Hoping to make your life's design a bit more dynamic!

I have some more impressions at the 6hr mark now. Again I don't know if I'll state them well but I'll put some out here.

As you have read, the music is really good. It stood out for me as soon right from the the opening screen, but as I've played the game I've stopped and thought to myself several times "this music is nice.". I felt bad because my top game of 2009 was Resident Evil 5 and when I watched the extras I actually say (the composer) crying as an orchestra played the score he'd written and I'd never even noticed the music while I was playing. It made me feel bad because I'm sure it's wonderful, it just never caught my attention while playing. The music in FFXIII on the contrary has caught my attention a few times. I did notice that the classic battle ending theme is nowhere to be found.

As I play this game, and especially as my roommate plays FFXII, I find myself feeling like Square went through a laundry list of things that people did not like about previous Final Fantasies and tried to address those issues. For instance my roommate is an explorer in RPGs, he loves to find everything. Just last night he was complaining that he got to this area where he felt like he couldn't not explore it for fear of missing something, but he didn't want to explore it all because it was so big. Just previously he was complaining about how he got to a point in the game where he'd explored this whole dungeon, leveled, and set up a bunch of gambits oly to die and lose like 1hr hour or more of valuable play time. These were both negative experiences that took fun away from the game, and most importantly wasted his valuable gaming time.

I don't know about other people but I'm 32 years old. I am an adult with a full time job, friends and family (no children), but responsibilities that come with being an adult. To waste even an hour or two of game time was not that big a deal in the past, but sometimes an hour or two of game time is all I have in a day. To be faced with either of these situations; having to explore a vast, risky, unknown area at the risk of missing something valuable, or ending up wasting an hour of time due to the placement of save points is just not very considerate of my time as a gamer any more. To tell you the truth this is one of my chief complaints against RPGs and why I don't play them as much as I used to.

Back to FFXIII, at the 6hr mark I'm starting to switch over from worrying about whether or not the gameplay system might be too easy and oversimplified, to starting to really like it and appreciate some of the decisions that were made so far. In reference to the above issues, the maps so far are simple, almost too much so. I see where people are coming from that say it's pretty linear (so far). Compare this to the two situations from FFXII where you are faced with time wasting situations however. In FFXIII you don't have to spend a lot of time exploring these maps, you don't get lost, and you are able to understand where you are going at a glance. If there is a side branch it's short, and you know there are optional enemies and treasure there. If you want to get them you go down the short branch first, if not you keep going on the long branch. You don't have to wonder and feel like you're missing anything. There are plenty of these little side branches as you go.

Also the save points appear frequently. I don't worry that I'm going to die and lose a lot of work, the last save point was not that far back, and from what I read, the penalties for a game over death are not very high. Another way that this game respects your time and minimizes an "unfun" situation, dying and loosing a lot of (time/effort/etc.). Does this mean the game is easy? From what I hear, no. But it does mean that also in combat a great many things have been made to be less taxing on the player to make it easier for them to enjoy the fun parts of battle, not the tedious ones.

The moment when I started to really appreciate the battle system I think it when I was recently introduced to the way you use the TP ability "Libra" (Familliar of course from previous games, come to find out it's pronounced "lie-brah" like "library". That makes way more sense now). The tutorial went thus: When you want to know a bosses weak points, use libra and you'll see that it's weak against fire and water. "Ok", I was thinking, "but I'm only controlling one character in the party (the leader). How do I get my party to cast those?". So you use libra, you find out the enemies weaknesses, and automatically your party members who have those abilities will start using them against that enemy. I really like this! No gambits to set up or any of that crap, just get the information and your party will automatically begin to make good use of it.

This also helped me to figure out how the game can determine what abilities to use when in battle, even for the character I control. When I'm using Lightening (character) for instance, she will sometimes use a group attack, or a spell called ruin, and I wasn't really sure why. I've realized that it's because when you choose "attack", the game will actually pick the best attacks from your currently available pool of abilities to use based the enemy you're fighting and what you (or the game) knows about it. It's not like you don't have the option to specify your attacks or make any tactical decisions, but the game takes some of the guesswork and trouble out of managing the details of what to use when. Rather than it feeling like the game is playing for you, it feels like a burden is taken off your shoulders and you can concentrate the the overall battle which is fast-paced and efficient. It sounds weird but I really like this.

So my impressions of the challenge so far compared to other JRPGs? It wastes my time less and maximizes the fun more by utilizing some innovative play mechanics and taking the burden of a lot of micromanaging off the player's shoulders. Is it easy or hard because of it? So far easy. I've only hit game-over once, and only lost a character in battle where I had to use a phoenix down once (maybe twice). However, I can see this system being challenging later on. Rather than being "cheap" (which none of us enjoy) I anticipate it will be challenging in fun ways, as the focus is squarely on fun and not tedium in this battle system.

Played some yesterday and today. I'm at about the 10hr mark right now. It is starting to get hard now. I just did the battle for Lightening's summon which I was proud of the fact that I didn't have to look up how to beat it. It took me about 3-4 times to figure out what to do though, and another 3-4 to actually succeed in doing it. The trick now seems to be to set up the right optima sets and switch to them at the right times. I also just has another tutorial which was about what to do with the summon. A new leveling opportunity has presented itself which is the leveling of items by using other items you've collected. I'm on chapter 4 still. Apparently there are 13 chapters (of course), though the last few are supposed to be longer and/or where most of the side-questing and exploration happen. I like the challenge that is arising. I've gone from getting 5 stars easily in each battle to getting about 3 stars most of the time. I'm looking forward to figuring out how to more effectively fight the regular battles. I also noticed that enemies seem to respawn. I should take a moment to practice on a set of enemies to try to hone my skills.

I've recently read a couple of things on FF13. First, good news for me, apparently the Xbox 360 version runs identically to the PS3 version, except of course changing disks, but I'll be able to compare the versions since my brother has a PS3. I also read an interview from one of the directors of FF13 who said all of the content they cut out of the game is enough to fill a whole other game. I wonder if that means there will be downloadable content in the future.

I'm liking these reports filler. Keep 'em coming! My feelings about this game are like a roller coaster. One day I read something positive, but a few days later I read something negative. This game really has a lot of haters out there, and I'm not sure if it' just anti-Squeenix sentiment, or if it's truly that bad of a game. We'll know soon enough, though.

That happens with every famous game. There are people out there, that no matter how good the game is, they'll allways criticize for not being indentically to the previous stallment.

Glad they are appreciated. I wasn't sure if I was just hijacking this thread for my own personal amusement or if people were getting something out of it. My feelings are more consistent but my fear is that my limited ability to follow the story may color my opinion either positively or negatively. The game is so story based, you play to see the next cut scene a lot of time because they are soooo beautiful and well done. However, my limited ability to really follow the story may make it seem either better or worse than it actually is. I can follow a lot of what is going on but I just don't feel confidant judging it, and that is where I'm afraid ultimately I will not be able to give it the review I'd like to. I may be worried over nothing.

The battles are tough now. There is nothing impossible about them but because of the fast pace it's possible to die at the drop of a hat if you don't pay attention. Figuring out how to handle each enemy and each group of enemies is the trick. I just faced an enemy that I got no stars defeating the first time, I'm up to getting 3 stars for it now. I still want to get 5 on that one! I can't quite figure out how! It's fun though, and some enemies it's still easy to get 5 stars without too much work.

I just finished up a tough spot of work so I finally have some genuine free time to play this game and get further. I'm at the 16hr mark now. I'll be streaming it on Sunday the 17th of January 2010 (in two days!) pretty much all day starting at about 9-10am eastern time here: http://www.playongo.com/.

I repeat: Streaming FFXIII Sunday January 17th, all day! http://www.playongo.com/

So if you want to check it out for yourselves please stop by and take a look.

While I'm on the subject let me double post... I was just thinking about this game and two things I like are these; 1. The story (at this point) is told from the perspective of a group of characters that are split up and on their own respective journeys fated to come back together I'm sure, and 2. the lead male character is not a completely androgynous pretty-boy.

As for the first, this is a storytelling technique I've encountered in books and movies and can be used really well. I like how it works in the game to bring you from one main character to another so that the setting, characters, and story are fresh and varied. As for the second, the main male lead, Snow, is kind of a nice guy version of Sawyer from Lost. He's loud, arrogant, and confrontaional, but he's also a cocky, fighting for love and justice, hero type bad-ass. I'd file this with the laundry list of FF complaints that was addressed in XIII, the whiny boy hero has been removed.

As the counterpart to Snow you have Hope, a younger version of the whiny pretty-boy (he looks exactly like Heather from Silent Hill 3), but it works better for Hope. For starters he is young. He's probably 13-15 or so. Also he's played as more of a brooding, angry, emotional type, but not in an unlikable way. There is something about him that makes you sympathize with him which is an important part of any good character. His humanizing element is probably his vulerability, and you grow to like him because of how he deals with what is going on around him. Like I said, I'm being cautious about putting too much faith in my grasp of the story, but I can follow enough of it that I am starting to get a handle on the characters a bit. This may be the strongest set of characters an FF game has had yet.

I feel the same way, although I'm trying to avoid reading too many opinions on the matter. Even though I was largely disappointed with XII, I'm still going to play XIII. Having read that the game is so story based, and has stronger characters gives me hope that I will enjoy it, and it won't wind up as a €60 dust collector!



So does this mean that more than one character will be more than a paper cut out? I have found in past FF games that, while one character is fully developed, the supporting cast are somewhat one dimensional. Such a shame.... they often seem more interesting!

Yes, that much I can say with certainty. Although they seem to have been more successful with the male characters than the female so far. Although I do kind of like what they did with Vanilla ultimately. Hope is probably my favorite character, but I like Snow and Sazh pretty well too.

I have to admit, I was really enjoying the game right up until chapter 11 but now I'm starting to have some doubts. This is kind of a critical point in the game because it's the first place where you are freed up to explore a larger area and set some of your own goals. It's also the first place that I was like "meh". I worked under the assumption that if there were so many seemingly optional missions here that the entire thing might be skippable and so I decided to just keep going with the story which is what I wanted to check out. You CAN do this so I was relieved and while the enemies seemed tough, they were not impossible. However, unlike earlier where fighting the regular enemies that were around was enough to keep you adequately leveled up, it seemed like the difference in power between the enemies and my party keep getting greater and greater. There were multiple optional sub bosses that were too hard for me. Eventually I simple couldn't keep playing.

I decided to back-track all the way to the area I'd originally abandoned thinking I'd do some of the missions there to level up. I assumed that I'd be a lot tougher for having forged ahead for a while and probably wouldn't have much trouble with the first handful of missions. However, I found this whole segment to be rather opposite of the game thusfar. Rather than feeling like the game valued my time, instead it seemed like there were a bunch of run around quests set up where you must needlessly wander between areas tracking down enemies. Even though I'd leveled more, the mission enemies and even the free roaming ones sill seem rather challenging. I'm caught feeling like I need to level grind to continue playing the game and it's very contrary to the experience I've been having up to this point.

I read a review someone posted on GameFAQs to the effect that the game placed itself in a tough position at this point because people who had been enjoying the game before now were basically guaranteed to find fault with this segment of the game, while those who really enjoyed this part of the game are almost guaranteed to dislike the parts leading up to it. I'm not going to state that this is my opinion as well but I can certainly see where they are coming from and they may be on the right track.

I'd like to sit down and grind for a bit until I think I can keep going and hopefully make it through the rest of the game so I can form some opinions on the whole experience. I'm not looking forward to this grinding thing though. I put the game down and haven't been back to it for a few days now.

You know Filler, it's strange, but it seems like the way I feel about Arc the Lad II for PSX(I'm current playing it)
I got to a part when all members of the group finnaly reunited in one huge group.
Before that, the sidequests were very fast ones. Most of them I did without realizing they were "sidequests", since they are so small and so "close" to the main storyline.

But after that reunion, a lot of parts of map opened and I can do a lot of sidequests, that are completely unrelated with the main storyline. That's a good thing, except, that I did chose to continue following with the story, and the enemies are getting much tougher than they're supposed to be.

I'll give you an example:

Before, my characters were level 39-40 fighting against enemies of level 38-39
After, my characters were level 41-42 fighting against enemies of level 57-58

So, I decided to do some sidequests. I mean, a lot of them, but not all, there are still some of them that I did not finish(the really boring ones). Than, I decided, to continue the story, with levels 51-52. But now I got to a part that enemies range from level 62-64, WTF?!
This game is starting to piss me off.

I allways thought that sidequests should be optional. But it's not possible to beat this game without doing sidequests.

Sorry to get off topic, please continue with your FFXIII review.