Final Fantasy XIII on the Xbox 360

[Master_Yoshi]

It's simple really:

- The Gambit system takes away any fun you can really have with the game. My gameplay consisted of putting the game on, then changing from AV input to my cable to watch TV for an hour while I navigated around a map levelling up and never dying.

- The game requires a huge grind. It's an RPG, why should I sit around killing wolves for an hour just so I can eke out some exp so I don't get killed by a boss fight.

- The gambit system doesn't adequately prepare you for boss fights. You have to do some micro-managing for these fights, and as someone that never used the menu too often I ended up spending more time figuring it out in the earlier boss fights than I was actually fighting the boss. The experience should not be "Final Fantasy Excel Spreadsheets embedded in spreadsheets."

- The main character was not compelling. At all. He was just there for the ride. And everyone hated him, even the player.

- The end boss wasn't really that evil. I didn't get any sense of accomplishment for fighting or beating him. Hell, I'd have been fine with just leaving him be. I mean... what kind of a leader DOESN'T use religion to gain political power.

- The game did not have a very good story. This is what final fantasy is about. Big, epic stories with well-rounded characters and enemies, events you actually care about. For what I'm talking about, play FF5 or 6 again. You care about what happens in these games. In 12, I spent most of my time going "so?"

- The game doesn't really give you a sense of accomplishment very often. I mean... remember when you get the airship in previous installments and you can start running around doing cool stuff? Even when you get it in 12 it's no big deal.

It is for these reasons that I believe that SE has lost their grip on the main FF franchise. I don't expect any good things out of 13. From what I've seen it's nothing but fanservice and anime in motion with numbers randomly popping up over enemies' heads. SE has lost the soul of Final Fantasy, and I don't think they'll get it back.

And the whole thing they have allready announced "FF 13 vs"??? FFX-2 anyone?

Lastly, you can tell that they are just milking the franchise now, rather than actually putting any effort into their games. Look at their stupid fighting game, and they even had a crappy sequel for 12. Yayy...

[I-n-j-i-n]

The Gambit system was alright, but it was like with Kingdom Hearts 2. The game could run itself if you set the system up right. But probably less hands on than even KH2. As for the story, I would say it really was non existent. I could probably recall better stories from FF4 all the way up to FF10. I thought FF12 really got too much credit when I was only 10% through the story. The most unnerving fact that Vann and his friends never really TALKED through much of it. That was a bad sign.

I actually thought FFX-2 was a good enough sequel to FFX, but FFX never really had the most compelling stories anyway. As for the fighting game, are you talking about Ehrgeiz? That was like forever ago. I hope FF13 does have some effort put into it. Mainly the way they're promising real time battles, Star Ocean style.

[atmuh]

no theres a new fighting game disidia or smth

[I-n-j-i-n]

Dissidia. But I think it's a bit silly to point out that they're milking FF series. Of course they are. The same way Mario is milked to the bone. But I don't think that has too much relevance to the main games they're releasing. While I do think FFXII was very flawed, I can at least tell they put in a lot of effort in it. Actually, a lot of their current projects are a bit flawed (which JRPG isn't?) like with FFTA's judging systems or the remakes' easier difficulties. But I don't think you can say that they put no effort in them.

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

Final Fantasy XII was awesome because you could scale your own difficulty. You wanna auto through the whole game(like a whole bunch of whiners here)? Fine. Wanna ATB it up like the rest? Do it. Wanna man up and take the whole game on active? Hat's off to ya. If you were just gonna set the game up to play by itself, you probably shouldn't even be playing to begin with.

If daring to be different and making an awesome game in the process is a flaw, well then you should probably go back to every other iteration of the series. God forbid a game series takes a step in a new direction.

But to echo Atma, 12 was excellent and you're an idiot.

[Brushfire]

FF12 was a total travesty.

Don't believe Ondor's lies!!

[Master_Yoshi]

Don't believe Ondor's lies!!

Ondor? Huh?

Also, all these people being mean are liable to make a newbie sad ; ;

Haha just kidding, I really wish that more than one person could give a quantifiable reason as to why FF12 was a good game rather than just hurl insults in the same manner that a monkey at the zoo hurls poo. To address Malaki, you are right that being able to scale difficulty makes games better. I tried that at first with FF12. I ran from city to city until I hit boss fights that I realized I couldn't win due to having levels too low (thus having not enough HP to survive attacks, and not doing enough damage.) So I ended up having to go outside and grind on wolves for a couple hours.

I was fully prepared to give 12 a chance since I have given almost all games I play a chance (except like.... I dunno, but the game I wouldn't give a chance must exist) but I honestly can say I just don't like it on any level. As such, 13 doesn't seem like it'll be any better. Maybe flashier.... something that 12 definately was lacking. None of the characters except Balthier were very cool.

Edit: I almost forgot! This game gets upgraded from "Travesty" to "Bad game that might have been ok if it wasn't titled 'Final Fantasy' and had instead been titled 'Adventures in some place'" by having Gilgamesh. He alone was worth buying the game.

[Thin Crust]

I should mention that FFXIII is made by the same creator as FFX-2 and FF12-2. Does anyone else find that disturbing?

[Gollgagh]

FF12-2.

I was not aware of a XII-2

[Master_Yoshi]

I was not aware of a XII-2

I can't remember what it was called, but it was for a portable system.

[Gollgagh]

Revenant Wings =! XII-2

[Genjutsu74]

I was not aware of a XII-2

It was called Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, for the DS. Never played it myself, so I'm not gonna comment on it.

As for X-2...was I the only sicko that enjoyed that game? Seriously, it wasn't that bad. Yeah, the girliness was a bit much at times and the story was less than memorable, but the battle system was probably the best the series has seen. It took the job system from FFV, made it more flexible by allowing you to change jobs during battle, ramped up the speed a bunch, and made everything more fluid, so that it felt like it was more real-time than turn-based. I kinda wish all these remakes would actually modify the gameplay a bit to play more like X-2.

As for the main topic, XIII...wow. This is great news for me, as I really didn't want to drop $500(or whatever it costs now) on a PS3 to play this game. Of course, there's still Versus, but that one seems further away anyway; by then I might be able to throw some money at a PS3.

As for all the fanboys crying foul at Square-Enix for "selling out" or "betraying the fans" or whatever, get over it. This is a unique move in a sense for Squenix: they're actually acknowledging the American fanbase. While the PS3 is obliterating the 360 in Japan, it's quite a different story here. They're now giving American and European fans the choice of buying the cheaper, (arguably)more popular system and still being able to play FFXIII.

Besides, Square has a history of doing crap like this. I'm sure Nintendo got a real kick out of that conference. Sony's as strong as they are today partially because Square made a similar move before. In the end, it's all a business, and in order for Square-Enix to maximize profit, they need their flagship title on the most popular system.

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

I'm not trying to knock anyone down here, but FFXII was an achievement in terms of game presentation and quality, much like MGS4 or Resident Evil 4. I'm not saying that these games have no flaws(and I have several issues with FFXII myself), but they were landmarks regardless, and failure to at least acknowledge that, well... Is bad.

As for FFXIII, it's like solving a simple math problem A(Square-Enix wants most of their profits from international markets) + B(most American and Euro gamers own 360s) + C(Final Fantasy is a big hit in the west) = Square-Enix releasing Final Fantasy XIII on the 360 in both North America and Europe. I enjoyed Final Fantasy X-2 quite thoroughly, and I'm sure that FFXIII will be another step in a fresh direction that will not disappoint. From what I've read about the plot and concepts thus far, I think we might have a winner.

Ditto on the packaging as well. Seriously, the Lost Odyssey packaging was a joke.

[Bahamut]

FFXII was crappy to me too - the grinding was just too much for me. I had to spend hours leveling and earning money just to buy all of the equipment I wanted for my party. And then there was bullshit like what they did with the Zodiac Spear.

[Avatar of Justice]

I liked FF12. The soundtrack was excellent, world was expansive, and the lack of random battles made everything super smooth and fun. I enjoyed combat in FF12 more than any other FF. Gambits did the mindless "attack" "attack" "magic->cure" stuff for me letting me only intervene when needed.

As for characters, everyone seems to like Balthier and nobody else. I personally was impressed with Ashe. She breaks the princess stereotype. She was neither spoiled nor childish. She simply wanted Dalmasca back because it belonged to her (she doesn't talk a lot about Arcadian injustice or anything). Basch was a cool loyal knight type character, and I thought Larsa was awesome in the secondary cast.

I can't wait to see the new FF13 battle system. Square mixes up combat every single time in FF, usually for a new and fun experience. The world sounds cool and the cutscenes look good. Not sure what people want out of Final Fantasy. Let's bash it because doing so is "hip." I personally love the ridiculously high budget RPG experience that Final Fantasy is and am completely unapologetic about it. Everyone seems to pine for the days of SNES FF, but the stories have only improved in terms of meaning and emotion and the worlds have only gotten more detailed. I still think Final Fantasy X has the best story in the main series, not counting Final Fantasy Tactics which I think is the only video game that approaches the level of a great book in terms of story and themes.

[Final_metroid]

Us few Wii-ers feel like dying

Edit: Am I the only one who thought FFXII was too tedious to keep my attention span...?

[sephfire]

I found that FFXII had quite a few strengths going for it that few of the other FF games have managed.

1. Battle system

Now, I'm not saying XII's real-time, gambit-based system was a better concept than the turn-based traditions, but it definitely had some strong points.

We'd all like to think that every random battle in these FF games is a strategic affair. But they aren't usually. Alot of the time, we're just jamming 'x' over and over until the weak random encounter dies so we can get our XP and prizes and move on. Then we break out the strategy for the boss fights.

With XII, that repetition is removed. You give your characters a series of prioritized commands to follow and guide them through the world. They follow the repetitive orders by default; orders that you would otherwise have to select over and over. They streamlined the traditional system.

And the best part is that you can still play the traditional way at any time. At any point, you can pause and select a character's next action. And you'll have to do a lot of that when the tougher fights come. But if you don't need the strategy, the gambits will do the repetitive work so you can focus on the fun.

2. NO random encounters

I don't think random encounters are an inherently flawed concept, but they are a bit dated. Running around an area in FFXII, the world feels so much more alive than past environments have. No jarring transitions to a battle screen. No pause in the action. It makes the whole experience much more fluid and "coordinated" somehow, and I hope more JRPGs follow XII's lead.

3. Story

It's a solid story (as solid as you're likely to get in a JRPG, anyway). But it is a bit different than your average FF fare, which is why I'm not surprised it turns a lot of people off.

Your standard FF story is very "hero focused". The world is in danger, and that's important, but the real focus of the story is the personal journey each main character takes. It's very character-driven.

But with FFXII, it felt to me that the characters had been dropped into a conflict (and story) that was much bigger than them. Major political conflict and war loomed over the world, and this small troupe of people were trying to find a way to prevent disaster. It's not a case of "[Villain] is going to use the _______ to destroy the _______, and I'm the only one who can stop him." It's a bit different than the stock Final Fantasy story and I like it. I like that they're willing to play around with the formula and try new things.

4. Localization

This is big. FFXII has the strongest translation and english performance of any FF game to date. The dialogue is strong. The writing is solid. Gone are the awkward pauses and uncomfortable "Tidus laughing" scenes. The english localization team really nailed it this time and I hope we'll keep seeing this sort of quality.

5. Art

I know it's a given that Final Fantasy is going to bring great production values, but the art direction and design in this game are really top notch. I know graphics aren't everything, but just look at it.

The game had issues, certainly. I don't think FFXII is the "ultimate" JRPG, but one of Square's greatest traditions with the Final Fantasy series is that they never settle on a gameplay formula and run it into the ground. Every game brings some new innovation. A unique battle system. A ground-breaking technical advance. A fresh aesthetic. I enjoy some FF games more than others, but I can definitely say that I've never played one that actually "sucked." They've just set the bar very high.

As for X-2...was I the only sicko that enjoyed that game? Seriously, it wasn't that bad. Yeah, the girliness was a bit much at times and the story was less than memorable, but the battle system was probably the best the series has seen. It took the job system from FFV, made it more flexible by allowing you to change jobs during battle, ramped up the speed a bunch, and made everything more fluid, so that it felt like it was more real-time than turn-based. I kinda wish all these remakes would actually modify the gameplay a bit to play more like X-2.

I still argue that FFX-2 had the greatest battle system of the whole Final Fantasy series. I wish more JRPGs would borrow that system.

I've got to learn to stop arguing on the internet.

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

This is why sephfire is awesome.

Totally agreed on, although one thing bugs me. Do people hate FFXII because they genuinely thought that it was a bad game, or was it a bad game just because it took such a huge departure from the traditional style? If it's the latter, then they're probably gonna have some serious issues with FFXIII.

[Master_Yoshi]

I personally hate it because it was a genuinely bad game. I will agree that it wins for presentation (aesthetic was very polished) and localization. Still, the gameplay was a huge weakness for me, and the story was... well it was "meh" at best and intensely boring at worst. I personally would say that the game tried to hard to be groundbreaking AND polished AND good that it failed at all 3.

Although it wasn't really groundbreaking. The gameplay was very close to FF11, just with the other 5 idiots in your party being automated by your gambits.

Hell I enjoyed FFX-2. Sort of... I though it was an unecessary game, and the fact that it was final fantasy barbie was a huge turnoff, but the battle system and continuous good music kept me with it.

Oh and for the record: The "traditional style" doesn't make a difference for me. I loved the hell out of the Seiken Densetsu series, and all 3 kingdom hearts games, so I am not someone bound by the "traditional" FF game. I just want a game to be GOOD.

[sephfire]

I personally hate it because it was a genuinely bad game.

You've articulated why you hate it (and your opinion is valid, XII isn't my favorite in the series either). You haven't said much to back up the bolded blanket statement, though.

Why is it a "genuinely bad game"?

[Hector]

What I found amazing about FFXII was the exploration. It was more fun to explore the world in FFXII than any other FF game in my experience, and you had more reason to do so than other FF games because of all the hunts.

And the plot for the game is pretty good; it's simply that you sometimes forget what you are doing in it if you spend time exploring all the side-quests. Though my favorite two parts of the plot were that the fate of the world did not hang in the balance and Balthier stole the position of "Main Character"

As to the gameplay, FFXII felt more tactical than most tactical RPGs.

Then it had a few flaws (Vaan, the randomness in acquiring rare weapons, and a main villain who could legitimately ask at the end "Who are you people?")

[Master_Yoshi]

You've articulated why you hate it (and your opinion is valid, XII isn't my favorite in the series either). You haven't said much to back up the bolded blanket statement, though.

Why is it a "genuinely bad game"?

Hmmm... really I suppose that this is more of a personal opinion than anything. I consider it a bad game because it lacks a compelling storyline, has very little to no replay value, and has a low sense of immersion. All 3 of those points seal the deal on me calling the game "genuinely bad."

Realistically though, this does all boil down to opinion. Perhaps in the future I'll replace a criticism such as "it was a genuinely bad game" with "I very heavily disliked the game."

[Bahamut]

Also to add to my dislike of FFXII - I despised how large the world was. At first it was nice, but as the game progressed, it started to really drain me because of how much walking there was involved to explore. It eventually got to a point where I started dreading doing hunts and looking around the world because even if I teleported relatively close to my objective, there was still a lot of walking and fighting to be done.

[kupernikus]

I liked FFXII, I liked the large world, it was about time we had a world that wasn't about the size of rhode island... I enjoyed the gambit system because I enjoyed tinkering around seeing if I could create an invincible party that didn't require any management (which ultimately failed, I had a few gambit sets for situations, but that was about it.) And it had a story that wasn't about a single characters redemption (although the theme was still there in a sense)

That said, FFX-2 is still among my favorites for how the battle system worked. and my all time favorite will likely remain FFVI with IV a close 2nd. (Im a nut for nostalgia I guess)

[sephfire]

Also to add to my dislike of FFXII - I despised how large the world was. At first it was nice, but as the game progressed, it started to really drain me because of how much walking there was involved to explore. It eventually got to a point where I started dreading doing hunts and looking around the world because even if I teleported relatively close to my objective, there was still a lot of walking and fighting to be done.

This is true. I loved the wide open environments, but the long travel time for side questing really wore on me after a while. Just a few more teleport points throughout the level would have been nice. They could have even waited until near end game to make them available.