Final Fantasy XIII: Tube Quest

[Great Rumbler]

So who here has any interest in FFXIII? I was pretty hyped about it when it first announced, about a century ago, but what I've heard about it recently has done a good job of deflating that hype.

One of the major things I've heard about it that I don't like is that the whole game is basically one long tube that the game drags you through. Maybe six or seven years ago this wouldn't have bothered me as much, but I've been on a western RPG kick recently and I love the fact that they're much more open and have choices that you can make rather than having the game decide for you.

Having said that, I would still like to play it some, though probably not until I can find it cheap.

[DMiller]

I'm definitely going to get it, but not at release. I too have been spoiled by the relative freedom in western RPGs and if 13 is similar to 10 in terms of dragging you along it's probably not going to make me very happy.

[Great Rumbler]

A lot of people are saying that it's even worse than 10, unfortunately. There's also no towns.

I never played very much of 12, maybe 8-10 hours, but I really like the huge, open world with lots of side quests and locales.

[Geno]

I barely played 12 (didn't like the battle system all that much, but I guess I need to get used to it; I was hoping it would be more like Kingdom Hearts' battle system), but I agree that 10's lack of freedom to explore sucked. I've never really played western RPGs, so I can't really compare, but the old Final Fantasy games had a bit more freedom. Sure, until you get your airship, you're pretty much stuck to a small portion of the map, but at least there was an overworld, you could usually backtrack to previous towns (amid hordes of random encounters, no less), and you could go on side quests to other towns along the way. Zelda is pretty much the same way; you could visit some areas before the story required it if you wanted, though without certain items, you may not have gotten far.

From how you describe western RPGs, I imagine they're somewhat like Grand Theft Auto (also a western series) in which you can explore the town and do whatever you want until you decide to advance the story by starting the next mission or completing a particular objective or whatever. If that's the case, then yes, that style does appeal to me.

[Great Rumbler]

From how you describe western RPGs, I imagine they're somewhat like Grand Theft Auto (also a western series) in which you can explore the town and do whatever you want until you decide to advance the story by starting the next mission or completing a particular objective or whatever. If that's the case, then yes, that style does appeal to me.

They do have similarities in that regard to GTA, though to varying degrees. The latest big-budget western RPG, Mass Effect 2, does push you along a bit and there aren't huge open areas to explore, but it lets you decide when you want to mess around with side quests and talking to NPCs and went you want to follow the story.

If you really want a huge, open world where you can do whatever you want, Fallout 3 is pretty much the pinnacle of that for recent games.

[A Black Falcon]

They do have similarities in that regard to GTA, though to varying degrees. The latest big-budget western RPG, Mass Effect 2, does push you along a bit and there aren't huge open areas to explore, but it lets you decide when you want to mess around with side quests and talking to NPCs and went you want to follow the story.

If you really want a huge, open world where you can do whatever you want, Fallout 3 is pretty much the pinnacle of that for recent games.

It's also lame and stupid compared to Fallouts 1 or 2. :p

But yes, most Western RPGs have some degree of open-endedness. How much there is varies from title to title, but there's almost always at least some, and usually more than most JRPGs have. In the last few years also action-style combat has gotten more and more popular; a few games here and there resist that, most recently Dragon Age, but action combat is in now, unfortunately for the genre in my opinion (I mean, I like action-RPGs, but not as a replacement for the traditional genre, just as a supplement!).

[Geno]

I could go either way so long as it's fun. I enjoy the real time gameplay of Kingdom Hearts, the turn-based gameplay of Super Mario RPG, and the ATB style of most of the Final Fantasy series. I just want whatever system the game uses to be well-made, and I just didn't find FFXII to be very well-made (again, I didn't play the game for very long and I would like to give it another shot someday). I didn't even think Zelda II's pseudo-RPG style was bad, though I do prefer the traditional Zelda style.

[A Black Falcon]

FFXII is pretty good for a Final Fantasy game I think, it's kind of like a JRPG/MMO hybrid gameplay-wise, which makes it a lot more interesting than standard JRPG menus-only, you-can't-move-around stuff.

I did stop playing at some point when I ran into a hard boss that probably requires me to go back and grind, because I hate doing that, but it's a fun game in my opinion.

[Geno]

I hate having to level grind. I prefer when the difficulty of the bosses flows evenly with the encounter rate assuming the player doesn't just run from every random encounter (and I have disciplined myself to only run when it's absolutely necessary and not just because I'm tired of fighting imps).

[A Black Falcon]

I completely agree, but Final Fantasy don't often do that from my admittedly somewhat limited experience... there's always somewhere where you need to grind, as well as fighting every single random battle possible along the way. What a pain...

For instance, Secret of Mana. I stopped playing that game after something like the third or fourth time I reached a boss, only to be utterly destroyed and realize that no, I'd need to go back and grind monsters for half an hour or something before I'd be strong enough to fight it. I kept going after the first few times, even though having to do that is a massive pain when whenever you fight the boss and fail you have to start all over from whenever you last saved, but after a while I just said forget it, this is not worth it.

[DMiller]

I really liked Final Fantasy 12. I enjoyed the battle system, and the amount of freedom to do what you want in that game was unprecedented for a FF game. It's too bad they seem to be regressing with FF13.

[alien space marine]

FF13 is utter weirdness, The last game I played was FFX, I am surprised to see that the random battles are gone...

[A Black Falcon]

Getting rid of the random battles is one of the few things FFXIII keeps from FFXII... (and FFXI of course, if you count it)

And yeah, as I said, FFXII is a good game. I just hate required grind, that's the only reason I stopped playing... will probably get back to trying it sometime.

[Dark Jaguar]

A long tube? Heh, that's an accurate description of 10. I think the moment I first realized I was never going to really be able to "explore" in 10 was when I finally got control of an airship and when I got all excited about telling it I wanted to fly somewhere, I got a frickin' menu, which just teleported me to places I'd been before.

9 was the last one with a world map. 12 was nice for having some wide world exploring at least. Apparently some people complained...

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.

[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.

[Dark Jaguar]

It's funny you mention that about KH, because I liked exploring those worlds too. I was just too fast for the heartless so I just flew by them when I was exploring, or as a cub, just ran by. As much as I like the series though, the worlds are just really small snapshots of a few areas dedicated more to battle than anything else. The worlds being small? That I understand, there's a lot of different worlds they are trying to fit into one game.

The annoying thing about 358/2 Days is just how repetitive it gets. After playing the game, as much as I like certain aspects, it gets really old really fast visiting exactly the same worlds doing exactly the same thing over and over again just to fill a "mission" quota. I mean it's just plain bad design. Also, I got excited when I first realized I'd be able to go on pure "exploratory" missions until after I'd done a few and realized that the ultimate extent of that would be clicking on a bunch of question marks hidden in the level and then answering extremely painfully obvious questions about what all the clues "meant". Hardly what I had hoped for.

[A Black Falcon]

http://ve3d.ign.com/videos/play/68727/Xb...lash-Video

PS3 vs. 360 comparison video. They look similar, but as has been widely reported the PS3 does have an edge. Plus evidently the 360 is missing some background trees in the distance or something in some areas... but 3 DVDs is a lot less space than one BD, so it's not surprising that there were some downgrades. As the video makes clear it still looks pretty good on 360 I'd say.

[alien space marine]

What's ironic is that the one boss I am having difficulty beating is Odin.

[Geno]

What's ironic is that the one boss I am having difficulty beating is Odin.

Hahaha. Does he have actual attacks unlike in FF8, in which he stands around and one-hit pwnz you if the time runs out before you defeat him?

So yeah, my impression so far of FFXIII based on what I saw at my friend's house: the graphics are obviously impressive, the music is nice (typical of Nobuo Uematsu), but probably most compelling is the battles. The ATB makes a comeback, but the characters move around the battlefield more instead of always standing in a straight line, so the battles look much more animated and... cool. I can't say much about the story because I only played the beginning portion and then watched him play sections from later in the game in which I had no idea what was going on, so I'll save that review for when I actually play the game. Apparently, there's something called Pulse aaaaaaaaand... that's about the extent of my knowledge. :)

[alien space marine]

Hahaha. Does he have actual attacks unlike in FF8, in which he stands around and one-hit pwnz you if the time runs out before you defeat him?

So yeah, my impression so far of FFXIII based on what I saw at my friend's house: the graphics are obviously impressive, the music is nice (typical of Nobuo Uematsu), but probably most compelling is the battles. The ATB makes a comeback, but the characters move around the battlefield more instead of always standing in a straight line, so the battles look much more animated and... cool. I can't say much about the story because I only played the beginning portion and then watched him play sections from later in the game in which I had no idea what was going on, so I'll save that review for when I actually play the game. Apparently, there's something called Pulse aaaaaaaaand... that's about the extent of my knowledge. :)

I beat him after some frustrating time spent leveling up, The summons are not like those in the early games, They fight alongside your lead character and can also switch to a special mode were they perform attacks by pushing different button combination's.

[etoven]

This combat system in Final Fantasy XIII is basically this....

You press the X button to flick a giant penis...
And then the console makes a completely random decision totally unrelated to the giant penis...

[Geno]

Yeah, auto-battle does take away from some of the skill since you can just pre-program basic strategies and spam your most frequently used combos. Once you've set up an auto-battle sequence, all you do is pick the sequence and let the game do the rest. It's a real X-masher.

The summons sound interesting, actually. One of the few things I loved about FFX was that you could actually play as the Aeons. FFVIII kicked things up a notch by giving GFs their own HP meters, but other than that, they would just use one attack and then disappear like summons in all other Final Fantasy games prior to 10.

[alien space marine]

I tend to die allot more in this ff then any other, The game is nice enough to bring you back at the exact spot were you died.

[Geno]

I also noticed it auto-heals you after every battle.

[EdenMaster]

Yeah, auto-battle does take away from some of the skill since you can just pre-program basic strategies and spam your most frequently used combos. Once you've set up an auto-battle sequence, all you do is pick the sequence and let the game do the rest. It's a real X-masher.

The summons sound interesting, actually. One of the few things I loved about FFX was that you could actually play as the Aeons. FFVIII kicked things up a notch by giving GFs their own HP meters, but other than that, they would just use one attack and then disappear like summons in all other Final Fantasy games prior to 10.

It's still better than XII, where thanks to Gambits, you didn't even have to hit X. Penny Arcade summed it up the best, the game was masturbating, just playing itself.

I'm just after defeating Odin right now, and so far I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Sure it's a bit linear, but I'm enjoying the scenery, characters and story. You guys do remember which FF is my favorite, right?

[alien space marine]

It's still better than XII, where thanks to Gambits, you didn't even have to hit X. Penny Arcade summed it up the best, the game was masturbating, just playing itself.

I'm just after defeating Odin right now, and so far I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Sure it's a bit linear, but I'm enjoying the scenery, characters and story. You guys do remember which FF is my favorite, right?

Watch out for the giant boss with lawn mower pedals that keeps changing its elemental characteristics, You'll need to use the Libra ability on it and then cautiously wait for the right moment to use Odin as his attacks are based with the thunder element you'll need to wait for the boss to become vulnerable to thunder attacks before you summon Odin.