Note there will be slight spoilers.
Chocobo Hot and Cold becoming even more boring than it was in 9, Vanille's dumb robot dog, 64 hunts that offer little more than throwback fights with Cactuar and Tonberries after fighting a bunch of recolors and then more recolors was crap (hell at least the hunts in 12 occasionally led to new areas like the deeper parts of the Lhusu mines. I'd much rather deal with random NPCs than talk to stones in the single spot that I get to do any deviation and gain something from it), and a fighting extravaganza with little new to offer which I had been doing all game anyway for Titan's Trials were hardly the most endearing side quests I've experienced.
Other RPGs have similar crap but I don't think 13 handled this well. You're still spending roughly 40-60 hours on this game sans side crap anyway so what exactly is the excuse for the linear areas. I don't mind linear areas every FF has had them to some extent, but they were small segmented areas that showed differences in between, here I have several large areas that offer little in variety with few exceptions.
The locales look great, it's too bad I can't go anywhere most of the time, it's too bad I have my party once I recall screaming that I'm going the wrong way at one point. FF 12 for all it did wrong at least had **** for me to look at, I remember stopping in the cave right before Archades because I veered off to find this waterfall with flowers nearby, useless as it was at least I could see the bloody thing rather than stare at a pretty ***** sunset from the distance as the sunlight glistens off this awesome building in Palumpolum that I will never enter because the story dictates I'm a fugitive 20 times worse than Cecil, the Returners, Avalanche, Balamb Garden mercs, traitors to Yevon who murdered a Maester and can still buy potions in Luca before clearing our names. While it certainly makes sense I'm still playing a game that I bought at full price by brand name alone and I long for entertainment, not frustration and rage.
Battle system I'll leave alone (touched on in edit), I hate it, but at least it's doing something new. Then again FF2 tried something new back in the day and it still proved to be a pile of ****. One thing I will not tolerate however is DEAD LEADER, SMT 3 Persona 3 and 4, all humans dead in SMT (small number usually) don't get away with this **** either. But at least none of them had this fetish for timing me the way FF 13 does as if the boss has a hot date waiting but they're coming to his house and they're cheating on them with me and needs to finish up our romantic rendezvous as quickly as possible, leaving me unfulfilled as one of us needs to finish up without afterglow and I get thrown out regardless either to do it all again or beat my obsession and leave them forever. In either case I'm left mostly unfulfilled.
Give FF 12 flak for a lot of things, but was switching party members at anytime and when they fell and using the full range of them when you had them with few restrictions really a bad idea? (If you're going to tell me this will upset balance and I call **** especially with chapter 13 alone, if standard enemies with the HP of bosses is called balanced then I believe we've lost sight on this issue long ago, if you find the tedious fights you need to have in order to feel secure in taking on the boss taking 5 minutes (provided you don't know how to break the system with stagger in which case you're at a few seconds and I'm still hating the fact that I know enough to do this) per fight then go right ahead and feel rewarded, I do not, I feel like I wasted time better spent playing another game. Now if you excuse me I'll go off to fight Yiazmat in FF 12 three times in a row without using gambits because truly I personally believe this is what one may as well say they enjoy doing.) I remember in chapter 3 having Hope in my party, I go to the menu, he's there can't get the ass in my party, nope switching comes into play in chapter 9... 20 hours into the game... I know we're using only 2 people for the majority of the time before that but... why? There is no excuse for this... at all.
(And if someone wants to go "LOL FF4" or any FF before 6 which did not allow switching, consider that these games are far older and the first one that had this was 6 and from then on it became the standard and expected. Also consider that 6 when it split you into 2-3 man groups after getting Sabin allowed you to choose scenarios something this game really really hates letting you have any control of. Chapters mid-4 through 6 could have potentially be made into something you voluntarily switched through as until roughly 7 and 8 Lightning's group and Sazh's group didn't really effect one another. Now if someone will say "well FF4 GBA port let you switch WAAAYY late too!" you're basically telling me that FF XIII is relying on an excuse for a port of a 15 year old game that only allowed switching due to the new content added. Okay!)
The game's story has an interesting premise but my pure disdain for the characters and the dialogue from everyone that isn't Sazh or Fang makes me want to turn up random music very very loud or punch someone in the mouth. Now I would hardly call Persona 3 original, but why am I viewing the Ken and Shinji scenario again only Ken is named Hope and became an even whinier **** who acts like his mother has been dead for years and he's been planning revenge when really he should still be in shock of this and many other events that have transpired. Over like... a few days
Oh I know, it's because he's JUST AT THAT AGE. Just like he's just at that age to hate his father who only works hard to provide for his family and give them a beautiful home. No I **** you not the datalog that won't stop updating like a f***ing twitterphile tells me this so it must be true!
Go f*** yourself, datalog. wrote:Bartholomew is Hope's father.
He loves both his wife and son, but is clumsy at expressing it. Things are made even more difficult by Hope's rebellious age and unreasoning resentment towards his dad.
Oh I
loved this part of the game, I love hearing about Hope and his irrational daddy issues that amount to jack **** (well Snow being shirtless... but other than that) just like I loved the amazing one liners that make me slowly lose faith in everything I've known.
Cloud and Squall's adopted daughter. I wonder who's on top anyway. wrote:Fighting without hope is no way to live. It's just a way to die.
Needless to say if I can't tolerate Hope, and if I can find fault in Lightning, it's very obvious what my feelings for Vanille are (even when she becomes serious), I can actually tolerate Snow if only because Lightning's bitchiness became old hat and everyone giving him **** got tired after a while. So let's not go there lest I talk until the end of time. I don't hate Fang because even after chapter 7 I still don't know much about her, what i will fault her fore are her chapter 10 antics: which more or less amounted to "**** Cocoon" and then Bahamut who senses that there might be legitimate conflict in the plot comes in to save the day from there being a fight against a human that won't transform (out of cutscenes) or isnt' clad in metal just like it did with Jihl! And we're pushed forward to an airship which like the last three times we've been on one crashes in the middle of nowhere because heaven forbid Pulse be more than 1 mile wide and that we can visit several areas without walking or warping, no that is soooo FF9.
Now on the story itself I feel like I said, interesting premise, but horrendously executed. I pointed out silly dialogue issues but let's take a look at character action. You have a bunch of people cursed with certain doom and instead we're not going to focus on that. We're going to SPLIT UP, we're going to DIG UP CRYSTALIZED FIANCES (this is the one legitimate thing that was done, it may not have made sense but stupid as this is I see it as a labor of love. One more point for Snow you lucky lucky bastard), we're going to go to the amusement park (oh they were going in there for cover you say? Why would they go to a populated area wouldn't taht be risky, oh noone would recognize them, just like noone should recognize them in towns save for Psicom until they get caught on camera in chapter 7 making reasoning to avoid towns at taht point completely invalid. And if they were always going to be followed why would Sazh think it's a great idea to go to a populated area and placing more people at risk?), we're gonna go to dad's house!
Now going to Pulse made sense to look for a way to be rid of their marks... but apparently we're not in such a hurry since we went camping (WE COULD CAMP!? YOU SPENT ALL THIS TIME MAKING ME AVOID TOWNS AND THUS INNS BUT NOW WE CAN HAVE A CAMPOUT!? There may have been one in chapter 4 I can't remember. Point is now that I'm not being chased... you'll let me camp... but you won't say put a town on Pulse, one with people mind you as in NOT OERBA, that's a dungeon the same way that Zanarkand in FF 10 is a dungeon.) and let Hope cry so Alexander could pimp slap him. (Speaking of which know what would have been a GREAT time for Alexander to show up?! CHAPTER MOTHERF***ING SEVEN WHEN HOPE IS GOING BATSHIT ON SNOW! GOOD JOB SCENARIO WRITERS!) and the oh joyous of joys we're going to kill Cocoon's life source and everything will turn out okay because of two things.
1. The game never stated TWO OR MORE people COULDN'T become Ragnarok, it also never stated TWO RAGNAROKS were unable to FUSE so... the game since it never said this COULDN'T happen does just that... I'm sure someone somewhere finds this to be brilliant writing. I say this is on the level of what was FF8 disk 3 which in my experience turned me away from JRPGs for a few years. Yes I didn't play FF9 on release due to that betrayal.
2. Lightning says:
ROW ROW FIGHT DA POWAH! wrote:We make the impossible possible!
And Barth says some nonsense on machine gods being super duper limited and unable to harm themselves or other Fal'cie apparently. (I can't remember if there were rules against directly killing humans or not but if there were then killing Jihl was a no no.)
I'm aware I'm not being very coherent, I just don't like this game, I can understand why people do but I refuse to let someone give so arrogant a statement as this without response:
This really hawt guy!~<3 wrote:Really, even if you don't like it, you have to agree the standard RPG mold it's trying to break is dumb as hell. Games shouldn't be engineered to waste your time.
When all I've done even before beating up on defenseless turtles is waste my time. I still had to go through the sphere grid- I MEAN CRYSTARIUM that just like the rest of the game offered few choices compared to its predecessors in order to increase my skills still, I still had to deal with accessories (let me guess you want those gone too), I still had to customize weapons (you can get through the game without doing that but if I have the option to become stronger why wouldn't I, don't treat me like it's my fault that time is wasted, you'll then have to treat everyone who didn't do an NCU run of this game like this).
But hey least I didn't have to waste time shopping with what limited way I had to make any money. Because Dark Matter, something from SPACE dropping out of a turtle, and Ingots totally make more sense than money and other crap, just like all those Fortisols and other **** I get from battle make total sense. Even 12 and its stupid loot system handled this better and even rewarded me once in a while with special packs of items that were sometimes useful equipment (though I still question what an arcana looks like and what it would be used for, why would I be paid for this. But I say this proves we shouldn't think about this, just as one shouldn't think about how impossible it is to dig in a wolf's anus to find gil).
If you like this game good for you, but don't tell me I HAVE to agree to ANYTHING. I don't mind having to find out what I need to do to progress in a game by actually exploring a town, talking to people, inspecting scenery and finding hidden stuff be it items or side content along the way no matter how tedious I'm still given options and I appreciate it. Even if I did agree to look at this from another perspective (which I have, I can get why the battle system is so highly praised, I can get that not everyone wants to spend time doing what are admittedly mundane tasks) I will deny having done so out of spite for having this demanded of me or anyone that dares to dislike the game.
In all FF 13 annoyed me to no end. I won't tell anyone to hate this game, I will state what I feel about it, but what I will not do is allow someone no matter who it may be to force me or anyone to say that this was revolutionary, that this was an evolution, and just because it could be an evolution to the genre doesn't necessarily mean the alterations were for the better. I will speak more on this if I see it as necessary.
(Hey at least I didn't pull out every famous quote, let alone MOMS ARE TOUGH. Or even go into how I truly feel about TOWNZ. Until edits happened and even then I'm really not even done yet.)
Edit: One last thing I want to point out partly in relation to side stuff, remember that mech Hope rode in chapter 4? Why weren't there more amusing segments like this say involving your Eidolons, they transform into things to ride, chapter 12 would have had been perfect for this. And just to clarify I don't see 13 as a bad game, more a massive disappointment, moreso than I saw 12 as even though there was some aspects of 12 I really really loved I can't say the same for 13.
Also in case it's brought up by anyone at any point for some reason countering one point or another: I don't want to hear anything about any Episode Zero web novel. No I don't care that it adds to the story, stuff like this should have been in game as they certainly had enough fun toying with me dropping flashbacks all over. Last I checked with few exceptions in regards to FF5 (remember the anime I forget if it's unlimited or infinity) and 7 (movie, not going to go into all the other games involved as I'm trying to focus on material that isn't a game) FF largely isn't a multimedia franchise in the way that say, .hack is where you almost MUST have each and every single game, novel, manga, anime, and movie to get everything out of the plot, even then I say such material should be separate enough from one another to stand alone (.hack succeeds in this regard), I don't believe that Episode Zero does this (granted I really do like it but to further understand the characters which I don't feel FF XIII did a good job at for me this almost becomes necessary and this doesn't sit well with me).
Edit: Another thing I want to discuss briefly, retry option. I actually like that this is there however I'm not going to deny it feels like an excuse to baby newcomers and to make battles annoying for those who don't want to obsessively buff and debuff during each and every single fight they get into let alone faff about before battle trying to poke at a Behemoth's behind. I can be entirely off base but this is how I see it.
Auto-battle, this can be there, I don't have issue with it being there as I'm not using it, what I do hold issue with is that it's there on the menu front and center being obnoxious as can be. This is my own personal vendetta based on positioning so obviously this is not a legitimate complaint by any means. Note I won't fault anyone for using auto-battle and certainly not repeat as I felt much of the battle system amounted to: waste time and be bored as you sift through commands hoping this bird won't chew on Vanille's skirt or be bored as you mash on X (or O if you're into that sort of thing, possibly even A in which case you'd never hear the end of it from fanboys who conveniently forgot Square used to be butt buddies with Nintendo before licking Sony's nipples.) They would still need to learn how to Paradigm shift efficiently or rely on random chance with Com, Rav, Med.
Paradigm shifting I feel to be a bit of a drag, but shame on me for liking FF5's handling of the battle system best where your initial form got all abilities as you progressed in your jobs. I'm a silly nostalgia-tard bent on hating everything after FF6 forever oh woe is me. No, I also liked X-2's handling better even if it limited you based on class. So then what becomes my issue with Paradigm shift? I find the limitations to be very absurd based on individuals, not only have we gone back in time to 1987 and have only 6 classes, but now attacking is forbidden (though it would be useless in some cases) Now we have classes based purely on buffing and debuffing, on defending, healing. One may tell me it's for the strategy involved in customizing patterns for this, and that may be true. It's just not something I appreciate just like I don't appreciate having the combinations I made to be wiped clean as soon as an Eidolon comes by to fight.
Now on music which I neglected to mention, good, but there's not much I can say is memorable with the exceptions of the main battle theme and Lightning's theme (the latter is a variation of the other or vice versa) and that's only because you're going to have to hear the battle theme all the time. However I'll admit I only remember a few select tracks from older FFs but certainly more than I do 12 and 13. At the very least though I like 12's OST more 13's is more memorable than 12's as all I remember from 12 was Destiny.