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Author Topic: Final Fantasy XIII  (Read 9332 times)

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Cthulhu-chan

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Re: Final Fantasy XIII
« Reply #40 on: January 27, 2010, 12:15:17 PM »

I might skip 14.

Kinda wish I could say the same.  so weak... :;_;:
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jsnlxndrlv

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Re: Final Fantasy XIII
« Reply #41 on: March 09, 2010, 05:23:58 PM »

This game is out. I've been playing for a couple hours. Let's get the obvious complaints out of the way right now.

Lightning is just Cloud plus boobs, the camera controls break bold new ground in the field of "sucking hideously", and I find myself lacking a useful adjective for the game's pacing and mechanical development: "glacial" just doesn't emphasize the slowness enough. A lot of these NPCs seem indistinguishable from characters in FFXII and X. The storytelling aspires to be Star Wars Prequel Action Scene: The Movie; that quote about sound and fury applies. To compensate, the writers and world builders have included a catalog in the menu, which contains two or three redundant story summaries, some retellings of your history, further elaborations on what that cutscene just attempted to depict, and a reminder of who you're playing and what you're doing. It also explains the plot, and there's a synopsis of everything that's happened in the game. Oh, and you can read a list of the things that have occurred so far.

I don't know why I keep harping on how repetitious the chapter summaries are; they've actually been helpful. Maybe I'm just antsy about how heavy-handed the storytelling has been so far. It's not subtle.

Finally: all of Vanille's dialogue, voice-acting, and animation has made me embarrassed for Square Enix.

tl;dr this game si really cool and you guys should definitely buy it
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Cthulhu-chan

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Re: Final Fantasy XIII
« Reply #42 on: March 10, 2010, 04:20:30 AM »

I'm enjoying it.  I do agree on Vanille, though.  I don't hate her, but ugh...

I almost prefer Hope.  Almost.
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Bleck

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Re: Final Fantasy XIII
« Reply #43 on: March 10, 2010, 10:58:56 AM »

I hate all of the characters.
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Mothra

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Re: Final Fantasy XIII
« Reply #44 on: March 10, 2010, 01:19:27 PM »

hahahahaha

yesssss
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jsnlxndrlv

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Re: Final Fantasy XIII
« Reply #45 on: March 10, 2010, 01:33:10 PM »

Played more. Vanille doesn't bother me so much anymore, and the catalog's a godsend. The world-building seems less slapshod now that I've been more than two places, too.

Don't sell your components; they're used for item upgrades later. This should have been completely obvious to me, and I even made a separate save before I sold my components off for the first time. There's no way I'm restoring from that save just for twenty or thirty extra items, though.

Random things I like:

The fact that fights are hard. Lightning's lieutenant. Characters talking automatically when you stand near them. Three-party battles: the first such fights (when it's just Sazh and Vanille) are puzzles where you have to figure out which enemy to kill first. The fact that, at this point in the game, I haven't needed to use the shop once. Everything about Sazh: sure, he may have a Chocobo chick in his hair, but this somehow manages to be less stupid than I thought it'd be.
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Cthulhu-chan

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Re: Final Fantasy XIII
« Reply #46 on: March 10, 2010, 02:03:54 PM »

Random things I like:  Everything about Sazh: he has a Chocobo chick in his hair, this is awesome.
:perfect:
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Mothra

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Re: Final Fantasy XIII
« Reply #47 on: March 10, 2010, 02:25:48 PM »

Characters talking automatically when you stand near them

Oooh! Are all NPCs voice acted or is this some kind of popup?
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Envy

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Re: Final Fantasy XIII
« Reply #48 on: March 10, 2010, 02:28:35 PM »

They are all acted.
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PhoenixUltima

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Re: Final Fantasy XIII
« Reply #49 on: March 11, 2010, 11:14:30 PM »

I'm holding off on getting this until some of you have played through to the end and can confirm it doesn't turn into pure bullshit the way FFXII did.
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Cthulhu-chan

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Re: Final Fantasy XIII
« Reply #50 on: March 12, 2010, 12:33:20 AM »

What kind of "pure bullshit" are you talking about, sonny?
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PhoenixUltima

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Re: Final Fantasy XIII
« Reply #51 on: March 13, 2010, 09:05:40 PM »

Hunts that require you to jump through 11 flaming hoops in reverse order just to even take a crack at a monster that has 100 billion health and turns temporarily invincible at 10% health left, ultimate gear that requires almost MMO levels of grinding, the later dungeons are all uniquely horrible, the entire game generally turning into one big grind. Near the end I was playing more out of an obligation to finish the damn thing rather than any desire to actually play the game, which is generally a bad sign.
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Mothra

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Re: Final Fantasy XIII
« Reply #52 on: March 13, 2010, 09:07:44 PM »

What's the bottom line here PU

is FFXIII merciless fagging
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PhoenixUltima

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Re: Final Fantasy XIII
« Reply #53 on: March 13, 2010, 09:52:15 PM »

I don't have XIII. I was talking about XII. I'm mostly waiting on other people's opinions before I go and get XIII.
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the asshole you hate

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Re: Final Fantasy XIII
« Reply #54 on: March 14, 2010, 02:03:12 PM »

I'm about 1/3 through (halfway done with the main plot) and am enjoying the hell out of it.

The thing that hooked me was the lack of resources. It feels a bit like a survival game on hard, and there are gimmicks within the item system and leveling system that make it very enticing to a completionist.

I keep calling Hope variations of Vahn and Sora, and I'm pretty sure Vanille is some kind of pokemon for the first half of the game, AND admittedly the [spoiler]suicide bit OMG HEAVY ISSUES, 'moms are tough' and Hope's seemingly endless supply of emo[/spoiler] are a bit annoying, but these are only marginal annoyances with the icing.

The delicious cake itself is a battle system with time as almost the only resource. Instead of mana, spells take only a segment of the Active Time Battle gague.

A very basic outline of the battle scheme: All enemies (and your characters to some degree) have a chain gauge. Magic makes the chain gauge go up. The higher the chain gauge, the more damage attacks will do. Physical attacks slow the chain gauge's rapid depletion. Debuffs and other saboteur class moves also do this, as well as further weakening enemies. If you libra an enemy your allies will automatically target it with what it's weak to.

The basic strategy is to determine if an enemy is weaker to physical or chain-gauge defeat, then, by switching between pre-created job class templates during the battle, hit them with that weakness. It's much more complex than that once you add in dozens of other factors like chain-gauge resistant, magic resistant enemies that must be debuffed or Summoned out of your way.

The trick is finding the perfect combination of job classes to unbalance the enemy and cause it to Stagger by filling the chain gauge, at which point attacks nearly double in damage for a time.

There are only maybe 100 equippable items. This means that instead of buying new items, you level up the ones you have already, and eventually evolve them with special components into the next form (most equippables have three forms). Each item can be leveled up with organic and mechanical components which bestow experience on the item. Organic items increase the multiplier applied to the experience each component puts into the item and mechanical components are worth tons of experience but instead lower said multiplier. The trick is to put just enough organics into the item to make the multiplier x3 and then pump in a ton of mechanical components to drive the XP of the item into crazytown. I have a sword right now that is basically owning, though I had to grind about an hour to make it so buff.

Each item 'class' (such as HP increasing gear) can be mixed and matched to synthesize extra abilities. So if I put two or more Boost-type items on, I will always synthesize active time battle increase on that caracter.

I'm currently planning to have Vanille (who has a pretty tragic story, actually) as a healer/saboteur/ravager, Snow as a sentinel/ravager/commando, and Lightning as a ravager/commando/medic. As I level those three sphere-grids for each of those characters I can switch between their jobs in-battle and almost instantly. The only thing I'll lack is a synergist, but I can make up for that later.

Anyway, yeah, don't listen to the haters. Like all FF games, this one is so different that comparisons to others are relatively pointless. This one gets high marks from me.
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the asshole you hate

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Re: Final Fantasy XIII
« Reply #55 on: March 14, 2010, 02:17:39 PM »

Vanille doesn't bother me so much anymore

Ditto.

Quote
The fact that fights are hard. Lightning's lieutenant. Characters talking automatically when you stand near them. Three-party battles: the first such fights (when it's just Sazh and Vanille) are puzzles where you have to figure out which enemy to kill first. The fact that, at this point in the game, I haven't needed to use the shop once. Everything about Sazh: sure, he may have a Chocobo chick in his hair, but this somehow manages to be less stupid than I thought it'd be.

I agree with everything you said here 100%.

I hope that your change of heart with Vanille indicates you'll enjoy her story (and Sahz's too) as much as I am.
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Kayma

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Re: Final Fantasy XIII
« Reply #56 on: March 14, 2010, 03:13:44 PM »

I hope that your change of heart with Vanille indicates you'll enjoy her story (and Sahz's too) as much as I am.


Easily my two favorite characters. Everything with them is just sugar and rainbows.
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the asshole you hate

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Re: Final Fantasy XIII
« Reply #57 on: March 15, 2010, 09:30:53 PM »

Since I would have liked to see a chart like this when I first started, I thought I'd post this here.

To upgrade an item:
1 Buy 36 Sturdy Bones.
2 Put 5 Sturdy Bones into the item to increase the Bonus Multiplier by X.25
3 Perform step 2 three additional times to reach a X2 Bonus Multiplier.
3 Put 16 Sturdy Bones into the item to increase the Bonus Multiplier to X3.
4 Calculate the experience required to level the item. You can do this by saving, leveling the item once, and seeing how much the item's next level will cost. The amount it went up is static throughout the item's growth, so if an item went from costing 1000 experience for level 2, and 1221 for level 3, it will cost 1442 to get to 4, and 1663 to get to 5. (See gamefaqs.com for a list of items and their max levels.)
5 Put in exactly enough Crankshafts (or Insulated Cabling if you're a low level) to meet or beat the total experience cost. (The number shown when upgrading is displayed post-multiplier.)

Wouldn't have put this here, but I'm having a hard time finding any really good free advice on this game and on the issue of item leveling this knowledge is vital to staying on a fun power curve and avoiding grinding altogether for the first half of the game.
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Envy

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Re: Final Fantasy XIII
« Reply #58 on: March 15, 2010, 10:13:20 PM »

Check your inbox G. Useful information awaits.
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rootdown

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Re: Final Fantasy XIII
« Reply #59 on: March 15, 2010, 11:00:27 PM »

dudes you lost me at tim rogers.

if they just went ahead and released ff12 again I'll buy that instead.
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