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[brandonh83]

The main reason why Barthandelus is going to be remembered is his incredible boss battle theme.

it's great but it literally repeats the same melody and doesn't change up enough. Now, the 2nd to last and last boss tracks are way better, IMO.

 

[Dedication Through Light]

While I liked the story, I didn't like most of the playable cast (just Lightning, and Fang to an extent) as well as the human antagonists. Glasses girl was disappointing to say the least, given

Spoiler

how, from the videos, she looked as she was going to have some more important role as an antagonist to the party

. Same for blue hair dude, although he had a bit more presence.

Well the

Spoiler

pilot of the Proudclad

, was an epic side character in my opinion, the way he went out, lol. Surely he deserves props (I guess hes the one youre describing).

 

[Like the hat?]

Am I the only one that thinks Sazh is a great character? He's probably my favorite in the game. Then again, I'm only on chapter 10 so maybe I'll end up disliking him.

 

[Crash Station]

Am I the only one that thinks Sazh is a great character? He's probably my favorite in the game. Then again, I'm only on chapter 10 so maybe I'll end up disliking him.

EVERYONE thinks Sazh is a great character. That's one of the few things universally excepted here about the game.

 

[Sword Familiar]

The main reason why Barthandelus is going to be remembered is his incredible boss battle theme.

The what theme now?

 

[Rahxephon91]

The what theme now?

Its called "Fighting Fate" and its just one track from XIII's amazing OST.

 

[Like the hat?]

EVERYONE thinks Sazh is a great character. That's one of the few things universally excepted here about the game.

sweet.

Love that guy!

 

[Trojita]

This game is only really difficult when it comes to throwing mobs of enemies at you at uneven levels or the Random Number Boss Fights aka

Spoiler

Barthendalus

. Fight him once and beat him. Try and fight him again and the boss fight feels completely different.

I would have preferred glasses girl to be working together with Blue Hair and then betraying him. Space Pope and the poorly put together story didn't do it for me.

This game is one of my least favorite Final Fantasy's.

 

[Lain]

EVERYONE thinks Sazh is a great character. That's one of the few things universally excepted here about the game.

Wrong.
I don't share that view. I found him kind of annoying, not as much as Snow or Vanille, but still... at least they had the excuse of being dimwitted youngsters.

 

[brandonh83]

I thought Sazh was the only character in FFXIII, if that counts for anything.

 

[PeakPointMatrix]

Hard drive got corrupted. Wiped my save. I WANT CLOUD STORAGE.

:'(

 

[Jerk]

EVERYONE thinks Sazh is a (comparatively)great character. That's one of the few things universally excepted here about the game.

FIFY!

 

[Diablos]

Hard drive got corrupted. Wiped my save. I WANT CLOUD STORAGE.

:'(

Back some important saves up every now and then.

 

[jgwhiteus]

Really LTTP, but I just started this; about 7 hours in.

The first hour or two was pretty horrible - I'd heard the "tubes" comment before and the linearity complaints, so I didn't have high expectations, but yeah, running down corridor after corridor with little to no sense of exploration was pretty bad. The limited camera options don't help - camera feels clunky and constrained, even claustrophobic at times. Which is unfortunate, since the environments are uniformly gorgeous, but I kept thinking, "What was the point of putting all that time and money into designing these beautiful backdrops if they're basically empty and I'm just going to run through them? Might as well have stuck with pre-rendered backgrounds from FFVII and saved the trouble".

Introducing battle mechanics with "press X to auto-battle and win" didn't help either. It really felt like they'd stripped things back even from FFXII. Lack of experience points, getting scores which apparently don't mean anything and star rankings really make you wonder why the hell you're bothering fighting enemies. In fact, I still have no idea what the point is of the scores, and the star rankings apparently influence what items you get? (but apparently, if you do worse you sometimes get better items like smokes?)

I have to say, though, that now that the game's introduced paradigms, character progression, etc., it's gotten a lot more fun. Combat feels much more engaged, even arcade-y - you actually have to be involved, which is sort of a welcome change from FFXII and even from earlier FF's. So high marks on that.

Don't know where I stand on the characters / story yet. I'm not a fan of the storytelling device of "let's throw around a lot of random made-up terms and have you figure out what they mean from context later on". I can't make sense of Vanille's accent - an Australian accent which switches in and out, sometimes unbearable girly / cutesy, sometimes adult-sounding. Hope is whiny and annoying. Lightning is all monotone, all the time. Sazh's voice-actor, however, gets high marks - his character borders on stereotype as comic relief (and are they serious with the afro as chocobo-nest?), but at least he has "character".

So yeah, first take - horrible pacing in first few hours; they could have done a much better job with how and when they chose to introduce battle concepts and plot points. If I'd just played the first hour I would have put it back on the shelf. But at least the combat is actually getting fun.

 

[MoxManiac]

Back some important saves up every now and then.

And what do you do about locked saves?

 

[Zoe]

And what do you do about locked saves?

You can back those up on a full system back-up. As long as you restore to the same PS3, they'll still be there.

FFXIII isn't locked though.

 

[dark10x]

Finally made it back to where knead before I lost my save. Now in chapter 8. I'm stunned by how amazing it looks. It's one of the first points where the backgrounds start looking like cg from the older games. Insane looking!!

 

[Sword Familiar]

Its called "Fighting Fate" and its just one track from XIII's amazing OST.

*Tumbleweeds*

 

[rush777]

Horrible. And for once, I agree 100%.

The basic foundation of the story and its ideas are good. But the execution is so bad that it doesn't matter.

This is the first Final Fantasy that I've ever skiped major cutscenes for, and it's not a knock against the game because I played XIII for close to 100 hours finishing everything the gameplay was just that good.

It was so good in fact that I beat the game simply to expand my crystarium and I ended up skipping the endings cutscenes because quite frankly I didn't give a shit, and I had turtles to farm.

 

[Dedication Through Light]

Really LTTP, but I just started this; about 7 hours in.

The first hour or two was pretty horrible - I'd heard the "tubes" comment before and the linearity complaints, so I didn't have high expectations, but yeah, running down corridor after corridor with little to no sense of exploration was pretty bad. The limited camera options don't help - camera feels clunky and constrained, even claustrophobic at times. Which is unfortunate, since the environments are uniformly gorgeous, but I kept thinking, "What was the point of putting all that time and money into designing these beautiful backdrops if they're basically empty and I'm just going to run through them? Might as well have stuck with pre-rendered backgrounds from FFVII and saved the trouble".

The first hour or so was in fact terrible to replay. Though in my opinion of all games, that period of time is just horrible because all mechanics are available, lol. I wish there was a skip to 1 hour in button when one wants to play the game.

 

[DryvBy]

Does anyone else have this problem? I can't hardly finish the beginning of the game because the music is too relaxing. I play for 10 minutes and find myself dead sleep for hours. It's like sleeping pills, this music!

 

[brandonh83]

Does anyone else have this problem? I can't hardly finish the beginning of the game because the music is too relaxing. I play for 10 minutes and find myself dead sleep for hours. It's like sleeping pills, this music!

I fell asleep in the Macalania Woods in FFX. You want to have the worst fucking nightmares of all time? Fall asleep listening to that music. You will wake up in a clawing tournament with a fake demon.

 

[Dedication Through Light]

Does anyone else have this problem? I can't hardly finish the beginning of the game because the music is too relaxing. I play for 10 minutes and find myself dead sleep for hours. It's like sleeping pills, this music!

Relaxing? Owning the soundtrack, I cant really think of all but two tracks that maybe relaxing. Snows Theme pumps me up, and a few other songs too. The chocobo songs, fun, lol.

Oh but the beginning of the game, in that blue crystal area potentially its too serene

 

[CryingWolf]

Does anyone else have this problem? I can't hardly finish the beginning of the game because the music is too relaxing. I play for 10 minutes and find myself dead sleep for hours. It's like sleeping pills, this music!

Personally I found the gameplay and story to be like sleeping pills.

 

[kyo_daikun]

Personally I found the gameplay and story to be like sleeping pills.

Lol how mean, auto battle auto battle auto battle auto batzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

 

[DryvBy]

Relaxing? Owning the soundtrack, I cant really think of all but two tracks that maybe relaxing. Snows Theme pumps me up, and a few other songs too. The chocobo songs, fun, lol.

Oh but the beginning of the game, in that blue crystal area potentially its too serene

They're pumping up music but I think those beats they're pumping out hit my senses as something equal to just socking me in the back of the head and knocking me out. I need to get the soundtrack; I can't sleep sometimes and I really think this would help.

I used to do the same with the FFVII intro music.

 

[Fimbulvetr]

Personally I found the gameplay and story to be like sleeping pills.

The story is too out there to be sleepy.

And even if you don't like the battle system it's pretty cool to watch.

 

[dark10x]

The FFXIII cast could have been good if the writing and voice acting didn't seem like it was plucked from High School Musical.

Barthandelus was more forgettable than Necron.

Yeah, it's not the best, but I haven't found it too painful overall. It is, perhaps, one of the least offensive JRPGs this gen. Games like Star Ocean 4, Eternal Sonata, Tales of Vesperia, Infinite Undiscovery, and Blue Dragon were all much harder for me to swallow. FFXIII feels like a huge step over those games, but still far below stuff like Mass Effect 2.

If you feel bad about the cutscenes in FFXIII you should go watch some scenes from Star Ocean - The Last Hope and XIII will suddenly seem like a genius masterwork.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSCdm-tgteg

 

[ULTROS!]

In defense of Star Ocean 4 (sorry but I really had fun with SO4), SO4 had more side quests, towns, and more open areas than FFXIII.

Of course, FFXIII is way more beautiful than SO4 and had better production values.

 

[dark10x]

In defense of Star Ocean 4 (sorry but I really had fun with SO4), SO4 had more side quests, towns, and more open areas than FFXIII.

Of course, FFXIII is way more beautiful than SO4 and had better production values.

I didn't think they were done very well, however. I couldn't get through the game (rubbed me the wrong way right from the start), however, so perhaps things changed later on.

 

[ULTROS!]

I didn't think they were done very well, however. I couldn't get through the game (rubbed me the wrong way right from the start), however, so perhaps things changed later on.

The problem with SO4's areas is that they're too big (hence forcing you to use the dash button) with too little save points and a fare share of monsters, on the other hand, most of FFXIII's areas are corridors.

Spoiler

At least SO4 had towns despite being sub-HD, lulz

Anyway, I clearly like FFXIII for its production values and battle system.

 

[Dedication Through Light]

In defense of Star Ocean 4 (sorry but I really had fun with SO4), SO4 had more side quests, towns, and more open areas than FFXIII.

Of course, FFXIII is way more beautiful than SO4 and had better production values.

hm I was gonna start SO4: International Soon, I guess I have some fun to look towards, but were production values really that lacking?

 

[dark10x]

I don't see the value in towns if they fail to offer any real value to the experience.

What kind of things did you do in SO4 when inside a town?

I suppose something like Tales of Vesperia is a better example for me. I've played through that one and, really, towns were generally useless. Each town was extremely tiny in scope. Even if it were supposed to be a huge metropolis, it was really on three or four individual, relatively small areas. The only things you could really do in these towns was click on random people until you find the one that advances the story. The rest of the people have two or three lines of text that had no bearing on anything. The towns were basically window dressing.

Something like Mass Effect 2 took this type of town in the right direction. The environments were much larger, conversations were more than text boxes, there were more things you could do in those areas, and the atmosphere was killer. It drew you into the world. If you can't match that type of town experience in this day and age, I don't see any reason to even try.

 

[ULTROS!]

What kind of things did you do in SO4 when inside a town?

A number of NPCs in each town have a fetch-quest request, of course they are completely optional but if you want that trophy/achievement...

Also

Spoiler

one of the towns in SO4 features an arena and a bunny race.

hm I was gonna start SO4: International Soon, I guess I have some fun to look towards, but were production values really that lacking?

Of course FFs production values are top notch. This doesn't mean SO4's production values are horrible (they're fine actually but they sorta look dated).

 

[dark10x]

Of course FFs production values are top notch. This doesn't mean SO4's production values are horrible (they're fine actually).

It seemed a bit off to me in that many cutscenes were lacking music of any sort and were filled with complete silence with only the awkward dialog left to fill your speakers.

Also, simply moving around the world feels pretty poor. The animation doesn't mesh well with the environment (walking looks like sliding) and the camera has problems with close quarters. The game has a somewhat unfinished feel.

It reminds me of Infinite Undiscovery in that regard. IU had many unfinished elements as well with half of the cutscenes lacking actual dialog (which was quite bizarre).

The tech savy Tri-Ace of last gen definitely lost something when transitioning to the current gen. At least End of Eternity seems to be much more solid overall.

I don't think you need FF quality production values to make a good impression, though. Lost Odyssey turned out great, I thought, despite plenty of technical issues and somewhat ugly visuals (at times). SO4 seems like one of those games that could crash at any moment (though it actually does not).

 

[ULTROS!]

It seemed a bit off to me in that many cutscenes were lacking music of any sort and were filled with complete silence with only the awkward dialog left to fill your speakers.

Also, simply moving around the world feels pretty poor. The animation doesn't mesh well with the environment (walking looks like sliding) and the camera has problems with close quarters. The game has a somewhat unfinished feel.

It reminds me of Infinite Undiscovery in that regard. IU had many unfinished elements as well with half of the cutscenes lacking actual dialog (which was quite bizarre).

The tech savy Tri-Ace of last gen definitely lost something when transitioning to the current gen. At least End of Eternity seems to be much more solid overall.

Actually, the SO team aren't known for their technical awesomeness or something (SO3 looks dated, so does SO4), it leans more towards the Valkyrie Profile team (the creators of RoF/EoE).

 

[dark10x]

Actually, the SO team aren't known for their technical awesomeness or something (SO3 looks dated, so does SO4), it leans more towards the Valkyrie Profile team (the creators of RoF/EoE).

The technical people between all of those games are the same, however.

SO3 did not look dated when it was first released in Japan, though it did have lots of bugs (which, unfortunately, Tri-Ace has always been noted for). VP just appeared more advanced due to its later release date (on both PSX and PS2).

SO3 was one of the first PS2 games to support 480p 16:9 video output and pro-logic II for audio. It did all of this at 60 fps even and presented plenty of uncommon visual effects for the system. It had its issues, but it was impressive stuff.

SO4 isn't even remotely close to that, in comparison.

 

[ULTROS!]

You have a point there. But of course... FFX graphics (2001) > SO3 (2003) graphics, plus they did it in 1 CD. But that's Squaresoft.

AFAIK, SO4 didn't have bugs (or anything that I've encountered) although it had a bad frame rate (occasional dips when you walk/dash).

 

[george_us]

I don't see the value in towns if they fail to offer any real value to the experience.

What kind of things did you do in SO4 when inside a town?

I suppose something like Tales of Vesperia is a better example for me. I've played through that one and, really, towns were generally useless. Each town was extremely tiny in scope. Even if it were supposed to be a huge metropolis, it was really on three or four individual, relatively small areas. The only things you could really do in these towns was click on random people until you find the one that advances the story. The rest of the people have two or three lines of text that had no bearing on anything. The towns were basically window dressing.

Something like Mass Effect 2 took this type of town in the right direction. The environments were much larger, conversations were more than text boxes, there were more things you could do in those areas, and the atmosphere was killer. It drew you into the world. If you can't match that type of town experience in this day and age, I don't see any reason to even try.

Even small towns in something like Tales of Vesperia is preferable to no towns at all. Why? Because, in my opinion, those towns still help build a connection to the world you're often trying to save. I've never felt so disconnected from an entire world like I did while playing FFXIII.

 

[Son of Godzilla]

I don't see the value in towns if they fail to offer any real value to the experience.

The big thing when people say they want towns is that they want the pacing to be strung out more. Towns do generally suck, but they give you a pause in the gameplay. Basically they are half cutscenes you can pause and half ornate menu navigation. FF13 could have done with some "Hey fuckhead, now is the time when you stop running forward and play with the shops" moments.

But yes, current gen jrpgs have sucked ass at... well, being current gen.

Anyways, HOLY HELL CHAPTER 11. THIS IS THE GOOD PART? DEAR FFXIII THREAD YOU HAVE CONTINUOUSLY SET ME UP. Actually it ain't that bad, except it is. Considering I've managed to clock in 8 hours or so without even advancing a sub-chapter...

 

[Yopis]

Man I have been playing this game for a few chapters and it's good stuff. I love how fast your in and out of the battles. I don't really miss towns that much but I understand that people just want a break somtimes from the action. Great game in small chunks.

 

[Cornbread78]

Oh god, I'm back from vaation and was able to grind a lot over teh week. I've 5 starred every mission other than the mac daddy #64, I haven't tried him yet, I'll grind away the last two levels on the final Cryo role, then go at him.

I still have yet to get a single trap drop after killing about 20-30 of them so far. So is there a better way to get traps, because the 1% drop rate is ridiculas.....


Also, Long Gui's have a 5% drop rate, but everytime I start a battle, I start Death spamming them, are they immune to Death? It's not working! A straioght battle could take an hour with the amount of HPs they have! Anyone?

 

[CTLance]

Bought the game recently, played for a bit. So far I'm not terribly impressed.
Will persevere until I get out of the handholding part and am allowed to chose my own way a bit more freely. Which I hope will happen soon. Very soon. *twitch*

Oh well. At least I caught a glimpse of what the combat system might be capable of with that Paradigm tutorial fight. Right now combat is horribly boring though. Mashing the A button is not my idea of fun. Reading about what appears to be 70% of the story in some log thingamajig instead of experiencing it in some other way also doesn't really blow me away.


Obligatory rant: Oh gawd I want to strangle Hope with his own intestines. And then, right after that, maybe Vanille too. Argh. And the blonde guy, but that one already got smacked around by the lead, so maybe not. Oh wait! That horrible pedo(-looking?) marriage proposal scene. Can you possibly get any creepier? Ew. Ew ew ew ew ew.

Still, I'm mildly optimistic. I'm a sucker for female leads, and I got the game on the cheap, which always slants my view.

 

[badcrumble]

Oh god, I'm back from vaation and was able to grind a lot over teh week. I've 5 starred every mission other than the mac daddy #64, I haven't tried him yet, I'll grind away the last two levels on the final Cryo role, then go at him.

I still have yet to get a single trap drop after killing about 20-30 of them so far. So is there a better way to get traps, because the 1% drop rate is ridiculas.....


Also, Long Gui's have a 5% drop rate, but everytime I start a battle, I start Death spamming them, are they immune to Death? It's not working! A straioght battle could take an hour with the amount of HPs they have! Anyone?

Yes they're immune to death, and no they don't take that long to kill if you have the right setup. You shouldn't even try to take them on if you still have to deathspam Adamantoises though - get a strategy going with those to be able to kill them without using Death or Summon and it shouldn't be too hard to figure out how you need to shift it to take on a Long Gui.

 

[ULTROS!]

Obligatory rant: Oh gawd I want to strangle Hope with his own intestines. And then, right after that, maybe Vanille too. Argh. And the blonde guy, but that one already got smacked around by the lead, so maybe not. Oh wait! That horrible pedo(-looking?) marriage proposal scene. Can you possibly get any creepier? Ew. Ew ew ew ew ew.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8nWTbQHKWo

Spoiler

Orgasm with an Eidolon

 

[dark10x]

Even small towns in something like Tales of Vesperia is preferable to no towns at all. Why? Because, in my opinion, those towns still help build a connection to the world you're often trying to save. I've never felt so disconnected from an entire world like I did while playing FFXIII.

I do think SE was attempting to do something new with FFXIII but ultimately ran low on time and money. You can see this in the way things like conversations are handled. Simply stopping near someone will trigger a random spoken line equivalent to a text box in other RPGs. I think a place like Nautilus exhibits signs of what they could have achieved with more towns in the game. I would have liked to see moments like that more often. Palumpolum could have been excellent for this, for instance. You don't need to have shops everyone or side quests, but give the player a visually dense environment to explore leisurely before jumping back into combat zones.

That said, I could see the way XIII ended up bothering people more or less depending on play style. For me, I don't spend all that much time per day playing a game like this. When I play in the evening I might get 2-3 hours in and then call it a night. I'm enjoying experiencing the game in these chunks. If I sat down and tried to play for a significantly longer period of time, however, I suppose the pacing would be much more frustrating.

I must admit, however, that the world feels more immersive to me than something like Vesperia despite the lack of towns. You are limited in where you can go, but the areas you visit still manage to feel quite large and making your way to each new area takes enough time that it actually feels as if you have traversed something. In a lot of RPGs, large areas and towns are represented with small models that give the impressive of something much smaller than it supposedly is. When you visit Palumpolum, for instance, you don't actually see that much of the city, but the way it is visually designed makes it at least FEEL as if you are running around a portion of a much larger world. Seeing EVERYTHING doesn't always make things feel properly vast. Anyone else feel this way?

 

[Cornbread78]

Yes they're immune to death, and no they don't take that long to kill if you have the right setup. You shouldn't even try to take them on if you still have to deathspam Adamantoises though - get a strategy going with those to be able to kill them without using Death or Summon and it shouldn't be too hard to figure out how you need to shift it to take on a Long Gui.

Damn, I was looking for "quick and Easy" and I guess that isn't going to work.


I guess I'll have to go back to ol' faithfull

Light/Fang/Hope

Do you have to take their legs out first?

 

[badcrumble]

Damn, I was looking for "quick and Easy" and I guess that isn't going to work.


I guess I'll have to go back to ol' faithfull

Light/Fang/Hope

Do you have to take their legs out first?

I'm sure in theory you could kill them without ever taking their legs out, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to try.

 

[Cornbread78]

I do think SE was attempting to do something new with FFXIII but ultimately ran low on time and money. You can see this in the way things like conversations are handled. Simply stopping near someone will trigger a random spoken line equivalent to a text box in other RPGs. I think a place like Nautilus exhibits signs of what they could have achieved with more towns in the game. I would have liked to see moments like that more often. Palumpolum could have been excellent for this, for instance. You don't need to have shops everyone or side quests, but give the player a visually dense environment to explore leisurely before jumping back into combat zones.

That said, I could see the way XIII ended up bothering people more or less depending on play style. For me, I don't spend all that much time per day playing a game like this. When I play in the evening I might get 2-3 hours in and then call it a night. I'm enjoying experiencing the game in these chunks. If I sat down and tried to play for a significantly longer period of time, however, I suppose the pacing would be much more frustrating.

I must admit, however, that the world feels more immersive to me than something like Vesperia despite the lack of towns. You are limited in where you can go, but the areas you visit still manage to feel quite large and making your way to each new area takes enough time that it actually feels as if you have traversed something. In a lot of RPGs, large areas and towns are represented with small models that give the impressive of something much smaller than it supposedly is. When you visit Palumpolum, for instance, you don't actually see that much of the city, but the way it is visually designed makes it at least FEEL as if you are running around a portion of a much larger world. Seeing EVERYTHING doesn't always make things feel properly vast. Anyone else feel this way?

They could easily fix this by creating a FFXII-2 and make the base world on Pulse, and then expand it and create missions back on Cacoon, and in the new expanded territories and rebuild territories on Pulse. That would fix those issues.... I would actuially LOVE if they did that, because the basics of FFXIII are really damn good, but you can definately tell they got lazy.

 

[Cornbread78]

I'm sure in theory you could kill them without ever taking their legs out, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to try.

Alright, I'll have to grind through the battle them

start with
SEN/SEN/SEN
then
MED/MED/MED
then
SYN/COM/SYN
then
RAV/COM/RAV
once it falls
SAB/SAB/SYN
then
RAV/RAV/RAV
then
COM/COM/COM

reset?

Is that about right?