You don't actually start out with three for each character. When they are first introduced, I believe Lightning has 2, Snow has 3, Vanille has 2, Sahz has 1, and Hope has 1. Not long after, they throw on some SYN/SAB roles to a few characters, though, so you can see my confusion about what defines a "main". Is it only the ones they started with, or does it include the ones I just got?
Each character has three main roles and three secondary roles. The three main roles are the three each character is first introduced to, so yes, those newly unlocked SYN/SAB roles are main roles.
I believe you don't unlock secondary roles until Chapter 10, so it'll be pretty clear by then what their three main roles are. Like others have said though, the secondary roles give you really crappy bonuses for high amounts of CP so for the main game, I would just focus on primary roles.
Basically don't put any points into trees other than these until they're maxed, then don't bother putting any points into any of the others apart from to get Com, Rav and Sen to Rank 1 :P
I'm thinking that they should have one DLC battle that just shows up as "???". You go into the pre-battle cutscene wondering who you're going to face...
...and then One Winged Angel starts playing and you think back to the exact same situation in the first Kingdom Hearts game.
Yep, you're screwed.
Only trouble with that is how overpowered Heartless Angel would be, since in all likelyhood it wouldn't be blockable by SEN/SEN/SEN. I guess with some warning they could make it so you're able to switch to any paradigm with enough MED to survive the aftermath.
Except every gaming site and forum poster would ruin the surprise in big, bolded letters that is stickied to the top. With a neon glow border.
It's very hard to keep secrets in videogames a secret in this day and age.
Anyway, there's a rumor that the next FF crossover is going to be a SRPG for the Vita. Grains of salt here, but I have been expressing how much I would like the next Dissidia-style game to be an RPG, so this would fit perfectly.
I just hope they don't stick with that Thetrhythm style. Having several tiles of those ._. faces would be nightmare inducing.
I'm going to start a world exclusive I Hate [Final Fantasy] (Insert Number) thread rumor about the series that is exactly as credible.
The next FF game is going to be...An AR dating sim on the 3DS, with the big selling feature being online Triple Triad.
Question regarding the post-ending. Not looking for specific spoilers.
Can I skip the credits? Or do I need to sit through them to the end for another scene? I'm talking specifically about the base ending, although I guess the question applies to the 160 shards ending as well. Please no spoilers tho. Just looking to find out if I can skip 10 minutes of japanese names.
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
Question regarding the post-ending. Not looking for specific spoilers.
Can I skip the credits? Or do I need to sit through them to the end for another scene? I'm talking specifically about the base ending, although I guess the question applies to the 160 shards ending as well. Please no spoilers tho. Just looking to find out if I can skip 10 minutes of japanese names.
So far, I'm in chapter 4 or 5, and I'm liking the story. All of the characters are believable enough (Hope whines a bit much, but he's getting better), and Vanille's accent is atrocious, but otherwise, I'm enjoying it.
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
You seen much of Sazh yet? I think he's got the most interesting story in FFXIII, and I remember thinking he was criminally underused compared to Hope.
Also Vanille gets a whole lot better later on in the game, story wise. I think her accent even improves!
FFXIII-2 SPOILERS;
Man. That ending was quite something. Noel has some terrible timing on his reassurances though - "I'm sure Lightning's fine, death doesn't exist in Valhalla" followed by a close up of Caius' dead body.
You seen much of Sazh yet? I think he's got the most interesting story in FFXIII, and I remember thinking he was criminally underused compared to Hope.
Ironic, since Sazh has the most lines in the game.
Sadly, 90% of them are ridiculously unfunny "jokes" and him going "I'm too old for all this crazy shit you crazy kids are crazily doing because you're crazy."
Ironic, since Sazh has the most lines in the game.
Sadly, 90% of them are ridiculously unfunny "jokes" and him going "I'm too old for all this crazy shit you crazy kids are crazily doing because you're crazy."
He's the only one I cared at all about! :P
Possibly dead son makes for more justifiable drama than "you didn't risk your life trying to save my mom hard enough"
And that scene after he got his Eidolon was pretty shocking.
Plus him being older than everyone else makes him seem less angsty. He's got a good reason to be mopey, but keeps on telling stupid jokes instead.
Ironic, since Sazh has the most lines in the game.
Sadly, 90% of them are ridiculously unfunny "jokes" and him going "I'm too old for all this crazy shit you crazy kids are crazily doing because you're crazy."
He's the only one I cared at all about! :P
Possibly dead son makes for more justifiable drama than "you didn't risk your life trying to save my mom hard enough"
And that scene after he got his Eidolon was pretty shocking.
Plus him being older than everyone else makes him seem less angsty. He's got a good reason to be mopey, but keeps on telling stupid jokes instead.
That bit was pretty great thematically, but they fucked the entire thing right up.
My son just turned to crystal, and I'm about to kill the person who did it to him.
Woo! I'm driving a hot rod! This is awesome!
Oh wait, back to super serious moment. That's it, I'm going to kill myself.
*bang*
Me: Oh please, I know full well you're not going to actually go through with it.
One chapter later... yup, he's alive and didn't do it.
The whole thing was just completely mishandled and robbed of any serious emotion they were trying to go for.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
Sazh wasn't my least favorite character, but he was definitely the character I cared the least about, if that makes any sense. And I had the same reaction to that spoiler as Wolfman.
Yeah, I also thought that part wasn't handled well.
It seems like the better route would have been to have him put the gun to his head, start to pull the trigger, and then have his brand freak out and have Brynhilder come. The eidolons are supposed to appear at a l'cie's "weakest moment," right? Clearly he is at his weakest when he has the gun to his head, but that happens after you fight the eidolon.
That, and like you said WOOO HOT RODDING just seemed especially silly given everything that's happening in that moment.
Haha, it's so much fun to go back and watch the FFXIII trailers knowing what the game is like now. So much misdirection!
When the game first started getting in gamer's hands in Japan, 2ch basically went "Holy shit this is BAD." I tried to warn everyone over here about the gamer reviews coming out. Got told off for my troubles, if I recall correctly, heh.
But hey, the reviews for it were coming up aces, so obviously it was just a bunch of pissed off 2channers, right?
Yeah, now that I've finally played it, I'm surprised the game reviewers didn't bash it a little more. Reading those quick blurbs on metacritic makes it sound like a lot of them appreciated the streamlined nature of the game. Obviously those are not regular RPG players.
the biggest surprise to me about the 13 reactions was that apparently lots of people liked wandering around towns full of developmentally damaged NPCs
which isn't to say that 13 does a great job of worldbuilding necessarily, but most of the elements it removed were never anything but semi-mindless padding
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
After playing Lost Odyssey, with all its towns' sidequests, I was kind of sad about FF13's lack of them because a town usually meant there would be a breather in the pacing of the story. You get to just sit back and talk to said developmentally damaged NPCs, do vendoring, pick up a quest, and have a brief emotional respite from the world falling apart/villain ruining peoples' lives. In this sense, I guess the decision to make FFXIII like it is worked the way it was supposed to, by constantly keeping me seated in the plot, not letting any of the emotional punch of story beats (which feed back into appreciation of the story) fade away, and not coming out of a town and being like "Wait, I forgot there's a lot of shit going on in this story. What's going on again?" and potentially not finishing it.
That said, I'm enjoying FFXIII-2's towns. Many NPC's are pretty one dimensional, but at least they each have like 4 different lines that will inform you of their individual motivations, current events, tension, or whatever. The fragment NPC's are believable and make the quests fun. These description are all relative to standard JRPG NPC's though.
Not having any towns made the game feel very empty to me. The brief time at Nautilus with Vanille and Sazh was kind of neat in that it broke up the pacing, but that was over quick.
Also, having an overworld and towns gives somewhat of an illusion of choice even if there is no real choice in the grand scheme of things, i.e. I know I'm supposed to go to this cave to the east, but there's all this land to the west...let's go see what's over there! There's some mystery there. It's also nice to come to a new town and get a little excited to see what kind of new weapons and armor they have, instead of getting a message after a boss fight that says, "New items in stock at XXXXX!" or "New store available!" a la FF13.
However, that said I really would not have minded at all that FF13 was so streamlined if the story, characters, and gameplay pacing were better. I thought FF10 felt pretty streamlined as well, but it didn't bother me in that game.
My three biggest complaints with 13 actually have nothing to do with the fact there are no towns:
-You only play with two characters in your party for almost half the game when it is 10x more fun to have a full party of three.
-You don't really get to appreciate the battle system until 3/4 of the way through because of how slow they introduce things to you.
-Half of the game is you just running away from the authorities with no real purpose or goal in sight. The story just kind of stops and you're just running, running, running...yeah, there's some character development going on during this part but it's not nearly interesting enough to make up for it. When I got to the part where you board the airship to save Vanille and Sazh, I was SO much more pumped up because now there was an actual purpose and goal. Unfortunately after that, it's more running around without much direction. There's some vague ideas being thrown around about saving Cocoon but there's no real plan.
That last point is my biggest complaint. The game party just runs around with little to no direction. Who knows, maybe this is analogous to the what the development team went through while making the game.
I still enjoyed FF13 despite what I've said, but now that I'm playing through FF9 a lot of this stuff becomes much more apparent.
Oh god, the sequel hook is right there in our faces and we missed it.
From FF13-1:
X. The Menace Beyond
Obtain: Clear Mission 56: A Toothy Grin
They say the fal'Cie made the Arks in preparation for battle against the menace that lurks beyond. Where is this "beyond" of which they speak? Do they mean Cocoon, and the demons that dwells within? If so, they are mistaken. The legends of the Arks date far before that sphere was even crafted; whispers even hint at Arks displaced around the time of Cocoon's creation, spirited away to be hidden in its shell.
What, then, is the "menace"? What distant threat confronts us, and to what purpose? The gods vanished from this place. Are they now residents of the "beyond"?
-- On the Nature of Fal'Cie
From FF13-2:
Mirror of Atropos - The Book of Haerii
The is the prophecy as told by Atropos,
messenger of the heavens.
The Thirteenth Ark is the fortress that
protects the heavenly vault. When the heroes
gather unto mighty Pulse to do battle in the
war that must be fought, this shall be the
stronghold. Know now and remember that
the Ark shall by the salvation of all Pulse's
children.
The 13th Ark shows up and is completely ignored outside of a plot hook to set up the Neo-Cocoon project? Yeah, right.
Yeah, now that I've finally played it, I'm surprised the game reviewers didn't bash it a little more. Reading those quick blurbs on metacritic makes it sound like a lot of them appreciated the streamlined nature of the game. Obviously those are not regular RPG players.
Square Enix pays a LOT of money in advertising. It's not surprising it got rave reviews.
Yeah, now that I've finally played it, I'm surprised the game reviewers didn't bash it a little more. Reading those quick blurbs on metacritic makes it sound like a lot of them appreciated the streamlined nature of the game. Obviously those are not regular RPG players.
Square Enix pays a LOT of money in advertising. It's not surprising it got rave reviews.
-Half of the game is you just running away from the authorities with no real purpose or goal in sight. The story just kind of stops and you're just running, running, running...yeah, there's some character development going on during this part but it's not nearly interesting enough to make up for it. When I got to the part where you board the airship to save Vanille and Sazh, I was SO much more pumped up because now there was an actual purpose and goal. Unfortunately after that, it's more running around without much direction. There's some vague ideas being thrown around about saving Cocoon but there's no real plan.
That last point is my biggest complaint. The game party just runs around with little to no direction. Who knows, maybe this is analogous to the what the development team went through while making the game.
I don't give a hoot about towns or NPCs, but I wholeheartedly agree. I actually have a similar complaint about FFXIII-2. These Cocoon folk aren't very goal-oriented. There's some vague idea about saving the future and saving Lightning, but for the most part, they're also just running around without a plan.
That being said, I still enjoyed FFXIII's linearity and I don't think all the sidequests and towns make FFXIII-2 more enjoyable for me. It all seemed very fetch questy to me.
What do you say we take a relaxed attitude towards work and watch the baseball game? The nye Mets are my favorite squadron.
the biggest surprise to me about the 13 reactions was that apparently lots of people liked wandering around towns full of developmentally damaged NPCs
which isn't to say that 13 does a great job of worldbuilding necessarily, but most of the elements it removed were never anything but semi-mindless padding
You and me, hating pointless town excursions together!
the biggest surprise to me about the 13 reactions was that apparently lots of people liked wandering around towns full of developmentally damaged NPCs
which isn't to say that 13 does a great job of worldbuilding necessarily, but most of the elements it removed were never anything but semi-mindless padding
You and me, hating pointless town excursions together!
Lack of towns wasn't really a big deal as it was made out, it was more of a symptom of a larger problem, but that's the part that stood out on the surface for a lot of people. It's an easy dot point problem that's really the tip of the iceberg of larger world building, storytelling and art direction issues. FF13's setting felt hollow, very gamey rather than creating a world you could lose yourself in.
It's not that towns are all that important or useful for gameplay purposes so much as they can do a good job of helping ground a setting or giving it a sense of place. Making it seem like a real environment that people live in and has an internal logic to it. Plus they can be good beats for pacing, or hubs for stories.
If the world and it's inhabitants were shown better in the game (instead of explained in a datalog), if the pacing was better, if the environment design was smarter then the town thing probably wouldn't have even been noticed.
Example of a game (and series) that perfects rpg towns? Trails in the Sky.
Houses and living quarters (above shops) for everyone fully furnished. Restaurants, general stores, and the like. Believable economies and modes of transportation (which aren't instant). NPCs that talk about current events both local and elsewhere in the world, with complete dialog changes after every event. In-world readable newspapers.
Posts
Each character has three main roles and three secondary roles. The three main roles are the three each character is first introduced to, so yes, those newly unlocked SYN/SAB roles are main roles.
I believe you don't unlock secondary roles until Chapter 10, so it'll be pretty clear by then what their three main roles are. Like others have said though, the secondary roles give you really crappy bonuses for high amounts of CP so for the main game, I would just focus on primary roles.
Hope: Rav/Syn/Med
Vanille: Rav/Sab/Med
Sazh: Com/Rav/Syn
Light: Com/Rav/Med
Snow: Com/Rav/Sen
Basically don't put any points into trees other than these until they're maxed, then don't bother putting any points into any of the others apart from to get Com, Rav and Sen to Rank 1 :P
That's funny. I would way prefer an srpg with that style over dissidia.
PS2
FF X replay
PS3
God of War 1&2 HD
Rachet and Clank Future
MGS 4
Prince of Persia
360
Bayonetta
Fable 3
DS
FF: 4 heroes of light
I'm going to start a world exclusive I Hate [Final Fantasy] (Insert Number) thread rumor about the series that is exactly as credible.
The next FF game is going to be...An AR dating sim on the 3DS, with the big selling feature being online Triple Triad.
Can I skip the credits? Or do I need to sit through them to the end for another scene? I'm talking specifically about the base ending, although I guess the question applies to the 160 shards ending as well. Please no spoilers tho. Just looking to find out if I can skip 10 minutes of japanese names.
You can skip the credits.
I bought them from some liquidation store. They are wood and were $8 each.
Had a friend paint them.
So far, I'm in chapter 4 or 5, and I'm liking the story. All of the characters are believable enough (Hope whines a bit much, but he's getting better), and Vanille's accent is atrocious, but otherwise, I'm enjoying it.
Also Vanille gets a whole lot better later on in the game, story wise. I think her accent even improves!
FFXIII-2 SPOILERS;
Sadly, 90% of them are ridiculously unfunny "jokes" and him going "I'm too old for all this crazy shit you crazy kids are crazily doing because you're crazy."
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
PSN: BrightWing13 FFX|V:ARR Bright Asuna
It is covered pretty extensively in the last few pages.
He's the only one I cared at all about! :P
And that scene after he got his Eidolon was pretty shocking.
Plus him being older than everyone else makes him seem less angsty. He's got a good reason to be mopey, but keeps on telling stupid jokes instead.
That bit was pretty great thematically, but they fucked the entire thing right up.
Woo! I'm driving a hot rod! This is awesome!
Oh wait, back to super serious moment. That's it, I'm going to kill myself.
*bang*
Me: Oh please, I know full well you're not going to actually go through with it.
One chapter later... yup, he's alive and didn't do it.
The whole thing was just completely mishandled and robbed of any serious emotion they were trying to go for.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
That, and like you said WOOO HOT RODDING just seemed especially silly given everything that's happening in that moment.
When the game first started getting in gamer's hands in Japan, 2ch basically went "Holy shit this is BAD." I tried to warn everyone over here about the gamer reviews coming out. Got told off for my troubles, if I recall correctly, heh.
But hey, the reviews for it were coming up aces, so obviously it was just a bunch of pissed off 2channers, right?
which isn't to say that 13 does a great job of worldbuilding necessarily, but most of the elements it removed were never anything but semi-mindless padding
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
That said, I'm enjoying FFXIII-2's towns. Many NPC's are pretty one dimensional, but at least they each have like 4 different lines that will inform you of their individual motivations, current events, tension, or whatever. The fragment NPC's are believable and make the quests fun. These description are all relative to standard JRPG NPC's though.
Boobees!
Also, having an overworld and towns gives somewhat of an illusion of choice even if there is no real choice in the grand scheme of things, i.e. I know I'm supposed to go to this cave to the east, but there's all this land to the west...let's go see what's over there! There's some mystery there. It's also nice to come to a new town and get a little excited to see what kind of new weapons and armor they have, instead of getting a message after a boss fight that says, "New items in stock at XXXXX!" or "New store available!" a la FF13.
However, that said I really would not have minded at all that FF13 was so streamlined if the story, characters, and gameplay pacing were better. I thought FF10 felt pretty streamlined as well, but it didn't bother me in that game.
My three biggest complaints with 13 actually have nothing to do with the fact there are no towns:
-You only play with two characters in your party for almost half the game when it is 10x more fun to have a full party of three.
-You don't really get to appreciate the battle system until 3/4 of the way through because of how slow they introduce things to you.
-Half of the game is you just running away from the authorities with no real purpose or goal in sight. The story just kind of stops and you're just running, running, running...yeah, there's some character development going on during this part but it's not nearly interesting enough to make up for it. When I got to the part where you board the airship to save Vanille and Sazh, I was SO much more pumped up because now there was an actual purpose and goal. Unfortunately after that, it's more running around without much direction. There's some vague ideas being thrown around about saving Cocoon but there's no real plan.
That last point is my biggest complaint. The game party just runs around with little to no direction. Who knows, maybe this is analogous to the what the development team went through while making the game.
I still enjoyed FF13 despite what I've said, but now that I'm playing through FF9 a lot of this stuff becomes much more apparent.
X. The Menace Beyond
Obtain: Clear Mission 56: A Toothy Grin
They say the fal'Cie made the Arks in preparation for battle against the menace that lurks beyond. Where is this "beyond" of which they speak? Do they mean Cocoon, and the demons that dwells within? If so, they are mistaken. The legends of the Arks date far before that sphere was even crafted; whispers even hint at Arks displaced around the time of Cocoon's creation, spirited away to be hidden in its shell.
What, then, is the "menace"? What distant threat confronts us, and to what purpose? The gods vanished from this place. Are they now residents of the "beyond"?
-- On the Nature of Fal'Cie
From FF13-2:
Mirror of Atropos - The Book of Haerii
The is the prophecy as told by Atropos,
messenger of the heavens.
The Thirteenth Ark is the fortress that
protects the heavenly vault. When the heroes
gather unto mighty Pulse to do battle in the
war that must be fought, this shall be the
stronghold. Know now and remember that
the Ark shall by the salvation of all Pulse's
children.
The 13th Ark shows up and is completely ignored outside of a plot hook to set up the Neo-Cocoon project? Yeah, right.
Final Fantasy XIII-3 confirmed. :P
Square Enix pays a LOT of money in advertising. It's not surprising it got rave reviews.
Or, you know, it's a genuinely good game.
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
I don't give a hoot about towns or NPCs, but I wholeheartedly agree. I actually have a similar complaint about FFXIII-2. These Cocoon folk aren't very goal-oriented. There's some vague idea about saving the future and saving Lightning, but for the most part, they're also just running around without a plan.
That being said, I still enjoyed FFXIII's linearity and I don't think all the sidequests and towns make FFXIII-2 more enjoyable for me. It all seemed very fetch questy to me.
You and me, hating pointless town excursions together!
LoL: failboattootoot
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
Fixed. It's my default choco theme.
It's not that towns are all that important or useful for gameplay purposes so much as they can do a good job of helping ground a setting or giving it a sense of place. Making it seem like a real environment that people live in and has an internal logic to it. Plus they can be good beats for pacing, or hubs for stories.
If the world and it's inhabitants were shown better in the game (instead of explained in a datalog), if the pacing was better, if the environment design was smarter then the town thing probably wouldn't have even been noticed.
Houses and living quarters (above shops) for everyone fully furnished. Restaurants, general stores, and the like. Believable economies and modes of transportation (which aren't instant). NPCs that talk about current events both local and elsewhere in the world, with complete dialog changes after every event. In-world readable newspapers.
Most believable rpg world ever.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //