Final Fantasy XIII

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

Can someone give me a good idea of how Sentinel works? I can't for the life of me figure out the differences between entrench and vendetta, or provoke and challenge.

[The Dual Dragons]

I've been playing the game now, so now my comments aren't purely based on impression alone.

This game is one of the least interactive games I've played, I play games mostly for story, but when the game doesn't give me the feeling of depth, and feels more like I am SOMETIMES controlling the characters to their next staged scene it feels like a drag. And I personally don't think the scenes are that good in my opinion. But that's personal preference.

But my main point is that this mostly doesn't feel like it should be a game, but a CGI movie, WAY too little interactive stuff to be made as a game I think. This could be a CGI TV series or something lol. That would be ok. Also SE said themselves that the lack of depth in gameplay and exploring was due to time issues.

I say again: This would not do so well in sales if it wasn't called Final Fantasy. Glad I didn't buy it, just borrowed it

I remember reading someone say: Square Enix focus on Quantity over Quality these days, tons of FF titles of all sorts, but their all pretty bland.

Look at the story sequences of Dissidia, pretty ANTI FF in quality that too if you ask me.

[LuketheXjesse]

I don't think it should be about what's Final Fantasy and what's not Final Fantasy, but rather, what's fun and what isn't fun.

[Arek the Absolute]

Saying something is "Anti-FF" in quality is pretty silly to me.

[Arcana]

But the poster's comments aren't entirely untrue - the game does feel like a bunch of movie scenes strung together with a 15-minute walk through a narrow hallway punctuated by fights in which you fight one of three configurations.

The prophet said that this game was FPS-inspired and a lot of people laughed at him for it but what he says does have a lot of truth to it. The story pacing, especially, reminds me a lot of an FPS game rather than a traditional role-playing game.

I mean, someone's going to jump down my throat about what a "role-playing game" should be or should not be, but I think it's safe to say that in almost every Final Fantasy game, the story starts out simple and localized, and eventually grows such that you explore the entire world and fight a battle in which (usually) the entirety of civilization rests in your hands. This style of story is consistent with all of the main-series Final Fantasy games that I've played. In contrast, many other role-playing game series (ex: Suikoden, Ogre Battle, Dragon Age: Origins) end up with stories that are more localized - the story doesn't affect the entire world but rather a single country or city.

As a prerequisite in almost all of these RPGs is some aspect of "world development". Exploration of the world isn't really there to add replay value or to make the game longer, but serves the important purpose of letting you learn about what the world and its people are like. You walk around a town and view the surroundings and see things, watch people go about their business, and learn about their plights.

Final Fantasy XIII lacks these "learn about the world" experiences. You do get a few opportunities to look around and see what "the world is like" but they're not really that frequent.

In contrast, a game with a very similar design, but different presentation is FF X. It also has very similar dungeons but in between you get the traveller posts in which you talk to people and learn about what they think of Yuna and the summoners. You get to look at the town of Besaid and even explore the big city after a few hours into the game. By the time you're almost done the summoner quests you have a pretty good idea of what the ordinary citizen thinks of Yuna and her importance to the world.

Final Fantasy XIII does a lot of "telling" - the game tells you what people are like in cutscenes. Final Fantasy X does more "showing" in contrast, where you find out bits and pieces, and, the more time you spend in the world the more chances you get to piece together what's going on.

So I think what Lunar says is applicable even if you disagree with what he suggests with the term 'Anti-FF'.

[Falsate]

"Anti-FF" and yet, I seem to recall each Final Fantasy title establishing a caliber of its own while sharing common mythological ideas about Chocobos, Cid, and Crystals.

People seem to forget how much Final Fantasy can easily manifest itself differently in each and every instalment, but ignorance clearly surfaces amongst a tarnished fan-base yearning for the same elements and mechanics to reappear.

[LuketheXjesse]

Man, now I have to play this game.

[MaxFrost]

I'm liking it so far, though I'm still pretty early in, only about 5 hours or so.

Combat system has some fun potential to it, and I'm happy that everybody pretty much levels equally, even if they aren't active, so I don't have to spaz out about grinding levels...yet anyways.

[Arek the Absolute]

ff7 is anti ff because of how it is compared to ff6.

ff8 is anti ff because of how it is compared to ff7

ff9 is anti ff because of how it is compared to ff8.

ff10 is anti ff because of how it is compared to ff9.

ff is anti ff because of how it is compared to ff.

[prophetik music]

Can someone give me a good idea of how Sentinel works? I can't for the life of me figure out the differences between entrench and vendetta, or provoke and challenge.

this sounds dumb, but an AI sentinal is better than you, in general.

entrench is a low-level skill that allows you to take a buttload of damage and then deal some out at the end to the one that damaged you the most, based on how long you were entrenched.

vendetta is a mid-level skill that does more damage with the comeback.

provoke gets a lot of enemies to attack you for a while.

challenge forces an opponent (who can be provoked, mind you, not all enemies can be) to attack you with their next turn, and possibly thereafter.

let the computer handle it. it'll work better. just buff up a sentinel and pray they only use mediguard and they'll be fine.

[Brandon Strader]

This game starts to go downhill at chapter 9 and then faceplants at gran pulse. Wow, so, so terrible.

[Zipp]

Alright, it seems fastest to just post my review, rather than try and sum up my thoughts:

http://www.honestgamers.com/reviews/8734/Final-Fantasy-XIII.html

I gave it a 6/10, if you want a quick idea of what I thought about the game. The review isn't long, so it seems pointless to summarize any further. If I had to do a two-line review it would go something like this:

"We waited three years for a battle system?"

[Arek the Absolute]

The only character I really like seeing fight is Fang, and that is only because she is like Judith from Tales of Vesperia, except not nearly as fun, flashy, or anything else that made Judith awesome.

[The Dual Dragons]

The main point was the interactive part. Not the small personal preference section at the very bottom of my post lol

Anyways, if the Anti FF part was most interesting, let's go into some more depth

I think Final Fantasy stands for:

1. Focusing on making the player live the characters life, not only playing them to the next scene.

2. Making a lot of variety in the game-play besides the battling.

3. Having a big world that you feel that you are in and not out of.

AND, every new FF game focused on something different in terms of character designs, this time Nomura was asked to do a female Cloud lol Where did their unique way of thinking go? It went from experimental, to: Let's do what we think will earn the most. Which is nostalgia from their biggest selling title FF VII. Even the train scene is pretty much there lol.

By the way, FF XIII has a female Cloud, am I wrong if I got the impression that FF Versus XIII will have ''Zack''? lol

Maybe that girl Zack is talking to in some screen-shots is their new ''Aerith''. Just speculating

[Brandon Strader]

I think this game is better than 12 but it's not as good as 10 or the FF's that came before 10.

[The Dual Dragons]

I think this game is better than 12 but it's not as good as 10 or the FF's that came before 10.

Vaan from 12 made me laugh to death when he leaned back holding his head every other cutscene lol. Horrible lead character.

[Kenogu Labz]

I'm not sure how XIII stacks up in terms of world-building, but that's been one of the strongest pulls of Final Fantasy for me. In these games, they not only make a world, they build it. As you play and live the character's lives, you see the mechanics, politics, laws, and nature of the world. XII did that surprisingly well, which is one of the reasons I really like the game (among other reasons). Similarly with X, the storyline didn't just show you the world: you were slowly shown every aspect from someone who themselves was having to learn the rules to a new world, which is why it was so strong (despite its terribly simple battle system). Does XIII world-build, or does it show?

[Alexis]

Spoilers? Maybe?

Ahem.

FUCKING BARTHENDELUS. I can't get past the second fight with him, and I spent the last two hours getting them all maxed out to level four in their three main roles. Yeah, all the enemies sitting around Oerba I can kill in a few hits. And somehow that's still not good enough for Barthandelus.

He's the Seymour of this game. GAAAAAAH.

</boss rant>

[The Dual Dragons]

I'm not sure how XIII stacks up in terms of world-building, but that's been one of the strongest pulls of Final Fantasy for me. In these games, they not only make a world, they build it. As you play and live the character's lives, you see the mechanics, politics, laws, and nature of the world. XII did that surprisingly well, which is one of the reasons I really like the game (among other reasons). Similarly with X, the storyline didn't just show you the world: you were slowly shown every aspect from someone who themselves was having to learn the rules to a new world, which is why it was so strong (despite its terribly simple battle system). Does XIII world-build, or does it show?

I agree with you there, FF XII did that very well. I didn't LOVE the story or all the characters in the game, but I got so caught up in the world that I played through the game twice. Pretty addictive.

FF XIII shows a LOT more than it builds. For sure.

Good games put you in their world, hands out the control to YOU. And YOU have to make things happen. Like many/most of the Final Fantasy games have done despite often being linear. Star Wars Knights of the old republic is a prime example of full control in a game by the way, you can hang out on a planet in that game doing nothing but exploring all day long if you want. But if you start talking to the inhabitants of the planet, things start to evolve with pretty high speed. All at your finger tips. Freedom in games or at least the illusion of freedom is important. Going from A to Z with only battles to keep you interested is poor game-design.

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

Spoilers? Maybe?

Ahem.

FUCKING BARTHENDELUS. I can't get past the second fight with him, and I spent the last two hours getting them all maxed out to level four in their three main roles. Yeah, all the enemies sitting around Oerba I can kill in a few hits. And somehow that's still not good enough for Barthandelus.

He's the Seymour of this game. GAAAAAAH.

</boss rant>

SPOILERS(I think)!:

Lightning, Sazh, Vanille

Relentless Assault

Bully(or Evened Odds)

Combat Clinic

Tireless Charge

I actually restarted the game and I'm back in Gran Pulse actually exploring instead of heading straight to Oerba. I can't say for sure this'll work well on his second form(that one was a total bitch), but I tried this formation out on his first form, and destroyed him in less than 5 or 6 minutes. Basically you want to debuff the hell out of him and buff yourself as much as possible.

Does anyone which mark I have to go on in order to be able to ride chocobos? I'm dying for some mobility.

[Bahamut]

SPOILERS(I think)!:

Lightning, Sazh, Vanille

Relentless Assault

Bully(or Evened Odds)

Combat Clinic

Tireless Charge

I actually restarted the game and I'm back in Gran Pulse actually exploring instead of heading straight to Oerba. I can't say for sure this'll work well on his second form(that one was a total bitch), but I tried this formation out on his first form, and destroyed him in less than 5 or 6 minutes. Basically you want to debuff the hell out of him and buff yourself as much as possible.

Does anyone which mark I have to go on in order to be able to ride chocobos? I'm dying for some mobility.

Yeah, that's what I used as well for that boss - he was very easy for me with that party.

As for the chocobos - I forget the #, but you have to do the mark to open up access to the western side of the Steppe first, and then you have to do another mark to save the chocobos there.

SPOILERS

So I beat FFXIII yesterday, and wow what a game. That last dungeon is absolutely insane, died a ton of times trying to get through it, probably due to a lack of a sentinel. It really stresses class importance with some enemies gangbanging you - I cheated my way through the one part I could not break through by magically avoiding one battle, summoning my way through two of them, and lots of tries to get through the last.

The last set of boss fights was just wow - the bosses get harder and harder. The way events play out around here is great with the revealing of the deceptions about common notions of stuff like cieth, and Ragnorak, and with how Barthandelus tries to manipulate the party by "killing" off Daji (sp?) and Serah. This game really made its mark, and I'll probably replay it at some point (going to do endgame stuff for now).

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

I should probably point this out.

Good news for the series. I hope they take what they've learned from FFXIII, streamline it, and apply it to any next games in the series. Thus far, this game is fantastic.

Also, more multiplatform, but less rush jobs.

[Arcana]

Guys, can you use the COLOR tag and tag your spoilers white? I was scrolling down the page but was still able to read bits and pieces of your text with spoilers.

(We really could use a Spoiler tag on these forums).

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

I forget how...

Just don't focus on the words.

[Arcana]

I forget how...

Just don't focus on the words.

in square tags:

COLOR="white" and to close it: /COLOR

So the result is this:

-highlight to see-

text is white

And I glance at something and read everything by default, there's no way for me not to filter it out