Final Fantasy XIII

[Cloud500]

So Final Fantasy XIII comes out next week. Is anyone else planning on getting it?

It's been getting fairly mixed reviews due to its linearity and lack of towns and sidequests. From what I've seen it looks to be at least a good addition to the series, though.

Any other thoughts/opinions?

[Whitefang]

One day, I will get a PS3 specifically to play this game. But that day has not come, yet.

However, knowing how much I love Final Fantasy IV, well, I will probably be able to forgive the lack of sidequests and its linearity, as long as it tells a good story. It's also important to remember that Final Fantasy fans pride themselves on being unpleasable as a whole, so I'm sure there will be some good parts of the game. I've never played an FF game I didn't at least enjoy part of, if not the whole thing.

[Nate]

Man I remember when I was looking forward to this game and wasn't aware it was the biggest steaming pile of crap ever dumped out by Square-Enix. I miss those days. Those were good days.

[Cloud500]

Well, I spent a decent amount of time today reading over reviews and seeing what other gamers thought of the game and I've become more and more dissappointed. I'm deciding whether or not to take back my pre-order money, go back to the older titles, and just wait for IX to be released on the PSN... I want the airships back and full control of the party members. Oh well, I can still hope Versus XIII will be good...

[MasterDias]

Frankly, I've become more and more convinced that Final Fantasy has one of the most unpleasable fanbases ever. Pretty much all the past installments have had their detractors, and since I've enjoyed all of them since IV, I don't really see a reason I wouldn't enjoy this one.

I've found many of the complaints to be pretty silly and nitpicky.

[Nate]

Silly and nitpicky? Oh boy, here we go.

1. Having ZERO control over the other party members. XII did this sort of. But you know what? At least in that game, you could set Gambits so that your characters would act how you wanted them to. In this game? NOTHING! You can set their jobs but you have NO control WHATSOEVER over anything they do outside of their job.

2. Game over when main character gets KO'd. Okay, you've probably played the Persona games so you're used to that. For those of us who haven't played Persona? It's stupid, and not to mention at least in Persona there is a REASON for it. There is NO reason in XIII. None. Zero.

3. The Crystarium is ridiculously stupid. Why do they cap out the levels you can gain before beating certain bosses? The answer to this is probably "They don't want the game to be too easy." Then why have a leveling system?

4. On top of this, the Crystarium serves zero purpose. It's trying to be like the Sphere Grid from FFX. Except, in FFX, if you WANTED to, you could make Yuna just as awesome of a physical attacker as Wakka was. It'd take her a million Sphere points to do it, but if you took her down his path and got her the right power ups, she could be just as effective as him. Because they all used the same Sphere Grid. In FFXIII every character uses completely different Crystariums and none are the same, and even though you can CONCEIVABLY try to make one character a physical attacker when they're more magic oriented, they'll never be as good at it as a character who's set up to be a physical attacker. In FFX they gave characters specific roles at the start of the game and then allowed you to give them different attributes later if you wanted. FFXIII makes you THINK that it's like that but it's just an illusion, a giant lie.

The only other complaints I have are silly and nitpicky admittedly. I don't like going down a straight tunnel with no branches to explore. That's all FFXIII is. At least in a good FF game like, say, IX, even though there was a place you needed to go, you could veer off the path and go explore somewhere else if you wanted.

No towns is stupid. There's no reason to have no towns. I ended up liking FFXII despite its combat system because I liked how rich and full of life the towns were. It was a wonderfully crafted world, with interesting places to visit. Arcadia, Rabanastre, Mt. Bur-Omisace...these were really cool looking and interesting places that were fantastic! FFXIII has none of that because there's no towns. That to me makes it a dead world. I don't want to adventure in a dead world.

I don't know anything about the story or characters really, except Snow is apparently the most annoying human being on the planet, and the story isn't so great either. Though I don't know personally.

The summons are horrible and stupid. I didn't like them from the first time I saw them.

I don't like not being able to change my characters' equipment. At least in FFVIII although I hated it the Junction System was a sort of approximation to the fact that there was no armor or accessories, and also served as a good explanation as to the age-old question of "If my character is wearing different armor how come his character sprite looks the same?" I still like being able to equip armor and weapons, though that's a personal preference so I wouldn't say the game sucks automatically because of that, it's just another annoyance to me.

So there. I've laid out the legitimate complaints as to why XIII is garbage, and my personal silly feelings about it. I separated them to show the difference between them.

[Dante]

It looks like a fun game in many ways, but I'm afraid that I'm not buying a PS3 any time soon. Sure it may have many detractors (You die if the main character gets KO'd?) But it still seems like it would be a fun game to play.

[MasterDias]

Silly and nitpicky? Oh boy, here we go.

1. Having ZERO control over the other party members. XII did this sort of. But you know what? At least in that game, you could set Gambits so that your characters would act how you wanted them to. In this game? NOTHING! You can set their jobs but you have NO control WHATSOEVER over anything they do outside of their job.

It's not like this is the first RPG to have AI-controlled teammates, and I doubt it will be the last. I highly doubt it makes the game unplayable. I do prefer to control the entire party usually, but it was tolerable enough in games like Persona 3.

2. Game over when main character gets KO'd. Okay, you've probably played the Persona games so you're used to that. For those of us who haven't played Persona? It's stupid, and not to mention at least in Persona there is a REASON for it. There is NO reason in XIII. None. Zero.

It's only really an issue in Persona if you get hit by a successful instant-death spell (and they usually have low chances of success anyway.) And if I've understood correctly, Final Fantasy XIII allows you to reset to right before that battle anyway (unlike Persona 3/4, where you could lose an hour of progress,) so I don't see how it's that big of a deal.

3. The Crystarium is ridiculously stupid. Why do they cap out the levels you can gain before beating certain bosses? The answer to this is probably "They don't want the game to be too easy." Then why have a leveling system?

4. On top of this, the Crystarium serves zero purpose. It's trying to be like the Sphere Grid from FFX. Except, in FFX, if you WANTED to, you could make Yuna just as awesome of a physical attacker as Wakka was. It'd take her a million Sphere points to do it, but if you took her down his path and got her the right power ups, she could be just as effective as him. Because they all used the same Sphere Grid. In FFXIII every character uses completely different Crystariums and none are the same, and even though you can CONCEIVABLY try to make one character a physical attacker when they're more magic oriented, they'll never be as good at it as a character who's set up to be a physical attacker. In FFX they gave characters specific roles at the start of the game and then allowed you to give them different attributes later if you wanted. FFXIII makes you THINK that it's like that but it's just an illusion, a giant lie.

Do you really like grinding that much? I won't say I'm necessarily a fan of a level-cap, but I don't see how it's a major problem.

In an RPG like this, I'd actually rather have characters that lean towards certain skills/roles than characters that play largely identically, or at least, have some way to make them more distinct. XII had something of the latter problem. And I don't see how this is a terribly different system than what Final Fantasy (or most RPGs for this matter) has generally done. Otherwise, I'd have to actually play the game myself to probably say anything more about the mechanics.

No towns is stupid. There's no reason to have no towns. I ended up liking FFXII despite its combat system because I liked how rich and full of life the towns were. It was a wonderfully crafted world, with interesting places to visit. Arcadia, Rabanastre, Mt. Bur-Omisace...these were really cool looking and interesting places that were fantastic! FFXIII has none of that because there's no towns. That to me makes it a dead world. I don't want to adventure in a dead world.

From what I've understood, it's not that XIII has no towns, it's that the towns you see are all part of a "dungeon" that you're constantly running through so there's no exploring/talking to NPCs/visiting shops.

Also, I'll agree that XII generally did have a well-realized world, although the fact that Rabanastre's shops were so spread out was a pet peeve of mine...but that's something else. However, the field areas honestly felt pretty empty. There was rarely anything of value in chests, and nothing much extra to do there outside of hunts and nothing all that interesting to see.

Anyway, I still stand by my comments and think the Final Fantasy fanbase is incredibly difficult to please.

[blkmage]

One of the best series of criticisms and discussions about Final Fantasy XIII that isn't laced with irrational fear of change in how JRPGs work is in the FFXIII-related episodes of the Active Time Babble podcasts. They've had a few discussions starting from a few weeks back when they were going through the Japanese import until just last week with North American review copies.

I've noticed that most peoples' complaints about FFXIII in particular are the same ones as with other RPGs. It's just that Final Fantasy supposedly represents some sort of immovable standard in JRPGs (it really isn't) that any huge change is always met with hysteria. I feel like most of the changes in FFXIII are in line with modern RPG design.

[Nate]

First off, I will say I agree with this:

Anyway, I still stand by my comments and think the Final Fantasy fanbase is incredibly difficult to please.

So I'm right with you there.

It's not like this is the first RPG to have AI-controlled teammates, and I doubt it will be the last. I highly doubt it makes the game unplayable.

Kingdom Hearts was not the first game to have a crappy camera, and I doubt it will be the last. Having a crappy camera did not make Kingdom Hearts unplayable. But that does not excuse the fact that the camera was crappy and it doesn't make it okay for the camera to be crappy.

So my statement still stands. AI controlled characters in a turn-based game is garbage (actually one of the reasons I do not like Dragon Quest IV for the NES, although I love Dragon Quest to death, but the DS remake is awesome because you can manually control everyone).

Final Fantasy XIII allows you to reset to right before that battle anyway (unlike Persona 3/4, where you could lose an hour of progress,) so I don't see how it's that big of a deal.

So if it's not that big of a deal, why did they do it that way? It's still a stupid annoyance, with no reason to do it that way. In the original Final Fantasy if an enemy died and the other characters were targeting that space, they'd hit empty air. Sure, next round you can just have them target the still living monsters, but the point is it shouldn't have done that. That's why it got fixed in later remakes of the game, because it was stupid. There are still people who defend that hitting empty air as "challenging" and "not that big of a deal" but the fact remains that the creators of the game acknowledged it was stupid EVEN IF the fans defend it.

Having a game over if the main character dies is stupid EVEN IF people defend it.

Do you really like grinding that much? I won't say I'm necessarily a fan of a level-cap, but I don't see how it's a major problem.

I don't like grinding. But having the option to go up a level or two to make things better is not a bad thing, and taking away that freedom IS a bad thing. It's always a bad design decision to take away freedom from the player (this goes for the level caps AND the AI controlled partners).

And I can see it being a major problem. I don't know that there's anything like this in FFXIII, and probably there isn't. However, in earlier FF games there is a spell called Level 5 Death. It kills any party member whose level is a multiple of 5. So if you have a party of all level 15 characters, you'll all die immediately. So what's the solution? Have some characters gain a level and they'll be immune. Can you imagine having to go through an area where enemies could throw Level 5 Death at you and you were capped at 15 without being able to level up again? That would be a major problem.

Again, I'm pretty sure that such a situation does not exist in FFXIII, I am just giving an example where not being able to gain levels IS a major problem.

In an RPG like this, I'd actually rather have characters that lean towards certain skills/roles than characters that play largely identically, or at least, have some way to make them more distinct.

I agree with you, EXCEPT that FFXIII makes it LOOK LIKE you can make any party member do any job because every character has every job on their Crystarium. The problem is, it is more expensive for characters to take jobs opposed to their innate skills. So the game makes it SEEM like you can say "Y'know, I'll make Sazh a Blaster, it's expensive but I want to give him that choice!" Except, Sazh will literally NEVER be a better Blaster than Hope is. Why fool the player into thinking they can make any character do anything? Why trick the player into playing the game wrong? If they wanted each character to have distinct roles, then GIVE THEM DISTINCT ROLES. Don't give them something and say "You can make any character do any job, but don't do it because they'll suck at it!" At least in FFX, if you WANTED to you could make Yuna as good of a physical attacker as Wakka. You didn't have to, but you could.

XII had something of the latter problem.

Which is why I wish International Zodiac Job System had come out in the US. But oh well. :\

And even though you COULD make every character largely identical in XII, it would be kinda dumb to do so. Yeah, late in the game when you're swimming in LP and everyone has mastered everything on the License Board, they're all carbon copies for the most part (aside from slight stat variations and which Espers they can summon), at the beginning you'd be pretty dumb to not have one character specialize in spellcasting, one to be a heavy hitter, so on. And while it doesn't particularly matter WHICH character you pick to be which specialization, you don't want to go into some fights with everyone in heavy armor and no spells.

And I don't see how this is a terribly different system than what Final Fantasy (or most RPGs for this matter) has generally done.

Because, as I said before, most RPGs do one of two things:

1. Everyone has special skills unique to them. A good example is FFIX, where Vivi is the only Black Mage, Zidane is the only Thief, so on. This gives every character a particular job in combat.

2. Everyone is basically a clone of each other with slight stat differences and maybe a couple of different things. A good example is FFVII, where yeah Barret's magic isn't stellar but you can still load him up with Materia (the stat bonuses Materia gives can counteract his low magic anyway) and everyone's Limit Break is special to them, but everyone can more or less do everything equally.

Some games use a combination of the two (as I said, in FFX everyone starts out different but late in the game as you open up the Sphere Grid, you can take them down other people's paths and customize them, and if everyone maxes out the Grid then they'll all pretty much be the same), but what we have in FFXIII is this:

Every character has huge stat differences that give them a unique role in combat, but we'll give you the opportunity to make everyone do the same things, except you're stupid for doing so because you'd be wasting your time and energy.

I can see the appeal of this for say, challenges (play the game with everyone having jobs opposing what they're good for), but weird challenges shouldn't dictate how a game flows, otherwise it would be great for FFVI to have every enemy give only one experience point each because hey, it'd be awesome for low level challenges!

although the fact that Rabanastre's shops were so spread out was a pet peeve of mine...but that's something else.

Yeah Rabanastre was a pain to navigate until you got that Moogling thing that let you warp around. Still, as I said, it gave the game a feeling of realism, it really made the world feel alive. More so since there were a LOT of NPCs, and you couldn't talk to all of them, as opposed to games like well, FFIV which, while I love, has the problem of towns with a population of 9.

However, the field areas honestly felt pretty empty. There was rarely anything of value in chests, and nothing much extra to do there outside of hunts and nothing all that interesting to see.

I didn't mind the field areas for being empty, I only really was bothered by them for the parts of each area looking the same more or less. Some areas were really good at having each area be unique (Giza Plains for example), but other places like Cerobi Steppe was just the same thing every screen which admittedly did get old. Still, as I said, the feeling that the world gave me overall was enough to counteract that.

Except for the Ogir-Yensa Sandsea. Argh I hate hate hate that place.

And yeah the treasure system they used in XII was really stupid. Random treasures are always a bad thing especially when you find a chest tucked in a corner and think you've found something cool only to crack it open and find 6 gil. Frustrating.

I've noticed that most peoples' complaints about FFXIII in particular are the same ones as with other RPGs.

Depends on which group you're talking to. If you're talking to Western gamers who like RPGs like Neverwinter Nights or Dragon Age, then yes, their criticisms of FFXIII are the same criticisms they'd have about any JRPG. For the JRPG fans (like myself)? Not so much.

Final Fantasy supposedly represents some sort of immovable standard in JRPGs (it really isn't)

Agreed. Dragon Quest is the immovable standard in JRPGs. FF games have changed a lot between iterations. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. I still like more FF games than I hate (I really only hate 2 for its craptastic level system and 8 for everything except its music).

I feel like most of the changes in FFXIII are in line with modern RPG design.

See, I DON'T feel like that. Name one other game that is as rigidly linear as FFXIII. Just one. I've seen the maps for the first 5-10 hours of the game and literally they are all one single line. The line may curve or bend but it is still a line. Even FFX, as linear as that was, had paths you could walk off to gain extra treasures. It may have been linear but you could still EXPLORE. And FFXII was linear but you could still go to places you didn't have to. For example going to the Necrohol of Nabudis when you're still level 15 or so and will get immediately murdered by any enemy, but you go anyway to get the Zodiac Spear.

If "modern RPG design" is to take someone on a straight-line path from point A to point B, taking away control over their own party members, and not allowing them to customize equipment, then modern RPGs need to go back to the days of the SNES Final Fantasy games.

[Whitefang]

First off, I will say I agree with this:

Except for the Ogir-Yensa Sandsea. Argh I hate hate hate that place.

I just got here today. Finally, a place where I could get a good monster chain together...I must have gotten 10 free Phoenix Downs.

Anyway, I have to say after all this discussion that the only way to decide for sure is to play the game. I can see merits for both sides. If you can't customize your characters much, what's the point? On the other hand, what's the point if all the characters are the same? I guess it just depends on what you prefer.

[Nate]

Yeah the Ogir-Yensa Sandsea is a good place to get the "50 Chain" achievement, but I still hate it.

Okay, so, in the effort of not being completely negative about the game and complaining, I will now state things Squenix could have done that would make the game better and I would not complain as much.

First, I don't think there's anything they could do to make me accept the summons. I'll admit my total bias to that.

Okay, first, have each character be really awesome at one job, and be kind of awesome at a second. For example, have one be primary Blaster/secondary Jammer, the second be primary Attacker/secondary Defender, and the third be primary Healer/secondary Enhancer for your first three characters. Then the next few switch it up, like the fourth character to join you is a primary Defender and secondary Healer. This allows for some customization of a party, ensuring nobody is a clone and also avoiding the Crystarium's current problem of "You can make this character a job they shouldn't be but you're stupid because they'll suck at it." This way they have a job they're good at and a second job they're also pretty good at. So for example, the primary Attacker/secondary Defender would be a good Defender, but the primary Defender/secondary Healer would be a better Defender than him...but of course, you wouldn't be able to switch that one over to an attacking role, he'd just be a good support.

I really think that would have been far superior. Also, the Crystarium could have two branches for each character, one for primary and the other secondary, and maybe the cost for the secondary job's skills are say, 1.5 times as costly as the primary job's skills. This would allow for smaller growth of the secondary job but not penalizing the player if they'd rather focus on it (just make it a bit slower).

For the linearity, they should have taken the blueprints for FFX. As I said before, FFX was a lot of "running in a straight line" for almost the first half of the game. The differences are, that there were side paths you could run down for a bit of exploring, and the lines had points on them where towns were. If FFXIII did that, I think it would solve a lot of the complaints. Even the first map in FFX (not Zanarkand, I'm talking about the beach) wasn't a complete single line, there were a couple of branches. And again, if they would put towns like FFX did every so often along the path, it would help to break up the repetition and put some life into the game. That would completely remove my complaints about it.

They should remove level caps entirely if they're going to use a level system. If they don't want to use the level system, they should have the entire Crystarium open from the start, similar to how the entire Sphere Grid was open at the start of FFX (aside from a few locked nodes), because remember, FFX didn't have levels, everything was done on the Sphere Grid.

The armor thing still bugs me. There really isn't anything they can do to appease me on that except put armor in the game. If they're really adamant and the reason for having no armor is "But in this world nobody would run around wearing plate mail!" or whatever, then do what FFVII did. All the armor in that game was basically bracelets/bangles. They could do that for XIII as well. To be honest the armor thing isn't a dealbreaker for me, if the other concerns I mentioned above were fixed, having no equipment would still annoy me, but I could probably accept it (though I'd still complain, but I'd be more positive about the game overall).

And lastly, they should have kept the Gambit system and allowed you to change over to one of the other characters if the one you're controlling dies, similar to XII. There really is no reason to have the player control only one character in this game, or to have a game over when the one character goes down. At any rate, the Gambit system would have let the computer mostly take care of the other two characters, but still allow some control over them (again, like how in FFXII you could take control of a character at any time and make them perform an action, then they'd go back to their Gambit routine after it was finished).

I really think if these changes had been implemented, I would still complain about a few things in the game, but I would probably buy it and would be more positive about it overall. Anyway like I said, I wanted to be constructive in my criticism and show I could really like this game if a few simple changes were made.

[Cloud500]

I guess the only thing left for us to do is play the game on Tuesday (or whenever) and see how it is.

[Fish and Chips]

There's a bit too much going on to quote, so I'll sort everything here under headings for convenience.

No Party Control

I'll put this plainly. No party control in a turn-based RPG is inexcusable to me. I don't care what its justification is. If I have the spare time to punch in whatever commands I want to my main guy, I can take a moment to do so with my entire party. This has made or broken games for me. I lost nearly all interest in Persona 3 when I read you could only control your lead. If Persona 4 had continued that tradition, I probably wouldn't have bought it either.

That said, Final Fantasy XIII is a real-time RPG, which I'm a lot softer towards. It's acceptable that I can't have total party control when everyone is supposed to be acting simultaneously on the battlefield. However, I still like the ability to influence my party members in some way. In Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon, for example, all your summons act on their own under the AI's jurisdiction. Left to their own devices, they will fight the enemy without any input from you. However, they have certain abilities the AI defaults to always using, and with the press of a button you can switch what the default is, or even command them to use a particular ability once, and then return to their standard tactics.

Final Fantasy XIII's total alienation of party control is bothersome to me, if it is indeed in totality, though I don't know if there's some room for flexibility. Okay, so I can't control some character, but if I know that character will always act in the same fashion, as will all the others, can I bring him in when I need him, then switch him out, or change his tactics in the middle of the battle? That would be an important question to me.

Main Character KO

I dislike this. I can understand it, under certain circumstances, but I still dislike it.

To compare two Megaten titles, Raidou Kuzunoha (again) and Persona 4, in Raidou Kuzunoha you, that is Raidou himself, is the only human being involved in a network of spirits and familiars. Every additional party member you have is a familiar you've summoned. All your enemies are spirits, demons, small-time gods, with only the very occasional exception where they're not. In this case, I can appreciate your death causing a game over. Every other character in the field is an immortal figment, either unassociated with you or tied only to the material plane by your own will. You are mortal. It makes some sense.

However in Persona 4, all your party members are human beings. Any one of them can be dealt a deathblow only to be revived on the next turn by another human being. Anyone can use a revival bead, or cast recarm, including the main character, but also anyone who is not the main character but possesses healing skills, or anyone who has access to the inventory, which is everyone. But the minute your main guy gets struck down, it's game over? I'm sorry, I'm not buying that, even if it does only happen on occasion.

Except by some 11th hour plot twist I would know nothing about, everyone in your party in Final Fantasy XIII is a fellow mortal person, durable yet fallible. Living or dying by your main character makes no sense to me.

Level Caps

Let me just say that I agree with Nate on this. The entire purpose of leveling in the first place is to adjust the given difficulty of any area in the game. If my strategy is working perfectly, but the boss is a hard-hitter who seems to be knocking off just a little more HP then I have, I like to be able to waste a few minutes improving my stats so that I can survive on the off occasion that the AI roulette makes him use his super move twice in a row.

Fake Character Customization

The problem I have here is that the availability of character customization affects how I play the game. If all my characters are essentially lifeless dolls I can assign different stats and attributes to, I will, to build my perfect team. If everyone comes with designated jobs, I'll simply sort them around in order of effectiveness for whatever challenge is in front of me. Either type is fine, but if a game tries to convince me it's one when it's really the other, I feel cheated, likely because I've wasted my time either (1) leveling up this guy when that guy is better suited for his job, or (2) Assuming this guy had to stay his classes when secretly I could have made him exceptional elsewhere. It's not that either is a problem, but I want to know which one I'm playing.

Linearity

I actually don't care that much about this, since in my experience almost all Japanese RPGs are linear anyway. I love Final Fantasy IX, let it never be said otherwise, but that game was ridiculously linear. Sure, you can wander around, ever so occasionally finding something new and interesting, but the majority of time you're landlocked with two exits, one of which you just came out from. There are only three instants in disc one where you can go off the beaten path for anything actually meaningful.

What does bother me is how little effort they put into disguising it. I write now that Final Fantasy IX is linear, but when I first played it I wouldn't have thought such a thing.

No Towns

I can take them or leave them. It really depends on the type of game.

[Rocketshipper]

Got it pre-ordered already. Can't wait. I wasn;t actually all that excited about it...until I saw this in its full HD glory: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJPbozRomX4

And my mind promptly vaporized from awesomness overload. I watched that trailer about a zillion times...then I went out and bought Leona Lewis' CD "Echo" just for that song. I even pushed forward my plans to buy a new HD TV, because there was no way I wanted to play 13 on my old crappy SD TV.

I've heard the various complaints, and though I'm sure I won;t like everything thats come up in this new game (I hardly ever do) I'm not too worried about it. Every FF game changes something, if that botthered me I'd probably have stopped playing them long ago. The Linearity issue doesn't bother me at all; in fact maybe this means I won;t need a stratigy guide ^^, and I'm sure I'll adapt to the other gameplay aspects. I HATED FF 12's battle system when I started playing, but I eventually got used to it and learned how to master it. I'm sure the same thing will happen here.

How does the level cap thing work? Cause I actually think that sounds kinda cool. *hides* No really, if the game discourages you from power leveling too much, with a cap or something, then it also gives me an idea of wether or not I'm strong enough to keep going in the area. Sort of reminds me of the paper mario series; in the game the enemies would give you one less experience point each time you leveled up, until eventually you'd be so leveled that the weak enemies in old areas wouldn;t give you ANY experience (or, in thousand year door, just 1 exp. point) If you Like power leveling then it would be annoying, but personally I liked it, because I knew that, when the enemies stopped giving a ton of experience, that it meant I was strong enough to take on the boss of the area without a problem.

[MasterDias]

So my statement still stands. AI controlled characters in a turn-based game is garbage (actually one of the reasons I do not like Dragon Quest IV for the NES, although I love Dragon Quest to death, but the DS remake is awesome because you can manually control everyone).

I admit that most of the RPGs that use an AI-controlled party are Action RPGs like Tales and Star Ocean. Supposedly, though, XIII's combat is so fast-paced that Square-Enix was afraid manual combat would be too slow or something if I roughly paraphrase what I remember reading somewhere.

And I can see it being a major problem. I don't know that there's anything like this in FFXIII, and probably there isn't. However, in earlier FF games there is a spell called Level 5 Death. It kills any party member whose level is a multiple of 5. So if you have a party of all level 15 characters, you'll all die immediately. So what's the solution? Have some characters gain a level and they'll be immune. Can you imagine having to go through an area where enemies could throw Level 5 Death at you and you were capped at 15 without being able to level up again? That would be a major problem.

Again, I'm pretty sure that such a situation does not exist in FFXIII, I am just giving an example where not being able to gain levels IS a major problem.

Well, sure but, wasn't the last installment that had Level 5 Death like Final Fantasy IX? Yes, having a death spell level-targeted at exactly the level-cap level is bad game design, but I highly doubt a situation as unusual as that will be present in FFXIII. If game has a level-cap like this, I find it unlikely it would be designed to be an extreme handicap.

I agree with you, EXCEPT that FFXIII makes it LOOK LIKE you can make any party member do any job because every character has every job on their Crystarium. The problem is, it is more expensive for characters to take jobs opposed to their innate skills. So the game makes it SEEM like you can say "Y'know, I'll make Sazh a Blaster, it's expensive but I want to give him that choice!" Except, Sazh will literally NEVER be a better Blaster than Hope is. Why fool the player into thinking they can make any character do anything? Why trick the player into playing the game wrong? If they wanted each character to have distinct roles, then GIVE THEM DISTINCT ROLES. Don't give them something and say "You can make any character do any job, but don't do it because they'll suck at it!" At least in FFX, if you WANTED to you could make Yuna as good of a physical attacker as Wakka. You didn't have to, but you could.

Every character has huge stat differences that give them a unique role in combat, but we'll give you the opportunity to make everyone do the same things, except you're stupid for doing so because you'd be wasting your time and energy.

I'm assuming you can look at the characters stats and that it would be fairly easy to guess which characters are good at which job. Otherwise, the fact that the opposing jobs are expensive should be another clue. There are only six characters and six jobs, so it can't possibly be that difficult or time-consuming to figure out who's good at what, especially for JRPG fans like you and me.

Maybe the more casual RPG players, the people who only really play Final Fantasy and a few other high-profile RPGs, would have trouble...I don't know.

See, I DON'T feel like that. Name one other game that is as rigidly linear as FFXIII. Just one. I've seen the maps for the first 5-10 hours of the game and literally they are all one single line. The line may curve or bend but it is still a line. Even FFX, as linear as that was, had paths you could walk off to gain extra treasures. It may have been linear but you could still EXPLORE. And FFXII was linear but you could still go to places you didn't have to. For example going to the Necrohol of Nabudis when you're still level 15 or so and will get immediately murdered by any enemy, but you go anyway to get the Zodiac Spear.

If "modern RPG design" is to take someone on a straight-line path from point A to point B, taking away control over their own party members, and not allowing them to customize equipment, then modern RPGs need to go back to the days of the SNES Final Fantasy games.

Games do seem to becoming more linear though, and not just JRPGs.
I have seen a number of people comment on this.
Also, Kitase recently stated that a Final Fantasy VII remake is unlikely given how expensive it would be and how long it would take to develop, so take that as you will.

[Mithrandir]

...



...


If I'm reading this right, here's what I'm seeing:

1. No side quests.
2. No party control.
3. Linear plot.
4. No level grinding.
5. Main character KO = game over.

I'm sorry if I missed something, but can someone explain to me HOW they are able to call this game "Final Fantasy." If square has actually decided to get rid of everything I like about the FF series, then it may very well become the *Final* Fantasy game for me.

And I can't believe I just said that. No really, I can't believe it... I'm actually sad.

[blkmage]

I don't understand the linearity complaints when JRPGs tend to be the most railroaded games, if not in exploration, then definitely in plot.

And well, if Final Fantasy can survive ATB, jobs, espers, materia, junctioning, sphere grids, becoming an MMO, and whatever XII did, then I'm pretty sure it can survive XIII and XIV.

[uc pseudonym]

Stop me if I'm misreading, but I think I'm seeing the word "linear" used in two different ways. In one sense it means that the areas and plot of a game proceed in a basically straight line. But people are also talking about linearity in terms of side content and area complexity, and I think that's a different thing. Perhaps that's better labeled "breadth" - you still go from A to B to C, but the line between those points is broad enough to let you wander somewhat.

Though I like non-linearity quite a bit, I don't dislike a linear game automatically (and I think it's necessary for certain kinds of stories). However, I do dislike the idea of RPGs with little or no breadth. Isn't part of the fun having the option to explore a map fully, spend some time with a minigame, or go off the main path for a side quest?

Forgetting about story, if these things are too limited, the gameplay itself is damaged. RPGs vary, but part of the point is usually resource management, equippment, character development, etc. If you're given so few options that there's no way to make meaningful choices or strategy, then the game should probably have been a different genre. If HP, damage, and all those other numbers are on a fixed progression, then the game is a brawler disguised as an RPG, but probably without the required skill that makes a brawler fun.

Whether any of this has to do with FFXIII, I don't know. A lot can be said from what we already know, but I'll have to play it and see how it feels. That's not likely now that the series has moved to current generation consoles.

[Nate]

I don't understand the linearity complaints when JRPGs tend to be the most railroaded games, if not in exploration, then definitely in plot.

As uc said just now, there's different types of "linear." I can accept a "linear" story (although I don't see how that term would apply to a story).

Okay here's the deal. When I want to go to the grocery store in my car, it's pretty much a straight shot from my house to the store. However on the way to the grocery store, I can swing down a side road and stop at a fast food place if I want. There's two entrances leading into the parking lot of the store, so I can take the close one, or I can go down the road a bit and turn left, then turn left again into the store (if I needed gas or something since the gas station is at that intersection).

Even though it is a straight line from my house to the store, I can go down a couple of other paths on my way. This is how most JRPGs are. You have a clear destination, but you can trek off the beaten path a bit and explore a little, find some hidden stuff.

FFXIII is like driving in a tunnel. There are NO places to pull off, or stop and explore, it is one direction and you can only keep going straight. That is what I mean by "linear." You cannot name any other JRPG in history that literally is one straight tunnel with no side paths. It can't be done. There aren't any (probably). That's why FFXIII is linear and horrible because of it. There is no exploration. There is no trekking off the beaten path because there ARE NO OTHER PATHS. This is completely different from the game saying "We want you to go here to this place."

Supposedly the game "opens up" after 30 hours or so but why should I be forced to play for 30 hours before a game gets fun? I can put up with slow tutorial levels (even if they're annoying). I sat through the whole Twilight Town crap with Roxas in Kingdom Hearts II. It sucked and I hated it, and it was about 2 hours long, but I can endure that. But 30 hours is different from two hours.

And well, if Final Fantasy can survive ATB, jobs, espers, materia, junctioning, sphere grids, becoming an MMO, and whatever XII did, then I'm pretty sure it can survive XIII and XIV.

Oh sure, it can survive. That's not even in question. Nobody said it wouldn't survive. The problem is, the sales numbers aren't so great. In fact, they're bad. REALLY bad.

Yes, the game sold over 1 million copies its first day, which is pretty good. In fact, it's a record for the series. However, it's first WEEK sales? Bad. Really bad. Final Fantasy 8 still holds the first week sales record at 2.5 million copies. 7 comes in second at a little over 2 million.

13's first week sales are a bit over 1.5 million. Which isn't bad, but it's the second worst Final Fantasy game as far as first week sales go (the only one lower than 13 is X-2). Every other game has managed to get to at least 1.7 million.

Then it gets even uglier. Know what? I'll just link the chart:



Look at the comparisons after the first week of sales. It slides down, a lot, especially near the end. Compound this with the fact that there were game stores pawning off copies of FFXIII for less than 25 bucks after the game had only been out for about a month. They're desperately trying to get rid of the game. This is NOT a good sign for the series.

Will the series survive? Of course it will. Square has tons of money and they're not going to go bankrupt over this, one million sales in the first day is a lot, and they're making a huge profit. But the fact remains that this isn't doing as good as the other games, and this is a sign that something is wrong.

EDIT: Maybe there is an obscure JRPG that was as linear as this. So I won't be so presumptuous as to say you can't name any. So that's why I added the "probably."

[Cloud500]

I really want to like this game, but it's not really happening. I think I'm just desperate for a big-budget PS3 JRPG...

[blkmage]

I guess that in my view, the sort of freedom we see in JRPGs is vacuous. Yeah, you could stray off the path, but there is no meaningful impact to the overall picture. It's kind of like this particular case of when you're presented with a bunch of choices in a dialogue tree. Sure, you can choose the others and go through those trees, but the game will loop through the dialogue until you choose the right one.

Do I do sidequests? Yeah, but usually when we're in the open world mode where there's no more stuff to do before the game's finale. But we know FFXIII has that too. With the way I play and consider JRPGs, FFXIII will be no different from any of those because I find the freedom in those previous games to be quite meaningless.

I play Western RPGs too and almost every game that I consider to have meaningful freedom of exploration is a Western RPG. If there's one thing they do right, it's the open world.

So I might like it. You might not. Does FFXIII represent a trend in future FF games? Is this the death of FF as we know it? No. Everyone who thinks so is an alarmist or is mad that they aren't getting the game they wanted.

I mean, tracing each game back, we can see that recently, each game is wildly different from the last. FFXII had real-time combat. FFXI was an MMO. FFX ditched ATB, which, if you've forgotten, was huge. Could you imagine going back to the turn of the century and telling your younger self that in the new millenium, no Final Fantasy game would be using ATB anymore? And FFIX was completely different from FFVIII was completely different from FFVII.

So if you don't like FFXIII? You're in luck! FFXIV isn't going to be anything like FFXIII; it's an MMO! And FFXV? It probably won't resemble any FF game we've seen before either. Of course, this is assuming you're willing to give new things a try. If you want to play a game that's exactly like FFVII, you're better off going on PSN and buying FFVII, because, like I've mentioned before, Final Fantasy is not some stationary pillar by which a JRPG is measured. Obviously, no Final Fantasy game has dictated what any future Final Fantasy game is going to be like.

And don't forget that if you hate FFXIII, are two other FFXIII games (Agito and Versus) waiting for you to love/hate them.

[uc pseudonym]

I play Western RPGs too and almost every game that I consider to have meaningful freedom of exploration is a Western RPG. If there's one thing they do right, it's the open world.

I'd be curious to hear which games you mean and also to hear you say more about what you mean by an open world. My experience with western RPGs is basically limited to Bioware, Bethesda, and Diablo (unless you want to count the days of Apple II games), so I'm honestly asking.

There are probably a lot of smaller developers out there doing interesting things, and I would like to know about them. My general attitude toward the major game studios is that all choices are basically illusory, but I would like to be proved wrong. Not that I won't continue enjoying the stories of linear games.

[MasterDias]

Look at the comparisons after the first week of sales. It slides down, a lot, especially near the end. Compound this with the fact that there were game stores pawning off copies of FFXIII for less than 25 bucks after the game had only been out for about a month. They're desperately trying to get rid of the game. This is NOT a good sign for the series.

Will the series survive? Of course it will. Square has tons of money and they're not going to go bankrupt over this, one million sales in the first day is a lot, and they're making a huge profit. But the fact remains that this isn't doing as good as the other games, and this is a sign that something is wrong.

I don't think it's fully valid to establish a direct causation between people not liking the game and XIII's price drop, if that's what you are trying to do. It seems likely to me that retailers overestimated demand, as surprising as that may seem, and ordered too many copies. As the chart shows, Final Fantasy sales have been on somewhat of a decline since VIII anyway. XIII's first week sales isn't exceptionally unusual given those figures, but it is a sharper drop than retailers might have predicted. I am more curious by the sudden drop-off in sales after about three or four weeks however.

By the way, where did you get that chart anyway? It was interesting.

[Nate]

I guess that in my view, the sort of freedom we see in JRPGs is vacuous.

But that's true of ANY video game. In any video game, I can't do WHATEVER I want, I'm constrained by the limitations of the program code. "Freedom" in any video game is an illusion. However there's good ways to make an illusion and bad ways to make an illusion. David Copperfield making the Statue of Liberty disappear was an illusion, but a good one. Me standing in front of a mirror and saying "Look I have cloned myself!" is a bad illusion.

In Final Fantasy IX I can't explore the whole map at the start, but at least I'm not going down a tunnel with no side-paths whatsoever.

Yeah, you could stray off the path, but there is no meaningful impact to the overall picture.

No, but exploring is fun.

It's kind of like this particular case of when you're presented with a bunch of choices in a dialogue tree. Sure, you can choose the others and go through those trees, but the game will loop through the dialogue until you choose the right one.

Haven't played Mass Effect eh?

Do I do sidequests? Yeah, but usually when we're in the open world mode where there's no more stuff to do before the game's finale. But we know FFXIII has that too. With the way I play and consider JRPGs, FFXIII will be no different from any of those because I find the freedom in those previous games to be quite meaningless.

That's a matter of opinion, but here's the thing, if you find the freedom to be meaningless then that means you don't care either way. Some people DO care about having some form of freedom during the game, which means putting in that freedom makes one group of people happy and another group doesn't care, and taking it out makes one group of people upset and another group doesn't care. Why would you do something that literally CANNOT be seen as a good thing by anyone? One group will hate it and the other won't care.

By the way, where did you get that chart anyway? It was interesting.

I found it earlier today but honestly I can't remember the site I got it from so...sorry. :\ I googled a lot of things, like "final fantasy game sales" and "final fantasy first week sales" and stuff and found it on one of the results.

[Straylight]

The reviewers seemed to like it. Can't wait to get my hands on it!

[Whitefang]

I have to disagree with the exploring is fun bit, at least partially.

For example, I will compare Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy VI, before you can get airships.

In VI, the map is large, even from point 1 to point 2 (From Narshe to Edgar's Castle). I felt lost, and the only reward I had for being lost was more encounters. And more encounters. And more encounters. That was a bad way of implementing the ability to go "off the beaten path". However, in IV, due mostly to it being the first SNES installment, the map is smaller, and more linear. Sure, you may still go the "wrong way", but it is more obvious that you have done so, and since the only thing out here in the field is more battles, it's much more comforting to know, "oh, I must be heading the wrong way, I'll try this way instead".

However, once the airships are obtained, VI's world feels markedly more open, whereas IV feels like a small city of uninteresting locales compared to a world. What are there, 4 sidequests in IV? Nevertheless, my point is that if there is nothing to find by sidetracking, then there is no reason to include it in the game.

[Nate]

The reviewers seemed to like it.

Reviewers also liked Scribblenauts, Halo 3, Wii Fit, and Final Fantasy X-2.

Also an 83 on Metacritic is far from a shower of praise from reviewers. Not like, say, Super Mario Galaxy's 97.

Nevertheless, my point is that if there is nothing to find by sidetracking, then there is no reason to include it in the game.

Why are you even playing RPGs? If you want tunnels with nowhere to explore, go play Sonic and the Secret Rings. Exploring is as much a part of an RPG as statistics are. Also, Final Fantasy IV linear? Feel free to come back and join the conversation after you've gotten past Cagnazzo, because you clearly never went anywhere in the Underworld or on the Moon.

[Rocketshipper]

Sometimes I think you can go too far in the other direction with the linearity vs openness thing. One of my main annoyances with 12 was that, in the end, it was like 40% main storyline and 60% side quests (insanely grind-tastic sidequests at that). More of the content was optional than was mandatory. That annoyed me, why not put more effort into the main plot? Its like getting a game and discovering the majority of content and effort was focused on the versus mode, and your a single player who just bought it for the story mode. And I've pretty much avoided western Style RPGs for the same reason. Optional content is great sometimes, but in the end I want a good solid main story campaign.

I recall reading somewhere once that Final Fantasy 7 was one of the most returned games of all time.

[Nate]

One of my main annoyances with 12 was that, in the end, it was like 40% main storyline and 60% side quests (insanely grind-tastic sidequests at that).

Man I pretty much wasted every storyline boss in no time flat because my characters were so overpowered from sidequests and optional equipment that nothing was a challenge (except Yiazmat and Hell Wyrm, and even Hell Wyrm was more time-consuming and frustrating than hard).

That annoyed me, why not put more effort into the main plot?

I think the main plot had a LOT of effort in it, just not in a sense of game mechanics (in other words, it was intriguing and well-written, but the people you play as really didn't do anything in it). Also I think a fair balance has to be struck as far as game length. Gamers are getting older and have full time jobs now (most of 'em anyway), and with new games coming out all the time, it's kind of risky to put out a 100 hour main story game. I've never done a straight-shot playthrough of FFXII, but I'd assume it's only about 40-50 hours if you don't do sidequests, which is a fair length.

Besides, in Final Fantasy games after the SNES era, a lot of the content has been sidequests. I'm pretty sure I could beat 7 in about 20 hours if I didn't do sidequests too.