Revisiting the Final Fantasy XIII series

[Fatboi1]

The battle system is near god-tier, almost grandia like as far as greatness, for a turn-based system. Game is piff.

I agree with the battle system being piff. It flowed almost perfectly at times and didn't feel traditionally turn based so to speak. As for everything else?? I just like my RPGS to have towns darn it. The fact that the first 2/3rds of the game consisted of running down corridors and watching a confusing story play out made me call it quits once I finally got to gran pulse. Finally you get to some open area but that felt barren and more like a training field.
I spent a hour or so grinding xp with that exploit where by you kept juggling some big monster. XIII-2 was much better but I never finished it due to renting it and having to take it back but even then I don't feel like I missed out on anything special. The music in XIII-2 was nice though.

 

[iceberg_is_on_fire]

I agree with the battle system being piff. It flowed almost perfectly at times and didn't feel traditionally turn based so to speak. As for everything else?? I just like my RPGS to have towns darn it. The fact that the first 2/3rds of the game consisted of running down corridors and watching a confusing story play out made me call it quits once I finally got to gran pulse. Finally you get to some open area but that felt barren and more like a training field.
I spent a hour or so grinding xp with that exploit where by you kept juggling some big monster. XIII-2 was much better but I never finished it due to renting it and having to take it back but even then I don't feel like I missed out on anything special. The music in XIII-2 was nice though.

Square games have trained me well. I'm used to grinding.

 

[Khalil's_Black_Excellence]

I'm gonna attempt to beat XIII this weekend and see if i can finish XIII-2 next weekend before Lightning Returns comes out so two games in 12 days (really 13 cause i started yesterday).

Playing through XIII i don't see why people were so butthurt about this game. Yeah its linear as hell and yeah many of the characters have annoying quirks but i'd say i'm enjoying it as much my second go-round as i did my first and i'm noticing way more stuff.

one of the weird things about the game is half the store is told through the datalogs and if you don't read them the game probably makes zero sense. Lightning is also a real @sshole. I mean she makes Squall look like a nice guy in comparison. If that was my sister I'd distance myself from her but maybe she treats Serah nice.

What's the way more stuff you've noticed?

 

[Khalil's_Black_Excellence]

I agree with the battle system being piff. It flowed almost perfectly at times and didn't feel traditionally turn based so to speak. As for everything else?? I just like my RPGS to have towns darn it. The fact that the first 2/3rds of the game consisted of running down corridors and watching a confusing story play out made me call it quits once I finally got to gran pulse. Finally you get to some open area but that felt barren and more like a training field.
I spent a hour or so grinding xp with that exploit where by you kept juggling some big monster. XIII-2 was much better but I never finished it due to renting it and having to take it back but even then I don't feel like I missed out on anything special. The music in XIII-2 was nice though.

Word. I agree with the battle system and the barren feel of Gran Pulse. I too had quit the game for like a year and change after getting there, but I did finally go back to it and finish it. Not my favorite FF game, but if the good things of XIII and XIII-2 were combined, it could've been one of my favorites.

 

[Khalil's_Black_Excellence]

Was anyone else bothered by the fact the game auto-healed you after every battle? That made the game feel a little too easy for me. It's also super linear -- you ain't exploring shyt. Controlling one person while the other 2 guys cast a bunch of spells you don't want them to cast got a little annoying as well. It's definitely a bottom 3 Final Fantasy game in my opinion.

FF13-2........you fight with monsters you catch instead of having a real party. :daffy:

Nah, not really. Considering that your magic is unlimited, all that auto-hea after every battle did is eliminate a tedious part of RPGs, so it was mostly more good than bad for sure.

I do share your lack of enthusiasm for having monsters instead of real party members though. If anything, I at least wish that there was a steady 3-man party with the monsters being an additional 4th party member, which they essentially did in reverse in some parts of the game (like having Snow as a 4th member in that world with the huge Flan monster.

 

[Black Magisterialness]

Good: Sahz, Fang, visuals, boss fights


Bad: horrible main villain, super shytty supporting cast, Snow and Hope but HOPE/LIGHT/FANG is superior to every other team and there is no reason to use another one. Not one sub/sidekick villian worth it, 5 had Gilgamesh, 6 had Ultros, 7 had the Turks and Shira ect. The story drags on with the sequels, Lightning is as charismatic as a stone.

 

[winb83]

The "illusion" is why I like RPGs so much. The good ones take you to a world and let you feel like a part of that world. Ff13 just feels like I'm watching from the outside. And I never made it to the second or third game, so the story never made much sense to me. From what you described it does sound interesting, but I think they hid it behind too much other stuff about the characters that was not very interesting.

WRPGs usually offer actual freedom. something like Skyrim gives you so many options that could be considered freedom. a JRPG usually has very limited options. what people call freedom is mostly running from room to room in towns looking for chests or repetitive fighting of monsters over and over again looking for rare drops.

i guess i didn't have as many issues with XIII because i play JRPGs for the main quest and that's about it. when playing Fallout or a game like that i'll do side quest because they actually feel fleshed out and relevant.

As for the plot of the other games

XIII-2 spoilers

Spoiler

i'm kinda fuzzy on XIII-2 but i remember there was a chick that could see the future. I don't know why but Etro gave her tribe a single member with the "eyes of Etro" that would let them see the future at the expense of shortening their life span. then the chick dies she's reincarnated and Etro made this guy Caius her semi-immortal guardian and he got sick of watching her die over and over again so he ended up fooling Serah and Noel into killing him. his life was linked to Etro's and when he died she died she gave him her heart and he couldn't kill himself. Etro in this alternate realm (the unseen world) prevents chaos (some type of negative energy substance) from crossing over to the normal world and when Caius is "killed" Etro dies and the gates open and chaos spills over into the regular world. Time ceases to exist and the chick stops dying. Serah also has these "eyes of Etro" and when the gates open she gets hit with an overwhelming vision that eats up all her remaining lifespan and she drops dead.

before Caius is killed he was fighting Lightning who was seemed to be Etro's chosen successor and Lightning realizes if she kills Caius what will happen so she stops fighting him and falls into despair over the fact that if he dies the gates will open and Serah will die. Lightning plops down on Etro's throne and goes into voluntary Crystal stasis just accepting her inevitable L and hoping she wakes up in better days.

moderate Lightning Returns Spoilers

Spoiler

In Lightning Returns i guess (haven't played it obviously) the main God (Bhunivelze) that kills his mother wakes Lightning up at the end of days when chaos is about to destroy the normal world and gives her the task of gathering human souls as a savior (to guide them over to a new world?) at some point Lightning realizes Bhunivelze is up to some foul shyt and turns on him. all i know is Bhunivelze is the final boss of the game.

 

[winb83]

Good: Sahz, Fang, visuals, boss fights


Bad: horrible main villain, super shytty supporting cast, Snow and Hope but HOPE/LIGHT/FANG is superior to every other team and there is no reason to use another one. Not one sub/sidekick villian worth it, 5 had Gilgamesh, 6 had Ultros, 7 had the Turks and Shira ect. The story drags on with the sequels, Lightning is as charismatic as a stone.

in all fairness the main villain of this series isn't present in XIII or XIII-2. in XIII the primary antagonist is just a fal'cie that wants to drop Coc00n down on Pulse and kill all humanity and causing a massive influx of souls to slam the gate between the seen and unseen world which would he believes summon the "maker" read God. i don't know if he's aware that God isn't Pulse and Lindzei the two fal'cies Bhunivelze (the real God of XIII) left in-charge before going into crystal stasis. he probably thinks God is Lindzei (the fal'cie that made the Cac00n fal'cies)

i honestly believe they should have put the real plot of XIII in the actual game and by plot i mean the context for all the events that happen in the game. the actual in game events are mostly a bunch of contrived melodrama between the party members. you shouldn't have to read a bunch of datalogs and alternate sources to understand the game's plot.

 

[Fury616]

there's nothing wrong with Hope. he was a kid and his mother died. he was pissed at Snow and plotted his revenge. Hope wasn't some born hero he was literally just a regular kid that got dragged into some BS. if you simply go by how he behaves then yeah he'd be annoying but if you consider the whole character and how he moved on from that and in the future became a leader of mankind he's a better character than people give him credit for.

Vanille walked around acting dumb because she felt guilty for the role she played in everything. In her narration she's totally different than she behaves around the characters. yeah she's way too oversexualized riding around making sexual noises on a monster that looks like a giant penis but i can't really say i like or dislike her.

these aren't bad characters. some of them aren't likable but there's more development to these characters than most haters of the XIII series wanna admit. Van and Penelo these aren't.

Yea, Hope being a bad character may be the wrong description but annoying as fukk is more like it. I just didn't like Vanille's character and the accent didn't help me like her either. Again with the high annoyance factor. Fang was a great example of a character with personality, not too boring and the perfect voice actress.

And the Eidolon summons just made it worse. I appreciate that they tried to do something different wit the transformers look but they were still lame. FF12 at least got that much right. Those designs were dope as hell.

 

[Khalil's_Black_Excellence]

FFXIII by itself isn't a bad game at all...But as Final Fantasy game it underwhelms. It also has one of the most cringe worthy scenes I have ever witness in video game.

In terms of the characters....Sazh was far and away the best one. He was the only one that actually came across as a person. Everybody else came across as a bunch of shytty anime tropes.

What cringe-worthy scene was that?

 

[Prince Akeem]

What cringe-worthy scene was that?

Spoiler

The scene near the end of the game when they get turned into fal'cie or whatever and they all overcome it though the power of friendship or some bullshyt.

 

[Clark Wayne]

Coli fam I just copped FFXIII-2 for $10 because of the PSN sale. Haven't even played the first but apparently I'm not missing much.

 

[BasedPrime]

Played LR's demo, shyt was alright but Im going for ToS HD this month and might pick up FFX HD

 

[winb83]

sitting here grinding in XIII and watching this Super Bowl. so far it ain't been much to watch but i better $5000 coli cash on the Hawks so i better shut up.

 

[cfountain]

Caius was that dude tho

my kinda villain