Final Fantasy XIII Mega-Thread

FFXIII has been getting hammer by reviewers for being too "linear".

Ok, so Final Fantasy XIII made its out of Japan debut on March 9th so I've been playing it pretty consistently. I'm probably a little over 30 hours into the game and I just made it to Chapter 11, which is 11 out of 13. I wont mention any story spoilers what-so-ever, but there will probably be a few gameplay spoilers in here.

So the game is taking much more of a beating from reviewers than Final Fantasy games are used to and while everyone has a right to their opinion I can't help but feel like some of these reviewers entered into this game with a closed mind for what they expected from it. Anyway here's my take on what I've played so far.

Yes, the game is far more linear than any Final Fantasy game before it by a long shot. There are no towns in the sense of a place to walk around and converse with innocents. This sounds like shit doesn't it? Guess what though, it works. The reasons for these things make perfect sense when you take the mood and environment set up by the story into account. I wont really say much more than that because I don't really want to risk spoiling any bit of the story so I'll just move on to the game-play elements.

The battle system; at first I was highly skeptical about the fact that you only control one character. Now I've played the classic FF battle systems all the way through FFXII's very different battle system (if you haven't played FFXII, it's very similar to Dragon Age: Origins where you can set up the AI for your party members). This system can be relatively hands-off and can be described and hitting the X/A button repeatedly for all encounters. Or you can go through your abilities and pick each one as you desire. Now attacks are normally executed when the ATB gauge fills up and every stacked command will be done, but if you wish you can execute a slightly filled ATB bar by pressing Triangle/Y. Tactically this proves very useful in various situations.

The music is very well done as you'd expect, only thing I miss is the battle fanfare. The voice actors are extremely well done too; I have issues with Vanille's voice, but Jeff assures me she is awesome. Each voice matches their character extremely well. They even customized the lip-syncing to match the English voices (most of the time companies will edit the English script to best match the Japanese lip-synching) and it looks really good. Speaking of looking good the graphics and art direction just make this game look amazing and nobody does better cgi-scenes than Squeenix.

So far I'm really enjoying the game, the linearity didn't really bother me at all and right now I just got plopped into a situation where it went from a straight line to a huge fucking map so I've been exploring quite a bit. So I think I'll go do a bit more exploring...

they should have a Final Fantasy where it seems like the main character is going for the typical good guy win

but then shows that he's the ult badguy and screws everyone over

kinda like a Deathnote thing, but with out the "L"

i agree mav the game is alot bigger than we are lead to believe so far, plus i also think that reviewers are only condemning it to the ff 10-2 its the only other game ff-13's producer has produced. Alot of things i have also read is that lightening herself is refered to as the "female cloud".

IN a nut shell they dman the guy that made ff10-2 and they also hate the fact his ff games have lead female characters instead of hard ass emo boys

Actually I think I read in an interview that when they tasked Tetsuya Nomura (Character Designer, mostly known for his work as the Kingdom Hearts Director) with designing Lightning. They actually told him to make her into someone that would be seen as a female Cloud type persona. She and Cloud share some similarities beyond that too, they are both ex-soldiers and they both lack a funny bone XD. As far as looking like Cloud I think Hope is the one that looks like him the most specifically his hairstyle, especially if it's Cloud from Crisis Core/Advent Children.

Done!, 92 hours 34 minutes and 39 seconds from hitting 'New Game' I've finally finished it 100%, Platinum trophy. Helluva ride.

grats man

just to add 2 cents i was a little disapointed with the battle system, just didnt quite feel like it had enough features/ err, i dunno how to put it, i like systems more like FF7's or FF10's, just cant get the feel for 13

i like the combat feels more involving, not one of the click and click let them duke it oue in turns as the stand exactly so many paces away from each other

hmm yeah i suppose you do have a point, but i still get the feeling something is missing, just not sure what

so i'm now in the last chapter and i can barely take down the enemy, probably because my team sucks or the computer controlled chars suck.

i'm not sure if i feel like pushing on or just grinding something in gran pulse

@kin37ik - you definitely have more control over the battles with the previous iterations of FF, this combat system is a lot flashier, but at the same time it's as deep as you make it, you can make a paradigm that you can use fairly safely against all enemies, or you can make a set of paradigms with specific goals in mind and be constantly switching to the ideal set at the right time.

@Metal Man - What team are you running with? You can definitely beat the story of this game with minimal CP grinding as long as your team is well balanced. The difficulty curve does take a leap towards the end-game, but the difficulty comes from finding out that late game you have to do a lot more paradigm shifting to be successful, also for the first 9 or so chapters you don't need a Sentinel at all, whereas towards the end a Sentinel is basically mandatory.

i'd have to be home for a bigger detail, but i'm using Light, Fang, and Hope. I probably should be shifting often, even though I don't like it, but Hope keeps getting one shotted by the Bikes.

I probably should get some of the HP boosting Rings, but I like his magic over 2k

I usually go Light Fang Hope as well, and what I ended up doing in the later chapters is start off with Delta Attack, Commando/Sentinel/Ravager, with Fang absorbing the hits Hope and Light are usually left unharmed. If you're going against an enemy you need to stagger to kill, start off with a round or two of that to get the Commando bonus of slowing the stagger gauge down, and then switch to Mystic Tower Rav/Sen/Rav and that'll allow you to drive that chain gauge up to stagger. Once you have that enemy staggered you can switch to Relentless Assault Rav/Com/Rav or Aggression Com/Com/Rav and keep him juggled with that Launch ability. Of course if you need some quick healing Combat Clinic is great Med/Sen/Med. Basically my paradigm deck looks like this:

Delta Attack - Com/Sen/Rav
Solidarity - Com/Sen/Med or (I forget the name) - Com/Sen/Syn (good to have Hope give you Haste)
Mystic Tower - Rav/Sen/Rav
Relentless Assault - Rav/Com/Rav
Aggression - Com/Com/Rav
Combat Clinic - Med/Sen/Med

and this is with the party of Light/Fang/Hope