Yes. Whether that vindicates the opening hours or not will be a matter of taste, though.

I've also noticed that I have been pressing the "A" button on the 360 version a lot. However, that doesn't really make it suck. I'd rather have confidence in knowing that most things can be done with just one button than trying to fumble around my controller in the heat of battle.

People are judging RPGs by the first hour now? great.

Am I the only one that finds it weird they sent Brad a copy of the Xbox-360 version instead of PS3, since PS3 shows better?

This sounds like a good game to use my turbo on my arcade stick for.

"

People are judging RPGs by the first hour now? great.

"

I'm about 7 or so hours into it now... its pretty hectic... there's a lot of strategy and constant paradigm changes required to continue, even in average battles... but it's true a lot of rpg fat has been cut from the game.. but its a good thing! Not having to select every single attack makes leveling and progressing less of a chore. And the linear structure just helps remove the stress of a rpg, you'll never get confused as to where to go next and you won't feel stressed about leveling the wrong way... those were my biggest issues with the prior ff games and the lack of those is great!

" @Yukoei said:

"

People are judging RPGs by the first hour now? great.

"

The Halo generation at its finest. "

" @Yukoei said:

"

People are judging RPGs by the first hour now? great.

"

The Halo generation at its finest. "

" @Hailinel said:

" @Yukoei said:

"

People are judging RPGs by the first hour now? great.

"

The Halo generation at its finest. "

Are talking about me or the TC? "

" @Yukoei said:

" @Hailinel said:

" @Yukoei said:

"

People are judging RPGs by the first hour now? great.

"

The Halo generation at its finest. "

Are talking about me or the TC? "

The TC. "

"

People are judging RPGs by the first hour now? great.

"

I'm on the fence about this game. I know the game is decent but what I want to confirm is whether it's $60 decent. If only Square Enix could just give us a friggin demo.

" I'm about an hour in and so far it sucks. Does combat get anymore involved than rapidly pressing the A button? "

" @Yukoei said:

"

People are judging RPGs by the first hour now? great.

"

The Halo generation at its finest. "

" I'm on the fence about this game. I know the game is decent but what I want to confirm is whether it's $60 decent. If only Square Enix could just give us a friggin demo. "

" I'm about an hour in and so far it sucks. Does combat get anymore involved than rapidly pressing the A button? "

Renting it at the moment. PS3 version, so pushing X a lot and forward on the analog stick. Boring so far. kinda bummed out.

" The combat gets way more involved but you'll still be pressing A _ALOT_ in this game. "

" I'm about 7 or so hours into it now... its pretty hectic... there's a lot of strategy and constant paradigm changes required to continue, even in average battles... but it's true a lot of rpg fat has been cut from the game.. but its a good thing! Not having to select every single attack makes leveling and progressing less of a chore. And the linear structure just helps remove the stress of a rpg, you'll never get confused as to where to go next and you won't feel stressed about leveling the wrong way... those were my biggest issues with the prior ff games and the lack of those is great! "

" @Yukoei said:

"

People are judging RPGs by the first hour now? great.

"

The Halo generation at its finest. "

Brad... started this onslaught of negativity =?

" @Yukoei said:

"

People are judging RPGs by the first hour now? great.

"

The Halo generation at its finest. "

" Brad... started this onslaught of negativity =? "

" @Hailinel said:

" @Yukoei said:

"

People are judging RPGs by the first hour now? great.

"

The Halo generation at its finest. "

Why shouldn't you, really? I mean it's an 1 hour you have chosen to spend playing a video game. Shouldn't it be fun? And if it's not then that's a problem isn't?   To qualify,  I only have spend 40 min with the game, and most of the that was kinda boring fights with cutscenees which felt that they were over compensating for that.   I a vested interested in the game and still want to keep playing because i know there will be more too it . After how many hrs of game time that will be who knows? but don't except everyone to have the time and patience to "put up" with this inane Japanese game design philosophy! "

" @demontium: Sarcasm?   "

" @RedHerb said:

" @Hailinel said:

" @Yukoei said:

"

People are judging RPGs by the first hour now? great.

"

The Halo generation at its finest. "

Why shouldn't you, really? I mean it's an 1 hour you have chosen to spend playing a video game. Shouldn't it be fun? And if it's not then that's a problem isn't?   To qualify,  I only have spend 40 min with the game, and most of the that was kinda boring fights with cutscenees which felt that they were over compensating for that.   I a vested interested in the game and still want to keep playing because i know there will be more too it . After how many hrs of game time that will be who knows? but don't except everyone to have the time and patience to "put up" with this inane Japanese game design philosophy! "

Fucking this. A video game is supposed to be fun. If it takes a whole hour for a game to be fun, then what will that say about the rest of the experience? Occasional high mark fun segments with mostly boring tedium segments? Yeah, no thank you. The older Final Fantasy games were fun from the very start. Everyone else remember the opening bombing mission from VII? Badass. Or those freaking awesome magitek mechs from VI?   If a game fails to grab you in some way within the first hour, it's probably not worth seeing through. "

Someone here hasn't played Persona 3 (or 4, for that matter). At least FFXIII let's you do something in the first hour of mashing that A button ;P

i heard that its even better if you get to push x rather than a. 360 version that i saw running side by side in jb hifi is noticably worse graphically. the stairwells are choppy, but much smoother on the ps3 for example, and lightnings hair looks a bit choppy around the edges on 360 too. the game is 'linear' so far, but im pretty sure that unless the word had caught on everyone's tongues after a couple of reviews mentioned the word, 90% of people wouldnt have noticed it anyway, espcially if there wasnt a map to view. the game is slowly introducing the combat concepts which i actually like, as i remember that in many parts off ff9 and a few of the others, id just get blitzed with game concepts all at once and it would be too much to take in, or rather you didnt want to sit there and read it all for so long, and just wanted to play, so i think they've done a good job of managing that. you can see that the further you get in the more it starts to loosen up and let you take control. i didnt like the very intro to the game where they were using all the world terms like l'cie etc all squished into the same sentences, leading you to barely understand what they were talking about as you dont know what those things are yet, but now that im a bit further in ive picked it up so that's all good. graphics are amazing, the music is fantastic (except a few that im not overly fond of, but i dont hate either). i think vanielle's voice is excessively annoying (i cant tell what nationality her voice actor is? at first i thought it was brittish, then i thought it was some dodgey attempt to sound aussie (im an aussie so that's fair call!) oh and that other shiela with the 'steve irwin' aussie accent is horrific. just for the record, 95% of australians dont sound like that.
 
the game is hardly deserving of the poor end reviews so far, and the start of the game is meant to be the low point with the 'linierarity', by which at a point it opens up a lot more. any site that's given this game a 5/10, 6/10 etc is safe to ignore forever.
 
EDIT: just thought id further make mention to the repeated pressing of a/x in the game. you ARE navigating a menu are you not? so using one button to select each option in the menu seems logical to me? i mean at least its not like kh where you press the button to hit them over and over, or even games like god of war to some extent. there seems to be an awful lot of uneccessary bashing of the game.

" I'm about an hour in and so far it sucks. Does combat get anymore involved than rapidly pressing the A button? "

The first hour of Final Fantasy XIII is more like watching a movie. The cut scenes are beautiful, I don' know about the 360 version, but Square-Enix used the PS 3's graphics to it's full extent. I do agree that the first 1 or 2 maybe 3 hours is slow but it starts picking up after that and all of a sudden you realize that you have played 10 hours worth of the game. People need to realize that this game is 60+ hours long and sometimes you just need to sit back and re-lacks and enjoy the story. Everything now a days have to be extravagant but I really like Square's simple approach to the game. It is like a roller coaster you don't know where it's going to take you.      

" @LiquidPrince said:

" Brad... started this onslaught of negativity =? "

Oh yeah it is an ONSLAUGHT man. Totally. "

" @RedHerb said:

" @Hailinel said:

" @Yukoei said:

"

People are judging RPGs by the first hour now? great.

"

The Halo generation at its finest. "

Why shouldn't you, really? I mean it's an 1 hour you have chosen to spend playing a video game. Shouldn't it be fun? And if it's not then that's a problem isn't?   To qualify,  I only have spend 40 min with the game, and most of the that was kinda boring fights with cutscenees which felt that they were over compensating for that.   I a vested interested in the game and still want to keep playing because i know there will be more too it . After how many hrs of game time that will be who knows? but don't except everyone to have the time and patience to "put up" with this inane Japanese game design philosophy! "

Fucking this. A video game is supposed to be fun. If it takes a whole hour for a game to be fun, then what will that say about the rest of the experience? Occasional high mark fun segments with mostly boring tedium segments? Yeah, no thank you. The older Final Fantasy games were fun from the very start. Everyone else remember the opening bombing mission from VII? Badass. Or those freaking awesome magitek mechs from VI?   If a game fails to grab you in some way within the first hour, it's probably not worth seeing through. "

Or if you're on the PS3, press X repeatedly. :)

" @Mooshu said:

" @RedHerb said:

" @Hailinel said:

" @Yukoei said:

"

People are judging RPGs by the first hour now? great.

"

The Halo generation at its finest. "

Why shouldn't you, really? I mean it's an 1 hour you have chosen to spend playing a video game. Shouldn't it be fun? And if it's not then that's a problem isn't?   To qualify,  I only have spend 40 min with the game, and most of the that was kinda boring fights with cut scenes which felt that they were over compensating for that.   I a vested interested in the game and still want to keep playing because i know there will be more too it . After how many hrs of game time that will be who knows? but don't except everyone to have the time and patience to "put up" with this inane Japanese game design philosophy! "

Fucking this. A video game is supposed to be fun. If it takes a whole hour for a game to be fun, then what will that say about the rest of the experience? Occasional high mark fun segments with mostly boring tedium segments? Yeah, no thank you. The older Final Fantasy games were fun from the very start. Everyone else remember the opening bombing mission from VII? Badass. Or those freaking awesome magitek mechs from VI?   If a game fails to grab you in some way within the first hour, it's probably not worth seeing through. "

Remember the amount of time Persona 4 took to set up and introduce the player to the game?  It was a good four hours or so before you finally had full control of where to go and what to do.  God forbid games take their time to set things up. "

  @Faint said:

" i fear the day that video games become infected with 'mtv 2-4 minute disease', unless its already come,  "

" @Hailinel:  I have played Persona 4, and I enjoy that game quite a bit. But the way Persona 4 sets up the story is much better than how 13 does it. You actually care about the characters, and the voice acting is really well done.  All the characters are really fleshed out. I said in my previous post that the game has to grab you "in some way," be it though gameplay, story, or presentation. Persona 4 does this through story and presentation.  Final Fantasy XIII so far has not grabbed me personally in any of those categories. "

" engadget said the game doesn't get any different until about 13.5 hours in...  NOTHX "

likely, thank god its not like crisis core where you really could go through the entire game with attk attk dodge over and over.

How dare someone want to enjoy the early parts of a game; it HAS to be the person's fault, not the game's.

I've found the best way to put it in this way....the actions are all done with the X/A buttons YES but by pressing L1 then selecting a preset of 3 classes it changes what X/A does, so instead of hitting cure, then attack, then spell, done, your hitting L1/LT then choosing if each character is gonna cure/attack/ cast a spell. It's a streamlined and imo way more fun way that redefines what your doing to cure/ cast a spell, or attack. Seriously guys give the combat a chance it's a change, and it's for the better.