Final Fantasy XIII
Game » consists of 17 releases. Released Mar 09, 2010
This entry into the Final Fantasy universe is set in the worlds of Pulse and Cocoon. Players take control of multiple characters who are caught in a war between these worlds.
Unrealized potential
I'm about 10 hours into FFXIII and I have to say that so far I'm kind of disappointed. I know from reading reviews that it takes quite a bit longer to really get going, but so far it is giving me bad flashbacks of FFVIII in that it seems like there are a ton of great ideas that are really poorly implemented.
Remember some of the revolutionary things about VIII that never quite came off? Like how you just remodeled your weapons instead of buying new ones - except that something as simple as a screw was next to impossible to find? Or how you got paid a salary instead of getting random money from battles - except that you got paid irregularly and the amount fluctuated up and down for no apparent reason? I'm starting to have those same feelings about XIII.
Like the new Paradigm system. It seems cool at first, until I realized that it renders down battles to me basically choosing "auto-battle" and occasionally switching paradigms. Or how your characters move around in battle - until you get nauseated by the constantly moving camera that makes it next to impossible to keep track of whats going on. I'm happy that the devs are trying out new ideas and attemping to freshen up the series, but I kind of wish they had stepped back at certain points and asked themselves if making all of these changes was actually going to be fun rather than just making the change for the heck of it.
FFVIII is actually my favourite, and still is...so comparing it to that is a positive for me.
That said, while I like XIII it ranks in at a solid #4 for me anyway.
PS Auto-battle is a bad crutch when you're working on some things later on, I'd break the habit for most things besides healing. Especially for roles like Ravager, Synergist, or Saboteur.
I am really liking the new combat system and the elimination of MP and refilling hp at the end of each fight. More then anything else big thumbs up to Square for realizing that not everyone play's on a HD tv and made the game scale to 480
Not really. There are certainly some good points in FFXIII; but most of us are completely turned off with the changes. Fans don't normally like change, even if its good. There are also some issues in the game that are to be addressed, such as the pacing and very linear path the game sets out." Will anybody ever talk about the good things and only the good things? "
The thing with just choosing auto battle in all battles in FFXIII, is that just swapping paradyms is essentially the equivalent of picking your skills anyway, there really isn't a single bit less strategy than most other FF games.
I like the Linearity, I can see why it would bother some people though.
I agree with the camera though, the camera tries too too hard to be dynamic and exciting in battle, and just ends up annoying.
Drat that camera. I've lost battles because I was just spamming auto battle on the last, almost dead enemy, not bothering to heal up and then the enemy dies and there was a smaller enemy hiding behind him that kills me.
Because the camera wiggled it's way into a bad position
What really annoys me about the battle system is the placing of characters, you have literally no control of were they chose to stand on the battle field, sometimes it's ok, but I've lost a fair shout of fights because my group decides to all clump together against a monster that hits an area effect attack for pretty heavy damage. SPREAD OUT YOU BASTARDS!
" What really annoys me about the battle system is the placing of characters, you have literally no control of were they chose to stand on the battle field, sometimes it's ok, but I've lost a fair shout of fights because my group decides to all clump together against a monster that hits an area effect attack for pretty heavy damage. SPREAD OUT YOU BASTARDS! "I actually agree completly with this. Figured I'd offer some help that a minor solution to this is to delibratly set them to different roles for a second just to move them around. This doesn't allways work, but making 3 people into Comando's has a habit of making all 3 of them split up to attack different targets, and then you can reset there paradigm. It's dumb that the game makes you do this, but I hope this advice helps you out.
" @Soap said:" What really annoys me about the battle system is the placing of characters, you have literally no control of were they chose to stand on the battle field, sometimes it's ok, but I've lost a fair shout of fights because my group decides to all clump together against a monster that hits an area effect attack for pretty heavy damage. SPREAD OUT YOU BASTARDS! "I actually agree completly with this. Figured I'd offer some help that a minor solution to this is to delibratly set them to different roles for a second just to move them around. This doesn't allways work, but making 3 people into Comando's has a habit of making all 3 of them split up to attack different targets, and then you can reset there paradigm. It's dumb that the game makes you do this, but I hope this advice helps you out. "
Yeah thanks for the tip, I've thought of the same thing before but haven't bothered to try it due to how stupid the problem is in the first place, instead i just go with a good hearty facepalm and hit retry, I guess if it was big enough an issue they could patch in some fix to it, but we are talking about a japanese games company here... so they wont.
In the games deffence, it'd be more then a simple bug fix patch to add in a system where by you could order your sqaud into formations to move around.
As silly as it is, I think the game was intended this way, not on oversight. (still kind of an oversight, but you know what I mean).
It's why comando's are programmed to try and attack different targets, that was there way of having you control it.
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