Final Fantasy XIII

[Jaxel]

Honestly, you aren't far enough through the story of the game yet. The monsters become much easier, the sense of accomplishment goes way up, especially if you can kill the giant turtle iguanas. There are 65 different monster missions you can do, thats a ton of side quests, this doesn't count gate missions, the main story, etc etc.

As far as the linear way the game moves. You are correct about that, to a point. The story aspect will push you right down the tunnel with no way out. However, that's most of the beginning of the game. I see the first 30 hours as a tutorial, a way to prepare you for everything Gran Pulse has to offer, as well as everything near the end of the game and in game+. You need experience in how to swap paradigms. You need to strengthen each one even to beat the final boss. Every final boss is hard and this one is no exception the first time through.

You need to get ultima and omega weapon upgrades, something that is difficult yet not impossible to do. You need to balance out someone like Lightning between being both a healer and a ravager, because face it, she sucks as a commando. You have to do this with your whole party, which in turn helps makes killing pesky large things like the behemoth lords, a 28 second fight. The game has a ton of things in it that you really haven't seen to much of if you're focusing on following the primary story arc.

Oh and they didn't create towns in this game because creating whole towns in HD was going to push them months past their deadline. Did they take the quick way out? Yea, but eh I can handle it if they took out a bunch of people that say the same line every time you talk to them and only have 1 shop in the whole place with a limited selection of items.

I'm on chapter 12 of a 13 chapter game. You can't tell me I'm not far enough into the game yet. At 35 hours the game should be rolling credits, not now picking up. If a game is only good at Game+, then whats the point of Game? To me this is nothing more than justifying a lackluster game by people who refuse to admit that Final Fantasy can suck major ass. I feel like nothing happens in this game and Square simply threw in dungeon after dungeon to ARTIFICIALLY extend the life of the game.

Not creating towns in this game because of HD is the biggest crock of shit I have seen. They have made a lot of towns in this game; the problem is that they don't function as towns but as more dungeons with enemies you have to fight through. All they had to do was take out the random battles and put in some random NPCs. Easy. Just ONE central cool down area that you could go back to later on would have been nice. Instead this isn't a world with a single place you can get attached to.

Actually though, I'm enjoying the game a lot more today than I did yesterday. Why? Because of Taejin's Tower. The game is excruciatingly hard, until you get the Taejin's Tower. Suddenly the game has become laughably easy. I didn't change anything with the way I play, the random battle enemies just dropped in difficulty for no reason at all. So because the battles got easier, I'm not enjoying them a lot more.

Holy crap Jaxel. I don't even know where to begin with that crap response, but if battles are taking you five minutes then you are doing it wrong.Very rarely should any battle exceed a minute. And lol at your FFXII comment. FFXII had an awful story, a weak soundtrack with the exception of a few songs, and, outside one or two, some of the most forgetable characters in the series.

Apparently hyperbole is lost on you... Anyways, the soundtrack for this game is not atmospheric at all, except towards end game. Background music should set the tone; for the majority of the game you are on the run and the music should exemplify the tense situations. Instead you end up running through a town, fighting battles while some chick is singing about rainbows and springtime. This is not good music.

 

[Shenrei]

I agree with almost everything Jaxel said. The fact that there were no towns was such a downer for me. I wanted a place to relax or lay low, take a break from all the action and just romp around talking to NPCs and doing other things without worrying about battles. Complaining that towns are too difficult to do in HD sounds like such a cop out - Bioware does this in spades, with NPCs and chatter bustling around to add to the immersion. Instead, what we got was a never ending string of dungeons, with save points where you can equip your characters. There needs to be some downtime, and cutscenes don't count. Not only are towns good for the above, but they also serve as points for further character development and interaction. When done right, towns can really flesh out characters. Instead, in FF13, the cut scenes do all this for us and the result is half-baked.

I did enjoy the battle system and the boss fights, but after Gran Pulse, the battles really felt like I had to put in too much effort, and they began to feel cumbersome and tiring, and long. I remember running around a lot of monsters in the end chapters just because it felt too much of a hassle to battle.

Can't say I had an attachment to the story or the characters, because I didn't.

I did enjoy the music however, a lot of times for melodic reasons instead of mood-setting reasons. Battle music was phenomenal IMO, especially the regular boss fights and the Bartantulus fights.

 

[LP]

I stopped supporting Square a while back. Pretty much, I was in the denial stage when 10 came out...and then when X-2 came out I just lost all hope for them.

I know EXACTLY what you mean about the characters in ten, though. Every character basically becomes a mirror image of the others, with your party pretty much coming down to who you want to look at. Summons in that game became beyond useless, even, when you could just Haste ---> Quick Strike everything to death before it got a chance to attack. Half of the fun in winning a battle in an RPG comes from the difficulty, as much as some don't like to admit it, but that game just became so tedious after the Calm Lands that it was stupid.

Other than that, I, for the most part, have sworn off JRPGs (though I still buy quite a few NIS and Atlus games...though I never play them). Not really for the gameplay aspect, ESPECIALLY AS A FUCKIN' BLACK MAN, I'm TIRED of playing video games as blonde-haired, blue-eyed angsty white guys in worlds where black people either A) don't fuckin' exist or B) have about one to two black people in the entire world (good luck with them being a main character, too) and their skin color is of no consequence at all - it's basically like they threw them in there as some type of affirmative action thing.

Enough angry black man, though. Honestly, though, BioWare RPGs have been the only ones where I enjoyed and actually had a desire to beat yet hoped they didn't end in a while - it seems like everyone one else is too busy being afraid to be innovative to make anything that isn't Rehashed Save the World Plot with Forgettable Characters X (Where X is How Many of these Shitty Titles You Can Tolerate).

 

[Ring]

I also have to agree with Jaxel. What I hate most about the game is the fact that it forces me to fight a lot of battles and the battles itself are too long and annoying and the worst thing is that you can't escape from them.

FFXII was so much more fun imo.

 

[The Landslide]

I was in denial about this game as well, I really wanted it to be good.

Right now though I have very little good to say about it. I guess the battle system is good but even that got tedious. The story is good, but presented pretty badly. No real memorable parts. Lots of cool characters, but no good villain to speak of, which is frustrating because I have practically no one to dislike in-game. Really this game is simply a tremendous time sink.