Final Fantasy XIII: Tube Quest

[Geno]

I'll still get 13 I think though. I hear it's still a good game. However this focus on battle systems above every other aspect of the game is annoying me. Kingdom Hearts, for example, is a series that could be much improved if I could interact with the various worlds in ways other than fighting and the occasional "examine" command.

Zelda does have a great sense of exploration and a vast world I can freely travel in. Sure I need to gain access to different parts of the world, usually through items, but that's part of the fun, slowly expanding the range I can explore. That's how older FF games worked too. I think that's one of my biggest annoyances with the Xenosaga series actually.

Agreed about KH, Zelda, and classic FF. I wish the worlds in KH were a bit more interactive instead of Heartless constantly appearing every step you take. That series really overdoes it with the Heartless. I want to enjoy being able to romp around Pride Rock as a lion cub a little bit, stop attacking me! Maybe if the worlds had more citizens, shops, mini-games, and the like, sort of like the locations in Zelda, I'd enjoy it more.

I wonder why Square Enix decided to do away with the free exploration of the old FF games in the newer ones. Older video games generally didn't have that kind of free exploration. Super Mario World was very innovative because it was the first Mario game in which the player could revisit previous levels. This system was adopted by other games as well. I liked the formula you described better, in which the world slowly became more open to you as you gained new items (i.e. the ability to pick up bombs allowing you to blow up the boulders blocking your path to Zora's Domain or the Longshot/Epona allowing you to get over the bridge to Gerudo's Fortress).

At some point, you'd then gain easier access to areas you've previously explored: in the Zelda games, you would learn some sort of warp spell (the ocarina songs in Ocarina of Time, the owl statues in Majora's Mask, the wind song in Wind Waker, Midna's warping power in Twilight Princess, etc.) and in the Final Fantasy games, you'd get some sort of vehicle for limited exploration (a boat, a floating military academy, or a plane that got shot down and now functions as a boat), followed later on by an airship for complete access to the entire world map save for a few secret areas that can only be accessed by breeding a gold Chocobo or whatever. Still, this is just an optional convenience. Why do away with the freedom to explore the world? Why replace the world map with a menu of locations?

Yeah, I've rambled enough. Tomorrow, I'm going to a friend's house to preview FFXIII. He says it's awesome.