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The XIII games all share this big complex mythology but they only go into the parts that are relevant at the time, so XIII has a lot of stuff about Pulse, Lindzei, etc. because they play into the whole Pulse/Cocoon thing, whereas XIII-2 is almost entirely focused on Etro and why she's a big dumb fuckup. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUlt89pbMl8
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May 22, 2012 00:45
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NikkolasKing posted:I just don't like how it undermines the game's entire frickin' message. You're supposed to be heroes carving your own destiny by resisting the tyrannical gods. When I played I had no idea about the goddess stuff, I thought they'd gone for the old anime trope where the heroes achieve the impossible and win through sheer force of will, so I thought it was a bad ending for the opposite reason - they'd followed those themes straight into a really cheap, pat ending. By the time I found out I was wrong during XIII-2 I was okay with it because it swings so hard in the other direction, it starts to work again.
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May 22, 2012 01:52
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Sazh dies in Nautilus and the rest of the game is his dying mind trying to put everything together.
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May 22, 2012 13:17
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Azure_Horizon posted:I dunno about that at all. The fact that Squall takes a near-fatal wound and then is magically better with no holes in his clothes or any sign of the wound is bizarre enough. Any cohesiveness in FF8 is only felt in Disc 1. Afterward, everything just kind of falls apart. That cutscene had battle physics is all. She did her limit break on him, and if I remember right someone literally casts Cure on him in prison to heal him up.
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May 22, 2012 22:27
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Pesky Splinter posted:
Ideas are cheap, it's everything else that takes time to develop. They reused the game engine and a shitload of art assets.
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May 24, 2012 20:12
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"Oh, but
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TurnipFritter posted:There's absolutely nothing wrong with reusing a game engine. I'm not saying there's anything wrong, I'm saying that's why it was so quick to come out.
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May 24, 2012 20:21
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Schwartzcough posted:FF8 really is a mess. Watching the latest LP really lets you pick out how almost every scene introduces several plot holes, or things that can theoretically be explained but only if the explanation is that everyone is monumentally retarded. It's pretty clear that no one on the writing staff really took a hard, critical look at the script after it was written and asked, "does this make sense?" The guy writing it though, no offense, but I'm pretty sure FF8 killed his dog or something. What other impression could you possibly get through that kind of lens?
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May 25, 2012 12:46
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This Jacket Is Me posted:What actually changed for the better in the gameplay? The paradigm system seems entirely the same as in FF13, and the ambush button mashing thing just makes fights easier. Paradigm shifting doesn't take loving forever and you're given a ton of options up front, so the fights are designed with more emphasis on planning and quick reaction. There's still a lot of "stagger, murder, repeat" as you approach the end but overall it's much more snappy.
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Jun 11, 2012 12:43
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Barudak posted:Now let me tell you about Final Fantasy Legends III, the one where the plot is that all of existence is a gameshow and the final boss is the producer of your TV series which he is trying to cancel. Star Ocean 3?!
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Jun 14, 2012 20:23
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Allan Assiduity posted:Apparently, some people think that XIII-3 will involve the Thirteenth Ark based on its two-second appearance in XIII-2 and something from the Datalog. Here's hoping you're right about this. People in that one area in 13-2 kept saying "look it's the 13th ark!" and I could never figure out what the gently caress they were talking about, so it'll be nice to see that thread picked up. I can't wait to climb aboard that thing and play a rehash of literally the most boring dungeon in either game.
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Jul 5, 2012 23:27
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The White Dragon posted:Anything that requires you to read more than, say, five to ten NPC boxes of flavor to engage you or for you to sufficiently enjoy it or tell you everything meaningful you need to know about a place is an absolute failure. That's... really not true at all.
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Jul 6, 2012 17:25
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The White Dragon posted:So you're saying a setting that requires a loving encyclopedia to get anything more out of than "my what a pretty setting" isn't a complete failure? Ok I agree. That's not what you said before though. Read your own post again, it's crazy. The White Dragon posted:Anything that requires you to read more than, say, five to ten NPC boxes of flavor to engage you or for you to sufficiently enjoy it or tell you everything meaningful you need to know about a place is an absolute failure. FF13 is wordy and intangible, but that's not a failure in itself. The Ivalice games are too, only they're backed up by people, politics and events that aren't stupid.
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Jul 6, 2012 22:48
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You can take or leave the ending of FF13-2, but comparing it to ME3 is kind of silly. Mass Effect was all about actions having long-tailed consequences, and then the ending gave you a whole new problem and a meaningless choice. FF13-2 is basically episodic and not super serious, but at the end it follows through on all the bad poo poo you were forewarned about (and probably ignored) in a sequence that mirrors the end of FF13, where they chickened out and pulled a happy ending out of thin air. 13-2 is about how that kind of ending wrecks the integrity of a fictional world and gradually turns players numb and incredulous.
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Jul 12, 2012 00:38
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Pesky Splinter posted:At the very least, there are plenty of interesting ideas in XIII, but they are told so badly, or pushed aside in favour of whatever other nonsense the writers wanted to shove down our throats. I couldn't help thinking they wrote the whole thing in summary and fed it to a robot to connect all the dots. Idea: "Hope is paired up with the guy he hates. They clash! It's tough, but they work out their differences in the end." Execution: Hope is with Lightning. Snow appears. Lightning goes away somewhere else. Snow redeems himself by accident. Tempo 119 fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Jul 12, 2012 |
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Jul 12, 2012 01:42
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I followed the X-2 strategy guide and lost the 100% for skipping a cutscene. It's in the same pile as IX for me - great FF games that I never want to see or play again as long as I live.
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Jul 13, 2012 16:44
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Gammatron 64 posted:That's kind of a flaw with almost every Final Fantasy game. A lot of them have "gently caress you, buy the guide" moments. The worst offenders are those chests you can't open in FFXII or else you miss out on the best weapon, and all those summons you had to draw out of bosses in FFVIII or else you miss out on them forever. How are you supposed to know they had a summon you had to draw? The punchline to both of these is that you get 2nd chances, but they're exactly as obscure as before. You didn't know to draw from this one specific boss at the start of the game, hopefully you'll know about this other specific boss at the end instead! 
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Jul 13, 2012 17:50
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Himuro posted:I'm not sure if I could call that mediocrity because the music is far from mediocre. It's something prominent with a lot of Sakimoto soundtracks, depending on the game. I can say the same is true for a lot of his Matsuno games, FFT included. If that's mediocre to you, I don't know what to say. It's definitely better arranged than Uematsu's offerings, it's just that it lacks a giant emphasis on melodic elements, if we're talking purely technical musical terms which Uematsu has a hard on for, given his lack of skill in well arranged tracks. I wouldn't say it's bad or anything, technically, but there's no way it's a good sign for me to be clicking through all these youtubes and not recognising a single thing from a game I played for tens of hours.
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Jul 16, 2012 22:30
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Renoistic posted:Do you get something cool for unlocking the extra endings in FFXIII-2 o r should I just watch them on Youtube? (still miffed about the ending) The paradox endings are worth seeing, you'll need to do them to get all the fragments, but the reward for that is just another ending that's not worth it. Here is all of it: "hi I'm Caius, the main ending was the real one, bye". So yeah just Youtube them if you don't want to play any more.
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Jul 17, 2012 19:24
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13 is about Lightning 13-2 is about someone else looking for Lightning 13-3 is about Lightning's mom 13-4 is about Old Lightning
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Aug 22, 2012 17:40
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Harlock posted:It's pretty disappointing that for the 25th anniversary they're making a sequel of an average sequel to a luke-warm game. Playing Theatrhythm right now, this anniversary's already a success as far as I'm concerned.
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Aug 22, 2012 20:05
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Harlock posted:We'll see how long that lasts. The bad guy's goal was to end death, and he succeeded so she was probably alive again before the credits even rolled.
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Sep 1, 2012 07:30
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Azraden posted:So I'm about 15 minutes into a video about Lightning Returns, does this Totally-Original-Not-Even-On-The-Internet idea of WORLD DRIVEN actually amount to anything other than 'yeah we did a lot of world building stuff'? Because slapping a dumb name on something that already exists doesn't make something totally original. Stories are typically character-driven (compelling characters do things) or plot-driven (characters do compelling things), so I suppose a world-driven story is where the setting/backstory is over-complicated - oops I mean compelling - and the characters and plot act as a window into it.
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Sep 1, 2012 13:13
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The stuff in the video about how the world runs on a schedule and you have to wait for trains and poo poo sounds so tedious, hopefully they won't go too far with that.
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Sep 1, 2012 14:09
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Also that part in Advent Children where Cloud puts on a skirt made of feathers and rides a horse.
Tempo 119 fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Sep 1, 2012 |
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Sep 1, 2012 20:40
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Has there been a good Let's Play of Lost Odyssey? I never finished it, so if I could read through the first half of the plot and then pick up from my old old disc 3 save that would be perfect.
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Sep 3, 2012 17:28
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Pesky Splinter posted:From the top going clockwise: I was going to try this but I couldn't name half the people. Here's what you missed: There's a moogle by Cecil, there's a dragon at the top, Yuna's a ghost, the crystal has impaled Sephiroth through the heart, and Squall through the butt. Tempo 119 fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Sep 6, 2012 |
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Sep 6, 2012 23:33
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It's been ages since I played so maybe this is off base, but I feel like the whole game is about maybe two of those things, and the rest of it isn't really explored in any meaningful way, similar to how FF8 just says "teenage mercs, hosed up right? So anyway," Like it's there and it's all very interesting if you weave it together yourself, but the game will only concern itself with any one thing for 5 minutes at the end of a sidequest, and then it never affects anything again. Tempo 119 fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Sep 8, 2012 |
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Sep 8, 2012 15:26
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My Lovely Horse posted:I keep seeing FFXIII for really cheap in stores lately. Now when it came out I pretty much read the reviews and said "hahaha no thanks" but... it's kind of starting to look tempting. I played them all except XI and XIV, and there's none I didn't like, although the ones I enjoyed most are V to X, broadly speaking. Think it's worth it to pick it up today or will I just sit there after 30 hours going "NOPE STILL poo poo"? If you've liked every other one I'm 100% sure you'll get something out of it.
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Sep 8, 2012 15:49
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I hope I'm not the only one reading this music discussion and having to look up almost every song on Youtube. I know them when I hear them but the names just fall right out of my head.
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Sep 10, 2012 16:11
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NikkolasKing posted:Absolutely not. I wouldn't say I hated XIII but when i was done with it, I was done with it forever. I wasn't a fan of 13 by the end of it either, but 13-2 (I bought them together...) managed to win me over. I don't know how much my affinity for poo poo time travel fiction swings it, but I thought it was much better all round. Edit: it's true about the last dungeon though, what a loving disaster. Tempo 119 fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Sep 11, 2012 |
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Sep 11, 2012 18:02
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ParliamentOfDogs posted:Are the dlc boss battles actually hard? Most of them are hard-ish, but a couple are downright unreasonable. If you're on 360, good news, there's a sale coming up this week.
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Sep 24, 2012 02:31
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kater posted:So all of FFXIII-TWO's DLC is on sale, is that stuff worth paying money for? I haven't actually played it yet but I liked the first game's brand of glittery nonsense so much I doubt I'll mind whatever problems people freaked out over. The Sazh and Lightning scenario things are pretty good minigames. The Lightning one takes place after the main story, beware of spoilers. Don't buy DLC clothes, you're better than that. Take whatever coliseum characters you like the look of, but keep in mind that they're all post-game strength (except maybe Lightning/Amodar). Gilgamesh in particular is for power gamers only. Tempo 119 fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Sep 26, 2012 |
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Sep 26, 2012 18:41
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Momomo posted:Why'd they even bother bringing Cid back to life in the first place? I realize they had the cutscene already made, but why make game content that contradicts this entirely? You could definitely create a position in which the party both fights Cid and he's killed as the new Space Pope. When I played it, I thought the Cid who got shot was Barthandelus in disguise, doing bad things to discredit Cid so the rebels would flip out. This made some kind of sense at the time, but now I don't remember where it was said in the game, if at all. The FF wiki says he was "teleported away" and didn't actually do anything. Shrug.
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Oct 6, 2012 17:57
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The only time it's worth some grinding is at one point in the final dungeon, there's an enemy called Wladislaus who gives a serious shitload of CP per kill. You can't return to that area later, so stock up a bit if you're planning to take on any post-game stuff.
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Oct 7, 2012 20:12
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TL posted:As someone who enjoyed the battle system of FFXIII but found the rest of the game so uninspiring that I turned it off halfway through and never picked it up again, would I enjoy FFXIII? Is the plot separate enough that I'll understand it without finishing XIII? Yeah, there are a few references to things that happened (you can probably pick it up from context/flashbacks, or if not there's a recap you can scan through) but it's mostly doing its own thing.
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Oct 13, 2012 16:58
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That loving Sned posted:Thanks guys! While the story is still both badly written and poorly told, at least I now have some context for the tedious poo poo I did for those 20 hours. She's all up in the datalog but never mentioned in the narrative. There are Yeul quotes in there as well. Tempo 119 fucked around with this message at 12:48 on Oct 16, 2012 |
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Oct 16, 2012 12:45
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Pesky Splinter posted:Yet I carried on, thinking it would get better. I even did the bonus dungeons. I don't know about you, but for most of that medieval planet I was thinking "I've been on this boring side story for 30 hours now, surely they'll have to go to space again soon". Tempo 119 fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Oct 19, 2012 |
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Oct 19, 2012 00:35
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What the christ was I thinking!?
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ImpAtom posted:On the other hand Star Ocean 4 featured plenty of planet travel and was many times worse for it! Only because all the most heinous character asides took place on the ship while you were travelling! I'd still rather go with that structure than spend a solid 80% chunk of the game in the wrong genre.
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Oct 19, 2012 01:10
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Eggie posted:SO3 I probably shouldn't start on this... but I still don't think that twist is as stupid as everyone says! They built it as a game, but it still functions as a complete universe. An evolution of the old "robots are people too" sci-fi trope, the Data trial but for a whole world, etc. Admittedly, at that point, I was just thrilled to be finally playing the game I was promised on the back of the box, with all spaceships and dimensions and poo poo. It's clumsy for sure, but I never quite understood why that one thing became the infamous "bad part", instead of the thing where absolutely nothing happens for dozens of hours. Tempo 119 fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Oct 19, 2012 |
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Oct 19, 2012 17:40
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ImpAtom posted:It's really a stupid twist because it still functions as a game. Like you meet people who play the game or hack their characters to get stronger or alter the parameters. Instead of "We created a universe" it is "we created a pretty bitchin' game that we can alter freely." That's what shithead gods and devils do in every other fantasy story, just bust into our realm of existence to gently caress with us. All SO3 does differently is show them at home, in a form we understand. Creation myths like "we were made as an experiment" or "we were made for entertainment" have been around forever, but they tend to stop short of exploring the creator's perspective. If you unpack those ideas at all, then yeah of course we're in a computer or a petri dish or something. I actually think FF13/FNC suffers much more by going the opposite route. Nothing is allowed to be mundane; everything important is totally vague and abstract. That's a huge problem when you're writing for a video game because it's impossible to convey ideas like "Etro the bumbling goddess that no living person has heard of" or "the Unseen World where chaos is recycled" without just up and turning into a book.
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Oct 20, 2012 00:30
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