That said, it did not have a completely terrible script. FFX had the virtue of at least having very well-defined (if not always likable) characters and a moderately-structured plot that you could tell somebody at least wrote down on a napkin before they started designing the game.
I'm on the fence for this. Because while I definitely agree that FFX had a nice, organized processions (with a healthy smackering of incredibly godawful fucking minigames that are among the worse of any FF title awkwardly bolted on), it was a steady train of total bullshit to a vague hint of actual non-shit storytelling back to total bullshit.
The racial hatred between the Guado and the Al'bhed? Sure, okay, that seems fair enough. Around that we get some bullshit information of underwater soccer as a manifestation of religious faith by being a political demonstration against technology, and what to do with our ongoing Cold War against the memories of the dead. Awesome.
Maybe I was incorrect, but I got the sense that, while incredibly stupid, this stuff was important. Mostly because they'd use the word "Fayth" in every other sentence at some point. "Oh, so that giant returning harbinger of doom is the manifestation of some fake person's fake father and his resentment and love of his son and his own compatriots, and he's weak to singing? Okay, no problem, Fayth!" If you rip out all that stuff, I guess the amount of bullshit decreases and it just becomes "The woman I love is going to die, how can I prevent that?" But I operate under the impression that, as you experience a game, your understanding of the plot grows in depth, and into further details. Not the reverse. FFX might be a game for amnesiacs or people with the long-term memory of gold-fish.
One thing I liked about FFX is the omnipresent threat of sin, a giant indestructable force.
Absolutely. If I have a favorite part of the game, it's this. The cutscene where it attacks that coastal village is, in my opinion, the peak of that game. But I don't think they do anything particularly interesting with the concept beyond that, especially in the context of "he's your father!"
The concept of Sin, by itself, is fine--though I don't think it's that hot, I don't like the weird tropical vacation resort with the major risk of death that is Spira on the whole--but I would argue that its ruined as you find out more and more about it. I would have preferred it be left a mystery--if not, sure, that's fine. Explain it, but please don't do it with some shitty "oh, god, it's your father, and the sins of the father blah blah blah" with a dash of attempted parallels. "Oh no! He's doing exactly what I did! What ever shall I do?"
There's something to be said about mystery. But if that isn't acceptable, don't ruin it with tired "It's dad, and he's pissed" angle.
Seriously, there's nothing wrong with other people enjoying FFX--nothing at all. You're just not bothered by the same thing. But "you just don't get it" is pretty much the worse defense you can make.
Here's why: I get it. The laughing scene isn't complicated. It still sucks, as does much of the game's story, characterization, and dramatic development, even if it does exactly what it set out to do. Actually, I'd say it's not the worst scene in the game by any means (hell, it doesn't even compare to Tidus and Yuna "swimming"). It's actually quite minor compared to the suck of the rest of the game, though I can appreciate why people point to it--because, as was its intention, it is painful to watch. The fact that this is deliberately the case doesn't magically make it all better. "Thank you, Square-Enix, for making me want to jam a pen in my ear for a few brief seconds."
In my own experience--not everyone's, but my own--Tidus is part of the problem. A big part. He just won't shut up. His narrative is painful. His observations are ridiculously corny or just flat-out stupid. If I had to compare him to Vanille, I'd say that Vanille actually possesses the cognitive ability to rationalize things. Tidus does not, so his answer to all things is that weird light grunt followed by his "You gotta believe it!" mini-speech. Vanille makes her stupid rationalizations once or twice per chapter. Tidus can't rationalize, except for brief moments like in Zanarkland, and makes his observations constantly.
Part of it isn't surprising, this was Square-Enix's first endeavor in English voice acting. Maybe the delivery isn't as bad in Japanese. I'm guessing actual story is. Thing is, not only is Tidus a big part of the problem, he's symptomatic of a greater problem beneath that. I don't think there's a problem of coherence in the plot of FFX--everything seems simple enough to be followed from point to point, but it doesn't overcome the stupid. "He's dead! Now he isn't! Now he's dead again! Except he's not, because he's a figment of a dream sent to protect another figment of a dream! Here, play some underwater soccer!"
I also found he grew less sympathetic, and more irritating, gradually but steadily, as we grew to know him and the story progressed. He was barely at all eye-rolling when we first met him, just unusual.
I really don't like FFXIII's inventive new nouns, but that's something that could change. I didn't like the way English sounded when I first learned it, now it no longer bothers me.
I really like this post.
Also, I didn't mean to imply that I didn't "get it". I do. I just really vehemently disagree that it is, in any way, well-executed. You put it better, though.
And yeah, I'm right there with you on FFXIII's creative use of apostrophes. They should've just stuck with "gods", honestly. But it's part of the overly baroque nature of Final Fantasy, and I don't think it actively detracts from the game.
Cherrn on
All creature will die and all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai.
I think the laughing scene comes up a lot just because when you think about the bad aspects of the game that one was what hurt the most to watch.
It was like watching a [strike]bad[/strike] sitcom and seeing the trainwreck situation develop in front of you that you foresaw five minutes ago and are now earnestly trying to ignore by reading a book/going to the bathroom/plugging your ears because it's so painful to watch.
I think Square-Enix feels obligated to do it. It's their shtick, along with handsome, young protagonists and flashy cinematic. To be fair, "Pulse" and "Cocoon" aren't that bad at all. Even "l'Cie" and "Fal'Cie" aren't that bad. The problem gets when you combine them all together, and then omit the conjunctions and possessive nouns and the like. "You've become a servant of the emissaries/manifestation of the denizens of Pulse" becomes much shorter, but also less coherent.
But it's part of the setting. Flying cities, holo-domes, etc. It's like Spira with indoor plumbing and a city ordnance board. And an army. The datalogs help a lot. If Square-Enix is going to reinvent the social world and hierarchy each time, they might as well include the datalog.
But I belong to that group of people who, strangely enough, enjoys the less fantastical games, probably why 6 and 7 are my favorite games. Fantasy doesn't have to be automatically unrelatable, there's still plenty of fantasy in those two. At a point, it can seem a little overwhelming like. "Wow, I cannot fucking imagine what this is like....darn."
But that's something that would vary widely from person to person.
That said, it did not have a completely terrible script. FFX had the virtue of at least having very well-defined (if not always likable) characters and a moderately-structured plot that you could tell somebody at least wrote down on a napkin before they started designing the game.
I'm on the fence for this. Because while I definitely agree that FFX had a nice, organized processions (with a healthy smackering of incredibly godawful fucking minigames that are among the worse of any FF title awkwardly bolted on), it was a steady train of total bullshit to a vague hint of actual non-shit storytelling back to total bullshit.
The racial hatred between the Guado and the Al'bhed? Sure, okay, that seems fair enough. Around that we get some bullshit information of underwater soccer as a manifestation of religious faith by being a political demonstration against technology, and what to do with our ongoing Cold War against the memories of the dead. Awesome.
Maybe I was incorrect, but I got the sense that, while incredibly stupid, this stuff was important. Mostly because they'd use the word "Fayth" in every other sentence at some point. "Oh, so that giant returning harbinger of doom is the manifestation of some fake person's fake father and his resentment and love of his son and his own compatriots, and he's weak to singing? Okay, no problem, Fayth!" If you rip out all that stuff, I guess the amount of bullshit decreases and it just becomes "The woman I love is going to die, how can I prevent that?" But I operate under the impression that, as you experience a game, your understanding of the plot grows in depth, and into further details. Not the reverse. FFX might be a game for amnesiacs or people with the long-term memory of gold-fish.
Like I say, there was a lot of unnecessary clutter. A lot of it. I think they could have done a whole lot better if they left unexplained things like where Sin came from, or Yu Yevon, or all that other stuff. It just wasn't necessary and I think a fantasy setting like the FF games does a lot better if some things are left vague.
But, IMO, the game was really about Yuna and whether or not she was going to let herself die to fit into the role society laid out for her from birth. Heavy-handed? Definitely. But not completely terrible.
Compare that to Chrono Cross. While I never even beat FFX the first time, I probably have played through CC ten times - explored every nook and cranny, got every character and their special Elements, seen just about every scenario. But I really couldn't tell you what the hell the game was about. I think it had something to do with taking care of the planet. But it really doesn't make any sense when you try to break it down.
Serge was a kid who got attacked by a panther so his dad took him to a special city from the future found in the middle of a time pocket and somehow his dad got turned into a walking cat and Serge ended up having his fate intertwined with a clone of Schala who's trapped beyond time so he and the cat switch bodies in order to (???) but eventually after fighting the planet's elemental dragon deities he ends up with a new body but then a parallel time line where reptites survived 65,000,000 BC splices with ours and a huge tower just appears out of the middle of fucking nowhere and a shard of Lavos that can literally grant any wish is up there for some reason. So they kill the great dragon deity and go to another time pocket and kill lavos with music from the elements.
Then there was the whole FATE/Lucca/Robo/Chronopolis thing, Harle and Kid being somehow related, Kid being in Lucca's orphanage, and I can't even remember what all else.
Considering that CC was one of the better RPGs released in the years leading up to FFX, I think FFX could have been a lot worse than it ended up being. At least it had a simple conflict at the root of all its overcomplicated mess.
Yeah, the whole Yu Yevon/Yunalesca thing is pretty horribly executed. The idea itself is not inherently bad, but it's a difficult one to make not corny as hell, and they managed to make it both corny and heavy on the bullshit. It serves a specific function, I thought, as establishing the weird-ass duality of the Yevon Church, it's hypocrisy and yet its absolute importance, and some sort of justification to having every other person be dead and yet not-dead.
Seriously, what the fuck? To draw a comparison, let's look at the same explanatory mechanism used in 7, for the Shinra Corporation, up to the point where the game begins (note, nothing after that point).
Out of the long, and admittedly pointless war between imperial Wutai and the eastern city-states, a desire for collective security and protection drives engineers and designers to a small military arsenal called the Shinra Manufacturing Company. This brain trust develops many advancements in the fields of not just weapons but also rocketry and chemistry. President Shinra draws upon their collective wisdom to develop a reliable way of electrical power generation based on observations of the planet and Wutai's use of materia, and promptly forces an end to the war and the political subjugation of hated Wutai. The Shinra Corporation corners the market on power-generation, and serves as a federal state to the bankrupt local governments, eventually securing political authority through their monopoly on post-war reconstruction and martial law.
And that's probably over-explaining it. They did this with a minimum of married people coming back from the dead (that happens later), or political will held by the fragments of dreams, or the generation of an entire psuedo-world as a mechanicsm in a cold war against the dead. This is purely a personal view, but overall, not only does it make more sense, it leaves out a lot of awkwardness about underwater sports being manifestations of religious glory but at the same time subtle acts of resistance against the clerical hierarchy or naked women who grant wishes and enormous power to traveling pilgrims as their ongoing role as the manifestation of dreams.
It sounds a lot less weird. 6 is, at least in my memories of it, not nearly as weird too. And weird can be good, but in X's case, it is not.
Oh that CC post really made me nostalgic for PS1 era Square. They were so willing to try some weird shit. Not all of it succeeded (hated Blue's ending in Saga Frontier, oh God Vagrant Story why do you have awful menu systems, where's my plot in Legend of Mana) but was it fun to play.
EDIT: Compared to other FFs, 6 is pretty straightforward. It's more complex than the previous ones but it keeps things pretty simple. It's probably why it's still loved today.
CC is one of the most soothing RPGs out there. I know it back and front but still pick it up every few years. Probably the best aged Square RPG on the system besides the flawed but beautiful looking Legend of Mana.
I think Square-Enix feels obligated to do it. It's their shtick, along with handsome, young protagonists and flashy cinematic. To be fair, "Pulse" and "Cocoon" aren't that bad at all. Even "l'Cie" and "Fal'Cie" aren't that bad. The problem gets when you combine them all together, and then omit the conjunctions and possessive nouns and the like. "You've become a servant of the emissaries/manifestation of the denizens of Pulse" becomes much shorter, but also less coherent.
But it's part of the setting. Flying cities, holo-domes, etc. It's like Spira with indoor plumbing and a city ordnance board. And an army. The datalogs help a lot. If Square-Enix is going to reinvent the social world and hierarchy each time, they might as well include the datalog.
But I belong to that group of people who, strangely enough, enjoys the less fantastical games, probably why 6 and 7 are my favorite games. Fantasy doesn't have to be automatically unrelatable, there's still plenty of fantasy in those two. At a point, it can seem a little overwhelming like. "Wow, I cannot fucking imagine what this is like....darn."
But that's something that would vary widely from person to person.
I really, really didn't expect to like FF XIII. I didn't even intend to buy it, and only did because I came across a cheap used copy. But I'm glad I did. There's something to be said for low expectations, but it has continually impressed me at every turn.
I also agree with your estimation of relatability in the context of fantastical worlds. Though I honestly find XIII to be surprisingly effective in this regard. Maybe it's because, despite its extremely verbose nature, both the themes and the overarching motivations of the characters, are relatively unambiguous if you try to boil them down. In some respects, I think it has a lot in common with the more "lyrical" types of science fiction (such as Dune or Hyperion) than it does with traditional fantasy.
Crystalline machine gods use people as pawns in their neverending schemes and, and the people in question are, frankly, fucking sick of it. The thoughts and actions of the characters all revolve around this concept, and though it's hard to picture yourself in a similar situation, I found it to be far less discordant than in, say, something like FFX, where I don't think any of the characters even remotely resemble actual human beings in anything they do. And even though a lot of people seem to hate the dialogue in XIII, I think they do a fairly effective job of communicating character motivations and every person's thoughts on whatever crazy situation they find themselves in.
In any case, I think I can say with some determination that the game's localization is fucking phenomenal. I'm willing to entertain the notion that there might be some cultural barrier in FFX that I'm not getting across (isn't there supposed to be some distinctly Okinawan philosophy behind the game?), but either way I consider XIII a resounding success, both in terms of story and gameplay - which is quite a feat, considering I haven't been able to stomach JRPGs for years.
Cherrn on
All creature will die and all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai.
Yeah, the whole Yu Yevon/Yunalesca thing is pretty horribly executed. The idea itself is not inherently bad, but it's a difficult one to make not corny as hell, and they managed to make it both corny and heavy on the bullshit. It serves a specific function, I thought, as establishing the weird-ass duality of the Yevon Church, it's hypocrisy and yet its absolute importance, and some sort of justification to having every other person be dead and yet not-dead.
Seriously, what the fuck? To draw a comparison, let's look at the same explanatory mechanism used in 7, for the Shinra Corporation, up to the point where the game begins (note, nothing after that point).
Out of the long, and admittedly pointless war between imperial Wutai and the eastern city-states, a desire for collective security and protection drives engineers and designers to a small military arsenal called the Shinra Manufacturing Company. This brain trust develops many advancements in the fields of not just weapons but also rocketry and chemistry. President Shinra draws upon their collective wisdom to develop a reliable way of electrical power generation based on observations of the planet and Wutai's use of materia, and promptly forces an end to the war and the political subjugation of hated Wutai. The Shinra Corporation corners the market on power-generation, and serves as a federal state to the bankrupt local governments, eventually securing political authority through their monopoly on post-war reconstruction and martial law.
And that's probably over-explaining it. They did this with a minimum of married people coming back from the dead (that happens later), or political will held by the fragments of dreams, or the generation of an entire psuedo-world as a mechanicsm in a cold war against the dead. This is purely a personal view, but overall, not only does it make more sense, it leaves out a lot of awkwardness about underwater sports being manifestations of religious glory but at the same time subtle acts of resistance against the clerical hierarchy or naked women who grant wishes and enormous power to traveling pilgrims as their ongoing role as the manifestation of dreams.
It sounds a lot less weird. 6 is, at least in my memories of it, not nearly as weird too. And weird can be good, but in X's case, it is not.
FFVI is really straightforward, almost as straightforward as a fantasy game can be.
You've got this typical Industrial Revolution-era world. A thousand years before present, a race of demigods and humans had a big war that wiped out all civilization. The demigods went off to their own world and sealed the door shut.
However, a ruler of one of the human countries got kind of obsessed with the stories he heard about the power of these demigods, so he started looking for them. Incredibly, he found them, along with a half-human girl, the child of a woman who had somehow wandered into the Esper world. He captures a bunch of the magical beings and discovers you can make powerful technology by somehow extracting their life force and infusing it into machinery or humans, and using this as a weapon, starts trying to conquer other nations.
Yeah, the whole Yu Yevon/Yunalesca thing is pretty horribly executed. The idea itself is not inherently bad, but it's a difficult one to make not corny as hell, and they managed to make it both corny and heavy on the bullshit. It serves a specific function, I thought, as establishing the weird-ass duality of the Yevon Church, it's hypocrisy and yet its absolute importance, and some sort of justification to having every other person be dead and yet not-dead.
Seriously, what the fuck? To draw a comparison, let's look at the same explanatory mechanism used in 7, for the Shinra Corporation, up to the point where the game begins (note, nothing after that point).
Out of the long, and admittedly pointless war between imperial Wutai and the eastern city-states, a desire for collective security and protection drives engineers and designers to a small military arsenal called the Shinra Manufacturing Company. This brain trust develops many advancements in the fields of not just weapons but also rocketry and chemistry. President Shinra draws upon their collective wisdom to develop a reliable way of electrical power generation based on observations of the planet and Wutai's use of materia, and promptly forces an end to the war and the political subjugation of hated Wutai. The Shinra Corporation corners the market on power-generation, and serves as a federal state to the bankrupt local governments, eventually securing political authority through their monopoly on post-war reconstruction and martial law.
And that's probably over-explaining it. They did this with a minimum of married people coming back from the dead (that happens later), or political will held by the fragments of dreams, or the generation of an entire psuedo-world as a mechanicsm in a cold war against the dead. This is purely a personal view, but overall, not only does it make more sense, it leaves out a lot of awkwardness about underwater sports being manifestations of religious glory but at the same time subtle acts of resistance against the clerical hierarchy or naked women who grant wishes and enormous power to traveling pilgrims as their ongoing role as the manifestation of dreams.
It sounds a lot less weird. 6 is, at least in my memories of it, not nearly as weird too. And weird can be good, but in X's case, it is not.
FFVI is really straightforward, almost as straightforward as a fantasy game can be.
You've got this typical Industrial Revolution-era world. A thousand years before present, a race of demigods and humans had a big war that wiped out all civilization. The demigods went off to their own world and sealed the door shut.
However, a ruler of one of the human countries got kind of obsessed with the stories he heard about the power of these demigods, so he started looking for them. Incredibly, he found them, along with a half-human girl, the child of a woman who had somehow wandered into the Esper world. He captures a bunch of the magical beings and discovers you can make powerful technology by somehow extracting their life force and infusing it into machinery or humans, and using this as a weapon, starts trying to conquer other nations.
That's really all there is to it.
That's how I remember it. Throw in some stuff about the army, the King's cabinet, and the cabinet members hating eachother's guts, and you got it.
CC is one of the most soothing RPGs out there. I know it back and front but still pick it up every few years. Probably the best aged Square RPG on the system besides the flawed but beautiful looking Legend of Mana.
And with good reason. The 3D graphics are among the best on the PSX, the music is fucking incredible, and the nature of the combat/leveling is such that you really never have to worry about fighting enough enemies.
I'm pretty sure we're not going to see another Chrono game, but I'd love to see another game with a similar system of combat and leveling, along with a fantastic score by Mitsuda (who hasn't really done anything good since CC)
Vincent Grayson on
0
JeanHeartbroken papa bearGatineau, QuébecRegistered Userregular
edited May 2010
120kCP for an upgrade?
Arg, screw you, post game grind! I'm on my 4th job and even with the growth egg this is taking forever.
Jean on
"You won't destroy us, You won't destroy our democracy. We are a small but proud nation. No one can bomb us to silence. No one can scare us from being Norway. This evening and tonight, we'll take care of each other. That's what we do best when attacked'' - Jens Stoltenberg
Feel obligated to say I've just booked a couple of massive XIV appointments during E3. Will be interesting to see what's shown of that game there. The Alpha plays very much like a higher res FF11, so I'm hoping they're going to announce more that'll differentiate it.
Feel obligated to say I've just booked a couple of massive XIV appointments during E3. Will be interesting to see what's shown of that game there. The Alpha plays very much like a higher res FF11, so I'm hoping they're going to announce more that'll differentiate it.
Feel obligated to say I've just booked a couple of massive XIV appointments during E3. Will be interesting to see what's shown of that game there. The Alpha plays very much like a higher res FF11, so I'm hoping they're going to announce more that'll differentiate it.
Really?
Hi res FF11 doesn't excite me that much.
but think of all the various colored turtles you can kill in full 1080p
Feel obligated to say I've just booked a couple of massive XIV appointments during E3. Will be interesting to see what's shown of that game there. The Alpha plays very much like a higher res FF11, so I'm hoping they're going to announce more that'll differentiate it.
Really?
Hi res FF11 doesn't excite me that much.
but think of all the various colored turtles you can kill in full 1080p
Until the mother-of-all-turtles decides to tear you a new one when you encounter it.
bros, I'm on chapter 9 and worried about when I should start doing the weapon upgrade thing. Ive done a few up to like lvl 5-6 but I dont seem to be getting the materials to do much upgrading at all and don't have a lot of gil to buy them from the shops.
I'm worried I'm going to miss some mob I should be farming for materials or something and be stuck with suck-ass weapons.
bros, I'm on chapter 9 and worried about when I should start doing the weapon upgrade thing. Ive done a few up to like lvl 5-6 but I dont seem to be getting the materials to do much upgrading at all and don't have a lot of gil to buy them from the shops.
I'm worried I'm going to miss some mob I should be farming for materials or something and be stuck with suck-ass weapons.
HOW DO I MAKE WEAPONS GUD?
Wait do do anything until Chapter 12 when you run across your first adamantoise
Anything you miss can be purchased later, but the important thing to remember is that you won't be able to make a decision on what weapon you want to upgrade until you have them all available to you.
It's very easy to get through the first 11 chapters without ever upgrading a weapon, so don't worry about that. If you hold onto all your materials, it will make upgrading once you can get Platinum Ingots and Trapezohedrons later easier, as well as increase the chances that you'll have the catalysts you need to get weapons up to level 2.
Once you're in Chapter 11/12, you'll want to grind Vanille until she has Death.
Things will go a lot easier for you if you obtain a Collector/Connoisseur Catalog and Experience Egg in Chapter 11. The catalogs will increase your odds of getting drops from the turtles and the egg will double all experience received. This means that every turtle killed will net you a minimum of 150,000 Gil and 80,000 CP, as long as you reload if it didn't drop anything.
I just grinded the turtle in front of the factory-like area right before the final dungeon. It's a massive brontosaurus-like thing in an open plaza right past a save point, you can't miss it. Save your TP-restorative items for this point, since you'll need to be able to summon to cripple it. Finally, recharge your TP on the nearby soldiers, since they're easy to get a quick 5-star rating on.
Ok. I could use a little help here for anyone playing FFXIII. I am avoiding gamefaqs if I can...maybe some of you can help.
We are in chapter 13...Bart just opened up the portals so we can go back to Eden and Pulse. We are back on Pulse doing missions. All 3 main roles for each character are maxed out on the crystarium. All of them have at least 1 of the minor roles maxed and a few people have 2 minor roles maxed out. So we are doing pretty well on crystarium. We don't have any of the final, biggest bestest weapons that can be made. We have upgraded a few weapons for Lightning and after that, we haven't done any weapon upgrades (no trapazohedrons or whatever they are called, no lucky drops from any of the tortoises we have killed). We are doing the Titan missions and I can't beat Neochu. That screech....
I have a few questions
1) I have seen some screen grabs where people have 17k hit points. Is there an item that doubles your hit points or something? We are most of the way through the crystariums and we barely have a few people breaking 10k. And I don't see how upgrading diamond bangles to the max will get us that many more HP. Do we need to go further in the game or something?
2) I have also seen where people are talking about having 4 accessorie slots. We only have 3...and there are no more spots on the crystariums. Again...do we need to go further in the game? We feel like we are getting close to the end...
3) That Neochu. Mission 45 I believe. What's the trick here? We tried death on him and it won't stick. We have tried a lot of other things, but we just can't get any damage done to him or stagger him. Once he screeches, we just barely survive (if we do at all). I think it is because we don't have the super high HP like other people have. That would sure make things a lot easier when it came to fighting the neochu. I know to save the TP for dispelga's when he does his pollen attack and we have managed to get through 3 or 4 screech/pollen combos before we get killed. He has never summoned others yet either. We don't get much time to actually damage him though since we are always trying to heal and keep buffs up after he does his pollen and stuff.
We have beat all the other stuff for the titan (that flying zirnatra though...we need to do again so we can try to get better stars off him and we also need to do the other zirnatra missions) except the neochu. I really think we could figure it all out on our own if we knew what we were missing when it comes to the 4th accessory slot and what seems to be the double hit points that I see pics of.
Ok. I could use a little help here for anyone playing FFXIII. I am avoiding gamefaqs if I can...maybe some of you can help.
We are in chapter 13...Bart just opened up the portals so we can go back to Eden and Pulse. We are back on Pulse doing missions. All 3 main roles for each character are maxed out on the crystarium. All of them have at least 1 of the minor roles maxed and a few people have 2 minor roles maxed out. So we are doing pretty well on crystarium. We don't have any of the final, biggest bestest weapons that can be made. We have upgraded a few weapons for Lightning and after that, we haven't done any weapon upgrades (no trapazohedrons or whatever they are called, no lucky drops from any of the tortoises we have killed). We are doing the Titan missions and I can't beat Neochu. That screech....
I have a few questions
1) I have seen some screen grabs where people have 17k hit points. Is there an item that doubles your hit points or something? We are most of the way through the crystariums and we barely have a few people breaking 10k. And I don't see how upgrading diamond bangles to the max will get us that many more HP. Do we need to go further in the game or something?
2) I have also seen where people are talking about having 4 accessorie slots. We only have 3...and there are no more spots on the crystariums. Again...do we need to go further in the game? We feel like we are getting close to the end...
3) That Neochu. Mission 45 I believe. What's the trick here? We tried death on him and it won't stick. We have tried a lot of other things, but we just can't get any damage done to him or stagger him. Once he screeches, we just barely survive (if we do at all). I think it is because we don't have the super high HP like other people have. That would sure make things a lot easier when it came to fighting the neochu. I know to save the TP for dispelga's when he does his pollen attack and we have managed to get through 3 or 4 screech/pollen combos before we get killed. He has never summoned others yet either. We don't get much time to actually damage him though since we are always trying to heal and keep buffs up after he does his pollen and stuff.
We have beat all the other stuff for the titan (that flying zirnatra though...we need to do again so we can try to get better stars off him and we also need to do the other zirnatra missions) except the neochu. I really think we could figure it all out on our own if we knew what we were missing when it comes to the 4th accessory slot and what seems to be the double hit points that I see pics of.
After you beat the game, a 10 level of the crystariums opens up and that is where you can have 4 accessory slots.
As for HP, again, there is a 10th level, and also, some chars have a low maximum hp and Lightning has the second lowest (above Hope). For any of my chars, I never wore a hp bangle. I never needed it. If you have a 3 med paradigm, that will work just fine.
For Neochu, you just gotta set up a sab/med/sen paradigm so that the sen can soak up the damage while the med heals and you just gotta keep trying death over and over. It took me about 20 mins of reloading the fight before it stuck. After that, if you kill him and those little shits are still up, use your summon to revive any dead chars, and just use a com/med/sen and just slowly kill the little buggers and that's it.
Edit: Death is not counted as a debuff spell, so the belladonna wand will do nothing. Using that wand just makes it easier to stick the other debuffs on guys so that death will have a higher chance of working.
Wait...so the game forces you to beat it in order to unlock the final stuff? Serious??
That's fucked up...I can understand unlocking new areas or challenges...but forcing you to beat it so you can max your chars out??? ggrrrrrr......
We are plenty strong enough to beat the end guy I imagine...looks like we need to finish the game before we finish our fun leveling up and completion stuff. We have always done anything and everything as much as we can before we actually beat the game...even if that meant that the final boss was a pushover...that's just how we have always done it in the past.
And really...death is the only thing to do? No way...I know you can beat the neochu without death...and we sat and deathed that thing for a good 30 minutes last night with no luck. Which is why we got frustrated with it and went to bed....
So we need to go beat the game....blah. Lame. We'll do that and hope we have the desire to go back and do this stuff.
Wait...so the game forces you to beat it in order to unlock the final stuff? Serious??
That's fucked up...I can understand unlocking new areas or challenges...but forcing you to beat it so you can max your chars out??? ggrrrrrr......
We are plenty strong enough to beat the end guy I imagine...looks like we need to finish the game before we finish our fun leveling up and completion stuff. We have always done anything and everything as much as we can before we actually beat the game...even if that meant that the final boss was a pushover...that's just how we have always done it in the past.
And really...death is the only thing to do? No way...I know you can beat the neochu without death...and we sat and deathed that thing for a good 30 minutes last night with no luck. Which is why we got frustrated with it and went to bed....
So we need to go beat the game....blah. Lame. We'll do that and hope we have the desire to go back and do this stuff.
I will say this, you will have a very hard time beating all the missions without beating the game. That 4th accessory slot helps a ton for surviving those later fights. As well as maxing the stats. I'm sure it could be done, but you would save alot of time just beating the game to open up the 10th level. Doing the endgame grind is already long enough (97 hours for me to 100% the game).
Wait...so the game forces you to beat it in order to unlock the final stuff? Serious??
That's fucked up...I can understand unlocking new areas or challenges...but forcing you to beat it so you can max your chars out??? ggrrrrrr......
We are plenty strong enough to beat the end guy I imagine...looks like we need to finish the game before we finish our fun leveling up and completion stuff. We have always done anything and everything as much as we can before we actually beat the game...even if that meant that the final boss was a pushover...that's just how we have always done it in the past.
And really...death is the only thing to do? No way...I know you can beat the neochu without death...and we sat and deathed that thing for a good 30 minutes last night with no luck. Which is why we got frustrated with it and went to bed....
So we need to go beat the game....blah. Lame. We'll do that and hope we have the desire to go back and do this stuff.
I will say this, you will have a very hard time beating all the missions without beating the game. That 4th accessory slot helps a ton for surviving those later fights. As well as maxing the stats. I'm sure it could be done, but you would save alot of time just beating the game to open up the 10th level. Doing the endgame grind is already long enough (97 hours for me to 100% the game).
and the only point to the endgame grind anyway is to get the final trophy
there is zero joy to the turtle hunt after the thrill of bumping off your first one
Posts
I'm on the fence for this. Because while I definitely agree that FFX had a nice, organized processions (with a healthy smackering of incredibly godawful fucking minigames that are among the worse of any FF title awkwardly bolted on), it was a steady train of total bullshit to a vague hint of actual non-shit storytelling back to total bullshit.
The racial hatred between the Guado and the Al'bhed? Sure, okay, that seems fair enough. Around that we get some bullshit information of underwater soccer as a manifestation of religious faith by being a political demonstration against technology, and what to do with our ongoing Cold War against the memories of the dead. Awesome.
Maybe I was incorrect, but I got the sense that, while incredibly stupid, this stuff was important. Mostly because they'd use the word "Fayth" in every other sentence at some point. "Oh, so that giant returning harbinger of doom is the manifestation of some fake person's fake father and his resentment and love of his son and his own compatriots, and he's weak to singing? Okay, no problem, Fayth!" If you rip out all that stuff, I guess the amount of bullshit decreases and it just becomes "The woman I love is going to die, how can I prevent that?" But I operate under the impression that, as you experience a game, your understanding of the plot grows in depth, and into further details. Not the reverse. FFX might be a game for amnesiacs or people with the long-term memory of gold-fish.
The concept of Sin, by itself, is fine--though I don't think it's that hot, I don't like the weird tropical vacation resort with the major risk of death that is Spira on the whole--but I would argue that its ruined as you find out more and more about it. I would have preferred it be left a mystery--if not, sure, that's fine. Explain it, but please don't do it with some shitty "oh, god, it's your father, and the sins of the father blah blah blah" with a dash of attempted parallels. "Oh no! He's doing exactly what I did! What ever shall I do?"
There's something to be said about mystery. But if that isn't acceptable, don't ruin it with tired "It's dad, and he's pissed" angle.
Rest assured my problems with the game go far, FAR beyond just that scene, and I didn't mean to harp on it (even if I kinda did).
I really like this post.
Also, I didn't mean to imply that I didn't "get it". I do. I just really vehemently disagree that it is, in any way, well-executed. You put it better, though.
And yeah, I'm right there with you on FFXIII's creative use of apostrophes. They should've just stuck with "gods", honestly. But it's part of the overly baroque nature of Final Fantasy, and I don't think it actively detracts from the game.
It was like watching a [strike]bad[/strike] sitcom and seeing the trainwreck situation develop in front of you that you foresaw five minutes ago and are now earnestly trying to ignore by reading a book/going to the bathroom/plugging your ears because it's so painful to watch.
But it's part of the setting. Flying cities, holo-domes, etc. It's like Spira with indoor plumbing and a city ordnance board. And an army. The datalogs help a lot. If Square-Enix is going to reinvent the social world and hierarchy each time, they might as well include the datalog.
But I belong to that group of people who, strangely enough, enjoys the less fantastical games, probably why 6 and 7 are my favorite games. Fantasy doesn't have to be automatically unrelatable, there's still plenty of fantasy in those two. At a point, it can seem a little overwhelming like. "Wow, I cannot fucking imagine what this is like....darn."
But that's something that would vary widely from person to person.
Like I say, there was a lot of unnecessary clutter. A lot of it. I think they could have done a whole lot better if they left unexplained things like where Sin came from, or Yu Yevon, or all that other stuff. It just wasn't necessary and I think a fantasy setting like the FF games does a lot better if some things are left vague.
But, IMO, the game was really about Yuna and whether or not she was going to let herself die to fit into the role society laid out for her from birth. Heavy-handed? Definitely. But not completely terrible.
Compare that to Chrono Cross. While I never even beat FFX the first time, I probably have played through CC ten times - explored every nook and cranny, got every character and their special Elements, seen just about every scenario. But I really couldn't tell you what the hell the game was about. I think it had something to do with taking care of the planet. But it really doesn't make any sense when you try to break it down.
Then there was the whole FATE/Lucca/Robo/Chronopolis thing, Harle and Kid being somehow related, Kid being in Lucca's orphanage, and I can't even remember what all else.
Considering that CC was one of the better RPGs released in the years leading up to FFX, I think FFX could have been a lot worse than it ended up being. At least it had a simple conflict at the root of all its overcomplicated mess.
Seriously, what the fuck? To draw a comparison, let's look at the same explanatory mechanism used in 7, for the Shinra Corporation, up to the point where the game begins (note, nothing after that point).
And that's probably over-explaining it. They did this with a minimum of married people coming back from the dead (that happens later), or political will held by the fragments of dreams, or the generation of an entire psuedo-world as a mechanicsm in a cold war against the dead. This is purely a personal view, but overall, not only does it make more sense, it leaves out a lot of awkwardness about underwater sports being manifestations of religious glory but at the same time subtle acts of resistance against the clerical hierarchy or naked women who grant wishes and enormous power to traveling pilgrims as their ongoing role as the manifestation of dreams.
It sounds a lot less weird. 6 is, at least in my memories of it, not nearly as weird too. And weird can be good, but in X's case, it is not.
EDIT: Compared to other FFs, 6 is pretty straightforward. It's more complex than the previous ones but it keeps things pretty simple. It's probably why it's still loved today.
I really, really didn't expect to like FF XIII. I didn't even intend to buy it, and only did because I came across a cheap used copy. But I'm glad I did. There's something to be said for low expectations, but it has continually impressed me at every turn.
I also agree with your estimation of relatability in the context of fantastical worlds. Though I honestly find XIII to be surprisingly effective in this regard. Maybe it's because, despite its extremely verbose nature, both the themes and the overarching motivations of the characters, are relatively unambiguous if you try to boil them down. In some respects, I think it has a lot in common with the more "lyrical" types of science fiction (such as Dune or Hyperion) than it does with traditional fantasy.
Crystalline machine gods use people as pawns in their neverending schemes and, and the people in question are, frankly, fucking sick of it. The thoughts and actions of the characters all revolve around this concept, and though it's hard to picture yourself in a similar situation, I found it to be far less discordant than in, say, something like FFX, where I don't think any of the characters even remotely resemble actual human beings in anything they do. And even though a lot of people seem to hate the dialogue in XIII, I think they do a fairly effective job of communicating character motivations and every person's thoughts on whatever crazy situation they find themselves in.
In any case, I think I can say with some determination that the game's localization is fucking phenomenal. I'm willing to entertain the notion that there might be some cultural barrier in FFX that I'm not getting across (isn't there supposed to be some distinctly Okinawan philosophy behind the game?), but either way I consider XIII a resounding success, both in terms of story and gameplay - which is quite a feat, considering I haven't been able to stomach JRPGs for years.
However, a ruler of one of the human countries got kind of obsessed with the stories he heard about the power of these demigods, so he started looking for them. Incredibly, he found them, along with a half-human girl, the child of a woman who had somehow wandered into the Esper world. He captures a bunch of the magical beings and discovers you can make powerful technology by somehow extracting their life force and infusing it into machinery or humans, and using this as a weapon, starts trying to conquer other nations.
That's really all there is to it.
That's how I remember it. Throw in some stuff about the army, the King's cabinet, and the cabinet members hating eachother's guts, and you got it.
The only thing I didn't mention was the statues of the goddesses, but all in all it's a very self-explanatory game.
I can't remember. It's been a while since I did a full playthrough.
And with good reason. The 3D graphics are among the best on the PSX, the music is fucking incredible, and the nature of the combat/leveling is such that you really never have to worry about fighting enough enemies.
I'm pretty sure we're not going to see another Chrono game, but I'd love to see another game with a similar system of combat and leveling, along with a fantastic score by Mitsuda (who hasn't really done anything good since CC)
Arg, screw you, post game grind! I'm on my 4th job and even with the growth egg this is taking forever.
XBL/PSN/Steam: APZonerunner
Really?
Hi res FF11 doesn't excite me that much.
but think of all the various colored turtles you can kill in full 1080p
Until the mother-of-all-turtles decides to tear you a new one when you encounter it.
I'm worried I'm going to miss some mob I should be farming for materials or something and be stuck with suck-ass weapons.
HOW DO I MAKE WEAPONS GUD?
Wait do do anything until Chapter 12 when you run across your first adamantoise
I just hate games that if you miss something you're screwed. I'm not using a game guide or anything.
It's very easy to get through the first 11 chapters without ever upgrading a weapon, so don't worry about that. If you hold onto all your materials, it will make upgrading once you can get Platinum Ingots and Trapezohedrons later easier, as well as increase the chances that you'll have the catalysts you need to get weapons up to level 2.
Once you're in Chapter 11/12, you'll want to grind Vanille until she has Death.
Things will go a lot easier for you if you obtain a Collector/Connoisseur Catalog and Experience Egg in Chapter 11. The catalogs will increase your odds of getting drops from the turtles and the egg will double all experience received. This means that every turtle killed will net you a minimum of 150,000 Gil and 80,000 CP, as long as you reload if it didn't drop anything.
I just grinded the turtle in front of the factory-like area right before the final dungeon. It's a massive brontosaurus-like thing in an open plaza right past a save point, you can't miss it. Save your TP-restorative items for this point, since you'll need to be able to summon to cripple it. Finally, recharge your TP on the nearby soldiers, since they're easy to get a quick 5-star rating on.
Hope that's not too much info for you.
The plot of X didn't really seem complicated until the whole thing was done, then it was a little confusing.
We are in chapter 13...Bart just opened up the portals so we can go back to Eden and Pulse. We are back on Pulse doing missions. All 3 main roles for each character are maxed out on the crystarium. All of them have at least 1 of the minor roles maxed and a few people have 2 minor roles maxed out. So we are doing pretty well on crystarium. We don't have any of the final, biggest bestest weapons that can be made. We have upgraded a few weapons for Lightning and after that, we haven't done any weapon upgrades (no trapazohedrons or whatever they are called, no lucky drops from any of the tortoises we have killed). We are doing the Titan missions and I can't beat Neochu. That screech....
I have a few questions
1) I have seen some screen grabs where people have 17k hit points. Is there an item that doubles your hit points or something? We are most of the way through the crystariums and we barely have a few people breaking 10k. And I don't see how upgrading diamond bangles to the max will get us that many more HP. Do we need to go further in the game or something?
2) I have also seen where people are talking about having 4 accessorie slots. We only have 3...and there are no more spots on the crystariums. Again...do we need to go further in the game? We feel like we are getting close to the end...
3) That Neochu. Mission 45 I believe. What's the trick here? We tried death on him and it won't stick. We have tried a lot of other things, but we just can't get any damage done to him or stagger him. Once he screeches, we just barely survive (if we do at all). I think it is because we don't have the super high HP like other people have. That would sure make things a lot easier when it came to fighting the neochu. I know to save the TP for dispelga's when he does his pollen attack and we have managed to get through 3 or 4 screech/pollen combos before we get killed. He has never summoned others yet either. We don't get much time to actually damage him though since we are always trying to heal and keep buffs up after he does his pollen and stuff.
We have beat all the other stuff for the titan (that flying zirnatra though...we need to do again so we can try to get better stars off him and we also need to do the other zirnatra missions) except the neochu. I really think we could figure it all out on our own if we knew what we were missing when it comes to the 4th accessory slot and what seems to be the double hit points that I see pics of.
After you beat the game, a 10 level of the crystariums opens up and that is where you can have 4 accessory slots.
As for HP, again, there is a 10th level, and also, some chars have a low maximum hp and Lightning has the second lowest (above Hope). For any of my chars, I never wore a hp bangle. I never needed it. If you have a 3 med paradigm, that will work just fine.
For Neochu, you just gotta set up a sab/med/sen paradigm so that the sen can soak up the damage while the med heals and you just gotta keep trying death over and over. It took me about 20 mins of reloading the fight before it stuck. After that, if you kill him and those little shits are still up, use your summon to revive any dead chars, and just use a com/med/sen and just slowly kill the little buggers and that's it.
Edit: Death is not counted as a debuff spell, so the belladonna wand will do nothing. Using that wand just makes it easier to stick the other debuffs on guys so that death will have a higher chance of working.
Xbox Live: Kunohara
That's fucked up...I can understand unlocking new areas or challenges...but forcing you to beat it so you can max your chars out??? ggrrrrrr......
We are plenty strong enough to beat the end guy I imagine...looks like we need to finish the game before we finish our fun leveling up and completion stuff. We have always done anything and everything as much as we can before we actually beat the game...even if that meant that the final boss was a pushover...that's just how we have always done it in the past.
And really...death is the only thing to do? No way...I know you can beat the neochu without death...and we sat and deathed that thing for a good 30 minutes last night with no luck. Which is why we got frustrated with it and went to bed....
So we need to go beat the game....blah. Lame. We'll do that and hope we have the desire to go back and do this stuff.
Death is the fastest and easiest way.
I will say this, you will have a very hard time beating all the missions without beating the game. That 4th accessory slot helps a ton for surviving those later fights. As well as maxing the stats. I'm sure it could be done, but you would save alot of time just beating the game to open up the 10th level. Doing the endgame grind is already long enough (97 hours for me to 100% the game).
Xbox Live: Kunohara
and the only point to the endgame grind anyway is to get the final trophy
there is zero joy to the turtle hunt after the thrill of bumping off your first one