Final Fantasy XIII

[Arcana]

I take it you've never played Demon's Souls...

THERE ARE NO SAVE POINTS AS IT'S ALL DONE PERIODICALLY REGARDLESS.

nonetheless an awesome game.

I have not.

But "no manual saves" is bad design too.

[Schwaltzvald]

I have not.

But "no manual saves" is bad design too.

I would argue that in some ways it works in favor of Demon's Souls in that it's uniquely different enough from a large variety of RPGs. Now if it were to be implemented in Final Fantasy, Disgaea or Persona then I'd say it's a bad game design for it.

[prophetik music]

I think he meant OtSS (Over the Shoulder Shooter) ala Dead Space and Resident Evil 4/5.

That said...

What the hell, that's some stretch prophet.

http://gamerdeals.net/blogs/carlos/archive/2010/03/12/the-changing-face-of-rpgs-according-to-ffxiii.aspx

Sure, every iteration of the Final Fantasy franchise has had a new combat system to play with, but none let you "Auto-battle" your way through it. FFXIII sets up actions in the most effective way to take down your foes...and you can mash on "X" through all of them.

The combat boils down to -- mostly -- staggering your enemy, managing your health, and changing your party's offensive/defensive formation, or "Paradigms," according to how the battle unfolds.

Action games? Shoot, manage health, and adapt to the dynamic of the battlefield.

basically, it discussed how the switch from menu-driven combat to more strategic auto-combat was a result of the FF design team taking ideas from the gameplay of games like Uncharted and CoD.

think about it before you call me an imbecile =)

also, arcana, DA:O's a crappy example, for one big reason: it was developed on the PC first and then ported to consoles. guess how you save in the PC version =) there's autosaves, yes, but they're few and far between. almost every time you save, you do it through the save menu.

[The Vagrance]

I don't mind the saving at all, and I feel it exists to hook in those "15-30 minutes at a time" gamers that seem to be more and more common.

[Brandon Strader]

It took me 27 hours to get to Gran Pulse. Then it was so huge that I got intimidated and beat 2 other games in the meantime. I'll probably play it a little here and there so I don't forget the controls, but wow. That transition sure is jarring.

[Gollgagh]

http://gamerdeals.net/blogs/carlos/archive/2010/03/12/the-changing-face-of-rpgs-according-to-ffxiii.aspx

FPS != action game

[linkspast]

It took me 27 hours to get to Gran Pulse. Then it was so huge that I got intimidated and beat 2 other games in the meantime. I'll probably play it a little here and there so I don't forget the controls, but wow. That transition sure is jarring.

Dang, if thats the case then im way behind you guys... I might be ten hours is.. .

Stupid finals week..

[Schwaltzvald]

FPS != action game

Gollgagh's right, I don't need to

ya

on what a

is do I Prophet..?

Seriously though in the end, FFXIII is rather awesome.

[Gollgagh]

wait I think I got that wrong

I think it should be action game != FPS

[prophetik music]

FPS != action game

yeah, i know. there's another article comparing and contrasting FFXIII to MW2 and (more importantly) ME2, but i can't find the damn thing.

still, understand the gist of what i was going at, even if i didn't make it super clear at first.

[Arcana]

I don't see anything in common between this game and an FPS other than the pace of the story. Normally Final Fantasy games give you the impression that it occurs over months whereas FPS games occur over a few days. FF XIII on the other hand is short in comparison.

Regarding saves, I just feel that, for such a forward-thinking series, they have a remarkably outdated mechanic. I don't mind manually-saving either, but having save points and no autosaves just strikes me as antiquated in games now - just like monster-grinding, using passwords for game progress, SDTV, and status windows that take up 2/3 of your screen all the time.

As I said - the game really should just autosave itself into a new file for each significant checkpoint, and in addition allow the player to, in addition, save whenever he or she wants to do so manually. Saving nowadays breaks up the game play more so than "Now loading" screens do and only remind me that "I'm playing a game".

And prohpet, I did play the PC version of DA:O. It autosaved pretty much every time you entered a new room, but you also got the opportunity to save manually, which I used frequently. Dragon Age was much less linear of a game than FF13, which also meant that you saved and loaded a lot.

I'm not about to recommend that someone not play Final Fantasy XIII because it uses an antiquated save feature. I just think that being prompted, every 30 minutes, with a "Do you want to save?" is an outdated mechanic.

[prophetik music]

if that's your biggest issue with the game, then leave it alone already

people who made it to the skyway: boy, didn't that feel good to kick all those monsters' asses that you saw back at the springs? those things destroyed me for like two hours until i figured out that sentinal wasn't a boss-only class. i pounded those things into the damn ground, and it felt good.

[Arcana]

if that's your biggest issue with the game, then leave it alone already

It's not, did you read anything else in my post or did you just zero in on this one issue because it looked like an easy target? It's the only thing that people chose to discuss out of my post out of my 10 or so paragraphs, so

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

So I'm worried that the game's plot is more than a bit rushed. I just hit Chapter 12. Should this continue to worry me?

[Darlos9D]

if that's your biggest issue with the game, then leave it alone already

people who made it to the skyway: boy, didn't that feel good to kick all those monsters' asses that you saw back at the springs? those things destroyed me for like two hours until i figured out that sentinal wasn't a boss-only class. i pounded those things into the damn ground, and it felt good.

After thinking about it quite a bit, I realized that Sentinel is actually better for larger group fights, because it can really keep it from turning into a complete clusterfuck. I remember on the Palamecia there's this one fight with three deckdrones and two dragoons that can quickly go straight to hell if you're not careful, because the drones fly all over the place and do wide-area spinning attacks while the dragoons sit back and hammer you with missiles.

(uh oh, I feel a big rant coming on)

Actually, I spent an hour or two (at work lol) just thinking about the best possible party combinations for different given situations. The first an foremost thing I decided: once I have full control over my party and who is the leader, Sazh will always be my leader. Sorry Lightning, but you don't have Haste, Vigilance, and offensive buffs. I'd want him to be my leader so I could actually make choices on what buffs to use on who, since the AI doesn't do a great job of handling it in my eyes, since it'll pointlessly cast Bravery on a dedicated magic character. Besides the synergist abilities, his ability to easily move between Commando and Ravager (due to his evenly balanced stats, something he shares in common with Lightning) depending on my setup. I can just slap different accessories on him to boost his stats in whatever direction I desire. Also, his version of Blitz rocks, which I guess is a tradeoff for the fact that he can't Launch.

As for the other two members, it's pretty situational. I'd probably bring Hope into a boss fight (or any fight that seems like it might be tough and take a while) and take advantage of all three of his roles for buffs, chaining, and healing. The buffs are the major thing though, and if I decided I don't absolutely need them then there are other medics and ravagers... namely Vanille.

Saboteur at first seemed like a role I wouldn't like much since I'm not to fond of debuffing (why use debuffs that might work when you have buffs that always work), but aboard the Palamecia I realized that they're VERY useful for dealing with enemies that buff themselves. In particular, the PSICOM Huntresses were a huge pain until I realized Fang could just dispel their asses. So, if I think I'll be dealing with annoying enemy buffs, I'll definitely bring Vanille or Fang along.

Unfortunately, I feel like Lightning and Snow might both fall by the wayside. The only interesting thing Lightning has is the ability to be Medic, which can be filled by two other characters to much greater utility. Similarly, Snow only has Sentinel to speak of. He also has Ravager. I mean, what? He's so Strength based that that's just silly. Really, the only reason I'd use either of them is if I decided I wanted three commandos. Which is possible, if I think I'm going to be dealing with a single powerful target, since I could stagger them and then just go ballistic with huge Strength physical attacks. In that case, I'd probably have Lightning (because I'd still need a medic). Fang and Snow are a tossup. Snow, if I don't think I'm going to deal with enemy buffs, because I think he's the strongest. If I do have to deal with that though, Fang.

I could go on to talk about what Paradigms I actually tend to use for what reasons, but this is probably already tl;dr enough. I will say though that I wish it weren't set up so multiple commandos pick separate targets. Logic dictates that you want to pick things off one at a time, so I don't know why they decided that. Because I would love to be able to selectively go full commando on singular enemies when they get staggered.

[eternal Zero]

The largest draw to Lightning is that she is your most powerful and versatile physical ravager. She gets access to all elements up to -ra as well as all elemental strikes. Only Hope has as much versatility but defensive buffs aren't as good as Sazh's offensive buffs. Vanille completely outshines Fang as a saboteur. Fang is the best commando but not by a large margin. Lightning is just as good. Snow is your best sentinel but honestly I get along fine without one. Lightning makes a good evasive sentinel later on. And I'll mention saboteur again. They are amazing. They win so many fights and I consistently see 999,999 on a lot of enemies with Lightning's regular attack and I don't even have her weapons upgraded.

My team is usually Lightning, Sazh, Vanille. Buffs, Debuffs, solid damage, great healing. A little on the frail side without a dedicated sentinel but I beat the main game with (almost) no issue and I've felled my fair share of Adamantoise.

[prophetik music]

i've been using lightning, hope, and snow a lot, but i'm about to switch lightning out for sazh. i'm getting sick of having her get hammered thanks to her relatively low HP. i know she's my most versatile character, but she gets pounded with relative ease by most bigger enemies.

snow's awesome with the power circle as both a sentinal and a commando. i'm in chapter 12, and he's level four in both - and he's kicking ass in both. he'll easily hit for 8000 per attack, per turn, against a non-staggered opponent, using the base level of the power circle =) he's also a way better sentinal than fang thanks to his superior HP.

i'm digging the syn-syn-sen at the start of bigger battles. hope's buffs work perfectly with sazh, and you can get all seven major buffs (veil, protect, shell, haste, vigilancy, bravery, and faith) on all characters in the time it takes to normally have two or three turns.

the main issue with sazh as a leader is that you don't have that emergency paradigm of combat clinic (med-med-sen). if you use enough synergy paradigms, though (i always use one after staggering an enemy, when there's no chain to maintain), it balances out usually.

[eternal Zero]

Lightning really shines when you give her a maxed Imperial Armlet (20% Dmg reduction) or the best HP one (starts at 800 HP) whichever gives you a higher total effective HP. Same goes with Hope really.

My favorite opener for Light/Sazh/Vanille is Com/Syn/Med and once all buffs are up switch to Com/Rav/Med then I have Rav/Rav/Sab for setting up a stagger with huge damage into a Com/Rav/Rav for maximum pain during stagger. Then Med/Syn/Sab for safely reapplying all buffs and debuffs lastly Med/Syn/Med to save my own ass. I rarely get less than 4 stars this way. I really like it. Only issue is that I feel Odin is a relatively weak summon. Also this is perfect for hunting Adamantoise cause I just switch my leader to Vanille and I already have the right Paradigm set I just make it the active one.

I really want to use Snow and maybe Hope but I'm just so comfortable and confident in my current setup it's hard to change.

[Bahamut]

Lightning really shines when you give her a maxed Imperial Armlet (20% Dmg reduction) or the best HP one (starts at 800 HP) whichever gives you a higher total effective HP. Same goes with Hope really.

My favorite opener for Light/Sazh/Vanille is Com/Syn/Med and once all buffs are up switch to Com/Rav/Med then I have Rav/Rav/Sab for setting up a stagger with huge damage into a Com/Rav/Rav for maximum pain during stagger. Then Med/Syn/Sab for safely reapplying all buffs and debuffs lastly Med/Syn/Med to save my own ass. I rarely get less than 4 stars this way. I really like it. Only issue is that I feel Odin is a relatively weak summon. Also this is perfect for hunting Adamantoise cause I just switch my leader to Vanille and I already have the right Paradigm set I just make it the active one.

I really want to use Snow and maybe Hope but I'm just so comfortable and confident in my current setup it's hard to change.

Heh I use the same party and do similar things.

[Darlos9D]

The largest draw to Lightning is that she is your most powerful and versatile physical ravager. She gets access to all elements up to -ra as well as all elemental strikes. Only Hope has as much versatility but defensive buffs aren't as good as Sazh's offensive buffs. Vanille completely outshines Fang as a saboteur. Fang is the best commando but not by a large margin. Lightning is just as good. Snow is your best sentinel but honestly I get along fine without one. Lightning makes a good evasive sentinel later on. And I'll mention saboteur again. They are amazing. They win so many fights and I consistently see 999,999 on a lot of enemies with Lightning's regular attack and I don't even have her weapons upgraded.

My team is usually Lightning, Sazh, Vanille. Buffs, Debuffs, solid damage, great healing. A little on the frail side without a dedicated sentinel but I beat the main game with (almost) no issue and I've felled my fair share of Adamantoise.

I suppose I didn't consider vesatility within particular classes enough, making me not give Lightning enough consideration. So far I haven't been paying a whole lot of attention to elemental attributes though, so that's probably why. Though I have experimented a lot with elemental strikes versus regular commando attacks and it feels like the strikes fall short damage wise, when used on an elementally neutral target. Are the strikes purely strength based, or are they like half magic half strength or something?

[prophetik music]

just finished the game with sazh, hope, and fang as my party. great ending sequence, IMO - the battles fit really well with each other. i like that none of the three battles really had me holding on by the skin of my teeth, too. i hate it when final bosses are absolutely punishing - it just takes the fun out of it, in my opinion.

time to hunt some marks!

[eternal Zero]

I suppose I didn't consider vesatility within particular classes enough, making me not give Lightning enough consideration. So far I haven't been paying a whole lot of attention to elemental attributes though, so that's probably why. Though I have experimented a lot with elemental strikes versus regular commando attacks and it feels like the strikes fall short damage wise, when used on an elementally neutral target. Are the strikes purely strength based, or are they like half magic half strength or something?

I think they are purely str. I don't have the guide so I can't be sure. Ravagers don't get the damage that commandos get. Also you need to be sure that the enemy doesn't half a resistance to the element. In general, unless your elemental strike is being boosted by a weakness it will do less than a commando strike. Also an en-[element] strike from a commando is more powerful than the strike but will contribute about half chain. Also damage isn't comparable when staggered. Commandos win almost every time.

[The Derrit]

so this game is officially ruined for me

my hotel room was broken into this morning (i'm on a week long training trip) and my xbox was stolen

barring the police actually finding it i'm not going to be playing it anytime soon and i'd have to start over even if i went and bought it again

fml

[Schwaltzvald]

so this game is officially ruined for me

my hotel room was broken into this morning (i'm on a week long training trip) and my xbox was stolen

barring the police actually finding it i'm not going to be playing it anytime soon and i'd have to start over even if i went and bought it again

fml

Damn, sorry man...

[Arcana]

so this game is officially ruined for me

my hotel room was broken into this morning (i'm on a week long training trip) and my xbox was stolen

barring the police actually finding it i'm not going to be playing it anytime soon and i'd have to start over even if i went and bought it again

fml

That sucks, I'm sorry to hear that.

Hmm, can you report it to Microsoft? I don't know if they'll take any action but maybe they can help the police find it if, for example, the thieves plug it into a network and it logs into XBox Live.