Rahxephon91
Banned
I'm just saying. Her costume looks really stupid, but going off of XIII I just don't think there's enough to right off her character.
FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 Review Thread [Update: More Reviews]
- Thread starter Kagari
- Start date
I'm just saying. Her costume looks really stupid, but going off of XIII I just don't think there's enough to right off her character.
Reviewer opinions are ultimately no different to someone who may be on Gaf, i.e. an enthusiast of the medium--the only difference is your reaction to their analysis. Of course, you can have reviewers who you like and dislike, but the same can be said for a member of a message board. It's up to you where you get your recommendations and opinions from, but this idea that games critique has gone down in quality in recent years is not the truth, it's usually just a reflection of people's unruly sensitivities towards their favourite series or what have you.
Plus, a reviewer can't really be held accountable for letting a game go under someone's radar. Maybe that just means said person spends more time on boards than reading reviews? Which is what I do, but you get me.
DR2K
Banned
She had much more than that, you're lucky you forgot. She was a slightly smarter version of Vanille only without the personality, charm, or uniqueness. She was nothing but a plot device with too many lines, and now they give her her own game.
It's true that she only shows up momentarily in the main action of the game, but she factors heavily in the endless flashback sequences. Most of my personal distaste for Serah stems from the Snow/Serah romance stuff, which I found tedious and a little creepy. (I don't like Snow, either.)
Rahxephon91
Banned
What scenes did she have?
The scene where they find her in the Vestige.
The Worst Birthday ever scene.
The "drooping the break up bomb" scene.
The "yes lets fly to where fireworks are"/proposal scene".
The scene where Light releases she's been so blind! scene.
The flying to the Vestige scene, but she hardly says anything here.
And the scene were she talks about being a L'cie to Vanile.
Maybe there's more, but they probably don't add that much. And pretty much every scene with her is about how she's a L'cie. How at all is she like Vanile? How does she have too many lines? All her scenes addedd up don't account for a lot of the game.
DR2K
Banned
She was in just about every flash back scene + more. That's way more than the 5 minutes you were talking about. That's more than enough scene time to infer how much of a shitty character she was. It doesn't look like anything has changed between sequels either. She's just a Plain Jane character, inferior to her sister in every way. Just a whiny character no one cared for with face palm worthy lines of dialogue.
Dark Schala
Eloquent Princess
From the English RPGSite Review:
This makes me feel great about Noel as a protagonist, and I liked him already based on the Japanese dialogue and the demo script.
Dark Schala
Eloquent Princess
Excellent. That's the sort of thing I like to hear.
Rahxephon91
Banned
That's good. I found Serah to be a likable character in XIII. It was only Snow I hated, screw that guy. If Noel is his replacement as male lead then good on Noel.
RPGCrazied
Member
Uhm. How is that a spoiler? It's been said many, many times in the OT that it ends with no conclusion. Almost every review says that about the story.
Good enough for me. FFXIII was the first FF I've played where I cared nothing at all about the story, but I found most of the actual gameplay great. Most reviewers seem to say the story is somehow worse, but all the mechanics are improved, so I'm happy.
edgefusion
Member
How is it a spoiler? Dude you're talking about the end of the game. What do you mean how is it spoiler?? I made my decision to play based on the demo, I had no interest in the OT or reading any reviews apart from coming here to see an aggregate of what kind of scores it received. Not that anyone should have to justify themselves on this because I don't think it's much to expect that people won't be talking about the ending of an unreleased game in the first post of a review thread.
Relaxed Muscle
Member
Between this and PE3 I hope Toriyama never ever writes a game.
RPGCrazied
Member
Whatever. Unless you have been living in a cave, you'd know about that. But I edited it out of the post to those it offended.
It's the kind of vague spoiler people always talk about though. I suppose it's technically one, but it doesn't go in depth and you'll hear people stating this about movies or other games (go back to 2004 and look at all the comics about Halo 2's non-ending, without any of them SAYING how it ends. Even though commercials fucking showed it.)
RurouniZel
Asks questions so Ezalc doesn't have to
Huh. Didn't know tri-Ace co-developed the game. That explains a lot.
NeededSleep
Member
Think im gonna stay away from ff games for awhile. Kinda want them to go back to fantasy-ish stuff and character designs/artwork like ff9. I might be out of luck but who knows they might make stuff for handhelds that look like that.
Of course they are. Publishers pay magazines and websites to give games good reviews. At places like GAF or other forums, you can get honest, unbiased opinions.
Raitosaito
Member
One thing reviewers won't mention with the N.A. version. Noel has the same voice actor as the 198219 NPC characters in Skyrim. It's hilarious to me because I feel like Noel should be giving me quests.
DR2K
Banned
What "little" screen time she had was all bad to me. She makes child like choices for no reason, she's just a cry baby wuss character all the way through. She reminded me of a 5 year old in an adults body. She isn't worthy of being a main character regardless of how conflicted our opinions are. You're giving her more of a fair shot, I've personally seen enough.
FateBreaker
Member
That 1up review was pretty entertaining and well-written. Nice work, Jeremy.
Rahxephon91
Banned
Such as? The two choices she makes, make sense. She doesn't want to tell Light, because like Light says if she is a L'cie its her job to deal with her, you know kill her. She goes to the Pulse Vestige because she has no other choice. Its what she thinks her focus is and she gained some reassurance from Snow that this is what she should do. Completing your focus is better then turning into a monster. What are the child choices she makes for no reason?
How is she a cry baby? Yes I would cry to if some machine god just handed me a death sentence. I'm not sure why this isn't reasonable. I'm not sure why showing some emotion makes her a cry baby. Besides, she's not crying in every scene, she really only literally cries in 1 and well she was turning into crystal and probably thought she would never see Snow or Light again. The other cutscene where she seems down sees her turn fine when Snow reassures her. Oh I guess she shed a tear during the fireworks scene, yeah what a crybaby. Shedding a tear because realize your going to die.
How? What does she do that is like a 5 year old. The answer is probably nothing.
I don't see the problem or why she's not worthy. FFXIII was about Light doing most of the things she did because of Serah. XIII-2 seems to be the reverse. Makes sense to me.
Fair enough I guess, but I'm not seeing an actual reason as to why she's shitty here. Beyond I guess she looks stupid? Is she a plot device. Yeah she is and she mostly works.
Rahxephon91
Banned
GT's wasn't harsh on the story either, neither was another video review I watched from a site I can't remember.
Reviews are in the 7-8 category, which is pretty much what I expected. Don't care though, got it pre-ordered and will form my own opinion.
Also, I always laugh at people who use "whiny" to describe characters. Mainly because it's used wrongly so many times, especially when it comes to FF and JRPGs in general. Serah was fine in FFXIII, and from most reports, she's pretty good here as an actual character, not just an extended plot device.
Also, I always laugh at people who use "whiny" to describe characters. Mainly because it's used wrongly so many times, especially when it comes to FF and JRPGs in general. Serah was fine in FFXIII, and from most reports, she's pretty good here as an actual character, not just an extended plot device.
Perfo
Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
After reading almost all of these reviews, I can definitely say that they speak of a game worthy a score of 9+. They clearly forced themselves in giving the game an 8 in most of the cases. The bad thing of this is that games like Dragon Age 2, pure shit, are rated similar. Who doesn't have the patience to read and relies only on scores, will think of XIII-2 the same. So sad.
ShockingAlberto
Member
haha what
Thats what I thought as well after reading your post =/.
Good grief, who's not to say that reviews of games like Dragon Age 2 "speak of a game worthy of a score 9+"?
I know you're excited about the game Perfo, but that's uh... some interesting bit of footwork there.
Talk about convincing yourself that a game is going to be great. Wow lol
Ok, it's time to confess. You really are that moogle aren't you?
Perfo
Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
I'm trying my best to be optimist you know! lol ~ (I know, I deserve a good prize for being the best fanboy out there!)
Yeah anyway, jokes asides, the game is better described than XIII in most of the cases, still it gets lower scores from the same magazines that rated the first better. We talked of this already, we know the reasons. The paradoxes (!) that come out, are just funny :O
I'm not writing a review here, I'm just trying to support a series I like
But If I'm not mistaken, you said it once... that XIII-2 will be scored lower or similar to XIII, while being better, because they rated XIII higher than what deserved. I just repeated this.
Yeah anyway, jokes asides, the game is better described than XIII in most of the cases, still it gets lower scores from the same magazines that rated the first better. We talked of this already, we know the reasons. The paradoxes (!) that come out, are just funny :O
I'm not writing a review here, I'm just trying to support a series I like
But If I'm not mistaken, you said it once... that XIII-2 will be scored lower or similar to XIII, while being better, because they rated XIII higher than what deserved. I just repeated this.
>_____>
Perfo, you need to learn to be critical of the things you love most.
This is a joke post, right? There's no way that you can seriously believe this.
Perfo
Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
For a moment I thought most of these reviews stated that XIII-2 is a better game than XIII – yet scoring similar or lower – and that Dragon Age II is considered worldwide a real bad game strangely rated with 80% on videogame ranking sites. Maybe I just imagined it?
Lady Bird
Matsuno's Goebbels
A 9+ game is what the main Final Fantasy games are (were) usually worth for, and main Final Fantasy games used to be staples of their time, above average JRPGs, and presenting some of the better storytelling from Japan, exceptions aside.
For FFXIII-2 so far, there has been some pretty big consensus that the story is pretty bad (sure, there will always exist those that will like it, as 2-3 out of the ten-ish reviews point so - but that's a clear minority), and Toriyama's direction has not been received very well neither (for trying hard to make "a JRPG as good as the others", in contrast to "something above your average JRPG" the FF series were know for; and for how many of the game ideas somehow fall flat and feel like they are there for the sake of fan appeal, leading to a direction that didn't feel very unified.) The soundtrack has also been the target of some issues especially for not fitting very well into the game.
Taking all this into account, 8/10 actually feels very generous, which shows its a very solid game regardless of Toriyama's questionable skills for directing and even more so for writing.
Perfo
Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
Yet both famitsu and dengeki gave XIII-2 a perfect score. I'm not saying it should deserve it, and that was not the intent of my statement. I'm trying to say that, compared to XIII's scores and similar titles, it's just underscored – or if you prefer me saying it differently, the other titles are scored more than their worth.
8 out of 10 is actually a good score if journalism in the last years stopped abusing that same score on titles that are worse and the 9s pratically everywhere else. I haven't played XIII-2, but I'm confident in saying that is surely a better experience than Dragon Age II and XIII. But that was not enough for it to get higher scores. I'm interested in seeing Edge's score, at least they have space to show improvements eheh.
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