Early thoughts/impressions?

Yeah they did change it completely. I wish it was similar to them but unfortunately its not. It sounds good though. I like it. Not the Leona Lewis song though -_______-. Kimi Ga Iru Kara, the main theme song in Japanese is really good. I also love Serah's theme song. So far the game reminds me of FFX/FFVII. Obviously the graphics are are closer to FFXII then those two though.
 
I friend invited me over and I started watching him play it. I fell asleep. It was boring, so he decided to let me play, in a hope that I would change my mind about the game. Deciding once and for all to drop the "you have to play before you complain" thing, I played the game.

I got further than he did, and by the time I stopped playing... which would just 40 minutes ago, I was already fed up with the game.

Eventually, I just loaded up music from the X-Box, the music in the game was terriblizzle. The graphics were pretty, but I was expecting that, the battle system consisted of mashing "A" all the time.

So much for strategy, that's really all that I did.

The linearity was more brutal than I thought it would be. I never thought in my life that pressing up on a joystick would be so... :rage:

Every. Character. Is. Annoying. (Except Sazh, he's actually one of the only things that I like about the game so far.) Vanille is horrid, and fugly, seriously, she isn't cute at all. And her running animation... I want to shoot her. :ffs:

Running through the game, I miss all of the elements of FF past. It seriously doesn't look, nor feel like an FF game.

The leveling up system... If I wanted to play FFX (A game I already view as terrible) I would play FFX. I don't like this stupid system... At all.

The game is far, FAR, too easy. Being healed at the end of every battle is just overkill.

The AI is bloody stupid. "Here, AI, do this!" Then he does something completely fraking different. I think I could get more done by fighting monsters by myself.

The story thus far is completely average. I don't care about any of these characters. They give me no reason to care. Sometimes they look into the camera like one of those starving African children and make a "I'm sad" face, but that makes me giggle. :rofl:

The story on paper, sounded pretty interesting, but seeing it executed... It's kind of boring.

The game is what I thought it was going to be, a complete letdown. However, even so, I'm going to go back to my friends house tonight, and try this crap again. Even though I really, really, don't want to because I really, really, hate this game. :mokken:

EDIT: Also, I think it would have been better as a movie. Seeing as how you're tripping over cutscenes every so often. :ffs: Seriously, I'd like to play a full 10 minutes without some sort of frigging cutscene.

EDIT 2: Also, in battle, if you set everything to automatic, instant 5 stars. In manual, I always get 4. It's like the game fucking punishes you for playing it. -__-

Also, adding a ranking system to the battles in a FF game was fucking retarded and that guy should be shot.

(Hell, the entire FFXIII team save for Kitse and Nomura should be shot for this fail. :mokken:)
 
Last edited:
Okay, I know everyone is excited about the game but please remember this is a post count section. There is no reason to post one-line responses after every post. Any further one-liners will be deleted. Thanks. :)
 
I agree with Lightning and it is confusing at the start of the game with the storyline. Trying to keep everything in check gets abit ARGH lol. But just done the first boss battle and its getting better for me. Ill admit Im glad I didnt get the special edition for the OST as it is a boring soundtrack.

Calzum said:
Well i just put it in and after i saw the graphics after the first CGI cut scene...on xbox there badd
Click to expand...

What are you talking about lol? Im playing on a 15inch widescreen and I think they are super. Cant please everyone I guess.
 
Tsukianei said:
Vanille is horrid, and fugly, seriously, she isn't cute at all. And her running animation... I want to shoot her. :ffs:
Click to expand...
...agreed. She runs like Yuna did in FFX-2, although more...all over the place...playing that section was very, VERY tedious. Still, no doubt thousands of fanboys all squealed at that moment...

Anyways...am now up to Chapter 3. My opinion of the battle system has risen somewhat. The Paradigm gimmick looks pretty nifty, although it'd be nice if the AI was a bit quicker on the draw. I died twice against that
scorpion-mech thing
because Vanille didn't cast Cure on me fast enough...rrrgh. The lack of strategy is off-putting, as well. Seriously, you CAN just go through the game mashing the X button. But then, I imagine once some more abilities are unlocked, things will get more interesting.

Not being able to advance my characters irks me, as well. I LOVE grinding. To have it restricted...that is a low, low blow. Seriously.

I'm getting to like Snow, he's not ENTIRELY shallow...although I don't only want to strangle Hope; I want to crucify him. He is such a WHINY LITTLE BRAT. For the love of everything sacred, someone, ANYONE, shove him off the edge of a cliff. For me. Please. I still feel absolutely nothing for Lightning, she really is a female Cloud Strife. Stereotypical, boring "lone-wolf" type. Meh.
 
I gotta admit Hope is a tad annoying. All he does is want to run away and flipping hide. But then I remember hes a kid, so its not really his fault. But as Martel said pushing him off a cliff would make me happy :-) I love Vanille, she makes me smile when shes on screen.
 
Yeah vanille's running is pretty hilarious. She looks like she's skipping around as if she doesn't have a care in the world... lol
 
I bet everyone here will finish the game way before me. I'm at chapter 8-

The story isn't confusing, I found FFXII's storyline much confusing lol.

The music isn't that bad, there are a couple of good tracks.

Such as the boss theme & Gapra Whitewood.

^These songs are stuck in my head >.<
 
At the rate I'm going, I could finish the story by Saturday at the latest. I've just started Chapter 4, and I don't have to go into University tomorrow or Thursday >D
...although, as soon as I get some freedom (Chapter 11, yes?) to do as I please, I'm going on a sidequest/training spree, which is likely to triple whatever my current game time is. I get more obsessive over the sidequests than I do over the actual story. XD;

Still waiting on the point where I actually have to think to win, instead of just tapping X, and occasionally Triangle to finish things off, or R1 to get a Medic out...
 
i thought that the game was really slow to start off with, but as i progressed i have really began to enjoy it, this game is definitely in a league of its own, and sazh is definately one of the best characters in the game but im not too fond of hope though :| has any one else noticed that sazh sounds a bit like sgt johnson from the halo sereis?
 
Just got back from playing again. It's boring, I literally have to sit down and make myself play it. I'm trying to get to Pulse, just to see if the game opens up.

So far, my conclusions are:

Annoying characters
Final Fantasy in name alone
The most linear game I've ever played
Boring battle system. It looks flashy, but all I'm doing is mashing "A".
Horribizzle music, so I loaded up my own. (FFIX and Crono Cross music is oddly fitting.)
I can't play the game 10 minutes without tripping over a cutscene.
I couldn't care less about the story.
I couldn't care less about the characters.
Doesn't look, nor feel like a FF game.
Vanille is fugly.
The game looks nice.
I'm already starting to feel the redundant grind, despite the fact that I'm not grinding.
I never knew that walking up could feel so annoying.
I can play a match on Dissidia while pressing up on the controller with my feet.
You can definitely tell that they got inspiration from Halo and MW2.
If this is the new generation of FF, then it sucks.
I'm never playing another main series FF game again. (Except for XIV.)
FF is dead.
Leveling up is almost the same as leveling up in FFX (a game I don't like. -__-)
Ranking system in battles is stupid.
Just set the game to auto and you can watch the game win every battle with 5 stars for you.
Far too easy for a FF game. Auto healing after battle is overkill.

I'm going to play until I get to Pulse, and check out the side-quests, but overall this game is fail. I hate it, I hate everything about it, even Sazh is starting to lose his charm. I'm glad that I didn't pay for it. It would be much better suited as a movie, because as a game, it's fail.

The story looked good on paper, but as I progress through the game, I just find myself not caring. Almost like a Tom Clansy book. :rofl:

Anyway, I hate this game. The FF series is dead to me now. It's almost like seeing a statue that I used to like being torn down after a local gang scribbled on it. T_T

EDIT: Also, chapters suck. :ffs:
 
Last edited:
yeah im only on chapter 2 since i was working (blah), so to be honest i cant really comment on too much. the music i have heard so far, i will agree with most people on this, isnt good. it holds none of the charm that ant onther scores have. not a fan thus far.
the characters i find to be ok, except for Hope who is kinda annoying in my opinion. Vannille is my fave though! She is cute i think! Lovely and upbeat! :) They really used a terrible picture for Sazh's status/equipment screen lol. Really bad.
i havnt enjoyed the battle system at all but then again i havnt really expanded since 'press A and then you will attack twice. Or maybe even three times!'
im keeping a very open mind though since im only on chapter two :).
 
I thought the story started slow, so I was like meh

.. But trust me, it gets better. Just give it a few chapters and you'll see.

And about Hope, he gets less annoying as his character progress.
 
BNO said:
I thought the story started slow, so I was like meh

.. But trust me, it gets better. Just give it a few chapters and you'll see.

And about Hope, he gets less annoying as his character progress.
Click to expand...


yeahh i have began to get
used to him now he is starting to open up more and become and enjoyable carachter
 
Vanille is the most annoying character I've ever come across in any game -___-
Certainly in the first two chapters where
Hope clearly wants to mention something about his mothers death
and she stops him pretty much. The best scenes are when he actually does show some emotion. :mokken:
 
Alright here goes...

So far so good, although there's definitely a few things that I have to get used to. But first I'll mention a few positive highlights. I love the characters so far, some moreso than others. Lightning, Serah, and Sazh are definitely up there. Vanille, Hope, and Fang (although I only saw her for a minute - I'm at Chapter 4 now) ... er, they're okay. Nothing too special in my eyes. Brilliant cinematics and lots of eye-candy, that's for sure. I love the emotion that each character portrays.

Now, here are the few things I'm a bit irked of:

On page 31 of the guide, it says, "Readers keen to 'level up' the party straight away should note that Crystarium progression is capped, with new layers only introduced at fixed story milesones. [Yada yada yada] ...there are just enough enemies between now and the chapter end to provide all the progress you need [yada yada yada] ... so there's no real benefit in fighting in a single spot with long-term character advancement in mind."

That made me sad. I was really looking forward to some sort of grinding at the least. I did come to a situation where I couldn't progress through the Crystarium anymore, and although it's not that big of a deal (makes battles more challenging I suppose) I wasn't expecting it would be capped at all. :hmmm: Definitely has that FFX elements to it...but a bit more harder to view at times.

Paradigms and roles are quite interesting, although the system seems very familiar to me, so it's not something entirely new I think. Still likeable though.

I'm also kinda irked that there's no money gained after battles. That's just my own preference though. I don't know about everyone else, but for me, a battle seems a lot more enjoyable after you receive some sort of income. Meh, I'll live.

I was expecting the linearity but I wasn't expecting it'd be that linear...however I'm not gonna get into it since it's not a major issue for me. T'was just something I thought I'd take note on.

Music is catchy enough. There's a few that I actually got into but I do have to say it doesn't have that Final Fantasy music element that I'm used to hearing in the past, ones that kinda tug at the heartstrings and leave a mark forever. Here, the music is a bit different for my taste, but it also doesn't bother me. It's just A-okay - nothing too special that's worthy of mention at the moment.

With that said, I can't wait until the sidequests become available. I'm still enjoying the game despite the little gripes here and there. =] As I progress through the chapters, I'll make sure to add any additional information to the thread, but for now, this will have to do.
 
Well, I gotta admit that I don't own FF XIII. I don't plan to get it. Ain't got a tv or anything like that so... it's sorta senseless.
Nevertheless I got a very good impression of FF XIII by your comments, which are overall very critic. But that's probably because you are hard, solid fans and want any FF to be very very good. So am I. Or was I.

I wanna stick to characters:
When I started playing FF (that was FF VII in 1997 if I remember correctly) I was about 13 or 14 years old. A teenie that is. Since then I played almost every FF there is (except 1 and 11). When I was quite young (up to 18/ 19 I guess) I could identify with characters from the games. But when I played X-2 or XII (X too, but mostly the two mentioned before) I couldn't identify with a character or feel sympathies for them. Why that? I think these characters are... well, they are teenie and I am not anymore. The problems they got and all that jazz belong to a world that I've left some years before. Overall I think FF's are getting more and more uninteresting because of that.
I think a player gotta identify in some case there (characters) if that game wants to be appealing to him. If this isn't given anymore, why should he be playing? Or let's say the storyline gotta be extremely good to like the game. I didn't see that given in any of late FF's.
It's been said before (twice by one member): FF's dead. That sums it up. But it's dead for many many years now.
My thesis: FF's just appealing to a player if he/she can identify with some sort of the game (mainly characters).
Someone disagree?
Oh, btw: hey there. First post. Cheers.
 
I'm only 5 hours into the game, so perhaps it's too early to make any overarching judgements, but there are a few things that are beginning to rankle. The battle-system, though fast and dynamic, doesn't really demand much thought. To win fights I just need to change Paradigms, let the AI take care of healing, and consistently tap A (that's on the 360) until the enemy enters 'Stagger' mode and then I win. It's so easy, it's almost insulting. I can even win fights by not even looking at the screen. You can tell it's been designed to appeal to casual gamers. I've only died once, and that was because I forgot to change Paradigms. That said, it's still early days, and I'll probably need more time with it before making a final call.

However, the characters are by far the biggest let down for me so far. Lightning seems to punch her teammates with alarming regularity for no reason, Hope delivers some of the most preposterously overwrought "I'M ACTING HERE" moments I've ever seen in a videogame, and the others aren't particularly inspiring. You can tell that Square's target audience for this game was young adolescents. Still, it's early days; I can't really pass judgement until I've played more.

EDIT: The game is very linear (but I was expecting that), and there's not really any interaction with the environment. At times, it feels like you're barely relevant and the only reaon you're playing the game is simply so you can trigger the next cut-scene. It's sort of like an amusement park ride. There's not much spice and it all gets rather repetitive. Would it be unfair to call the game an "interactive movie" instead of an RPG? Because that's what it feels like.

Of course, it's not all negative. It looks beautiful. The subtle expressions on the characters faces really bring them to life and the battles throw up some spectacular visuals. Having said that though, it's only marginally better-looking than what I remember FFX (and X-2) being.


 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top