FF13 definitely ended up being the hardest Final Fantasy I've played. Not losing any progress on death meant they could really throw the big guns at you.
Didn't complete it, I just got to a point to where I was done. I'd spent the better part of an hour tweaking my team, getting prepped for a boss fight. Got my equipment all sorted, got gambits programmed out for my main team and my backup, had everything just about perfect, and then the game crashed. And the idea of redoing all of that, of spending another near-hour just to prepare for a fight, was just too unappealing. I was near the end of the game, too - I was cleaning out the last of some sidequests before heading to Bahamut. But I just couldn't be fuckin' bothered.
I thought the game started out quite strong. I admired the double-fakeout opening, the party seemed like it had some fun characters, it initially felt like everyone had a fair bit of emotional heft to unpack and explore. And then the story just... Didn't. It would gesture in the direction of pathos, but the characters were so thinly-sketched that they couldn't pull off the emo moments.
It's a shame. I quite like Ivalice, the visual design of the world was cool, I even dug parts of the gameplay. But there was just not enough depth anywhere for me to really sink me teeth into anything. Ah, well.
I'm now into 13. I'd heard this game was linear, but I'm used to that being at least slightly metaphorical. But no, I'm quite literally walking in a straight line for most of this game.
Lightning fuckin' rules, though. The whole cast is pretty fun, and with some of the best visual designs this side of X-2. And the structure of the story (thus far, anyway), intercutting the modern adventures with slices of life in the before time, is really working for me. I got 50-ish hours into FF12, and only six hours in 13 has me caring infinitely more about the characters. Hope's kind of annoying, but I have very little affection for his character archetype generally so I'm accustomed to tuning little twerps like him out. And I wish they'd dim the neon on the flashing "I am a god" sign hovering about Vanille's head, but there are enough weird wrinkles in the actor's performance that I find her more interesting than annoying.
I do find it fucking hysterical that Squeenix seemingly went, "You know the problem with 12? The combat was too challenging."
13 has a great difficulty curve, and the cast is way more likeable than 12's. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
(The OST is phenomenal, too.)
Vaan I'll give you is annoying, I like the rest of them more than anyone in 13 but Sazh though.
Didn't complete it, I just got to a point to where I was done. I'd spent the better part of an hour tweaking my team, getting prepped for a boss fight. Got my equipment all sorted, got gambits programmed out for my main team and my backup, had everything just about perfect, and then the game crashed. And the idea of redoing all of that, of spending another near-hour just to prepare for a fight, was just too unappealing. I was near the end of the game, too - I was cleaning out the last of some sidequests before heading to Bahamut. But I just couldn't be fuckin' bothered.
I thought the game started out quite strong. I admired the double-fakeout opening, the party seemed like it had some fun characters, it initially felt like everyone had a fair bit of emotional heft to unpack and explore. And then the story just... Didn't. It would gesture in the direction of pathos, but the characters were so thinly-sketched that they couldn't pull off the emo moments.
It's a shame. I quite like Ivalice, the visual design of the world was cool, I even dug parts of the gameplay. But there was just not enough depth anywhere for me to really sink me teeth into anything. Ah, well.
I'm now into 13. I'd heard this game was linear, but I'm used to that being at least slightly metaphorical. But no, I'm quite literally walking in a straight line for most of this game.
Lightning fuckin' rules, though. The whole cast is pretty fun, and with some of the best visual designs this side of X-2. And the structure of the story (thus far, anyway), intercutting the modern adventures with slices of life in the before time, is really working for me. I got 50-ish hours into FF12, and only six hours in 13 has me caring infinitely more about the characters. Hope's kind of annoying, but I have very little affection for his character archetype generally so I'm accustomed to tuning little twerps like him out. And I wish they'd dim the neon on the flashing "I am a god" sign hovering about Vanille's head, but there are enough weird wrinkles in the actor's performance that I find her more interesting than annoying.
I do find it fucking hysterical that Squeenix seemingly went, "You know the problem with 12? The combat was too challenging."
13 has a great difficulty curve, and the cast is way more likeable than 12's. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
(The OST is phenomenal, too.)
Vaan I'll give you is annoying, I like the rest of them more than anyone in 13 but Sazh though.
I liked Balthier at first and Fran was pretty much always cool (though 90% of that is the really great voice acting - one doesn't often encounter a voice like that in video games). Basch had a kinda unique hook that they dramatically underplayed, leaving him as just typically-bland Stoic Soldier Guy. Penelo had no personality outside of "loves Vaan for some reason." Vaan had no arc at all - one of many characters in the game to go, "I HAVE A BIG PROBLEM AND I WILL NEVER BE SATISFIED, oh what's that one half-assed apology in one cutscene? Alright, we cool." Ashe was kind of a cypher, and everyone kept SAYING to her, "I bet you're mad with power, huh? Clouded with revenge? Bet you really want these magic nukes, don't you, you fucking aspiring tyrant you." And then she'd just sorta stand there and look pensive about it.
I think my big thing with FF12 is that all of the characters have backstories that are way more interesting than their present stories. All the most interesting things to happen to the characters happen in the first three hours and/or off-screen before the game starts, and that's a Problem for me in a big-ass jurp
Didn't complete it, I just got to a point to where I was done. I'd spent the better part of an hour tweaking my team, getting prepped for a boss fight. Got my equipment all sorted, got gambits programmed out for my main team and my backup, had everything just about perfect, and then the game crashed. And the idea of redoing all of that, of spending another near-hour just to prepare for a fight, was just too unappealing. I was near the end of the game, too - I was cleaning out the last of some sidequests before heading to Bahamut. But I just couldn't be fuckin' bothered.
I thought the game started out quite strong. I admired the double-fakeout opening, the party seemed like it had some fun characters, it initially felt like everyone had a fair bit of emotional heft to unpack and explore. And then the story just... Didn't. It would gesture in the direction of pathos, but the characters were so thinly-sketched that they couldn't pull off the emo moments.
It's a shame. I quite like Ivalice, the visual design of the world was cool, I even dug parts of the gameplay. But there was just not enough depth anywhere for me to really sink me teeth into anything. Ah, well.
I'm now into 13. I'd heard this game was linear, but I'm used to that being at least slightly metaphorical. But no, I'm quite literally walking in a straight line for most of this game.
Lightning fuckin' rules, though. The whole cast is pretty fun, and with some of the best visual designs this side of X-2. And the structure of the story (thus far, anyway), intercutting the modern adventures with slices of life in the before time, is really working for me. I got 50-ish hours into FF12, and only six hours in 13 has me caring infinitely more about the characters. Hope's kind of annoying, but I have very little affection for his character archetype generally so I'm accustomed to tuning little twerps like him out. And I wish they'd dim the neon on the flashing "I am a god" sign hovering about Vanille's head, but there are enough weird wrinkles in the actor's performance that I find her more interesting than annoying.
I do find it fucking hysterical that Squeenix seemingly went, "You know the problem with 12? The combat was too challenging."
13 has a great difficulty curve, and the cast is way more likeable than 12's. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
(The OST is phenomenal, too.)
Vaan I'll give you is annoying, I like the rest of them more than anyone in 13 but Sazh though.
I liked Balthier at first and Fran was pretty much always cool (though 90% of that is the really great voice acting - one doesn't often encounter a voice like that in video games). Basch had a kinda unique hook that they dramatically underplayed, leaving him as just typically-bland Stoic Soldier Guy. Penelo had no personality outside of "loves Vaan for some reason." Vaan had no arc at all - one of many characters in the game to go, "I HAVE A BIG PROBLEM AND I WILL NEVER BE SATISFIED, oh what's that one half-assed apology in one cutscene? Alright, we cool." Ashe was kind of a cypher, and everyone kept SAYING to her, "I bet you're mad with power, huh? Clouded with revenge? Bet you really want these magic nukes, don't you, you fucking aspiring tyrant you." And then she'd just sorta stand there and look pensive about it.
I think my big thing with FF12 is that all of the characters have backstories that are way more interesting than their present stories. All the most interesting things to happen to the characters happen in the first three hours and/or off-screen before the game starts, and that's a Problem for me in a big-ass jurp
These are fair criticisms of the 12 cast and their writing, it's just that for me the 13 characters go beyond "kind of boring on screen a lot of the times" all the way to actively irritating me. Part of it is also that the 13 cast is stuck in a game that I hated for a bunch of other reasons and that rubs off on my impressions of them, I'm sure I'd think 13's cast was fine in a story I liked more, told in a way I liked more.
+2
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PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
Didn't complete it, I just got to a point to where I was done. I'd spent the better part of an hour tweaking my team, getting prepped for a boss fight. Got my equipment all sorted, got gambits programmed out for my main team and my backup, had everything just about perfect, and then the game crashed. And the idea of redoing all of that, of spending another near-hour just to prepare for a fight, was just too unappealing. I was near the end of the game, too - I was cleaning out the last of some sidequests before heading to Bahamut. But I just couldn't be fuckin' bothered.
I thought the game started out quite strong. I admired the double-fakeout opening, the party seemed like it had some fun characters, it initially felt like everyone had a fair bit of emotional heft to unpack and explore. And then the story just... Didn't. It would gesture in the direction of pathos, but the characters were so thinly-sketched that they couldn't pull off the emo moments.
It's a shame. I quite like Ivalice, the visual design of the world was cool, I even dug parts of the gameplay. But there was just not enough depth anywhere for me to really sink me teeth into anything. Ah, well.
I'm now into 13. I'd heard this game was linear, but I'm used to that being at least slightly metaphorical. But no, I'm quite literally walking in a straight line for most of this game.
Lightning fuckin' rules, though. The whole cast is pretty fun, and with some of the best visual designs this side of X-2. And the structure of the story (thus far, anyway), intercutting the modern adventures with slices of life in the before time, is really working for me. I got 50-ish hours into FF12, and only six hours in 13 has me caring infinitely more about the characters. Hope's kind of annoying, but I have very little affection for his character archetype generally so I'm accustomed to tuning little twerps like him out. And I wish they'd dim the neon on the flashing "I am a god" sign hovering about Vanille's head, but there are enough weird wrinkles in the actor's performance that I find her more interesting than annoying.
I do find it fucking hysterical that Squeenix seemingly went, "You know the problem with 12? The combat was too challenging."
13 has a great difficulty curve, and the cast is way more likeable than 12's. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
(The OST is phenomenal, too.)
Vaan I'll give you is annoying, I like the rest of them more than anyone in 13 but Sazh though.
I liked Balthier at first and Fran was pretty much always cool (though 90% of that is the really great voice acting - one doesn't often encounter a voice like that in video games). Basch had a kinda unique hook that they dramatically underplayed, leaving him as just typically-bland Stoic Soldier Guy. Penelo had no personality outside of "loves Vaan for some reason." Vaan had no arc at all - one of many characters in the game to go, "I HAVE A BIG PROBLEM AND I WILL NEVER BE SATISFIED, oh what's that one half-assed apology in one cutscene? Alright, we cool." Ashe was kind of a cypher, and everyone kept SAYING to her, "I bet you're mad with power, huh? Clouded with revenge? Bet you really want these magic nukes, don't you, you fucking aspiring tyrant you." And then she'd just sorta stand there and look pensive about it.
I think my big thing with FF12 is that all of the characters have backstories that are way more interesting than their present stories. All the most interesting things to happen to the characters happen in the first three hours and/or off-screen before the game starts, and that's a Problem for me in a big-ass jurp
the driving force of most of the game is hunting down magical wmds because ashe wants them despite literally everyone telling her not to use the magical war crime mcguffins and then you get them and it veers hard left to go 'actually one of the villains is super right about stuff but also they're evil I guess?'
it's just... really weirdly plotted out like you said, everything that is presented to you is just really pretty and interesting but nothing really resolves until it finally does
I don't recall the cast of XII as a whole being very emotive, something that XIII flips completely. That's how I remember it anyway.
Yeah the folks in XII have these huge, sweeping backstories, full of betrayal and loss and crumbling kingdoms and grief, all of which impact the current personalities and actions of the characters basically not at all
XIII is much clearer on what's driving people. And in the couple of cases where it's not, the game tacitly says, "This is a mystery, not a blank forgot to fill in, don't worry."
Generally speaking, this game is much better at introducing questions about the characters/worlds, letting you sit with those questions for a little bit, and then resolving them. The story feels almost like a serialized TV show, in some ways? Pair up a few characters, see how they bond, get em in a scrape, see how they get out. It gives the story a nice rhythm, a cohesive one, one that's kinda novel in my experiences of the franchise (though I could see an argument of FF7R having similar rhythms, though I'd say the "episodes" are longer in that one). The tradeoff for the tidier, more consistently-propulsive narrative is the linearity, but I'm thus far totally fine with that trade.
A lot of why I enjoy 12 is that it feels kinda like a single player mmo to me.
It has these massive environments and big monsters you can track down through the hunt system.
It's a really cool world to explore. Shame that the plot eventually starts to just spin its wheels without moving anywhere.
I also find it funny that some of my favorite lore in the game is completely hidden in bestiary entries iirc.
The espers that you fight and summon are servents of the gods that rebelled against their creators and lost. They were cast down, branded scions of darkness, and became the espers that you find in the game. It's extra neat to me since each esper has a corresponding scion of light, who remained loyal to the creator, and the names of those counterparts are used as the names of a bunch of the big bads in FF14's story.
A lot of why I enjoy 12 is that it feels kinda like a single player mmo to me.
It has these massive environments and big monsters you can track down through the hunt system.
It's a really cool world to explore. Shame that the plot eventually starts to just spin its wheels without moving anywhere.
I also find it funny that some of my favorite lore in the game is completely hidden in bestiary entries iirc.
The espers that you fight and summon are servents of the gods that rebelled against their creators and lost. They were cast down, branded scions of darkness, and became the espers that you find in the game. It's extra neat to me since each esper has a corresponding scion of light, who remained loyal to the creator, and the names of those counterparts are used as the names of a bunch of the big bads in FF14's story.
That's why I couldn't stand it. I got my gambits set and then... I pretty much read books while holding forward through areas. The thing that eventually did it in for me was after some supposedly big story boss fight like 30 hours into the game, there was a cutscene to what were clearly the main antagonists again, doing some shit that had absolutely nothing to do with anything the party was doing, seemingly having zero knowledge, concern, or even awareness that the party existed.
I don't recall the cast of XII as a whole being very emotive, something that XIII flips completely. That's how I remember it anyway.
Yeah the folks in XII have these huge, sweeping backstories, full of betrayal and loss and crumbling kingdoms and grief, all of which impact the current personalities and actions of the characters basically not at all
XIII is much clearer on what's driving people. And in the couple of cases where it's not, the game tacitly says, "This is a mystery, not a blank forgot to fill in, don't worry."
Generally speaking, this game is much better at introducing questions about the characters/worlds, letting you sit with those questions for a little bit, and then resolving them. The story feels almost like a serialized TV show, in some ways? Pair up a few characters, see how they bond, get em in a scrape, see how they get out. It gives the story a nice rhythm, a cohesive one, one that's kinda novel in my experiences of the franchise (though I could see an argument of FF7R having similar rhythms, though I'd say the "episodes" are longer in that one). The tradeoff for the tidier, more consistently-propulsive narrative is the linearity, but I'm thus far totally fine with that trade.
The Lightning/Hope arc is really well done and I don't think they could have managed it with a more traditional FF narrative structure
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I feel like 13 is one of the stronger narrative arcs, it felt like the team had a very clear beginning, middle, and end in mind. Not counting the snafu that the sequel starts up...
I always felt like the odd one out at the time. I preferred when 13 was in its linear phase to the more open mode. When all the discussion at the time was about how much better it was past the linear portion.
+3
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BlackDragon480Bluster KerfuffleMaster of Windy ImportRegistered Userregular
I feel like 13 is one of the stronger narrative arcs, it felt like the team had a very clear beginning, middle, and end in mind. Not counting the snafu that the sequel starts up...
Yeah, I definitely didn't like the direction stuff took in 13-2. Though I do have a fondness for Lightning Returns, as the combat is like a single character version of the Dressphere from X-2 and once you adjust to the Majora's Mask like time loops the game played great.
Plot was bullshit that was so far up it's own ass that even Dr. Weird would've been impressed (though angry at lack of BBQ sauce), but it was hella fun to play.
BlackDragon480 on
No matter where you go...there you are. ~ Buckaroo Banzai
XII's biggest problem is that the first 50% of the game is a pretty good jrpg with an interesting, well thought out setting, and the remaining half is a pair of what feel like 15 hour dungeons
I don't know that I'm all that invested in Tales of Symphonia at this point, a bit into the (first?) visit to Tethe'alla, but damn it, I've been trying to finish this game since 2004, always impeded by scratched discs or buggy emulators or lost save data and I'm going to clear the damn thing this time.
I feel like 13 is one of the stronger narrative arcs, it felt like the team had a very clear beginning, middle, and end in mind. Not counting the snafu that the sequel starts up...
In my opinion, a lot of media fucks up flashbacks, using them to just illustrate shit you already know, or show shit that's less interesting than what's happening in the present day (which is bad and boring), or show shit that's too much more interesting than the present, leaving you wondering why the present day storyline is happening at all.
13, thus far, has avoided all those traps. It's good at using the flashbacks to answer present-day questions, while also using that space to set up new ones. They've got a lot of moving parts in the story, and they're doing a rather remarkable job of keeping it clean and clear, keeping it all moving, and getting it all to fit together. Very curious to see if they're able to sustain that balance.
It's so weird - I think the gameplay has kinda shitty pacing. It's too simple for too long, it's constrained in ways that are detrimental to the overall experience, it does a terrible job of even hinting at how (let alone when) it'll get fun. But the story is probably the best-paced I've seen from the franchise.
+3
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I feel like 13 is one of the stronger narrative arcs, it felt like the team had a very clear beginning, middle, and end in mind. Not counting the snafu that the sequel starts up...
In my opinion, a lot of media fucks up flashbacks, using them to just illustrate shit you already know, or show shit that's less interesting than what's happening in the present day (which is bad and boring), or show shit that's too much more interesting than the present, leaving you wondering why the present day storyline is happening at all.
13, thus far, has avoided all those traps. It's good at using the flashbacks to answer present-day questions, while also using that space to set up new ones. They've got a lot of moving parts in the story, and they're doing a rather remarkable job of keeping it clean and clear, keeping it all moving, and getting it all to fit together. Very curious to see if they're able to sustain that balance.
It's so weird - I think the gameplay has kinda shitty pacing. It's too simple for too long, it's constrained in ways that are detrimental to the overall experience, it does a terrible job of even hinting at how (let alone when) it'll get fun. But the story is probably the best-paced I've seen from the franchise.
I definitely think it sticks the landing. It has one of my favorite endgames in the series. I don't know how far you are, but the flashback with
I've realized I'm probably even less kind to Lightning Returns than it deserves because my brain immediately brings up Third Birthday any time I think about it.
A third game in a Square-Enix series where the badass female protagonist becomes a dress-up doll and the plot gets especially dumb (Motomu Toriyama gets blamed for both with a lot of personal attacks though it turns out he barely wrote anything in what Third Birthday ended up being. He was director on LR though so that's all him).
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I lost interest in LR real fast. I loved the battle system in 13 and -2, and having a game with a solo character isn't the same.
I feel like 13 is one of the stronger narrative arcs, it felt like the team had a very clear beginning, middle, and end in mind. Not counting the snafu that the sequel starts up...
In my opinion, a lot of media fucks up flashbacks, using them to just illustrate shit you already know, or show shit that's less interesting than what's happening in the present day (which is bad and boring), or show shit that's too much more interesting than the present, leaving you wondering why the present day storyline is happening at all.
13, thus far, has avoided all those traps. It's good at using the flashbacks to answer present-day questions, while also using that space to set up new ones. They've got a lot of moving parts in the story, and they're doing a rather remarkable job of keeping it clean and clear, keeping it all moving, and getting it all to fit together. Very curious to see if they're able to sustain that balance.
It's so weird - I think the gameplay has kinda shitty pacing. It's too simple for too long, it's constrained in ways that are detrimental to the overall experience, it does a terrible job of even hinting at how (let alone when) it'll get fun. But the story is probably the best-paced I've seen from the franchise.
I definitely think it sticks the landing. It has one of my favorite endgames in the series. I don't know how far you are, but the flashback with
Snow and Serah
is one of the most beautiful scenes in the game.
I really liked that scene! I didn't give a fuck about Snow up until that one, and then I went, "Oh, shit, he's a Wife Guy for real real," and I immediately developed a soft spot for him. It was really romantic and totally worked for me.
+2
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H3KnucklesBut we decide which is rightand which is an illusion.Registered Userregular
edited January 2022
Figured you all might get a chuckle out of this, too
Square Enix has officially decided to follow in Shinra's footsteps. That's right, the videogame developer that started as a side-business to a power line construction company is now going to jump into the exciting world of NFTs! Burning the world down faster to make more profit.
Choice quote to really give that Frank Capra villain feeling:
I realize that some people who “play to have fun” and who currently form the majority of players have voiced their reservations toward these new trends, and understandably so. However, I believe that there will be a certain number of people whose motivation is to “play to contribute,” by which I mean to help make the game more exciting. Traditional gaming has offered no explicit incentive to this latter group of people, who were motivated strictly by such inconsistent personal feelings as goodwill and volunteer spirit.
I feel like 13 is one of the stronger narrative arcs, it felt like the team had a very clear beginning, middle, and end in mind. Not counting the snafu that the sequel starts up...
In my opinion, a lot of media fucks up flashbacks, using them to just illustrate shit you already know, or show shit that's less interesting than what's happening in the present day (which is bad and boring), or show shit that's too much more interesting than the present, leaving you wondering why the present day storyline is happening at all.
13, thus far, has avoided all those traps. It's good at using the flashbacks to answer present-day questions, while also using that space to set up new ones. They've got a lot of moving parts in the story, and they're doing a rather remarkable job of keeping it clean and clear, keeping it all moving, and getting it all to fit together. Very curious to see if they're able to sustain that balance.
It's so weird - I think the gameplay has kinda shitty pacing. It's too simple for too long, it's constrained in ways that are detrimental to the overall experience, it does a terrible job of even hinting at how (let alone when) it'll get fun. But the story is probably the best-paced I've seen from the franchise.
perhaps I couldn't see the good points of the storytelling through the fog of my displeasure at the gameplay experience, I was just utterly uninvested in the story in a way I had never been with a final fantasy game before 13.
Cold Steel 1 update: my drunk teacher has sent me on a field trip, which seems to be an elegant way to have a game be set in a school and yet also allow you to do jrpg stuff. Also, literally every single npc has a name and you can talk to them, huh?
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
Cold Steel 1 update: my drunk teacher has sent me on a field trip, which seems to be an elegant way to have a game be set in a school and yet also allow you to do jrpg stuff. Also, literally every single npc has a name and you can talk to them, huh?
That's a Trails of thing, yes. It's neat in theory, but tends to get super tedious in execution.
+3
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BaidolI will hold him offEscape while you canRegistered Userregular
Cold Steel 1 update: my drunk teacher has sent me on a field trip, which seems to be an elegant way to have a game be set in a school and yet also allow you to do jrpg stuff. Also, literally every single npc has a name and you can talk to them, huh?
The second part is a hallmark of the Trails games. Additionally, what NPCs say will change after regular story beats and are sometimes neat little completely optional side stories that contribute nothing other than world building. There are lots of NPCs so I don't recommend "sweeping" them each time unless you are really into that like me.
It's conceptually a great worldbuilding feature but in a pure logistical sense it's both a dramatically overkill and an infamous nightmare for localizers.
I'm one of the FF13 haters. I found the combat pretty terrible - at a micro level you're just hitting auto, at a macro level you're just picking one of 6 or so modes - attack, defend, build meter, some inbetween of them. Just completely narrow and fairly braindead. And it takes like 50 hours to get to that point where you're actually making meaningful decisions in combat.
The story was better but still not what I'd call great. The only character I gave a damn about was Zazh(?)
I feel like 13 is one of the stronger narrative arcs, it felt like the team had a very clear beginning, middle, and end in mind. Not counting the snafu that the sequel starts up...
In my opinion, a lot of media fucks up flashbacks, using them to just illustrate shit you already know, or show shit that's less interesting than what's happening in the present day (which is bad and boring), or show shit that's too much more interesting than the present, leaving you wondering why the present day storyline is happening at all.
13, thus far, has avoided all those traps. It's good at using the flashbacks to answer present-day questions, while also using that space to set up new ones. They've got a lot of moving parts in the story, and they're doing a rather remarkable job of keeping it clean and clear, keeping it all moving, and getting it all to fit together. Very curious to see if they're able to sustain that balance.
It's so weird - I think the gameplay has kinda shitty pacing. It's too simple for too long, it's constrained in ways that are detrimental to the overall experience, it does a terrible job of even hinting at how (let alone when) it'll get fun. But the story is probably the best-paced I've seen from the franchise.
Once the game starts regularly giving you three party members the combat really sings.
It definitely takes WAY too long to happen. But I still love the game for much of the reasons you do - the character work is phenomenal and it really carries me through the slower early hours until the whole thing opens up.
Meanwhile 13-2 has less than 30 minutes of tutorial before it gets into the action and has the best gameplay and best story of the trilogy.
Edit: Re: 13 itself. I'll defend Snow. And I actually like Hope who acts like the actual immature child he is and then we see him grow up as a character. But Vanille is a psycopath and an unsympathetic character, and poor Fang's in an abusive relationship with her.
Cold Steel 1 update: my drunk teacher has sent me on a field trip, which seems to be an elegant way to have a game be set in a school and yet also allow you to do jrpg stuff. Also, literally every single npc has a name and you can talk to them, huh?
The second part is a hallmark of the Trails games. Additionally, what NPCs say will change after regular story beats and are sometimes neat little completely optional side stories that contribute nothing other than world building. There are lots of NPCs so I don't recommend "sweeping" them each time unless you are really into that like me.
They made it for weirdos like me and I love them for it
Meanwhile 13-2 has less than 30 minutes of tutorial before it gets into the action and has the best gameplay and best story of the trilogy.
Edit: Re: 13 itself. I'll defend Snow. And I actually like Hope who acts like the actual immature child he is and then we see him grow up as a character. But Vanille is a psycopath and an unsympathetic character, and poor Fang's in an abusive relationship with her.
13-2 replaces the characters that 13 made me care about and has a fucking Pokémon mechanic for the third party member.
I have never made it more than like 2 hours in.
+2
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
Meanwhile 13-2 has less than 30 minutes of tutorial before it gets into the action and has the best gameplay and best story of the trilogy.
Edit: Re: 13 itself. I'll defend Snow. And I actually like Hope who acts like the actual immature child he is and then we see him grow up as a character. But Vanille is a psycopath and an unsympathetic character, and poor Fang's in an abusive relationship with her.
13-2 replaces the characters that 13 made me care about and has a fucking Pokémon mechanic for the third party member.
I have never made it more than like 2 hours in.
It's a fun game, and has some great environments, and you get to fight Ultros and Chupon.
That said, the story is a hot mess, and boy does it get dark.
It's also super easy to snap in half. 13 is a balanced game, 13-2 is broken as all hell, especially if you get some of the DLC like Sazh and Jihl.
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"These enemies are too hard for you, you should go around them"
I fought one, it was easy, and I got enough CP from that battle alone to buy a node each for my characters
Vaan I'll give you is annoying, I like the rest of them more than anyone in 13 but Sazh though.
I liked Balthier at first and Fran was pretty much always cool (though 90% of that is the really great voice acting - one doesn't often encounter a voice like that in video games). Basch had a kinda unique hook that they dramatically underplayed, leaving him as just typically-bland Stoic Soldier Guy. Penelo had no personality outside of "loves Vaan for some reason." Vaan had no arc at all - one of many characters in the game to go, "I HAVE A BIG PROBLEM AND I WILL NEVER BE SATISFIED, oh what's that one half-assed apology in one cutscene? Alright, we cool." Ashe was kind of a cypher, and everyone kept SAYING to her, "I bet you're mad with power, huh? Clouded with revenge? Bet you really want these magic nukes, don't you, you fucking aspiring tyrant you." And then she'd just sorta stand there and look pensive about it.
I think my big thing with FF12 is that all of the characters have backstories that are way more interesting than their present stories. All the most interesting things to happen to the characters happen in the first three hours and/or off-screen before the game starts, and that's a Problem for me in a big-ass jurp
These are fair criticisms of the 12 cast and their writing, it's just that for me the 13 characters go beyond "kind of boring on screen a lot of the times" all the way to actively irritating me. Part of it is also that the 13 cast is stuck in a game that I hated for a bunch of other reasons and that rubs off on my impressions of them, I'm sure I'd think 13's cast was fine in a story I liked more, told in a way I liked more.
the driving force of most of the game is hunting down magical wmds because ashe wants them despite literally everyone telling her not to use the magical war crime mcguffins and then you get them and it veers hard left to go 'actually one of the villains is super right about stuff but also they're evil I guess?'
it's just... really weirdly plotted out like you said, everything that is presented to you is just really pretty and interesting but nothing really resolves until it finally does
Yeah the folks in XII have these huge, sweeping backstories, full of betrayal and loss and crumbling kingdoms and grief, all of which impact the current personalities and actions of the characters basically not at all
XIII is much clearer on what's driving people. And in the couple of cases where it's not, the game tacitly says, "This is a mystery, not a blank forgot to fill in, don't worry."
Generally speaking, this game is much better at introducing questions about the characters/worlds, letting you sit with those questions for a little bit, and then resolving them. The story feels almost like a serialized TV show, in some ways? Pair up a few characters, see how they bond, get em in a scrape, see how they get out. It gives the story a nice rhythm, a cohesive one, one that's kinda novel in my experiences of the franchise (though I could see an argument of FF7R having similar rhythms, though I'd say the "episodes" are longer in that one). The tradeoff for the tidier, more consistently-propulsive narrative is the linearity, but I'm thus far totally fine with that trade.
It has these massive environments and big monsters you can track down through the hunt system.
It's a really cool world to explore. Shame that the plot eventually starts to just spin its wheels without moving anywhere.
I also find it funny that some of my favorite lore in the game is completely hidden in bestiary entries iirc.
That's why I couldn't stand it. I got my gambits set and then... I pretty much read books while holding forward through areas. The thing that eventually did it in for me was after some supposedly big story boss fight like 30 hours into the game, there was a cutscene to what were clearly the main antagonists again, doing some shit that had absolutely nothing to do with anything the party was doing, seemingly having zero knowledge, concern, or even awareness that the party existed.
The Lightning/Hope arc is really well done and I don't think they could have managed it with a more traditional FF narrative structure
Yeah, I definitely didn't like the direction stuff took in 13-2. Though I do have a fondness for Lightning Returns, as the combat is like a single character version of the Dressphere from X-2 and once you adjust to the Majora's Mask like time loops the game played great.
Plot was bullshit that was so far up it's own ass that even Dr. Weird would've been impressed (though angry at lack of BBQ sauce), but it was hella fun to play.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
In my opinion, a lot of media fucks up flashbacks, using them to just illustrate shit you already know, or show shit that's less interesting than what's happening in the present day (which is bad and boring), or show shit that's too much more interesting than the present, leaving you wondering why the present day storyline is happening at all.
13, thus far, has avoided all those traps. It's good at using the flashbacks to answer present-day questions, while also using that space to set up new ones. They've got a lot of moving parts in the story, and they're doing a rather remarkable job of keeping it clean and clear, keeping it all moving, and getting it all to fit together. Very curious to see if they're able to sustain that balance.
It's so weird - I think the gameplay has kinda shitty pacing. It's too simple for too long, it's constrained in ways that are detrimental to the overall experience, it does a terrible job of even hinting at how (let alone when) it'll get fun. But the story is probably the best-paced I've seen from the franchise.
I definitely think it sticks the landing. It has one of my favorite endgames in the series. I don't know how far you are, but the flashback with
A third game in a Square-Enix series where the badass female protagonist becomes a dress-up doll and the plot gets especially dumb (Motomu Toriyama gets blamed for both with a lot of personal attacks though it turns out he barely wrote anything in what Third Birthday ended up being. He was director on LR though so that's all him).
I really liked that scene! I didn't give a fuck about Snow up until that one, and then I went, "Oh, shit, he's a Wife Guy for real real," and I immediately developed a soft spot for him. It was really romantic and totally worked for me.
perhaps I couldn't see the good points of the storytelling through the fog of my displeasure at the gameplay experience, I was just utterly uninvested in the story in a way I had never been with a final fantasy game before 13.
That's a Trails of thing, yes. It's neat in theory, but tends to get super tedious in execution.
The second part is a hallmark of the Trails games. Additionally, what NPCs say will change after regular story beats and are sometimes neat little completely optional side stories that contribute nothing other than world building. There are lots of NPCs so I don't recommend "sweeping" them each time unless you are really into that like me.
The story was better but still not what I'd call great. The only character I gave a damn about was Zazh(?)
Once the game starts regularly giving you three party members the combat really sings.
It definitely takes WAY too long to happen. But I still love the game for much of the reasons you do - the character work is phenomenal and it really carries me through the slower early hours until the whole thing opens up.
Edit: Re: 13 itself. I'll defend Snow. And I actually like Hope who acts like the actual immature child he is and then we see him grow up as a character. But Vanille is a psycopath and an unsympathetic character, and poor Fang's in an abusive relationship with her.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
They made it for weirdos like me and I love them for it
13-2 replaces the characters that 13 made me care about and has a fucking Pokémon mechanic for the third party member.
I have never made it more than like 2 hours in.
It's a fun game, and has some great environments, and you get to fight Ultros and Chupon.
That said, the story is a hot mess, and boy does it get dark.
It's also super easy to snap in half. 13 is a balanced game, 13-2 is broken as all hell, especially if you get some of the DLC like Sazh and Jihl.
I do not care for capturing and grinding monsters in place of a party member who could have been given story and purpose.
You and I play video games for very different reasons.
Boy, you'd really hate core SMT...