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Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII |OT| Toriyama's Bizarre Adventure

Kagari

Crystal Bearer
Funny thing that, a lot of my friends who love Star Wars have choice things to say about how Disney is handling Expanded Universe stuff.
Hah, yep. I like Star Wars but Disney is the worst thing to happen to it in a while.
 

Perfo

Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
I was watching this typical cutscene from Tales of Xillia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Kjft0wDDlY and I was wondering, but if LR: FFXIII is considered a low-budget jRPG, how you'll rate that? Cutscene direction is basically non-existent, boring, static, with those strange pauses for every line...

Is S-E really the only one producing big (or -mid if you will) budget jRPGs nowdays? Or is just a matter of talent and not budget? I would like to compare the size of the team behind ToX with the one of LR and find out if it's a matter of having a better team or just more budget at disposal.
 
It's really absurd. Watch Spoony's FF 13 review / playthrough. He read them just to get the gist of it. Also, FF13's story is the stupist thing ever if you think about it. All they had to do was: NOTHING. x)

Great watch. It's a bit too nitpicky in part one, but the later parts really point out some OBVIOUS flaws - gameplay-, and story-wise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIOXqHz_2MY
Kinda funny that he asks if movies would require you to do homework to comprehend the story, when the Star Wars prequels and just about every other entertainment media that uses the transmedia approach does that shit.
 

Perfo

Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
Kinda funny that he asks if movies would require you to do homework to comprehend the story, when the Star Wars prequels and just about every other entertainment media that uses the transmedia approach does that shit.

Spoony's reviews are even more childish than everything Toriyama ever wrote. I don't understand how people can stand so much blablabla. The power of the internet I guess.
 

Yoshichan

And they made him a Lord of Cinder. Not for virtue, but for might. Such is a lord, I suppose. But here I ask. Do we have a sodding chance?
:( no one commented on my detailed gameplay post... Guess people are more interested in the story and Perfo hate ._.
 

ironcreed

Banned
So yeah, after spending 30+ hours with the demo I pretty much acknowledged a lot of things. I know all of this is pretty much known already for the people who have played the retail game but it's good info for those who haven't seen much of the game.

- Blocking at the same moment as the enemy hits gives you a "perfect block". It reduces the damage taken by 100% if it's a melee hit, and gives your enemy a debuff (Debrave, Defaith, etc, depending on the enemies weakness). If you perfect block magic attacks, 90% of the damage will be reduced and the enemy will -not- get a debuff.

- By spamming the block button, you'll be pretty much guaranteed to perform a perfect block. However note that your ATB gauge on that specific paradigm will go down the drain really fast.

- If perfect blocking isn't your thing and you want to stick with the regular block, make sure to block with the paradigm that has the most block stat. Trust me, it makes a huge difference (for example: blocking with the blackmage deals 250 damage while blocking with the heartstealer deals 40 damage). Imagine the numbers you'll be mitigating when the enemy hits you for 5000+.

- The final attack in the combo, be it through regular attacks or magic casting is almost never worth it, because they take way too long time. Experiment with your abilities and figure out how many button presses you need to press for it to become the final attack. Just before the last attack, cancel out of the combo and switch paradigm. You'll gain tons of more ATB and you'll get more dps throughout the entire thing.

- ATB recharges faster with a specific paradigm if you're not currently using it.

- Performing a perfect evade/roll recharges your ATB with 80% of the initial evade cost. It's always a good idea to try perfect evading in order to get the max out of your ATB, which essentially is your battle tempo.

- I figured out that having block/roll/any-defensive-move on one button (for example, circle) is A LOT easier for the brain to acknowledge that you need to go into some sort of defensive maneuver. You'll be paradigm switching very often in this game, and by having the defensive stuff on one button, you'll adapt to it much quicker.

I got plenty of other stuff in my mind but I've got to do other stuff for now :lol

"blocking with the blackmage deals 250 damage while blocking with the heartstealer deals 40 damage). Imagine the numbers you'll be mitigating when the enemy hits you for 5000+. "

Interesting little nugget. I love the timed blocking mechanic it has going on. Can't wait to dive into this system with the full game.
 

dramatis

Member
I don't think you'll ever ask your friend about the next star wars movie if that friend of your doesn't like star wars to begin with. Right?
I would. An alternate perspective to something you're excited about can give you interesting new ideas you haven't considered.

If you want the audience of a product to expand, you don't only look at the fans that adore. There's no good reason ever to justify confirmation bias; it only speaks of someone with a narrow mind.
I was watching this typical cutscene from Tales of Xillia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Kjft0wDDlY and I was wondering, but if LR: FFXIII is considered a low-budget jRPG, how you'll rate that? Cutscene direction is basically non-existent, boring, static, with those strange pauses for every line...

Is S-E really the only one producing big (or -mid if you will) budget jRPGs nowdays? Or is just a matter of talent and not budget? I would like to compare the size of the team behind ToX with the one of LR and find out if it's a matter of having a better team or just more budget at disposal.
There's no question the kind of budget on a Tales game doesn't compare to the kind spent on even spinoffs of FF mainlines. Tales is budgeted to the point where even sound effects are reused across multiple unrelated games (world wise).

The only company that we know of (officially) that is spending money on a big budget JRPG is Square, but only because we know FF15 and KH3 are in the pipeline. Until there are announcements otherwise.

Must you always attempt to find bits of games to demean to glorify your favorite? Reeks of an act of desperation here.
 
Hah, yep. I like Star Wars but Disney is the worst thing to happen to it in a while.

This is interesting considering Disney hasn't done anything with SW yet. I'm intrigued to see what they'll do since they're currently kicking ass with a lot of their properties
 

Setsuna

Member
It's really absurd. Watch Spoony's FF 13 review / playthrough. He read them just to get the gist of it. Also, FF13's story is the stupist thing ever if you think about it. All they had to do was: NOTHING. x)

if they did nothing they would have been turned into a cieth and some other person would have been chosen to do what they failed to do
 
Really enjoyed the combat in the demo, but I have to imagine managing the costumes will get exhausting after a while. All have different abilities, separate equip slots, and so on. Lots of possibilities for interesting synergy though. Looking forward to Tuesday! Although I have a lab practical to study for so I doubt I'll get to it until Friday.
 
LR spoiler:


Okay, so I had to stop playing about 4 hours in because of work and class. But I still went on youtube and watched the English ending just to see if it was any better in my native language.

Anyone here play Saint's Row The Third and play the canon parody ending? At times, LR's VA in the ending reminds me of the parody's VA. It is so over blown and so overly melodramatic I have a hard time taking it seriously.
 

Perfo

Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
:( no one commented on my detailed gameplay post... Guess people are more interested in the story and Perfo hate ._.

The idea you invested 30hrs on a short demo is what puts me off to begin with :\ it's like totally killing the interest for a game... if that was me doing it :( what's written in there is interesting though, even if I read few stuff before. What's wrong about this I think is the game forgetting (or not?) to teach you about this mechanics.
 

Caffeine

Gold Member
So yeah, after spending 30+ hours with the demo I pretty much acknowledged a lot of things. I know all of this is pretty much known already for the people who have played the retail game but it's good info for those who haven't seen much of the game.

- Blocking at the same moment as the enemy hits gives you a "perfect block". It reduces the damage taken by 100% if it's a melee hit, and gives your enemy a debuff (Debrave, Defaith, etc, depending on the enemies weakness). If you perfect block magic attacks, 90% of the damage will be reduced and the enemy will -not- get a debuff.

- By spamming the block button, you'll be pretty much guaranteed to perform a perfect block. However note that your ATB gauge on that specific paradigm will go down the drain really fast.

- If perfect blocking isn't your thing and you want to stick with the regular block, make sure to block with the paradigm that has the most block stat. Trust me, it makes a huge difference (for example: blocking with the blackmage deals 250 damage while blocking with the heartstealer deals 40 damage). Imagine the numbers you'll be mitigating when the enemy hits you for 5000+.

- The final attack in the combo, be it through regular attacks or magic casting is almost never worth it, because they take way too long time. Experiment with your abilities and figure out how many button presses you need to press for it to become the final attack. Just before the last attack, cancel out of the combo and switch paradigm. You'll gain tons of more ATB and you'll get more dps throughout the entire thing.

- ATB recharges faster with a specific paradigm if you're not currently using it.

- Performing a perfect evade/roll recharges your ATB with 80% of the initial evade cost. It's always a good idea to try perfect evading in order to get the max out of your ATB, which essentially is your battle tempo.

- I figured out that having block/roll/any-defensive-move on one button (for example, circle) is A LOT easier for the brain to acknowledge that you need to go into some sort of defensive maneuver. You'll be paradigm switching very often in this game, and by having the defensive stuff on one button, you'll adapt to it much quicker.

I got plenty of other stuff in my mind but I've got to do other stuff for now :lol

This is a great analysis of the combat. I did not know that perfect blocking a melee awards a debuff this is something great to keep in mind now when I play. Also noted about selecting the right blocking class to null major damage. maximizing the dps by refreshing atb gauges is also another great tip here.

This is a really great post Yoshi
 
So yeah, after spending 30+ hours with the demo I pretty much acknowledged a lot of things. I know all of this is pretty much known already for the people who have played the retail game but it's good info for those who haven't seen much of the game.

- Blocking at the same moment as the enemy hits gives you a "perfect block". It reduces the damage taken by 100% if it's a melee hit, and gives your enemy a debuff (Debrave, Defaith, etc, depending on the enemies weakness). If you perfect block magic attacks, 90% of the damage will be reduced and the enemy will -not- get a debuff.

- By spamming the block button, you'll be pretty much guaranteed to perform a perfect block. However note that your ATB gauge on that specific paradigm will go down the drain really fast.

- If perfect blocking isn't your thing and you want to stick with the regular block, make sure to block with the paradigm that has the most block stat. Trust me, it makes a huge difference (for example: blocking with the blackmage deals 250 damage while blocking with the heartstealer deals 40 damage). Imagine the numbers you'll be mitigating when the enemy hits you for 5000+.

- The final attack in the combo, be it through regular attacks or magic casting is almost never worth it, because they take way too long time. Experiment with your abilities and figure out how many button presses you need to press for it to become the final attack. Just before the last attack, cancel out of the combo and switch paradigm. You'll gain tons of more ATB and you'll get more dps throughout the entire thing.

- ATB recharges faster with a specific paradigm if you're not currently using it.

- Performing a perfect evade/roll recharges your ATB with 80% of the initial evade cost. It's always a good idea to try perfect evading in order to get the max out of your ATB, which essentially is your battle tempo.

- I figured out that having block/roll/any-defensive-move on one button (for example, circle) is A LOT easier for the brain to acknowledge that you need to go into some sort of defensive maneuver. You'll be paradigm switching very often in this game, and by having the defensive stuff on one button, you'll adapt to it much quicker.

I got plenty of other stuff in my mind but I've got to do other stuff for now :lol

Good post, Yoshi. Though... make sure you get some sleep in between playthroughs, lol.
 

Yoshichan

And they made him a Lord of Cinder. Not for virtue, but for might. Such is a lord, I suppose. But here I ask. Do we have a sodding chance?
Thanks guys!

Also, Perfo - the reason why I played the demo is because I love min maxing. I always enjoy maxing the potential out of games, preferably before the retail launch. Same thing with Path of Exile, spent 400 hours only theorizing how loot drops and dps works in that game.

I don't play Lightning Returns for its story, characters, world or lore. I play it for the numbers being shown in combat.
 
There's also this "Art of War" costume. I also meant from a story perspective. Everything is wrapped up and there isn't anything else to be explored?
Maybe a Animal House style ending DLC?
I feel more comfortable in buying games that has superfluous day one DLC than games with expected story DLC in the future.
They said there won't be any story DLC, but you never know.
 

kayos90

Tragic victim of fan death
Not sure why Perfo is suddenly comparing Tales cutscenes to Lightning Returns cutscene quality....
 

Perfo

Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
Not sure why Perfo is suddenly comparing Tales cutscenes to Lightning Returns cutscene quality....

It was just a curiosity of mine, when I think about people blaming LR to be low-budget I wonder what Tales of are. Perhaps LR is not that low-budget if they at least can afford to have proper cutscene direction in the game and all the chracters voiced. The hate for this game during all these months really distorted reality many times imho. Luckily there's one savior here that will expose such fantasies in 6 days.
 

kayos90

Tragic victim of fan death
It was just a curiosity of mine, when I think about people blaming LR to be low-budget I wonder what Tales of are. Perhaps LR is not that low-budget if they at least can afford to have proper cutscene direction in the game and all the chracters voiced. The hate for this game during all these months really distorted reality many times imho. Luckily there's one savior here that will expose such fantasies in 6 days.

I'd rather play Xillia three times over than play XIII-2 or XIII again even if both games have better cinematography and visuals.
 
It's a bummer that Tales of Vesperia is still the best looking game in the Tales series. Suppose people in general just think of Final Fantasy being a very prestigious, big budget series so Lighting Returns is obviously budgeted on the low side in comparison. Still doesn't seem as low budget as Xillia but as mentioned that series isn't really known for production values
or being good
 

Perfo

Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
I'd rather play Xillia three times over than play XIII-2 or XIII again even if both games have better cinematography and visuals.

That was not the point. But if you want to have fun giving out personal opinions, I could say I absolutely dislike tales of series :D so much that I forced myself buying Tales of Vesperia and I resisted 2 hrs before selling it back. A game for kids with a decade old mechanics. No thank you :p

... but that was not the point.
 

kayos90

Tragic victim of fan death
That was not the point. But if you want to have fun giving out personal opinions, I could say I absolutely dislike tales of series :D so much that I forced myself buying Tales of Vesperia and I resisted 2 hrs before selling it back. An game for kids with a decade old mechanics. No thank you :p

... but that was not the point.

Alright. We can jump ship back to the original argument. Low-budget is only a classification deemed in the light of other SE titles. Not sure why you felt the need to bring in Tales of Xillia when its set production values and presentation are within the realm of what they're aiming for in respect to understanding the fanbase. LR is NOT.
 

Perfo

Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
Alright. We can jump ship back to the original argument. Low-budget is only a classification deemed in the light of other SE titles. Not sure why you felt the need to bring in Tales of Xillia when its set production values and presentation are within the realm of what they're aiming for in respect to understanding the fanbase. LR is NOT.

Before talking of LR as a lower budget titles I'd like to know how many people worked on it compared to XIII-2, Type-0 and other major releases from S-E JP from 2010 onward. No one got a clue?
 

kayos90

Tragic victim of fan death
Before talking of LR as a lower budget titles I'd like to know how many people worked on it compared to XIII-2, Type-0 and other major releases from S-E JP from 2010 onward. No one got a clue?

We can have a basic idea of how the staff size but the staff size does NOT mean always something. It can have almost 0 relevancy to this discussion.
 

Perfo

Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
We can have a basic idea of how the staff size but the staff size does NOT mean always something. It can have almost 0 relevancy to this discussion.

Staff size counts definitely something.
 

kayos90

Tragic victim of fan death
Staff size counts definitely something.

Are you trying to justify that the quality of the game is good if not alright if only 50 people worked on this title? A staff size should NOT be used as a justification for how good or shitty a game is.
 

bbtankc

Neo Member
Having played 13-2 after purchasing it in the last sale, I must say I greatly enjoy it, despite all the haters. I am now looking forward to the next game.
 

Perfo

Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
Are you trying to justify that the quality of the game is good if not alright if only 50 people worked on this title? A staff size should NOT be used as a justification for how good or shitty a game is.

Ehm remember I haven't played LR yet and for what I've seen (first hour of the game) I already called the game impressing visually. So I still have to see this inconsistency some talk about. I just don't think LR has a smaller team than XIII-2. So I wanted proof :p

Having played 13-2 after purchasing it in the last sale, I must say I greatly enjoy it, despite all the haters. I am now looking forward to the next game.

There's alot of people that love the series thanks god. Welcome to the team :p
 
So not to come in the way of the Perfo-Kayos friendship building exercise here but for those that have played the game, what can I expect in terms of difficulty for achievements/trophies?

It seems quite a few of them are secret and I didn't want to spoil any part of the game considering I've made it this far without having anything spoiled. Really just curious how much time it's going to complete all achievements/trophies. I did it for the other two games so would like to for this one just for the sake of completion.
 

Yoshichan

And they made him a Lord of Cinder. Not for virtue, but for might. Such is a lord, I suppose. But here I ask. Do we have a sodding chance?
I didn't notice your new tag ahah XD
You scared me, thought I had got a new one :lol this one's at least 4 months old!
 

Nohar

Member
I just needed to say that I find this discussion mesmerizing...

That being said, I hope that Amazon will deliver my order in advance. I want to try the battle system outside of the very restricted demo. And pet the horrible dog.
 
Motomu_Toriyama_by_Scelatio_1.jpg

I chuckled.

And I noticed just now that on amazon.co.jp it gets similar results from the votes of the community. My suspects were right, for XIII "fans" (that means, the only probably that bought this last entry in Japan) LR: FFXIII is the best entry in the trilogy. That's why I was never interested in the opinion of those people that never liked the series yet forced themselves in buying one last chapter. I always wanted opinions from people that actually bought the game because they loved the first two, same case as me. Now finding out that for them this is better than the previous two is what I was looking for. I can now expect an epic closure to one of my favorite series in the "series" (lol) and dismiss anything and anyone saying the contrary. For Toriyama, for Lightning, for myself!

So you are admitting that your being close minded on the subject and won't take any other opinion on a game you haven't played yet except if it's positive.

But that's normal, it's equal to the amount of sales dropping with each iteration. Same happens on amazon, with 3k for XIII and 400 for LR: FFXIII. Doesn't change a thing, it actually reinforce the fact that the people that bought LR, or most of them, are fans of the series and are rating this very high. That's all I wanted to hear from fans like me. I'm not here to listen to an hater of XIII saying to me XIII is a shit. An opinion that will never click with me. I need people I can trust that have same opinions of mine in regards to this.

Perfo listen. I know your a good guy. I know your intentions are good if not extremely biased. That being said, it seems like even if you trust a person or reviewer if they don't score it well or don't have a glowing view on the matter you completely disregard their opinion. That's insulting. Not willing to accept the imperfections and not willing to accept that LR is a mediocre game just shows me the childish way you're going about conducting yourself.
 

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Perfo's an ideologue. The ideology being "FF games are always sublime".
 

Perfo

Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
He's spent years shifting the argument to "every other JRPG ever is shit" this shouldnt be a surprise,

The funny thing is that I was loving every single jRPG during PSone and PS2 eras. Then I had an epiphany, realizing most of them were shits and only Final Fantasy was worth my time. I changed my name from Perfect Cell (...) to Perfo and began my life anew. I'm now a foundamentalist of FF and I don't play anymore jRPGs not-called FF.

I'm a more satisfied gamer than before. That's the best part of it.
 
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