Anybody playing FF13?

[chewey]

I wasn't going to, since what I had read about the game since its Japanese release didn't interest me that much. However, I decided to rent the game for three days just to see how it is.

I don't like it.

Well, I don't like it as much as I should like a game that's been in development for 5 years and had such a big budget. The story is a mess for about the first 15 hours in, and it's very hard to wrap your head around the world they're trying to create. I had to read a fair bit of informtion in the datalog just to discover what Coccoon and Pulse actually were, and what the relationship between the two was.

A quote from the Destructoid review words my feelings way better

Final Fantasy XIII has perhaps one of the worst introductions a Japanese RPG has ever had. Square Enix thought it would be a good idea to not tell the player what is happening, and as a result, the first ten hours of the game feels like a conversation that the player has stumbled in on halfway through. All the characters know what's going on, and talk as if the player should know, leading to a very alienating narrative that ensures the player never truly connects with it. When you finally do work out who is who and what's going on, however, you'll wish the game had stayed so vague.

The characters are average, with the exception of Sazh (who I like a lot). In fact, I think I pretty much like all of the male characters and can't stand the girls. Vanille has probably the worst voice actor of all time, and a lot of her dialogue makes her sound like a borderline sociopath (except... she's not [they were just trying to make her sound cute]) so it's really, really hard to find out what she wants or how she feels about anything.

Lightning is annoying as a person for the first 4 or so chapters, because she's extremely bullheaded and ends up punching away her problems more than Snow (and he uses fist weapons!). However, eventually she wonders off with Snow and acts as a really shitty mentor. She says a bunch of stuff that doesn't mean anything, but I suppose the writers thought this would make her look deep or hardened by the life of being a city guard. One quote I remember is, "It's not about can or can't. Some things in life you just do," in response to Hop asking her if she can save her sister. What?

Fang isn't bad, but her voice actor annoys me too so she loses marks.

The battle system is great (I'd hold it on par with X-2's), but the gameplay for the first ~20 hours is not. The first three hours are spent fighting useless battles with no rewards that mostly serve as a way of splitting up all the cutscenes shown. Then, for the next ~10 hours, the game slowly opens up all the intricacies of the battle system to you. As for the actual battles... you'll either kill an enemy in seconds or spend 5 minutes hacking away at its health without any challenge to be seen anywhere. I'm not even sure why people complain about some of the bosses in this game, because so far I've not had any trouble with any of them.

Is it bad? No, not really. The 'no towns' thing isn't really a problem, since it works in the world they've created. Never does it feel like a copout, I assure you. The linearity thing is a problem (for the first 20 hours), but only if you catch on to the pattern. It really is "walk down hallway, fight (mini-)boss, repeat." The linearity of the paths bothered me in the introduction area because the restrictions felt really forced, but I stopped noticing once the game got going. I think I just paid most of my attention to grinding up the Sphere Grid V2 (that's not nearly as complex or even... necessary) instead of how hallway-y the hallways were. However, eventually, I caught on to the fact that I was doing the exact same thing in every 'dungeon' I had been in, and any twists (such as a mini-boss coming back later in a stronger version) could be seen a mile away. It got boring, and I'm glad I'm up to the more open part of the game.

I think I've pretty much covered everything.

[Holkeye]

10 hours of not knowing what's going on? That makes me never want to play this game.

[chewey]

Yep! While playing the game I was writing down notes of problems I had with it, and a common one was not having any clue of what was going on. I've lost the file now, though.

[strike]

I rented it. just as I'm starting to kinda like the story (Sazh is an awesome normal kinda guy) the battles are just annoying repetitive and fucking stupid.


after my fifth Orion (it may as well be a miniboss because you cannot stagger it with two characters so you just have to whack away at it for 5 minutes(god help you if there are other enemies)) in a goddamn row and seeing at least 3 more on the path ahead. I've said fuck this shit.

I don't feel like playing anymore. I spent 17 minutes in a bossfight with an airship only to have it replaced by another in a cutscene then this new one gets blown to fuck by a deus ex machina.(Why the fuck couldn't this have happened half way through this hell fight? what the shit? or give me a fucking timer to hold off until my air support shows up) they may as well have just walked into my apartment and dicked me in the face. I'm 18 hours in and no amount of awesome black people or graphics will make trudging through this sewer full of shit any better.

maybe I'll give it another shot some other time but for now i am going to go rent metro 2033 and hopefully it'll actually be FUN to play over spring break

[Moss.]

And the torch falls to FFXIII Versus.

[chewey]

You fight all those Orions while you're playing as Sazh and Vanille, right? That was a load of dicks. That was around the time I started skipping battles because the stagger system is a pile of shit when you have to spend forever maxing it out.

[Irock]

I knew this would happen.

This is why I never played a final fantasy game. I knew that FF13 would suck, so I saved myself from feeling inclined to play it. :]

[chewey]

Irockpal

I got some toys http://i42.tinypic.com/2ludzf5.jpg

[umbrageous]

Well in a Game thats 3 Discs long, what do you expect i just bought it and i love it honestly. You really do have to take in what they tell you otherwise you're just lost. The Battle System in my opinion is great.
However im about 7 hours into it and They are still Tutorial Scenes, Im sure the game makes up for its slow beginnings as i just got the ability to Summon things Reminiscent of FFX-2. I do expect alot more from this game as i continue to play. and also I want to Ride my Damn Chocobo already >.<

[Irock]

Where did you get those from.

[chewey]

Well in a Game thats 3 Discs long, what do you expect i just bought it and i love it honestly. You really do have to take in what they tell you otherwise you're just lost. The Battle System in my opinion is great.
However im about 7 hours into it and They are still Tutorial Scenes, Im sure the game makes up for its slow beginnings as i just got the ability to Summon things Reminiscent of FFX-2. I do expect alot more from this game as i continue to play. and also I want to Ride my Damn Chocobo already >.<

I'm not sure what the number of discs has to do with anything. And I listened to every word they spoke, and it is literally impossible to fully understand what they're talking about (so you can actually care) unless you do some reading in the datalog. This has been a problem brought up by lots of critics.

The battle system didn't get boring for me until a while in. When you're playing with a party of two and have to build up the stagger bar for a while, it gets tedious. It's also kind of lame you don't have all the options made available to you until chapter 10, which is about 20 hours in.

Summons are useless. Really. You will never, ever have a use for them. They do minimal damage and the stagger bar is reverted to 100% once they leave.

I think they probably could have done more with the 5 years of development time. It wasn't especially bad, but at ~25 hours in I just couldn't find a reason to trudge through the game when I didn't care about the characters (except Sazh)/story all that much. Like it all you want, bro.

Oh and speaking of Chocobos, they totally ruined the theme

Where did you get those from.

The internet

[Grafikal]

I didn't really read all of the comments to see if anyone mentioned this, but from what I heard, nothing good happens for literally the first 26 hours of the game or so. Then afterwards it's good.

[Holkeye]

Yeah, I won't be playing this. 26 hours is too long to invest in something that "might get good".

[tSwitch]

this is disappointing.

Versus might be great though, they have the gameplay people from the Kingdom Hearts series (mock the Disney all you want the action gameplay is polished and extremely fun) and the graphics people from Advent Children (bad movie, amazing CG) working on the same project.

I didn't have high hopes for FFXIII when I heard about robotic summons, but Versus I'm hoping good for.

[Holkeye]

I hated the Kingdom Hearts battles, but these days, I'm much more interested in real-time battles than turn based.

[chewey]

I didn't really read all of the comments to see if anyone mentioned this, but from what I heard, nothing good happens for literally the first 26 hours of the game or so. Then afterwards it's good.

Depending on how quick you are, you can get to chapter 11 in about 20 to 25 hours. It's here that you are given a more open world and have sidequests (hunts) to do. It's likely you'll only have a good time with the sidequests if you aren't already tired of the battle system. I was, so even when the game was at its 'best' I wasn't having much fun.

The game has 13 chapters all up, just so you know.

[Grafikal]

Is it true that you can't even swap party members around for real strategy until like 23 hours in?

[chewey]

Is it true that you can't even swap party members around for real strategy until like 23 hours in?

Yes. However, it's not as if that 'strategy' is needed until the option is made available. I'm not defending it, I'm just saying you're given everything you need to get through the 20 hours. You're given access to all party members and the option to switch them around somewhere near the end of Chapter 9 (roughly 20 hours in). You're then given the option to level all jobs on all characters in the beginning of Chapter 10 (21 or 22 hours in).

It didn't really bother me that I couldn't play as who I wanted, because the game felt like an adventure game more than anything. I think if the story weren't poop and the gameplay didn't grow stale when in pairs, it would have worked out nicely.

[ahref]

I quite like the storyline the characters merging together makes quite a thrilling story. The first ten hours were a little confusing but once i had accepted a few things it made it quite easy to understand. Look at it from the perspective of Hope, hes a kid nothing makes sense to him and hes a retard

Ive just got to where the real strategy starts in that I have all characters can structure the team how i want to and level them in anything. I have friends who insist on farming leveling up all the characters in their roles before proceeeding and think theyll probably enjoy the game more if they just let it flow.

Although the battle system does look rather simple and boring it actually ends up becoming quite complicated when you have to deal with multiple strategy enemies, the boss at the end of disc 2(LOL XBOX) had me switching paradigms every few minutes to better support the entire party and avoid rage.

True i hated the 2 character stages in particular vanille and sazh's trippy walk through the countryside just to see some chocobo's. I kept at it seeing as i just spent £34 on the game and now have £8 to my name.

I can see the game opening up slowly allowing me to do what i want(i leveled hope in commando a bit just for a laugh).

[umbrageous]

Okay I just Reached 11 hours into the game and despite all of its faults the story is really coming together and you really begin to sympathize with the Characters, The Beginning was a bit slow, but not unbearable.

[Kokowam]

So there's no Japanese audio/English subtitle option for this? I mean, it's not like I have a PS3 or plan to get one soon, but I may in the future, you never know. But srsly, English voice actors suck. I'm playing Disgaea right now, and they butchered Flonne and Laharl and basically everyone. I don't think I've ever seen heard any good voice actors for games. At least Jap>English games.

[ahref]

Vanille and Fang are the only voices i dont like, vanilles is like awkward and Fangs is park ranger like

[chewey]

Lightning's voice wasn't much better, but that was due in part to how her character was supposed to be played.

[ahref]

Well at least Sazh's voice is acceptable

[chewey]

I liked the voice acting of all the guys, but I think I've already said that.