Man, chapter 7 took forever. I gotta say, the combat with only 2 people is pretty boring. It's much better with a full group of 3. Anyway, supposedly chapter 11 is where it opens up and you can do sidequests, grind, etc....., so hopefully 8-10 won't take too long.

3/17/2010 6:17:31 PM

i may not even finish this game. every character is so damn irritating,

3/18/2010 11:10:40 PM

finally got to pulse .... as soon as you get there you can do hunts

some enemies you have to completely avoid because they are so powerful

going to spend some time and do hunts because i couldn't beat the enemies blocking the way to advance the story

i really need a chocobo to get around on the plains but i don't think i can use them until i finish 12 hunts or something, walking takes a while

3/18/2010 11:20:01 PM

after reading these reviews, i think i'll just get god of war

3/19/2010 12:07:06 AM

^good idea

3/19/2010 12:21:48 AM

^^i'm sort of wishing i had at this point. i still plan on playing xiii but i think i should've gotten gow3 first.

3/19/2010 10:46:59 PM

can't believe I did not know about this mechanic

Quote :

"Shift ATB recharging This is a fairly well-known mechanic that will help you expedite battles and put you at a distinct advantage if used properly. Every time your ATB fills up completely to max, you are guaranteed a full ATB instantly upon your next Paradigm shift. After you shift, you must again allow the ATB to fill up completely before you can perform this shift recharge again. In other words, if you shift at most every other turn, you will always get a full ATB when you shift. The basic sequence to take advantage of this is: 1) After ATB is fully charged, perform actions and shift as final action completes. 2) Instant full ATB for next turn. Perform actions. 3) Back to Step 1 and repeat."

Makes things way easier once you practice and get it down. here is an example of it being executed well

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpsL_QeKrdE&feature=related

3/20/2010 5:00:48 PM

My gf gave me FF13 as an early B-day gift. I played for about an hour. w t f. I played FF8, 9, 10, 10-2, and 12. FF13 is a mess. FF10 had a badass beginning with the Blitzball game. 12 was lame w/ fighting rats, but at least opened up the world fairly quickly for exploring and grinding.

FF8 Good: story & characters, building weapons
FF8 Bad: enemies grow as characters grow, SeeD ranking crap
Overall, 8.5 out of 10

FF9 Good: story & characters
FF9 Bad: cartoon feel
Overall, 7.5 out of 10

FF10 Good: story & characters, voices, sphere grid, turn-based fighting system, blitzball
FF10 Bad: Unrealistic quests for the best weapons for a majority of the characters
Overall, 9.5 out of 10

FF10-2 Good: interesting costume concepts for character development
FF10-2 Bad: Yuna turned into a skank, gay story, gay singing
Overall, 7 out of 10

FF12 Good: Story, Real-time battles, vastness of world and freedom to explore very early
FF12 Bad: Characters not as interesting as past FFs, Summons were pointless/never needed
Overall, 9 out of 10

Everything that I liked about past FFs, seem to be missing in FF13. Characters seem lame, story is jumbled, battle system is fucked up (timing battles... really? REALLY? let me strategize & experiment, don't rush me god damnit). I hope this game pans out. I'm still going to play it though, but I feel it may be the worst FF yet.

3/31/2010 12:43:53 AM

Yeah, I kind of got bored of it, and have no desire to play it anymore.

3/31/2010 2:39:21 AM

^^, ^ A lot of things I've read on the game have mentioned that the game as a whole is great, but the first 30 hours or so are relatively boring and excessively easy...

so it should pick up after a while, if you feel like sticking with things.

Though for ^^, if you don't like the battle system, it might not be worth it for you. Supposedly once things actually get rolling, there's more focus on when to paradigm shift (or whatever it's called) than experimentation as with most other FF games, strategy-wise.

3/31/2010 3:35:05 AM

Jesus christ this is why I don't play things like FF.

I don't have time for a game that is "boring for the first 30 hours."

That's just silly.

3/31/2010 5:56:56 AM

^ i agree. I love FF games, but I like to fly through them without doing side missions first and beat them in ~25-40 hrs. I can't stand to buy a game that takes that long to be decent.

3/31/2010 8:17:33 AM

I'm in Chapter 12, where things have improved considerably (Chapter 11 is where it really picks up), but in general I don't like this FF. Except for Sazh and Fang, all the characters are horrible. Lightning's a bitch toward Snow for no apparent reason, Hope is a whiny punk, Vanille is a ditz and has one of the WORST voices I've ever heard (half her grunts sounds like she's getting plowed), and Snow has that lame fist-pumping, high school level "let's get em!" attitude.

The soundtrack is so-so. Definitely not up to par. The story doesn't make a whole lot of sense. On several occasions, I've learned something through reading the Datalog that the characters only vaguely hinted at during cinema scenes. And the cinema scenes can be downright painful, filled with a whole lot of overblown philosophical bullshit, bad dialogue, and melodrama. The graphics are fantastic though. They're the one thing helping me sit through the god-awful cinemas.

I do think the battle system is great once you get three characters in your party and the crystarium really opens up. I've died a lot, mostly when I thought I could kill an enemy before he killed the leader, but also when my paradigms weren't set up right. Just last night I fought one boss multiple times before I found the paradigms that worked to really take him down. And I got stomped by one enemy only to change up my party and take him down in no time.

3/31/2010 10:04:35 AM

I've beaten it and done most of the missions so I can finally give a just opinion

i had the most fun doing missions and unlocking more areas of Gran Pulse, riding around on my chocobo from mission to mission. this cannot even be done until chapter 12.

the graphics and music are good but the characters and story just were not there. the ending left me feeling pretty apathetic which is never good for a FF game. Square tried to go the Michael Bay route here.

The battle system is fun but for a seasoned FF player like me I only had to retry a few fights. Most of the missions were easy for me to 5-star. But that is not saying everyone will have it easy. I looked up a few strategies here and there. The second fight with Barthandelus was quite challenging (far more so than the last boss).

Overall, wait until it lowers in price if you aren't a hardcore FF fan because there are better games out there. sigh, I really miss the old JRPG charm. We may never see a really good JRPG again.

3/31/2010 10:32:32 AM

Some things I've gathered from reading up on/watching videos/watching a friend play the game (played a bit, but there's honestly not much difference between playing and watching):

The game was developed by a team led by the guy that made FF: Advent Children (Yoshinori Kitase... he has directed many past FF games, but this is one of the first times he's been given almost complete production control), and he's publicly announced that he didn't really think he was making an RPG, but more like something in a "new genre"...

Unfortunately his new genre seems to be interactive-combat-movie... and there were a few critical assumptions made that just didn't pay off. They assumed that people would care about the characters right off the bat, before getting to know them... so fairly early-on, people were given scenes meant to have an emotional impact before they were given any reason to care. They assume that players will automatically care about the world in which the game is set, even though during gameplay sequences, all they are ever shown of it is continuous hallways until late in the game. They assumed that anyone playing the game would take a deep interest in everything about it: You're expected to know something about the characters/setting/plot before the game ever begins, and you're expected to look in the Datalog as the game progresses (which is retarded). In many of these ways, the game was developed with a certain niche market in mind despite being Final Fucking Fantasy, one of the most popular and well-known franchises ever.

The game was designed linearly, which isn't a bad trait in and of itself, but apparently the studio entirely forgot to hire a level designer. Linearity to advance the plot a certain way is not bad, but it IS bad when something is linear to the point that it eliminates variety and entertaining gameplay. One could argue that the first 10 hours of almost any Final Fantasy game are very linear (with some exceptions), as you are funneled from town to field to dungeon as the plot demands... but there are branching paths in all of those things, and everyone has a slightly different experience (mostly ensured by random spawns, but variety is still possible with fixed enemies... for an example, see: Tales of Vesperia). The first 10 hours of FFXIII, with the exception of only one large room and occasionally small dead-ends, are comprised ENTIRELY of single-path hallways. Here is a map (spoiler-free): http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/192/ffxiiimap.jpg

As for the combat system... the system itself is phenomenally good. It demonstrates how to streamline a system without removing all depth. Unfortunately, it is implemented as poorly as possible... once again, it seems as though the studio forgot to hire level designers for the combat. The first 10 chapters of the game introduce concepts to you item-by-item, and then expect you to learn them through a lot of repetition. Besides some degree of monotony, they were so afraid that you might not understand that they hold your hand and turn down the difficulty for almost all of it. There's nothing inherently wrong with the Auto-Battle/ATB system (or whatever it's called), but when virtually every normal fight consists entirely of hitting X on Auto-Battle every time it pops up, the gameplay stagnates. The game forces you to pay attention and keep hitting the button, but it does very little to actually involve you in what is happening, and this is almost entirely the fault of the people who designed the monsters/fights. As for boss battles, many of them suffer the opposite problem from standard monsters... If you can't just flat-out auto-battle your way through them mindlessly, then there's generally one specific method that the designers want you to find out about that will let you win while most other strategies will get you killed. It adds variety, but the contrast is so stark that you either end up bored or frustrated with little room for fun in between.

Ideally, in an RPG, a player should want to continue gameplay to progress the story, but the gameplay should also be compelling enough that players want to continue the story so that it advances the gameplay as well (in simpler terms, fighting things to find out what happens next, but also wanting to get to new areas to be able to fight more new and different things). In FFXIII, in many ways, the gameplay comes off as an annoying necessity that just gets in the way between cut-scenes... It comes across as though the developers felt this way too... pesky gameplay, getting in the way of their movie. Players DO want to progress the story for new and different gameplay, but this is because they're disappointed and hoping that it gets better later (even the 10/10 reviews acknowledged that the game is slow, boring, and easy for the first 20 hours, making their overall rating kind of... questionable).

Everything about the first 2/3 or so of the game is so on-rails that the player can't feel much sense of accomplishment or involvement in what is going on... Why feel good about beating X boss when everything is so constrained that everyone else did it the exact same way, and it's simply what you're expected to do? In FF games, typically the player can feel involved and accomplished, because what they've experienced has mostly been their own... at the very least, there is at least an illusion of customization in the others. This can have surprisingly far-reaching consequences... people care about their party members not just from the dialog and character development, but also because the characters are a part of their party... the player has put some effort into making these characters not only stronger but also somewhat unique (again, this is sometimes just the illusion of customization, but it's still valuable), so they have even reason to care about what happens to them. FFXIII, on the other hand, expects players to care simply because the characters are in a Final Fantasy game and assumes that is the end of that... again, the game is so constrained that one player's characters are going to look almost identical to those of another player, which subtly reduces the value that the player places on those party members.

Plot-wise, I won't say much. This is meant as an objective review, and with characters and elements that players either love or hate, it's hard to quantify anything. Vanille, for example, was described by one player/reviewer as (paraphrased) "perfectly cast... lovable and cute in all the right ways." Another reviewer explained Vanille as "an abuse of the 'cute anime girl' cliche, voiced and scripted as obnoxiously as possible." I can't really say anything objective about her when some people wanted to hug her and others wanted to throw her off a cliff... besides perhaps that the characters are polarizing. The dialog, while not bad, maintains just enough cultural distance in the translation as to feel unrealistic to the player... for example, the words "Fal'cie, L'cie, Focus, Cocoon, Pulse, etc" are used so often that it becomes a notable over-use (largely due to issues inherent in translation... reluctance/ignorance of pronoun use and variety of phrasing).

Characters are very well-characterized (albeit through the relatively lazy method of flashbacks), but they experience virtually no character development. Also, the game lacks persistent plot-relevant NPCs and only just barely has a main villain. Basically the entire game, character-wise, is just the party members and their static personalities. These absences mean that the game has lost two huge elements of most FF stories: Character development and a villain/villains. Development-wise... Cloud matures in 7. Cecil becomes a paladin and develops morals in 4 (to say nothing of everything that Kain goes through). 5 and 6 feature a ton of this stuff, as well. Changing and maturing characters are important for an engaging and "epic" story such as the ones FF games always want to tell, but FXIII features relatively little of this. Also, villains are often some people's favorite parts of an FF game... Kefka was iconic, Sephiroth was more beloved by players than half of the party characters, and even if their motivation was simply "evil" or "nihilism", villains in FF games have almost universally been very strong characters. Again, FFXIII barely even has a main villain.

The graphics are phenomenally good, but graphics don't make a game... especially not a Final Fantasy game. When someone can get a more satisfying and emotional experience watching polygon-Cloud and friends or with sprites on the SNES, it really doesn't matter how realistic the hair looks, or that someone's skirt or cloak never clips through their legs. It's impressive, but ultimately useless. The music is good enough to add atmosphere, but nothing is really memorable or outstanding.

(cont'd)

[Edited on March 31, 2010 at 6:47 PM. Reason : .]

3/31/2010 6:39:30 PM

^ (cont'd)

Summary version:
Final Fantasy XIII is over-designed by pretentious and self-obsessed people who want to be making a film, and important aspects of past Final Fantasy games like strong level and combat design are ignored almost entirely. The combat system has incredible potential and is an outstanding innovation, but is implemented so poorly that the combat comes off as tedious and/or annoying. Most characters are either greatly loved or thoroughly hated, but they are all well-characterized despite being static throughout most/all of the game.

Of 13 chapters, 1-10 are about a 1/10 in terms of gameplay... mediocre, poorly-paced, and feeling like a 25-hour tutorial (but a PRETTY tutorial). 11 is where the game starts to become good. The player's leash is finally removed and they are permitted to create their own experience and shape their characters the way they want... And when the player is allowed to freely roam the Gran Pulse, we get a glimpse of just how great the game could have been, had the customization and freedom not come so late. The ending bit is back in the hallway-dungeons, but still leaves the control in the player's hands.

Grand Total: 6.5/10
Better than most FF-ripoff style JRPGs, but arguably the worst main-series FF game ever produced. The game looks great, and the final 3 chapters show us something awesome, but unfortunately, players have to drag themselves through nearly 30 hours of monotony to get there. Judged among all games (since there is a lot of trash on the market), I'd give it a 7, but as something with the Final Fantasy title, it's disappointing enough to be a 6.

----------------
This has been a long-winded and analytical review from someone who has seen nearly all the content of FFXIII and has read both positive and negative reviews to gauge the experiences of other players. Thanks for reading.
----------------
(Back in the day, I would have expected to get paid for writing all that... of course, if someone had paid me, I also would have bought the game myself, and I would have actually bothered writing better)

Quote :

"We may never see a really good JRPG again."

The Tales series has figured out how to do the genre the right way, and they're likely to continue moving in the right direction. However, you may be right that we might never see a great Final Fantasy again, unless Square-Enix ditches the failed experiment that was letting a man who wants to be a filmmaker lead a game development team.

[Edited on March 31, 2010 at 6:50 PM. Reason : .]

3/31/2010 6:39:52 PM

you should post that on gamefaqs or something, it's better than most of the "i only played 10 hours but know enough to say I hate Vanille 3/10 reviews"

if you look at the reviews on gamefaqs, like 10 of them have the phrase "a shining example" in the title. wtf

i played tales of symphonia and it was great but it looks like i won't be getting my hands on tales of vesperia any time soon (since i only own a ps3)

Also, the dialogue for FFXIII really brought it down. I think that the story and characters could have come across better if the dialogue had been improved. I heard that Square redid the cutscenes so the mouths would move along to the English dialogue. If so, that was a waste of time because the dialogue was crappy anyway. The music was still pretty good to me. I especially like the music that was used in the "Titan's Trials" area with the haunting vocals. In fact, a lot of haunting vocals were used. I'm probably just a sucker for that. I also liked the "chocobo jazz" music played when riding a chocobo.

[Edited on March 31, 2010 at 7:39 PM. Reason : .]

3/31/2010 7:34:07 PM

Quote :

"you should post that on gamefaqs or something, it's better than most of the "i only played 10 hours but know enough to say I hate Vanille 3/10 reviews""

Heh... I would, but GameFAQ reviews are almost universally trash. I'm not even posting this stuff to a gaming website and I've still got higher standards than that.

I wrote my share of reviews on GameFAQs back in my early high school years, before they were bought out by CNet and merged with GameSpot. There was a tougher quality control process back then, and while there were some shit reviews, things were generally reliable. Now it's mostly just ranting fanboys and haters throwing out whatever they feel like, and the administration lets them since the site has gotten too large to bother managing. This bit of e-history is sadly irrelevant to FFXIII, though, so that's all I'll say about it.

Quote :

" I also liked the "chocobo jazz" music played when riding a chocobo."

I've never met a chocobo theme I didn't like.
If there were still time, I'd edit my post from "nothing was memorable or outstanding" to "almost nothing". These were a few great bits of music, and the chocobo theme is fun, but most of the ambient music was just... there. Appropriate but not special.

[Edited on March 31, 2010 at 7:47 PM. Reason : .]

3/31/2010 7:43:29 PM

Quote :

"The game was developed by a team led by the guy that made FF: Advent Children"

That explains a lot, as AC didn't make much sense either. I had to consult message boards to get a decent explanation.

Quote :

"Also, villains are often some people's favorite parts of an FF game... Kefka was iconic, Sephiroth was more beloved by players than half of the party characters, and even if their motivation was simply "evil" or "nihilism", villains in FF games have almost universally been very strong characters. Again, FFXIII barely even has a main villain."

I was going to write about this earlier. Kefka, Golbez (with the Four Fiends), and Sephiroth were memorable and FUN. There was tension when any of them appeared on the screen. Now my reaction is "Oh, it's you again".

It's weird, the music sounds better when I listen to it on youtube than it does in-game. The battle music is generally good and I like the track called "Will to Fight".

tromboner's review is pretty much right on the money overall.

[Edited on March 31, 2010 at 11:39 PM. Reason : .]

3/31/2010 11:32:06 PM

Beat the game and am now in process of grinding the crystarium and weapons.

This is going to the be engine for the next FF game and, to me, it's a tech demo so it's about what I expected.

Not a lot of side quests other completing the Cieth missions.

4/1/2010 12:42:58 AM

im farming adamantoises for platinum ingots and traps. using the vanille casting death method. doing well. lvl 5 on 4 jobs for everyone so far...i have only 3 ce'ith stone marks left. after that, i'll have the gold watch and will try to get 5 stars on all the marks that i dont already have 5 stars on.

4/19/2010 4:25:42 PM

eh

you don't really need to max out to 5 star the missions

to me it was pointless

[Edited on April 19, 2010 at 4:31 PM. Reason : .]

4/19/2010 4:29:50 PM

i got about 12 hours in and just wasn't feeling it. i ended up trading someone on craigslist for god of war 3 and feel it was a good decision. i might end up picking up another copy of ff13 when the prices drop but well see

4/19/2010 6:32:13 PM

Beat it and enjoyed it, the last 1/3 of the game is alot better, and the crystarium was a cool level system.

I have to say I really enjoyed the battle system on this game...kept me thinking through most of the ceith stone and boss battles.

I've moved on to Resonance of Fate...cool game from the Tri-Ace people...not quite the polish of FFXII but the content seems darker, the voice acting better, and the JRPG cliches aren't as in abundance.

4/20/2010 8:36:05 AM

Debating whether to get FFXIII; I enjoyed the battle system of FFXII and the ease of grinding and exploring whenever I wanted. From what I read, I may not enjoy XIII so much. Will wait for prices to drop or someone to toss to side.


III

[Edited on April 20, 2010 at 9:57 AM. Reason : my B]

4/20/2010 9:56:23 AM

don't bother paying more than 30 or so for this, its not worth it. As a fan of the previous installments, i was so disappointed with this one that i physically couldn't play anymore after i got about 5-6 hours in.

4/20/2010 10:27:43 AM

eeehhh...that does not sound good. And as all the reviews and what I read in here...30 hours of mindless walking just to get into serious play sounds terrible. I am a slow player as it is anyway. I like to grind, explore, take my time (i.e. not smart enough to figure out mazes, puzzles, games, bosses) therefore it will take me probably double what hardcore players put in


III

4/20/2010 10:41:28 AM

there isn't anything in the first 30 hours that will confuse you. it's all that straightforward. the moment you're really able to do any of the real exploring is after that 30 hours.

4/20/2010 4:55:45 PM

Quote :

"i got about 12 hours in and just wasn't feeling it. i ended up trading someone on craigslist for god of war 3 and feel it was a good decision. i might end up picking up another copy of ff13 when the prices drop but well see"

Ditto, except Splinter Cell and I'm not buying it again no matter how far the prices fall. So not ditto at all really.

/agree Tromboner 100%

4/21/2010 9:06:34 AM

1/19/2011 5:57:34 PM

more time to improve the story

yeaaaaaah right

1/20/2011 1:06:41 PM

just re-make VI and VII and stop subjecting us to this installment

1/20/2011 1:34:26 PM

I'm not understanding the direction they have been taking since making FFX-2. FFX wasn't my favorite, but I enjoyed it/finished it.

But then they make the first ever sequel based around what I thought were some of the blandest characters in franchise history.

Now they're making another sequel (haven't played FF13, only read comments and tromboner's review), with more bland characters.

1/21/2011 11:49:27 AM

It's a money thing. FF games cost a lot to create (all games do these days) and reusing the assets allows them to make more money off them.

1/21/2011 1:06:12 PM

Can't remember if I posted in this thread already, but yeah, I got bored of it pretty quickly. The game is way too linear. There's not that "epicness" that you got in the earlier games - you know exactly what you should do at pretty much every juncture.

1/21/2011 2:40:29 PM