Meccanical
Member
The scariest thing about Gilgamesh is that you never know how many eyes he has until it's too late.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
FINAL FANTASY Community Thread: XV Mainline Entries and Counting
- Thread starter Kagari
- Start date
CrimsonCrescendo
Banned
Actually, I seem to remember plenty of times where Lightning, Hope, and Vanille avoided eye contact. But besides that: XIII was their attempt to cater to Western audiences, so that may explain why there was less of it. XIII-2 threw that out the window. And quite honestly, it would show more thought being put into the product if it didn't have stuff from Japanese culture. Parts of your background culture can be so deeply rooted that you don't even notice them. Making eye contact isn't frowned upon in the States or several other Western cultures, so we don't even notice that we do it and only notice that when it isn't done.
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
Blind men who can see better then you!?
------------
I dunno guys. A GILGAMESH GAME is long overdue. Ultima Radiation empowered arachnid samurai rude warrior dude with lots of weapons and a big stick with a sword on the end who also has an excellent sense of humor sounds like a winner if you ask me.
FF MUSOU!
This does not BEAR the RESEMBLANCE of the SWORD I seek!
CrimsonCrescendo
Banned
Two eyes are better than six when the buffoon can't properly use any of them to see what is in front of his face!
CrimsonCrescendo
Banned
HOW CAN YOU TELL!? You may have six eyes, but you see like you have none at all!
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
A WORTHLESS STICK I FOUND! YOU MAY CLAIM IT IF SUCH RUBBISH APPEAL TO THEE!
I bet he gives the best bear hugs around, tho.
See, that would make sense if this was a movie, but this is a game where you have to program what people do and how they're positioned and all that jazz. Either the heads just look janky and hanging because it's XIII-2 and a well known sloppily made product, or some guy actually had to tilt them heads to simulate a version of reality we are basing on hearsay.
I mean shoot, a cursory knowledge of anime disproves the argument altogether. People look at one another when conversing all the time.
What's more is that you're actually wrong about eye contact as it pertains to American culture. In America eye contact follows one of two rule sets depending upon your ethnicity. Either you're the type of person who looks someone in the face when speaking and away when being spoken to, or you're the type that looks away when speaking and at when being spoken to. In both cases, though, its a matter of the position of the eyes and not the head, which is what I'm talking about. It isn't that Hope and Noel's eyes are looking away, which is what someone might do, it's that their heads are both facing down at the same time while speaking to one another.
And it's FFXIII-2. Like hell was extra effort put into that game.
CrimsonCrescendo
Banned
There is an old saying: Thou must sometimes poke the bear to eat the lunch. If so, then Gigly boy gonna be awfully hungry.
True, I wasn't thinking about it that way.
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
It should be known I've essentially memorized every line GILGAMESH has ever said. It's a good thing he isn't given that many.
hipsterpants
Member
Corvo I had a larger response typed up but GAF did not deem me worthy of posting on my phone and since deleted it entirely.
For a little background information, VII was my first foray into the world of FF back in 2011, and during that summer I manages to beat VII twice, IX once, and got to the final dungeon of VIII before I quit (a mistake I have since corrected).
Basically what I'm saying is that Midgar (really up until after Kalm) is amazing and one of the best intros to any game ever, but man... On subsequent playthroughs it is kind of a drag. I'm going to push past that and see if things improve.
Also, no denying Cloud is the fucking man. The dive back into his memories on disc 2 is one of my favorite gaming moments of all time. And VII's cast is one of if not FF's best, almost entirely filled with memorable characters that are involved throughout the entire story. None of that "here are the two mega important characters and a few other guys that do stuff too" that later FF's have issues overcoming. Unfortunately XV will likely suffer from this as well.
Also Zidane x Dagger OTP 4ever.
Also this ended up being longer than my original post. Go figure.
For a little background information, VII was my first foray into the world of FF back in 2011, and during that summer I manages to beat VII twice, IX once, and got to the final dungeon of VIII before I quit (a mistake I have since corrected).
Basically what I'm saying is that Midgar (really up until after Kalm) is amazing and one of the best intros to any game ever, but man... On subsequent playthroughs it is kind of a drag. I'm going to push past that and see if things improve.
Also, no denying Cloud is the fucking man. The dive back into his memories on disc 2 is one of my favorite gaming moments of all time. And VII's cast is one of if not FF's best, almost entirely filled with memorable characters that are involved throughout the entire story. None of that "here are the two mega important characters and a few other guys that do stuff too" that later FF's have issues overcoming. Unfortunately XV will likely suffer from this as well.
Also Zidane x Dagger OTP 4ever.
Also this ended up being longer than my original post. Go figure.
I feel that having played VII, VIII and IX back to back, VII was still the most user friendly. VIII is the easiest as long as you can wrap your brain around junctions, and IX is the best in terms of presentation (but that battle system is slow as heeeeeeell).
NHarmonic.
Member
Well she does seem annoying in those scenes, at least Hope looked annoyed by her antics.
Also, are you able to play as Snow, Sazh or even Lightning (again) in XIII-2? Or Is "Noel-Serah-Monster" your party the whole game?
Meccanical
Member
You can acquire Snow, Sazh and Lightning as monsters, but you can't have the real deal in your party.
By acquire you mean pay up.
Dark Schala
Eloquent Princess
Hey. The DLC bosses are legit the only good thing about that game in a playable sense. Too bad you had to pony up to be able to play them.
And they're all gimmick bosses, too. :V
And they're all gimmick bosses, too. :V
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
Only good DLC boss was GILGAMESH anyway so whatever.
Dark Schala
Eloquent Princess
Gilgamesh was by-far the best DLC boss of the batch, yeah.
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
If only they implemented bosses like that in the actual game.
Dark Schala
Eloquent Princess
I think they took the complaints that FF13 was "too hard" too far and then made the game's difficulty incredibly low, even for the in-game superbosses. It shouldn't be possible for me to do a 2-person party run on a first playthrough, but I did it without a lot of issue. I didn't grind either since my levels were substantially lower even while doing quests than those playing through the game normally. Monsters were rather irrelevant for me. Of course, we'd justified it in the game's OT by saying that my playstyle might be different from a lot of people's, but since a lot of other people found it to be easy, well...
If you wanted to know what a focus group'd RPG looked like, then look no further than FF13-2's kitchen sink design and difficulty.
If you wanted to know what a focus group'd RPG looked like, then look no further than FF13-2's kitchen sink design and difficulty.
hipsterpants
Member
Oh no doubt. In fact, I beat VII without any actual knowledge on how the materia system worked and pretty much just used fire,ice, lightning, and cure for my magic spells. It's a comically easy game to the point of being a bit disappointing when you come back to it after a while.
I always have to wonder what exactly was going on over at Square during the translation of VII though. Of all the FFs to give a rush translation job to you think it wouldn't be the one that still to this day is one of the most expensive games ever made.
Edit: I like to think XIII-2's ridiculously easy difficulty is partly a result of how rigidly the battle system from XIII was tied to its linearity. By allowing full customization you can't really force people to use buffs / debuffs / sentinel powers without screwing over someone who leveled the wrong way. Of course they probably could have alleviated that by not using the dumb as shit leveling system they employed (level 2 sentinel cost = level 99 ravager cost, obviously).
Lumpy Onion
Member
Tried to play a bit of XIII-2 again for a bit today and think it's an unbalanced mess. I had my fun with it over a couple playthroughs, but it is really a hodgepodge of cool ideas that never came together. I thought Lightning Returns was MUCH better than XIII-2.
Also playing through FF XIII again (loaded a save right at the start of Pulse) and am loving the hell out of it even after many playthroughs. Doing manual command entry is making the combat feel more alive, and also adding some extra challenge. Playing SEN manually is more fun than auto ever was. I wish more JRPGs had the visual polish that this game had. The fact that you can zoom in on the characters faces and move their eyeballs around with the controller was crazy. This is still my go to game for eye-candy, and the only thing that comes close is XIV.
Also playing through FF XIII again (loaded a save right at the start of Pulse) and am loving the hell out of it even after many playthroughs. Doing manual command entry is making the combat feel more alive, and also adding some extra challenge. Playing SEN manually is more fun than auto ever was. I wish more JRPGs had the visual polish that this game had. The fact that you can zoom in on the characters faces and move their eyeballs around with the controller was crazy. This is still my go to game for eye-candy, and the only thing that comes close is XIV.
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
Doesn't help the people who it was focus-tested on was essentially a bunch of schoolgirls. Indicative of the target audience.
CrimsonCrescendo
Banned
Did you not see my audition picture for Banjo Kazooie earlier in the thread!? YOU OFFEND ME, CORVO! SURELY, IT IS I WHO GIVE THE BEST BEAR HUGS!
I never played any Banjo game.
Did you get that one shard in the back?
?
I just picked up the crystals I saw and then the tower sunk. Did I miss a job? I got five new ones :/
I'm somewhat surprised that anyone ever defaulted to autobattle to begin with. On my playthrough, early on I only used it to get a sense of what the game thought its mechanics were. It's not until things got really hectic (and the menus for RAV, SYN, and SAB got huge) that I started autobattling more, and even at the end of the game I was playing the other three roles with manual entry (except sometimes when coming out of a paradigm shift).
At any rate, the first two chapters of FFXIII would have been absolutely unbearable if I hadn't been trying to place AoE's and end battles faster with triangle-button action. There wasn't much that could be done to salvage Vanille's attack-only gameplay, but at least Lightning's combat (and to a lesser extent Snow's) gave me something to do.
The autobattle system seemed rather un-gifted at SEN, though I admittedly haven't used it there much.
For instance, on Palumpolum, does it do a decent job of provoke+guarding against the chainguns?
The character models are impressive as hell considering how low-poly they are. Obviously that meant that sharp geometric details like hands suffered, but 99.9% of the time the models look great, and have lots of well-used animation bones.
As cutscene animation is concerned, even FFXIII had some weird moments where they obviously threw in a sloppy stock animation or some other (literal) five-minute solution where specially-crafted animation could have made a difference. Heh, it's probably a good thing the game wasn't putting significant effort in giving the character movement a realistic type of weightiness.
Speaking of realistic weightiness, though, FFXIII-2 annoys me with its running animation. They decided to make the characters lean when turning during movement, but without quality kinematics happening between the character's feet and the floor, it mostly just looks weird.
Nah I'm teasing you. There is a crystal shard in the room you cannot reach.
Until near the end of the game.
Oh. I didn't even notice haha.
It's not a big deal, but a worse person than I would've told you you missed out on an important job class.
CrimsonCrescendo
Banned
Just started playing VIII. Is it true that, because the game scales to your level, it's better to do low level runs? Really don't want to find myself hosed halfway through.
tiggerkiddo
Member
You can't trust Corvo...he'll tell you to open every single chest at the end of the game.
Professor Beef
Banned
You can play the game anyway you choose. Enemies do scale with your party, but they're also only so strong before your party simply steamrolls them in every battle if you're properly junctioning spells.
CrimsonCrescendo
Banned
Thanks.
If you don't have Lionheart before the end of disc 1 you're doing it wrong.
I didn't know you could even craft weapons without the Magazines. Would've made my last playthrough more interesting to try and get all the weapons in disc 1.
You only need Lionheart. Squall could solo the game.
Meccanical
Member
That's how I did it.
Squall, Zell, Rinoa is my party of choice.
tiggerkiddo
Member
Rinoa is awful, use Selphie instead. If you get lucky, you can get her one powerful spell. Plus she's hilarious.
Selphies spell is hilarious but Rinoa also makes breaking the game easier. Plus Angelo is the best.
Yup that's who I use too.
Lumpy Onion
Member
Sounds like the most boring way possible to play the game. Just because you can doesn't mean you have to. If anything the game is far more interesting when you try and limit yourself and add self imposed challenges.
But I am the kind of person who avoids using offering and Ultima weapon on vi because it feels like I am cheesing the game.
tiggerkiddo
Member
You should play Star Ocean games. The fun in those is seeing how fast you can break the game. I suppose that's why I like to do in FF games too. Of course it depends from person to person. There is no wrong or right way to play.
I don't think TteoT or TLH had many ways to break the game? At least SO2 had all those fun skills to use. And you could get the main character's best weapon in like the second or third city you enter.
e: i should replay so2 some day soon
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
Regular attacks only. No magic. No defending. No items ever. No summons either. One character alive in party at all times. Go. You have a challenge now.
tiggerkiddo
Member
Getting Orhilacalum (however you spell that) and adding it to Boots of Prowess and your weapon increased your damage significantly and made the rest of the game trivial. Costs lots of money but once you get them high enough...only the absolute final final secret boss can hurt you. This is for Star Ocean 3. Don't know about 4.
Lumpy Onion
Member
I wish I learned how to break SO2 because that game got outright brutal towards the end. But after playing through SO1 remake recently I was kinda shocked at how easy it got with minimal effort. Every battle literally became press X to win with little deviation.
Yeah, there certainly isn't any "right" way to play FF games. Probably why I have replayed them all so many times throughout the years. Almost an infinite amount of variables to change the way you want to play them. You can either be a god or a weakling if you want to be.
Sounds like a challenge I wouldn't want to take lol. I'll stick to my limited stat junction run thank you.
Oh yeah, I think I remember something like that. Man, although they really really lack in the story department and the battle system is more flash-flash than depth-depth, they're a lot of fun to play. I should give them all another try soon!