), and more like he’s reminding Lightning of something she would have overlooked because she’s so emotionally charged.

RpgN said:
I'm not sure at what part you're talking about Snow (chapter 10 when he doubts himself?). It doesn't feel like no real reason to me or a complete 180.
Click to expand...
He doesn’t do a 180, but the story’s attitude on him does.

A big chunk of Snow’s arc is a part of Hope’s arc. The entire point there is Snow learning to take responsibility for his actions(Hope was blaming Snow because he needed a scapegoat, but Snow acknowledges that he is mostly correct anyway, even though he could hardly be condemned for Nora’s death).

But then, in the penultimate chapter, his wing-it-with-no-plan attitude is completely validated by the story. Because that is exactly what the party is doing. They have a vague goal(save Cocoon) and they’re gonna just fight and be all gung ho about it and everything will work itself out I guess. And they win.
 
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