Final Fantasy XIII [PS3, X360]
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Sigfried1977
Legend
I think FFX got it right actually. That game gave you something worthwhile to do with your awesome gear (Dark Aeons, Penance). FFXIII only hands you a trophy. All the missions can probably be done with base level gear in FFXIII, and the enemies you have to farm for items to make high end gear (Traps, Ingots and Dark Matters) are basically the only ones where high end equipment actually matters.
Demon's Souls is just as bad in that regard: the pure blade stone is needed for one of the worst weapons in the game iirc.
As for trophies: I try to get as many as possible (I think I have 6 or 7 Platinum trophies too: Dead Space, Uncharted 2, Prince of Persia, GOW3 ...), but when it comes to excessive grinding I'm out. I'm actually 2 trophies away from getting a Platinum in Trine, but there's no way I will ever do something as stupid as dying 50 times in a level on purpose or create 500 crates or planks with the mage in a single level.
OMG Amazon should have a safety button for people like me who click, click, click and BOOM - before you know it - Order Processed.
Long story short, my FF13 will come in a few days........ not good!
Long story short, my FF13 will come in a few days........ not good!
lawl !
Its a good game, worth playing
Its a good game, worth playing
Ok so i got FF13 and started playing it.
And.... suspence......... i kinda like it! A lot!
Ok let's get this out of the way, it looks good but, as i feared, after GOW3, it does have some 'meh...' moments. Character faces are beautifully made, some of the backgrounds and environments too. Obviously the size of this game compared to GOW3 has to be considered - GOW3 is much smaller and more 'compact' so it can cram all sorts of eye candy pretty much everywhere.
What saves FF13, of course, is the design. Shame about the realisation. It almost feels like SquareEnix still haven't learned about shaders. For example, as nice as Chapter 2 is (with the crystal lake), it doesn't look like there is anything more than simple texture maps that looks like ice/crystal, without much in the way of reflections/refractions. Compare that to the Ares Tomb room in GOW3, where the ice floor actually looks like real ice, and FF13 looks a bit like a higher res FF10.
With some exceptions (shadows are pretty good and lighting is pretty spot on a lot of the time), most of the game so far has that 'PS2 game but higher res and a few tricks here and there' feel to it, which some normal maps, some more detail textures would fix immediately. I see normals used sporadically here and there on some characters and in very few and far in between places, but seeing how taxing they are on current hardware (ie not that much), i do wonder why their use is not more wide-spread. They didn't even bother with high res textures on most of the game, so we get low res textures and not even a normal map to prop up the detail. Weird.
Anyway, enough bitching and on to the good stuff.
Story: So completely out of this world, and surely the result of many hours on LSD, that i kinda love it! What i especially love is how it is told. So japanese, so tacky, so structurally "battle!--cutscene-ooooh-shock-revelation--battle!--cutscene-ooooh-cute-little-girl-getting-annoying-now--battle!" that i can't help but love it. It really takes me back to when i spent half a year (or more) maxing out FF10.
Gameplay: At first i was a bit "ok so i have to shift these paradigm things?? what the heck is a paradigm??". Then i saw that you can pretty much go through many battles pressing X and let the game battle it out for you. So i was not sure whether i was playing the game or just wondering around watching a movie and pressing X repeatedly.
Then the point came when i started dying and i had that "A-HA!" moment. Now i understand the whole thing and it's actually quite fun!
It did take a few too many steps to even get to the Crystarium, but all in all i needed the tutorial so i won't bitch about it. Much better than reading the instructions manual.
One thing i do not like is that i can't go through 1000 battles per minute to max myself out!! It feels like the game doesn't want you to level up any more than 'allowed' for a given area, which is a lot more limiting than the structure of the level itself - or lack of, it is a straight line after all. I wouldn't mind a 'straight line' level if i could at least go back and kill lots of monsters so i could get super duper powerful, but i guess i'll have to wait...
Presentation: Besides being stuck in the 90's, besides seemingly ignoring most the last 10 years of realtime graphical advances, it is one beautiful thing to look at. Which is a testament of how talented these artists are. The whole thing has that air of superior quality, it gives a real feeling that many people worked for many years on it, that it is almost impossible not to be impressed at the whole package.
That's it guys, thanks for listening.
And.... suspence......... i kinda like it! A lot!
Ok let's get this out of the way, it looks good but, as i feared, after GOW3, it does have some 'meh...' moments. Character faces are beautifully made, some of the backgrounds and environments too. Obviously the size of this game compared to GOW3 has to be considered - GOW3 is much smaller and more 'compact' so it can cram all sorts of eye candy pretty much everywhere.
What saves FF13, of course, is the design. Shame about the realisation. It almost feels like SquareEnix still haven't learned about shaders. For example, as nice as Chapter 2 is (with the crystal lake), it doesn't look like there is anything more than simple texture maps that looks like ice/crystal, without much in the way of reflections/refractions. Compare that to the Ares Tomb room in GOW3, where the ice floor actually looks like real ice, and FF13 looks a bit like a higher res FF10.
With some exceptions (shadows are pretty good and lighting is pretty spot on a lot of the time), most of the game so far has that 'PS2 game but higher res and a few tricks here and there' feel to it, which some normal maps, some more detail textures would fix immediately. I see normals used sporadically here and there on some characters and in very few and far in between places, but seeing how taxing they are on current hardware (ie not that much), i do wonder why their use is not more wide-spread. They didn't even bother with high res textures on most of the game, so we get low res textures and not even a normal map to prop up the detail. Weird.
Anyway, enough bitching and on to the good stuff.
Story: So completely out of this world, and surely the result of many hours on LSD, that i kinda love it! What i especially love is how it is told. So japanese, so tacky, so structurally "battle!--cutscene-ooooh-shock-revelation--battle!--cutscene-ooooh-cute-little-girl-getting-annoying-now--battle!" that i can't help but love it. It really takes me back to when i spent half a year (or more) maxing out FF10.
Gameplay: At first i was a bit "ok so i have to shift these paradigm things?? what the heck is a paradigm??". Then i saw that you can pretty much go through many battles pressing X and let the game battle it out for you. So i was not sure whether i was playing the game or just wondering around watching a movie and pressing X repeatedly.
Then the point came when i started dying and i had that "A-HA!" moment. Now i understand the whole thing and it's actually quite fun!
It did take a few too many steps to even get to the Crystarium, but all in all i needed the tutorial so i won't bitch about it. Much better than reading the instructions manual.
One thing i do not like is that i can't go through 1000 battles per minute to max myself out!! It feels like the game doesn't want you to level up any more than 'allowed' for a given area, which is a lot more limiting than the structure of the level itself - or lack of, it is a straight line after all. I wouldn't mind a 'straight line' level if i could at least go back and kill lots of monsters so i could get super duper powerful, but i guess i'll have to wait...
Presentation: Besides being stuck in the 90's, besides seemingly ignoring most the last 10 years of realtime graphical advances, it is one beautiful thing to look at. Which is a testament of how talented these artists are. The whole thing has that air of superior quality, it gives a real feeling that many people worked for many years on it, that it is almost impossible not to be impressed at the whole package.
That's it guys, thanks for listening.
I had the same view cause I played this game after GOW3, but believe me some levels look waaay better than what you just experienced.
I am sure that all of your complains will go away as you experience later levels...How far are you anyway ? Real fun starts from chapter 5. [the Ch5 boss is a pokemon
]You can just go back & grind as much as you want, the monsters respawn, Its just that grinding isn't much of help in starting parts...you'd better off just progressing until you unlock Crystarium level 3, which is where you would want to start grinding. Either way you'll have plenty of Crystarium what you really need to worry about is...Gil Farming.
I'm at Ch.3. The best way to explain how i feel about the graphics is that GOW3 feels 'heavier', in that you can really feel that each and every pixel on the screen has gone through all sorts of levels, filters, shading passes that the end pixel is 'heavy'. In a good way!
Whereas FF13 gives me a feeling of a 'light' pixel, in that for example, again with the ice/crystal level, they just baked a blue-ish texture with white bits to kinda make it look like ice, and that's pretty much it!
I tried but i ended up going through empty levels! I'll wait a bit more.
Good news then, i just got to level 2.
One question... is there no Magic level? Cause in each battle i keep casting all sorts of spells and it seems like there's no limit to it...
There is no mana points/bar, abilities just consume some amount of your ATB gauge & that's it
I guess from your impressions your experience of the game matches mine very closely! I do think the lighting in the game is at times very well done, but like you say, the air of quality and polish that exudes from the game elevates everything - I played Motorstorm 2 the other day and that game actually had better lighting and overall image quality - especially when I went back to FFXIII straight after MS2 this struck me very clearly, almost as if FFXIII was upscaled and Motorstorm 2 wasn't! Strange experience.
Going back I was just thinking that if there was much more of this corridor stuff I'd give up altogether, but then after two battles I got a rather big animal, and shortly after I'm in a new chapter, with different characters and a very nice environment, and I think I might last a little longer (for reference, I never finished a single FF game, even though the only one I never played was FF9 - though even for that one at least a bit of demo).
Going back I was just thinking that if there was much more of this corridor stuff I'd give up altogether, but then after two battles I got a rather big animal, and shortly after I'm in a new chapter, with different characters and a very nice environment, and I think I might last a little longer (for reference, I never finished a single FF game, even though the only one I never played was FF9 - though even for that one at least a bit of demo).
I don't think it has anything to do with streamlining, magic in FF13 is not like a super attack as it is in many other games where it is much more devastating than physical attacks. The devastating abilities like Quake & Summons use technical points...which are limited.Oh that's unusual... Guess it's all part of the 'streamline' revolution
Given the condition you may encounter enemies that totally resist any physical attack, or some enemies that resist any kind of magical attack, there are even enemies that will resist any attack until you stagger them. IIRC then there are also some enemies that dynamically keep changing their status alignment against attacks. You really have to master the paradigm shift cause if you do it the right way you recover 3 ATB bars instantly as soon as you do a quick paradigm shift. Its also very easy to get defeated if you have the wrong combination of roles.
Battle system is one thing in FF13 which exceeds any other JRPG till date, it plays great, is fast and looks amazing...imo ofcourse
I don't think it has anything to do with streamlining, magic in FF13 is not like a super attack as it is in many other games where it is much more devastating than physical attacks. The devastating abilities like Quake & Summons use technical points...which are limited.
Given the condition you may encounter enemies that totally resist any physical attack, or some enemies that resist any kind of magical attack, there are even enemies that will resist any attack until you stagger them. IIRC then there are also some enemies that dynamically keep changing their status alignment against attacks. You really have to master the paradigm shift cause if you do it the right way you recover 3 ATB bars instantly as soon as you do a quick paradigm shift. Its also very easy to get defeated if you have the wrong combination of roles.
Battle system is one thing in FF13 which exceeds any other JRPG till date, it plays great, is fast and looks amazing...imo ofcourse
Cool! I also think the battle system is pretty darn good. I was worried at first but i'm starting to really love it.
Regarding magic, well in FF10 i liked the fact that i was dealing 99999 damage with physical attacks, so i'm ok with magic attacks that don't deal more damage than physical attacks. I usually use them according to elemental weaknesses of the enemy. As it should be!
Battle system is one thing in FF13 which exceeds any other JRPG till date, it plays great, is fast and looks amazing...imo ofcourse
It is definitely very good, and the best thing about the game, which is good, because there is preciously little more to the game it seems than the battle-system and some cut-scenes
Random example:
Still, I rather liked FFXII's battle system. One day maybe a perfect blend stands up - I really dig the almost real-time battle that the eidolon's afford, really love Odin for instance (although I only got the chance to use him just once so far).
I loath everything about FF12
straight from its characters, story, to its battle system, which reminded me of KOTOR initially & eventhough I love that game, I didn't liked it in my JRPG and I really disliked the gambit system too xD
straight from its characters, story, to its battle system, which reminded me of KOTOR initially & eventhough I love that game, I didn't liked it in my JRPG and I really disliked the gambit system too xD
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There is a story in FFXIII. A confusing story.
It was ok at first, especially the branchiness helped make progress more interesting earlier in the game. It took a down turn somewhere in the middle, and a nosedive towards the end.
The combat and Gran Pulse redeemed the game later. Although at first, the combat system was an automatic "one-click" ordeal.
As for the graphics, it's par for the course for me until Chapter 11 cut-scene, which was triumphed by Chapter 12 cut-scene. Then again, I didn't notice any god ray in the game while people like nightshade could see 'em.
It was ok at first, especially the branchiness helped make progress more interesting earlier in the game. It took a down turn somewhere in the middle, and a nosedive towards the end.
The combat and Gran Pulse redeemed the game later. Although at first, the combat system was an automatic "one-click" ordeal.
As for the graphics, it's par for the course for me until Chapter 11 cut-scene, which was triumphed by Chapter 12 cut-scene. Then again, I didn't notice any god ray in the game while people like nightshade could see 'em.
It's as good (or bad) as FFX. Some people hated it, some people loved it. Thank god i loved it, cause now i can enjoy this game and lose another half a year, while i really should do all sorts of other things! Thinking about it, i wish i hated it, cause i really have no self control.
I agree that there is a 'story', but only a 'plot' of convenience, the whole thing makes no sense whatsoever, the Characters motivations are contrived, hell the whole bloody story is contrived, nothing feels real, it's just random pseudo-story monologues on top of pretty (yet somehow generic) scenery, take the massive action scene when you leave pulse, there is a ton of action on screen, but no excitement, I wasn't worried about the 'Characters' because they had no character to speak of.
When I first started the game, I thought it might be good, after the tenth corridor, I knew the game was rubbish, even pulse, which could of added so much to the game, it seemed like the characters go there for no reason, I mean, nothing ever happens there, what was the point of going there?
The combat system basically amounts to Attack and Defend.
When under attack press Defend
When not under attack press Attack
They are just dressed under pretty names like Tri-Disaster and Combat Clinic, and change mode is called 'paradigm shift'
As for the graphics, it's par for the course for me until Chapter 11 cut-scene, which was triumphed by Chapter 12 cut-scene. Then again, I didn't notice any god ray in the game while people like nightshade could see 'em.
While the graphics were definitely pretty, I felt Like it was Generic SquareEnix 101, or like they used so much 'Shiny' and 'prettiness' that it ended up feeling like the star wars prequels i.e. so many special effects, that they are not special anymore
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