really linking this trailer

The framerate still looks bad in some of the gameplay stuff. I dove back into XIII-2 for a little while and the framerate in that game is often really really terrible. I hope they fix this.

Still waiting to hear more about the battle system and how it works with just Lightning. The 2-person parties were one of my least favourite parts about XIII, and the battle in the Lightning DLC in XIII-2 felt lacking.

I platinumed XIII-2 in like a week of continuous playing, so I'm still looking forward to this.

1. Snow looks awesome and continues to be my favourite character (even from that fmv trailer)
2. Lightning seems cool - though that outfit has some preeeeetty weird angles
3. TWO THOUSAND AND WHAT!?

dat delay, : (

@petiew: BTW - fuck yeah Fairy Tail :D (though I'm one of those guys who only watches / watched the Anime)

Erza Scarlet is awesome.

So two things.... first off fuck the 2014 delay. Still, I'd rather them get it right and not rush it but that doesn't mean its still not a bummer. Secondly around :30 seconds in is that Serah!? cause what the hell? Also if it is seems they changed her voice actress. =(

@selfconfessedcynic: My icon thing is actually Izayoi, from Blazblue. But now that you mention it they both look really similar. Red hair and crazy armour/weapons. Back when I read Fairy Tail I really liked Erza as well.

When I first saw Snow I didn't even immediately recognise it was him, design is pretty interesting.

@demoskinos: Wasn't that character in another trailer? I seem to remember a character with Serah's apperance that wasn't actually her.

@petiew: Dunno! I'll have to go back and see. Also, found this hands-on article from Polygon.

http://www.polygon.com/2013/6/6/4396420/lightning-returns-final-fantasy-13-hands-on-preview

@petiew said:

: O

That's an uncanny resemblence. Then again, they're animated characters so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Also, yes - that is NOT Serah. It's a FFX-2-esque look-alike character.

That framerate, *shudder* And I'm normally easygoing about that sort of thing. The only thing I'm digging about this is the larger environments and the awful framerate definitely has me a bit weary of those. Everything about the look of the game, character designs (in general, at least, Snow looks okay?) and the nonsensical gibberish we're hearing about the story looks extra awful - but then FFXIII-2's core story was a pleasant surprise even if there were a bunch of things on the periphery that were ridiculous.

I like the song in the trailer.

I am so fucking done with the FF13 saga it's not even fucking funny anymore. I just hope Square is milking those assets to death so they can start "fresh" next-gen.... well, one can only hope.

Talk about beating a dead horse. Sigh

I know people hate XIII but I played all the way through that and XIII-2 so I'm curious how the story turns out.

And Lightning is kinda cool so I'm glad this game seems to put the focus on her rather than some annoying brats.

Looking awesome!

Is it just me or is Lightning's voice now just identical to Liara T'soni's? I feel like Ali Hillis had played it a bit differently in the previous FF XIII games because I don't remember them sounding nearly as similar.

@chaser324: I think she has changed her voice slightly for this one.

You know what. I'm getting this.

Man, I do not give two shits about Final Fantasy XIII. I'm replaying FFIX and practically screaming at the screen for Square to open up a "back-to-basics" branch where they just develop awesome, old-school RPGs with none of this action-RPG bullshit they've been so focused on this generation.

I really don't care about a 1 party member Final Fantasy, why not just make it a action game at that point?

?

Final Fantasy XIII isn't an action-RPG.

@hailinel: Come on, it's about as much a turn-based RPG as something like Tales of Vesperia. Square's been focused on trying to attract the gamer market, and in the process has lost the heart of what made Final Fantasy games great. I guess I still have the FFX re-release to look forward to.

@sparky_buzzsaw: It's not purely turn-based like Final Fantasy X, but the combat system itself is a variant of the Active Time Battle system seen in other Final Fantasy games. I'd argue that it is one of of the best implementations of the ATB system that Square Enix has yet produced.

do you really want to play Dirge of Cereberus again? Not me sir.

I know what you mean though. maybe Lightning will have recruit-able monsters or some such.

@hailinel: I completely disagree - I think Final Fantasy X's combat is about as terrific a system as I've seen in traditional RPGs. And I almost always turned off the ATB options in favor of turn-based combat when I could. That said, I really did like Final Fantasy Xii's combat system, with its ordering system for commands and such. I just don't like my Final Fantasy games to be so lightning-fast. Ohhhhhh, I'm such a jokester.

I did like... well... Snow's outfit?

No, Lightning is on her own. The combat system revolves around her freely switching between different paradigm-like schemas that give her different abilities mapped to the face buttons on the controller. There's a pretty good explanation of how it works here. It actually is more of an action-RPG this time around compared to the first two FFXIII games.

there's a middle ground between tales of and something like SMT or dragon warrior or whatever.

The biggest difference between FF13 and FF, say, 7, is that FF13 goes faster.

also I wish that people would try FF13-2 for once because that game was amazing and I really disliked FF13 :(

also for what it's worth the heart of what made final fantasy games great is a dumb thing to say. my favorite FF games are 12 and 13-2, for example, and I severely dislike FFX (the combat is just persona 4/SMT games but not nearly as good).

I don't know Final Fantasy has lost it as much as others have caught up.

The thing I always felt Final Fantasy really excelled at was the story telling. And that is something that gamers have so much more choice today than we did in 1999. If you wanted a good story on console back in late 90's you generally wanted a JRPG.

Western games back then didn't have nearly the story telling that's common place in Mass Effect, Red Dead Redemption, etc todayy. And the ones that did were basically only on PC. Conversely mocap and voice acting have made the slight cultural differences in Final Fantasy's writing much more noticeable than it used to be...

I really miss the open world exploration aspect of the old Final Fantasy games which is what I feel the series has truly lost, but in a lot of ways I'm not sure they are as different as people seem to think they are.

I need to get off my butt and beat FFXIII-2 so I'll be ready for the next game. The story is almost irrelevant to me at this point, I just want to experience more of that battle system.

Yeah, what? FFVI you wait for a meter to fill then select an option from a menu. FFIX you wait for a meter to fill then select an option from a menu. FFXIII you wait for a meter to fill then select an option from a menu, but you can select an option when the meter is only partially full if you want.

Vesperia, you use your joystick to run around while mashing on attack buttons.

If anything, Vesperia has more in common with DmC than with FFXIII.

@slag: those older FF games had terrible stories, especially the PS1 era. Well told, sure, but good? The only good story in a JRPG I can think of in that era would be Persona 2: Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment. but then again I haven't played them all.

The thing is, at least in most ATB games I've played that presented the option, you couldn't actually turn ATB "off." You could only make time stand still while you were in magic or item menus. Final Fantasy X's combat system is fun and I enjoy that particular game a lot, but from a basic combat design standpoint, XIII feels like it has more to offer.

It's crazy that they would showcase such choppy gameplay in both trailers.

@animasta: I'm not saying that the combat is the heart of what makes Final Fantasy great (though I get why that statement would be confusing given what I wrote). I'm saying Final Fantasy XIII missed out on the heart of ALL the things I think makes Final Fantasy great. And as for stating that FFX's combat isn't nearly as good as something like the Persona series? We're going to have to agree to disagree there. I like combat in the Persona series, but when it's combined with the abysmally repetitive dungeon-crawling aspect, it doesn't hold up nearly as well as something like FFX. That's solely my opinion though, and I can totally respect your choice - those games did have some fun combat aspects in the Persona mixing-and-matching.

thanks for the link duder!

I think I'm going to have to see it in action to get a feel if I will like the combat system. It actually sounds kind of interesting and maybe short. Which I'd be ok with, Final Fantasy games seem like they often are about 10-20 hours too long sometimes. I dunno maybe I'm just feeling optimistic today, but I have a feeling I will like it.

@sparky_buzzsaw: I also severely dislike the story which is a really dumb story told completely seriously, but not the funny over the top type seriousness that can be ironically funny... beyond the 'climatic' moments like the wedding and that raid in the desert. and the random battle shit was annoying, especially the rate.

Persona's combat moves much quicker, and the dungeon crawling being repetitive was solved by the fact that you could leave the dungeon anytime you want, and you could go like hang out with Yosuke or Kanji or Naoto for a couple days. Meanwhile, there are some annoying ass slogs in FFX that you have to get through (specifically the highroad, the desert, the mountains, the plains...)

12 and on solved a lot of this by removing random battles.

By today's standards sure. Although I personally think Vi is pretty timeless.

By late 90's standards they were among the best around in games, especially in AAA console games. There only real competition was PC adventure games, and those were disappearing rapidly by the middle part of the decade.

@slag: I liked the stories quite a bit more in the FFVII-X days, I'd still take a batshit-crazy Final Fantasy story over a Gears of War grunt-tastic story any day of the week, but I get where you're coming from. I miss the huge open-world aspect the most too. I could almost forgive the combat if that were more of a focus. Love me some world exploration in a FF game.

@starvinggamer: The big difference? The combat was slower - way slower. And as I mentioned above, you had the option to "turn off" (someone did a better job of clarifying that above) the ATB system. Final Fantasy XIII is absurdly fast paced for my taste, but that's just me. Also, didn't Vesperia have certain attacks linked to timers, or am I thinking of one of the eleventy billion RPGs I played last year? Star Ocean, maybe?

@animasta: Not gonna lie, random encounters are a bad thing. But I think they can be done well - take the recent Rainbow Moon, for example. There's a little prompt that comes up where you can either choose to fight a random battle or ignore it entirely. It's a simple, awesome solution that I think should become the industry standard in traditional RPGs.

@sparky_buzzsaw: but why do you like those stories better? I mean it's like they were shit, and crazy, which was what 13-2 was (13's story was too sparse and too vague). I mean it had it's good moments, but it was still pretty dumb. and the way 13-2 ended means that this is coming from a way crazier place than any other FF story.

13-2 also had way more exploration than 13 did too.

It really doesn't sound like you tried it (and I can't necessarily blame you, I hated 13) but you could probably find 13-2 for pretty cheap nowadays, and it's got quite a bit more exploration and silly shit and buckwild crazy shit that only a time travel story could produce.

It looks a lot nicer than it did than when they previously showed it, but I would have liked a look at the UI during those fights.

2014? Bad or good, I just want them to get it out so they can get to the next thing quickly.

@sparky_buzzsaw: Yeah man I hear ya.

I think that's why I enjoy open world games like Sleeping Dogs and Red Dead so much. It's got that secret sauce of Compelling Open World + Story that I used to love in Final Fantasy games so much. The action is completely different of course, but I think that's always been a tertiary concern for me.

@starvinggamer: XIII-2 still has the same battle system more or less (there's an easy mode, have no interest in trying it); maybe feels slightly more fluid since you're not ridiculously constrained in terms of the roles your characters have for very long; monster development is fun and interesting. I got the $5 Lightning DLC which lets you fight a difficult boss at 11 different "power levels" unlocked the more you fail at it, by far the best part of the game so far; considering you get different roles and have to adjust to very specific timing on the boss to beat it at the lower end levels; the second stage of the boss isn't nearly as interesting as the first but it's sort of a victory lap by that point. Afterward you get Lightning as a monster character who's ridiculously overpowered; however you can 5 star otherwise nigh impossible battles to 5 star on the first go around (so for example I'll beat a boss and get 3 stars having played it perfectly, so I reload and put lightning in just for shits and giggles and bam 5 star) and it really speeds up random battles once you're tired of whichever area's fights.

The game is extremely non linear after the first few bits; which is kind of strange but works out okay with all the time travel shenanigans. It's not retarded nonsense like X-2 was either, and might as well be another full game in the series. Much like in XIII you can just sit on Crystarium points and not spend them to make the game more challenging; so at this point I'm 15 odd hours in and have 50,000 unspent points. Since the game's non linear if you just straight level I imagine that would make roughly half of the game easier; so far nothing's close to as difficult as the DLC boss but there do seem to be a fair number of challenges. Difficulty is wildly inconsistent but you can go back and face more challenging versions of monsters that you couldn't beat before using time travel shenanigans. The sentinel role is much better utilized in this game than it was in the first where you could largely ignore it for almost the entire game (though not for optional stuff).

Maybe the best part of the game is the dialogue wheel, most dialogue options have a "stupid" answer which in some cases is fucking great. Noel goes on about some super traumatic memories and Sarah responds with "What's that? Sorry I wasn't listening."

@animasta: I'll definitely be giving it a shot when I can, but budget constraints have kept me from picking up a lot of games I'd like to try. But yeah, after this conversation, I'm sorta curious about it now.

Anyways, the stories of FFVII-X all appealed to me for roughly the same reason - they're a big, meaty stew of everythig I love about storytelling in games in general. That's not very specific, is it? It's hard to break down the reasons, because they blend so well into each other. Let's use my nostalgic favorite FFVII for an example (I like FFX more for its mechanics, but that's another post entirely). Final Fantasy VII's characters, by themselves, are pretty crazy, but they're memorable. Iconic, even, depending on if you're older than, say, twenty. But it's not just their designs that matter - it's seeing them in and out of their elements, thrown into situations and places both familiar to them and completely foreign that makes them special. It's their very visceral link to the world around them, to the people and places they visit and interact with throughout the game.

And those places, in return, become almost characters themselves, particularly Midgar and Nibelheim. My biggest problem with Final Fantasy XII and XIII is that they feel emotionally cold. I never particularly cared abou tthe world surrounding the characters because they never seemed to be really invested into it. I get why people roll their eyes at stuff like the horrendous laughing scene in FFX (and make no mistake, I believe every RPG should have skippable scenes for that very reason), but when those moments work, they make a game's story, characters, and world immensely richer for it. Final Fantasy VII-X have dozens of moments like that - Cloud and his date in the Golden Saucer's cart, the "getting the band together" scene in VIII, practically the entirety of FFIX (seriously, that game drips charm), the little moments of quiet character building in X... those are all missing from Final Fantasy XII and XIII. There's no emotional investment. There's no magic, no spark. At the end of the day, everything about Final Fantasy XIII to me, particularly its story, felt cold and emotionless, as complete a "boardroom" game as any I've played this generation.

@sparky_buzzsaw: @fredchuckdave:

this is one of the reasons 13-2 is amazing and if they get rid of these in 13-3 (I'm not calling this thing lightning returns it's a dumb name) they will have MESSED UP.

@selfconfessedcynic: Snow is the best character in XIII, no clue about 2 so far; though he still has a fair amount of charm. I just hope he punches another dude, snags his gun and yells "I'm here to kill you all!" at a bunch of civilians again, what a champ.

oh man snow gets some of the best lines in 13-2 for what little he's in it. Where you at exactly?

also the fact that you played that lightning DLC before completing the main game is really funny

@animasta: Oh yeah I did that intentionally just to fuck with the game more or less. THIS DLC HAS SPOILERS ARE YOU SURE!? But hey I wanted a challenge and that's what I got; the plot seems okay so far and there's so much of a gap between what happens that I have no clear idea how it exactly leads to that yet. I've done Snow's bit with the super flan and fixed or fucked up Hope's timeline, not clear yet. "Academia" and the Gold Saucer just opened up. Is there anything to be gained the first time you enter the void beyond? I accidentally exited immediately after the cutscene; though the second time around I made sure to explore what little there was.

@fredchuckdave: the first time? I don't think so. You go there later and get fragments then, but not the first time.

Is it Academia 4XX or 400 af? Because once you get to 4xx (and immediately after) that's when the game really starts getting nuts.

(actually it gets pretty nuts in 400 too)

@animasta: Yeah the description sounded pretty ridiculous; I'll be sure to continue tomorrow. I will say it's interesting and engaging enough that I forget to eat while playing; and it's been a fair amount of time since that's happened (Dark Souls is the most recent game that comes to mind). Don't want to spoil the game though! Oh damn, too late.

The next game having Lightning as a main character is kind of a huge drawback considering she's as charming as molasses; better have some strong supporting characters or have her become extremely sarcastic or something.

I'm so disappointed with the direction they are taking Final Fantasy that I almost don't want to buy this just to make a point, but 13-2 was solid enough that I'd like to see how this ends up. Sigh.

@animasta: Holy fucking shit. I played that game for nearly 100 fucking hours got every goddamn trophy and never saw that bit. Amazing. I double stamp this game as my 2012 GOTY now cause fuck.

@sparky_buzzsaw: I'm not going to try to discredit your opinion at all but I will say this people tend to have the fondest memories of things that they grew up with. The music, movies well... everything is always going to be the "best" because you grew up with it. I think people get trapped in that nostalgia bubble way to often and judge things by the emotions you felt the first time you dug into a final fantasy game on SNES instead of the merits of a game that Final Fantasy XIII and its sequel bring to the table.

Most of the people I've seen that hate it spend more time complaining about what the game doesn't have instead of actually judging it by its own merits. You may THINK you want what old Final Fantasy want but really wouldn't the series be in the same rut Call of Duty is now with minor incremental upgrades every year? Now I can't really fault people if they think that Final Fantasy XIII has gotten a little long in the tooth because well... it kind of has but I think that first game while yes linear and yes most likely a bit to hand holdy at the beginning ends up being a very very distinct and uncompromising vision of what they wanted the game to be. The story I feel is one of the best in recent memory as well. Everyone pretty much spends most of the game actively hating each other. The plucky hero strolling into a new town and casually recruiting a few bumbling sidekicks who happily follow him to battle the evil bad guy seems just well... so played out and if you're trying to set the tone of a more realistic world not realistic either. The characters all actively have motivations,and reasons for their actions and eventually evolve as people. I feel like I could continue rambling but its 4 am and I really should get to sleep cause hey I have to be at work at 9am. So in summation something something you should give FFXIII and possibly XIII-2 another proper shot.

I really like Lightning as a character. Also 2014: the not shitty frame rate release

Did the 400 AF Academia section; I haven't levelled Noel and Serah in like 6 or 7 hours so now up to 75000 CP; every normal fight I could 5 star but at the end of each fight each of my guys would have ~10% of their HP left; made for some entertaining moments. Courtesy of Lightning I have a Gigantic Cactuar for synergist; who at low levels is actually worse than the bug that I had doing that; but the bug didn't make the camera ridiculously silly so he's out. Usually what I do is make it to the furthest boss ahead I can possible and then level a little to get powerful enough to beat it; but this boss (Zenobia) I could probably beat even with Noel/Serah having less than 1000 HP and no medic role yet since he doesn't really hit that hard; it would just take like 20 minutes so I used Lightning to speed it up; who knows when I'll finally have to level my characters again but the game is challenging and interesting with the present setup. Yeul seems to be the best kind of cannon fodder which I find to be quite amusing; I'm now curious as to how many times they make the same scene and attempt to make it emotional, if it was funny the third time it must be amazing the fifth or sixth time.

After the scene there's super dramatic experience music playing; except if you run back to where you were 5 seconds ago; then it's intense battle music! Then back again and the drama! Then more battle music!