Final Fantasy XIII

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Re: Final Fantasy XIII

Post by Gojira » Sat Mar 12, 2011 09:06

Wow, so this is where the review forum went. Not that I was looking for it, but I missed my chance to rant about this game again. Since FFXIII-2 was recently announced, I suppose bashing it one more time won't be totally out of fashion. So...

Yes, it sucks.

Let me count the ways:

1) No towns + non-interactive NPCs is an absolute fail. I don't count randomly listening in on someone's conversation with somebody else an NPC. I WANT TO INTERACT WITH PEOPLE IN MY RPGS. Not a fucking crystal, not a... floating... shop robot thingy, not an automatic cutscene. I want to walk up to someone, press a button, and have them address me/my character directly. And I want to do that in a town with personality that makes me feel welcome, no matter what the townspeople say to me. If your NPCs aren't giving at least that much payoff, you're forgetting the R in RPG.

2) Bad buildup for a battle system. Note that I'm not necessarily saying the battle system is bad, but they made a major misstep in introducing it to the player. Most RPG battle systems are like trees. Even though the trunk is in place, the branches (techniques, spells, powerful attacks, etc) unlock bit-by-bit. That's why building it up works. But the problem with FFXIII's battle system is that when it starts, it's not a tree at all. It's a floor. It has NOTHING. You slowly unlock the trees for the first 20 hours. And once you got everything unlocked? Not many branches. They're there, but you spend more time managing your job than you do managing your actions so the branches have minimal appeal. The roles are a nice idea when it's finally realized, but the buildup was totally pointless and made it look retarded for a very long time.

3) Goals! Goals! Where the hell are my goals?! Jesus Christ guys, can't you give me anything to do other than "go on" and "beat this monster?" At least the NPC thing would have opened up some avenues for design. Barely any sidequests hurts. No grinding for currency also hurts. Limited exploration REALLY hurts. And then they go and add those crystal quests about 30 hours in? Sorry guys, not good enough. In the end those were just more "beat this monster" goals like you had all along. The only faint spark in a world without fire was the little robot part mini-quest near the last area. It was as easy as a quest that would have appeared in the first hour of a normal RPG, but it was so much more satisfying than anything else. It had story, it added to the characters, it was a thing you could interact with. And yet, it was clearly an afterthought.

4) Speaking of exploration, yeah. I don't need to talk about this much, because anyone who's played the game for a short period and gotten disgusted with it knows what a crock it is. But what really gets my goat is how unnecessarily large it gets in the latter "OMG THIS IS WHERE IT GETS BETTER" stage. Great, a wide-open space. With long stretches of nothing. Thanks. Remember 2D games, when you could cross an entire map in 20-30 seconds? Remember when it was much easier to find stuff? While playing these games, did any of you EVER say "gee this game would be much more fun if it took me longer to cross these maps and these items were much harder to see?" I didn't. That doesn't mean you can't make it work, but this game really went overkill in terms of space-to-content ratio.

5) Hope. Hope is annoying. Does Hope get less annoying later? Sure. Will you care by then? Not really.

It'll be hard mustering up the strength to care about another Square-Enix FF after this (and considering FFXIV was their fastest failure yet), but because of the little robot quest I have the faintest hope that FFXIII-2 will right the wrongdoings of this game. Maybe.

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Re: Final Fantasy XIII

Post by Vice Vecta » Sat Mar 12, 2011 13:02

Is it safe to say that FFXIII it's exactly the complete opposite of what Fallout 3/NV is?

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Re: Final Fantasy XIII

Post by hadoolket » Sat Mar 12, 2011 19:01

Gojira wrote:1) No towns + non-interactive NPCs is an absolute fail.
i can't say this really bothered me too bad, a lot of people say they needed to feel immersed into a game, but i'm more concerned about playing a game than reading needless text
2) Bad buildup for a battle system. ....Most RPG battle systems are like trees...But the problem with FFXIII's battle system is that when it starts, it's not a tree at all. It's a floor. It has NOTHING.
i can agree here, and development is very important to an rpg (even though i'm not really much of a fan of rpgs to begin with) and i think the battle system itself was a great idea, just not a great execution--a lot of the complaints will be about not being able to move your party members and not being able to control each character individually, and most importantly, the leader dying = game over, which is about as stupid as the quirk the ice climbers face in smash bros

if polished a bit, it could be a fantastic battle system, and i love the fluidness of it, though menu-based activity may be a major drawback because that really takes up a lot of your time which may cost you some hit points or even possible match when certain things may require you to react on a snap and you're still searching your techniques for the one you want, and of course you're compounded by having to select more to fill up the ATB or press an extra button to confirm end of selection, and again, this takes up your time and can be inefficient in times such as when you have haste applied and your gauge is already filled by the time you are done selecting your queue of actions, which means an inefficient use of your atb and inefficient use of haste status!
3) Goals! Goals! Where the hell are my goals?!
wada lost sight of those a long time ago
4) Speaking of exploration, yeah. I don't need to talk about this much, because anyone who's played the game for a short period and gotten disgusted with it knows what a crock it is.
i wouldn't mind if there was some reason to go through such a wide expanse, but this is not metal gear and it's not like you can't easily sneak past most enemies in gran pulse, or even run away from them to avoid battle

but it's stuff like that that brings me back to playing metal gear solid instead, which is still enjoyable, and you actually feel the pressure to either maintain stealth or get barraged by alerted troops and possibly die, and i almost kind of want that in an ff game, but the nature of the rpg kind of prevents that

also, mgs games just overall have better (if crazier) story elements that beat out anything i've seen in a final fantasy game, that includes ffviii

on the other hand, i have managed in ffxiii to somewhat sneak past troops in corridors and hallways SOMEHOW to avoid battles
5) Hope. Hope is annoying.
yes, he gets a little more tolerable later on, but he's still kind of meh

though what's hard for me to understand is why did he have so much hate for his dad? his dad wasn't even an asshole or deadbeat or anything, he just had to be away for work? it sounds like hope is just a moody attached asshole with separation anxiety issues and is just a character meant to fill the niche of boy-with-issues, and it seems like forced character development

strangely enough, there are people who say they can relate to hope, but hope's the kind of guy i'd punch in the face and tell him to get over his small issues

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Re: Final Fantasy XIII

Post by Foxhole » Sun Mar 13, 2011 01:45

You'd be surprised at how whiny teenagers are in hindsight. I never thought of myself as particularly annoying in High School but when I think back on it, I wasn't as "solid" as I would have liked.

The Japanese voice made him mildly more tolerable. And during the race cinema I actually thought he came across as mildly badass.

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