ten things to love about ff13

I looked at this and the ten things to hate, and I honestly cannot wait for this game. The most difficult in the series? I'll take it. The only other difficult installment was IV, and that's only the Japanese version, and the remakes. Also, it's nice to see that he addresses the freedom as a POSITIVE, which is a first. Also, apparently the ending is decent which is good.

However, I will say that the camera is something that might annoy me. I'll keep an eye out for that.
 
However, I will say that the camera is something that might annoy me. I'll keep an eye out for that.

I'm also worried about the camera. I'm definitely one for the fixed-camera battles they had in the old days. I hate being overwhelmed by camera movement and not being able to see everything clearly, it causes too much stress and makes things much less enojyable for me.

That said, that guys positive list, biased it may be, far outweighs his negatives list in my opinion (most of his negatives were things I responded to with "oh, that won't bother me"). I think Snow's frozen motorcycle thing looks great.
 
In fairness it is based simply on one persons opinion on both the love and hate points and is far from reflecting the majority but I'll have my say on some of the negative points.

Hand Holding
I don't get why Square Enix felt the need for so much hand holding in Final Fantasy XIII. I get that the battle system is a bit different, and I agree to some extent with how they ease players into it with tutorials and gradual opening of options, but they spent far too long doing so. It was enough so that it might discourage some of the less patient gamers out there. Depending on your play style, it could take a good ten hours before you're playing the game comfortably, without the feeling of training wheels holding you back from going full speed.


That said, there is a lot to take in. I think Square Enix was thinking too much about accessibility and not enough about seasoned gamers.
It has to be a balanced game, not everyone who plays the game is going to be a veteran Final Fantasy player or an RPG player at that. Whilst I personally hate long tutorials there's obviously a reason for it looking at the battle system and the other systems, it's not the first game and certainly won't be the last to have a long tutorial.

Early Lack of Freedom
While the whole game isn't locked down to narrow corridors that you can only move forward in, the earliest parts of the game definitely are. In some ways you can see how Square Enix wanted to control the pacing of the story, letting little bits of narrative come out after sections of game play, but some of the early stages were examples of strikingly inelegant ways of easing you in. You can only walk forward in a narrow path so long before you start feeling like a test rat. Thankfully, multiple passageways, mazes, hidden paths and items, and eventually open-to-explore worlds eventually open up. But, just like the hand holding mentioned earlier, the game takes a bit too long to move on.


This isn't a full-on negative point or a deal breaker, and it really does get better. Even when it is locked down, there's an exceptionally polished and well told narrative for you to follow, and it's honestly good enough that it keeps you keeping on.
It's funny how the mazes, hidden paths, explorable worlds weren't mentioned when the game was described as linear isn't it? Whilst there are some parts of the world are certainly linear shown be screenshots it doesn't really bother me. Typical 2ch mind, the first people to criticise the game mislead people to believe it was something it isn't.
 
I like being already healed before going into battle. But at the same time, I enjoyed qucikly healind during battle, made it more intense you know? I do enjoy leveling up in my games, but what I love more is deciding where those points get spent like X and 12. So this whole Crystal Points thing is coolio to me. Also Im glad Persona 3 and 4 got a mention XD As for non NPC convos, thats not so bad for me. But getting annoyed at random character convos I love! Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect are awesome for this as you get to hear more of the characters opinions and views. Some are so comical, so thats not bad for me. But I too worry about the moving camera angles. 12 was a big pain for that and I want a locked camera angle if possible.
 

Aahhh, I shouldn't have read this yet--I'm not going to be able to afford a PS3 for a while :sad2: A little disappointed about how the ending sounds though--it sounds a lot like X and I absolutely hated how they did that with a passion :mokken: If you're going to put all that effort and love into your characters, you'd better darn well see a long, satisfying ending for them IMO. That's why I loved the type of endings the guy in this article was complaining about--especially VI, where they went back and gave EVERY character their own last little blurb. It gives the thing a whole lot more closure, especially if they don't make a spinoff or sequel with the same characters in it. "Short and not wordy" doesn't seem to describe that, but we'll see... Or, at least, everyone else will see, and I'll find out a few years from now when I have spending money :rage:
 
wow really? I LOVED X's ending. It was bittersweet, but I enjoyed it. It made perfect sense. If they hadn't ended it the way they did, they would have had to change around the story.
 
It's funny how the mazes, hidden paths, explorable worlds weren't mentioned when the game was described as linear isn't it?


A lot of fans of the game are going out of their way to show the "non-linear" portions of the map. When we watch them we see a HUGE landscape to explore... To the untrained eye that is.

You see the seemingly huge land that you can run though, but in all reality, it's just a big huge empty field with monsters on it on a huge (let's call it circle) circle portion of the otherwise completely linear "tunnel system" of maps.

The mazes, we've known about for a while now, and we can give the game props for that and the "hidden paths". It doesn't change the fact that the game, and it's maps, are linear. So in all reality, there is still next to no exploration in the game.

However, we can saftly say that isn't SE's fault. We were wrong for thinking so before. They simply cannot make FF's like they used to with the software and hardware that is being used today. Otherwise we would be waiting for a decade for the next good FF to come out.

So yes, this is the end of an era for us. Maybe were just getting older. But this really does feel like the end of the era of good FF games. Or even JRPG's in general.

However, as long as we have Atlas making games, we should be okay with that. :D

However, we digress...

We're still not buying, but seeing as how we recently got an Xbox that plays burned games... We will still try it, but even with that, we doubt we will like it. :mokken:

Out of everything we've seen of this game so far, which is a buttload, we've only seen 25% of the game that we've liked: The story. However, we can't sit though a game we hate playing just because the story is good. :mokken:

Also, the ending to FFX was the only good thing about the game. Other than that, the game was terrible. :mokken:

 
wow really? I LOVED X's ending. It was bittersweet, but I enjoyed it. It made perfect sense. If they hadn't ended it the way they did, they would have had to change around the story.

I guess what I meant to say is that I liked what happened, but not the way it was presented. A lot of the emotional scenes throughout the game contained good dialogue, which was part of what made them good IMO, but then at the end there was hardly any, and I felt like, for one example with Tidus and Yuna,
if you're never going to see someone again, you might want to talk to them a little more before you say goodbye
--he kind of just sprung it on her right before the boss battle and then they didn't get a chance to talk about it afterward. I think it would've been nice if he could've
at least said something nice before he left, like returning the "I love you"
--if I were Yuna I would've wanted to hear that. Anyway, I'm really just worried that they're going to do the same thing with XIII--have characters develop really complex, meaningful relationships through both dialogue and actions, and then have nothing but actions happen at the ending. It just feels like uneven storytelling to me. :think:
 
In truth the positive points got me more excited and the negative ones got me more curious rather than putting me off. Some of the negative points mentioned obviously show that this is different to pretty much all of the FF games that came before it and I'm glad to see them trying something different. If it doesn't work, so be it, I'll still be buying the game and I actually quite look forward to finding out for myself whether or not I agree that they are indeed "negative" points.
 
It's just been confirmed by Square that there will not be moogles in this game. They are only making a cameo appearance. Probably the moogle shop. Aw, poo.
 
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