Good Lord, Final Fantasy XIII's file size is huge

[Red Hawk]

So I decided to pick up Final Fantasy XIII for the Square Enix weekend on Steam, set it to install, and...

49.4 GB?!?

This better be for some uncompressed cutscene video files, because I'm pretty sure it isn't high resolution textures taking up all that memory...

 

[El Guaraguao]

49.3 of that 49.4 GB is pure bullshit. Needless to say, the game is shit.

 

[Red Hawk]

49.3 of that 49.4 GB is pure bullshit. Needless to say, the game is shit.

Just curious, but have you actually played it?

 

[El Guaraguao]

Yep. I have it for the PS3. I wanted to like this game so bad, but ultimately never could.

 

[shortylickens]

I think japanese forgot how to compress data over the years.

Saw a SNES final fantasy clone on Steam that looked very basic. But it checks in at 20 gigs.

 

[IGemini]

Square Enix must've really banked on blu-ray and/or saved the compression for the 360. On a disc count level, XIII-2 is worse--the install weighs in at 28GB. #1 used three DVDs, #2 used one.

 

[shortylickens]

Final Fantasy was on the 360?

 

[Red Hawk]

Yep. I have it for the PS3. I wanted to like this game so bad, but ultimately never could.

Hmm, I don't know. Final Fantasy XIII may be a subpar game, especially compared to other Final Fantasy games, but the production value seems too high to call it "pure BS". I'd reserve that title for something like, oh, Ride to Hell, Mindjack, or Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric.

I tried the game on 360 a few years back, but it lost my interest after an hour or so. But at the time I was fully initiated into the "PC master race" mindset, so I thought I might be more receptive to it on PC. It wouldn't be the first time I've lost interest in a game for a while and come back to love it -- Chrono Trigger, Deus Ex Human Revolution and Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds are some examples.

The utter laziness of this PC port isn't really doing it any favors, though. No mouse support whatsoever? Wtf Square Enix? I understand Japanese developers have little experience developing for PC, but was it too hard to call up the PC guys at their Eidos subsidiary and be like, "Hey, so we're porting FF XIII to PC, got any tips on what we should do?" And like Dark Souls, they didn't have support for resolutions other than 720p on release. Thankfully they did patch the game to support more resolutions, but the game still has frame timing issues. But hey, at least it supports MSAA. More than that, it's actually a version of CSAA, and it's low cost too. According to an analysis over at PCGamer, the game engine is actually an old fashioned MSAA-friendly forward renderer, rather than a deferred renderer. The trade off is that forward renderers can't have many dynamic light sources like deferred renderers without driving the performance cost way up.

No setting for anisotropic filtering, but that can be easily rectified by forcing it in the graphics control panel. There actually is a direct shadow resolution setting, all the way up to 8192x8192. It's certainly nice to bump up shadow resolution over what it was on consoles, but since they're not really soft shadows, the full 8192 setting seems like overkill, making them unrealistically sharp.

Final Fantasy was on the 360?

Yeah, it was the first multiplatform Final Fantasy game, releasing on both the PS3 and 360. It was clearly developed for the PS3 first though, making use of the Cell processor for graphics and such. And video compression was worse on the 360 than the PS3. So it was one of the rare multiplatform games that looked uniformly better on the PS3 than the 360. I do hope they worked from the PS3 source code for the PC port, even though porting from the 360 probably would have been easier.

 

[escrow4]

AC Unity: 40GB+

FC4: Touch under 30GB (excluding DLC)

GTA 5: Around 65GB

Battlefield Hardline: Around 60GB (for a *snort* 6hr single player campaign)

Its either stupid consoles that can't handle compressed audio or a poor attempt to stop PC piracy by bloating up sizes.

 

[Xellos2099]

The piracy thing made no sense. How is it different downloading 65 gig from steam or 65 gig from torrent?

 

[skipsneeky2]

AC Unity: 40GB+

FC4: Touch under 30GB (excluding DLC)

GTA 5: Around 65GB

Battlefield Hardline: Around 60GB (for a *snort* 6hr single player campaign)

Its either stupid consoles that can't handle compressed audio or a poor attempt to stop PC piracy by bloating up sizes.

You forgot Titanfall,my folder is 62gb. BF4 with all content is 55gb.

 

[alcoholbob]

It's actually 49GB download, 59GB on the hard drive after installation.

The reason it's so large is because they included full audio for the Japanese version as well in the download, even though I don't think you can actually enable it in-game. For some reason FF13 uses full uncompressed audio which is why the game download is so huge.

FF13-2 is only like a 20GB download in comparison even though the game really isn't much smaller.

 

[Xellos2099]

Well there is a lot less voice work from xiii-2 to xiii.

 

[ImpulsE69]

It's actually 49GB download, 59GB on the hard drive after installation.

The reason it's so large is because they included full audio for the Japanese version as well in the download, even though I don't think you can actually enable it in-game. For some reason FF13 uses full uncompressed audio which is why the game download is so huge.

FF13-2 is only like a 20GB download in comparison even though the game really isn't much smaller.

Not sure if you could when it was first released, but you can now. I am currently playing it. Everything everyone said about the game is true. The only thing I differ on is I don't think the battle system is anything great.

The game is simply run down this corridor, fight a few things (for the most part you can auto through everything but bosses), cutscene. It's been that way repeating for 17 hours so far. There is no exploration. There are item chests that just, sit there in plain site in your path most of the time and really make no sense as to what they are. I wouldn't even say the story is anything great, it is just confusing, but just interesting enough to keep me playing since the game isn't difficult by any means. Its like Final Fantasy Casual.

Add to that that it is such a lazy porting job, it simply is bad. The graphics use 25% of my 480, but the game stutters something fierce for no apparent reason (and is complained about considerably on the forums).. The latest VC update seems to have fixed much of that though. Hard to complain though because it is nice to see these games finally coming to PC, it LOOKS great, so maybe future 'better' games will come.

 

[Red Hawk]

The battle system is very visually appealing, at least. It's fun to see your characters dashing between enemies to lay hits on them. It's also nice to see it running more smoothly (for the most part) than it did on 360.

 

[mmntech]

This is why optical discs won't be disappearing from consoles for awhile yet. Size of games has really jumped between generations. They must be using a lot of uncompressed textures now.

 

[lupi]

another case of multiple audio file formats being installed even if not needed?

 

[escrow4]

The piracy thing made no sense. How is it different downloading 65 gig from steam or 65 gig from torrent?

If you are pirating I doubt you are interested in buying. Plus caps. Not everyone has unlimited internet.

 

[Revolution 11]

The game is simply run down this corridor, fight a few things (for the most part you can auto through everything but bosses), cutscene. It's been that way repeating for 17 hours so far. There is no exploration. There are item chests that just, sit there in plain site in your path most of the time and really make no sense as to what they are. I wouldn't even say the story is anything great, it is just confusing, but just interesting enough to keep me playing since the game isn't difficult by any means. Its like Final Fantasy Casual.

You might agree with Spoony's review of the game then since your complaints sound the same as his.

http://spoonyexperiment.com/game-reviews/final-fantasy-xiii-part-1/

 

[Puppies04]

The piracy thing made no sense. How is it different downloading 65 gig from steam or 65 gig from torrent?

Depends if you live in a country where a 20GB cap is the norm lol.

You seen facebook today Dimitar? No comrad I can't log on for the next 3 months because i'm downloading a game.

 

[MiRai]

With everyone talking about this lately, I ended up stumbling upon this handy guide which allows you to cut the install size down to ~30GB (but you have to fully download and install it first).

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=324566956

You might agree with Spoony's review of the game then since your complaints sound the same as his.

http://spoonyexperiment.com/game-reviews/final-fantasy-xiii-part-1/

I really liked his review of the game and here's maybe a better link since it's to the full series rather than just the first episode. There may be some redeeming aspects of this game, but it really doesn't seem like it. Don't get me wrong, I've never actually played FFXIII just as I've not had any desire to play any of the Final Fantasy console games over the past decade, so Spoony's review might not be spot on, but the way he breaks it down and presents all of it sure does make it seem like a train wreck outside of the fact that the game looks to be visually appealing.

 

[exar333]

Not sure if you could when it was first released, but you can now. I am currently playing it. Everything everyone said about the game is true. The only thing I differ on is I don't think the battle system is anything great.

The game is simply run down this corridor, fight a few things (for the most part you can auto through everything but bosses), cutscene. It's been that way repeating for 17 hours so far. There is no exploration. There are item chests that just, sit there in plain site in your path most of the time and really make no sense as to what they are. I wouldn't even say the story is anything great, it is just confusing, but just interesting enough to keep me playing since the game isn't difficult by any means. Its like Final Fantasy Casual.

Add to that that it is such a lazy porting job, it simply is bad. The graphics use 25% of my 480, but the game stutters something fierce for no apparent reason (and is complained about considerably on the forums).. The latest VC update seems to have fixed much of that though. Hard to complain though because it is nice to see these games finally coming to PC, it LOOKS great, so maybe future 'better' games will come.

To be fair, the game actually does get pretty good and rewards you in some interesting ways for really leveling your characters in late-game. The first 20-25 hours are 'on rails' but the game gets a LOT better when it opens-up and allows you to travel around more.

The battle system is one of the best in FF IMHO. Its a great mix of flexible jobs/classes and forces you to adapt your strategy in tougher battles. It is a lot of fun and the really tough enemies both are satisfying to beat and you get some nice stuff too from them.

If you removed the linear first part (or at least shortened it considerably) I think the game would have been much more liked. The story is average (at best) but not terrible. The battle system really holds it up though.

You do need to invest some time upfront to get past the linear part, which can be tough for some people (no offense). If you just want to play 25-40 hours in this game, I would suggest staying away. If you like to invest 50+ hours in your typical FF play throughs, then I do think it is a great title.

Note: FF13-2 was better in every respect. It was VERY flexible and both mechanic adds (creatures in battle) and time-travel were executed extremely well. It's the best FF since FFX IMHO.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I didn't know this, but now that Bravely Default's sequel will no longer be a turn-based RPG I will probably never buy another Square game ever again anyway.

 

[Aikouka]

I didn't know this, but now that Bravely Default's sequel will no longer be a turn-based RPG I will probably never buy another Square game ever again anyway.

Where did you hear this? I tried doing some Googling where I looked for information on the battle system for Bravely Second, but I didn't find anything.

EDIT:

I did find an article that talked about a Bravely Archive: D mobile game being released this month that will have a simpler combat system, but that's it.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Where did you hear this?

I might be wrong.