Final Fantasy XIII rant

[Graeham]

I'm excited for FF15, kingdom hearts like combat and "supposively" gay character in the group.

I'm intrigued. I do hope that it's a character who just happens to be 'gay' rather than one who adheres to various negative stereotypes and acts overly camp. Could you tell me the name of the character in question so I could look into it?

Edea is from 8 >.> sorry to nitpick but I couldn't help it

Oh, I know! Thanks for correcting me. I'm not sure why I put 7 instead of 8. :P

My thoughts regarding the female characters in FF7 are pretty neutral. I did like Scarlet - the scene where she and Tifa start slapping each other is pretty amusing.

[zito]

I'm intrigued. I do hope that it's a character who just happens to be 'gay' rather than one who adheres to various negative stereotypes and acts overly camp. Could you tell me the name of the character in question so I could look into it?

There was no definitive answer on who it would be, it also could of just been scrapped (it was stated about a year ago so who knows if they will keep it), but I think it was either suppose to be the main character or the Big guy who plays the best friend I think

[Graeham]

There was no definitive answer on who it would be, it also could of just been scrapped (it was stated about a year ago so who knows if they will keep it), but I think it was either suppose to be the main character or the Big guy who plays the best friend I think

I hope they go ahead with it and are brave enough to explicitly state it to be the case rather than leaving it intentionally vague. There's a lot of mature art out there of male FF characters paired with other male characters. Heck, in some cases it is far easier to find than straight art of the same characters even if they're actually paired with a female in the official canon. So there's definitely a market for that sort of thing!

[Zathrendar]

Like a certain two twin brothers!

[Clockwork Pinkie]

Lightning Returns wouldn't be so bad if it didn't have that ridiculous timer. It has no place in an open-world RPG like that. I have not been a fan of Toriyama's wank-fest trilogy nor his disturbing waifu obsession with Lightning. Here's hoping he never works on a Final Fantasy again. I really hope XV returns the series to its former glory.

There's nothing to even worry about with the timer. You extend the days via side quest and main quest, which people would be doing timer or not. Only thing that changes is that if you step away for awhile, it would be a smart thing to pause it. Hardly any pressure on it at all. On my 5th day in (game time) atm and it's still telling me 6 days till the end, instead of 1. Only thing I hate about it is the "you must return back to The Ark at 6 in the morning everyday to extend your time. Also, I fucking wish NG+ took the timer away. But alas, it makes sense, world's ending, don't really have time to flap around, trying to save souls n shit.

[Cattleya]

There's nothing to even worry about with the timer. You extend the days via side quest and main quest, which people would be doing timer or not. Only thing that changes is that if you step away for awhile, it would be a smart thing to pause it. Hardly any pressure on it at all. On my 5th day in (game time) atm and it's still telling me 6 days till the end, instead of 1. Only thing I hate about it is the "you must return back to The Ark at 6 in the morning everyday to extend your time. Also, I fucking wish NG+ took the timer away. But alas, it makes sense, world's ending, don't really have time to flap around, trying to save souls n shit.

Not to mention, Chronostasis is overpowered so you can keep the clock perpetually paused while you're in a hostile environment.

[Tech614]

The only thing you even need to do to get the good ending is beat all 5 main quests. That's it. No sub quests are required at all(but you need to do 40 if you want the optional non canon dungeon).

If you can't manage that in 12 days you're doing it wrong.

The time limit is virtually non existent. I completed every sub quest and all main quests and had 5 whole damn days left still which I had to kill at inns. Why people complain about it either tells me they haven't played the game, or are freaking out in the start of the game.

[PACOX]

I actually had fun playing FFXIII, but it didn't feel like a FF game at all. It wasn't broke or terrible, not doesn't live up to FF expectations - if those still exist at this point.

[Deleted]

The only thing you even need to do to get the good ending is beat all 5 main quests. That's it. No sub quests are required at all(but you need to do 40 if you want the optional non canon dungeon).

If you can't manage that in 12 days you're doing it wrong.

The time limit is virtually non existent. I completed every sub quest and all main quests and had 5 whole damn days left still which I had to kill at inns. Why people complain about it either tells me they haven't played the game, or are freaking out in the start of the game.

After have played for a while its true the timer is clearly enough. Im at the final phase of the game and I have 6 days left and I think 5 days spent so its fine. I was stressed at the start though when I was searching for the 4 numbers as I lost like 1 day searching for the last number, got me pissed.

Combat is still so so. I just wish they had an actually stagger bar tbh. I got the best weapon (I think) after like 3-4h of playing with 500/500 stats lol after killing a behemut in chaos and havent changed it since.

The story though.... there is like no story development & NO cut scenes Thats what I LOVE about FF games For ppl flaming there was too many cut scenes and too much of a tunnel game in FF13 then LR should be your thing lol

Really boring with 1 character as the main only when there is no conversations between characters

[prwraith]

They need to take Lightning and bury her. Bury that terrible character in a deep dark vault of final fantasy characters never to be mentioned again.

Imagine my surprise, the first FF I ever hated had her in it.

Imagine my further surprise when they made two more games with her in them.

I sincerely hope FF15 can redeem this company.

[Deleted]

After have played for a while its true the timer is clearly enough. Im at the final phase of the game and I have 6 days left and I think 5 days spent so its fine. I was stressed at the start though when I was searching for the 4 numbers as I lost like 1 day searching for the last number, got me pissed.

Combat is still so so. I just wish they had an actually stagger bar tbh. I got the best weapon (I think) after like 3-4h of playing with 500/500 stats lol after killing a behemut in chaos and havent changed it since.

The story though.... there is like no story development & NO cut scenes Thats what I LOVE about FF games For ppl flaming there was too many cut scenes and too much of a tunnel game in FF13 then LR should be your thing lol

Really boring with 1 character as the main only when there is no conversations between characters

The Omega skeleton drops a 580/580 sword that also buff attack if the target has deprotect, bio or curse You can find it in the spot where you killed the omega skelly

[Deleted]

They need to take Lightning and bury her. Bury that terrible character in a deep dark vault of final fantasy characters never to be mentioned again.

Imagine my surprise, the first FF I ever hated had her in it.

Imagine my further surprise when they made two more games with her in them.

I sincerely hope FF15 can redeem this company.

For me it looks like FF15 will be worse as it look like it will have Devil May Cry combat, hack and slash, which I dont want in a FF game but thats just me (and I love hack and slash games). Kids these days want fast phased games in everything :/ Maybe if the story in FF15 is epic it will be decent though as FF15 is in the FF13 universe we will see.

[prwraith]

For me it looks like FF15 will be worse as it look like it will have Devil May Cry combat, hack and slash, which I dont want in a FF game but thats just me (and I love hack and slash games). Kids these days want fast phased games in everything :/ Maybe if the story in FF15 is epic it will be decent though as FF15 is in the FF13 universe we will see.

If FF15 combat is similar to star ocean, it'll be amazing.

I wouldn't object to a real turnbased one agian though. Haven't had that in a while.

[Deleted]

They need to take Lightning and bury her. Bury that terrible character in a deep dark vault of final fantasy characters never to be mentioned again.

Imagine my surprise, the first FF I ever hated had her in it.

Imagine my further surprise when they made two more games with her in them.

I sincerely hope FF15 can redeem this company.

I am/was a huge FF fan and I too have lamented how this series has transformed into something so... unrecognizable.

Yeah, I hated this FF13 series too and I have no idea why this shitfest was the game they decided to milk 2 sequels out of. Its like Toriyama said "look assholes, this is my masterpiece and im going to tell this long story, and you fuckers better enjoy it!".

Fuck you, Toriyama. Your story sucks and your game sucks. NEXT!

[grovewd]

This is slightly deviating from the original post of this thread and why I originally came into it, but seeing as other people have already started to shift into XIIILR and even some XV and KH posts, I'm going to post my up-to-now experience with LR. I'm I think around 25 hours of play time in? I've finished I think 6 days of game time and have seen the large majority of the main quests (still halfway through the Desert one). Same format I guess:

Things I Like About XIIILR
The environments are again beautiful, but this time more than just being pretty, but off in the background, you get to explore them in this title. An insane amount of detail has gone into every person, building, wall, and piece of scrap in every city, and you can walk right up to almost all of it and take it in. Except for there not being an overworld linking the zones the game is totally open world - you can go where you want when you want, nothing is going to stop you.
The music remains superb. It actually has a number of pieces recycled from both XIII and XIII-2, which on one hand is regrettable but on one hand nice, but because I like both of those OSTs so much I can't not put this here.
The NPCs aren't something I would normally think much of, but all the ones I've encountered have a very wide range of personalities and stories that make them all unique and engaging.
The story telling is MUCH better than its predecessors. They still have the datalog, but this time the entries are much shorter summaries of what you were shown and told in-game for the most part, and summaries of what their role/relationship with Lightning was in the previous games. Unfortunately, I feel like this comes out kinda wasted, because let's be real here - who the hell is playing this game that didn't play at least one if not both of the games before it?? So the good story telling winds up feeling like recap a lot of time instead of new story. SquEnix finally manages to figure out how to tell the story they want in the last game of a trilogy where the story is the shortest (more on that later). Go figure.
The Japanese voice option that was offered as free DLC. God I hope they do that again going forward. All I want is the OPTION to choose which voice cast I want to listen to - I like voice actors in both. Even better, it's not just Japanese voices speaking over the English mouths - it's the ORIGINAL Japanese version audio and animation. The subtitles are still the heavily changed English ones though (expected).

Things I'm "Eh" About XIIILR
The battle system: Pros? It's again very high-paced action style that is a pleasure to watch take place in front of you. Having an emphasis placed on manually guarding attacks works really well with the system and makes it feel engaging and rewarding if you get good at it. Totally customizable playstyle between garbs, spells, attacks - everything except white magic. Cons? That "except white magic" part. I guess it's just part of my playstle that I really like buff stacking and management and being able to heal when and how I want to, so I find it disappointing that healing is accomplished almost entirely via potions (which you are limited in how many you can carry) and that buffs are limited to equipped items (which also currently are very limited. not sure if you ever get more than 2 per garb). I also really dislike that it's for the most part a solo character game, but I'm dealing with it :/
The garb system. It's cool I guess. It seems like a great platform for playstyle preference and customization, but I hate how sometimes there's a garb that LOOKS awesome but the auto-ability or stats just seem odd or very situational, so I don't use it Other times there is a garb with great abilities but I don't care for how it looks. I wish there was some kind of way to take a garb with nothing on it and then totally craft and build up what abilities/stats it has on it. Also kinda wish you could equip multiple adornments for different parts of the body that they exist for, instead of just one slot for ALL of the options.
The story itself...is not bad, but it's very basic and short. I guess it has to be to be contained to "13 days" and because it's the last game in a trilogy. But it leaves me feeling like "why was this 'story' deemed essential to make the trilogy whole? WHY didn't they do a better job laying the foundation of the mythology and story in the FIRST game when they SHOULD have???" There's 5 "main" quests that can each be done in a day of game time if you plan well and have good weapons/abilities (I'm looking at you Wildlands' main boss -_-), and so the 8 remaining days I guess are just populated entirely by all these side quests...

Things I DO NOT Like About XIIILR
The time limit. There's a reason I never finished and avoid Majora's Mask like a plague. There's a reason I have some minor form of PTSD from getting to the very end and failing Pikmin. It's one thing for a Sonic or Mario game to say "you have 200 seconds to beat this level"; it's something different entirely to me for a game to say "You have X days to do everything. Plan wisely!" Maybe it's the engineer in me constantly stressing over every minor decision I make, maybe it's the Pikmin PTSD, I don't know. It's true that because you can extend the game time through quests it's not AS BAD a time crunch as I was dreading, but I still obsessively save and reload my game trying to do things in the most time efficient manner. I also get the whole "it's the end of days" thing, but here's the bigger problem to me: once again SquEnix has done one thing well but then turned around and just shat on that good thing with something imbecilic. They FINALLY made a beautiful world that you can freely travel in again and can interact with damn near everything in it...and then you put a time limit on that experience?? Why?? WHY SQUENIX?!?!

That's really the only big one. The other things are pretty minor.
No XP/character development outside of quests.
The strong lack of party play I mentioned earlier...

My TL;DR of the game
XIIILR is a great ACTION RPG...but I don't feel like it really merits a "Final Fantasy" title for the things that it's missing (party combat, combat style, multiple characters, new story, XP-based leveling and character progression). They finally managed to make the open world people begged for from the beginning, but it's deeply void of all the great characters XIII had and is on a strict time limit. They finally got good at telling the story, but I think it's just too little too late for this series. XIII SHOULD have been done this well, and it wouldn't have NEARLY the amount of just DEEP hate that many people seem to have for it (that's a different thread altoget- wait, no it's not, that was the START of THIS thread rofl).

Great action game that if they'd released under ANY title OTHER than "Final Fantasy" and without an established FF character - as just a stand-alone new character/story/concept game - I think people would be praising it. But because it IS made as a "Final Fantasy" continuation people are just going to say "XIII blows" or "stop wasting time and release XV/KHIII already". It makes me hope though that both/either of those titles maybe MIGHT be a full, incredible game.

[Zython]

For me it looks like FF15 will be worse as it look like it will have Devil May Cry combat, hack and slash, which I dont want in a FF game but thats just me (and I love hack and slash games). Kids these days want fast phased games in everything :/ Maybe if the story in FF15 is epic it will be decent though as FF15 is in the FF13 universe we will see.

I really want to be excited for FFXV, but everything I hear about it seems to indicate that Square has learned absolutely nothing from FFXIII.

[grovewd]

Relating I guess to the original point of this thread, repeating myself: Final Fantasy XIII (and by extension SquEnix) has a number of frustrating things that definitely deserve SOME criticism. But the DEPTH of the seething some people have for this game/series and it's characters is completely unwarranted if I try to be objective about it (as a LONG time FF player). I think a lot of people have let the things they disliked about the game combine with other people reinforcing their negativity, and it has been further fed by SquEnix stubbornly continuing the series trying to fix something that really became just beyond fixing, all the while continuing to replace now-fixed dumb idea A with equally dumb idea B under the same series.

It sucks that something that had such great potential, fantastic characters, and well-developed new mythology will probably always be looked back at with so much hate as "the worst FF evar" because of stupid and stubborn missteps by SquEnix and rampant fanboyism (or I guess in this situation anti-ism?)

- - - Updated - - -

Furthermore, with FFX HD on the horizon, it's interesting that so many people point to X as being one of the BEST games of the long line of Final Fantasy (I myself being included), but then feel the exact opposite about XIII+. FFX definitely had things about it that I didn't like - some of them the same as things people hated about XIII (the lack of overworld and strong linearity comes to mind immediately. I'll have to play it again to remember if there was anything else. There is also MUCH more stale characters in X than XIII for all the people that hate XIII's cast). In addition, once you get outside of Cocoon, the world of XIII becomes VERY X-esque. Some of the regions, clothes, writing styles seen in-game look damn near identical (I actually have been kinda secretly wondering if that's why FFX HD is a soon-coming thing, because they were able to reuse a lot of the HD XIII+ material, other than the obvious easy money it will bring SquEnix).

So what I think I would really be interested to hear would be some people say WHAT that major disconnect between an intense love of X and an intense hatred of XIII is. I think it'd be really eye-opening for some people, if we're to take off the infamous "rose-tinted glasses".