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You can put a hat on a cat. That's a giant advantage for FFXIII-2.
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Aug 13, 2013 01:08
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And 13-2's DLCs are amazing. The arena and Sazh's chapter hit the sweet spot for me. And Chronobind is seriously fun as hell. That solo Lightning thing is okay too. I guess.
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Aug 13, 2013 03:22
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Winks posted:I still don't get how you say worse combat. You're not locked into essentially what was a crappy tutorial mode for hours like XIII and paradigms are far more customizable. Because the design and flow of combat is infinitely worse. FFXIII's structure had a lot of problems but it allowed them to design combat in such a way that it at least was relatively appropriate for the area you're in. FFXIIII-2 doesn't bother with this and so it highlights all the flaws of the FFXIII system which was designed around the idea of something more structured. You become so powerful so quickly that, even compared to FFXIII, every fight that isn't a DLC fight is utterly trivialized and not in a fun way. It takes all the flaws that FFXIII's combat had and amplifies them. No amount of cute monster hats or faster paradigm switches can change the fact that the encounter design beneath them is a complete pile of tripe. I was fully prepared to go into FFXIII-2 and enjoy it based on the combat and ended up finding the entire thing a tedious slog. And it isn't even as if the customization is particularly great enough to make up for that. The character building is boring and straightforward, the monster balance is all out of wack, and while the monster hats are adorable, there are much better games when it comes to playing dress up with JRPG characters. Yes, you can do low-level challenges, but the difference between a low-level challenge in FFXIII and in FFXIII-2 is night and day. It really underlines how bad the combat design is and how uninteresting the enemies are if you do FFXIII-2 at a low level. They clearly put no real effort into doing anything interesting, likely because they shoved the game out so quickly, and trusted on it to glide past with nobody looking very closely at how bad the fights were. (and then sold the actual interesting fights for real money. The DLC is actually good though, I'll give them credit for that.) ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Aug 13, 2013 |
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Aug 13, 2013 03:27
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Good DLC makes a bad game that much worse once you realize they could have maybe just made a good game in the first place but opted instead for the maximum cash grab.
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Aug 13, 2013 04:49
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Lord of Pie posted:Good DLC makes a bad game that much worse once you realize they could have maybe just made a good game in the first place but opted instead for the maximum cash grab. I agree, making a lovely game so that you can sell good DLC to the people that will, under no circumstances, want to buy it is a great business strategy and not at all one of the dumbest things I've ever heard.
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Aug 13, 2013 06:30
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SSNeoman posted:And 13-2's DLCs are amazing. The arena and Sazh's chapter hit the sweet spot for me. And Chronobind is seriously fun as hell. Chronobind is so goddamn addictive.
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Aug 13, 2013 07:30
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Solution: Download Chronobind for free instead. The interface sucks though, but at least this way you don't have to buy a game plus DLC. And maybe someone will be inspired to implement things like multiplayer one of these days. e: Holy poo poo this game is addictive regardless. Mega64 fucked around with this message at 12:59 on Aug 13, 2013 |
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Aug 13, 2013 12:51
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Melancholy tribute to FF8 Discovered this at work today. Down tempo arrangements of FFVIII songs. I'm loving it and there are albums for FFVII and FFIX as well.
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Aug 13, 2013 17:20
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Play Final Fantasy XIII-2 because at the end of the day it's still a better alternative to Hyperdimension Neptunia. Don't play it if you like to have fun though, it's not fun. Chronobind loses its luster after about ten minutes and you'll be doing it for HOURS to get the sweet poo poo at the casino. Everything else in the game is pretty much dreadful. You know what, you should just rent the game, you can easily beat it in a weekend if you skip the more lengthy sidequests.
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Aug 13, 2013 17:30
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Winks posted:I still don't get how you say worse combat. You're not locked into essentially what was a crappy tutorial mode for hours like XIII and paradigms are far more customizable. XIII-2's combat wins by default solely for letting me actually target the same enemy with 2 or more Commandos. That felt like a giant "screw you!" from XIII the first time around.
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Aug 13, 2013 17:36
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Mega64 posted:Solution: Download Chronobind for free instead. I like my Sazh-filled 3D interface, thanks.
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Aug 13, 2013 17:40
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But you can play with multiple Sazhes in this version! Pretty easy to make your own custom players, and the guy who made the game was even smart enough to include Sazh as an extra player.
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Aug 13, 2013 17:54
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ImpAtom posted:Because the design and flow of combat is infinitely worse. FFXIII's structure had a lot of problems but it allowed them to design combat in such a way that it at least was relatively appropriate for the area you're in. FFXIIII-2 doesn't bother with this and so it highlights all the flaws of the FFXIII system which was designed around the idea of something more structured. You become so powerful so quickly that, even compared to FFXIII, every fight that isn't a DLC fight is utterly trivialized and not in a fun way. It takes all the flaws that FFXIII's combat had and amplifies them. No amount of cute monster hats or faster paradigm switches can change the fact that the encounter design beneath them is a complete pile of tripe. You went after the tomato first didn't you
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Aug 13, 2013 17:58
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BottledBodhisvata posted:Play Final Fantasy XIII-2 because at the end of the day it's still a better alternative to Hyperdimension Neptunia. HN1 sure. HN2, I'd argue, is better. Gust is better at making JRPG battle systems than SE. Azure_Horizon posted:Chronobind is so goddamn addictive. Seriously. In fact, if you buy XIII-2, get the DLC. It's mandatory. Don't play 13-2 if you're not getting the DLC. Considering this is how I always perceived FFXIII's battle system, XIII-2's was a net improvement. I rarely felt the flow of XIII, and even towards the end I felt it had the exact same quality as a monster-less 13-2. 13-2 added monsters which allowed you to make new and interesting paradigms with. Most importantly, this system added some goddamn variety. You could argue that 13-2 is very  and I absolutely agree. Past the first few stages, the cracks really start to show. But I never felt structure with 13 and I certainly don't here. The rest of your criticisms can just as easily be applied to 13's system.
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Aug 13, 2013 18:31
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Not sure if this has been discussed yet, but there's a kickstarter for a JRPG with a bunch of Eastern and Western talent (including Uematsu!) http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1300298569/project-phoenix-japans-indie-rpg-feat-aaa-talent Kickstarter posted:Project Phoenix is a fantasy themed squad-based real-time strategy game combined with Japanese RPG design influences. The game draws you in with its breathtaking fantasy world, deep storyline, Japanese character designs, and a memorable cast, most notably, the band of heroes under your command. Furthermore, its intuitive real-time tactical combat is dynamic, fluid, and streamlined, allowing you to experience the strategic options without being bogged down by overwhelming archaic battle systems.
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Aug 13, 2013 19:00
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BottledBodhisvata posted:Play Final Fantasy XIII-2 because at the end of the day it's still a better alternative to Hyperdimension Neptunia. I'm just gonna get Tales of Vesperia like everyone said Never played a Tales game before but from what people said the combat is a lot like SO4's so I know I'll like that at last. It does seem to be one of the more popular (among the hard to please fanbases of forums like these) JRPGs of this home console generation.
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Aug 13, 2013 19:11
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I've been continuing with my FFIX playthrough (Just finished Mount Gulug) and i'm using a different team to my usual one of Zidane, Vivi, Steiner and Eiko - Zidane, Vivi, Freya and Amarant. It's a little tricky not using white magic at all, but I didn't realise just how strong some of Freya's dragon skills are (namely White Draw which is loving crazy when paired with stuff like MP attack on Zidane/Amarant and half-MP Meteor on Vivi) and Amarant can basically act like jesus all the time to all my guys too, with all his revive skills. Took out Meltigumi in like 4 turns which was ridiculous, so now i've got an airship and a gold chocobo to gently caress around on.
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Aug 13, 2013 21:49
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SSNeoman posted:The rest of your criticisms can just as easily be applied to 13's system. They really can't though, which is the problem. As I said, the difference between a low-level FFXIII game and a low-level FFXIII-2 game are night and day because it really highlights the difference between the two. Most of the encounters in FFXIII were designed (and in fact overly-designed) and stand out as fairly unique if you're not obliterating them. In FFXIII-2 they're basically interchangeable blobs with very little thought put into their abilities or AI patterns. This is largely because the game has no real way to know what abilities you have so they just went 'gently caress it' and made bland interchangeable enemies vulnerable to everything. I'm hoping that Lightning Returns bringing you down to one character (even if that character is super-customized) means they're going to put more effort into making the enemies have actual interesting attack patterns.
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Aug 13, 2013 22:15
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Thievery posted:I've been continuing with my FFIX playthrough (Just finished Mount Gulug) and i'm using a different team to my usual one of Zidane, Vivi, Steiner and Eiko - Zidane, Vivi, Freya and Amarant. It's a little tricky not using white magic at all, but I didn't realise just how strong some of Freya's dragon skills are (namely White Draw which is loving crazy when paired with stuff like MP attack on Zidane/Amarant and half-MP Meteor on Vivi) and Amarant can basically act like jesus all the time to all my guys too, with all his revive skills. Amarant also has that skill that gives enemies an elemental weakness, which pairs really well with Vivi. Also he can Chakra MP when he's got nothing better to do.
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Aug 13, 2013 22:16
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FF13 was a corridor and so the enemy difficulty was paced exquisitely (for an ff) and if you didnt understand the stagger/buff/debuff system by the time you fought the first spacepope you were hosed. a lot of bosses and regular encounters from spacepope through the end of the game are genuinely challenging (and fun). FF13-2 is the exact opposite of a corridor and so SE has no idea when you'll run into any enemies, and the elegant solution they devised was "make every encounter trivial regardless of party strength". it's pacing is a mess, and i was able to get through chapter 5 without ever changing my paradigm pack or levelling up my monsters.
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Aug 13, 2013 22:46
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One thing that really brought down the battle system in XIII-2 is that enemies are usually killed before you get a chance to stagger them. The whole point of XIII's battle system was that you were juggling the enemies' stagger bars using the paradigm system, so you'd use ravagers to boost it up, and use commandos to prevent it from dropping back down again. Then, once the enemy has been staggered, you could either use ravagers to increase the damage bonus, or inflict a ton of damage with commandos. Without this, all battles would end up with you just attacking enemies, and using a medic to heal anyone who gets damaged. Since you want to defeat enemies quickly, you have to sacrifice your defence to build up stagger as fast as possible, and to use the small window of time that they're vulnerable to take off most of their health. None of this strategy is required in XIII-2 outside of boss battles. The core gameplay element has been reduced to button mashing, and the rest is occupied by minigames and load times.
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Aug 13, 2013 23:41
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Schwartzcough posted:Amarant also has that skill that gives enemies an elemental weakness, which pairs really well with Vivi. Also he can Chakra MP when he's got nothing better to do. Does that work on bosses? Time to finish replaying ff9 now that 4JF is almost over.
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Aug 13, 2013 23:49
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Fingers McLongDong posted:Does that work on bosses? Time to finish replaying ff9 now that 4JF is almost over. Pretty sure. I seem to recall using it on the second-to-last boss last time I played.
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Aug 13, 2013 23:59
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That's fine, I didn't really need this paycheck or anything. http://www.shapeways.com/shops/joabaldwin?section=Final+Fantasy+7&l=36
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Aug 14, 2013 00:01
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Pyroxene Stigma posted:That's fine, I didn't really need this paycheck or anything. A cheaper option would be to make them as papercraft models which would be pretty easy due to their simple geometry, though whether it's worth it would come down to if you value your money or your time more.
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Aug 14, 2013 01:40
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Thievery posted:I've been continuing with my FFIX playthrough (Just finished Mount Gulug) and i'm using a different team to my usual one of Zidane, Vivi, Steiner and Eiko - Zidane, Vivi, Freya and Amarant. It's a little tricky not using white magic at all, but I didn't realise just how strong some of Freya's dragon skills are (namely White Draw which is loving crazy when paired with stuff like MP attack on Zidane/Amarant and half-MP Meteor on Vivi) and Amarant can basically act like jesus all the time to all my guys too, with all his revive skills. I like Zidane, Freya, Vivi and Quina--Quina can do some great healing and buffs on her own. In fact, that was the only party I ever beat Ozma with!
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Aug 14, 2013 02:41
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NikkolasKing posted:I'm just gonna get Tales of Vesperia like everyone said Never played a Tales game before but from what people said the combat is a lot like SO4's so I know I'll like that at last. Tales of Vesperia is certainly one of the best JRPG's I've played.
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Aug 14, 2013 07:44
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Nickname Pending posted:Tales of Vesperia is certainly one of the best JRPG's I've played. I just can't get into any of the Tales games after playing Tales of Destiny. It's a PSX throwback RPG with amusing writing and never takes itself too seriously. I suppose part of it is my general hatred for voice acting in RPGs, I can read much faster than your two-bit actors can deliver the lines. Vesperia wasn't awful, it seemed better than Symphonia, just couldn't get into it. From what I've read, NikkolasKing will probably love it.
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Aug 14, 2013 07:49
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Pyroxene Stigma posted:I just can't get into any of the Tales games after playing Tales of Destiny. It's a PSX throwback RPG with amusing writing and never takes itself too seriously. I suppose part of it is my general hatred for voice acting in RPGs, I can read much faster than your two-bit actors can deliver the lines. Vesperia wasn't awful, it seemed better than Symphonia, just couldn't get into it. From what I've read, NikkolasKing will probably love it.
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Aug 14, 2013 08:12
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TheEggsBenedict posted:Ehh, if you can't handle voice acting for some reason, the series really isn't for you. Part of what makes the Tales of Series so great are the skits, which can make you love a character that you hated a few minutes ago. The thing is, skits are extremely dull without voice acting. I'd be all over the idea if I could just read through them, they'd literally take 1/4th of the time and that'd help the anime aspects greatly. And I've watched a number of series.
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Aug 14, 2013 08:16
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Pyroxene Stigma posted:I'd be all over the idea if I could just read through them, they'd literally take 1/4th of the time and that'd help the anime aspects greatly. And I've watched a number of series.
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Aug 14, 2013 08:19
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Thievery posted:half-MP Meteor on Vivi Meteor, on the other hand, loves to miss. Its hit % formula is ((Level/2) + Spirit)% so it can actually never have a 100% hit rate (Spirit caps at 50 and while Vivi's can certainly reach that level, his natural Spr growth is pretty bad and without using the super-obscure stat-boosting method, it caps in the neighborhood of like 25 or 28. If it matters to you, you can find the formula and the stat growth charts here). Meteor is nice now because it has a high base power, but really it's just kind of disappointing in general. Fur20 fucked around with this message at 08:48 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 08:41
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The White Dragon posted:Please save yourself a lot of headaches and never use Meteor. Just buy Reflect x2 and give everyone Reflect to bounce target-all Bio off your party (0.5 multi-target x 2 Reflectx2 x 4 targets everyone in the party). Half MP isn't even necessary because Bio is so cheap. Auto-Reflect is a great strategy, but not always viable when playing the game because of how many stones it eats up and you can't heal unless you have Eiko or Dagger equip the ability to pierce Reflect (which takes up even more stones). You could use Quina's White Wind, but it's not really the best. You could probably get away with just hitting enemies for elemental weaknesses if you need to (every monster in the game barring humanoid ones have an elemental weakness, so unless it's Earth, Wind or Holy, Vivi can hit it) for most of the game, and just rely on Doomsday setups in Disc 4. Also Auto-Reflect kinda bones you for the last boss on Disc 3 and the penultimate one in Disc 4.
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Aug 14, 2013 08:50
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dukerson posted:Not sure if this has been discussed yet, but there's a kickstarter for a JRPG with a bunch of Eastern and Western talent (including Uematsu!) I'm really hoping this will be good. I kind of agree with their statement that JRPG's have been a bit too focused on flashy graphics and changing up the battle system just for the sake of changing it. A "back to the basics" approach may be a good thing. I'm positive to the project at least, and I hope they reach a lot of the stretch goals.
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Aug 14, 2013 08:54
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Pyroxene Stigma posted:I'd be all over the idea if I could just read through them, they'd literally take 1/4th of the time and that'd help the anime aspects greatly. And I've watched a number of series. After a shitton of games, Xillia finally lets you skip through dialogue in skits. Certainly took them long enough.
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Aug 14, 2013 09:31
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ApplesandOranges posted:Auto-Reflect is a great strategy, but not always viable when playing the game because of how many stones it eats up and you can't heal unless you have Eiko or Dagger equip the ability to pierce Reflect (which takes up even more stones). I'm really not a fan of Doomsday simply because I consider equipment to be more valuable than Ability Stones. I hate having to wear Dark Gear and lovely Demon Mail just so I don't die to it.
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Aug 14, 2013 09:44
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BottledBodhisvata posted:I like Zidane, Freya, Vivi and Quina--Quina can do some great healing and buffs on her own. In fact, that was the only party I ever beat Ozma with! I've never got into using Quina - when I was using him back on disc 2, his physical attacks were really weak and even though I tried to get as many blue magics as I could, he still seemed a bit poo poo. Any tips on him would be appreciated though. He's one of the characters, like Steiner, that you lose control of so often throughout the story that I rarely bother to keep them up to date. The White Dragon posted:Please save yourself a lot of headaches and never use Meteor. Just buy Reflect x2 and give everyone Auto-Reflect to bounce target-all Bio off your party (0.5 multi-target x 2 Reflectx2 x 4 targets everyone in the party). Half MP isn't even necessary because Bio is so cheap. I used it throughout Gulug since I had no one that could cast reflect and no auto reflect, and yeah it probably missed around 40% of the time. Super frustrating, but when it did hit I was doing around 6K damage to everything. Picked up a reflect ring from Dagguero earlier though so now I can gently caress around with that strategy instead. ApplesandOranges posted:
Do Amarant's Flair abilities (Chakra/Aura) get reflected, or Freya's stuff like Reis's Wind? I assume not, which is cool for reflecting. I never really got in depth with playing RPGs so I don't know formulas, best tactics, or anything like that, but it's been fun trying out new poo poo and realizing hey, maybe I don't need a white mage.
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Aug 14, 2013 16:30
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I've been playing through IX, and have just finished the monster hunting event in Lindblum, after several restarts to make sure that I win. However, I've heard that it's better to let Freya win, since you get a better reward in the end. I don't think I'll play past the end of the first disc, though, since the battles are unbearably slow. This is made worse by me playing the PAL version, since I would need to do an account switch on my Vita to play the NTSC version, and am having to play it at 5/6th speed. Compared to VII, the battles take an absolute eternity to begin, and even at the fastest ATB speed my characters can sometimes act half a minute after I gave them a command. I also heard that the quality of the game declines with each disc, and the charm and humour is lost over time. If I'm going to beat this game, I'll have to find a way to move my save file on to a computer, so I can play it on an emulator with a speed up function. I used to think people complaining about this were overreacting, but it's really dragging the game down for me.
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Aug 14, 2013 17:10
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It's still a pretty uncommon opinion, and I've never understood why it kept people from playing further. There are many, MANY slower jRPGs.
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Aug 14, 2013 18:01
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FFIX's battles are slow. Sometimes it can feel like a drag even if you're just fighting 2 guys, which is a shame because the game itself is amazing. I'm not sure who gave you the impression it gets worse as you play on though - it's really strong all the way through, up until the very very end boss which you can just ignore and pretend didn't exist. edit - oh also if Zidane wins you get gil, if Vivi wins you get a card, if Freya wins you get a coral ring which is great for the stage you get it. Either kill Zidane by attacking yourself in your first fight and see if Freya wins, or fight til you reach the Zahgnol then make sure Freya gets the last hit.
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Aug 14, 2013 18:03
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