Final Fantasy XIII [PS3, X360]

[Shifty Geezer]

hoorray !!
So much for being the worst FF ever.

How do sales compare to either FFs? And is there a breakdown of XB360 and PS3 buyers?

 

[patsu]

I think it's par for the course compared to other FFs.

PS3 sold almost double of Xbox 360 in US at launch:
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/108/1084078p1.html

Japan is exclusive.

Not sure about sales in EU.

EDIT: I do think that they should adjust the FFXIII formula. Otherwise Versus may suffer.

 

[Sigfried1977]

Versus will be a completely different game as far as I know. Supposedly rather open-ended (and people get their Townz back), and with fast real-time combat. It's done by the Kingdom Hearts team. I'm cautiously optimistic at best here: I'm a huge fan of FFXIII's bright and vibrant presentation, the (mostly) likeable characters and the brilliant combat system. The main character in Vs. looks like your typical androgynous jrpg-character, the world is dark, and the less said about Kingdom Hearts-combat the better. No one knows when this game is going to come out anyway. Could still be years for all we know.

 

[nightshade]

Atleast from the trailer...Versus 13 seemed to have a very dark look.
Anyways Nomura once mentioned that the game will be more action oriented.

 

[London Geezer]

Well i finally got to Grand Pulse and WOW.
Not only it's massive, beautiful and totally different from the game up to that point, but i also got my ass kicked a few times by some insanely overpowered monsters.
Are the missions all the same? I.e. find a stone, they tell you to go after a monster, you run for hours across the land and eventually beat the monster?
Where are the Chocobos?? It's taking me ages to go through the area.

Also, i have to mention Alexander. That's one heck of a summon. Amazing to look a the summon cutscene, even though it's a bitch that i can only use summons for party leaders, which means that i won't ever use Alexander as i will never have Hope as party leader, unless i'm forced to by the game. Just like most other summons, of course. Not that they're exactly useful, i find them terribly underpowered compared to FFX (my last FF game) and a bit pointless, to be honest. Do their power increase a lot as the characters get more powerful? Cause otherwise there really is little point in using them, apart from the eyecandy.

 

[patsu]

Well i finally got to Grand Pulse and WOW.
Not only it's massive, beautiful and totally different from the game up to that point, but i also got my ass kicked a few times by some insanely overpowered monsters.
Are the missions all the same? I.e. find a stone, they tell you to go after a monster, you run for hours across the land and eventually beat the monster?

For the most part, yes. But there are special ones. e.g., there is a Challenge somewhere on the map for you to fight one monster after another until you defeat them all.

Some of the quests will turn the stone into a teleporter. So you don't have to keep travelling.

Where are the Chocobos?? It's taking me ages to go through the area.

Read up the thread. I think it's mission 14. You have to do mission 1-12 to get there I think.

Also, i have to mention Alexander. That's one heck of a summon. Amazing to look a the summon cutscene, even though it's a bitch that i can only use summons for party leaders, which means that i won't ever use Alexander as i will never have Hope as party leader, unless i'm forced to by the game. Just like most other summons, of course. Not that they're exactly useful, i find them terribly underpowered compared to FFX (my last FF game) and a bit pointless, to be honest. Do their power increase a lot as the characters get more powerful? Cause otherwise there really is little point in using them, apart from the eyecandy.

Yeah, the Eidolon are not that powerful. I use them more to interrupt the enemy and restore my party's health.


The fun thing about Gran Pulse is you can see yourself "grow". Monsters that used to cause you problems no longer threaten you after a while.

 

[London Geezer]

The fun thing about Gran Pulse is you can see yourself "grow". Monsters that used to cause you problems no longer threaten you after a while.

Really? The Christ-whatever-its-called has completely gone crazy on the CP requirements, like 4000 CP for one single upgrade! Crazy!
But it's cool, i like a challenge and so far FF13 has been anything but challenging, except a few bosses which took me some adjusting, a few tries, but were relatively quickly dispatched.

 

[patsu]

Yap, Gran Pulse is cool like that. Set up a ZOMGWTFBBQ no name monster and then watch your team grow to ace it.

I didn't have time to experiment, so I spam my Gils on any upgrades. If you play it well, should be more rewarding.

EDIT:
By now, you should already be very familiar with the combat system, but there's still more to dig in. Judging from his posts, tha_con is a better player than me. He knows how to game the upgrade system.

It's really a shame we had to endure such a long, tedious path to get to Gran Pulse.

 

[tha_con]

Wow, speak for yourself. For me, these two games are not even in the same stratosphere. FFX was one of the best, if not the best JRPG ever made. FF13 is a pale, scrawny shallow imitation. I see almost no area of comparison between those two games, really they could not be more opposite.

But I'll cut you some slack, you're still early, I was really enjoying the game at that point too... just wait, it gets real old real fast.

Regarding grinding, don't bother. Everytime you reach a new milestone in the game, your CP bonuses shoot up so drastically that it will make you feel like a moron for grinding... ie You just did 20 battles at 1000pts each, and all of a sudden, you're making 6000 in a single fight... ok well that was a waste of time... and it contnues like that throughout the whole game.

So at some point you just resign yourself to never grinding, or even worse, just avoiding the enemies all together near the end of any given section. At that point it really starts to feel like a completely linear action adventure game, with no exploration, a horrible story and bad pacing.

Just out of curiosity, but how far did you get into XIII?

Also, I'd say X was probably a low point as far as characters, story, and setting. The only things that stood out in X were the battle system and the Blitz Ball minigame.

XII, IMO, had better characters, and potentially could have had a better story, had it not been for the late changes to add vann and friends.

XIII is similar to X IMO, in battle system. At first it may sound strange, but swapping your paradigms is extremely similar to swapping your team members for different classes in X. Still, I think you're been entirely too harsh on XIII because you seem to really want that cliche FF fan-fare.

 

[Sigfried1977]

Really? The Christ-whatever-its-called has completely gone crazy on the CP requirements, like 4000 CP for one single upgrade! Crazy!
But it's cool, i like a challenge and so far FF13 has been anything but challenging, except a few bosses which took me some adjusting, a few tries, but were relatively quickly dispatched.

Don't worry. An Adamantoise will earn you 40.000 xp or 80.0000 if you equip the growth egg.

Also: Eidolons do have their uses. For one they restore your entire party back to full health when they depart (even the knocked out ones I believe), and they are also vital when you want to take out Adamantoises without uber-equips and/or a maxed Crystarium.

 

[patsu]

Yes... yes... the Adamantoises.
[size=-2]It will have your balls for breakfast many times first, before coughing up 40K[/size]

 

[dlm]

Am I the only one that found FF XII to basically be a delicious sandwich, unfortunately enclosed solidly between two pieces of failbread?

I'm going to gloss over these four points that everyone has already said:
- The combat system is fantastic
- The music and visuals are incredible
- The 20-hour tutorial is beyond stupid
- The writing is some of the worst garbage ever commited to script

The thing that really annoyed me though is the endgame. There's all of these high-level missions that you can supposedly do... except there's a problem. There is only one mob in the game (adamantoise) that you can actually farm to get CP and cash in any even remotely efficient manner.

One mob... that you have to go to a save point to reset... that you have to kill dozens and dozens and dozens of times to level up your characters enough to do the hardest marks at the end of the game.


Really, SquareEnix? You thought that was a good idea?

Screw you.

 

[Nesh]

The music is very nice indeed. But is it me or is the soundttrack kind of limited?

I often suspect that previous final fantasy games had more music.

This is the first Final Fantasy game that I ever played and thought "oh here thats tune again. They didnt know what else to play on that cut scene or area"

They reuse the same tracks way too often even in scenes that dont exactly fit 100% perfectly

 

[Nesh]

Wow, speak for yourself. For me, these two games are not even in the same stratosphere. FFX was one of the best, if not the best JRPG ever made. FF13 is a pale, scrawny shallow imitation. I see almost no area of comparison between those two games, really they could not be more opposite.

I think FFX was the first Final Fantasy that begun to rely more on linear paths and sacrifice exploration.. At least it offered some areas you could access with your ship to discover weapons and extras so there was some kind of exploration. But the main game moved from point A to point B in a corridor like fashion since they got rid of the planet's map which you could "free roam" in.

It was a very good game. But I wouldnt consider it one of the best ever made or even the best ever in regards to the game mechanics.

For me at least Final Fantasy 7 and 8 (cant comment on 9 since I havent played it enough) had more depth and experimentation than X, and those pulled me more into the story and characters.

I think that the last superb and the best JRPG's for their time came before the 128 bit era. The 32 Bit era was probably the peak. It brought us not only FF7 but Xenosaga, Saga Frontier, Parasite Eve, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Vagrant Story and a few others probably I cant remember.

I suspect that the high costs of assets due to more advanced technology really absorbed some of the talent and work that would have otherwise gone to the other important aspects of JRPG's

 

[Rolf N]

The music is very nice indeed. But is it me or is the soundttrack kind of limited?

I often suspect that previous final fantasy games had more music.

This is the first Final Fantasy game that I ever played and thought "oh here thats tune again. They didnt know what else to play on that cut scene or area"

They reuse the same tracks way too often even in scenes that dont exactly fit 100% perfectly

Yeah, I felt the same way. The music wore kind of thin after a while. It needed more character themes at least, not just generic mood pieces.

It's also weird how the grandiose musical theme from the first few trailers made into the game as the back half of the battle music, it felt almost wasted there. The main motif could have been its own piece.

 

[Billy Idol]

Finally bought...er, Final Fantasy 13!

I am now a few hours in, about chapter 4 or so...

First: what a tremendous beauty the game is!!

Phantastic graphics I must say and I wonder why this game is not often mentioned with respect best looking games around!!

Maybe the only nit picking: whereas the faces of the characters are incredible detailed and good looking, the body (especially the fingers!) are rather low poly with a lot of edges - this is the only flaw I could detect so far!

Art style clicked with me...often jaw droping vistas and setting.

Cutscenes are phantastic to look, CGI at its best IMO. Everything screams high production values, even the menu and the GUI are rather stylish!

Sound up to now subtle, but good fitting to the overall mood.

Game itself is great as well, I am already addicted to up-leveling, and had my first fight with a Shiva, wonder the first time I can summon her ...the only round based battle game I played so far is Final Fantasy 7. Although it is not my favorite genre, I like FF13 gameplay and think it is cool how you only controll the leader, and indirectly controll the other characters - up to now, the AI seems to work well in the battles.

Turorial is great and helps me a lot (way better than stinky ol Demon Soul's, which is still waiting in the shelf, staring at me and mocks me occasionally) - I like the step by step increase of complexity, as I am not used to such type of games!

Story picks up slowly, I hope it turns out good...the worst thing in this game is the story telling itself - the characters are rather weird, with some kind of weird japanese-style gestures and behaviors, often giving the impression of a not so serious B movie (I always wonder when I am reading the conclusion afterwards in the data log about what story the characters tried to tell me in the cutscene?!), which is in stark contrast to the impressive, serious and superior audio-visuell presentation of the game!
But, up to now I can easily deal with it, as the great graphics and the settings want me to play along to see what the devs prepared next for me!


Are there any fundamental "must know" gameplay hints you guys can give me with respect to battle strategy or up-leveling?

 

[nightshade]

wonder the first time I can summon her

Its gonna take you a long time till you play as Snow again, he's practically out for the next 3 chapters.

Are there any fundamental "must know" gameplay hints you guys can give me with respect to battle strategy or up-leveling?

You've just started the game & have a long way to go, play some more
Real fun starts chapter 7th onwards and it sky rockets in chapter 11th. And every level from chapter 7 & onwards will delight you more & more with its visuals & artistry.

 

[Billy Idol]

Its gonna take you a long time till you play as Snow again, he's practically out for the next 3 chapters.


You've just started the game, play some more....real fun begins chapter 7th onwards & it sky rockets in Chapter 11th. And every from chapter 7 & onwards will delight you more & more with its visuals & artistry.

Really? What the heck - the crystal bresha sea (or what it is called?) was so good looking and cool - I wonder what other settings will blow my mind!

How long did the game last for you?

 

[nightshade]

How long did the game last for you?

85 hours & I need to play it a few more hours (maybe 5 or so) for platinum.

 

[Arwin]

Real fun starts chapter 7th onwards and it sky rockets in chapter 11th. And every from chapter 7 & onwards will delight you more & more with its visuals & artistry.

Good that you mention this, I think I just got to the beginning of Chapter 7 - is that the one with

Spoiler

all those big shield monsters?