Final Fantasy XIII

[Iambaytor]

I would love to see Yahtzee review this one.

Because you know how much he loves J-ARRPG's.

 

I would think he'd blast it but after seeing his surprisingly good review of Heavy Rain I don't know what to think anymore.

[The NZA]

whoah...he liked Heavy Rain? man, i'm out of the loop.

[Mr. Sexy Hat]

He said that the 2nd half of the game was good. But that does not make the whole game good. But i am interested in seeing that bra and panties fight sequence and the strip or die part. spending $100 on wank material.

[The NZA]

Another sentiment that seems to be popping up is that many in the fan base feel disappointed with the game.

 

not aiming this at Lulu, but for posterity: the Final Fantasy fanbase is largely retarded. most think VII is the best one yet, and XII is somehow awful.

 

Finished this one today - holy shit, is the last boss (im not spoiling by saying it has a few phases; that's every RPG ever) a fucking nightmare of a roulette wheel, that was some Shin Megami shit right there. as expected, the final hour keeps to form and turns into a metaphysical labyrinth with the traditional strange plot elements and overly-emotional dialogue, but again, this is made easier by expecting this of FF. its what comes before that matters.

 

unlike bish (moreso gun), i dug the later chapters - 11 was particularly fun/beautiful (

"i love these little calms before the storm")

, i saw a moment or two of what bish speaks of with the budget running over, but it was rare, and then there'd be a CG story element to make me forget soon after. i guess i didnt get the same sense of all this plot left on the floor that they did, save one deus ex-ing scene earlier on that you kinda run with in the action. it also helped that the game had solid pacing.

 

the visuals set a new bar, and this coupled wonderfully with one of the best OST's the series has seen: a few stages, i just kinda stopped, panned the camera around and took in the environment/sound. i had similar moments with scenes in VI, VII, X and such, but id usually complained that Uematsu, while still good, didnt have the music fit the scene nearly as well past VI. so, so happy that wasnt the case here.

 

everyone talks up the battle, and it is indeed awesome. once in a while, id long for the gambit system just because AI wouldnt have members do what i wanted, at least in the order they did - but it was very smart once you scanned a creature, for the most part (usually i was bitchy when they took to long for debuffs/etc).

 

but prolly the biggest thing here, for me - as its why i play this series - were the plot & characters. the smaller cast kept me from having nameless faces/groupies later on; even if you weren't overly fond of certain characters, you got the feeling you knew them. the plot took turns between character-moment flashbacks and having to run forward at breakneck speed, culminating in some really awesome tension around the 3rd act or so. this was really fantastic: most 3D FF's, for me, get this syndrome were disc 1 is just loaded with great events/pacing, and disc 4 falls the fuck apart (VIII is the most symbolic, natch). i felt no desire to rush past certain bits to get back to the ones that interested me, and that's a rare feel from JRPGs.

 

that said, i happily played a different game than some critics. tycho from penny-arcade said he basically hated everyone who wasn't Sazh, but i still remember emailing him back-and-forth like 10 years ago about how i didnt understand him hating everything about Metal Gear Solid 2. then again, i had to realize: many reviewers might not be into the series/genre or trying to review it as a stand-alone, and im unable to speak of it without comparing it to other chapters. this obviously affects things.

 

anyway, RPG of the forever, cause bish is right, no one's doing anything on this budget in this genre again for a long long time. for me, best FF games go VI, IV, XII, XIII, and after that, i gotta replay IX but i wanna say i rank it above X. much love.

[gunsmithx]

I'll go over some of the cutting room stuff with you on sunday(cause it's alot of random shit to get into here) but I don't know how you didn't see that there's alot of little shit here and there... but we were proabbly looking for different things. I still say the first half is much stronger as a story then the second and it had alot more oh shit moments.

[Maldron]

Second half was gameplay over story, first half was story over gameplay, never did the twain meet.

 

I liked the world they crafted, and I can see how it could expand to 10 years of XIII related games like they were touting, but they kinda set the whole thing up as if I already knew what the hell was going on in the world. It took me until I was in

Gran Pulse to even realize that Cocoon was a world above Pulse, and I still don't know whether it's an object hovering in the atmosphere or its own goddamn planet. I'm leaning towards the former, but this shit really could stand to be spelled out in their presentation of the story.

 

 

I had a good time with it. But there were still lacking elements that made me dislike it. And as far as that awesome CG you're referencing late in the game, if it's the

motorcycle race summon assault, I started the whole thing going "Really? Really? You're celebrating your independence and freedom with a goddamn motorcycle race?" followed swiftly by "well at least I don't have to play this as a minigame." I just couldn't believe that they'd be doing that, precisely because they hadn't built this racing thing up during the story whatsoever, so it felt out of left field and unimportant. Sure it looked cool, but I wasn't into it because I didn't buy into the setting.

 

[gunsmithx]

it's funny mal, George and i thought the same thing when we saw it, but you have to admit that it did look amazing as silly as it was.

[Maldron]

it's funny mal, George and i thought the same thing when we saw it, but you have to admit that it did look amazing as silly as it was.

 

Oh hell yeah, it was an awesome and well-choreographed scene, no question. Plus the graphics were very pretty. Girl-pretty.

 

Seriously though, it looked great and was a great FF action scene. Plus Hope got to be a pimp, which is always a plus in my book.

Then they ruined it by having him say "we're gonna fix this together!" Good lord, at least everybody else had the decency to look at him like he was an idiot, but it so undermined his pimp status.

 

[The NZA]

see...

 

 

i thought the race was just fine, but then, its like the idea of america celebrating its independence with a nascar race in the future or something. this could be their olympics, for all i know...didnt stand out too long for me, i guess.

now, what you said about cocoon as a planet above pulse, yeah, i totally wasnt sure about that until the end of the game, guess it wasnt just me.

 

 

mal, did you feel a lotta stuff got cut? i didnt get to talk to gun about it, but...

bish was right about that one scene in like act 7 or so when Snow goes from being cid/the guardian's prisoner to its ally with Fang, that couldve been a quick side-mission or at least cutscene. past that? im really not sure what else felt left out, the story got fleshed out & told. if they woudlve dragged the endgame along, we'dve had far more pimp-status-losing moments of "go team!' stuff, which happens in FFs sometimes.

 

[gunsmithx]

I'll try to pass by tonight nick with the list of shit that felt cut or should have seriously seriously been expanded

like you could have cut all of pulse and no difference in the game

[The NZA]

wow, /rather disagree.

i really liked that part/entire area, and they didnt spend a great deal of time there but if we'dve gotten to the end and never have even experienced the place, then i totally wouldve been in your camp of things having been cut. as it stands, im not sure what else you wanted from that area: we got the huge open-world and vanille's hometown. its the entire area for post-game quests, too...did you want a hubworld from it, or...?

[gunsmithx]

 

it's open world in the way that there's a huge field and it's open but there's almost nothing to do, you get almost no story out of pulse(outside that v and f are hippies) there's no connection made between the pulse fal ci and the coccon fal'ci(yes they should be working together but they seem to go about how they do it very differently and thats never explained. There no meation over what happend to the people on pulse(and there being no one is a huge fucking cop out) outside some vague hints that they might have been all killed in the war. Then when your about to go back to coccon you get told of some kind of goddess who betrayed everyone but who is that? george things it's anima but who knows.

 

 

The fact is that the game gets further and further disjointed as it goes on, they spent an enormous amount of time on the first half and much less on the second and whole thing stinks of mismangemnt. it drives me nuts cause it's still a really good game but it feels like it could have been so much more. It further drives me nuts because I believe that mismangement is one of the biggest problems that dev teams have and it's all over the indurstry(and to some extant all of software but it much more severe in games.)

[The NZA]

ok, you've got a couple've fair points.

 

 

you're spot-on about not discussing/fleshing out the pulse l'cie too much, but then, wasnt your party entirely them? weren't they just tools of the fal ones? i kinda recall the goddess detail, not trying to give a pass/be dismissive but thing is, specifically van/fang's village was just great for me. i absolutely loved/was enveloped by the song and atmosphere there, and so even running around for parts to van's old toy was something of a joy for me. i do not expect others to be as forgiving if they do not get this feel from said area, but i really do eat up parts of such games that give me this sense of lucid surreality, which again had more to do with the game's OST at that point than even its visuals.

 

to that end, though: werent the 2 of them in stasis for like 200 years or so? i felt nothing cheap/cop-out with looking at their home in a sort've preserved ruins post-war, myself. it was like this time capsule, overrun with baddies. you played Wind Waker, right? i got a somewhat similar feel to this in Hyrule Castle: you were somewhere you knew once had life, and now there was just this echo. you can certainly say some "LOL lazy devs" here if you like, but it struck me as part of the feel/design so i just dug it.

 

 

anyway, your complaints are mostly legit, and its not mine to tell you how to experience a game...but it does say something that i didnt notice these things you found glaring without you pointing them out. again, bish's moment i highlighted earlier did feel left off, but other than that, our experiences seem quite different.

on the point of mismanagement: we could do a whole thread on that, but you gotta know this was something on a different level than most. starting on PS2, all those years of development, changes in design, Wada making no secret of the fact he was pissy about delays on this and DQ both and wanted them out the gate within the fiscal year, coupled with what ive read of the studio doing like Konami did with MGS4 and putting the entire body into crunch time on the project...i mean, you've got a game that clearly went over-budget and had no real chance of staying exclusive when you take all this into account. it is what it is, but i think its a bit've a testament to square that i go the package i did, and not something like KOTOR II in the end.

 

*shrugs* still with bish here that this is a JRPG experience no one else is gonna be able to do for a while to come, sadly, so im just grateful they did.

[gunsmithx]

I keep saying it's a good game, it just could have been so much more.

 

as for the mismanagement I know all that and I think it highlights my point even more. I agree I'm not sure we'll see another jrpg on this scale till... ff 15 probably or maybe maybe maybe one of the ff 13 spin offs if the cutting room stuff is true. Though to be fair no one really does rpg's to the same scale and style square does.

[The NZA]

true, but this gen's showing it more than last, no?

PS2 didnt have what anyone healthy would call a JRPG drought. if you're willing to discount Last Remnant, Star Ocean IV, Eternal Sonata, Infinite Undiscovery, uh, Reasonance of Fate? (not sure if good), we've got Lost Odyssey, Tales of Vesperia, and a few outside sub-genres (Valkyria, Demon's Souls etc), then a lot on handhelds. am i forgetting any? cause the scene's kinda scarce on consoles, and every new one i read being announced is either wii or handheld at the moment.

 

we could hypothesize on Versus, i mean, i know fuck-all about it but im assuming it's smaller in scale, which could be fun. there's elements of Crisis Core i dug more than FF VII, for instance.

[Lulu]

Lol! So much to say on a few pixels of light.

[The NZA]

you lost me, lulu.

[Lulu]

you lost me, lulu.

Just commenting on how you guys dissect games and discus them. I find it really neat because usually when I play a game I either say I like it or I don’t and don’t go beyond that much. Yet when I see a discussion on a game, it make me realize points I never considered and give me a new perspective on it.

[The NZA]

haha, true - i used to think i did this here on hondo's and offline for years with friends, but time at neoGAF has me seeing some people doing this as a science. i mean, they got hundreds of pages on classic Genesis Sonic games and breakdown on physics, level layout, enemy placement & all kindsa shit i would just kinda speed past.

 

i love dissecting/talking about stuff like this in such venues cause a) people catch what i missed (as gun did here with plot pieces), b) others recommend me games i slept on, and c) sometimes i miss stuff that was significant. Like, i loved Super Metroid in the day, but didnt realize for years how influential it was. but yeah, stuff like this points out people gaming for different reasons, genre-wise: newt's turned off what he knows of this game's approach cause he says he plays FF games for exploration. i don't; thats what i do in Zelda, for example. im here for character/plot and surreal, enveloping moments like i said in my spoiler tag post; its mad rare i play RPGs for their combat system (cause its usually repetitive as shit, even in my favorites), so that was a big plus for this one.

but yeah, playing and just enjoying has its merits too, heh.

[Newtype]

[The NZA]

oh-ho-ho! another joke, like Yahtzee's non-review. "i gave up in the first five hours, and also, i loved FF VI cause it had a simple plot." hey, way to not enjoy JRPG's and pretend to review them! im gonna review a racing game, here goes: why the fuck am i driving around in circles? i want to buy the fastest car, but i cant inside of 20 minutes. this game is bullshit! why cant we go play farmville during this game!?"

 

congrats on joining the real JRPG-hating crowd preemptively, newt. turn in your card.

[Maldron]

Good going, Nick! You're quickly becoming the most prominent member in a club accepts everything without question. Hark, the future!

[The NZA]

that has to be sarcasm. has to.

 

newt loves jrpgs. dude lets the internet tell him "dont play this one", and he decides to listen rather than try it for himself. i mock him for this, and would expect any true gamer to do so as well.

or are you siding with yahtzee here? that was, heavy rain aside, the dumbest review of his ive yet seen from him. "i played it for admittedly five hours, and the plot wanst entirely laid bare for me!" " i liked VI, cause the plot sure was simple 10+ years back! also, the combat might've been a highlight, but i didnt like it cause it wasnt like (WRPG-x)!" nay, mal. the future is internet cynicism without forming your own opinion, and you're giving that dumbass shit a big thumbs-up. seriously? how are you backing a guy who admittedly hasnt played the game, and a reviewer that (allegedly) gave a 50+ hour 5 hours to prove his own preconceived notion? you're the kind've gamer that'll give things a try before letting others tell him what to think about it, like myself. no idea how you're supporting this foolishness.

[Iambaytor]

oh-ho-ho! another joke, like Yahtzee's non-review. "i gave up in the first five hours, and also, i loved FF VI cause it had a simple plot." hey, way to not enjoy JRPG's and pretend to review them! im gonna review a racing game, here goes: why the fuck am i driving around in circles? i want to buy the fastest car, but i cant inside of 20 minutes. this game is bullshit! why cant we go play farmville during this game!?"

 

congrats on joining the real JRPG-hating crowd preemptively, newt. turn in your card.

 

Yes, because blindly accepting the shit sandwhich you're handed is so much better. I've seen CJ play this and I've seen much enjoyment to be had, but when the game makes you got 20+ hours before it feels comfortable turning the reins over to you, then it's poorly designed. Yes you can go on and on about how in-depth it is, and I have in fact seen fun happening on the screen, so I know it's there. But a tutorial should take an hour, tops, and that's for a really complicated game (that other Square-Enix game from a few years back that you couldn't even play without a strategy guide, I think it had Oddysey in the title)

 

Yahtzee and Tycho have valid points, if you can't even get a handle on the game within two days then that's a black mark on its record. Also for the record, he was praising Final Fantasy III's narrative for not trying to muck shit up (Final Fantasy games past 7 are rather famous for weird plot holes) and its more fast-paced approach to turn based combat.

[The NZA]

jesus. not agreeing with yahtzee quitting @ 5 hours, or tycho's non-ability to enjoy much of anything that's not a WRPG is now "blindly accepting". there's no in between for you kids, really? I cant simply say that a) i was addressing newt, who hasnt played the game yet, b) yahtzee's review is fucking negligible as he hates the genre and quit in the first few chapters, and c) tycho's got weird tastes? seriously, if i named my top 10 games of all time, its likely tycho'd not like a single one, so while PA can be funny, its not exactly a barometer of any game's quality.

 

ive acknowledged what gun said @ the game kinda holding your hand a bit too much in the early chapters. if that equates a "shit sandwich" to you...holy crap, i hope you dont play many JPRGs is all im saying.

also: LO doesnt need a guide unless you have no idea what you're doing, and yahtzee's "points" are about as relevant as me saying "wow, platfomers sure were easier in 2D ten years ago!" its not a valid point; its your own admission you havnet kept up with the genre since the cartridge age, and prolly shouldn't speak on it.

 

TL;DR: JRPG's are dying because anytime anyone tries something different, the internet decides it sucks preemptively and starts praising the last game for "getting it right", see: FF X when FF XII came out, or this silly shit. man, no wonder dragon quest is stuck in the 90's.