Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII

[cmdrdredd]

I started playing Ni No Kuni based on exdeath talking about the game, and I'm only 10 hours in, but it's definitely worth it. Absolutely recommended!

I hated it. The kid got on my nerves "geepers" and all that. I couldn't relate to any of the characters enough to care about them whatsoever. Also I got to the point where all the monsters I was trying to tame would run.

 

[Aikouka]

I hated it. The kid got on my nerves "geepers" and all that. I couldn't relate to any of the characters enough to care about them whatsoever. Also I got to the point where all the monsters I was trying to tame would run.

It sounds like you were playing it with the English dub on. I just can't play anything anime-ish with English voices because I'm so used to hearing Japanese after watching anime for around 15 years! It just sounds too weird to hear English. I turned off voices in Tales of Vesperia and Tales of Xillia because they love to eschew the Japanese voices to try and make sure Japanese gamers don't import our cheaper games.

Anyway, it's really not that bad with the Japanese voice option. Although, the kid still isn't anything great after the first hour.

 

[exar333]

I think Exdeath is right on the money. Re-playing XIII was a blast, and I personally prefer XIII-2 slightly (I liked the variety of all the creatures you can have for the 3rd companion slot).

The story was 'OK' in XIII/XIII-2, but the world and battle system more than made up for it. And this is from a classic RPGer, where I really do value the story a lot. That was the only weak thing IMHO from the recent games. It wasn't bad, but just OK.

One thing Exdeath's reminded me of what options are available for leveling in XIII/XIII-2. You can be very happy going through the game and leveling to a decent degree, or you can really push leveling and get OP for farming rare items/powerful enemies. You don't feel forced to do so, but the rewards are pretty cool if you do.

Back to LR...I was *not* impressed with the demo, but I think most demos suck (outside of Id games) because they are generally (by design) linear. I think this is as much 'action oriented' as I will go. If the videos are accurate around XV, I will NOT be playing that. I don't need 'Assassins Creed FF' thank you.

Looking forward to firing-up the game today!

 

[exdeath]

This sucks. Still a ways to go to 100% Tales of Graces f, and Bravely Default and Lightning Returns come out at the same time.

 

[gothamhunter]

This sucks. Still a ways to go to 100% Tales of Graces f, and Bravely Default and Lightning Returns come out at the same time.

Just grabbed my Target Steelbook edition and my CE is late so I'll be playing that tonight and taking a break from KH 1.5 Remix Proud Mode. My Bravely Default replacement is also late...grr.

 

[007ELmO]

Bravely default is like FF Tactics, right? I might be the only person who dislikes those sort of games!

 

[gothamhunter]

Bravely default is like FF Tactics, right? I might be the only person who dislikes those sort of games!

Not at all like Tactics

 

[007ELmO]

Thanks, I just watched IGN's review. Excellent! I didn't know Square was making games for the 3DS.

 

[exdeath]

Re: Bravely Default

Pretty much old school JRPG. This is what Square should be calling Final Fantasy and using PS3/4 assets.

Two weeks ago I was eager to get home and continue playing... yes the demo.

Then I played some more until all jobs were max level.

Then I played some more trying various glass cannon configs against the two final super bosses.

Then... I'm at work Monday morning wanting to play and... forget it's a demo and I've completed everything there is to complete with like 11 hours on the demo save file.

Yeah it's good.

As long as it has a half decent and tear jerker of a story, the gameplay alone will carry it along.

I'm enjoying the fact that the game is sold out everywhere and all the local retailers like Target and Best Buy even have a huge display for it.

and....


I can't freaking believe Square made a game with a ... shock and gasp... WORLD MAP. Is that different from the original Japanese version? Maybe Nintendo added it themselves for the US release or something, because I know Square didn't...

 

[Maverickbcp]

Still hope we go back to world maps and airships some day with multi path dungeons with secret walls and all that.

Amen

 

[Gunslinger08]

Thanks, I just watched IGN's review. Excellent! I didn't know Square was making games for the 3DS.

I got Bravely Default on Saturday and I've put in about 12 hours so far. I highly recommend it if you're an old school JRPG fan (FF1-10, Dragon Warrior/Quest). It feels exactly like one of those games, with some great modern day tweaks and graphics. The only complaint I have is that I wish I had more time to play.

 

[007ELmO]

I will play it this weekend since I have no love in my life and my mother's birthday is near so I will visit her and simply sit on the couch rot away and play bravely default with a smile on my face.

exdeath gives great reviews

 

[exar333]

I will play it this weekend since I have no love in my life and my mother's birthday is near so I will visit her and simply sit on the couch rot away and play bravely default with a smile on my face.

exdeath gives great reviews

Sounds like we need an Exdeath game review sticky.

 

[exar333]

This thread is refreshing. I feel depressed everytime I check out Metacritic or read the comments below most game reviews these days. Seems that most folks who post are just jaded, angry gamers. 'FF is garbage', 'No No Kuni was terrible and the AI ruined it', 'games aren't like they used to be, blah blah blah.'

I think a lot of people look back on older games with rose-colored glasses. I love the older FF games too, but they have their faults as well. Take FF VII for example, the clunky controls annoyed me for a lot of the game, and the materia grinding was excessive (IMHO) but the game rose above those issues. I don't absolve all games of issues, but I wish folks could appreciate games more, and understand their merits rather than just nitpicking and panning the whole game for their faults.

For those who 'don't like any modern games' there are plenty of older games to play or re-treads/sequels/spiritual successors being made for Kickstarter. Don't ruin it for the rest of us!

I honestly think the focus on gameplay and graphics really short-changes the story in a lot of games these days. The other interesting thing is people complain about 'too much story' (e.g. Xenosaga) when the dev focuses on that. I swear most vocal gamers today are just unhappy, angry people. :/

 

[chimaxi83]

Re: Bravely Default

Pretty much old school JRPG. This is what Square should be calling Final Fantasy and using PS3/4 assets.

Two weeks ago I was eager to get home and continue playing... yes the demo.

Then I played some more until all jobs were max level.

Then I played some more trying various glass cannon configs against the two final super bosses.

Then... I'm at work Monday morning wanting to play and... forget it's a demo and I've completed everything there is to complete with like 11 hours on the demo save file.

Yeah it's good.

As long as it has a half decent and tear jerker of a story, the gameplay alone will carry it along.

I'm enjoying the fact that the game is sold out everywhere and all the local retailers like Target and Best Buy even have a huge display for it.

and....


I can't freaking believe Square made a game with a ... shock and gasp... WORLD MAP. Is that different from the original Japanese version? Maybe Nintendo added it themselves for the US release or something, because I know Square didn't...

Thanks for your opinion, another game I'll pick up and pour some time into once I finish up with Ni No Kuni in a month or two.

 

[cmdrdredd]

The demo didn't do it for me. Its like jrpg games dont evolve enough with the industry and they feel old to me many times. There are so few jrpgs I can stand anymore. I dont relate to child-like or chibi characters anymore either. Oh well...I will have to keep waiting for the next jrpg that feels right for my tastes these days. Xenoblade and Persona are probably the most recent games that I actually liked in the genre. They just had something to draw me in. Sometimes it is very hard to explain why I dont like a particular game or why it just didn't do it for me. I can't even describe them as bad games because sometimes there is a few good moments I found but overall wasn't interested enough in the story or the characters or disliked the battle system... Whatever the case may be. I cannot pinpoint one particular area sometimes.

Reading reviews for Bravely Default it seems like the old trick of forcing you to grind through trash mobs to lvl up before a boss fight is still alive and well. Maybe it is the random encounter system that I dislike most of the time. The artwork is great at times though IMO.

 

[Rezist]

The only pretty recent JRPG I like is Persona myself. I've tried a whole heap of others and none of them kept my interest. There was always an annoyance that I didn't like. Usually I wanted it to be a little more Mature.

Why can't someone make JRPG games like Xenogears with complex themes and less cutesy stuff?

Or even just finish xenogears properly, the themes in xenogears were amazing.

 

[Fulle]

A common thing that bothers me with Japanese games, has to deal with the chibi and young characters.

First of all, something feels very off to me about an elementary or middle school aged child, departing on a epic adventure to save the world. It's cheesy as hell, and frankly, even when I was a child I would have thought so. I wanted to play the big kid games, with heroes that looked the part, when I was a kid. I don't get why they do this. Anyway, it's completely immersion breaking to me, right off the bat. I'm not able to play stuff like Ni No Kuni, to the point that I might as well be violently allergic.

Chibi characters are obviously annoying. I find that outside of Japan, they have poor appeal... Although, a small portion of the female audience likes them. Overall, something to leave out of a big mainstream production, for sure.

Then there's the perv stuff. A 14-15 year old girls is often shown in sexualized ways, or made into a primary romantic interest. In the case of Bravely Default, Agnès was supposed to be 17 in the Japanese version of the game, and the western localization puts her at 20... but her artwork screams 14 to me. And I'm NOT OK with that. It's fricking creeepy. Persona games are GREAT, but... the highschool setting is really off putting, especially since you can end up pursuing romantic relationships with characters of the opposite gender.

I just want to be able to play an adventure where I don't feel like a weird loser pervert for enjoying it.

Anyway, Final Fantasy 13 isn't that bad in this regard. I mean, Vanille was too damn young, but they didn't go overboard with sexualizing her image (compared to the other creepy Japanese games), or at least didn't push her at you to a point where it's not avoidable, and at least Lightning actually looks like she's in her 20s.

So 13 isn't bad "for Japan", but they still pushed the Japanese pervert BS too far in my opinion. After the first game, they needlessly upped Lightning's boob size to just humongous levels for no apparent reason, for example. Why?! I just don't get it....

Japanese game devs are stuck in the past. A past where old gameplay ideas like random encounters were acceptable. The mainstream audience was dominantly young boys. A past where it was OK to raise your female heroine's cup size several magnitudes just to make her better for the young boys to gawk at.

But, for a Japanese game, the FF13 universe isn't that bad... Lightning is an interesting character, and I could probably tolerate "Japanese game" related issues in Lightning Returns. Nobody is going to hold a gun to my head and force me to put her in a miniskirt, with a bunny ear hat... but, by the looks of it, if I want to benefit from stat bonuses from different outfits, I'm going to have to have a really high tolerance for such bullshit.

 

[Aikouka]

I started playing Bravely Default the other day, and I haven't sunk much time into it yet, but there's one thing that I didn't care much for: the beginning. I didn't like how they just tossed all the background story for the four characters at you right in the beginning. Sure, there's certainly still plenty of mystery surrounding some of the events, but it felt like an exposition dump. The only thing I hate more than exposition dumps are excessive use of proper nouns (i.e. everything has to have a specific, unique name). That's one of the things that I don't like about Final Fantasy XIII's world. I still have no idea what's going on regardless of how many times I read the summary (l'Cie definitely makes me think of the company LaCie ), and that really turns me off.

I dont relate to child-like or chibi characters anymore either.

I remember reading that the company that makes Bravely Default won't be using chibi characters in their games anymore. I think that was in reference to a sequel to Bravely Default, but I'm not 100% sure.

Maybe it is the random encounter system that I dislike most of the time.

You can actually adjust the random encounter rate in the options menu. I don't know if you can pretty much disable it using that, but you can reduce or raise the rate. Although, if I had to guess, there's probably an item/accessory that will make enemies not attack you.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I started playing Bravely Default the other day, and I haven't sunk much time into it yet, but there's one thing that I didn't care much for: the beginning. I didn't like how they just tossed all the background story for the four characters at you right in the beginning. Sure, there's certainly still plenty of mystery surrounding some of the events, but it felt like an exposition dump. The only thing I hate more than exposition dumps are excessive use of proper nouns (i.e. everything has to have a specific, unique name). That's one of the things that I don't like about Final Fantasy XIII's world. I still have no idea what's going on regardless of how many times I read the summary (l'Cie definitely makes me think of the company LaCie ), and that really turns me off.



I remember reading that the company that makes Bravely Default won't be using chibi characters in their games anymore. I think that was in reference to a sequel to Bravely Default, but I'm not 100% sure.



You can actually adjust the random encounter rate in the options menu. I don't know if you can pretty much disable it using that, but you can reduce or raise the rate. Although, if I had to guess, there's probably an item/accessory that will make enemies not attack you.

One review I skimmed said you can turn it off but if you do, you'll be way too underleveled to fight any bosses and will have to grind anyway. One of the best things to come from many other RPG games is to gain xp via questing. You don't always have to grind if you do lots of quests.

 

[exdeath]

Still need to complete f arc of Tales of Graces f before I can start either BD or LR. Having too much fun power leveling and getting ultimate gear in Zhonecage to proceed.

And that level cap of 200...

 

[exdeath]

I heard they removed the frogs that I grinded in the demo. So pissed.

 

[007ELmO]

I like grinding, I miss it. I like dragon warrior, where if you cross that bridge and you're not ready you're effing doomed.

 

[exdeath]

Grinding should be optional.

A properly designed balance is that you don't have to grind to enjoy the main story the first play through but grinding is there if you look for it and you want to do secret bosses , ultimate gear, etc.

 

[Gunslinger08]

Grinding should be optional.

A properly designed balance is that you don't have to grind to enjoy the main story the first play through but grinding is there if you look for it and you want to do secret bosses , ultimate gear, etc.

I'm in chapter 2 and I don't feel like I've had to grind at all. I just make sure to find all of the chests in each area, which leads to a few extra random encounters. I'm level 30, which feels about right; maybe a little over leveled.