FFXIII straight to shit

Bad games are bad games, no matter the name. (Not to say FF13 is a bad game per say since I haven't played it yet, but I don't really have high hopes)

Happened to about every series I guess, I remember Tales of Legendia and Suikoden 4... *shudder

On the face of it, you only have control of one character, the party leader; you can select role-specific abilities for the leader to use each turn according to how many slots they use in that character's ATB bar, which grows as you progress through the game. In actuality, you'll rarely be doing even that. Much of the time, you'll pick a role for your leader and use the "auto-battle" command, letting the game do the rest. This effectively relegates them to the same level as the AI party members (which is very smart, provided you use Libra to study your enemies' strengths and weaknesses first).
'Final Fantasy XIII' Screenshot 5

Efficient battle performance earns you star ratings and TP to spend on summons and other Techniques.

Why would you do that? Because the fun is all in setting up Paradigms - permutations of two or three of the six roles - and swapping between these instantly and frequently to suit the situation. It actually represents similar thinking to Final Fantasy XII's wonderful Gambit system - in that it allows you to automate the behaviour of your party and wield several characters as one, in real time, without turns - only instead of being based on back-end tinkering, it's about direct input and quick responses on the fly.

The roles are Medic, Ravager (magic damage), Commando (physical damage), Sentinel (protection or "tanking"), Synergist (buffs) and Saboteur (debuffs). They all interact with each other and the enemy designs, and combinations of enemies, in interesting ways. Also, every enemy has a Chain gauge which can be filled by balancing magic and physical damage, increasing in effectiveness all the time and when filled, 'staggering' the enemy for huge damage multipliers. It's essential (not to mention immensely gratifying) to use Stagger to get through fights efficiently, but it's always an edge-of-seat challenge to balance it with switching your party between different utilities.

To be fair, Paradigm Shift and Stagger are actually more interesting in combination with groups of moderately tough enemies than in the thoughtful but rather gruelling boss fights. Nor do they sit that well with XIII's other battlefield innovation, Gestalt Mode, a sort of QTE affair that allows you to pull off showboating attacks in tandem with the visually astonishing Eidolon summons (which look like Transformers designed by Gaudi). Gestalt is amusing but doesn't quite offer the massive-damage pay-off to match a well-executed Paradigm strategy.

Anyways, this is the best system I've seen in an RPG to date. Reasons are as follows:
-Every character can learn ANY move in due time. Which means it doesn't matter that much what character you use later on. Meaning you don't leave forgotten character classes by the sidelines like you would do in previous games.
-You can use your points to either increase defense, or attack, or agility, or whattever you chose. Meaning your stats will be fully customized, and not automatic like the LVL system. Therefore more complex.
-You can see what spells and abilities lie ahead. And this is just awesome.

Legendia was made with a different... staff... head... guy... whatever.

But it had the best story out of all of them.

I was never dissapointed with any of the FF... I mean maybe a little bit with FF12 because story wise it failed a lot but still... I played over 100hours on it!
And yea i gotta agree with the post above mine, something new is always welcome. If it pains you to see that Final Fantasy 13 isn't like the previous ones, why don't you look at it from a different view point. I mean if it's that horrible to see this rpg wielding the name "Final fantasy", just take a black tape and roll it all over the title on the game box <_<... I've waited years for this game to come out, it might be dissapointing, it might not be, but it won't prevent me from buying this game just because some RANDOM people on the INTERNET adores badmouthing it. Also because of that, lots of people won't buy altough they might enjoy if they played it for real.

Those are horrible, horrible reasons, except the last reason. Learning all moves = characters are all the same, just like in most modern JRPGs. Increasing stats in a point-by-point fashion is retarded since there's no reason pass up stat increases, and the Sphere Grid is unbelievably linear. And when the Sphere Grid is opened everyone becomes like everyone else in terms of stats as well. And the Sphere Grid doesn't limit your characters in such a way that enemies and bosses provide a challenge.

Why would you do that? Because the fun is all in setting up Paradigms - permutations of two or three of the six roles - and swapping between these instantly and frequently to suit the situation. It actually represents similar thinking to Final Fantasy XII's wonderful Gambit system - in that it allows you to automate the behaviour of your party and wield several characters as one, in real time, without turns - only instead of being based on back-end tinkering, it's about direct input and quick responses on the fly.

Holic: Uh, they revived the roles? ;[ That's exactly what I didn't like about the old final fantasys.

Ugh! Real time battles, just what I didn't want to hear. I prayed so much that they would revive the turns.

I don't like to make quick responses on the fly. FFXII had a similar system and the battles never lasted more than 5 to 10 minutes (even in bosses). I really really dislike that. Badass bosses should have long badass battles. Quick bosses take the epicness out of it. And, because of the real time system, I was always caught off guard when the bosses made finishing attacks. It felt so cheap.
FFX had you thinking what strategies would be best to defeat the current bosses, whereas XII felt like it was all a matter of power. Can't defeat a boss? Grind a few levels and it's cake. There is no fun to that at all. Also (FFX), seeing your turns run out as the boss got ready to blow you an awesome attack felt great and exciting.

Anyways yea, FFX's battle system had so many aspects that I loved. It seems I am one of the few people that enjoyed it. ;[

It's amazing how with just two FF's under your belt you're already in the FF jaded stage. I don't mean that as an insult either. You aren't suppose to compare FF's to one another (even though everyone does, myself included) because each is suppose to be unique in it's own. Take FF13 for what it is not what it isn't.



You do realize that you will probably never see that system again right? So you're going to be disappointed a lot with the FF series if you keep comparing them all to 10 which was pretty damn good I will admit.

It's amazing how with just two FF's under your belt you're already in the FF jaded stage. I don't mean that as an insult either.

You aren't suppose to compare FF's to one another (even though everyone does, myself included) because each is suppose to be unique in it's own. Take FF13 for what it is not what it isn't.

Lol, kuro's talking shit with limited FF experience.

edit:
Everybody keeps pointing this out. Is my opinion that less valuable because I havn't played their games from over 10 years ago?

That depends on what you're talking about. If you're just comparing 1 game to another, fine (then you have holic's other point to deal with), but, if you're mentioning FF as a whole when you criticize its shit, then it's a different story. I missed the last 6 pages of shit (SKIMMED; too lazy), so if you wouldn't mind clarifying your point...

They're suposed to 'feel' like different games and not sequels. But they're from the same company/team! It's not as if they're not related. Also, when judging a sequel, the best to compare it to would be the previous games, don't you think so?

But they're from the same company/team!

It seems many people think that's not enough to judge this new game though.

Nice contradiction by the way.

And that means that it's suppose to be a cut and copy of FF-X's system? I think you're just in fan mode and are upset that this isn't more of a FFX-13 and less of an entirely different game.

You're comparing 13 to 10 which is bad. No wonder you and the guy in the videos were so upset and unsatisfied with this game.

What do we know so far:
Graphics = sexy
It's linear (yea, yea, half of it).
The vendor is the town.
The fights don't give you money.

What else?

You know what I meant. Now you're just attacking me. But no worries.

Okay, it's time for me to get things straight. I'll enumerate some things I liked and disliked between X and XII, so it doesn't feel like i'm just one big FFX fanboy.

Okay, after writting that, it felt like a complete waste of time, as you probably won't care enough to read it all.

Yes graphics look amazing.
Story seems interesting.
Linear (though I'm not against that. I don't like to get lost in rpgs. So I actually like it)
No towns ;[
No money. Currency is made of credits, used to buy stuff in save points.
Few minigames
Real time battle system where you control only one character (more details in holic's post)
Summons look godawful and transform into vehicles

Can't remember more atm. I'm gonna take a break now, this whole post has taken me longer than it should've.