zinfamous
No Lifer
- Jul 12, 2006
- 110,509
- 29,090
- 146
I've been going through the Final Fantasy 13 games for some reason, because of the Steam summer sale. I guess I got drunk one night and they ended up in my cart?
Anyway....the PC ports are, indeed terrible. buggy as hell and you do have to disable cloud saves or your saves will corrupt and become unplayable. That, and you have to install large address aware.
These are old games now for sure, and I had long-lost interest in this series (which I more or less grew up on when FF1 was released for NES), but I felt I would go back and try them out.
The first one...the criticism is apt. Hyper linear to the point that you feel like the first 20-40 hours is just a prologue, a rather obnoxious new combat system where you only control one character and it boils down to single-button pushing auto-attacking where 98% of the battles have the AI deciding your skills and actions. ...far, far cry from FFIX. But, it "opens up" near the end...meaning by ~60 hours, when you get a single "open worldish" map that provides all of the exploring and farming. The story is weird and mostly crap, like the characters, but it's still kind of interesting....the villains in these games have been the same since ~FF VIII: generic plug-in some weirdly-dressed person with some unexplained motivations that must be stopped. Still, it's better than the next one.
FF13-2. 2 characters, and some monsters that you capture and train, which provides the bulk of your party customizations. I mean....it's "neat" for one of those low-rent FF experiments like FF Legends, but the two main characters are completely useless. I can't stand them. The time-traveling stuff is actually kinda cool, with the different eras on the same maps, and the story does open up and near the end....really becomes rather haunting. It put me in "a mood." Stupid games like this aren't supposed to do this to me anymore. But there is something there with one of the main characters. The bulk of the gameplay in this, though, is forgettable.
FF13: Lightning Returns: I think this is my favorite, even though it is entirely dependent on one of my most hated and mercifully rare game mechanics: the persistent clock with timed countdown until the end.--like Majora's Mask, which I barely played because of this. I just want to take my time. I don't want to have to run around from place to place as efficiently as possible just to make sure I get everything I need and, at least, am properly leveled to handle a situation where I find myself stuck in front of an unbeatable boss, which happens. But--the battle system is wonderful. The world is really chill. The story...eh I don't know yet. Not down but it seems a bit obvious. Leveling through quests only does add that pressure to make sure you finish as many as you can, and once you get used to juggling the time pausing skill and replenishing your skill meter for it, you find that you end up with more time than you need, but the pressure to beat the clock is always there, regardless. If you ignore the dress-up aspect of it and just focus on the skill aspects, it's a solid system that is both actiony and classic FF-RPG. The fights can be really hard if you find yourself woefully underleveled, which normally isn't a problem because you would just go farm xp and fix the problem. But here you don't have time, and you feel that once you get to the end with a major boss, you don't want to waste time traveling somewhere else and losing major time. Even if it probably doesn't matter in the end....it matters. So you struggle and find a way to cheese your way through fights--(like cursing and using the -ga spells to juggle a dude in the air, near-constantly, until the fight ends, lol).
Anyway, I think this one is probably one of those panned gems that is worth a look if you haven't played it before or even another look if you didn't like it. It has a new game+ mode with better gear, supposedly, but I'm not sure if I have serious interest in running back through things.
Anyway....the PC ports are, indeed terrible. buggy as hell and you do have to disable cloud saves or your saves will corrupt and become unplayable. That, and you have to install large address aware.
These are old games now for sure, and I had long-lost interest in this series (which I more or less grew up on when FF1 was released for NES), but I felt I would go back and try them out.
The first one...the criticism is apt. Hyper linear to the point that you feel like the first 20-40 hours is just a prologue, a rather obnoxious new combat system where you only control one character and it boils down to single-button pushing auto-attacking where 98% of the battles have the AI deciding your skills and actions. ...far, far cry from FFIX. But, it "opens up" near the end...meaning by ~60 hours, when you get a single "open worldish" map that provides all of the exploring and farming. The story is weird and mostly crap, like the characters, but it's still kind of interesting....the villains in these games have been the same since ~FF VIII: generic plug-in some weirdly-dressed person with some unexplained motivations that must be stopped. Still, it's better than the next one.
FF13-2. 2 characters, and some monsters that you capture and train, which provides the bulk of your party customizations. I mean....it's "neat" for one of those low-rent FF experiments like FF Legends, but the two main characters are completely useless. I can't stand them. The time-traveling stuff is actually kinda cool, with the different eras on the same maps, and the story does open up and near the end....really becomes rather haunting. It put me in "a mood." Stupid games like this aren't supposed to do this to me anymore. But there is something there with one of the main characters. The bulk of the gameplay in this, though, is forgettable.
FF13: Lightning Returns: I think this is my favorite, even though it is entirely dependent on one of my most hated and mercifully rare game mechanics: the persistent clock with timed countdown until the end.--like Majora's Mask, which I barely played because of this. I just want to take my time. I don't want to have to run around from place to place as efficiently as possible just to make sure I get everything I need and, at least, am properly leveled to handle a situation where I find myself stuck in front of an unbeatable boss, which happens. But--the battle system is wonderful. The world is really chill. The story...eh I don't know yet. Not down but it seems a bit obvious. Leveling through quests only does add that pressure to make sure you finish as many as you can, and once you get used to juggling the time pausing skill and replenishing your skill meter for it, you find that you end up with more time than you need, but the pressure to beat the clock is always there, regardless. If you ignore the dress-up aspect of it and just focus on the skill aspects, it's a solid system that is both actiony and classic FF-RPG. The fights can be really hard if you find yourself woefully underleveled, which normally isn't a problem because you would just go farm xp and fix the problem. But here you don't have time, and you feel that once you get to the end with a major boss, you don't want to waste time traveling somewhere else and losing major time. Even if it probably doesn't matter in the end....it matters. So you struggle and find a way to cheese your way through fights--(like cursing and using the -ga spells to juggle a dude in the air, near-constantly, until the fight ends, lol).
Anyway, I think this one is probably one of those panned gems that is worth a look if you haven't played it before or even another look if you didn't like it. It has a new game+ mode with better gear, supposedly, but I'm not sure if I have serious interest in running back through things.