Support NeoGAF

[BlazeHedgehog]

So videos of all endings to FFXII-2 are blocked on Youtube then? Is their fear that people would just watch the endings and not play the game that strong?

It's sort of frustrating that Square-Enix would do this, given the increasing proliferation of gameplay videos on sites like Youtube these days.

I remember when Rockstar also blocked all GTA4 videos but never told Youtube to stop blocking them, so all the way up until they launched the PC version with Rockstar Social Club integration, a significant portion of any GTA4 footage was banned on Youtube.

But S-E has always been sort of a dinosaur when it comes to supporting "unofficial" fan-related content.

 

[OMG Aero]

It's probably just Youtube's copyright filter being really weird.
Same way how pokecapn put all his Sonic LPs on Youtube and the only thing that ever got flagged and taken down was the cutscenes near the end of Sonic and the Black Knight. To my knowledge, no other cutscenes in Black Knight were flagged and none of the other Sonic games were either.
Here is a Youtube doubled version of the ending anyway so when you get to the ending in the LP video just open this up, mute the video on the right and it's more or less in sync.

 

[Dark Schala]

I'll update the OP with those episodes and the YouTube Doubler link, thanks guys!

Wish they'd get onto Episode 5 since Episode 6 is really the last episode of the game. I ended up doing most of my fragment hunting in postgame since I stopped grinding to see if that'd make the game harder. Ah well.

I remember when FFXIII's ending went up on YouTube the first time and that was blocked and taken down, so they had to flip it or something. I think that was more on SE's end than YouTube's end (likely due to both Kimi ga iru kara and that Leona Lewis song). Can't remember if the FFXIII-2 (regular) ending was flagged or not.

It's sort of frustrating that Square-Enix would do this, given the increasing proliferation of gameplay videos on sites like Youtube these days.

They think their narratives are special enough to stop people from seeing the endings, I guess? *shrug*

None of the paradox endings use a licensed song other than the regular ending, though, so I don't see why showing off a paradox ending in an LP is grounds for flagging. Really weird. They might have to put the episode where they beat the main game, and also the episode where they beat the main game with the Paradox Scope on, somewhere else if it gets filtered due to the theme song playing in the ending sequence.

I liked the puzzles in Oerba, the only ones I disliked where the clock puzzles that change when u fail

The other puzzles weren't difficult, but they were just... dumb. Play Connect the Dots or a maze game. Yawners.

The clock puzzles in this LP are funny because...

Spoiler

they're doing them manually, lol.

 

[RPG_Fanatic]

I liked the puzzles in Oerba, the only ones I disliked where the clock puzzles that change when u fail

I hated the change every attempt clock puzzles so much.

 

[Hot Coldman]

Episode 11 is wonderful for both Omega- sorry, I mean OMEGA- and the other special fight featuring the return of the infinitely superior FFXIII battle music.

Oh, and "TIME TO BOOST TROOP MORALE" bambambambambam

 

[Dark Schala]

Episode 11 is wonderful for both Omega- sorry, I mean OMEGA- and the other special fight featuring the return of the infinitely superior FFXIII battle music.

Oh, and "TIME TO BOOST TROOP MORALE" bambambambambam

Their reaction to Amodar's appearance is a good indication of how FFXIII's supporting cast wasn't even memorable or underutilized. I didn't remember who he was until Kagari pointed his identity out during her FFXIII-2 playthrough/while I was watching the playthrough of the Daddy Bear portion of FFXIII-2. That sort of stuff was what they stuck in the Datalog, so you can't really blame people for not knowing who he was (and I think you only saw him once during a flashback sequence in FFXIII, so he could easily be forgotten on the player's part).

FFXIII's battle theme is tiresome. Can't stand it anymore. Nope, nope, nope. I'm a fool and didn't listen to other stuff while turtle hunting, so all I heard was that theme over and over. And I played FFXIII twice, and platinumed it on my second playthrough (thus out of the 200+ hours I played FFXIII, I must've heard it a hell of a lot of times, so much so that I can't count anymore). :|

FFXIII-2's battle themes ended up being super-refreshing as a result, lol.

 

[Hot Coldman]

I only got like 6 hours into FFXIII before bailing out so it's still good to me. I can see why you're not a fan though.

 

[Dark Schala]

Episode 34 - The Eyes Of The Goddess

More sidequestin'. They throw Mog around a lot.

The Eyes of the Goddess fragment skill, iirc, allows you to move the camera around during in-engine cutscenes. It's not very useful, imo.

I only got like 6 hours into FFXIII before bailing out so it's still good to me. I can see why you're not a fan though.

I remember when I liked that theme. It's well-composed, and the instrumentation is excellent, but I'm just tired of it. :|

 

[OMG Aero]

Episode 34 - The Eyes Of The Goddess

More sidequestin'. They throw Mog around a lot.

The Eyes of the Goddess fragment skill, iirc, allows you to move the camera around during in-engine cutscenes. It's not very useful, imo.

KFJ probably just wants it so he can get some questionable camera angles of Serah during cutscenes.
Oh and here's another bonus episode:
Let's Play Mario Party 9, Part 2/5

 

[CorvoSol]

Do they take the time to mock how stupid building a new Cocoon is? Because that's like the dumbest thing in the game.

 

[jvalioli]

An LP inside of an LP. What is this nonsense?

 

[Chairhome]

I had this game from a few months ago when Best Buy let you get the game for $15 with their magazine coupon. Finally started really getting into it this week since I'm on travel and brought my PS3 (its hard to game at home with the kids). I'm liking it, but there's so much going on in the game that its overwhelming at times. Just finished Oerba. I'm not liking a lot of the music with vocals, but some of the soundtrack is pretty good. I hate the "metal" songs :-/.

 

[Regulus Tera]

The metal chocobo music is amazing.

 

[Dark Schala]

Episode 35 - Brown Adventures in Arc-Lite Steppe

They get a Kichu in this episode (Chichu, whatever... Kichu is more natural than the alliteration they tried to implement in the English version). This is the strongest Commando in the game if you take care in developing it with a good build.

If I could, I would caution them that they might be a liiittle overlevelled now, so upcoming story fights might be a little boring now. But I didn't play the game the same way they did, so...

"Ewww... it's all toilet sounds..."

Do they take the time to mock how stupid building a new Cocoon is? Because that's like the dumbest thing in the game.

Nah, I don't think so. They're mostly poking fun at the dialogue. A quick glance at the SA thread shows discussion about it, but I feel like it almost mirrors the discussions we had in the spoiler thread (linked in the OP) a few months ago.

I had this game from a few months ago when Best Buy let you get the game for $15 with their magazine coupon. Finally started really getting into it this week since I'm on travel and brought my PS3 (its hard to game at home with the kids). I'm liking it, but there's so much going on in the game that its overwhelming at times. Just finished Oerba. I'm not liking a lot of the music with vocals, but some of the soundtrack is pretty good. I hate the "metal" songs :-/.

Well, if you need any help with regards to progression or how to level up in the Crystarium to max out stats properly (if you've been watching the LP, you probably shouldn't do it like they've been doing it in the videos since they're short-changing their stats a little), you could always ask here or the OT. I can't help with monster builds or anything outside of the one Sentinel monster since I didn't use monsters, but you could always ask those in the OT about that.

I think the metal songs are clever. >.>

I think the SonicGAF people in this thread are more receptive to the soundtrack because there has been music with vocals in Sonic since, like, Sonic CD (well, the first full soundtrack would be Sonic R, I guess).

 

[OMG Aero]

If I could, I would caution them that they might be a liiittle overlevelled now, so upcoming story fights might be a little boring now. But I didn't play the game the same way they did, so...

They said on SA that they are purposefully doing all this min/maxing now so that when they continue the story and get around to the DLC they can just relax instead of ending up with trainwreck episodes where they spend like 40 minutes fighting one guy like with the tomato king.

And before I forget, here's the next bonus episode, featuring the thrilling conclusion to the Bob-omb board:
Let's Play Mario Party 9, Part 3/5

 

[Dark Schala]

They said on SA that they are purposefully doing all this min/maxing now so that when they continue the story and get around to the DLC they can just relax instead of ending up with trainwreck episodes where they spend like 40 minutes fighting one guy like with the tomato king.

And before I forget, here's the next bonus episode, featuring the thrilling conclusion to the Bob-omb board:
Let's Play Mario Party 9, Part 3/5

Added to OP.

That's kind of too bad, considering they have

Spoiler

____two___

in-game chapters to go and can do most of this stuff in post-game. I got the impression that they thought the next chapter was the end at the time of that recording.

The reason why they die so much or take too long is because they use utterly crappy Optimae in general. They could have been fine should they had incorporated these earlier (I controlled Noel for the whole game, so this is Noel/Serah/Monster):
-Com/Rav/Com (like in FFXIII, use it when you've filled the Break Gauge, but since FFXIII-2 is much easier, you don't have to fill the gauge to 999%)
-Rav/Rav/Com (this is what you should generally start with when you encounter something with a larger Break Gauge--like bosses... better yet, use a Rav x3 combo for a faster chain buildup)
-Rav/Sab/Com OR Com/Sab/Rav (debuffing is your friend, I cannot emphasize this enough)
-Com/Med/Rav OR Com/Rav/Med (learn it, use it, love it)
-Com/Med/Med (superfluous, but if you're underlevelled and are having trouble with a boss, go for this)
-Com/Med/Sen OR Rav/Med/Sen (not necessary in this game, but if you want to keep healing, then attacking, and baiting the enemy into hitting one thing, go for this)
-Com/Rav/Sen OR Rav/Rav/Sen (though I know that people in the OT just didn't use a Sen in general, but this is just a precautionary measure)

Not to mention that they don't ATB Cancel. There's a good video of the technique here. They ended up levelling up through the Crystarium rather inefficiently too. (they reversed Noel and Serah's strengths and ended up levelling them a little awkwardly by not taking into account the bonuses that the bigger nodes and Sab/Syn classes (on even/odd levels) offer).

Keeping track of character animations' fluidity and watching enemy animations in this game aren't as important in FFXIII-2 as they were in FFXIII, so it isn't necessary. I personally don't like auto-battle and don't use it, but I guess it's serving them well at the moment. I'm not very surprised by that, tbh. Auto-Battle was added to make battles an Advent Children-esque spectacle.

Now that they have Gank and a better healer (and I certainly hope that they put some points into the Silver Chocobo or--better yet--the Bunkerbeast if you infuse it with Crushabolic), the game will be much easier from here on out. They shouldn't have much trouble with the final boss... I did it with just Noel and Serah so they should be fine with monsters at the moment. Actually, I think the consensus in the OT was that, uh, that flan that has the siren on it whose name I don't know was the best healer in the game just because of its Feral Link alone (I think it heals to 100%).

Anyway, I'm not watching this to groan about how they play. If I did, I would've complained posts and posts ago. I'm watching for the jokes. It's just too bad that the last episode dealt with the brownest place on Pulse. :O

 

[PokéKong]

I'm not caught up to these videos yet, only just watched part 26, but I do notice they seem to under-emphasize the Ravager role. Not to gripe, but they do seem to want their battles to blow by as quickly as possible, and in most cases this involves staggering enemies as soon as possible. I'd suggest highly specialized paradigms that take frequent switching, so that not only does each part of the battle happen as fast as humanly possible, but you feel a little less on brain-dead auto-pilot.
For general exploring, I like to make the default Rav Rav Rav, followed by Com Com Com once enemies are staggered, and then keeping a Med Med Med for emergencies, which heals anybody in danger ultra quickly. And of course keeping some Syn/Sab paradigms handy.
It's a shame someone mentioned Noel being more Attack heavy and Sarah being more Magic based early on in the videos and they took it a little too seriously, because I ended up leveling both their Com and Rav roles fairly equally and the discrepancy between them is completely negligible, yet these guys seem to be completely ignoring Rav for Noel and Com for Sarah, when both roles and highly useful for both characters. Also strange is how they tossed out that great Med Flan because they ruled out any usefulness of an AI controlled healer, when there are plenty of situations when you might want to keep getting healed while focusing yourself on attacking, in addition to my mega-triple-healing strategy. And I suppose I never did find as much usefulness out of the Sen role as they did, they seem to swear by it.

 

[Dark Schala]

There's no football today.
But they put an episode of the LP up today, so it's good alternative entertainment.

Episode 36 - Extreme Downhill Quizzing Part 1

...er, maybe I should take what I said back. So, basically, they have to chase down Daddy Bear and complete the Brain Blast quizzes. If you've played the game before and chased down the platinum, you'll know how utterly utterly fun this can be... If you get motion sickness like I do in these games, this quest can make you feel a little ill.

"Are these legal clothes?"

I'm not caught up to these videos yet, only just watched part 26, but I do notice they seem to under-emphasize the Ravager role.

They really do, and this hurts them a lot. The general method is to chain, stagger, and kill. That's what you had to do in FFXIII, and that's what you have to do here. When you're staggering and you're powerful enough, you don't even need to kill. Or if you're powerful enough you don't need to stagger. But they aren't powerful enough, so they always need to stagger then kill.

For general exploring, I like to make the default Rav Rav Rav, followed by Com Com Com once enemies are staggered, and then keeping a Med Med Med for emergencies, which heals anybody in danger ultra quickly. And of course keeping some Syn/Sab paradigms handy.

Yeah, I mean... like, I got through most of the game with just Noel and Serah with these and frequent switching, so FFXIII-2 isn't a hard game at all:
Rav/Rav
Com/Rav
Com/Sab
Rav/Sab
Com/Med
Rav/Med
Sen/Med (sometimes I turned this into Med/Med, but I don't like Noel's cast speeds at all. Serah's cast speeds make her the better spellcaster even though Noel's skillsets for Syn and Med are superior to hers.)

Syn's skillset was unbelievably gimped in this game and was needed in just a few boss battles but nothing major, really. They seem to underemphasize the Sab role in general, but debuffing is always your friend, as FFXIII taught you.

But eh, doesn't matter. They have Chapters

Spoiler

five and six, then postgame

left, so I think if they got this far with their playstyle, they're doing fine.

 

[Dark Schala]

Episode 37 - Extreme Downhill Quizzing Part 2

Nothing much to see here, folks...

I think their sanity's starting to go. It's like Sonic 2006, only without the singing and constant dying and schadenfreude. It's just boring. I can tell you that doing the Daddy Bear Quiz sidequest is just as boring and frustrating as it seems.

Edit: I seem to have missed...
Let's Play Mario Party 9, Part 4/5
Let's Play Mario Party 9, Part 5/5

 

[OMG Aero]

Here's another 'fun' bonus for crazy people to watch.
It's Kaz dictating the FFXII-2 datalog to hammer in that Square-Enix heavily subscribes to the "tell, don't show" method of storytelling.

 

[Dark Schala]

Here's another 'fun' bonus for crazy people to watch.
It's Kaz dictating the FFXII-2 datalog to hammer in that Square-Enix heavily subscribes to the "tell, don't show" method of storytelling.

Added to OP, thanks. Two fracking hours? D:

Good lord... I don't like the Datalog in general, but holy business.

 

[Regulus Tera]

why the fuck would Nintendo shit up on Mario Party like this?

 

[OMG Aero]

why the fuck would Nintendo shit up on Mario Party like this?

It's actually pretty fun to play and they just picked the worst board to finish it with. They should have finished with the magma board which is pretty much the best one since for most of the board you are followed by a sea of lava that gets closer after each players turn and if it touches you then you lose half your stars. There are spaces that make the lava move a lot faster than normal and alternate routes that take you longer to get out of the way of the lava so it gets really tactical with using the different dice blocks and picking your route to fuck up the other players just like in the old Mario Party games.

I've played a few Mario Party games with a group of friends and while I still prefer the old style because I feel a game of 9 ends too quickly, they say that they prefer 9's style.

 

[Myriadis]

why the fuck would Nintendo shit up on Mario Party like this?

Because after 8 games of the same thing, it's time to try something new. Otherwise it's just getting stale.

 

[Dark Schala]

It's actually pretty fun to play and they just picked the worst board to finish it with. They should have finished with the magma board which is pretty much the best one since for most of the board you are followed by a sea of lava that gets closer after each players turn and if it touches you then you lose half your stars. There are spaces that make the lava move a lot faster than normal and alternate routes that take you longer to get out of the way of the lava so it gets really tactical with using the different dice blocks and picking your route to fuck up the other players just like in the old Mario Party games.

I've played a few Mario Party games with a group of friends and while I still prefer the old style because I feel a game of 9 ends too quickly, they say that they prefer 9's style.

That Bob-omb board was horrible.

But from what I saw in the LP, MP9 seems to have way less minigames to contend with, which seemed to have been MP's focus prior to MP9. The minigames you do get seem pretty good, but they don't seem as plentiful (which, I guess, would make a game of MP9 end more quickly).

Anyway, can't wait for their Fortune Street video.

At least it isn't Sonic Shuffle. :O

 

[scy]

Missing threads like these is why I need to step out of Community more often.

...

Also, I need to finish XIII-2.

 

[EmCeeGramr]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpbKw14iiuY&feature=g-all-u

new outfits, level 69 deathticle, pokecapn playing xenoblade music

edit: and crossover fanfiction reading

 

[OMG Aero]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpbKw14iiuY&feature=g-all-u

new outfits, level 69 deathticle, pokecapn playing xenoblade music

edit: and crossover fanfiction reading

My favourite part of any LP is when the game gets so boring they read fanfic. I almost died during that Full Metal Alchemist one, holy shit.

 

[Dark Schala]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpbKw14iiuY&feature=g-all-u

new outfits, level 69 deathticle, pokecapn playing xenoblade music

edit: and crossover fanfiction reading

Fuck. Yes. That's always the best part. If they ever provide links to the fanfics, I'll add them to the OP.

Thanks, I'll add it to the OP. <3

I'll agree with them--when I was doing my platinum run for FFXIII-2, I had to play other music for a while so I didn't get sick of the music like I did with FFXIII. Xenoblade is a good choice.

 

[Regulus Tera]

This aimless sidequesting is painful to watch.

edit: This is the first time I listen to the Xenoblade soundtrack. HOLY SHIT

Shimomura <3

edit2: dissing on MOTHER3, awful taste confirmed.

 

[Dark Schala]

Haha, they finally removed the unlisted Episode XX video from the playlist. This obviously means we watched something many years into the future like Yeul did.

This aimless sidequesting is painful to watch.

edit: This is the first time I listen to the Xenoblade soundtrack. HOLY SHIT

Shimomura <3

Shimomura composed the fight music; ACE+ composed the Gaur Plains music (the one not in-battle), but Xenoblade certainly has excellent presentation in terms of visuals and music! It won GAF's SotY 2011 for a reason. :O

I wonder if they're just trying to get the majority of it out of the way so they don't have to do it all during postgame? Like, they can just do chapters 5 and 6 now (chapter 5 is linear and you can't sidequest at that time, but they can do what they want during and after chapter 6). Also, they likely want to get grinding out of the way, but in this game you certainly don't need to grind since it's so damn easy.

Edit: Considering that there are 160 fragments required for the True Ending (you guys are going to love the true ending, lol), this is going to take them a while. The Quiz, Slots, and Bestiary bullshit probably took me the longest time out of everything. The base game is probably about 25-30 hours long. But you can tell that some of that bullshit is just bad game design in general. I can't believe they added it clearly for the sake of adding it.

 

[OMG Aero]

Haha, they finally removed the unlisted Episode XX video from the playlist. This obviously means we watched something many years into the future like Yeul did.

On the plus side, we've got Serah getting actual normal looking clothes to look forward to. Along with 2 hours of looking for a single power crystal...

 

[Regulus Tera]

Oh Q, always the life of the party. Fanfiction is the best.

 

[Regulus Tera]

In which they bridge the future with the past. (TIME PARADOX)

 

[Dark Schala]

In which they bridge the future with the past. (TIME PARADOX)

Thanks, Regulus.

Buying some poo-poo! So much money wasted, but at least the characters look good now.

This is my favourite quest string in the game, btw. It's the only one that uses the time travel aspect to its advantage in a good, meaningful way. Why couldn't the rest of the quests be like that? D:

 

[Fimbulvetr]

Thanks, Regulus.

Buying some poo-poo! So much money wasted, but at least the characters look good now.

This is my favourite quest string in the game, btw. It's the only one that uses the time travel aspect to its advantage in a good, meaningful way. Why couldn't the rest of the quests be like that? D:

Look good? Serah maybe. Noel looks like a moron.

 

[Dark Schala]

Look good? Serah maybe. Noel looks like a moron.

They had to find a way to give him MC Hammer-esque pants again. Agreed, the costume looks silly. Not sure if I like it more than his default outfit.

I don't think any of Noel's costumes make him look good, really. Er, though I've only seen two of them + the default. I don't have much experience with the DLC other than pictures and this LP. I've gotten in to the mindset that his default outfit fits, excluding the pants.

 

[Regulus Tera]

Look good? Serah maybe. Noel looks like a moron.

Needed the Black Mage hat to make it worthy.

 

[PokéKong]

As for the costumes, I always found "Style and Steel" to be a quite a relatively tasteful costume for Serah, I'd go as far as saying it makes her looks like a legit FF character, and the White Mage one gets points for tastefulness too though it goes a little to far into plainness, looking more like some extremely low level MMO character with the basic gear. And Noel, I actually have always been bothered by his poofy pants, he looks way too much like Aladdin and it just makes all his animations seem unsatisfying to me, which is basically my main reason for keeping Serah as the leader at all times. So if I were ever to get a DLC outfit it would be any of the ones with tight pants.

I don't see how the Vile Peaks utilized time travel in a particularly better way then most other quests, it was just more "stuff got scattered across time, some over here some over there, go gather them", although I did enjoy that it set a different tone from most of the game and was the one time there was a memorably great reward for a quest.

 

[OMG Aero]

Is that a spoiler?
I am going to be pissed if you just spoilt Gogmagog for me.

 

[PokéKong]

Is that a spoiler?
I am going to be pissed if you just spoilt Gogmagog for me.

Oh gee, my bad. I totally thought it wasn't, since it was a piece of art included with the Collectors Edition, and I assumed you never see it in the game in that form, but apparently you do at some point which I somehow completely blanked out on.

 

[Dark Schala]

Episode 39 - Vile Peaks Part 2

They're finally fighting semi-competently. Thank goodness. Now they just need to become more efficient and strategic. Also, they make a great point about how the different locations in the game barely change and shouldn't be a significant selling point for this...

Favourite line from this:

Spoiler

"You never talked and laughed! You kept yelling at her. This is the worst birthday ever, Serah. Why are you marrying this fuckup, Serah? Blahblahblahblahblah, Serah. Why'd you have to turn into a crystal, Serah?"

I don't see how the Vile Peaks utilized time travel in a particularly better way then most other quests, it was just more "stuff got scattered across time, some over here some over there, go gather them", although I did enjoy that it set a different tone from most of the game and was the one time there was a memorably great reward for a quest.

It used it far better than the other fetch quests in a narrative and meaningful sense:

Spoiler

Dusk Odin was siphoning power in the past, so they went to the past to help people out and to stop Odin's illusion. Then they come back to the future and destroy the weakened Dusk Odin.

In that manner, the Vile Peaks quest string isn't merely a "go back in time to this time period, get me this flower, give it to me but my niece is already dead" sort of thing. There is true intent and design behind that Vile Peaks quest string as opposed to being merely an arbitrary fetch quest. If only more quests in the game were like that.

Plus it relates to the plot a little and somewhat humanizes the character at the centre of the string in a sense.

At the very least, good sidequests introduce you properly to the people whom you're doing the quest for. Barely any of the sidequests in this game do that, and the Vile Peaks string is an exception to that rule. Rather, you're just introduced to the people, do the quest, and then listen to them talk about how one of the people in the string is a paradox or how the person likes some sort of fruit, I dunno. There's nothing really that draws you into the quest in general. It's rather odd in a game with time travel as its main focal point.

 

[Regulus Tera]

"I'm glad our parents are dead because they would hate you, Serah."

Cold.

 

[Akibared]

I was planning to go to sleep tonight not going to happen now this is too funny!

 

[Dark Schala]

Well, since this is bumped...

Episode 40 - More Pandora's Tower

I'm with medibot: "Oh no, not here again."
"It's a computer and it wants to talk to yooooou!!"

"I'm glad our parents are dead because they would hate you, Serah."

Cold.

They kind of had a point, though -- I never ever got the impression that Lightning and Serah were super-close and got on well together. Not in the FFXIII prequel novel. Not in FFXIII. Not in the FFXIII epilogue novel. Not in FFXIII-2. The game never made me feel like I should care about their relationship at all.

 

[Regulus Tera]

Episode 41: In which Moogles are fucking douchebags, kupo!

And in Episode 42: something about boners.

They kind of had a point, though -- I never ever got the impression that Lightning and Serah were super-close and got on well together. Not in the FFXIII prequel novel. Not in FFXIII. Not in the FFXIII epilogue novel. Not in FFXIII-2. The game never made me feel like I should care about their relationship at all.

You have too high expectations from Toriyama. Why create characters when you can have stereotypes?

 

[Dark Schala]

Episode 41: In which Moogles are fucking douchebags, kupo!

And in Episode 42: something about boners.

Excellent, thank you. I'll add them to the OP (was pretty much out all weekend outside of posting in the Euro thread).

"TRY SOMETHING DIFFERENT, KUPO!" The kupos always annoyed the crap out of me, kupo. In English, they vocalize it as if it were a word as opposed to being something like onomatopoeia or an animal sound, kupo. No one talks like this, kupo. Kupo, kupo, kupopooo, kupo! It was cooler in text-form. :/

So now you guys might have noticed that they stuck almost all of the puzzles in Oerba, right? It's like the developers said, "well, everyone loved Oerba in the first game, so we might as well make the experience shitty by sticking all of these puzzles in here! Woooooo! Give them an extra side of Clock Puzzle in the final Oerba time!" This kind of stuff is just bad design.

Seems like they're having fun with Eyes of the Goddess...

So now that they've finished everything in Oerba, I can say that most of us in the OT used this website to quickly and painlessly solve all of the clock puzzles in the game.

You have too high expectations from Toriyama. Why create characters when you can have stereotypes?

I have a friend who seriously loves his storytelling. He thinks that "Toriyama's one of the best storytellers next to Kojima" (his words, not mine). He got so frustrated when I told him that I wasn't seeing what he saw in the narrative/characters at all, lol.

One day, I hope that someone takes Toriyama's writing utensils and word processor away. Guy needs to stop writing.

 

[Regulus Tera]

Excellent, thank you. I'll add them to the OP (was pretty much out all weekend outside of posting in the Euro thread).

"TRY SOMETHING DIFFERENT, KUPO!" The kupos always annoyed the crap out of me, kupo. In English, they vocalize it as if it were a word as opposed to being something like onomatopoeia or an animal sound, kupo. No one talks like this, kupo. Kupo, kupo, kupopooo, kupo! It was cooler in text-form. :/

Crystal Chronicles did it right.

So now you guys might have noticed that they stuck almost all of the puzzles in Oerba, right? It's like the developers said, "well, everyone loved Oerba in the first game, so we might as well make the experience shitty by sticking all of these puzzles in here! Woooooo! Give them an extra side of Clock Puzzle in the final Oerba time!" This kind of stuff is just bad design.

Wait a moment, people liked Oerba? What?

I have a friend who seriously loves his storytelling. He thinks that "Toriyama's one of the best storytellers next to Kojima" (his words, not mine). He got so frustrated when I told him that I wasn't seeing what he saw in the narrative/characters at all, lol.

How old is he? Also, gift him a real book next time his birthday comes up.

 

[Fimbulvetr]

They kind of had a point, though -- I never ever got the impression that Lightning and Serah were super-close and got on well together. Not in the FFXIII prequel novel. Not in FFXIII. Not in the FFXIII epilogue novel. Not in FFXIII-2. The game never made me feel like I should care about their relationship at all.

This is why people saying “at least Toriyama concentrates on characters” always makes me chuckle.

The dude treats characters like tools. They say their piece, and then he has no use for them so they devolve into clichés or cardboard in the background.

Wait a moment, people liked Oerba? What?

The usual praise is that it’s very atmospheric or whatever.

 

[Dark Schala]

Crystal Chronicles did it right.

Same sound as the moogles in FFIX. I always thought the sound was cute. That's the right way to do a moogle.

How old is he? Also, gift him a real book next time his birthday comes up.

29. So, no, liking Toriyama is not limited to youth at all. I guess it's a matter of taste? To be fair, the guy I'm talking about likes the "all flash, no substance" sort of stuff in storytelling.

This is why people saying &#8220;at least Toriyama concentrates on characters&#8221; always makes me chuckle.

The dude treats characters like tools. They say their piece, and then he has no use for them so they devolve into clichés or cardboard in the background.

People say that? None of Toriyama's characters are written well, nor do they have proper character evolution. If they evolve (and this is usually through a 5-15 minute speech somehow), it still doesn't make their character memorable. It's just an archetype "evolution". The man just cannot write, period. He must have some sort of seniority at SE to continue having a writing position because someone somewhere must have complained about how poor his writing skills are because in every game which has a plot penned by him, the narrative and character writing has been awful.

FFXIII is a good example of what you said -- towards the end, everyone just turned into Snow and ended up spewing the same motivational bullshit he said for the entire game.

Edit: The only exception to this that I see is Noel, who at least has a reasonable backstory.