Not sure how you guys reduced all that I said to that claim, because that's not even what I was saying. I don't really care if you liked it or not, that's up to you. The fact is, you're still commenting about it at the end of 2012, telling everyone how much you have no intention of getting it, in a thread about the third game in the series.
Would that happen with print media? No.
They'd review it (it reviewed fairly well), maybe do a postmortem, some interviews, and then start covering the next game. It's a completely different dynamic from the way gamers formed opinions of FFI-FFXII. Nothing about it is hogwash. Read what I actually said.
Last-gen, sites like Kotaku were already fairly popular, so not sure why you think XIII is the first one heavily subject to internet opinions.
That is also one of the flaws of print media, they tend to stay away from extreme opinions and play it safe. Plenty of underwhelming games score well because of hype and because they don't want companies to cut them off from advertising and sending them future games. See: gerstmangate.
They have an agenda to continue funding and be able to still run their magazine (or major gaming website) a year from now, gaming blogs have no such requirement, and may be more open with their opinions.
Last-gen, sites like Kotaku were already fairly popular, so not sure why you think XIII is the first one heavily subject to internet opinions.
That is also one of the flaws of print media, they tend to stay away from extreme opinions and play it safe. Plenty of underwhelming games score well because of hype and because they don't want companies to cut them off from advertising and sending them future games. See: gerstmangate.
They have an agenda to continue funding and be able to still run their magazine a year from now, gaming blogs have no such requirement, and may be more open with their opinions.
Gaming sites have an agenda to get people to click their articles at any cost. This means they milk controversy, and amplify it as long as possible because they get no subscription fees. They have very little leeway to decide what they cover. If it's not something controversial or shocking, it's not getting as many hits as it could. They also don't publish once a month, but every 30 minutes, 24 hours a day. Blogs tend to go through little to no editorial process, and often time get facts completely wrong. This isn't even mentioning the commenters.
Print didn't necessarily "play it safe," as much as just have basic journalistic standards above the level of tabloids, or internet troll comments.
Kotaku wasn't nearly as popular last gen. I've asked this like 5x now, but can anyone link me to the Kotaku review of FFXII? I looked, and I don't think one exists. Same for Destructoid.
And "Gerstmann-gate" was on a website. I'm sure magazines always faced similar issues, but if anything, blogs are far more vulnerable because they get no subscription fees and 100% of their money is generated through advertising. And usually magazines were having 2-4 people review each game. You could get an extreme opinion, and have it balanced out with someone who tends to enjoy the genre more and decide for yourself which one to trust.
1. A lot of my points, especially when it came to Deus Ex Machinas, retconns and sudden direction changes, are all details that show how Toriyama has trouble at keeping fans satisfied by his work. This is something that you can very well see by the bitter fan reaction, the lowert critic reviews and the sudden, drastic drop in sales for the sequels. LR itself looks to have a very low-budget. Certainly, the FF community, as a whole is dropping interest in his games, and very fast. Some reviews go as far as call a few of his stories (taking into account all games Toriyama wrote for) absolutely terrible or some of the worse in the gaming industry.
2. Toriyama does create new universe rules out of nowhere. This isn't even an opinion. A lot of his plot solutions in FFXIII came by nullifying how several concepts work. The characters
don't even need to overcome their l'cie status - it just automatically disappears and we then get to know from external sources that a Goddess did it. The drama with the "eternal life in crystal form" stops being drama, not because the characters overcame it, but because they were told, "no need to worry, there's simply a way to stop it" and it predictable comes to a stop at the end.
But those are smaller details when compared to Toriyama's apparent philosophy behind his sequels: drastically change the tone and style for the sake of "being refreshing"? This becomes really a big problem when in FFXIII-2 we get that ending retconn, or the sudden appearance of time traveling, or the sudden decision by the
goddess that she should do whatever she wants whenever she wants
, etc. And then we get a literal reset of the world with LR. It does not matters if Toriyama explains all those sudden changes with "it was a paradox!", or "the goddess did it!" or "the chaos did it!". For an average player, his work lacks a lot of consistency within the same universe, where suddenly the story about overcoming some type of rulers transforms into a time traveling story. The man does not knows how to stick to, and properly flesh out specific world concepts: he keeps jumping between completely different concepts and creates some random justifications to tie them all together into the same universe.
That being said, games like FFVIII were also guilty of this with the sudden Esthar technology,
and then monsters coming from the moon, and then time (lol) kompression
. Fitting enough, that's also when FFVIII's story was at its worse. It was much better when it focused out fleshing out specific concepts in disk 1, than when it started thriwng them out of the window and focusing on completely new stuff, only to scrap it again for more new stuff.
3. An example of anti-climatic events can probably be the entire Vanille attitude during
the holocaust at the beginning of the game
, which was probably one of the worst executions I've ever saw of "a girl trying to being cheery at the middle of a crisis", because her traits were so exaggerated, and repeated for so long, that you even wondered if she wasn't retarded instead. Another example might be NORA's dialogue during that same time, with that forgottable kid whining while laying at the ground bored (or something) in the middle of gunfire against a professional army.
4. Huge focus on subplots in detriment to the mainplot. I should have been clearer with this one. Half of FFXIII's story is spent on Lightning/ Serah/ Snow, Hope/ Snow and Vanille/ Sazh archs, and by the end of the game, you realize two of them were almost completely pointless to the story as a whole, and only one of those subplots mattered
Vanille's/ Sazh's subplot, because it's the only one that is deeply related with the main story, with the background events that lead to the actual crisis, and the development that would lead to the future events of the story. You could even call the Vanille/ Sazh's subplot the main plot of first half of FFXIII. Because it kinda was, players just don't realize it right at the time because it shares equal screentime with other subplots, and because no player at the time could predict that the second half of the story and everything villain-related would be an extension of Vanille's story only
.
5. The second half of FFXIII's story was almost exclusively told through uneventful monologues from villains. Cid's entire story and development? Was it shown through the game? No, we got a sudden, last minute recap out of him. Barthandelous plot? Typical "Mwhahaha, I'm the villain and I'm going to tell you everything while you're spending half the game walking around doing nothing, because the writers couldn't find a more interesting and exciting way to tell their story" at its worse. But in Toriyama's defense, the last one is probably Watanabe's equally bad writing, because Watanabe has done exactly the same with FFXII's plot after Ashe's party was reunited and ready to travel together. Watanabe seems to create this very exciting "go to point A -> listen to long-ass monologue -> go to point B -> repeat" narrative structure that everyone loved in FFXII's and FFXIII's second halves, right?
6. I don't have much to say to DEMs, because by their very nature, that's what DEMs do: they automatically fix everything because.
7. About the dialogue, another poster said it perfectly: it's representative of what we've gotten from previous Toriyama's stories.
I already said the vision behind XIII was streamlining the game, and making it more action-oriented. There aren't really a lot of side quests in XIII. The game also really only takes place over a series of 2, maybe 4 days in their world? It really flies by. They're on the run, and they're fugitives. They have a brand on their body that will kill them if they even delay, or get upset. There's just not going to be as much time spent sitting around and doing random side quests and character development stuff.
If we want to use logic, I could also argue that the characters in FFXIII would be caught very easily because they're stuck into one road with soldiers coming from both sides. Also, we don't need to have them "do random quests or spend time sitting around" (even though that's what they do
in Nautilus and in Pulse lol
). You could simply have diversified the gaming experience by having better and more interactive map design, for example. The story does give material for that, like being lost in messy places, or having to follow lights in forests that were supposed to be confusing. And an actual growth system that goes beyond a manual leveling up system, and another manual but clunky and useless-until-the-end-of-the-game leveling up system. Crystarium was basically a shadow of the sphere or license boards, and the weapon's system is almost universally disliked.
So you don't even need towns and mini-games to diversify and enrich the rhythm of the game. The reason most players missed towns and mini-games, it's because FFXIII scrapped them without compensating for their loss. Maybe if it had compensated with deeper growth systems and map design, and who knows, something else, players would have said "wow, this game does not have towns and mini-games, but it's still very fun!". But as it stands, FFXIII is basically a stripped down FFX. And players will look at both, and easily say "FFXIII was FFX but without the towns, without the mini-games, without the back-tracking and without more relevant growth systems." And fans will reach the conclusion that FFXIII would have been better with those.
If Toriyama wants to adapt game design to his stories, that's great. But he didn't adapted the mechanics. He scrapped them completely and left a void in their place.
The PS1 games spend more time on the main characters, but they're really completely different games, and they're going for totally different things. The world of FFVII and FFVIII isn't as well developed as FNC is, and they spent more time on the broader picture than the individual characters.
Yet, if we exclude the datalog, we get to know as much about FFVII's and FFVIII's worlds as we did with FFXIII's. And then we have FFX, of course, which is absolutely excellent at showing its world through the story and through the gameplay, two things FFXIII is bad at by lacking enough gameplay mechancis for that, and by focusing too much on secondary characters that bring little to the world, and by stretching and repeating their development for too long instead of using that precious screentime to actually develop the main story of the world without the need of a datalog.
FFXIII is basically "FFX-but-worse".
I disagree. People wanted to hate it before it even came out. If you can't really wrap your head around 3 words that are explained in the story, and the datalog, I just don't think you're really trying to give it a chance.
It's the contrary, FFXIII was extremely hyped before release. I was personally convinced we would see the FFX formula perfected and possibly one of the greatest and most ambitious FF games ever. Afterall, the ideas and concepts were excellent, the battle system looked awesome, the music and visuals were top-notch, the formula was a commercial success for them with FFX. What could possibly go wrong?
It went wrong because of the combination of a rushed project, with a director that lacks the skills to properly write a story and to design a game.
FFXIII's gameplay was "saved", because the battle directors and the Gran Pulse director have done a good job. The map direction, the growth systems direction, and the overall gameplay vision from the director all failed.
Print didn't necessarily "play it safe," as much as just have basic journalistic standards above the level of tabloids, or internet troll comments.
And "Gerstmann-gate" was on a website. I'm sure magazines always faced similar issues, but if anything, blogs are far more vulnerable because they get no subscription fees and 100% of their money is generated through advertising.
Gaming has never had journalistic standards, I used to read a bunch of gaming magazines, but few really felt reliable.
Websites like Eurogamer, IGN and Gamespot are exactly the same thing as those types of gaming magazines, just for a newer generation, so gerstmangate applies 100%. If a site gave FFXIII a 5/10 they would not think "Man, these guys might be right, we should take it as feedback and improve the next game" they would take it as "wow, fuck these guys we're never sending them a game again, pull their ads". Games are more popular than ever, and this kind of thing is more common now than in previous generations anyways.
Blogs might troll for hits, but they are also more likely to have people say what they really believe, and not what advertising dollars lead them to believe. Giant Bomb for example, essentially a result of gerstmangate, has quick looks for plenty of games, and as they play, they mostly give real opinions as gamers of what they think along the way. Some people think this means they lack 'journalistic integrity' but I care one hundred times more what someone like me thinks, than what someone paid to think a certain way thinks.
Once again, gaming magazines never had journalistic integrity anyways, gaming jounralism has always been terrible compared to what one would hope is 'real' journalism.
Edit: ^^ Damn grive, you say what we all want to say but are just too lazy to. He has already completely made up his mind though, regardless of any actual facts.
In regards to the Crystarium system, I don't think it was that bad. It's basically the Sphere Board with more freedom. You have 3 roles per character for most of the game and it is your choice what to build up first per chapter. The weapon upgrade system is what needed more refinement. The concept itself was fine but the lack of gil to buy upgrade items, their low drop rates overall, and limited character accessory space kind of ruined the whole dynamic.
I partially answered it in the following sentence. Also, there were branches that you could go down for abilities or other stat upgrades. It was not all a straight line.
Sure after you play TWENTY FUCKING HOURS of the game you can level up whatever role you want in any order for all the characters.
But honestly. c'mon, the end result is always the same. No major differences can be garnered with such a system.
It's no expert Sphere Grid or IZJS Zodiac license board. Unless your a dumbass, you should be continuing to level up the roles the characters started with, when those are maxed out, everything else is superfluous.
"The Power of Presentation
I think the really interesting implication here is just how much influence the interface to an underlying system can have on a player’s perception of it. When I first finished all my data-entry and started generating diagrams, I was shocked at how linear they were coming out. I thought that I must have made a mistake somewhere, because there couldn’t possibly be so few branches. Perhaps the linearity of it is more obvious to people that really invested a lot of time maxing out the grid for all their characters, but from my own experience with the game (finishing the storyline, decent number of sidequests, each character covering perhaps 1/4 of the sphere grid), I certainly didn’t expect it to look this way."
I agree that the sphere grid has better visual presentation, but it's actually more linear, or just as linear as the Crystarium Grid. It's not like the Crystarium Grid looked completely awful either. For the record, I like the sphere grid more. But when you strip them down, it's surprising how similar they are.
Sphere grid eventually lets you enter other people's though, and can do whatever you want with it.
It wasn't a very good system either though. I will say that in general, while some parts of FFX are just as linear as FFXIII, they were presented, kind of like the article says, in such a way that it did not feel as linear. Both in areas and game structures. Ultimately it was still a poor design choice in FFXIII then.
While the Licence Board in FFXII recieves quite a bit of criticism, and needed a bit of refinement, that was true freedom.
Sphere Grid gave you more "freedom". You could pick a few branches at the expense of your main path, like the Crystarium, but while the later system had branches, they almost always consisted of one or two side nodes that you would pick along the main path, while the former's branches were usually twice as big and offered alternative stat building, so you had to make bigger choices. The Sphere Grid had empty nodes, which gave you a nice degree of customisation with the consumable stat spheres you colelcted to fill those nodes, and it also offered you means to play around the grid with unique spheres, like teleporting, returning, etc, that made the whole thing funnier. Finally, the game had far more distinct stats, which diversified what each character level would bring to the table.
Crystarium allowed you to pick between three different paths, which was definitely cool, but the lack of diversity in stats, and the easiness to fill them all or most of them in each area made it feel far more linear than it could.
I think the Sphere Grid, as it is, but with each character having its own individual grid, like with Crystarium, and three distinct paths to build upon, like the Crystarium too, would be the best execution of this system, IMO.
EDIT: Scrap the word "freedom". What I truly mean is, SG was more playful, which made it feel less like a manual leveling up system than the Cristarium did. Because both surely were way too linear.
I will say in general, I like to see what other people think, even if I disagree with them completely. I know it's possible to have entirely different experiences because of how one played the game and what their expectations were and whatnot. In this regard, I can respect people who loved the games.
What I don't like is anyone arguing the legitimacy of opinions though. Implications that everyone who hates it must have gone in with pre-existing hatred or after already reading all the flaws thousands of times seeks to undermine the opinions of those who 'intoxicate' these threads.
I don't come into these threads with malicious intent as someone who dislikes the franchise, I come in to discuss what I find to be faults in a franchise I've been playing since I first started gaming.
Edit: Basically made this to summarize my thoughts, since I don't plan to spend much more time in this thread.
The Sphere Grid worked, IMO, because it had the best of both worlds in terms of character building. For most of the main story, characters had clearly defined roles a la FF4 and FF9. But for the huge post game content, you could start developing characters in whichever way you wanted, although they all became carbon copies at the end except for their Overdrives. Crystarium avoided the carbon copy thing in that not everyone had every spell or ability. On the other hand, there was even less freedom save for choosing which role you wanted to develop further at certain points.
I though XIII-2 had a much better growth system than XIII, and I slightly prefer SG to C. Didn't FFX-I have the option to start everyone in the middle of the SG though? That would have been a lot better.
I though XIII-2 had a much better growth system than XIII, and I slightly prefer SG to C. Didn't FFX-I have the option to start everyone in the middle of the SG though? That would have been a lot better.
The Sphere Grid worked, IMO, because it had the best of both worlds in terms of character building. For most of the main story, characters had clearly defined roles a la FF4 and FF9. But for the huge post game content, you could start developing characters in whichever way you wanted, although they all became carbon copies at the end except for their Overdrives. Crystarium avoided the carbon copy thing in that not everyone had every spell or ability. On the other hand, there was even less freedom save for choosing which role you wanted to develop further at certain points.
I though XIII-2 had a much better growth system than XIII, and I slightly prefer SG to C. Didn't FFX-I have the option to start everyone in the middle of the SG though? That would have been a lot better.
2) nobody can overcome their l'cie status by themselves . it's being told numerous times in the game..you just can't. What would have worked better ? the power of love ? frienship ? familly ? Anything that wasn't tried by the dozen of l'cie before and that you see those examples through the game itself ?
And the drama didn't stop because they say that "since their are fated to end as l'cie , they'll just fight and do what they want until the end" .. they never , ever talk about the crystal form or what could happen to them even when they realise what happenned to vanille / fang and despite what they did are still "toys" in all this ..all they did at some point was to find a common goal/purpose and still failed ( before the very last fight ).
The concept is always the same. Without FF13-2 the answer we got was : " the character worked as they could and the godess recognized their efforts and granted them a miracle". and it's not just a mythos that just happenned to be there .. the same godess was still there when each character go their eidolons and in several other trivias bits..
If anything , FF13 stays true to the rules that were made for his universe ...
And no , the ending of FF13 wasn't retconned in FF13-2 ...the WHOLE point of the first hours is to serah saying that what happened was true and what she is experiencing is wrong that's why she began travelling ..that's why snow goes in the search of lightning ..How is that a retcon when the game itself use that ending as a plot point for future events ?
And then we get a literal reset of the world with LR
Again , there is nothing as a setting that wasn't present in FF13-2 the game does end on a big event that was confirmed and told numerous times to be a world changer. this complain is void , because not only we saw and played in the changed world in ff13-2 ( dying world ) already but we had several stories already present as bad ends explaining why this new turn of events exist.
3) True ..the vanille part were badly done and that's a flaw ( terrible flaw ) for ff13.
7) i agree those parts weren't good but at least they tried something different for those points and better !! they actually went back to a more cohesive and intrsting method for leveling in FF13-2.The ff13 weapon system wasn't great too much work for too little gain , not fun to use , not fun to break or to experiment with .Same for the chrystarium that is still linear but focuses on a more dynamic approch to bonuses stats in FF13-2.
On this , FF13:LR can have a very fun system to use because this time they're aware of what works and what doesn't. they at least tried something different.FF does try everything they change a number in their title and S-E alredy know that it wasn't great this time around..
So you don't even need towns and mini-games to diversify and enrich the rhythm of the game. The reason most players missed towns and mini-games, it's because FFXIII scrapped them without compensating for their loss.
i so agree with you there ..but isn't that problem already solved in FF13-2 as well ?
FFXIII's gameplay was "saved", because the battle directors and the Gran Pulse director have done a good job. The map direction, the growth systems direction, and the overall gameplay vision from the director all failed.
Implications that everyone who hates it must have gone in with pre-existing hatred or after already reading all the flaws thousands of times seeks to undermine the opinions of those who 'intoxicate' these threads.
Obviously not everyone do this, but you can't say you don't think there are people who play these games already thinking it will suck. At least here on GAF, those who are lttp for example (on the two last games, I mean), after hearing all the hate it receives, of course he/she will play the game with all the hatred he/she read about it... I don't doubt some people in here will play this game just to bitch about it afterwards... mainly those who come in the related threads saying "this sux", "toriyama can get the fuck out", "will but when it is in the bargain bin", and derivatives, without even trying to explain why they think the game is bad. Thats how I see it at least.
Obviously not everyone do this, but you can't say you don't think there are people who play these games already thinking it will suck. At least here on GAF, those who are lttp for example (on the two last games, I mean), after hearing all the hate it receives, of course he/she will play the game with all the hatred he/she read about it... I don't doubt some people in here will play this game just to bitch about it afterwards... mainly those who come in the related threads saying "this sux", "toriyama can get the fuck out", "will but when it is in the bargain bin", and derivatives, without even trying to explain why they think the game is bad. Thats how I see it at least.
I don't think I've seen anyone play a game they "hate" on purpose just to complain afterwards, rather they played the game and then formed their opinion about it.
In fact, I think it's very clear that many of the ones that really say those comments actually were let down by the game considering the expectations they had for it.
What I find annoying is that it's always the same people making the same meaningless posts about the same things over and over again in every thread.
Obviously not everyone do this, but you can't say you don't think there are people who play these games already thinking it will suck. At least here on GAF, those who are lttp for example (on the two last games, I mean), after hearing all the hate it receives, of course he/she will play the game with all the hatred he/she read about it... I don't doubt some people in here will play this game just to bitch about it afterwards... mainly those who come in the related threads saying "this sux", "toriyama can get the fuck out", "will but when it is in the bargain bin", and derivatives, without even trying to explain why they think the game is bad. Thats how I see it at least.
There should be the reverse as well. Someone who goes in with the lowest possible standards because of the amount of hate it receives, they have no expectations but certain parts of the game click with them and makes it ultimately enjoyable for them.
On the other hand, those of us who played it fresh, only based off the promotional stuff, which looked super awesome, are more likely to be disappointed with the final product.
I would be curious to know what someone thought of FFXIII had they been a relatively big FF fan, but never saw any of the promotional content prior to the game or read anything about the hate the game gets on the internet.
One way or another, I suspect Square Enix will go in a new direction next-generation, assuming lightning returns continues to sell much less than FFXIII-2, as it did compared to FFXIII before it.
I do agree with the above that says no one would play a game specifically to hate it though. I didn't HATE FFXIII, but I certainly didn't like much about it. I got FFXIII-2 as people said it was much improved, but I stopped after about 6 or so hours because it did not do it for me. I saw a sibling beat the rest, and I looked on once in a while, but nothing I saw changed much. I will try Lightning Returns eventually, but I have no intention of purchasing it. I participated in such discussions because it is a franchise I love, and would hope someone, somewhere sees fan response and does not repeat the mistakes of FFXIII.
Disappointment is a function of expectations. Seeing people drag a game through the mud, a person will start a game with the lowest expectations possible. This makes them more likely to like the game since the game is better than their expectations (or not if a game is truly terrible).
EDIT: Scrap the word "freedom". What I truly mean is, SG was more playful, which made it feel less like a manual leveling up system than the Cristarium did. Because both surely were way too linear.
The sphere board was indeed more playful and allowed players more option when you finish each character's individual path. I played the International version of FFX so its board allowed players to give characters a different path quite early.
The crystarium on the other hand didn't really allowed players to have fun. It wouldn't have change a single bit if they scrap the whole thing and just gave the players 3 (or 6 , doesn't matter) roles at the start, along with an inflated level cap of 999 per role and do with traditional level. Points will be awarded to roles that are used more often in battles and abilities set to unlock via leveling. It would have saved players time from using the crystarium map thing since it was a really pretty but ultimately empty system
FFXIII-2 did a better job at giving players some sort of freedom with stats growth but the way they spread out abilities for the roles were too awkward. Some roles had zero new abilities past the half way mark. It felt like I was playing a game that wasn't fully completed yet. (And it was. Another 6 months could have made the game much better.)
I don't really like the Sphere Grid. I don't particularly like Crystarium either. While the Sphere Grid (especially in the International version) definitely gives more "player choice" when it comes to assigning points, it has some of the same issues as Crystarium. Ultimately it's a system where players are forced to spend points on stuff they might not really want or need to get to stuff they actually want.
It is also a system which actively punishes players who are new to the game, because they will make choices which might seem to have no real impact, only to find out they're limiting their stats and options later on. The game never really explains this particularly well, especially in the FFXIII-2 Crystarium system with regards to gaining the bonuses depending on what items you use.
I really like choice when building characters in RPGs, but I definitely prefer less aesthetically complex systems where it just looks like a jumble of choices all over the screen. What I like are skill trees or ability options where when a character is ready to learn something new, there is a clear choice of several things which can be improved or learned, displayed in very clear ways, and they're all useful for that sort of character. If there are stat modifiers, let the player choose them based on what they are good for, instead of hiding them behind some other system which is vague and unexplained. If a player wants to create a character who is good at physical damage at the expense of magic strength, let that be a direct option, instead of requiring the player to do something else in a more "complex" system to achieve that result.
I very much prefer the skill learning systems in FF that are based on equipment or the like, I have the most fun experimenting with those and fine tuning things to my play style and likings than filling boards or grids with permanent and limiting effects. It was good for exploring too, you end up finding something new and learning a new ability because of it rather it being a grind to fill up stuff.
I like FF8 junction system. yeah, come at me. even though drawing might be considered a grind, it was never a problem for me. I didn't need 99 of everything to have fun.
There should be the reverse as well. Someone who goes in with the lowest possible standards because of the amount of hate it receives, they have no expectations but certain parts of the game click with them and makes it ultimately enjoyable for them.
On the other hand, those of us who played it fresh, only based off the promotional stuff, which looked super awesome, are more likely to be disappointed with the final product.
I would be curious to know what someone thought of FFXIII had they been a relatively big FF fan, but never saw any of the promotional content prior to the game or read anything about the hate the game gets on the internet.
One way or another, I suspect Square Enix will go in a new direction next-generation, assuming lightning returns continues to sell much less than FFXIII-2, as it did compared to FFXIII before it.
I do agree with the above that says no one would play a game specifically to hate it though. I didn't HATE FFXIII, but I certainly didn't like much about it. I got FFXIII-2 as people said it was much improved, but I stopped after about 6 or so hours because it did not do it for me. I saw a sibling beat the rest, and I looked on once in a while, but nothing I saw changed much. I will try Lightning Returns eventually, but I have no intention of purchasing it. I participated in such discussions because it is a franchise I love, and would hope someone, somewhere sees fan response and does not repeat the mistakes of FFXIII.
I knew next to nothing about FFXIII. I saw the trailer of the initial reveal with Versus XIII and that's it. I occasionally read threads on GAF where people were mad hyped and had positive reactions to whatever it was they were seeing, but I refrained from delving any deeper. I had very high expectations since the concept of a floating world above a destructive wilderness had a lot of potential. I had the game on pre-order, received it day one, and finished it shortly after. I thought it was utter shit and one of the worst games I've had the displeasure of playing.
I can see some redeemable aspects in it - very nice art for the locales, soundtrack was good even if not as memorable as some past ones, battle system was decent if limiting. But none of this really meant anything since all you do in the game is run forward and fight endlessly. The battle system can't carry the game, and unfortunately, the story which is such a huge focus has next to no material for such length either. It's shallow, very artificial, and feels like it was written with ten year olds in minds who would be too blinded by the pretty visuals to notice the shitty plot. The summons were a real bore coming off FFX, the weapons upgrade system may as well not have existed, and the Crystarium was just a shitty License Board. It just failed in every noteworthy aspect. Even the battle system sucked for the first 10-15 hours because you couldn't really combo. Once you got three characters, it actually became fun, but by that stage you're already halfway through the game.
Basically, it's a gigantic cocoon of crap. I have never given such leeway to a game before. In this case, it was only because it carried the FF name.
Now... this is kinda interesting (not surprising coming from M.Toriyama). Apparently Lightning is seen by the inhabitants of Novus Partus has the saviour of lost souls. Perhaps coming from Valhalla everyone thinks she's been the one realising all the deads to the living world again, thus making everyone loyal to her in the hope she can bring back even more deads.
Now... this is kinda interesting (not surprising coming from M.Toriyama). Apparently Lightning is seen by the inhabitants of Novus Partus has the saviour of lost souls. Perhaps coming from Valhalla everyone thinks has been her realising all the deads to the living world again.
I very much prefer the skill learning systems in FF that are based on equipment or the like, I have the most fun experimenting with those and fine tuning things to my play style and likings than filling boards or grids with permanent and limiting effects. It was good for exploring too, you end up finding something new and learning a new ability because of it rather it being a grind to fill up stuff.
I like FF8 junction system. yeah, come at me. even though drawing might be considered a grind, it was never a problem for me. I didn't need 99 of everything to have fun.
I seem to remember loving Bleach when I watched it. I stopped around the time they started fighting vampires or something. Sounds like it went to shit. For a while it was some damn good anime.
I seem to remember loving Bleach when I watched it. I stopped around the time they started fighting vampires or something. Sounds like it went to shit. For a while it was some damn good anime.
I only really keep up with One Piece, it's a series that has kept control of power creep I feel. There's a lot of hullabaloo with JoJo as well, maybe I should get into that as well. Bleach just has a certain stigma about it, the only thing that's good about it is flashy attacks or something.
You can move around between continents by foot or faster by monorail. Its the so called open world connection.
Judging by the current outlook, the world is really vast and its rough on the operations.
The first thing Square thought of was the map function, but now the numbers are regulated.
Square looks forward to seeing how each continent is manufactured and connected.
It seems there is still more to come.
In this title, one day is 24 hours. In Final Fantasy XIII it was 26 hours, but when time stopped 2 hours were lost.
What happens when the gate closes due to the time but youre in a fight with a strong enemy, does it close after the battle? Does time pass during battle?
If youre doing your best, you can stretch the time limit past 13 days and increase time, but how you do it is a secret.
The games test players cleared it in 2 to 4 days.
Depending on how you do it, the deferment is quite different.
The ending doesnt differ too much depending on the time it takes you, but there are a lot of things in the playthrough you cant experience within the time limit. Those variations are what players can look forward to.
Battles are invoked when a corresponding button is pressed. Battles this way have you watch the ATB bar.
There are a limited number of items you can carry.
By setting abilities, the battles are more action based rather than command based.
Found all the characters beyond Luffy to be insufferable and the rogue gallery to be as impressive as Superman's (not a good thing btw). It started off great in the beginning but after that Captain Kuro arc and that Desert arc thing I couldn't take it anymore. I heard it gets much much better in the later ark but its years too late for me. Not trying to play catch up.
EDIT: Deadman Wonderland coming back January!? HELL YEAH! HNNNG!!
