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Fight Club Sandwich posted:Who cares if there's towns or not. looking up on gamefaqs to go into random house #4 to talk to some NPC's cat to continue the game isn't fun at all. Yeah, you're making some serious straw-man arguments here. Towns are places to hear funny little stories from the residents, watch dancers perform, go hunting for pianos, check out stores to decide how to spend your money, leisurely explore all the nooks and crannies for items hidden in pots, get turned into a frog, get dressed up in drag, play cards with people, hunt for sidequest hooks, seduce a moogle using a moogle suit to get treasures, play hide-and-seek with your thieving team mate, etc. It's all the stuff that makes you feel invested in the WORLD instead of simply what attacks to use on what monsters. And sure, a lot of minigames suck, especially the dedicated minigames. But some are fun (you missed Chocobo Hot & Cold), and some of them can barely be called "minigames" but they're gameplay changes to keep things fresh - FF7 was full of them, from the full-fledged motorcycle fights and sub battles, to little things like getting into a squats competition for a wig or playing simon-says military pageantry. FFXIII is a one-note game, which is why people get sick of it after a couple hours. It's just an endless parade of the doing the exact same thing.
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Feb 10, 2014 21:44
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Schwartzcough posted:Yeah, you're making some serious straw-man arguments here. Towns are places to hear funny little stories from the residents, watch dancers perform, go hunting for pianos, check out stores to decide how to spend your money, leisurely explore all the nooks and crannies for items hidden in pots, get turned into a frog, get dressed up in drag, play cards with people, hunt for sidequest hooks, seduce a moogle using a moogle suit to get treasures, play hide-and-seek with your thieving team mate, etc. It's all the stuff that makes you feel invested in the WORLD instead of simply what attacks to use on what monsters. i think maybe i just hate JRPGs
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Feb 10, 2014 21:48
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Pasteurized Milk posted:Waiting until the day they start selling gold and level ups like the Tales of Series. I'd honestly love to see the sales data on these, by the way. I can't imagine people who play JRPGs actually buy that sorta stuff.
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Feb 10, 2014 21:50
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Schwartzcough posted:FFXIII is a one-note game, which is why people get sick of it after a couple hours. It's just an endless parade of the doing the exact same thing. *Cutscene Starts* "We've got to keep running!" "Yeah!" *Fight* *Cutscene Starts* "We've got to keep running!" "Yeah!" *Fight* *Cutscene Starts* "We've got to keep running!" "Yeah!" *Fight* Ad fractum discus.  XIII-2 is better in this regard, and judging from what's been said about Lightning Returns, that's also looking to better in that area also. Pesky Splinter fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Feb 10, 2014 |
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Feb 10, 2014 21:51
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Admiral H. Curtiss posted:What kind of arcane magic do you have to do to beat the boss in ten seconds? I can barely get a minute! This is the basic strategy if you don't have a Magical rod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BftQzs_8Wuk
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Feb 10, 2014 21:52
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Admiral H. Curtiss posted:I'd honestly love to see the sales data on these, by the way. I can't imagine people who play JRPGs actually buy that sorta stuff. I think someone in the Xillia thread mentioned buying one because they couldn't beat a boss.
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Feb 10, 2014 21:55
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Fight Club Sandwich posted:Who cares if there's towns or not. looking up on gamefaqs to go into random house #4 to talk to some NPC's cat to continue the game isn't fun at all. This is exactly what I had do to complete XIII-2, although it was to find something necessary to complete the game. Near the end of the story, Hope asks you to collect some things for him so he can open the final dungeon. There's a thing that tells you where the things I need to find are located, but the areas I haven't been able to visit yet require a Wild Artefact to unlock, and all but two of the Wild Artefacts are located in areas that require a Wild Artefact to access in the first place. These two Artefacts are located in the casino, which despite over an hour of gambling I never came close to being able to afford, and one which was hidden off the edge of a cliff on the far side of the largest area in the game, which can only be seen by adjusting the camera in a very specific way. After all that bullshit, the final dungeon was absolutely atrocious. Despite being massively overleveled for the entire game, there was a huge difficulty spike and I only just managed to scrape through the enemies and boss battles to finish the game. The dungeon was also full of timed jumping puzzles, so if you get impatient and try to jump to a platform before it turns away then you'll have to repeat a lot of it. It's the worst RPG I've ever played through to the end, but at least even with all its padding, recycling, and non-linearity, it only took me 20 hours compared to the first game's 40 hours. Give me corridors and fun battles over the most tedious fetch quest ever conceived. It's like it was made so awful just so XIII would have something to favourably compare to.
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Feb 10, 2014 22:07
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Fight Club Sandwich posted:that's correct; 13 does away with all the "fluff" like towns, NPCs, minigames, etc. Another common complaint was that the battle system was too difficult (for an ff game) and that there was no way to break the game and become stupid powerful. Uh. You're welcome to your opinion, but it's also the wrong opinion. Everything about FF13-2 was a step up on ff13. - Less annoying characters - characters that used to be annoying aren't anymore - noel. - noel's voice actor - story is interesting, then again scifi technobabble =  - combat is still really boring and terrible but it's fast, and it's easy to overlevel everything and just one shot things, which is good because the least amount of time spent in combat, the happier I am. - minigames are okay. - arena thing was okay, i don't really care for arenas. Tempo 119 posted:The bundle pack is $17 for everything except the assassin/N7 outfits and the useless preorder weapons. So it's basically an EA game then. Or an Activision game. The outfits do nothing except look nice iirc (and they actually worked in cutscenes, which I liked), the rest could be missed with no real loss. Really the biggest problem is the story trying to be more clever than it is because of the writer, the linearity of level design, the characters being weak (again because of the writer), the whole "well, we want a turn based rpg but we also don't want it to be real time, lets do this and ignore that people have designed RTwP games in the west (because the west doesn't exist)". I had another thing but I've gone and forgotten. Pesky Splinter posted:*Cutscene Starts* The worst, the worst poo poo was when you watched a long cutscene, they gave control back to you, your character is in a new place now. You move your character forward (the only direction available) not even 2 feet and suddenly you're in another big cutscene. Really, what was even the point of giving me control if you're just going to take it away again? It's like one big cocktease. GreenBuckanneer fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Feb 10, 2014 |
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Feb 10, 2014 22:13
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Man that difficulty spike. I'm still so buttmad at getting repeatedly wiped by proto-bahamut that I haven't turned it on in a week. gently caress that guy. To the guy asking about FFXIII - while what all these dudes said is factually true, if you don't think too hard about it and just forge ahead you will probably have a good time. Who loving cares if the story is nonsensical? What FF has ever made sense when you really break it down? Just watch the FX and kill poo poo and go for it. Also, the front 'megatutorial' section can go way faster than 15 hours if you're focused.
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Feb 10, 2014 22:16
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I liked XIII-2 way more than any normal person should but gently caress Wild Artifactes.
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Feb 10, 2014 22:16
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Fight Club Sandwich posted:i think maybe i just hate JRPGs A good town in a good RPG helps create mood, atmosphere and environment. It helps you believe in the world you're playing in. For example, Jidoor and Zozo in FFVI help you understand the differences in class in the game and let you build a story in your mind. While they tell you that the poor are just banished to Zozo, you moreso get the feeling that people first lived in Zozo, and the rich eventually moved away. Or maybe that's me thinking Zozo is Detroit and Jidoor is Grosse Point. Anyway, that's the point of a good town. It builds the world. Baten Kaitos probably has my favourite towns in a game ever. A bad town will... well, make you hate JRPGs.
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Feb 10, 2014 22:23
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Towns exist as a pacing mechanism in JRPGs. They not only provide useful rest stops where the player can recover lost resources, but they're a place of safety. A place the player can take a break and not worry about the more complex elements of the game for a while.
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Feb 10, 2014 22:32
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GreenBuckanneer posted:- combat is still really boring and terrible but it's fast, and it's easy to overlevel everything and just one shot things, which is good because the least amount of time spent in combat, the happier I am. 
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Feb 10, 2014 22:32
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Dr Pepper posted:Towns exist as a pacing mechanism in JRPGs. I don't know how much they kept up with the idea, but Square always tried to keep you on your toes about that. The first Final Fantasy had you fight a pirate in the second town. FFIV has you fight off soldiers in Kaipo and to a larger extent the attack on Fabul. FFVI starts out in a town which you're technically attacking and the town is defending. The idea is they are safe, but not always.
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Feb 10, 2014 22:47
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Ciaphas posted:The only mainline FF games I haven't played yet are FF13 and FF13-2. With Lightning Returns coming up soon I figure I might want to try those out for myself. Am I correct in understanding that the negatives, at least for the first one, are pretty much "linearity; handholding; obtuse story"? I don't really mind any of the three, as long as it's entertaining to play (and the combat system looks interesting, anyway). I was in the same boat and have been plinking away at FFXIII. I'm only at chapter 4 so it's still early, but everything I've read about the game here seems to be holding up: Good combat and graphics, everything else is just kinda there. Nothing is outright bad (yet), but nothing is very compelling either. They really do nothing to make you care about anything that's happening, either to the characters or the world. There's an empty, disconnected feeling about everything. You can tell the game is just a bunch of different ideas mashed together with no thought given for how the player will actually experience it. Still, I'm interested enough to keep going. I feel like I'm just starting to get the hang of the combat, and figuring out the best way to deal with different enemies is pretty fun. There's no real penalty for screwing up in battle anyway. You can just hit Retry and be put back right where you were before the fight started. The characters really are dull and stupid though. Everyone has been right about that.
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Feb 10, 2014 23:12
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I dunno, I liked the towns in XIII-2.  (Exception would be C'ieth city, but I did like the art style to it). I thought it was really cool that townspeople would react to Mog revealing hidden items and check out what's going on. I also thought it was neat that if you stay idle long enough, the AI party member will go off and do his/her own thing. And I really liked the combat system, and I never realized until now that it could be horribly broken early on. Other things from XIII-2 that I liked that haven't been mentioned:-Really cool soundtrack -Sentai Flan Squad -Hats for your monsters -Flanitor -Snow Villers: Time Cop -I loved finding data logs and reading the side story stuff. Basically: fronz posted:I liked XIII-2 way more than any normal person should but gently caress Wild Artifactes. Also, one of the best things to come out of the XIII series are the Ligtning event weapons in XIV.
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Feb 10, 2014 23:17
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Paper Jam Dipper posted:A good town in a good RPG helps create mood, atmosphere and environment. It helps you believe in the world you're playing in. For example, Jidoor and Zozo in FFVI help you understand the differences in class in the game and let you build a story in your mind. While they tell you that the poor are just banished to Zozo, you moreso get the feeling that people first lived in Zozo, and the rich eventually moved away. Or maybe that's me thinking Zozo is Detroit and Jidoor is Grosse Point. Anyway, that's the point of a good town. It builds the world. Baten Kaitos probably has my favourite towns in a game ever. It kinda gives me chills to imagine Midgar presented as a series of dry transition screens between battles with pop-up lore articles about Wall Market, the Church, the Sectors.
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Feb 10, 2014 23:32
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Also FFXIII-2 has the luxury of having one of the most enjoyably hammy villains in the franchise to carry its stupid nonsensical plot. Sure the things he says are over-dramatic and stupid, but he says them so convincingly and he's just ACTING as hard as possible. Caius is top tier FF villain. Up there with Brother-McThong'n'Chaps and Literally-just-a-crazy-clown.
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Feb 10, 2014 23:36
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:Also FFXIII-2 has the luxury of having one of the most enjoyably hammy villains in the franchise to carry its stupid nonsensical plot. I think you'll find the tier list starts with "A tree that hated people so much it became a wizard"
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Feb 10, 2014 23:41
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My Dad, The Apocalyptic Space Whale is up there in some tier of sorts, even if it isn't necessarily one of villainy.
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Feb 10, 2014 23:49
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It helps that Caius is voiced by I think Liam O'Brien, who is wonderful at hammy voices for videogames. Actually, in terms of hammy villains, Garland was great at that. Ham is at the root of Final Fantasy, it's been there since the beginning and it's not going away. I like that, this series needs to be a bit cheesy in places, even if it is usually taking itself seriously. Also I agree that the difficulty curve on XIII-2 is easily broken, but to me that was all part of the fun. How much could it be broken? It's like Calculator Mages in Tactics and the like, breaking stuff entirely through combining things. Helps that I love monster raising things in games. So I'd enter an area and not be worrying about how hard the enemies were, but wondering what cool things I could capture. Made one of those ridiculous Chichu builds with a guide later on, that was fun to use when I just wanted everything dead. Also it was funny because it was basically a ballsack. Well, a terribly diseased looking one anyway. But I also had Team Chocobo for fun. They were still pretty strong though.
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Feb 10, 2014 23:57
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GreenBuckanneer posted:So it's basically an EA game then. Or an Activision game. The outfits do nothing except look nice iirc (and they actually worked in cutscenes, which I liked), the rest could be missed with no real loss. I don't know what you mean by this. The DLC is fun and at $17 for the lot I would recommend it unreservedly.
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Feb 11, 2014 00:01
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People are also forgetting that XIII-2 is a game with graded QTEs where meaningless numbers get bigger the better you time button presses. It's such a stupid, dumb game.
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Feb 11, 2014 00:03
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Great Lakes Log posted:People are also forgetting that XIII-2 is a game with graded QTEs where meaningless numbers get bigger the better you time button presses. It's such a stupid, dumb game. This is the best reason to hate 13-2 right here.
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Feb 11, 2014 00:07
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Enallyniv posted:It kinda gives me chills to imagine Midgar presented as a series of dry transition screens between battles with pop-up lore articles about Wall Market, the Church, the Sectors. New Datalog Received: "The planet's dyin', Cloud!" They could have done so much more with the concept, such as have it be written by one of the player characters, or notes collected from someone else. Something like Nate's journal from the Uncharted games, full of scribbles of statues and artefacts he's come across, but also jokes about the other characters, and filled in as the game progresses. Just not an in-game Wikipedia. CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:This is the best reason to hate 13-2 right here. QTEs, like funny dialogue choices, just kind of disappear about a third of the way into the game. Besides, unless you're counting the useless monster attacks, they're just used to finish off an already dead enemy so the numbers don't have any purpose. The atrociously balanced combat and literally everything outside of the combat are far worse. That Fucking Sned fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Feb 11, 2014 |
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Feb 11, 2014 00:07
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Sunning posted:While I was reading the updates for the Unsung Story Kickstarter, there was an interesting anecdote about the Final Fatasy Tactics' casting system. I can't imagine FFT without cast times, especially since for some skills (all of the useless archer charges) you'd have to have the charge timer still, and without magic on a time delay you'd just nuke poo poo left and right without having to deal with Calculators. A few bosses would be harder but they'd have to live long enough to matter. Having no charge time in Tactics Ogre worked well due to how mp charged up over time, requiring items if you want to go faster, and aside form Dragon/Forbidden magic the only spells to worry about were things like Fenrir and Gnome with, which enemies had rare use of, and which you could single target on to stuff to murder things. Pasteurized Milk posted:Waiting until the day they start selling gold and level ups like the Tales of Series. People who buy gold and xp in a Tales game confuse me. You have to be really impatient and/or bad at video games to need help in a Tales game that badly. If you're playing co-op with others then there's no excuse because 2-4 person co-op and coordination can trivialize lots of hard fights in those games unless Xillia has drastically upped the difficulty compared to others like Vesperia or Abyss.
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Feb 11, 2014 00:08
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Great Lakes Log posted:People are also forgetting that XIII-2 is a game with graded QTEs where meaningless numbers get bigger the better you time button presses. It's such a stupid, dumb game. But the QTEs aren't like "you fail, do the whole thing over" The first qte you do if you do them right, it takes a ton of damage off the boss. But the game itself is so easy it doesn't matter if you hit them or not.
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Feb 11, 2014 00:10
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Barudak posted:I think you'll find the tier list starts with "A tree that hated people so much it became a wizard" Of course. He's Top 5. It goes Exdeath, Caius, Kuja, Kefka, and finally First-Boss-Last-Boss-Same-Boss.
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Feb 11, 2014 00:10
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Speaking of random bullshit hiding in corners, I bought the Lightning Returns guide. Because I am weak, and also I need pretty costumes. Amazon marked it down to $20 at least.
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Feb 11, 2014 00:28
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Aphrodite posted:Speaking of random bullshit hiding in corners, I bought the Lightning Returns guide. Because I am weak, and also I need pretty costumes. Which costume comes with the guide?
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Feb 11, 2014 00:32
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I'm playing 13-2 right now. I just finished the first time area. Am I good to just go through whatever gate? I'm not sure I follow how I'm supposed to go through the story.  Also, I'll never get tired of the song that just yells out "TIME AND SPACE" over and over. Capsaicin fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Feb 11, 2014 |
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Feb 11, 2014 00:34
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Capsaicin posted:I'm playing 13-2 right now. I just finished the first time area. Am I good to just go through whatever gate? I'm not sure I follow how I'm supposed to go through the story. You can return at almost any time so just go through gates when they seem fun to you.
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Feb 11, 2014 00:35
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Capsaicin posted:I'm playing 13-2 right now. I just finished the first time area. Am I good to just go through whatever gate? I'm not sure I follow how I'm supposed to go through the story. poo poo. Now I have to relisten to the soundtrack which was awesome.
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Feb 11, 2014 00:49
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ImpAtom posted:Which costume comes with the guide? It's called Art of War. It's only with the CE guide, not the regular one.
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Feb 11, 2014 00:52
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GreenBuckanneer posted:poo poo. Now I have to relisten to the soundtrack which was awesome. Blinded By Light from XIII and The Last Hunter from XIII-2 are up there among my favorite battle themes from the series. I will say the music from the recent FFs have been pretty great overall. Garuda and Titan from XIV are fantastic boss themes.
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Feb 11, 2014 00:55
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Capsaicin posted:I'm playing 13-2 right now. I just finished the first time area. Am I good to just go through whatever gate? I'm not sure I follow how I'm supposed to go through the story. The historia crux is basically your world map, the gates open paths between areas and you can jump around as much as you want. Even in the middle of a story event, as long as your party isn't separated you can just back out and play some cards or whatever. It does get locked down a couple of times through the story but the game's very obvious about warning you. If you reset/"rewind" an area it takes away all your story progress from that point on (so you can redo a dungeon or a dialogue choice or something), and when you're finished it puts everything back how it was. Tempo 119 fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Feb 11, 2014 |
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Feb 11, 2014 01:05
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My favorite tracks from ff13-2 are probably: (no real order, mostly the most iconic) Knight of the goddess Paradox Run Noel's Theme The Song Written in Time Ruined Hometown Plains of Eternity Crazy Chocobo (for the horrible attempt at melodic/thrash death metal) The Last Travel (amazing)
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Feb 11, 2014 01:09
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GreenBuckanneer posted:Crazy Chocobo (for the horrible attempt at melodic/thrash death metal) You can't mention that and not mention Limit Break.
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Feb 11, 2014 01:17
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GreenBuckanneer posted:My favorite tracks from ff13-2 are probably: (no real order, mostly the most iconic) 13-2 had an odd soundtrack. There were both a lot of misses and a lot of hits, with the latter being sadly underutilized (the aggressive version of the eclipse area's theme being the most notable one). The final boss theme also starts out cool but then just goes weird. I want the remix of it from that amazing 16 bit 13-3 trailer, though. I think on the whole 13 had the better soundtrack, but I like that they experimented a lot in 13-2's. If we had never gotten 13-2, for all its faults, the world would have been without the death metal jpop boss theme and crazy chocobo.
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Feb 11, 2014 01:25
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GreenBuckanneer posted:- noel. These were both dogshit in a way that's almost inexplicable in this day and age. Noel's voice acting is the worst in the game (yes! Worse than Mog's! Worse than Mog's!) - not embarrassingly bad like Vanille's in FFXIII, but he never, ever deviates from the same vaguely petulant tone of voice no matter what's happening around him. Even Serah managed to emote despite having no personality to speak of; how can some guy who was the last living human on the planet express this fact in a way that makes it sound like his mom forced him to clean up his room? 700 AF was the worst stage I've gone through yet, even worse than the Ci'eth mobs, because it's nothing but walking about and hearing Noel whine for thirty minutes, half of it in those wretched, tedious voice-overs. Oxxidation fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Feb 11, 2014 |
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Feb 11, 2014 02:14
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