FFXIII: Simple or Complex?

[Aztec Triogal]

So this Final Fantasy's gameplay clearly tries to be deep but accessible. My question is which does it do better? Is it more strategic than previous games in the Final Fantasy series? Or is it dumbed down so anyone can play it?

My thoughts on the complex: Elemental weakness are important for all enemies, some battles almost cannot be won without buffs or debuffs, and the stagger system encourages you to sacrifice attack power in order to concentrate on building that bar. It's not straight up attack, attack, attack.

My thoughts on the simple: However, all that gameplay ever really boils down to is picking which jobs your characters will fill... and hitting auto-battle. If your pre-fight selections are good and you can switch between job combinations as needed, then you can beat most any baddie.

I would probably say that, for me, this game is more simplistic than previous games. Yes, your setup has to be thought through... but that requires what? A game guide and about ten seconds of situation planning? It all boils down to hitting auto-battle in the end.

What do you think?

 

[chatua]

Wait, hold up. Game guide? Obviously with a game guide everything will be simplistic. I for one didn't use a game guide and so for the tougher boss fights, it came down to getting my ass kicked a few times, learning the pattern of attacks and what kind of attacks work best, figuring out which paradigms work best to capitalize on weaknesses while not leaving the party overly vulnerable, when to switch paradigms, how to start the battles, when the best time to summon would be, and then beating the boss without breaking a sweat. It's a sweet feeling when you figure out how to do it yourself. It really does require a bit of thinking and strategy.
And not everything boils down to autobattle either. Most of the battles I start out with picking my spells and attacks, i.e., when theres a large group of enemies, i manually select area effect spells, and when playing medic, I never autobatte.

 

[Linnaete]

There's a bit of both actually, depending on who you're picking a fight with.

Most of the battles - especially in the first few chapters - require nothing but a series of the same button pressing of the Auto-battle command to finish the battle and get a respectably high star ranking afterwards. The moment your enemy profile has details of weaknesses and resistances, Auto-battle automatically optimises the appropriate moves. That does make it much easier and more convenient than cycling through menus to find the needed spells and abilities. Furthermore, as long as you can fill the Stagger bar, you basically have the battle nearly instantly in your favour.

The complex part tends to occur in Eidolon battles, boss battles and the more tricky enemies. I agree - you do need to do some detective work and see what the enemy does and how you can counter it. It then boils down to having a decent lineup of Paradigms and to time them well in some occasions. Eidolon battles of course, without using Libra or Librascopes are tricky to get right. Even with Libra or Librascopes used, it may still require a couple of tries and getting the right Paradigms to end the battle with a victory.

I haven't used a game guide, so there were difficult moments. I'm not actually sure whether FFXIII has dumbed down compared to previous games or not. Yes and no is probably what I'll say.

 

[Æon Flux]

Hmmm IMO the game is super simple and dosent realy require much stradegy...or actuall thought . The auto battle pretty much does everything for the gamer wich I think is like thinking of people as to stupid to be able to chose their own actions.
Even without realy trying Ive beat most boss' and the "harder" enimies while getting a five star rating...
I think the game is to simple....The only real thought the game requires is wich paradgim to use...and basically for the most part their realy wasnt any difficult moment in it for me...even chosing it took no real thought or strenuious effort on my part..it just became irksome having to look at the screen to make sure I had to shift otherwise I probably wouldnt have wached it.....
To simple to the point of boredom

 

[Sultan]

It was more simplistic as opposed to strategic to me. The only fights where I had the pleasure of switching my brain on were the summons and the final boss, and even those didn't take much to figure out. I definitely felt that this game was way dumbed down for the convenience of inexperienced players. Granted, there might be tougher fights in the side quests but I wouldn't know since I didn't do any of them and I don't really care.

When it came to the point where you actually get to switch paradigms with the freedom to use any of the characters and the freedom to assign any role to them the battle system got a little exciting for about 1-2 hours and then You feel its simplistic nature again. I just didn't find much "strategy implementing" when I'm telling my characters to be "be a healer" or "be a tank". I know that technically it is strategizing but it's not much. I didn't find it to be fun and I certainly did not find it to be challenging. This is without a doubt the the least game I had trouble with in the franchise.

The number 1 death factor in fights for me were the AIs. They're good most of the time but they're just tedious with the heals. Did the programmers not know that gee, maybe giving the AI the priority to heal the leader would be ideal as opposed to healing the character with the least HP? since you know, if the leader dies then it's game over. So when I die in fights because of that, it's not because the fight itself was hard, it's because the other characters didn't do exactly what I wanted them to do. Man if only this game had gambits.

 

[Aztec Triogal]

The number 1 death factor in fights for me were the AIs.

Haha yea, good point. It's probably one of the only three ways I ever died. I've died a few times just in the couple second long "cutscene" when you change between paradigms... but more often I only seem to die if the enemy has one devastating cheap attack that hits for more than your character's total HP. Very rarely did I ever die for any other reason than those.

On a sidenote, I didn't use a game guide. That wasn't my point. My point was just that the game if far more focused on setup than skill.

 

[Sultan]

I've died a few times just in the couple second long "cutscene" when you change between paradigms...

Yeah! What the hell is up with that? Every once in a while your characters will just change paradigms and that's it but then most of the time you get the camera doing a close up on each character individually changing their paradigms and while that's happening the boss is still skull fucking you in the ass (lol wut?) And every time that happens I keep saying "UGH who the hell thought this was a good idea?". But you're right there are bosses that have a "cheap move" that will annihilate your party completely but then again it's easily bypassable. You either grind for CP and boost your character's HP or some bosses require you to do a certain attack or command that will interrupt these deadly attacks.

 

[Linnaete]

I really don't get what's up with those Paradigm Shift animation scenes either. Yes, you look pretty by twirling around guys, but there's a friggin' bad guy tearing down your HPs! Fortunately they don't seem to appear when either your team leader is in the air or when it's already been shown once in the same battle. Despite being a few seconds, I do agree that they are a waste of time and can sometimes cost you a battle. I've just had my butt kicked in Eden by that Adamanchelid chap during that. >.<

When I was fighting Barthandelus (chapter 9), I remember that being a big difficult part for me. One of those cheap attacks - Barty killed me like four times before I realised that you can nullify some damage by attacking him while he's charging. It's moments like that which constitutes to some major challenge in boss battles.

 

[Floating_Redness]

I thought it was simple, but a weird game, for example, the storyline is very simple when compared to previous F.F., e.g. F.F.XII.

I didn't like the Stagger System because all it's doing is trying to get the gamer to Stagger the victim which doesn't involve alot of thinking, and people who have been fans of F.F. may begin to drift away battles, however, this, and along with the Auto-Battle, is a great way for people who have never played a F.F. Game before to get in to it. Also, the Stagger System tends to make the battles easier, whereas, in previous F.F., you had to think about what you were going to do and find that monester's/person's weakness, whereas the Stagger makes the foe weak to just about anything that can damage it.

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Have to agree with the Paradigm Cutscenes; if they did that, then the monster should stop attacking you because that's cheating!

I must admit that the onl challenging bit of F.F.XIII was which Paradigm to use in battles and figure out the Weaknesses, although, sometimes they were displayed without using the Lyriascope.

 

[DragonSlayer45]

It all depends how you play. Personally, I think it's the very fact of the Paradigms that make it complex. I still find myself dying on certain common battles just going through the story. The challenge sometimes even forces you to not use autobattle. It's really only as complex as you make it out to be.

 

[Kasumi.]

I think that the way the story is presented is very complex. Honestly for most of the game you're pretty lost on what's supposed to be happening.

The game mechanics however are presented in such a way where they seem complex but once you actually try them and use them you realize just how simple they are. All in all if you look at the Paradigm shifts are like an integration of the job system and the dresspheres and the Chystarium is just a prettier Sphere Grid.

 

[Sultan]

In my opinion the story wasn't told well. The reason why many players felt lost was because of the lack of exposition not because the story is complex. sure you have the datalog to clarify things but that's not good storytelling. We're far past the days where we had to read the manual to know what's going on.

 

[Ambios]

^ Agreed on the datalog. I can't be bothered to go into a long list of (poorly) organized categories and subcategories to read 3 paragraphs of plot summary each time something notable happens. The only reason I used the datalog was to get rid of the flashing "new" symbol or to look up monster stats. Which reminds me, the way they sorted the bestiary was *FAR* too complex. Why was it necessary to break everything down into monster categories and then subcategories? What would have been so difficult about the old, quick and dirty alphabetical list?

As for the paradigm animations, I agree completely. There are ways to avoid seeing the animation happen; i.e. if your leader is currently in the air because the enemy is launched, it will skip the animation. You'll still see it in subsequent shifts if all of your party is on the ground, though, so it ends up being a nuisance to just wait for an opportune shift moment.

I do like the paradigm system a lot though and the beauty of it is its simplicity. It made things quick and easy. I liked just being able to set up a few predetermined paradigms. Gone are the days were you have to issue out commands to each party member. This also means less control; you have to depend on the AI to do everything. So the paradigm system's biggest flaw is also its greatest strength.

I do wish they would have some sort of "save paradigm settings" feature, though. It would save A LOT of time. I switch party members a lot, and everytime I do, my settings are reset. Annoying.

 

[DeadFantasy]

There's a bit of both actually, depending on who you're picking a fight with.

Most of the battles - especially in the first few chapters - require nothing but a series of the same button pressing of the Auto-battle command to finish the battle and get a respectably high star ranking afterwards. The moment your enemy profile has details of weaknesses and resistances, Auto-battle automatically optimises the appropriate moves. That does make it much easier and more convenient than cycling through menus to find the needed spells and abilities. Furthermore, as long as you can fill the Stagger bar, you basically have the battle nearly instantly in your favour.

The complex part tends to occur in Eidolon battles, boss battles and the more tricky enemies. I agree - you do need to do some detective work and see what the enemy does and how you can counter it. It then boils down to having a decent lineup of Paradigms and to time them well in some occasions. Eidolon battles of course, without using Libra or Librascopes are tricky to get right. Even with Libra or Librascopes used, it may still require a couple of tries and getting the right Paradigms to end the battle with a victory.

I haven't used a game guide, so there were difficult moments. I'm not actually sure whether FFXIII has dumbed down compared to previous games or not. Yes and no is probably what I'll say.

I agree with Olivia. For the same reasons as her. It's both a mixture of complex and simple.
Like she had said, the first few chapters were so frickin' easy I could fight (basically) with my eyes shut and it didnt take much effort to win a fight. But the farther along you went it did get more complex and you have to stratigize in some way.

Good post btw Olivia

 

[Aztec Triogal]

Since we're talking about gameplay and the benefits of paradigms, wouldn't this have been the best game to include your ENTIRE party? You could have had everyone to a job class or two... but no, just three guys again all trying to be everyone.

This game was more challenging in the fact that it limited you (by abilities, by party numbers, by baddie's with cheap hits) than it was in just straight up strategy. I guess that's why I think it's simple. Kinda like the point about the plot... it's not that the game was difficult, just that it was poorly setup.

 

[SaShman]

Since we're talking about gameplay and the benefits of paradigms, wouldn't this have been the best game to include your ENTIRE party? You could have had everyone to a job class or two... but no, just three guys again all trying to be everyone.

I kind of agree with you to a certain extent. But I think the idea of character roles took a new form with the way the Crystarium was designed. For example both Hope and Sazh took on the early 'synergist role' but while Hope's early synergist abilities were defensive buffs (protect, shell etc) Sazh's were offensive buffs. I agree that towards the end when the characters learned more abilities the character roles became a bit blurred. But before this happened, I had to use certain characters for certain things.

As for the gameplay being simple or complex. I definitely would say that it was more simple than anything, in the sense that it just amounted to using auto-assign for most battles unless I wanted my characters to do something specific.

To be fair, I would argue that the real strategy in FFXIII occurred outside of battles rather than in them. In order to win tough battles, a good paradigm set up was crucial (for me at least). So a lot of the tough battles required some trial and error as far as paradigm set ups go. However, the point that weapon upgrades weren't really required kind of simplified things. I didn't really need to dapple with upgrading things in order to finish the game.

Personally I really liked the system. But I'd definitely say it was more simple than complex. However, I did enjoy the idea of planning for battles more thoroughly while setting up my paradigms.

 

[CHIP]

I thought the battles themselves were rather simple, thanks, in no small part to the adroitness of your AI-controlled buddies. I mean, there's not much complexity to switching roles mid-battle, letting the AI automatically do most of the work, as you hammer auto-attack, until the need to switch roles arises again. Complex? Hardly. To be brutally honest, it's baby-simple.

That said, even though it was simple, it was still more fun than any other previous installment because battles are so fast and, more or less in real-time, they demand quick-thinking and fast-reflexes to keep enemies on the backfoot, which means fights are more engaging. In my opinion it's better than having your characters stand in line each waiting for their turn to attack.

So, it's simple - but fun. The most complex bit of the battle-system probably lies in the preparation - as someone said. Before each boss encounter, I often found myself doing a lot of micromanagement, while mentally living the battle out in my head and ascribing my roles accordingly. But I guess, that's not really much different from any other Final Fantasy. Micromanagement is a given.

(Opps, I thought this thread was just about the battle-system).

 

[master_ben]

be humble everyone me im a ff veteran i finish ff1 to 13 except the 2
seriously the game system is easy to understand but hard to master you have to tried many combination of paradigram to perfect your strategie.Seriously in a lot of ff game i dont die too much but in this one i die often and not because i suck.The first barthandelus was a bitch(i dont custumize weapon but still) i died 4 time,the mark with the ochu was a pain(i dont custumized my weapon...).Another thing the customized weapon when you first acquired this,you dont know what to do with that and you dont want to waste all youre item on one weapon.You dont know what weapon to choose
maybe if i replay the game i will customize weapon but the first time it was confusing.
For the difficulty of boss and even some monster the challenge was good vs other final fantasy

 

[Gingerbread Lesbian]

I found it ridiculously simple. I generally found that once you got used to the paradigms and what they do it's straightforward, even with the huge amount of setups you could have I only needed 6 of them throughout the entire game when I could pick my own party. Some battles are a bit more complex than others but if you've got the right equipment then it's not really a problem.