I picked up Final Fantasy XIII two days ago and have been playing it every night after work. Anyone else try it? It's pretty unique in that it ditches A LOT of standard practices from most RPGs. For example: - After every battle you gain full life since you can't use magic outside the battle screen. This means no more finishing a battle and THEN using potions or Curaga. - There aren't 'levels' in the sense that the player you control has a level. That player has different roles (Medic, Commander or Ravager (focus fire), Synergist (buff)) and each role has a seperate level. Also, all equipment in the game has a level and can be upgraded multiple times. - (From what I've heard) There are no towns to walk around in. Sure there are small spots where NPCs interact, but none of them are set towns. - Although you can have 3 people in your party at once, you only ever control one of them, and if you die (even if the others are alive) it's game over. Other characters are AI controlled. The depth of the game really comes from the upgrading equipment and the Paradigm system. Since you have 3 characters with multiple roles, you end up with different battle configurations where certain configs are good at offense and some are good at defense. Basically one of these configurations is a Paradigm and you are allowed to switch on the fly during battle. There are other little intricate details that play into this as well. What do you guys think, even if you're only going off what I've said? I was explaining it to some friends and they thought it sounded incredibly lame and watered down. Would you guys prefer a traditional RPG or do you lean towards new systems? (Note: I'm only about 6-8 hours into the game and apparently it takes 25 before it 'gets good'. So, I may be leaving out some things...)

Personally, I like towns. I think it's nice to wander around a chill place and see what's happening, maybe go to a store or a pub. I'm disappointed to hear FF XIII doesn't have any. That was the major gripe I had with Vagrant Story too.

I have played it for 5 and half hours yesterday night, having purchased it yesterday afternoon. I would've played it some more today, but my customer demanded my attention.

It is certainly different from the "classic" FF games in the sense that a lot of things that required grinding (experience, for example) are now absent, and that you don't directly control all of your party. There is still the grinding aspect if you want to evolve your role capabilities further than they naturally do, but I'm under impression that this is not strictly needed.

As a graphical, interactive adventure with a deep background story, I think XIII is excellent. I can't wait to see what events turn up when I play the game again today. As a hardcore RPG fan, I'm a little bit disappointed that they removed some of the best micromanagement stuff but there is definitely more good things about the game than bad.

The art direction is very well done, and the graphics are superb. And while Nobuo Uematsu hasn't written for this game, the music is still very appropriate and reminds me of FF Tactics series (which I hold in very high regard).

I have to admit I'm pretty bored with it. I'm about 6 hours in and so far the game has had me walking in a straight line. I don't think I ever made a decision on anything. Sure I made a few custom paradigms but it just feels like everything has been dumbed down. I mean they have icons on the mini map telling you everything before it happens, I know I'll have a button to press around the corner and that after this mob fight there will be a cut scene... come on...

The only thing really keeping me going is that I like the story.

I will say that Final Fantasy XIII is diffidently a bit different from the previous games in the series but I think most of the changes are good. That main reason I buy Final Fantasy games is because they generally have great story lines and the combat system is pretty solid. While I don't think the combat system in FXIII is the best, it is a hell of a lot better than XII and a bit better than X-2. I really don't miss the towns all that much, without them, it helps them streamline the story.

All in all i think this is one of the better Final Fantasy games but that is just my opinion.

wait, theres gameplay? (see what i did here?)

i'm holding my opinions till the part where you supposedly can do stuff, which should be soon i'm in chp 10 and i think theres only 13

I'm disappointed so far, but my expectations were pretty high.

The good:
Visual:
- It's pretty
- One of the few (only?) PS3 games that isn't inferior to the 360 counterpart from a technology standpoint.
- Did I say it's pretty?

Sound:
- Game seems well voiced
- Music is pretty good

The meh:
Upgrades:
- Item upgrading. The upgrades don't seem to change the weapon properties enough. There is a lot of potential for this system, so I'll reserve a bit of judgment until later.

Story:
- Story jumps a lot. It's like flipping channels between commercials. It's only 'meh' because the story ties together.

The Bad
Combat & Difficulty:
- It's simply way too easy. Make one person a healer, one a melee, one a caster, and mash auto-skill until victory. Eidolon fights are more 'complicated' in that you have to scan+read the instructions and then execute them. I'm really having to go out of my way to face danger in battle.
- To expand on the above point: If the target(s) are scanned, there isn't much reason to think about what skill to use since the auto-attack button will generally pick the best situational skill. Such as Area-Of-Effects if little guys are near each other or fire on fire-weak bosses. Even the bosses that shift their defense, the auto-attack will identify that and respond appropriately.
- Items don't use action energy so any time the characters might die under lucky hits, it's free heal time!
- No meaningful resource pool. Yeah, there's TP which is used for rare stuff, but the players can cast spells endlessly (like cure) in battle.
- Characters move around during combat, but the player has no control over this. That would have helped greatly by at least making positioning less about 'luck'.

Growth:
- Advancement choice is an illusion in that (at least I) end up with enough CP to max what ever is available by the time I get to the next 'upgrade point'. There's not really any flavor to the system other than choosing which Job max order before the next boss.

Progression
- Many hours in and still the game is a straight line. So far, the concept of 'side paths' is simply not there.
- There's not much to discover (yet). The mini-map makes it pretty clear where enemies are and side pockets where items are. Just about every time there is a small section off the main path, there's an item.


For me, it's about 3 long movies where I rapid tap the auto-pick-a-good-situational-skill button. Having played all Final Fantasies including spin-offs [sans Online], this is ranked pretty low on the list so far and only really propped up by pretty graphics. At least in Final Fantasy 12 the player got to define the AI behavior, and take manual actions in the harder boss fights.

I can only hope it gets better (for me) before the end.

[Edited by - necreia on March 13, 2010 8:26:14 AM]

still haven't beaten it, but i must say it has one of the weirdest flows i ever saw in a game.
after guiding you with a leash for 25 hours, it randomly tosses you in a open world without any warning, it feels almost like someone switched game disc with something else

I'm about 40 hours in, currently stuck on a fight in late chapter 11, and it's been a mixed blessing but generally not too bad. There are some issues, of course.

First is the linearity which everyone will complain about from now to all eternity. There are no towns, only a few NPCs that will say two or three predetermined lines if you talk to them, all shopping is done "online" at save points, and there are no side-quests apart from around 50-60 combat-oriented ones later in the game. They cut out all the "fluff" leaving you on rails for most of the game. This is rather disappointing for any RPG fan of course, since much of the joy comes from being able to explore the world at your own pace, even if the story itself is linear. It's not a new trend for JRPGs though - Final Fantasy has been doing this for years, but it wasn't quite this obvious and in-your-face before.

After about 20-25 hours (or 10-15 if you've been skipping the multitude of cut-scenes) you get to the first open area that contains some side quests and a mini-game. Monsters here are significantly stronger - every other encounter is a boss-level fight with way higher difficulty than the boss fight in chapter nine. You're almost expected to grind here, especially if you are not very skilled at switching paradigms. I had to spend ten hours here doing side-quests and grinding before I was able to move on. After you leave the big area, you are on rails again.

The graphics are very pretty, but occasionally you will see a blurry texture (which is not the result of post-processing), so the quality varies. The setting is imaginative, but the plot twists can be seen coming a mile away and the story in general is not that interesting. For the first nine chapters you essentially move one or two screens, get into two or three fights, then watch a cutscene. Early on you are also switching characters all the time, which keeps you on your toes but makes it necessary to adjust the paradigms often (as they are not saved).

I was disappointed that the Japanese voice track was not included on the disk, but the English voice cast did a phenomenal job, especially if you consider some of the inane things the script made them say. The characters are fairly stereotypical but this is mitigated by the voice cast. Unfortunately, there is an overabundance of cheesy emotional speeches and in-your-face self-reflection. It's much like a badly written anime in that respect.

The combat system is nice, although I'm not a big fan of the whole "separate combat field" found in Final Fantasy and Star Ocean titles (and other JRPGs?). At first it seems like you are severely limited by only having one character to control (and only issuing automatic orders, which take advantage of a creature's known elemental weaknesses). However, once the paradigm system is unlocked, the game comes into it's own. Switching paradigms often at appropriate times is the key to victory, and it makes for some fairly interesting fights. However, combat is fairly easy until you get to chapter 11.

The item upgrade and class upgrade system is pretty linear. You can skip some nodes in class upgrade but eventually you'll come back to pick them up, so there is no real choice involved here. The items also progress on a linear path - weapons eventually upgrade into ultimate weapons and similar items (such as the bangles) upgrade into better variants of each other (iron-silver-gold version etc).

If you are interested in trophies then you might like to know that, unlike Star Ocean TLH, you probably won't have to spend upwards of 500 hours to get them all. The only grinding trophy is maxing out all classes for all characters. Still, the game is long, which is a good thing considering the current trend seems to be to make games shorter and shorter.

[Edited by - lightbringer on March 14, 2010 5:20:29 AM]

lightbringer - I heard right at the very end the game takes a total turn and gets extremely hard compared to the rest of the game.

I never really got into the Final Fantasy crazes as each came out so this is the first one I got right away and I'm close to stating it as my favorite FF game. Although, 8, 9, and 10 were pretty good (8 and 10 especially). It's definitely a game about the story and combat and not the character customization though.