FFXIII Final Fantasy XIII General Discussion Thread

Final Fantasy XIII is great, but still... (this is a rant, read at own risk!)

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Does anybody else think that the story is unsatisfying? I expected FF13 to the greatest game ever, to surpass my two favorite games (FFIV and Chrono Trigger) as the best game.

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But man, I was disappointed. For one, the characters. Can Vanille get even more annoying? She is always clueless, and makes squeaky annoying sounds. And in battle, I swear I heard her say, "I'm not all sugar and rainbows." Wow. Also, Hope is pretty annoying too. Every cutscene, he says,"Come on guys, we have to do this to save Cocoon!!" in his dorky, wannabe epic voice. I cringe whenever he or Vanille opens their mouths, as I know that something dumb is going to come out. And Snow. A great example of the kind of junk that comes out of his mouth is, "It's Snow or never!" Funny, never heard a pun before. He also kind of looks like the jerk-biker type. Besides these three, I don't really have a problem with any of the other characters, other than Fang's awful Australian accent, and how Lightning is always pissed off.

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The enemies are also pretty bad. When I came across what seemed like the 20th form of Flan, I knew that the enemies were awful. They're all just variations of one kind of enemy, just with different colors or an extra small feature. They're all just ridiculously repetitive. Even Jabberwocker and Bandersnatch are copies of Enki and Enlil. And for the giant, bulbasaur looking boss? They made that a normal enemy in chapter 12. Would it really be that hard to think of some new enemies?

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And the music. Why, oh why, are half the songs variants of the battle theme? There's the techno beat version in chapter 6, the sad, slow piano version, and a million others, but they're all just the SAME SONG. Maybe the reason why the music is so much worse than the old Final Fantasies is that Uematsu wasn't composing. Uematsu went on to Mistwalker, and made Lost Odyssey, which just happens to have a much better soundtrack.

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I suppose it's not fair to compare it to classics like FF4 or Chrono. But I enjoyed Lost Odyssey more than FF13. And Lost Odyssey is not a classic. Lost Odyssey had, except for Cooke and Mack, all awesome characters. Kaim is one of the coolest characters I will ever play as. The in game graphics were better. Not the cutscenes, because they didn't use CGI. The enemies were so beautiful and original. The environments were so much better. And the story was just SO MUCH BETTER. Why? Because the two greatest things that happened to Final Fantasy, Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobuo Uematsu, created it. Final Fantasies just won't ever be what they used to be, as FF13 clearly shows. Saying that this game was a disappointment is an understatement: it is a crushing blow of truth to me. I badly wanted this to be the best game ever. And it is a great game. But not nearly as good as a Final Fantasy should be.
 
Before I played FXIII I read about it on forums and stuff and from the sound of it. I wanted to give up on all final fantasy's. The thing was I thought 12 was extremely boring and was the only FF game I haven't bothered to finish. From what I read FF13 was worse but when I played it. It pleasantly suprised me. Yeah I have my complaints like not enough comedy and easy going moments, also some of the characters are wack but I actually liked Lightning and Sahz which is strange because one of the reason's I hesitated to play it was because of the female lead. However she is like an Andriod 18 type character so I enjoyed her and Sahz was a regular dude not a hero or a soldier so that made him pretty cool. Lastly one thing that made me even more mad was NO TOWNS I have nothing nice to say about this.
 
Finally got around to finishing it. (Well the story at least...I still got to deal with a circle of death and giant monsters to deal with, eventually).

Last boss series kind of reminded me of FFX, with the real challenge at the big monstorous thing followed by an ugly thing that's easier to take out. Pretty decent difficulty overall.

I'll say the final had me teary-eyed. I rather liked the ending and the circality and bittwersweet nature. The story, overall, was enjoyable for me. Not the best FF story, but far from the worst, and fairly engaging.

Now I can finally look onto tomorrow for the series...and the scary and hopefully pleasant things lying in store. (The XII-2 trailer worries me).
 
I loved Final Fantasy XIII all in all its my second favorite FF game ever made. ill start with what I hate about it, and the only thing I hated about it was being capped on the crystarium until I complete a certain chapter then I can get more, I had to grind up max out and then keep griding just to save cp so i dont have to grind again whenthe cap gets removed. Thats the only thing I hated about the game, most of the stuff everyone hates im sure you all know about I could really care less about, linear,maps,etc I dont really care and because of that It didnt effect my overall view.

What I like about the game, just about everything for the first time in a final fantasy game I get a character thats just like me Oerba Yun Fang, even before the games release and when her name was first revealed I was all over her, she's the only one I wanted to play with cause I just wanted to see if she was like I thought she was and I was right 100%. Aside from getting a character like that, I havent seen a main character not just in ff but any game do so well since Ramza,Yuri and edge. Lighting completly did good as a overall character and main.

I liked the battle system, for one I liked how it looked all futuristic, plus the mechanics was good to, I like the new magic skill ruin, people complained about auto battle I switched between maunal and auto, I did things manually just as much especially when I was doing all my side mission, auto battle didnt help me on any of the missions and the adamantotoise no auto battle messes you up. So I liked the battle system, I like how it was semi wait and active, you can scan an enemy one time and whenever you see it again you dont have to scan it anymore and it saved the weakness so the ai, why would I hate that?

The leveling system is the same as X except I didnt like how it was capped,overall just like the sphere grid. I loved the graphics of course best one in a FF game so far. I also loved the soundtrack I downloaded a few of the songs and sinc ei have a 360 I could overlap the music and I awlays played will to fight in a lot of the cut scenes, all the eidolon battles, the music was 87% great and ill be hearing some songs from XIII in the next one cause I love it so much ill play it in the next one.

The storyline which I wont spoil of course, was really great since i cant say alot on it cause of the spoilers thats all I can say I loved it, I did research before getting the game so i knew what they where talking about at the beginning which most people wouldnt if you didnt look up info. I think I can say I loved alot of the releationships except for serah and snow and light and hope but loved fang and vanille, fang and the party, sazh and vanille, lighting and snow the most. wish I could talk more on it but then it give it away so thats it on that.

Overall I loved roughly everything about the game and Im hoping FFXIII -2 is just as good.
 
The game was all out amazing... it has jumped to my favorite... tied with IX... might explain more on a later post though XD
 
Well, FF7 was my least favourite Final Fantasy, until this one came along. Wow. I guess everyone at Square must have been away during the development and it was up to the janitor and a couple of kids to piece that one together. There was nothing redeeming about FFXIII at all. Utter shit...
 
I personally liked the game. I'm already going for a second go on it. My sister told me that she thinks that Lighting reminds her of Squall from VIII. I actually liked that Lighting was a gun-blade. And she is in my opinion the best COM. I think it fit her well. Hope makes the best rav, and Medic. At first I didn't like Hope, but then he grew on me. Vanille was the best Med, and SAB role, and I personally hated her character. Sometime I wanted to yell shut up at her. Though I do loved that she narrated the story for us.

Sazh was like the comic relief sometimes and he made the best SYN. Snow I wasn't to fond of, him and Fang make the best SEN. I think that is why I didn't call for him. The others make better roles in my opinion.

I hope I didn't spoil any thing for anybody.
 
Yes, the venerable franchise stumbled, essentially producing a poor, muddled echo of Final Fantasy X, enveloping an innovative, deep battle system destined to waste away under its captor’s mediocrity. The soulless homogenizing of mainstream games may have presented itself differently in Final Fantasy XIII, but it’s undoubtedly the root of the game’s undoing.

Content is admittedly sacrificed for visual fidelity. Cutscenes go from being a spectacular payoff of our invested time to a stylish, but soulless spectacle punctuating an empty story. The heavy handedness of developers so high on their own convoluted mess throttles any life that could’ve bloomed in this beautifully designed, fantastical science fiction dreamscape.
 
...So, I'd decided to embark on a quest to finish this game again in September or there abouts...

It's still going- or, well, it stalled. I lost any drive to play it.


I can see how it could be interesting, but I sadly picked up some other games I hadn't finished before, and they always take precedence in my eyes.
 
I liked the game alot even though it could get cheesy at times that I cringe. overall I liked the characters well there's one I don't like
and I didn't find Vanille all that annoying. I didn't even know people were calling the noises Vanille was making sex noises. lol
Thanks alot really now every time I play I'm going to think she's having sex. xD

My least character that I dislike is Snow with all his hero crap.
 
I found Vanille as almost a secondary lead character. I mean she does narrate A LOT of the game it seems when it comes to her thoughts and he perspectives on situations and characters. We basically get an inside look at her brain and what her emotions are kicking up.

I really didn't mind Snow's "hero complex" as you kinda put it. It has to be filled by someone in each FF game I believe. Sometimes it's the lead, sometimes it's a non-playable character taking a sacrifice, sometimes it's a few of the characters. He was courageous enough to stand in the way of danger to save and spare others. I was kindaa Snow fan myself. Hope was definitely my least favorite character.
 
Well I didn't take a pix0r of mine, but I did make this nifty design sig which you can see below on PhotoShop to celebrate. The game is A-W-E-S-O-M-E so far. As soon as I got access to Paradigms, I started spamming Paradigm Shifts after every attack just because I love the animations haha.

I'm easily amused.
 
Haha! I am so glad I wasn't the only one who thought that about Vanille. I could never have her on my team.. She just put me off.. SO MUCH.

I loved Final Fantasy XIII. The story line was just, epic and it has some amazing characters in it. Lightning is by far my favourite game character ever. Her attitude amuses me, but she is such an interesting and different character from your usual lead game characters. I also love Fang, she has some really awesome one liners and her back story is pretty awesome. Though the story got a little confusing for me to follow at times, I really did enjoy it and re-playing it I am finding things I totally missed when I first played it.

Took me a while to get into the battle system, but this was the first Final Fantasy game I played properly. When I was 13 I was stupid and bought X-2, which people have told me is one of the worst FF games out there. That put me off the series, but when I was put on XIII, I loved it pretty much after an hour of playing and went back and played a few of the previous games.
 
You should definitely consider other FF. I personally recommend Anything between ff1-12.

X-2 was indeed horrible, Like i've said before. i hate 13 with a passion. Lightning's character has been often compared to FF7's cold, silent, and sticking with the mission Cloud Strife. Personally, Lightning wasn't unique at all...when it comes to seeing female protagonist evolve, we've seen Lara Croft, Samus Aran (old). Honestly, there are countless of characters just like Lightning, the only thing was that Lightning's character type isn't usually the main character. To me, i felt like "Hope" was suppose to be the real main character. Having gone though a lot, had plenty of room to grow up and also trying to get over some demons. He was the perfect candidate. Perhaps if he was the main character, vanille turning into crystal would be more meaningful since he was fond of her. In fact, that may make up most of Vanille's character.

Vanille is only one of the worst characters, as we also had "Snow". And Sahz wasn't too bad, but that doesn't mean he was bad at all.

I wish Lightning to me was just a character that didn't have to act so tough.....she wasn't dynamic, she was straight forward. XIII-2 and Lightning Returns only push how much Lightning is being put as a god, and not really as a dynamic character.
 
Razberry Knight said:
To me, i felt like "Hope" was suppose to be the real main character. Having gone though a lot, had plenty of room to grow up and also trying to get over some demons. He was the perfect candidate. Perhaps if he was the main character, vanille turning into crystal would be more meaningful since he was fond of her. In fact, that may make up most of Vanille's character.
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Vanille was originally supposed to be the main character. Not only is it (in my opinion) obvious from the narrative (her character arc spans the entirety of the game's events, and her character limitations and eventual growth underlie the pivotal plot developments), it's been confirmed by FFXIII Ultimania Omega. To quote Wikipedia (I don't think there are any online translations of Ultimania for me to link to; Wikipedia cites it as the source for this comment): "In Final Fantasy XIII, Vanille was originally going to be the main character, but after the game was shown off with Lightning in the central role, the decision was scrapped."
 
Personally I always got the impression that FFXIII ended up with the same result to the cast set up that FFVI had; in that there wasn't any real central character, however some had more influence than others. Definitely Lightning and Vanille have more prominent parts to play with Hope and Sazh having the accompanying roles (Much like Locke did in FFVI).

I think the observational elements that Lightning and Vanille play in the game (i.e. large part of the start game coming from Light's POV and the story being narrated by Vanille) give us a reference point for a main character, but I think they wanted the game to be more about intertwining characters, stories and plots.
 
tiornys said:
Vanille was originally supposed to be the main character. Not only is it (in my opinion) obvious from the narrative (her character arc spans the entirety of the game's events, and her character limitations and eventual growth underlie the pivotal plot developments), it's been confirmed by FFXIII Ultimania Omega. To quote Wikipedia (I don't think there are any online translations of Ultimania for me to link to; Wikipedia cites it as the source for this comment): "In Final Fantasy XIII, Vanille was originally going to be the main character, but after the game was shown off with Lightning in the central role, the decision was scrapped."
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Vanille's growth was mostly said than shown. She stillr etains the exact same personality, unlike Hope. Hope makes a rather shift in personality. And i personally like that. I'm glad Vanille wasn't the main character...but i felt that thy should've either scrapped Vanille or Fang. i didn't see the need to have two of the same characters sharing the same faith.

Galadín said:
Personally I always got the impression that FFXIII ended up with the same result to the cast set up that FFVI had; in that there wasn't any real central character, however some had more influence than others. Definitely Lightning and Vanille have more prominent parts to play with Hope and Sazh having the accompanying roles (Much like Locke did in FFVI).

I think the observational elements that Lightning and Vanille play in the game (i.e. large part of the start game coming from Light's POV and the story being narrated by Vanille) give us a reference point for a main character, but I think they wanted the game to be more about intertwining characters, stories and plots.
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Lightning was anything but observational, as she had personal goals just as much as Snow, and the rest. But Vanille had a purpose up until the end. However, i felt a character such as Hope had a much stronger voice....

Intertwining characters, stories, and plots sound good, but it doesn't feel all together. For example: Snow and Lightning had the exact same motives. Sahz had his own, Hope had his own, and Vanille really didn't have one. Reason why i push Hope's side most is because it didn't feel so intrusive (like Snow and Lightning's direct and typical), yet relevant enough for him to ponder the bigger questions that could push him to go deeper into the main plot.
 
Razberry Knight said:
Lightning was anything but observational, as she had personal goals just as much as Snow, and the rest. But Vanille had a purpose up until the end. However, i felt a character such as Hope had a much stronger voice....

Intertwining characters, stories, and plots sound good, but it doesn't feel all together. For example: Snow and Lightning had the exact same motives. Sahz had his own, Hope had his own, and Vanille really didn't have one. Reason why i push Hope's side most is because it didn't feel so intrusive (like Snow and Lightning's direct and typical), yet relevant enough for him to ponder the bigger questions that could push him to go deeper into the main plot.
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I'm not quiet sure what exactly you're saying in reply to me here. Characters having goals and motives be they similar or completely different only show a diversity in the way each character's role intertwines in the story. I think the idea was to have each character with their own purpose and the chance to influence each other as a party. I don't think it was ever an intention to make the characters and their motives mesh and blend completely like a smoothie, this is why the story retains so many different elements. They are connected, not amalgamated. Is sounds like this is what you were saying too so I'm going to assume you were agreeing. :)

Also for reference I said "observational elements" as in seeing the likes of the start game from Lightning's point of view which gives her a more central part in the game (this alters and lessens by the time the party gets to the Archylte Steppe). I didn't say Lightning is standing there looking from the sidelines with no aims and purposes of her own.
 
What I'm saying is that their connection was forced apon a focus but other than that, none of these characters had much personal things going on. Sahz was just momentary. Hope could've lasted longer in his development rather than a sudden shift. Snow and lightning are the same....

The thing is unlike other FFs, 13 really leaves it cut and dry when it comes to expanding all the plots. If there was a clear main character, I wouldn't mind. But it feels like no one wants the spot light, or they think sharing it is enough.
 
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