Are battles in XIII significantly more difficult than in previous games?

[LanguageSponge]

I am wondering whether you thought that the battles in XIII were more difficult than in previous games. I find myself dying in XIII much more frequently than I have in any other game. Despite very often being as developed as the Crystarium will allow, I often get steamrollered in boss fights numerous times before I work out how to handle them, and even then I often get a mediocre rating. I have read that many consider the Eidolon fights some of the hardest story battles, but I have honestly found them some of the easiest so far, having only died against the Shiva Sisters once, and beat Odin and Brynhildr first time round. But some of the other bosses flattened me before I'd even had a chance to draw my sword.

So, is it more normal in XIII to get beaten in normal fights and boss fights, or have I just not got the hang of staggering and paradigms properly yet? What do you think? What were your experiences?

Thanks!

LanguageSponge

 

[Sheechiibii]

I don't think the battles are hard as long as you don't bother caring about the rating. I hated the ratings system and tried to forget they were there. I wanted to be able to take my time, and when you do that the battles aren't so hard. Rushing makes them harder.

 

[Linnaete]

I remember being steamrollered by a few normal enemies, but I suppose that was because I was still mashing the Auto-Battle command like crazy, thinking the battle could end after a minute or so of passive tapping. There are a few points in the game outside of bosses and quarries when you may need to adjust your strategy and the paradigm deck before you go in, but I found that chucking in a Libra or Librascope, and knowing when to basically dish out damage, when to heal, when to perhaps buff/debuff and when to curl up into a ball is enough to get through.

Of course, attempting to 5-star everything is a pain in the arse, and it's there to act as an artificial difficulty increase for dedicated players. I never paid attention to it, so long as I didn't die in the fight.

Eidolon fights did initially annoy me though. I was so confused at the first one, because I thought you had to go Sentinel, then switch back to Commando when safe to attack the Shiva sisters. I didn't think that staying curled as a ball was supposed to impress them, but haha, it did. It was just silly. Odin took me a lot of goes.

Then there are bosses like Barthandelus. His face opens and he casts Destrudo. Logically you curl up into a ball. It still kills you. It turns out you have to attack him while he's charging up to fire. And here I thought I'd be rational and use the time to buff and heal up. =/

I found FFXII somewhat more challenging anyway. That wyrm boss in the Golmore Jungle is pure, unfiltered evil.

 

[BretHudson]

I don't think they were necessarily harder, but the game did a poor job of preparing you for the battles. Often times I'd find myself running back and forth in an area to grind, and part of that is the lack of random encounters. So yes, it was a bit harder in some battles to win, but it wasn't due to the difficulty of the game, but rather the poor design choices that require players to grind over a linear path over and over again.

 

[Alak]

I actually felt it was easier than the previous games. Regular encounters were no issue for me, especially since your party completely heals up after each fight. However, I did begin to find the game to be challenging after encountering Cid. That was the first fight I actually lost in XIII (but certainly not the last).

 

[greenyxi]

The battles are much easier in 13 than a lot of FF games. You press x over and over and win most battles. Now and again you'll need to change paradigms (mainly during bosses) but not all that often.

 

[Razberry Knight]

Easiest game in the world. Occasionally I would die when I started out. But those excessively long tutorialsbarely paid off...and it was incredibly easy.

The problem is the game wasn't designed well to show if you did it right or not. But its fiarly easy. Paradigm shift the moment they attack and that somehow saves u some damage. Also mashing x....it was just insane....

 

[tiornys]

Rating the baseline difficulty of battles in any FF game is rather difficult, as all kinds of variables come into play: how developed "should" your characters be for X enemy or Y boss? and, what equipment should we assume you are using? and, how do we compare resource management issues in FFI vs. FFVI vs. FFX vs. FFXIII? and etc. FFXIII is significantly harder to complete if you avoid grinding than if you constantly grind to the level cap, but is it harder to beat FFXIII without grinding than it is to beat FFVII without grinding? I'm not sure (more precisely, I think it depends on how much knowledge we assume the player has), and I'm in a better place than most people to make that judgement call (because I've actually beaten both FFVII and FFXIII without grinding).

With that said, I do think that it is generally more difficult to find efficient, optimized battle strategies in FFXIII than it is to find efficient, optimized battle strategies in the other FF games. This is mostly a consequence of FFXIII's superior internal balance and its relative lack of broken abilities/combos.

 

[Razberry Knight]

idk what you're talking about. theres not alot of room to grind.

 

[tiornys]

Early in the game, you don't have room for grinding because fighting each enemy on path maxes the Crystarium before the next expansion. That starts to change in chapters 6 and 7, and becomes a major factor in chapter 11. A player who grinds to max primary roles in chapter 11 will have characters with about 40% more Strength, Magic, and HP than a player who avoids grinding while fighting every enemy on the path once, not to mention various other benefits in terms of abilities, role levels, ATB segments, and extra accessory slots. This advantage grows in chapters 12 and 13.

And then there's secondary roles. Secondary roles don't offer very much in the way of stats (although the cumulative stats in all three secondaries does make a small impact), but they do offer a ton of strategic flexibility. For those who doubt the power level of that added flexibility, I'll point out that characters who have maxed their entire stage 8 are capable of taking down every encounter in the chapter without equipment upgrades. This includes such postgame standouts as Long Gui, Shaolong Gui, 2x Raktavija, and Vercingetorix.

And then there's equipment upgrading, which offers extremely fertile grounds for grinding. FFXIII can be beaten without using the Crystarium at all (and so can all but two of the missions), and this is largely made possible by extensive gil grinding to create max level +HP bangles and max level weaponry.

FFXIII offers plenty of scope for grinding to matter. It's not very efficient, and it's not as effective as coming up with better strategies, but it does still exist.

 

[IlluminaChaos]

I found the battles in XIII to be of easy as long as you prepared your paradigms accordingly.But before acquiring a full group it is a bit of a pain in the begining of the game, ill admit.There wasnt anything greatly difficult about it though IMO,a couple of the bosses were terribly annoying,I.E. Barthandulas the second time fighting him and one other I cant think of the name to off hand.

 

[L]

kinda sorta, but more than anything they are just ridiculously long. i guess from an overall level of difficulty they are a little more difficult, but maybe i am just used to playing MMOs or something where the point of content is to pressure the player

a lot of the old games you just exploit weakness and watch something fall over dead though. pretty much the same in ffxiii as well, just that it takes 5x as long so that you can't just sweep the boss under the carpet before they can really do anything

 

[tiornys]

kinda sorta, but more than anything they are just ridiculously long.

Out of curiosity, what's your timeframe for "ridiculously long"? 1 minute per fight? 2 minutes? 5?

 

[Razberry Knight]

they really dont vary so much. you can call ff13 immersive, the majority of was just dead weight. aspects you "could" use but obviously meant to just hide the ones you trully needed.

i mean for one to not use the crystarium system is desperate attempt to make the game more diversive.

 

[Big Casino]

Theyre just incredibly long to the point where its ridiculous. Its boring, time consuming and i found myself skipping as many enemies as i could. A lot of the random monster battles took longer than boss fights. 5 minutes + for a regular fucking enemy are you joking ._. Its all because of that stupid stagger system the game has. If you dont stagger an enemy youd still be fighting it come christmas morning. Its the main thing for me that really makes it the shining turd of a game it is. To this day i still cant bring myself to finish it. -______-

 

[Harlequin]

The battles aren't harder in my opinion just much more long winded. The rating system is broken too - it's time based which isn't always indicative of a well fought battle.

If you dont stagger an enemy youd still be fighting it come christmas morning.

LOL!

100% agree. It was a good idea badly implemented. Should've only been on bosses, special or rare enemies.

 

[Razberry Knight]

idk...maybe its either that i caught onto the mechanics of the game faster and took advantage of everything that it made it so incredibly easy, or you all played a different copy than mine....

the bosses are long, but not hard. you don't stop battling mid-way and take a break without pausing.

 

[L]

Out of curiosity, what's your timeframe for "ridiculously long"? 1 minute per fight? 2 minutes? 5?

Well

Compare the battle times of FFXIII to FFXIII-2 and you will see a more traditional speed. Some of the fairly trivial encounters I have had in FFXIII took as long to complete as some bosses in MMOs take to die.

I don't mind a boss battle being long, they are supposed to be long. and hard. and eheheheh yeah i'm real mature. But some of the enemies are just so trivial, yet can take so much abuse or just use or have really annoying innate abilities to prolong the times of their demise. Barthandelus also kept resetting his break when I last played the game and I was pretty much doing everything in the exact same pattern for the next 5+ minutes.

But maybe it wasn't even 5 minutes. Maybe I was just so bored that it felt like 10 minutes. I am used to playing a lot of action games and 3-5 minutes is kinda lengthy while still being an exhilarating experience.

Kind of remind me of fairies in Record of Agarest War. Fuck Fairies. They have a higher rate of movement than player characters in your party and just run the fuck away when you kill everything else, wasting turns to prolong their pitiful lives.

Fairies are dicks.

 

[tiornys]

Hmm. Sounds to me like many of the posters in the thread were overlooking the power level of various strategic options. Yes, if you just stagger and kill one enemy at a time using only COMs and RAVs (and MEDs when healing is needed), then many fights are going to take quite a while, especially as you get further into the game. That's because the game expects you to be using more efficient strategies as you advance to later sections. With good strategies and normal (or higher) development levels, most battles will finish in under a minute, and it will be rare for a non-boss battle to take longer than two minutes.

Its all because of that stupid stagger system the game has. If you dont stagger an enemy youd still be fighting it come christmas morning.

LOL!

100% agree. It was a good idea badly implemented. Should've only been on bosses, special or rare enemies.

This is a clear indication of overlooking or underestimating various ways to amplify damage without relying on staggers. Between buffs like Bravery and Enfire, debuffs like Deprotect and Imperil, weapon and accessory upgrade options, proper deployment of COMs, and effective use of multi-target abilities, there are lots of ways to efficiently kill things that don't necessarily involve staggering them. In fact, for normal casual play, over half of all enemies you encounter should be defeated without making any effort to stagger them.

But some of the enemies are just so trivial, yet can take so much abuse

Those enemies can be taken down quite rapidly by combining the stuff mentioned above with chain building. Note that chain building is not always the same as staggering. Enemies with very low stagger points might well want a fair amount of extra chain building after stagger before switching to heavy damage mode, while enemies with high stagger points can usually just be chained up to 250-300% or so without worrying about getting all the way to stagger.

or just use or have really annoying innate abilities to prolong the times of their demise.

All of which can be circumvented, disabled, prevented, or defended against.

 

[Razberry Knight]

meh...but you have to consider how much one puts value in such things. thats what separates XIII from every single entry. the fact that they put the most important details in the most trivial ideas. Especailly chain building. The significance, doesn't matter, when the game fofers little reward to use the tactics it offers.

but this is about difficulty, and this game is easy as it comes, the idea is to gather momentum, more than strategically choosing ur attacks. The more momentum you get the more speed you play, in which makes the game in credibly difficult to love for older fans because the general idea is literally "what you make of it". Whatever you value most in the game is what makes the game enjoyable. And that's fine and all, but they really chose the wrong things to focus on and because they focused on them, battles can feel tedious when u just want a quick playthrough.

the entire game boils down to having these options that don't really bring much of a reward in the long run. just the personal 100% (and of course the PS-trophy system, in which i personally find it to be the stupidest excuse of in-game trophies to disappear).


the game is incredibly easy, regardless if you enjoy the system or not, the battles just tend to get tedious, even in boss battles.