@slag:

Eh, I'd say it falls on the better side of Final Fantasy's history. I mean, it certainly isn't XII. It's one better. That's just math.

Big wall of text is hidden under a spoiler to make navigating this thread a bit more manageable. Surprisingly I don't actually spoil anything too big storywise. The tl;dr version: I really liked FF13, but it's an aright game, the battle system has pros and cons.

@hailinel said:

Spoilers DUDES

Some of these have an Require your suspension of disbelief like the that underwater helmet thing from FF6 that 3 people can use at once but it just keeps piling it on. It's like there's no rules.

A l'Cie is given the tools to complete their job, but it's their responsibility to figure out what the job is. Barthandelus doesn't sit idly by waiting for shit to happen, either. He takes several proactive steps to ensure that certain barriers are not in the party's way. There's also the fact that he's a Cocoon fal'Cie. Because the party was made l'Cie by a Pulse fal'Cie, it's normally his prerogative to stop whatever they're doing. If anyone else on Cocoon, including other Cocoon fal'Cie, knew what he was doing, he'd have far more trouble on his hands than a few l'Cie being troublesome in his attempts to guide them to his want.

The key point being, Barthandelus didn't create these l'Cie. He was taking advantage of the act of a Pulse fal'Cie that actively had it in for Cocoon.

@hailinel: I'm not harping on Barthandelus and his actions specifically, just the fact that he demonstrated that the fal'Cie are capable of speech. Unless the fal'Cie are just playing a super elaborate version of that Resistance game Drew was talking about, I still don't see how explicit communication is a negative. It's not like both sides don't already know what the other wants already anyway.

And the logisical side of things aside, having one of them talk ruined the concept of them being Lovecraftian beings beyond human comprehension.

@gokaired: You could have saved your self some time and just posted Spoony's "reviews."

There are two types of people in the world, people that love FFXIII and people that think FFXIII is the worst thing ever done to any video game franchise ever. There is little hope of convincing someone on one side to come to the other.

The arguments against it are sound. The long hallways kinda suck, the plot is vague at best and expects you to read the datalog (once you do, you definitely get more out of the game), and the character development can be real spotty.

I just finished playing this game a few days ago, and god damn if I don't love it.

I actually watched that a month ago and i just finished Lightnings Returns in the summertime (what a waste) The one I didn't notice was the robes, but the more I thought about it the dumber it got. Everything falls apart when you apply it to common sense.

Personally because of the restricted hallway nature of the game i never really "got" how the the natural world worked in context to everything. This is just a personal complaint because i never felt connect/immersed in the world.

Oh a positive about the combat. The Eidolons are cool, senseless but cool. Shiva is my favourite, for obvious reasons ;)

Lightning Returns has only been out for a few weeks. At no point was it out during the "summer."

This response got accidentally wiped the first time I typed it out, but I'll see if I can summarize it again:

There's nothing in the game that specifically states that all fal'Cie are or aren't capable of human speech, or even disguising themselves as humans. It could be that only a select few are capable of such. Barthandelus might be the only one for all we know. Certainly, Lightning and the others had no idea that he was a fal'Cie until he shed his Galenth Dysley disguise.

And again, Barthandelus is alone in his plot. He needs a l'Cie, specifically one created by a Pulse fal'Cie, to make it to Orphan's Cradle and become Ragnarok. He wants to destroy Cocoon, which is an act that he is incapable of himself, and which the other Cocoon fal'Cie would never agree to. He is a nihilist acting on his own taking advantage of pawns that happened to fall into his lap thanks to Lightning and the others becoming l'Cie when they tried to rescue Serah. He needs the l'Cie to grow strong enough to accomplish the task he needs, which is why he puts them through ordeals and never tells them the full story. He needs them to feel the stress and despair necessary to be confronted by one's own Eidolon. These aren't things that would necessarily happen if the party knew the fully story. He requires them to experience adversity in order to become strong enough as Ragnarok to accomplish his wish. All he wants is for Cocoon to be destroyed, and he's molding the party into potential vessels for Ragnarok. If they failed to make it to the cradle, then they just weren't strong enough for his needs.

I think he's from Australia or something.

It's not summer in the southern hemisphere, either.

It is summer in Australia and New Zealand From December-February.

Winter doesn't start in the northern hemisphere until Saturday. What are you guys doing down there starting summer early?

Things right.

Well I'm not there now, but we basically used a simplified seasons calender where they always start on the first of the month.

@arbitrarywater said:

I can live with that, lol.

Wanna know the best part about all of this? None of it really matters because XIII-2 chucks most of the plot out of the window and focuses on different characters and plot threads.

L'Cie? Fal'Cie?

@flappy: Let's have 2 Hopes cause fuck it!!!

well, FF13 just became this whole "that will be the definition of this generation" or "the death of japanese development." But somehow from just probably a development cycle that probably lasted about 8 years and then 2 games after they that kinda recouped their losses. I know there isn't a book about this, but I'd love to know the whole drama of how this game got made. That would probably make Duke Nukem 4 look modest. At some point it was suppose to be a PS2 game, and it shows. It might be an uplifting story, "japanese game development isn't dead, but they had to go through traumatic changes."

I'm looking forward to the next blog post.

I played something like the first 8-10 hours and didnt really enjoy it all. I'm well aware the general consensus is that it gets better after that but just personally i don't wanna play more of that when there's other stuff out there I could be playing.

Sorry man, got my wires crossed I meant 13-2. I can't say if that game improved or made the game worse i'll need to borrow it again.

I know I friend who's planing on getting 13-3, I borrowed 13 and 13-2 off of him. I chastise the hell out of him XD

It isn't a review, though. It's me attempting to explain why the combat is more interesting than a lot of people think it is.

I have a few actual reviews on my profile. If you want to see how differently I wrote those than this, feel free.

@flappy Hey thanks!

@c2c "Now you omitted something really big in the blog, and that is auto-battle. We can talk all day about the actions each character can take, but as a player I don't need to actually need to care when the auto battle does that for me."

I didn't really mention auto-ability because that's not really the crux of the game's combat by any stretch. It's sort of like a car: the engine (paradigm shift) is the most important part. You need the wheels (auto-ability), but they're kind of a solitary aspect, while the engine is really what drives every other system at play forward.

Damn that was a bad analogy. I think you understand what I mean, though.

Wowee, guys. 120 comments. I realize this isn't a huge amount but it's pretty significant for me.

Thanks a bunch for reading, even if a lot of you do really strongly disagree with me.

I LOVE YOU ALL.

I hated the combat, it wasn't fun. I didn't get any sense of it being "action" it just felt like a turn based system sped up. Auto battle will resolve most battles, the hard battles are just extreme repetition in switching to the right paradigm shifts at the right time then using the most obviously fitting attack for the situation. Games like Tales do real time much much better and older Final Fantasy does turn based better.

@tamriilin: may I give you some advice, try to write like your writing about a song you love and it connects with you.

I'm glad you like Final Fantasy XIII, but in all honesty it's NOT one of the better Final Fantasy games.

Sure the combat is interesting, and the graphics are breath taking, but everything else about it (Story, Characters, Exploration) turned me off completely. FFXIII did not live up to the incredibly high expectations that come with being a numbered mainline Final Fantasy game.

It's just a decent JRPG with a cool combat system that failed to live up to the greatness associated with the previous entries.

@noctisluciscaelum: If we're being 100% honest, that 'greatness' started to wane once we made the jump to the PS2.

FFX - I think it's safe to say that most people consider this one to be a solid entry (weird VA aside).

FFXI - It's an MMO. Whatever.

FFXII - This is the one where shit falls apart and people either love it or hate it. You don't have to look hard to find someone poopooing on this game.

If anything, XIII tried to experiment (just like XII) and it got a mixed reception from the fans. Realistically speaking, there's a decent chance that XV turns out the same way. We may not want the first next-gen FF to fall on its face, but it's a risk that comes with trying something new.

@flappy:

The FF series was still great on the PS2.

-I feel like FFX was, and still is, an amazing Final Fantasy mainline entry. The VA was fine, I don't get why people think it's wierd.

-FFXI while an online mainline numbered entry, it's still a rock solid MMO that lived up to the franchise's expectations.That job system was addictive.

-I agree with you on FFXII, it really was the point where people started to question the direction Final Fantasy games were heading. Still, FFXII was pretty good (way better than XIII). For all the people who either adore it or loath it, it's still a fantastic game. A game I feel still has some of that Final Fantasy "greatness." It was more or less a successful experiment.

XIII was a failed experiment, the only thing you can praise that game for is it's amazing graphics and interesting combat. It's unflinching linearity, whatever... story, and meh... cast, really hurt it. I wanted to love FFXIII. Maybe I'll go back to finish it, but skip all the cut-scenes so I can just play, and enjoy, the combat. If it wasn't a mainline entry it probably wouldn't have been as scrutinized.

I also agree with you that FFXV is a bit of a risk since it's trying something new. When it was Versus XIII, you can shrug it off as an action spin-off to the Fabula Nova Crystallis project. Now that it's a mainline game, who knows how fans will react. To me it looks like Kingdom Hearts in a Final Fantasy setting, so I'm on board.

@crithon: I'm not going to take writing advice from somebody who gets "you're" and "your" mixed up. Sorry!