Castor Krieg
Banned
Because he's Toriyama :-/
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FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 |OT| Change the Future
- Thread starter Kagari
- Start date
Because he's Toriyama :-/
it's because the battle system is so fun!
I never avoided fighting stuff until the end when I just wanted to get to the ending.
Dark Schala
Eloquent Princess
Oh, I know the part you're talking about, lol. A lot of the narrative (and dialogue) is just... why? "Who wrote thi--... oh, right." A lot of it is a little confusing, like the part (or combined parts of the narrative) that you're referring to... You should be close to Chapter 5, then, if you're pacing yourself well.
A few streamers have gotten extra endings. Some of them are... uh, interesting... I haven't seen them all yet, but apparently the rest of them range from cool to "interesting". Wonder if all the endings are on any wikis yet...
Is the game really that easy? It only seemed like some of the streamers were having a hard time sometimes because their Optima choices weren't great. If it's easier than FFXIII, that's pretty disappointing. I wanted it to be harder. :/
Is using monsters definitely compulsory, then? I was looking forward to trying my hand at a Noel/Serah-only party.
Oh, and what do you think of the Time Labyrinth puzzles so far?
Rahxephon91
Banned
If it actually is easy, then I wont even bother with monsters in my party.
For healing and stuff? Yeah I guess that makes sense.
What do you think of the OST? How much is repeated/carried over from XIII exactly and what's your fake on the new stuff? I liked that compilation SE posted on YouTube; listened the whole way through, twice.
Dark Schala
Eloquent Princess
Some of them seemed like bad/frustrating padding to me, particularly the
puzzle with the numbers and the clock hands since they take long for the streamers to do and they're apparently randomized.
The puzzle where
you play connect the dots with matching coloured dots
Riposte
Member
How hard is this game vs XIII?
How easy to become overleveled? Let us compare to XII as a base where it was extremely easy to become overleveled.
People throwing around "bad end" pretty loosely here. Let us not spoil the game.
How easy to become overleveled? Let us compare to XII as a base where it was extremely easy to become overleveled.
Stocke was a good protagonist. They might've given us someone like him.
People throwing around "bad end" pretty loosely here. Let us not spoil the game.
rykomatsu
Member
I like the general gameplay direction they took with this entry. A lot of stuff to find and do and various time points are worth revisiting. The down side is, the side-quests are generally "find me this and bring it back". Regardless, there's a lot of chatter going on and having the townsfolk crowd around you when you come by with a Chocobo for the first time or when the Moogle(sp?) finds a hidden treasure orb in front of everyone adds a nice touch.
It still pales in comparison to say...ToV, but it's a huge improvement over XIII; not story-wise however...
Some framerate drops; cinematic action is kinda stupid, but overall I'm finding myself enjoying it more than I expected.
It still pales in comparison to say...ToV, but it's a huge improvement over XIII; not story-wise however...
Some framerate drops; cinematic action is kinda stupid, but overall I'm finding myself enjoying it more than I expected.
CosmicGroinPull
Member
So the story in this one is not up to par either? *sigh*
Perfo
Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
On par with what? In my opinion for example the story of FFXIII was on par with the previous games and managed to make me care alot for the main protagonists. It's the first more or less Final Fantasy where every main character also had a role in the story and something to say. Usually in FF you get a couple of protagonists and many fillers inbetween. Don't always talk as if there's only ONE opinion on that game. Infact there are multiple out there.
The Praiseworthy
Member
D
Deleted member 20920
Unconfirmed Member
Been playing for about 25 hours. It's easy to over level if you do side areas. The game itself is mostly easier than FFXIII. I would say that there is less reliance on paradigm shifting especially if you are slightly over leveled. There's very little reliance on Sab/Syn for normal enemies. No more enemies that take forever to break. Some areas have the one or two harder or impossible at that point in time enemies.
The game itself is pretty fun. Like some have said there's tons to collect and ways to collect things. Currently my main complaints would be that it's easy and that some of those plot points are just confusing. (Toriyama plus being bad in Japanese make things worse I suppose.) Like how does
changing things in the future
events in the past?
The monster growth system is quite complex and sort of like an evolved version of 13's weapon upgrade system. You use items to move from node to node in their crystalium. Items and monsters are divided into ranks and you need the right rank for the right weapon.
EDIT: I think I'm mistaken about biological and mechanical items for level ups for monsters.
Riposte
Member
Alright, so what I am getting is that this game's critical flaw is going to be the removal of the "level caps"(balanced design) in XIII. As I predicted, a downgrade from XIII. If that is the case that is I need to hear to decide that I won't be playing this game, at least not if I can't play it for free somewhere.
It is a shame that SE struggles with making decent games and a fanbase which doesn't know what a good game looks like discouraging any sort of positive evolution in exchange for towns certainly doesn't help. You'd think with games like FFXIII and The Last Remnant you'd see something more inspired in a "refined" sequel of one of them. This is why JRPGs suck, but what can ya do?
To be clear though, what exactly do the difficulty settings do?
EDIT: I should probably play it so I can justify saying "My favorite Final Fantasy is XIII and it is better than XIII-2" and then watch how people react.
D
Deleted member 20920
Unconfirmed Member
I haven't played with easy so I don't know any difference. They did say that they were having problems balancing the difficulty as they won't be able to tell how far the player is progressing . Once the options started to open up, i took a route that was harder (than the other) and going through that area made the other options easy for me.
Difficulty have always been one of the problems in JPRGs. I think back in the 80s when they first came up, one of the reasons that developers made RPGs was that it allowed people who are bad at games to be able to play them too. The philosophy, I think for Dragon Quest games, is that the player can always grind and attempt some more. This is in contrast with the difficult games of that period, the ones that had limited lives and actual game overs.
Riposte
Member
What really bothers me about all this, maybe to the point of frustration, is that they found solutions to the difficulty problems in previous games, in this game's predecessor even! The Last Remnant scaled enemies with you, which obviously has its downsides, while FFXIII simply capped based on storyline progression. All they had to do: skim off the tutorial stuff given it is a sequel(unless playing on easy, of course), emulate the best hunts and boss fights of XIII(making the game harder overall, at least on "hard" difficulty), and implement their ideas for improvements well. Maybe it was a fluke and I had guessed as much when this game's details first reached me, but I gave them the benefit of the doubt because the game seemed so similar to XIII and they were obviously implementing ideas to make it more complex. (I am maybe too accepting of the flaws of JRPGs, but all they need to do is advance and I'll forgive a lot.) But hey, towns, woo hoo, because that is what makes a videogame good.
If you want some challenge, then maybe don't do much of the side-quests & stuff early on in the game, just leave them for a second playthrough or something?
Dark Schala
Eloquent Princess
Huh. I wonder if the difficulty is part of the reason why people on streams are just using monsters as support classes, then, and not exploring additional roles for the main characters. I would have assumed that the human characters would have access to better and more varied skills for these support classes.
I mean, I just saw someone fight
I mean, I just saw someone fight
a Long Gui and they had a way easier time with it than in FFXIII! I don't think they were playing it on Easy mode (edit: yes, they were playing on Normal), they were using Auto-Battle for the majority of the battle, and they had some of the worst Optima equipped for the job. I don't even think they used Tri-Defender. They took long, but it was a little surprising to see. They also had Doom cast on them because they were taking long, but because leader death doesn't result in game over anymore, Doom isn't much of a weapon anymore unless it's a solo-human character + monster party.
You took the words right out of my mouth with regards to expenses and grinding for cash. I hope it won't be as irritating as the weapon upgrade system in XIII in the long run...
Riposte
Member
That is a bit too "manufactured" for me and I get the feeling I'd just reach the point where I was underleveled. Also what is there to say I won't become overleveled even just doing that? Naturally I'd like to hear impressions of people doing this, but I imagine that will be rare because it sounds fucking boring to prevent yourself from doing content.
Dark Schala
Eloquent Princess
Yes. I saw two people fight the Guis tonight on streams. One of them should have it recorded, but I'll caution you that the rest of those videos have spoilers in them. Unless someone just uploads the fight on YouTube or something...
D
Deleted member 20920
Unconfirmed Member
I'm kind of worries myself. But I don't feel the need to get all monsters and max them out so there's always good.
I suppose you could limit your level ups. Do the side content but not use the crystalrium points. If only they had added a hard option...
Perfo
Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
That's actually quite interesting. Did you finish the game already?
Ah ok, thx
The OST is fine... though they do make use of a lot of tracks from XIII, but it's done in a way that's meant to be "nostalgic."
ULTROS!
People seem to like me because I am polite and I am rarely late. I like to eat ice cream and I really enjoy a nice pair of slacks.
No wonder one city looks like something from Star Ocean 4.
Maybe they're the ones responsible for the towns!
lol.
As for Easy Mode... I think it's really unnecessary. I saw a lot of Japanese folks using it on the stream but... if you level enough you don't need it. I only had trouble with one boss so far and that was only because I didn't use status effects on it enough.
One would have thought that with the complaints about the story, SE would have also been like "Yeah, Toriyama? You know how you have written all of your games so far? Do a lot less of that."
I see it among the biggest complaints for the game. I'm curious how the western press will react, or if they've decided that JRPG stories are no longer worth caring about anyway.
Perfo
Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
I think in Square Enix they actually are quite confident on his way of working on story-writing. They always kept saying that FFXIII's story was an element well received worldwide 'till few weeks ago. That the "human drama" was achieved with success.
Toriyama will defend it to the end. The reality is, he had some good ideas, but the execution of them was quite poor. The same can be said of XIII-2.
I see. I imagine that works well enough in a game centered around time travel.
They need Nojima, but he's writing Versus for Nomura.
yo yo, the best story of 2011 from SE
What exactly is that?
from what I watched, the story seems very entertaining and twisty this time, I kinda like it. you probably shouldn't expect straight forward and simple stories from FNC games, looks like all of them will involve some invisible not really explained thing changing everything at some point and some bad random twists, so far all the FNC games feel like that to me, I'm not sure now if that's only because of Toriyama or the whole FNC mythos thing.
PsychoSoldier
Banned
Anyone know if there are any parts where the game limits you to only having two instead of three? Those were the absolute worst parts of the XIII imo.
Glad to hear that enemies aren't as hard to break this time. In XIII that might have added slightly to the difficulty, but mostly just added nuisance.
Glad to hear that enemies aren't as hard to break this time. In XIII that might have added slightly to the difficulty, but mostly just added nuisance.
Only in the first chapter.
PsychoSoldier
Banned
Good news. Probably be giving this a go once it comes out here then.