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I don't even understand how the business model for DLC anymore. It just seems to me like a cheap way for devs to recoup dev costs. Or something. I don't fucking know. I don't like it anymore. Could someone actually shed some light on this?

Then it's settled. I shall be buying a 3DS during or post holiday season this year.

Well, there goes any online competition on PS3/360... (Not that they were ever the same as a good old fashioned offline match, but still)

I think we can all agree that English majors occupy the lowest echelons of worthlessness...

I think other than originally taking place on Pulse, the game really doesn't seem to have much with Fabula Nova Crysalis, but I have no real idea. With the renaming of Agito to "Type-0"(with subsequent Type-1 and Type-2 possibly happening), my theory of SE trying to go for the Monster Hunter money is growing more likely. If I decide to grab another PSP, which is close to happening, I'll probably be grabbing this. Regardless, looks cool and I wants more info.

Basically this. I pirate old shit, but I also can't talk. Also, You made my night by posting this.

DLC's a sham, guys. We've been over this.

So you DO want the genre to stagnate. Also RDX, trade ins aren't an indicator of game quality. While it easily could have been that people were frustrated with the game and tried to get rid of it faster than a tumor, there are plenty of people that enjoy a game, decide it ain't for them, or decide that they want to make some money off it to pay for their next fix(in Japan's case probably Monster Hunter related) and sell it back to a store. There are a multitude of reasons as to why people might trade stuff in. Hell, there were people selling back Dragon Quest IX in droves and giving it 1-star reviews on amazon.co.jp, and that game has thus far sold more than 5 million copies with 90% of that coming from Japan. It's the same thing that happened with the SE Madcatz Street Fighter IV Fightstick. A few people got some bad units, and thanks to the power of the internet were able to make it sound like the whole production line was shit, which wasn't the case. If you ever wonder why there isn't a sizable defense for something in this type of situation, it's probably because everyone else is too busy actually enjoying it.

I'll spoiler tag this one I guess. The best reason I can give as to why Vayne didn't actively destroy the other stones himself was that A)the Occuria are probably the only ones who can destroy real nethicite, and/or B)since he had an empire to run he probably wanted to ensure that nobody could oppose his reign, so he wanted to collect all the nethicite as well as his own manufacted stuff. If we look at it in another way, it's possible that Vayne was actually a good guy in that by collecting all the known nethicite, they could never be "misused" by any dangerous forces. Those things ARE WMDs after all. Of course that's all just my theorizing. It's possible that it doesn't make any sense. Oh well... It was cool to watch when I was playing it.

This is where you have to stop. I'm an old-school RPG fan. I loved Final Fantasy XIII just as much as any other entry in the series. Your use of this phrase is incorrect. Fun fact: Final Fantasy was never old-school(except maybe FFIX, which tricked you into thinking it was with the setting). If it was, it'd be using the same turn-based system that Dragon Quest is still using(not a statement about the quality of Dragon Quest games). The series has always thrived on the evolution of its mechanics. Problem is that you never noticed that until the last few entries when they really changed things up(I'd say from FFX up). If you liked those more, that's totally cool. Final Fantasy IV or VI will probably maintain an honorary first place in my book simply because of my nostalgia for them. Another fun fact: There is no RPG aside from pen & paper, tabletops, and Hack/Net Hack that are non-linear. As long as there is a goal that you are being directed towards with a set beginning and ending, then that game is functionally linear. This applies to western as well as eastern RPGs. As Jeremy Parish of 1up puts it(and I'm paraphrasing) "Final Fantasy XIII puts aside all pretense of lying about being an open world to you and just asks you to walk in a straight line for awhile". It's efficient, and within the context of the story(which may or may not have been the result of constrained development issues), it works. Do you really enjoy walking into the same NPC house and listen to him or her spout out the same "Man, things were pretty peaceful around here until all these monsters started popping up!" over and over again? Is that freeing to you? Does it "set up the world's lore"? Give me a fucking break. "Resonance of Fate is what FFXIII should have been"? Resonance of Fate is a great game, but the way it does things isn't the end all be all of the genre. What about Mass Effect 2(which incidentally makes some of the same design choices of FFXIII)? Beyond being critically acclaimed, it had millions sold, and had plenty of satisfied customers. "Who cares about that, though. It isn't what I want the genre to be, so it's shit." That's the message you and a lot of others in this thread are giving off here. If anyone is guilty of "tunnel vision", it isn't the devs working at Square-Enix. Not by a long shot. Thankfully the rest of the game development community doesn't think like this, or the medium would have died off years ago.

Which is what I think most people here are having a hard time accepting. The game sold shittons, and there's a sizable amount of people who did genuinely like it, both non and longtime fans of the series alike. "I didn't like it, so it must be shit!"

I'm not knocking it. I fucking love Knights in the Knightmare. I wanna know whether or not RH is awesome as well.

I'm a huge fan of any Sakamoto soundtracks, and the updated TO ost is no exception. I'm going to need to grab a PSP again for all the stuff you just mentioned, especially TO. From what I've been reading, FFT is a pretty diluted successor to TO, so I'm pretty excited about playing it.

Well if you think about it, the transition from DS to 3DS is a lot like the NES to the SNES. It isn't so much about the cosmetic as much as it's about what the system is capable of. That's the way I look at it anyway. Early adoption isn't too bad, though. Once all the killer apps hit, that's one less thing you have to worry about tracking down. Also, Tell me how that goes.

Ivalice was Matsuno's baby, and FFXII takes place way the hell before FFTactics. You're also aware of the Lucavi in FFT, right? Those are the same espers that tried to rebel against their creators(the occurians) before the events of FFXII. They were the ones pulling the strings in FFT. It was actually a bunch of weirdo alien things pulling the strings the whole time.

Well I guess I'd have to imagine most of her shirt is some kind of padding, otherwise she wouldn't have much protection at all.

On the topic of analog sticks on handhelds, what exactly was the problem with just one analog on the PSP? I owned one for 2 years and I didn't have a single problem with it in the slightest. If it was due to camera concerns, well I can understand that, but then that lies with the software and not the hardware as much, since developers could figure out ways to work around that(ideally), but if it's because certain types of games(like FPSs) didn't work with that type of layout, well why are you trying to play a genre that doesn't usually translate well to handhelds? Anyway, as for the 3DS I'm pretty excited. I think out of the whole NES/SNES/GB days, the GB had my favorite titles like Metroid II, Link's Awakening, etc. so it's great to have those games coming back. I'm not entirely thrilled with the launch lineup as I was hoping for Kid Icarus earlier. Also the price is kinda high, but I guess reasonable for the type of tech they're touting. It'll be interesting to see how many devs go for full 3d experiences and how many opt for the additional horsepower by disabling it. On that note, the battery life could be pretty low to some people(I guess), but there's the backlighting, the 3d, and the wireless functionality to worry about, so chances are it could still be within reason. I'll probably grab it around the end of the year/early next year when maybe more colors/next revision(if any) are announced.

I'm sure you can pull out as many numbers as you need to, but making a "might makes right" argument wasn't what I was trying to do here. My point was that for a game that was "critically panned"(I think Edge was the only one that gave it a scathing review), the lowest point in the FF series and a game that everyone hated, there's a surprisingly high number of people that enjoyed the game and thought it was great. Just read the comments pages or threads on different games coverage sites like 1up or (amazingly enough)Kotaku. As for the sales, 6 million is a huge number so naturally you're going to cast a wider net for reactions, but even if a quarter of that figure resold the game or didn't like it(which are 2 different things entirely), that's still close to 4 million people who might have enjoyed it.

More likely than not it'll reuse similar assets as well as probably be made up of all those assets and content that Toriyama says were allegedly scrapped from the original. The idea that these assets exist lead me to believe that the original game was intended to be less linear than it was at its completion. Also, the game has sold close to 6 million copies since after 2 months of its western release. Even more interesting is that for all the vitriol being tossed around, there's still an even greater amount of people who thought it was excellent.

The whole point of the plot was that the characters in FFXII were just players in a history bound to repeat itself over and over. One of the Occurians saw the endless cycle, got bored and helped the Arcadians, for which he was branded a heretic by the other Occurians who then essentially sent Ashe and crew on a "hit". The party then decides that it's bullshit that a group of "gods" determines the balance of power in the world and wants to give that power to man. For a Matsuno-developed title, it's still very Final Fantasy. Also fun fact: Vaan was never supposed to exist as Bascch was to be the actual main protagonist as per Matsuno's design.

Nomura's been saying that he wanted to make the combat more action based like Kingdom Hearts for a long while(I think since the game was announced). Versus XIII looks pretty epic, but I'm much more interested in continuing Lightning's story. Here's to Winter 2011 and hoping that they use better video and audio encoding for the 360 version.

So uh... This totally just happened Wheeee!

Yes, Chipp. Theme of Love is taught to Japanese elementary school kids on the recorder. Also FFVIII was boss you bitches best recognize.

Well wikipedia says Dragon Quest was first released in Japan in '86 while Final Fantasy came out a year later in '87, so I guess SE wanted some of the DQ money, although I don't know that I'd say they were "rivals" per se. I think that may have happened toward the 2nd or 3rd game in each series, however I was under the impression that DQ was ALWAYS crack in Japan while FF was more popular in the west(during some period of time anyway). Also, while there's nothing about a Final Fantasy VII remake, the rumor mill is once again churning about there being a Final Fantasy XIII-2 in development. In addition to comments by Toriyama(director) saying that there were roughly enough assets produced to make a sequel(or at the very least double the size of FFXIII), as well as DLC plans that were canned and saying he was very interested in making a sequel, a domain name www.finalfantasy13-2game.com was registered by a company that does domain registering for SE(they also registered NieR among others). Might just be speculation and maybe they're just guarding the domain in case of a future eventuality, but it makes me excited for more FFXIII. Contrary to all the insane internet slamming it got, it sold well over 5 million copies worldwide before April 2010, and I loved the hell out of it. Here's to them making the sequel less of a straight line.

Looks like Masashi Hamauzu is SE's new go-to music guy, and I'm not complainin'. I think I'll be picking up this new FFIV update, but dammit Bleck's right. Where the FUCK is my FFV and FFVI?