Final Fantasy 13

My thoughts on FFXIII so far:

Well, I played pretty much all day yesterday, and overall I'd say I'm fairly dissapointed so far.

I, for one, enjoyed exploring, which is now absent with the "travel from point A to point B" approach they've taken so far.

I also enjoy *gasp!* grinding. I like to get obscenely strong compared to the enemies I'm supposed to be fighting, as a result of a mixture of grinding/leveling and obtaining the best equipment and weapons I can. FFXIII limits how powerful you can become IN RELATION TO what part of the story you're at, and as you know throws armor out the window and severely limits the amount of weapons you obtain.

I also think that the whole "party leader dies/game over" idea is weak.

Another thing that seems a little cheap is how easy the battles become once you switch between paradigms. For example, I can use all my ATB as the leader, switch to another paradigm setup, and all of a sudden my ATB is full?? Does that sound right to you? It doesn't seem to work reliablly everytime, but it still makes the battles easy.

The story started out fairly slow and weak, but at the point i'm at now it's picked up considerably and is definitely engaging.


Anyways, these are just my thoughts, and should be taken as such. My favorites in the FF series were VI and XII (of the numbered series) and Tactics is my favorite of all time (where my username comes from). I didn't expect FFXIII to be the same as previous entries obviously, but I did expect it to engage me more mentally than it has. I also miss my exploring, armor, and growing extremely powerful :( .

I've played a few hours into XIII and like it well enough for what it is. I think the FF titles we grew to love changed for better or worse when Squaresoft became Square-Enix. Just sayin'.

This.

Games these days are so over-hyped and have suffered when it comes to producing something worthwhile. If they spent half the marketing budget and put it towards an actual RPG, then somehow included the same story, we could really have something there.

Id get similar experiences if I put the movie "Avatar" into my ps3 and just wildly tapped the X button on my controller throughout it.

While 13 is a beautiful game graphically and possesses a decent storyline (thus far since im still "watching" it), I wouldnt consider this an RPG. Its very linear, it lacks actual choices, and at no time do I actually feel like Im assuming the role of any of these characters as the story unfolds. I can deal without the towns and NPCs for the most part, but at least make up for it with a decently challenging battle system. I was challenged more by playing Parappa the rapper.

Its by far not the worst SE has ever produced when it comes to FF titles. X-2 will be holding that crown of thorns for a long time to come... at least until 15 comes out.

The free roam in chapter 11 better be *** good or i'm going to rage

there is something you didn't mention :S FFXIII is like FFXI for one thing... No gils at the end of a figth, which force you to farm like a little pig for somes "sellable" items...

While 13 is a beautiful game graphically and possesses a decent storyline (thus far since im still "watching" it), I wouldnt consider this an RPG.

Why is there no real choise involved with the crystarium(sp)?
At first it looked like we'd be allowed to really specialize our characters, but after you the play the game for a few hours, you end up unlocking every last node on it.

The only choise left is the order in which you do the unlocking, but the end result will be the same: a fully unlocked crystarium tree.

I heard there's no towns.



lol

You guys have to stop pretending you didn't know that a traditional JRPG has not a single role playing element in it. Back in the days, Enix and Square just stole the term because it sounded like dragons and swords and ***. They don't care what you think it should mean. They don't even speak English.

When I play an FF game, I expect it to be linear and to restrict my choices because that's the only way a game can have a good storyline that makes sense. I don't expect to identify to one of them in particular and pretend that I'm him. Instead, I expect it to feature a new cast of characters and I want to be able to witness the interaction between those characters, helping them achieve their objective as a group. It's been like this since 1988 if you leave XI out since it's an MMO, so what's the big deal about FF XIII being restrictive? The Midgar part of FF VII was just as restrictive, wasn't it?

Other companies will just squeeze the juice out of an old successful franchise, making clones after clones until they runs out of ideas for their "remakes". Think Street Fighter, Zelda, Castlevania, Mega Man... But you have no idea what the next FF will look like. It's been that way since 1988, for the better or the worse; and let's hope that'll never change.