CrimsonCrescendo
Banned
One last thing: I am convinced Sazh says
. I don't care what the subtitles say.
"Blasted Fuckball"
-
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Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII |OT| Toriyama's Bizarre Adventure
- Thread starter Kagari
- Start date
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Where on the package? Cause I didn't preorder, but I bought it day 1 and I missed out on Cloud
But I'm in the US, so idk. I'll check when I get back.
I'm gonna guess its Canada only.. It's printed so big and obvious on the front of the package that I don't see how anyone could miss it. Actually I'm glad I have the CE arriving soon, because it makes the package pretty ugly.....
Just lol'd in the middle of class. Thanks for that.
Lol. Bad enough they
retread his story from FF13 AGAIN.
I'm in the US, and I saw a sticker on the package saying it comes with Cloud DLC at Wal-Mart yesterday. Only place I happened to look so far.
SirCrush
Member
My notes for a review I am writing for this game...I believe I am in stark contrast to most of the thoughts held by most people playing this game so thought I'd share here. I am only 13 hours in so these notes may change but here they are so far. I just don't get what people are looking for in video games any more. It is worth noting that I am blown away by what I have played so far.
* Story - Unique, engaging, rounds up previous 2 entries' plot points (how well?)
* Side quests - Mixed up in interesting ways. Time system makes you think about how and which side quests to complete.
* Battle system is brilliant, but probably not for those who are adverse to a challenge on Normal mode.
* Time system - I was skeptical at first but after a few hours, I began to see the brilliance. Juggling your time with what you have to accomplish is both stressful but massively rewarding.
* Visuals - While some of the visuals fall short, it is ultimately a gorgeous game. Characters are awesome and some real strides have been made in the english dialogue matching mouth movements. Sometimes distracting because it is off at times while others it is spot on, leaving me watching for which moments happened at which times.
* Music - Amazing blend of 13-1 and 13-2 and even FFVII and IV nods.
* Resource limitations - Being restricted to how many resources you can carry at a time adds an element of challenge that also yields its own rewards. Will this continue as resources become less restrictive? (EP max increases, curatives max on hand increases)
* Schemata system is one of the most impressive innovations I've ever seen in a Square game. Ever. Yes, trumping even the materia system and license/gambit systems. Many battles require you to shuffle your schemas and abilities with their own specific approaches in mind. Certain areas have groups of enemies with certain tendencies so you will be cycling skills often but not so often that it becomes tedious.
SIDE NOTE TO GAF: For those worried about the time limits, let go a little bit. It's not as intense as it first seems. You DO have time to complete the rather fun sidequests and ample time to do what you need to do as far as the main story goes as well. At first, it feels restrictive. But so far the result for me has been a rather interesting meta game where you challenge yourself to push the time limits in order to do more of the side content which is rather intriguing and humorous at times (though not quite as funny as Tales of Xillia's skits overall).
* Story - Unique, engaging, rounds up previous 2 entries' plot points (how well?)
* Side quests - Mixed up in interesting ways. Time system makes you think about how and which side quests to complete.
* Battle system is brilliant, but probably not for those who are adverse to a challenge on Normal mode.
* Time system - I was skeptical at first but after a few hours, I began to see the brilliance. Juggling your time with what you have to accomplish is both stressful but massively rewarding.
* Visuals - While some of the visuals fall short, it is ultimately a gorgeous game. Characters are awesome and some real strides have been made in the english dialogue matching mouth movements. Sometimes distracting because it is off at times while others it is spot on, leaving me watching for which moments happened at which times.
* Music - Amazing blend of 13-1 and 13-2 and even FFVII and IV nods.
* Resource limitations - Being restricted to how many resources you can carry at a time adds an element of challenge that also yields its own rewards. Will this continue as resources become less restrictive? (EP max increases, curatives max on hand increases)
* Schemata system is one of the most impressive innovations I've ever seen in a Square game. Ever. Yes, trumping even the materia system and license/gambit systems. Many battles require you to shuffle your schemas and abilities with their own specific approaches in mind. Certain areas have groups of enemies with certain tendencies so you will be cycling skills often but not so often that it becomes tedious.
SIDE NOTE TO GAF: For those worried about the time limits, let go a little bit. It's not as intense as it first seems. You DO have time to complete the rather fun sidequests and ample time to do what you need to do as far as the main story goes as well. At first, it feels restrictive. But so far the result for me has been a rather interesting meta game where you challenge yourself to push the time limits in order to do more of the side content which is rather intriguing and humorous at times (though not quite as funny as Tales of Xillia's skits overall).
SirNinja
Member
I had a similar idea. How about just:
It just isn't a Final Fantasy logo without the Runic MT font and some kickass Amano artwork.
Perfo
Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
That's expected. I keep saying this, but most of the reviews, especially below 7, are just bashing reviews for the sake of saying "XIII is shit". Time will make this even more concrete when users' scores/opinions will widely consider this a better game than what has been reviewd with.
You're just being honest with no second-aim in your thoughts. You're a good player.
CrimsonCrescendo
Banned
You are going to keep parroting this until the day you die, aren't you?
brandonh83
Banned
I would print this cover and use it especially if the spines matched up to the first two games.
Perfo
Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
More like until I play. You can still expect a twist plot with me calling this a shit you know? It all depends on the game. But I'm never wrong, or at least most of the times I'm not. I sincerely think this game has been bashed for the sake of bashing and only that. We will see in barely 1 day, when Europe will officially get the game and me with it.
Patience
Black Door
Banned
Yes, but
apparently there is a secret dungeon that shows up if you 100% everything, and time does not stop there
SirNinja
Member
PshycoNinja
Member
He's been doing this forever. It would bemuse me if he stopped now.
More like until I play. You can still expect a twist plot with me calling this a shit you know? It all depends on the game. But I'm never wrong, or at least most of the times I'm not. I sincerely think this game has been bashed for the sake of bashing and only that. We will see in barely 1 day, when Europe will officially get the game and me with it.
Patience
CrimsonCrescendo
Banned
More like until I play. You can still expect a twist plot with me calling this a shit you know? It all depends on the game. But I'm never wrong, or at least most of the times I'm not. I sincerely think this game has been bashed for the sake of bashing and only that. We will see in barely 1 day, when Europe will officially get the game and me with it.
Patience
Yes, because obviously anyone who didn't find this game good has an agenda against it. And differing opinions don't exist for purely subjective things.
Mihos
Gold Member
I am the same way... it is also the one thing I kind of hated about Persona 4.
They make it pretty obvious that you are supposed to play through the story more than once, but I am not sure that I will.
I am digging the game myself, although not as much as 13-2. A 7 out of 10 seems fair to me.
Black Door
Banned
People who have actually played it vs XV worshippers who just want to see it end so development of that game can hasten? No surprise there.
PshycoNinja
Member
Because people who are anticipating FFXV couldn't have possibly played LR...
No, not everyone. But definitely some of them.
Then there's people who just don't put in any effort in reviews when things are different. RE6 was very harshly reviewed because of this, and has later had many go back and find that it's actually a great game.
Will the game be remembered more fondly after the public has a chance to play it? I think it will without a doubt. The best parts of this game take a while to get to, and are not accessible to people who don't try and figure out the game's new systems.
There's a stigma attached to SQEX, where any game that gets released that doesn't have eye-melting graphics gets trashed just like this. NieR and The Last Remnant scored pretty much exactly the same as LR, and both are remembered a lot more fondly now.
Giolon
Member
I really enjoyed both XIII and XIII-2, but I am really not liking this game. The time mechanic is really pissing me off. I wasted most of Day 2 running around trying to find a mission objective that wasn't available until later, and on Day 1 I went off in the wrong direction in the city and missed some important ability treasures. Now I'm at a permanent disadvantage b/c there's no real way to make up for the lost time.
No agenda involved. I really was hoping to enjoy this.
No agenda involved. I really was hoping to enjoy this.
Perfo
Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
One thing is saying I don't like it, one thing is labelling the game as an abomination while probably the game is good enough to not deserve any harsh description like that. There's been so much hate about this sub-series that I can't, sorry, trust anyone that lost 6 yrs bashing on every single thing this games bring. When you even hear complains about the pinky hair of Light, you already know which opinions must be ignored.
No one will be able to convince me that this game plays, looks and sounds horrible like Two Worlds. I just have to decide if it's as good as XIII, decent like XIII-2 or "bad" like Crisis Core. I don't expect anything less or more than this comparisons.
2 days to go.
Actually the Lightning Returns import thread seemed to be pretty negative when I last visited a few weeks ago. Bad reviews from people who actually played it and discussion about a "dog".
Mood was pretty bad for what was the de-facto OT at that time.
CrimsonCrescendo
Banned
And here is where you over exaggerate how the reviews were. But there's no point in discussing this with you because no matter what is said, you'll just write it off as "invalid" because it doesn't fit your world view. You've said so yourself.
It's been a while since I laughed that hard. Thank you
Oh God that face is just mythic.
SirCrush
Member
It's just that most peoples' opinions are subconsciously or unconsciously shaped by the popular opinion rather than an open mind. I have already thrown in the towel arguing this point. When I see things like "boring sidequests" or "terrible plot" as criticisms while universal praise is offered to games with the same regurgitated plot themes and questing approaches, I can only shake my head.
Some people take an open mind and dislike certain games for very valid reasons. I respect those opinions...But they are rare.
PshycoNinja
Member
I knew today was gonna be a good day when I woke up this morning. :]
Thanks for the laugh.
Perfo
Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
Straight to the point.
One immediate comparison? ARR's fetch quests. Terrible boring quests from start to finish, including many of the "main quests" that just end up being more filler fetching quests. Yet... no one noticed that most of the game's quest is made of boritude.
Lala.
CrimsonCrescendo
Banned
Maybe, maybe not. It just seems like overkill to call the integrity of a reviewer into question over it like many have (not saying you did).
The problem I see is that people are taking these's reviews as Word of God and set in stone (and to be fair, too much importance is put on them in the Gaming Industry and the wider community). That's where I agree with Adam Sessler with "Fuck metacritc" and "stop taking reviews so seriously". Maybe a reviewer was having a bad day. Maybe, like RE6, it takes a couple times to fully get into. I hated Resident Evil 6 the first time I played it. Utterly loathed it and swore never to play it again. I went back a year later a I loved it. Turned out Capcom sucked at giving you any indication on how the game was supposed to be played. That wasn't the reviewers fault.
Maybe I'll end up with a more favorable opinion of LR in a couple of months when I try to replay it (I'll finish it now only because I'm so close to the end... I checked). The gameplay is good but the story is so overwhelmingly disappointing to me that I can't look past it.
PshycoNinja
Member
The difference in FFXIV is I don't have a ticking time bomb on my back to finish the quest ASAP. I can take my time and explore every inch of the world. And I have a more vested interest in the world and feel attached to the world.
I don't feel any of that in LR.
lol. Your constant fall back to bashing ARR is getting pretty old now. LR's sidequests are very similar to what you might find in a MMO.
Perfo
Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
Except the game last 30hrs and not 600 hrs and I'm not paying 11 euros each month. Lol.
And in any case, I think the doomsday mixed with the special rewards youfind in LR (stats boost, ep ect.) gives it a more interesting twist than classic mmorpg fetch quests. We shall see.
Perfo
Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
Do you even like XIII and XIII-2 stories to begin with?
FFXIV:ARR praise is weird to me.
As you mention, the quest design is TERRIBLE. It is often "go to this place on the other side of the world for a 5 sentence discussion about something" followed by "go back to where you were, on the other side of the world, for another 5 sentence discussion."
And in terms of story there is basically nothing but boring filler from 1-49 and like 92% of the story is packed in a few dungeons. And the villains up to it have absolutely no development or anything. If you only played ARR you would have no idea who any of the Scions are or what that group is about/why it exists as it does. But the story is put up as like the bestest thing to come out of Final Fantasy in a long time.
FFXIV 1.0 - 1.23 had a better story.
CrimsonCrescendo
Banned
That's a given. And like I told Shinta, people take reviews way too seriously. But to flat out call each and every one of them below an arbitrary number "invalid" is not only agenda driven, but even more close minded, which is why I called Perfo out.
Personally, I'd give LR a 6.5/10. It's not bad, but it certainly isn't good due to the story. This may change after I get passed my initial disappointment with the story.
Perfo
Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
I agree with you here. I actually think ARR's story is the worse in the franchise if we consider the main series and everything that followed FFIV. Quest-design is also largely boring and the game stops being fun once you hit lvl 50. The endgame is just a bland excuse to force players staying longer while recycling each and every event, design, idea that was previously already visited in the main part of the game. There are really many things wrong within ARR, also alot of good stuff of course. And that's why I think this is the same case with LR: FFXIII.
There is nothing wrong with putting a lot of value into a game's story. I do the same thing which is why the XIII games have been pretty disappointing in that department. It was consistently the one thing they never improved upon and now looking back, XIII somehow ended up with the best one of the three.
Which is why I stopped playing it. But I did enjoy the beautiful world and music. Just not enough to pay every month to continue enjoying it.
(Can't believe I'm writing this...)
I miss FFXI quests. Sure, they were obscure and some were downright impossible without the help of a wiki, but at least they fleshed out the universe way better than most quests in FFXIV:ARR, in which most quests are just there for exp/gils and aren't even worth reading (though there are interesting quests, namely the storyline, job and craft ones... but the rest is just filler/fetch quests with no emotional investment whatsoever).
I miss FFXI quests. Sure, they were obscure and some were downright impossible without the help of a wiki, but at least they fleshed out the universe way better than most quests in FFXIV:ARR, in which most quests are just there for exp/gils and aren't even worth reading (though there are interesting quests, namely the storyline, job and craft ones... but the rest is just filler/fetch quests with no emotional investment whatsoever).
SoraanTribal
Member
Definitely agree with you there. The world of XIV/ARR is beautiful with so many great sights. Always something fun to stumble upon, and the music was fantastic as well. In fact, I'd go so far as to say the world design is some of the best in the series, and it has interesting lore as well. Unfortunately, I don't feel like the game really utilized all that very well in terms of the story. I actually blame the boring quest design being integrated into the main storyline as one of the biggest problems because by the time you get to the interesting parts of the story, you've been through a lot of BS run here, run there, now run over there stuff that you really just don't care. I would have preferred if they had kept the main story quests completely separate to the filler quests and had all those boring quests be optional stuff you could do. *shrug* I was actually kind of disappointed with how they handled the villains in ARR - they had SUCH potential (great designs, voices, dialogue), but you barely saw them and when you finally killed them, you wondered "Now who was that? Why were they even fighting me?" ARR's storyline is really nothing compared to the FFXI stories (especially Chains of Promanthia). Hopefully the expansions for ARR will be a bit more interesting than the base game.
Anyways, the XIII series actually had a similar problem to me. The world of the XIII games is actually quite interesting and visually appealing. Well, at least XIII/XIII-2 - I haven't seen enough of LR to form a solid opinion yet, but from what I've seen, I wasn't very impressed (coming off playing ARR for a long time didn't help matters since that world is so massive and beautiful). So yeah, an interesting setting, but then they kind of ruin that by not telling very compelling stories that utilize the world or mythology. And similar to ARR, the villains of XIII had very few appearances and when they died, you were like "what's the point?". I'm just talking about the first XIII regarding villains though. I actually liked Caius quite a bit as a villain. Can't wait to see him again in LR.
XI is one of my all time favorite FF games. And it had awesome quests. Lots of cutscenes with story. All the AF and job storylines, all the WotG nation storylines, all the regular nation storylines, Zilart storyline, Chains of Promathia storyline, ToAU storyline, even Dynamis storylines; it's one of the most fully developed worlds I've ever played in, and virtually every aspect of it hints at additional history and depth in the world.
I think Eorzea will hopefully get there, in time. MMOs are evolving games, and the mistake a lot of people make is forming an opinion on the game, but not re-evaluating it later. We all know they rushed ARR out as fast as they could under difficult circumstances. Now they get to start making expansions and updates. I didn't even start XI until the 3rd expansion was out, and I still played it extremely heavily for 5 years.
I'm not even truly starting ARR until January when I'm done with school and have more time. ARR will be around for a while and will be improving hopefully.