[Multiplatform] Official Final Fantasy XIII Thread

Well, presentation is pretty much the only aspect I don't worry about with Squeenix these days. Towns are the least of my panic.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I hear ya, their track record has been rather disappointing lately when pitted against their PS1 or even PS2 offerings. Most of everything I've seen and read about this game though has me feeling pretty optimistic. Hopefully I won't be disappointed.

BTW, I hope Squeenix translates and makes the prologue novel available for free to the rest of us as it has in Japan.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

This was the most anticipated game of all time for me. Note I've been playing Final Fantasy ever since FF 2 /4 was released... when I was 7 years old.

This is easily the most disappointing game of the series for me.

The first 25 hours (most of the game) you are walking in a straight line.

Walk > battle > cutscene > boss battle > cutscene. repeat.

No castles, no towns, no areas to explore. No NPC's to talk to really till about 18 hrs in at Nautilus. And even when you get there, it's still just a straight path through the town.

No mini games or side quests. It just seems the side quests are the hunts at the end of the game and that's it.

The crystarium system is just a copy of the Sphere Grid but just looks nicer.

In my opinion Square really fucked this game over. It could have been so much more. I can't imagine this game being what the fans wanted. I just want to finish the game so I can put it up on eBay. But I'll post a full review after I complete the game, which should be in a day or two. I'm about 27-28 hours into the game.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

From what you played so far, is there any downtime in the gameplay or is it as relentless as everyone is making it out to be? If the game doesn't let you relax and have a breather in towns and soak in the environments they created, does the story (that apparently refuses to ever take a back seat to anything else in the game) have lighter moments? Or is it all non-stop sci-fi/action movie explosions and moving the plot forward?


Also, from my understanding, some of the mob-hunts that you can do later will be pretty varied in terms of prizes from loot, weapons, and extra story-bits and cut-scenes. Though I have no idea just how well they balanced these.

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Originally Posted by Andrew Evenstar

This was the most anticipated game of all time for me. Note I've been playing Final Fantasy ever since FF 2 /4 was released... when I was 7 years old.

This is easily the most disappointing game of the series for me.

The first 25 hours (most of the game) you are walking in a straight line.

Walk > battle > cutscene > boss battle > cutscene. repeat.

No castles, no towns, no areas to explore. No NPC's to talk to really till about 18 hrs in at Nautilus. And even when you get there, it's still just a straight path through the town.

No mini games or side quests. It just seems the side quests are the hunts at the end of the game and that's it.

The crystarium system is just a copy of the Sphere Grid but just looks nicer.

In my opinion Square really fucked this game over. It could have been so much more. I can't imagine this game being what the fans wanted. I just want to finish the game so I can put it up on eBay. But I'll post a full review after I complete the game, which should be in a day or two. I'm about 27-28 hours into the game.

Final Fantasy games always send you in a straight line for the first half of the game. Sure, they might have a wider area to give the impression that you're exploring but it's nothing more than a wide corridor, there's never more than one exit at the end. It's never until you get the airship that you actually go exploring in pretty much all of them up to XII. The towns are just filler anyway and essentially, just a way to let players decide if they can be arsed to read variations on the same bit of exposition twenty times while they shop. If all the story is now told in cutscenes, there's no need for towns. All Square have done is admitted that their games have always been basically linear and cut out the fluff a bit, I don't see why there's so much crying going on on various websites.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Too bad this game sends you in a straight line for 95% percent of the game and the only thing extra to do is fight optional bosses. No extra dungeons, no mini games. Nearly no puzzles.

And other Final Fantasy's may be linear, but in no way do they send you in a straight corridor. Many of the areas are open. You have castles and dungeons to actually walk through with different rooms and areas to navigate through to find treasure or do other things.

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Other Final Fantasy games have:

Final Fantasy IV: The Land of Summons, Excalibur sidequest. Castles and towns to visit with many different rooms / areas. Abandoned Eblan castle. You have the first world map, the underground, and the moon.

Final Fantasy V: Multiple extra, hidden areas to explore. Optional bosses and many secret items. Underwater Area and the void / dark world.

Final Fantasy VI: Narshe, the first city is pretty massive. The last half of the game is filled with extra side quests and dungeons. Hidden items and areas are all over the game. World of Balance, World of Ruin. The Dream Stooges, Phoenix Cave, Fanatics Tower.

Final Fantasy VII: Gold Chocobo quest, secret characters, hidden areas. Multiple sidequests and mini games. Extra dungeons as well. The city of Midgar has more exploration than FF13. Ancient Forest, Vincents story and Lucretias Cave.

Final Fantasy VIII: Hidden summons and dungeons. Balamb Garden is the first area but is pretty big. Card game. World Map with so many areas to explore. Esthar.

Final Fantasy IX: Once again, a world map with places like towns, castles and dungeons to actually explore.
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This game is battles and cut scenes. That's it. If you're okay with a point a to point b game. Then this game is for you. This game actually makes me appreciate FF12 a lot more.

I don't know why people are trying to justify the linearity of the game. In this game you visit two towns. Palumpolum and Nautilus. No exploring, No shops. No rooms or places to visit. Nothing. You just walk straight through each city.

The games music is great, characters are good, story is great as well. But the experience was not even close to what I was expecting or looking for. It was the first Final Fantasy game I was ever disappointed with. ( didn't bother with x-2)

FELIPE NO

Sounds like the exact opposite of XII then. The cities seemed a bit too big, and it was weird having all those NPCs while only a few would actually speak.

Having a strictly linear game with nothing much outside of combat and cutscenes isn't necessarily bad. FF XI and XII should've already shown that it's a bad idea trying to compare current Final Fantasy games to the rest of the series. This sounds more like a 3D version of Valkyrie Profile 2 in format if you really are just walking down a single street in the few towns that exist. I suppose a lot of people didn't like that one either, but using linearity as a major complaint is pretty silly. Not every game has to be a sandbox with dozens of sidequests and mini-games to be fun. You say the characters and story are great, and that's all I really need in an RPG.

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Originally Posted by Andrew Evenstar

The city of Midgar has more exploration than FF13

In Midgar you have the Shinra building you're forced to go through, which has one route, unless you count the stairs, a couple of shopping screens, the Honeybee manor you're forced to go to, the church you're forced to go to and so on. The only hidden thing is a piece of materia hidden in a playground.

What I'm getting at and where I think you're missing my point is that older Final Fantasy's have never really had any exploration, they've had complete linearity but through wider areas. Having to walk around for five minutes between shops isn't exploration, it's a mechanic designed to make the game seem larger than it actually is.

Now I've not played FFXIII so I accept it might lack the side quests of the earlier iterations but personally, I'd rather spend my time actually playing a game, rather than spending an hour walking around between shop menus. As I understand it, FFXIII has all the shopping in the save menu so you stop to save, do your shopping then get back to the action in five minutes, rather than a pointless hour trapesing about looking at the scenery.

If FF actually had any roleplaying in it then I'd agree that you need a bit of npc interaction and non-combat bits to round out the characters but the series isn't roleplaying, they've always had completely preset stories and characters so if you can cut out the bullshit aimless wandering about in towns and get the exposition out of the way in a few cutscenes then for me that's a good thing.

I appreciate that not everyone plays jrpgs just for the game mechanics and battle systems but if you're after a roleplaying experience I'd question why you were playing Final Fantasy in the first place.

In short, you're mistaking filler space for an exploration mechanic, but if that's what you like, go nuts (And you should probably play Sacred 2, it's at least 100 hours of pure filler).

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Originally Posted by Tritoch

Sounds like the exact opposite of XII then. The cities seemed a bit too big, and it was weird having all those NPCs while only a few would actually speak.

If you sounded like a man but looked like a woman, and walked into a big city, how many average joe motherfuckers do you think would actually respond to you in conversation if you walked up to them and asked them for anything.

If you were wearing that tiny chain link metal vest I would ignore the fuck out of you too.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I don't mind the lack of NPC's with nothing crucial to say, and aimless wondering that leads to nothing substantial. That's all fine and good.

I just hope the game still allows you to somehow take in and appreciate the scenery and environments. It doesn't have to be an open sandbox. The narrative can dictate where I'm going all it wants. My destinations however, need to be interesting and feel substantial. Not like a sneak preview of what the areas are like.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I'll just leave this here

YouTube Video

YouTube Video

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Kishin

The game sounds it's basically the same as FFX in all aspects, with enhanced graphics.

It isn't. The story is much stronger in FFX, there's more of a real villain in that game as well.

Quote:

The thing that worries me is his mentioning of music, since that's the only thing I'm interested in the game. I probably will play the game after many years, but I will grapplehook myself to the soundtrack the day it's released, maybe even buying it. This reviewer however doesn't really know anything about music, so I'm not certain what the soundtrack will be like. I'm worried about him saying "pop" music has taken over into the BGM as well. This sounds weird, and only done, because it's more possible to shoehorn worthless vocals into games nowadays, more than ever before, and Square of all companies WILL abuse this possibility to no end, especially with Final Fantasies. But it's Hamauzu, so it might actually be good, even still...

The music is nice for the most part. I didn't really appreciate some of the jazz in there but it's never distractingly bad and seems to be usually scene appropriate (harmonica solo anybody?).

From my classically trained standpoint some of the music is nice, but you start to notice that most of it is re-arrangements of the same few themes or the same harmonies used over and over (hint: the battle music is re-arranged as an area theme several times, with one notable giant re-orchestration with a rather disonnant brass chord, if you're into that sort of thing you might want to listen for it).

Also I think I heard Maaya Sakamoto singing or humming throughout a few tracks in there. Some of the more electronic tracks are actually the more interesting things from the game, which is a strange thing for me to say because I usually don't care for electronic music for the most part.

Overall it's completely different, slightly more sophisticated than some of the earlier titles, but probably won't inspire the same nostalgia. If you like cluster chords in your tonality you're in for a treat but if you're looking for nerdy anthems it's not going to happen for you.

Originally Posted by Andrew Evenstar

characters are good, story is great as well. But the experience was not even close to what I was expecting or looking for. It was the first Final Fantasy game I was ever disappointed with.

No Spoilers here but a few generalisations;

I feel the same way for the most part with a few exceptions. The characters were a bit too generic for my liking.

"守りたい"

yeah that was indiscriminately thrown around and just about every second word in the game.

We've been sitting here wondering how elements of this story are going to translate into English because culturally that shit doesn't have the same resonance and meaning that it seems to here. When people hear "I want to protect EVERYTHING!" in english 400 times in a row I imagine they're going to start to say "why?"

The story was probably the weakest element of the game in my mind now. The character motivations were generic or stereotypical, the big bad was vaguely mentioned a few times throughout the course of the story and a whole bunch of the people who we've all seen in the trailers are only in the game for a few minutes to dodge some bullets, say something generic and not develop any relevance.

But I'll say this, I did like the battle system. I just don't think that the overall experience puts it on par with the earlier games. If the story was stronger it would've been amazing, but they seem to be asleep at the wheel still.

If you like haircuts, necklaces, somersaults, power-poses and explosions it's a game for you.


edit: I realise that it has become the new hotness to be meta-critical armchair sociologists or economists and analyse the game in terms of its intended audience by saying things like "it's for the japanese not for whities" or whatever to apologise away problems or issues that people have with the game. That being said, I liked a lot of the earlier games and they came from the same company and same motivation, but something has changed culturally in RPGs (Square Enix's) now to the point where it's more about image and suggestion of story rather than whatever possible attempts at depth that may have happened in the past. I'm not claiming that Final Fantasy VII or VIII was Shakespeare, but it was closer to a narrative world than a mohawk and implication. If you want pretty things to look at then it's all there.

There's just something unconvincingly shallow going on.

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Originally Posted by Decoy Goat

But I'll say this, I did like the battle system. I just don't think that the overall experience puts it on par with the earlier games. If the story was stronger it would've been amazing, but they seem to be asleep at the wheel still.

"Still" as in you haven't beaten the game yet? It's just very concerning to hear that the story is a let-down, considering how the game seems to have sacrificed some elements just for the narrative.

If you still haven't beaten the game, then at least there's hope that the plot will develop later and deliver some satisfying twists?

EDIT-

Just saw your other post stating how you finished the game. So yea, that's too bad. I can't imagine how they can spend all this time working on a main Final Fantasy entry with a story as awful as everyone claims it to be. I guess this is what happens when the start trying to crank out a million bloated spin offs all at once as opposed to proper, decent titles a few at a time.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I think people is just getting too critical for the game. Of all the reviews I've read, most of them just tell that the game is alright but somehow it fails on some tiny/major aspects that the reviewers seem to like. I get the feeling that people aren't enjoying it that much because they're looking on the bland aspects of the game. It's all about having a gaming experience, not just pointing out where and how does it fail, after all it's just another Final Fantasy.

FELIPE NO

Yeah, I assume every single posted impression is incorrect too because they're all looking for something to hate.

Especially when they all bring up the exact same issue.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Destructoid - Final Fantasy XIII 'the biggest swindle in history'

I just saw this posted on Destructiod.... haha. I think it's a bit harsh obviously... but my honest score for this game is a 6 or 7 / 10.


Anyways I've already sold the game along with the FFIV beta code and made nearly all the $ that I spent on it.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Quote:

Apparently the review was so intense and surprising that even the magazine issued a disclaimer calling the journalist in question a "non-gamer" and "borderline-retarded."

Best disclaimer ever.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Final Fantasy XIII Video Game, International Trailer HD | Game Trailers & Videos | GameTrailers.com

It's started ok until that Leona Lewis song :\

but beside the song the game seems pretty good to me. I was never really picky for voice acting and I like what I heard in this trailer. I just thought they would have try to make a better job at lips syncing. It was kind of a hit or miss in that trailer.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I actually like the Leona Lewis song, not too bad, though didn't have the same impact as Sayuri Sugawara's. It seems rather lazy of SE to not try and create a new original song for the game, instead opting to go with a song off Lewis' new album.

The voice acting didn't bug me either, I actually thought Hope's VA was one of the better ones. And I was rather surprised to see that they resynced the lips to match the english dialogue, even for the pre-rendered cut scenes that's so unlike SE (eg. Advent Children, where they should have done it, especially when the NA releases were always some months after the Japanese one both DVD and Blu-ray).

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Holy crap, they resynced the lips. I don't believe it. Although I still would like to have the Japanese voice track on the game (though I know that's not happening), this makes its inclusion a lot less important.

I've given up hope of getting an enjoyable quest out of this game, so I pray the story and gameplay can make this one worthwhile. At this point, I'm liking what I see.

I was speaking idiomatically.

So, it seems the US version is done. We just have to wait.

Quote:

Final Fantasy XIII has been released on the PS3 in Japan, but the multi-platform version won't be out in the West until March. Square Enix has, however, announced that development on this "overseas version" is now complete.

In an online letter to European gamers, FFXIII game director Motomu Toriyam writes, "FINAL FANTASY XIII overseas version is finally completed." He then apologizes for the long wait. Continuing, he adds:

The overseas version was developed simultaneously with the Japanese one as we wanted to ensure that it comes out as soon after the Japanese release date as possible.

In the completed FINAL FANTASY XIII, the features which were popular amongst gamers at our survey last summer have been enhanced even further.

One of those features is characters' facial animations, which work as the core of any human drama. Their movements are completely synchronised with the English lines and, due to this, each scene in the game is truly spectacular...

...Don't get distracted. You will see the truth when you hold it in your hands. Please be patient a little longer for the 'day of a battle against the fate"!

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Hantei

I actually like the Leona Lewis song, not too bad, though didn't have the same impact as Sayuri Sugawara's. It seems rather lazy of SE to not try and create a new original song for the game, instead opting to go with a song off Lewis' new album.

Yeah, that song is okay, at least I understand the lyrics this time

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The song is ok for a mainstream song. I just think it doesn't fit into the game.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Inhert

The song is ok for a mainstream song. I just think it doesn't fit into the game.

Well, it's not like it's the battle theme song or something like that. You will hear it during the staff credit roll, when nobody cares anymore anyway, so we gonna be just fine.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Yeah exactly, that's why it doesn't bother me that much.

btw, any news on a limited edition in NA? I still haven't pre-ordered just in case something like that pops up.

There's nowhere I can't reach.