Support NeoGAF

[sdornan]

you readin' the datalog, yes?

lots of info in there

I found most of the datalog to just be a rehash of cinemas I've already watched. Besides, I don't want to read about what the world and its characters are like, I want to see it.

 

[jjasper]

I am 100% in agreement with the above poster who said the open-ended stuff should come at the front

I don' see how they could have done this and gotten away with it. Instead of people saying "It sucks cause you have to walk forward for 15 hours before you get to the good stuff", it would have been" The game opens up great and then takes everything away from you" There just isn't anyway they could have gotten around their horrible level designs.

 

[BocoDragon]

One area does not make up for the rest of a linear game. Moreover, FF13 has little in the content department—sure there are a lot of bosses to fight, but there's no honestly engaging exploration, nothing to make you feel at home with either Cocoon or Pulse. There are no activities outside of running, combat, and cutscenes. Can you honestly say that ONE area makes a full RPG?

I'd want more in the future... sure... but this isn't quite Calm Lands "one area". It's a small handful of different areas with different music tracks... Having a mini-FFXII in the second half of the game definitely goes a long way into destroying the impression that XIII is "one long hallway."

If Pulse had been front loaded on the game, the "linearity" complaint wouldn't have been so prominant.

Also, it's not an "open sandbox world" it's a big empty field to do the same exact shit in, fight monsters.

Shadow of the Colossus? Monster Hunter?

FFXII was great, and it was basically the same concept: roam the countyside, kill marks.. that's a pretty classic RPG mechanic right there...

 

[dramatis]

Yeah, right.

You can't really believe that. Can you?

Destructoid's 4 for this game? EDGE's 5? Come on.

Yes, I can. I think most of the higher end scores were given because they were giving FF the benefit of its name. Perhaps our opinions vary, but I think if it had not been a mainline FF title, 13 would have scored much lower because of the current wind of western taste. I wasn't speaking for the low scores, I was speaking for the 8s and 9s.

 

[Alex]

Shadow of the Colossus? Monster Hunter?

You have got to be mother fucking kidding me.

 

[eznark]

I don' see how they could have done this and gotten away with it. Instead of people saying "It sucks cause you have to walk forward for 15 hours before you get to the good stuff", it would have been" The game opens up great and then takes everything away from you" There just isn't anyway they could have gotten around their horrible level designs.

Yes, but then I would have been happy and not disappointed!

 

[BocoDragon]

You have got to be mother fucking kidding me.

Could you can the faux outrage?

 

[dramatis]

Can you say the overworld in Oblivion or Fallout 3 can make a full RPG?

Did I mention anything about Oblivion or Fallout 3? No? Then stay on track in discussion.

 

[KZObsessed]

Just got three platinum ingots which can be sold for 150k each...

($_$)

 

[sdornan]

Shadow of the Colossus?

This game and Shadow of the Colossus aren't even on the same plane, let alone the same level, of quality.

 

[7Th]

Pulse was a total cop-out with its rather plain huge steppe that had nothing but a few monsters scattered around. It would have been better to wander through plot-related ancient ruins and interestingly designed locations

 

[Brazil]

Yes, I can. I think most of the higher end scores were given because they were giving FF the benefit of its name. Perhaps our opinions vary, but I think if it had not been a mainline FF title, 13 would have scored much lower because of the current wind of western taste. I wasn't speaking for the low scores, I was speaking for the 8s and 9s.

I was speaking for the low scores. The 8s and 9s (and 10s) are well given.

People have been walking through corridors and pressing the same buttons over and over again and loving it for ages, and now that XIII comes out with a formula similar to that, but in a package beautiful beyond imagination, people throw all their hate over it. All because said game is a Final Fantasy game.

We know very well "fans" don't support changes in this series. Just look at Final Fantasy XII - that's one of the best RPGs ever created, and people troll it around just because it isn't a carbon-copy of X. Gamers want innovation? Hahaha. XIII isn't like X or XII - so everyone who wanted more of X or XII troll it like there's no tomorrow.

And I'm out of here. Back to playing this fantastic game.

 

[Crash Station]

Intro to chapter 12 was off the wall. I don't know how they do it but they keep topping the previous chapter intro/finale. It was kind of hard to follow but awesome nonetheless.

 

[Community Forum]

Chapter 11 holla! So how do I go about getting a

Spoiler

chocobo? I want to hang out on Pulse as much as possible, and I'm having fun leveling up!

 

[sdornan]

We know very well "fans" don't support changes in this series. Just look at Final Fantasy XII - that's one of the best RPGs ever created, and people troll it around just because it isn't a carbon-copy of X. Gamers want innovation? Hahaha. XIII isn't like X or XII - so everyone who wanted more of X or XII troll it like there's no tomorrow.

It's actually very much like X in many aspects, except not as good. And I've always thought X was overrated.

 

[eznark]

I was speaking for the low scores. The 8s and 9s (and 10s) are well given.

People have been walking through corridors and pressing the same buttons over and over again and loving it for ages, and now that XIII comes out with a formula similar to that, but in a package beautiful beyond imagination, people throw all their hate over it. All because said game is a Final Fantasy game.

We know very well "fans" don't support changes in this series. Just look at Final Fantasy XII - that's one of the best RPGs ever created, and people troll it around just because it isn't a carbon-copy of X. Gamers want innovation? Hahaha. XIII isn't like X or XII - so everyone who wanted more of X or XII troll it like there's no tomorrow.

And I'm out of here. Back to playing this fantastic game.

I never really thought about it before but this game has shown the importance of towns and overworlds. I honestly do not like side quests. I never do them, ever. I do, however, love the illusion of choice. Spent an hour in a town here, grind this enemy instead of that to the north instead of the south...those things are important and break up the monotony. They also draw you into the world because there is an investment as a result of your choices.

This game us undeniably beautiful...that opening cinematic is jaw dropping. The battle system is rad and incredibly engaging, as engaging as you want it to be basically. Sadly the story is mediocre, the characters are a mixed bag and the dialog is atrocious. The whole package just isn't that compelling right now.

 

[Thrakier]

This is just part of the bigger issue of character development that the game has. Namely locking stuff away until after you finish it. But no eventually you will have to level up your weapon because you are going to need the extra stats, but you will also get a stupid amount of money sometime in chapter 11 and 12 so you shouldn't have a problem doing that.

The character development is the other thing I don't get. So far I'm in chapter 8 and I have every character class maxed out for every charater...on a linear path. So...what!?!? Why do I even have to do it manually?

And that I need to upgrade my weapons...sure. I decided on gladius and I gonna stick with it. This means, the weapon I found in the first hour is the one I gonna use for the rest of the game. No "happiness" about finding a new weapon, no cool looking new weapon design in the battles...nothing. Sorry, it's complete shit.

 

[Yoshichan]

Dunno if anyone needs help with mission 62 but I was stuck for 4 hours on these guys, when I finally found an amazing way of handling them in less than 3 minutes! I was close to beating them once and that took me 20 minutes, nice change huh? Well...

Spoiler

Lightning (main)
Vanille
Fang

Everyone should be equipped with fully upgraded Witch Bracelets (25% resist magic x4 = 100%). I had 14000 health with each character.

Rav/Sab/Rav
Rav/Rav/Rav
Rav/Sab/Com
Med/Med/Med
Sent/Sent/Sent

Battle Plan:

1: Use both buff items

2: Use Rav/Sab/Rav until you've got one debuff on him then immediately switch to Rav/Rav/Rav.

3: Continue spamming until you see both enemies load their magic. Quickly switch to Sent/Sent/Sent. This combination including you having 4 of each resist magic item will make their stronger magic hit 400-500 on you which is ridiculously low.

4: Obviously once they've casted it, continue with Rav/Rav/Rav until he breaks.

5: Switch to Rav/Sab/Com and spam the living crap out of him with Army of One. Vanille will debuff him (this is important!, Fang will hit him and Rav (which will be using Army of One) will stab him to death, literally taking him 45 seconds to die.

If he's close to dead, restart. If he's not close to being dead, go grind some, you're not ready.

If he IS dead, use Med/Med/Med if you want, then repeat.

 

[SEGAvangelist]

I'm suffering from Final Fantasy XIII withdrawal right now. I'm out of town on an opera gig and won't get to play again (about 12 hours in and my wife and I play together so I have to wait) until the Easter weekend. I keep humming the battle theme and start screen theme and my hands want to start jamming L1 and X over and over again. How do I survive?

 

[Alex]

Could you can the faux outrage?

Oh, I'm afraid it's not faux, just a natural reaction to very, very silly comments.

See, mob hunting is indeed a noble mechanic, in fact I've stressed about a hojillion times how much I like that sort of gig and like to fight big challenging bosses. I looked quite forward to it, most RPGs I play are kinda all about that.

But when it takes 20 hours just to get control of your group and big reward for all of that perseverance is a big open field to do the exact same thing in you've been doing all game, it's not very exciting with nothing to support it. In fact, it's very fatiguing, especially to see that the combat really doesn't go much of anywhere but the WRONG way with it's awkward, HP tank battles and role punishment.

(It's also not very fun when you've seen FF14 alpha footage full of significantly better looking sweeping vistas and outposts and interaction, but that's maybe not entirely fair)

Anyhow, trying to compare Monster Hunter of all ungodly awesome games to this is indeed RAGE INDUCING to me. So I stand by my reaction!

Also, I want to agree with a friend real quick that if you ripped out the entire OST and replaced it with the one in Chrono Cross, only good would come from it.

 

[Duki]

so upon reaching chapter 11, i've realised how to fix every problem with this game.

turn it off and go play final fantasy 12.

thinking about it, that game had a ridiculously good structure. every area was basically gran pulse, with monsters interacting with one another, and overly powerful monsters interacting with weaker ones making it seem like an actual cohesive world.

and they let you actually explore areas almost immediately. you could go to, say, the western estersand almost at the start of the game and get your ass kicked if you wanted to. was great.

and having hunts available throughout the game was much more entertaining than bunching them together. really broke up the monotony and gave some nice rewards.

irrespective of whether you liked the gambit system or not, and irrespective of whether you hated the story or not, the actual structure of final fantasy xii, the freedom it gives you, and the world that's created, is leagues above this game. why'd they regress so badly?

sigh. at least chapter 11 is fun so far. but all it makes me think about is how i played a whole game like this and it just makes me bitter.

also, even though the plot in ffxii was spread out far too thinly across the game (which is i think what most people's problem with it was; not the story itself, but the fact that for long stretches of the game you were told nothing but 'hey go talk to this weird looking guy, he'll tell you everything', and four hours later, when you FINALLY get to weird shaman guy, he's like "lol i dunno figure it out on your own", repeated forty times), it's still so much more interesting than ffxiii's.

even though, thinking about it, in a lot of ways they're kind of similar plot wise. you'd only realise how near the end of ffxii (so those of you who gave up on it won't understand what I'm talking about). The only thing swapped is basically the perspective; the antagonists of ffxii are trying to do what the protagonists in ffxiii are doing,

Spoiler

in that they're both trying to free humans from the control of weirdo crystal monsters

. pretty nifty now that i think about it.

and the antagonists in ffxii essentially win in the end, which is all kinds of :3

 

[DualShadow]

Rant

I hated the Gambit system and the story to FF12, the reason i stopped playing it less then half way through. However i love FF13's battle system and story so far (Chapter 7).

So turning it off to play FF12 wouldn't fix the problem since i don't have one and not everyone does.

 

[Duki]

i explicitly said i wasn't talking about either of those things. i was talking about the structure of the game as a whole; and final fantasy xiii is at it's best when it's directly copying ffxii in chapter 11. the battle system and story have nothing to do with this really.

 

[Dedication Through Light]

The cutscene of the Grand Prix in Chapter 12 reminds me of Speed Racer movie, lol. So colurful yet out of place personally.

 

[Giolon]

irrespective of whether you liked the gambit system or not, and irrespective of whether you hated the story or not, the actual structure of final fantasy xii, the freedom it gives you, and the world that's created, is leagues above this game. why'd they regress so badly?

I disagree completely. FFXII's structure made it feel like an offline MMORPG to me, and that's exactly the opposite of what I want from a JRPG. When I want that, I'll play WoW. I *like* FFX and FFXIII for their linearity. I *like* FFIV and FFXIII for its fixed parties - people come and go as appropriate to the story, and in FFXIII, you even have a choice of classes to use with any given person. I love it!

Even in Chapter 11, the missions essentially just take you to each of the available areas and lead directly into the end of chapter locations and on to Chapter 12. Sure you can go wander around, but the game doesn't force you to. I like a bit of structure. While open areas are nice for a diversion, I generally don't like when that's the whole game.

 

[luxarific]

so upon reaching chapter 11, i've realised how to fix every problem with this game.

turn it off and go play final fantasy 12.

thinking about it, that game had a ridiculously good structure. every area was basically gran pulse, with monsters interacting with one another, and overly powerful monsters interacting with weaker ones making it seem like an actual cohesive world.

and they let you actually explore areas almost immediately. you could go to, say, the western estersand almost at the start of the game and get your ass kicked if you wanted to. was great.

and having hunts available throughout the game was much more entertaining than bunching them together. really broke up the monotony and gave some nice rewards.

irrespective of whether you liked the gambit system or not, and irrespective of whether you hated the story or not, the actual structure of final fantasy xii, the freedom it gives you, and the world that's created, is leagues above this game. why'd they regress so badly?

sigh. at least chapter 11 is fun so far. but all it makes me think about is how i played a whole game like this and it just makes me bitter.

also, even though the plot in ffxii was spread out far too thinly across the game (which is i think what most people's problem with it was; not the story itself, but the fact that for long stretches of the game you were told nothing but 'hey go talk to this weird looking guy, he'll tell you everything', and four hours later, when you FINALLY get to weird shaman guy, he's like "lol i dunno figure it out on your own", repeated forty times), it's still so much more interesting than ffxiii's.

even though, thinking about it, in a lot of ways they're kind of similar plot wise. you'd only realise how near the end of ffxii (so those of you who gave up on it won't understand what I'm talking about). The only thing swapped is basically the perspective; the antagonists of ffxii are trying to do what the protagonists in ffxiii are doing,

Spoiler

in that they're both trying to free humans from the control of weirdo crystal monsters

. pretty nifty now that i think about it.

and the antagonists in ffxii essentially win in the end, which is all kinds of :3

FFXII was almost perfect except they ruined the story by shoehorning in Vaan and Penelo. If only they'd kept the focus on Basch/Balthier/Ashe....

That said, I'm still having fun with FFXIII despite major flaws with level design and the stupid battle AI. I actually like the lore and characters (except for Vanille, but she could have been a catgirl, so I suppose we got off lightly). And the game is gorgeous. I can't help but look forward to Versus now - I just hope we don't have to wait 2-3 years for it.

 

[DualShadow]

I disagree completely. FFXII's structure made it feel like an offline MMORPG to me, and that's exactly the opposite of what I want from a JRPG. When I want that, I'll play WoW. I *like* FFX and FFXIII for their linearity. I *like* FFIV and FFXIII for its fixed parties - people come and go as appropriate to the story, and in FFXIII, you even have a choice of classes to use with any given person. I love it!

Even in Chapter 11, the missions essentially just take you to each of the available areas and lead directly into the end of chapter locations and on to Chapter 12. Sure you can go wander around, but the game doesn't force you to. I like a bit of structure. While open areas are nice for a diversion, I generally don't like when that's the whole game.

Pretty much this without the WoW part

FF13 is probably my favorite FF since FF7!

 

[Duki]

I disagree completely. FFXII's structure made it feel like an offline MMORPG to me, and that's exactly the opposite of what I want from a JRPG. When I want that, I'll play WoW. I *like* FFX and FFXIII for their linearity. I *like* FFIV and FFXIII for its fixed parties - people come and go as appropriate to the story, and in FFXIII, you even have a choice of classes to use with any given person. I love it!

Even in Chapter 11, the missions essentially just take you to each of the available areas and lead directly into the end of chapter locations and on to Chapter 12. Sure you can go wander around, but the game doesn't force you to. I like a bit of structure. While open areas are nice for a diversion, I generally don't like when that's the whole game.

well, ffxii does exactly the same thing. there's no real choice in how to progress the game. there's a fixed story path like every other final fantasy game.

it just lets you ignore the story whenever you want and do your own thing for a bit, which i appreciated.

 

[MechaX]

That ending was... huh... I don't really know how I should feel about it. Even though I doubt any one cares, I'll probably add in my own detailed piece on this game later. After playing this game for five hours straight, I need a break.

 

[MrOctober]

Is anyone else kind of annoyed that you can't fight that giant mother fucker on Gran Pulse? The one who is taller than the mountains.

I kind of want to aim to take his ass down. That would be epic as shit.

 

[Curufinwe]

thinking about it, that game had a ridiculously good structure. every area was basically gran pulse, with monsters interacting with one another, and overly powerful monsters interacting with weaker ones making it seem like an actual cohesive world.

and they let you actually explore areas almost immediately. you could go to, say, the western estersand almost at the start of the game and get your ass kicked if you wanted to. was great.

and having hunts available throughout the game was much more entertaining than bunching them together. really broke up the monotony and gave some nice rewards.

I absolutely loved all that stuff in XII, but I am enjoying XIII even though I'm only 6 hours in which is supposedly 6 of the worst hours in any game if you listen to some reviews.

 

[Duki]

Is anyone else kind of annoyed that you can't fight that giant mother fucker on Gran Pulse? The one who is taller than the mountains.

I kind of want to aim to take his ass down. That would be epic as shit.

yeah holy shit, that was great. real star warsy thing, where the monsters they showed just kept getting bigger one after the other.

i'm surprised you don't fight him actually, is he ever explained plot wise?

 

[Fun Factor]

so upon reaching chapter 11, i've realised how to fix every problem with this game.

turn it off and go play final fantasy 12.

thinking about it, that game had a ridiculously good structure. every area was basically gran pulse, with monsters interacting with one another, and overly powerful monsters interacting with weaker ones making it seem like an actual cohesive world.

and they let you actually explore areas almost immediately. you could go to, say, the western estersand almost at the start of the game and get your ass kicked if you wanted to. was great.

Or better yet, play a MMORPG!

FFXII had areas with a relatively large & somewhat diverse area to explore, yet the very next one could almost be out of a random generator.
Half of the areas in the game were also linear paths that just kept branching off over & over again, to top it off the were overtly segmented by constant load times.
Plus the battle system in this one is much better

and having hunts available throughout the game was much more entertaining than bunching them together. really broke up the monotony and gave some nice rewards.

Haven't started the hunts yet on this game, but they can't possible be as tedious as in FFXII.
For each hunt, you had to:
Go to one city to read the hunt on a billboard, go to another city & talk to the headmaster of the guild to accept the hunt. Then go to another city to talk to the person who requested the hunt & finally go & find & beat the hunt.
Only to have to go back to the person who requested the hunt & THEN AGAIN back to the headmaster in the other city to tell them you finished it to complete one lousy hunt.

also, even though the plot in ffxii was spread out far too thinly across the game (which is i think what most people's problem with it was; not the story itself, but the fact that for long stretches of the game you were told nothing but 'hey go talk to this weird looking guy, he'll tell you everything', and four hours later, when you FINALLY get to weird shaman guy, he's like "lol i dunno figure it out on your own", repeated forty times), it's still so much more interesting than ffxiii's.

smh

 

[RurouniZel]

Finally I can ride Chocobos! WOOOOOO!!!

That's all I ask for in a new Final Fantasy. Let me ride them and I will be happy!

 

[SEGAvangelist]

also, even though the plot in ffxii was spread out far too thinly across the game (which is i think what most people's problem with it was; not the story itself, but the fact that for long stretches of the game you were told nothing but 'hey go talk to this weird looking guy, he'll tell you everything', and four hours later, when you FINALLY get to weird shaman guy, he's like "lol i dunno figure it out on your own", repeated forty times), it's still so much more interesting than ffxiii's.

This (and not getting all the useful gambits when you actually needed them) was probably my biggest gripe with XII. The story was really cool in the last portion of the game, but it took FOREVER to get there. Also, the characters were boring and I didn't care what happened to them. It was the first Final Fantasy since VI where I didn't care at all about the characters. Playing Lost Odyssey shortly after made this sink in even more as it felt like what FFXII should have been. What I like about FFXIII (so far) is that focus has been brought back to the characters. I almost swear Gooch was back for this one. Also the music feels like a Final Fantasy game again. It's not Nobuo, but it's almost as good. FFXII's music was terrible. It was like the crazy synth music from the overture in Waiting for Guffman. Enough of the FFXII hate, though, because there were many things I liked about the game. Adventuring was fun, I loved killing tortoises, the graphics were awesome, the world was interesting, the localization was great, and I applaud Square for trying something different, but I think they found a better mix of old and new for FFXIII. Now with the hard work done (engine and PS3 tech stuff), let's hope Square adds a little more exploration in the early parts of FFXV (hopefully for PS3?) as well as some towns and shops and I think it'll be just about perfect. XIII has me really excited for future games in the series just like X, VII, IV and 1 did before that. Now the gruelling wait until Easter to get my hands on XIII again... ugh.

 

[dustytruly]

are the summons actually useful in this game? i can never think of practical times to use them... they don't deal enough damage and your character can still die with them around and you get a gameover

i always think of them as like a gamesaver when you're on you last ropes, but in FF12, and 13, these like... 'stand-alone' summons that fight with you seem completely useless and they use 3 team points ... plus these ones are like dumb transformers that look kinda ridiculous when they transform

 

[MrOctober]

yeah holy shit, that was great. real star warsy thing, where the monsters they showed just kept getting bigger one after the other.

i'm surprised you don't fight him actually, is he ever explained plot wise?

No. I've beat the game and am now back on Gran Pulse trying to finish all the hunts and take down everything on the lower world but that guy is always there walking around in the distance just doing his thing and I can't go fuck him up. I'm a little pissed about that.

 

[RurouniZel]

No. I've beat the game and am now back on Gran Pulse trying to finish all the hunts and take down everything on the lower world but that guy is always there walking around in the distance just doing his thing and I can't go fuck him up. I'm a little pissed about that.

DLC. Believe.

 

[KZObsessed]

are the summons actually useful in this game? i can never think of practical times to use them... they don't deal enough damage and your character can still die with them around and you get a gameover

i always think of them as like a gamesaver when you're on you last ropes, but in FF12, and 13, these like... 'stand-alone' summons that fight with you seem completely useless and they use 3 team points ... plus these ones are like dumb transformers that look kinda ridiculous when they transform

I've never died while my summon is there. I think it gives you full health plus Odin will heal you when you're low. They also revive your teamates when they're done. I use Odin when Hope gets killed and I'm about to die myself. Do damage with Odin and afterwards everyone is alive and at full health.

 

[Alex]

I hated the Gambit system and the story to FF12, the reason i stopped playing it less then half way through. However i love FF13's battle system and story so far (Chapter 7).

So turning it off to play FF12 wouldn't fix the problem since i don't have one and not everyone does.

You're kind in the middle of a high, in Chapter 7 the pacing is excellent, the story is fairly interesting, especially in world building, and it really seems like it's gonna all come together!

Wait and see how you feel in a few chapters. People told me this, I shrugged it off as the things that were coming interested me way too much.

I still had fun to the end, but I'd never felt so conflicted with a game. It certainly did shit all over itself and rely on the battle engine to save it's ass (which also has more than a few break downs later in, the seams and "quick fixes" REALLY, REALLY show)

are the summons actually useful in this game?

No.

 

[SEGAvangelist]

are the summons actually useful in this game? i can never think of practical times to use them... they don't deal enough damage and your character can still die with them around and you get a gameover

i always think of them as like a gamesaver when you're on you last ropes, but in FF12, and 13, these like... 'stand-alone' summons that fight with you seem completely useless and they use 3 team points ... plus these ones are like dumb transformers that look kinda ridiculous when they transform

I kinda wondering the same thing. I hope they become more useful than in FFXII. I think they should just can summons for the next game if they plan on continuing down this route. As must as I love summons, I didn't miss then in Lost Odyssey. The animations are always so cool, though... I'm torn.

 

[Shouta]

are the summons actually useful in this game? i can never think of practical times to use them... they don't deal enough damage and your character can still die with them around and you get a gameover

i always think of them as like a gamesaver when you're on you last ropes, but in FF12, and 13, these like... 'stand-alone' summons that fight with you seem completely useless and they use 3 team points ... plus these ones are like dumb transformers that look kinda ridiculous when they transform

Summons do massive amounts of free damage in overdrive mode if you build the bar up to 999% or whatever is max (forgot). It'll be the first thing to break the damage limit if done properly. It also revives dead members and heals them up to max.

 

[badcrumble]

What's the best setup for grinding Adamantoises with Vanille?

 

[Duki]

What's the best setup for grinding Adamantoises with Vanille?

the only thing that really changes it is the belladona wand afaik.

haste her up too i guess.

 

[SEGAvangelist]

Summons do massive amounts of free damage in overdrive mode if you build the bar up to 999% or whatever is max (forgot). It'll be the first thing to break the damage limit if done properly. It also revives dead members and heals them up to max.

Ooooh. Good news. BTW, I'm so glad to see all this FFXIII love in here. I'm tired of seeing bitchy reviews.

 

[Tathanen]

Summons do massive amounts of free damage in overdrive mode if you build the bar up to 999% or whatever is max (forgot). It'll be the first thing to break the damage limit if done properly. It also revives dead members and heals them up to max.

I've never managed to make them do ANY meaningful damage. Is it like.. do you have to do their ultimate attack without doing their other ones first? I always use up my points down until 2-3 left then do the ultimate one. Is it stronger if I do it earlier in overdrive mode?

And by build up the bar to max, you mean the chain gauge on whatever enemy you're attacking, yeah?

 

[aceface]

well, ffxii does exactly the same thing. there's no real choice in how to progress the game. there's a fixed story path like every other final fantasy game.

it just lets you ignore the story whenever you want and do your own thing for a bit, which i appreciated.

In FFXII the story is so bad it might as well be non-existent. FFXII is more accurately titled Final Fantasy: Monster Hunts. Which is fine if you like monster hunts but I like my garishly dressed soap opera heroes.

 

[Alex]

In FFXII the story is so bad it might as well be non-existent

Non-existent is preferred after the "twists" in XIII, which are easily worst in series or just about any JRPG I can think of off hand. Calling it Soap Opera like is a great disservice to Soap Operas.

XII also had some decent dialogue and world building that kept going. Certainly more than Fal'cie, Fal'cie, L'cie, L'cie, L'cie, L'cie, Focus, Focus, Focus, Serah, L'cie, Focus, Serah, Fal'cie, Fal'cie Fal'cie, Fal'cie, L'cie, L'cie, L'cie, L'cie, Focus, Focus, Focus, Serah, L'cie, Focus, Serah, Fal'cie, Fal'cie

Which I was actually fine with for awhile, but it just keeps going! FOREVER. There are pop up books with better writing than this.

I've never managed to make them do ANY meaningful damage.

There are abilities to rig a full chain gauge (Sazh and Light). But I still couldn't put out more with a summon than I could with just three characters. Maybe I was doing it wrong as well, it just mostly seemed "safer".

I spent most of my TP (besides Libra) on Renew if I wanted safety. I'm probably "doin it wrong" but I dont care enough to stay for the second half of the end game anyway.

I think I'm just done with the game now, I had my fun even for all of the sillyness, I wont' sit in here and thread shit, but man what a conflicting game.

 

[MrDenny]

In FFXII the story is so bad it might as well be non-existent. FFXII is more accurately titled Final Fantasy: Monster Hunts. Which is fine if you like monster hunts but I like my garishly dressed soap opera heroes.

Exactly how I felt. FFXII felt like an offline mmorpg with a dull story.

 

[aceface]

Non-existent is preferred after the "twists" in XIII, which are easily worst in series or just about any JRPG I can think of off hand. Calling it Soap Opera like is a great disservice to Soap Operas.

XII also had some decent dialogue and world building that kept going. Certainly more than FAL'CIE, L'CIE, L'CIE, L'CIE, L'CIE, FOCUS, FAL'CIE FAL'CIE, L'CIE, L'CIE, L'CIE, L'CIE, FOCUS, FAL'CIE FAL'CIE, L'CIE, L'CIE, L'CIE, L'CIE, FOCUS, FAL'CIE FAL'CIE, L'CIE, L'CIE, L'CIE, L'CIE, FOCUS, FAL'CIE FAL'CIE, L'CIE, L'CIE, L'CIE, L'CIE, FOCUS, FAL'CIE FAL'CIE, L'CIE, L'CIE, L'CIE, L'CIE, FOCUS, FAL'CIE

Which I was actually fine with for awhile, but it just keeps going! FOREVER.

I disagree, I like my Final Fantasy games to have stories. As for FFXIII I just started chapter 10 and I'm completely satisfied (with the story) thus far. The end of Chapter 9 was awesome. If you don't like the story in this game I can't see how you would have liked any Final Fantasy since FF5 (excepting 11 and 12 of course). What you get in this game is really par for the course in this series.