Official Final Fantasy XIII thread

[FeathersMcGraw]

RPG's are a dying form, no doubt about it. I couldnt get enough of them for many years, but have grown to dislike the "wack a mole" button pushing games that they include after Guitar hero copied SIMON and timed button pushs became a game.

While that's glib, it's not entirely accurate. Simon was not a timing game, it was just a memory game with a time limit. The earliest example of the rhythm genre game I can recall is Parappa the Rappa, or possibly Space Channel #5. Quick Time Event games are older than that, but the earliest one I can remember is probably Dragon's Lair.

Back on topic, while I'm finding Final Fantasy XIII pleasant enough so far, I definitely prefer the turn-based menu games (like the much-maligned FFX, whose combat I actually found to be a series of interesting strategic puzzles if you wanted to simultaneously cycle through all of your characters to get experience, set up Overkill for loot, and use the appropriate weapons for monster capture). Although I'm not averse to a little reflex minigame once I've decided what actions I want to take (Shadow Hearts, Paper Mario, Lost Odyssey).

I've only just started to get introduced to the Paradigm system, but it definitely seems like it will be interesting as selectable characters and new roles are introduced for each character (if they do, but that seems more likely than not). Although right now, spamming auto-attack seems to be a lot more effective in terms of star ratings than queueing actions on my own, even with the ATB gauge set to slow.

 

[clok1966]

While that's glib, it's not entirely accurate. Simon was not a timing game, it was just a memory game with a time limit. The earliest example of the rhythm genre game I can recall is Parappa the Rappa, or possibly Space Channel #5. Quick Time Event games are older than that, but the earliest one I can remember is probably Dragon's Lair.

Back on topic, while I'm finding Final Fantasy XIII pleasant enough so far, I definitely prefer the turn-based menu games (like the much-maligned FFX, whose combat I actually found to be a series of interesting strategic puzzles if you wanted to simultaneously cycle through all of your characters to get experience, set up Overkill for loot, and use the appropriate weapons for monster capture). Although I'm not averse to a little reflex minigame once I've decided what actions I want to take (Shadow Hearts, Paper Mario, Lost Odyssey).

I've only just started to get introduced to the Paradigm system, but it definitely seems like it will be interesting as selectable characters and new roles are introduced for each character (if they do, but that seems more likely than not). Although right now, spamming auto-attack seems to be a lot more effective in terms of star ratings than queueing actions on my own, even with the ATB gauge set to slow.

dont worry auto attack is pretty much the way to go till about 8 hours in (and ODIN battle requires your first thinking battle), but it will get more and more inot a "thinking" combat game. I must admit i was a bit worried as it was pretty much easy and no thinking 99.9% of the time. I was trying for stars, and cant really see a "pattern" on how to achive it. 95% of my battles are 5 gold stars, but some that are one round kill battles can sometime be silver stars... not sure why. I was thinking the DPS meter was key, or time.. but some long battles are still 5 gold, so no idea. The paradigm system looked interesting at first, then i found i never needed it (as i say you will, but not for hours). Now i use them all the time.

SIMON, yes there was some sarcasm in that statement. But honestly GH ecsh song is the same, so its simply a memorization game. Of course my reaction times and fingers wont do it even if i know what i want, so there is skill (or dexterity of digits) involved.

 

[blurredvision]

Spoiler for Lightning's eidolon encounter (end of Chapter 4/beginning of Chaper 5, somewhere around there):

Spoiler

Just fought Odin, I had been hearing a lot about how he was pretty tough. I had forgot the strategy going in, so the first time I went down pretty damn quickly. Tried again a second time, again, went down quickly. So the third time I assigned Lightning to heal and Hope to shield going in, then switched to a rav/rav combo once Hope had applied all buffs and pummeled him as quick as we could while using potions to heal. Hope died later on in the fight, and I just barely finished it with Lightning, literally had Odin submit while he was charging me with me probably at 50 health. Very, very close.

Anyway, I beat it in 2 minutes, 18 seconds, and noticed the target time was 26 minutes. Did it actually take anybody anywhere near that long? Just curious.

 

[SandEagle]

holy hell, i am having a tough time beating Aster Protoflorian. That thing is crazy. anyone get to it yet and beat it?

ok, forget everything u read on google regarding this. i just used the war&peace paradigm (commando, medic). use lightning's blitz over and over while hope does the healing. cumbersome, but over in 10 minutes

btw, graphics and music on chp 7 is amazing. totally hated the grapa woods

 

[Phobic9]

Spoiler for Lightning's eidolon encounter (end of Chapter 4/beginning of Chaper 5, somewhere around there):

Spoiler

Just fought Odin, I had been hearing a lot about how he was pretty tough. I had forgot the strategy going in, so the first time I went down pretty damn quickly. Tried again a second time, again, went down quickly. So the third time I assigned Lightning to heal and Hope to shield going in, then switched to a rav/rav combo once Hope had applied all buffs and pummeled him as quick as we could while using potions to heal. Hope died later on in the fight, and I just barely finished it with Lightning, literally had Odin submit while he was charging me with me probably at 50 health. Very, very close.

Anyway, I beat it in 2 minutes, 18 seconds, and noticed the target time was 26 minutes. Did it actually take anybody anywhere near that long? Just curious.

Spoiler

I used the same strategy in the end after some people here mentioned that Odin was so hard they quit playing the game Like you I was obliterated within seconds the first 2 times I fought him then I buffed up a couple of lightning protect rings and went in using Rav/rav. Switched to Rav/medic every now and then but overall he went down really fast.

I'm not sure of how long it took but I did get 5 stars at the end of the battle. Did you?

 

[gaidensensei]

Cut it out with all the black text, lol. You're intentionally making me want to read the spoilers.

 

[blurredvision]

I'm not sure of how long it took but I did get 5 stars at the end of the battle. Did you?

Yep, an easy 5 gold stars here. I've found that going into fights with the proper paradigm selected by default is the difference between getting 5 stars and 3 stars or less.

Gaiden, my spoiler text above isn't really a spoiler, I'm just trying to be wary of protecting info that people may not want to know. It's just battle strategy really.

EDIT: Just now noticed there was much discussion on this battle just a few posts before mine that kind of render my spoiler tags pointless .

 

[Maximus96]

just picked up my PS3 copy from target today. comes with a $10 giftcard...i caved in and read your stupid spoilers...

 

[velillen]

Even though as others have pointed out theres been a bit of talk already i figured i would toss in my two cents.

Spoiler

i didnt find this that hard at all really. First try in i pulled a stupid mistake at the end and lightning died with like 100 to go (but one or two more hits to the square coming up)

After that i modified and got ready a bit since the first fight i didnt even know odin was coming.

1.) out of battle i put up the offensive and deffensive buffs. I also equipped Spark rings on both.
2.) i use lightning as commando and hope as rav to start and dps till hope was ~50%
3.) Switch to hope being med (leaving lightning as com) and heal up
4.) switch to com/rav and go till odin starts attacking
5.) switch to com/med and heal up
6.) go back and forth like this

I finished with between 700-850 left and neither character were below 50% at any point. he uses pretty predictable attack pattern so its not to hard. He attacks and as he attacks you switch to hope being med and heal up then switch to rav and can do a round of dpsing before he attacks again (sometimes two rounds)

I dont know why but i found the fight pretty easy. Nothing like the crazyness i was expecting. And as for the 26 minute thing its probably so its an auto 5 star battle maybe? You die in like 3 minutes no matter what due to DOOM.

 

[waggy]

-Flow of game....not sure if thats what i'd call it but whats really annoying to me is playing through 2 or 3 battles and BAM cutscene. Ok back to character, fight a battle, cutscene. That ends run forward a bit and cutscene then you switch characters. I just feel the two main issues for me right now are there are to many cutscenes (doesnt let me really get into the game before a cutscene) and the fact you keep switching characters. I'd like to play my partner leader for more than 5-10 minutes before being switched to the next. This could change later in the game and i am the only one who has seemed to mention it so its probably just me.



this is enough for me to NOT play it. i wan't to play a game not watch a movie whith some RPG elements.

 

[hans030390]

-Flow of game....not sure if thats what i'd call it but whats really annoying to me is playing through 2 or 3 battles and BAM cutscene. Ok back to character, fight a battle, cutscene. That ends run forward a bit and cutscene then you switch characters. I just feel the two main issues for me right now are there are to many cutscenes (doesnt let me really get into the game before a cutscene) and the fact you keep switching characters. I'd like to play my partner leader for more than 5-10 minutes before being switched to the next. This could change later in the game and i am the only one who has seemed to mention it so its probably just me.


this is enough for me to NOT play it. i wan't to play a game not watch a movie whith some RPG elements.

The cutscenes and leader switching really cut down once you get past the intro stuff (which can be a couple hours).

 

[velillen]

this is enough for me to NOT play it. i wan't to play a game not watch a movie whith some RPG elements.

Since it was my comment ill update it since i am further into the game now. I'm chapter 5 with like 9 hours played. I would say the first 5-6 hours was how i described (since hey thats when i wrote that) but it has gotten better. There are still quite a few little cutscenes and party switches but it is less frequent now. The game is still linear but there is longer periods of time between party switching and cut scenes. Also the cut scenes are normally where a party switch occurs as well.

Really though i will be honest and say the first three chapters were boring and kind of annoying to me (flow of game wise and combat wise) but post chapter 3 it has actually become quite fun and flows a whole lot better. Just sucks it took 5 hours to get there. Seeing as i was the only one who made that comment as well i would still give it a try as it was probably just me who was annoyed by the flow of the game at that early stage

 

[Rage187]

I'm about ten hours in. It is starting to grow on me. I found some grinding I could do and that is usually the clencher for me.

Some place to grind CP and upgrade components? Count me in.

 

[Phobic9]

I'm about ten hours in. It is starting to grow on me. I found some grinding I could do and that is usually the clencher for me.

Some place to grind CP and upgrade components? Count me in.

Where is that? I haven't had any trouble really keeping my characters CP up (only focusing on 2 trees each mainly) but I'm super low on components at the moment.

 

[SandEagle]

I'm about ten hours in. It is starting to grow on me. I found some grinding I could do and that is usually the clencher for me.

Some place to grind CP and upgrade components? Count me in.

same here. i'm more than 10 hours in and i don't feel like its been a drag at all. the cutscenes and pacing seem to be fine. it is getting progressively harder, but not by much. i always held FFX as the best in the series, but so far i think FFXIII is going to take that crown. the new battle system is absolutely welcomed.

 

[Schfifty Five]

It was free with some pre-orders, and of course you have the Hardcore FF people (guy at my work paid $50! for a hardcover Guide. Not for me, but then again I have the short and long versions of LOTR on DVD and will probebly buy the Blu-ray... to each his own

I bought the collector's strategy guide from amazon when it was on sale for like $18. Glad I did b/c it's really rare and everyone is selling it for $50+

I normally don't buy strat guides, but this one is well worth it, the quality of the printing is excellent.

 

[blurredvision]

Finally made it to chapter 5 this morning, I think my save at the beginning of the chapter is about 8.5 hours. Hope was, by far, my most hated character, but he's finally coming into his own and I don't mind him so much anymore. I think it's mainly because he's putting together complete sentences now.

I'm also getting better at the battle system. I've still not found the battles hard, but I'll occassionally die against a weird grouping of enemies and will have to adjust my strategy to beat it the next time. That's few and far between though. I like how it's still the typical type of Final Fantasy battles, but you control it from a very different perspective. Love it.

 

[UglyCasanova]

Decided that this has the best soundtrack except for FF7. Listen to Gapra Whitewood. The music gets really good when its not the poppy music with vocals.

 

[MJinZ]

First 2 hours experience:

X X X X X X X X X X X X X X Am I done with battles? There's never a need to do anything except press X.

Also, lightning's hair looks damaged. Graphics are overhyped.

So far, so boring. Character design is pretty bad at this point. Lightning looks OK, but the rest are just shitty. Looks like a gang of street rats from Tokyo with flaming red and blue hair. Names - Snow and Hope - what the hell is the fucking girly names.

I'm sad for JRPGs. And games in general.

Going to play through FF13 for the story, then hold my breath for Diablo 3.

 

[Sadaiyappan]

is this worth buying? It's $50 now. i was planning on waiting until it became less then $40.

 

[MJinZ]

is this worth buying? It's $50 now. i was planning on waiting until it became less then $40.

Good thing about console games is that you can always sell them for a smaller loss.

 

[Phobic9]

is this worth buying? It's $50 now. i was planning on waiting until it became less then $40.

Originally I wasn't going to buy this game because it looked boring. I bought it anyway for $46.99 from Amazon (had a coupon) and I don't have any regrets after 16 hours into the game. I will say though that the first 2-3 hours is lame as hell as someone mentioned. All you literally do is press X. I all but gave up on JRPGs but this one is one of the better ones that's been out for a while.

 

[blurredvision]

Character design is pretty bad at this point. Lightning looks OK, but the rest are just shitty. Looks like a gang of street rats from Tokyo with flaming red and blue hair.

Huh? You must be talking about the rebel group whom you never actually control and only see for a very short period of time. The actual characters you go through the game with look pretty damn normal, especially compared to past FF games.

If you don't like fantasy-type stuff, then don't play a game based around fantasy.

 

[Maleficus]

Jesus Christ this game is seriously making me mad. I'm at what I assume MUST be near the end of disc three, and the last... 5 hours of gameplay have simply been endless grinds of fights. these enemies take 15 minutes to kill.

If the game doesn't end soon, I probably won't finish it.

In the beginning I enjoyed this game, by disc 2 the story and characters were growing a little dry, but it had it's moments. Now I just want it over so I can say i beat it and then put it to rest.

44 hours in.

 

[FeathersMcGraw]

I suspect that I'm getting close to the end of chapter four, and while the combat isn't difficult with respect to staying alive, I find it's virtually impossible to get a five-star rating without a pre-emptive attack. I managed to have more frequent success with Sazh/Vanille utilizing the Saboteur role, but I'm just not finding a good strategy using Lightning/Hope, particularly since his Synergist buffs tend to be defensive, not offensive, and I'm finding it difficult to score staggers on the predominant mech enemies.

The combat engine certainly has a ridiculous amount of depth and variation, but I'm finding that it gives you way too much rope to hang yourself, and trying to select actions, target enemies, and switch roles at the appropriate times may be outside my skill level.