Airship Travel Returns in Final Fantasy Versus XIII

[Tehlanna TPX]

Finally! I was so bummed about losing this ability. Free roaming, here I come!

 

[RvLeshrac]

Still, earlier Final Fantasy games gave a feeling of freedom and excitement right from the beginning, rather than locking players into a set path and shoveling them along it.

Although actually there are only two Final Fantasy games that actually provide freedom from the beginning, and if you asked 95% of the fanbase to rank the games by quality, those two would be at the bottom. That'd be Final Fantasy II and Final Fantasy X-2.

Every other Final Fantasy game has been just as constrained and linear as FFXIII, but apparently people are bad at spotting this when presented with the appearance of free movement given by an overworld map, even if there's precisely one new location accessable at any given time.

In my opinion, not quite. For example, in the original Final Fantasy for the NES, you can at least roam around the world map. You can try to get enemies to drop special items, level up, try to earn some gold to buy new spells, etc. Most of the following Final Fantasy games followed this formula. As far as being free to roam the world, that comes later. To me, Final Fantasy XIII does not feel as free as the others, while those others may still be constrained in certain ways.

You felt like you could wander around in Final Fantasy, but there was only one significant place to go for much of the game, and wandering around was only good for XP and money. (Item drops didn't happen until FF2) Until you'd done the earth orb and beaten Lich you were on a fixed path, then you were free to sequence break, though the enemies were frequently far too hard to make it practical unless you'd gained some levels. (The usual sequence break is to get the class change early and then go back to the rest of the game in order anyway).

I'm with you there, that you were really tied in to going to this dungeon or that area, but wandering for XP and money alone (thanks for the correction on items) gave me a "feeling" of freedom, even though I may not have been totally free. That feeling is nowhere in the beginning of FFXIII, as the game just shovels you forward along a path. In FF's of the past, walking backwards would at least have you encounter an enemy or two, and you could explore towns, and you could save up for new equipment, and you might learn a new spell by leveling up. It just feels like this level of depth has disappeared... again from the early portion of FFXIII (as I still need to put more hours into it), and to some of us it's boring. In FF6's early hours I fought in Magitek armor while enslaved, I had a multiple group fight using moogles of varying abilities, and I was constantly able to find new relics (some requiring secret methods to get) to build my characters. Instead, FFXIII has me walk forward and press auto-battle, simply put.

FFXIII never *seriously* gets any better about this. There are, after about 30 hours, side-quests you can do, but your characters are cocgrowth-blocked until well past that point.

That's the real problem. Since your characters' abilities and stats are capped for most of the game, you *CAN* go back and fight earlier enemies, but since later tiers of the Sphere Grid Crystarium can cost dozens of thousands of CP per sphere crystal, there's just no reason.

Even *worse* is the fact that shops are locked-down *HARD*. You can't get "better" equipment or "more powerful" items, you can only get the equipment and items which are carefully crafted to be level- and story-appropriate.

 

[RvLeshrac]

It's true that FFXIII starts out with a more constrained path than previous games (except FFX, which is basically the same thing, here is a line, you will walk along it now), and the section of the game comprising chapters 1-10 should really have been shorter.

I think they were trying to deliberately reproduce the stark difference between the opening section of FFVII where you're confined to Midgar and there's an equally linear path, but they overstretched it. If I were given funky time travel mojo to make them change it, I'd cut out any bits from that section where you controlled people other than Lightning, and shortened chapters 1-10 from 20+ hours to about 8 (Which is generally how long Midgar takes first time).

There are some sections of that bit that really feel like padding, and when you get to chapter 11 you will forgive the game, but resent the padding even more for keeping you from the juicy meat.

If I were given funky time travel mojo to make them change FFXIII, I'd make it not FFVII - but I think a sharp dressed stick-figure in a nice hat already made my point two days ago.

 

[GloatingSwine]

If I were given funky time travel mojo to make them change FFXIII, I'd make it not FFVII - but I think a sharp dressed stick-figure in a nice hat already made my point two days ago.

He certainly made a point, but his taste in videogames is somewhat suspect. FFXIII is already significantly not FFVII (for a start, the class system and progression system is actually interesting), there's only really one way in which it was trying to be. The meat of the game, story and sidequest wise, is more like FFXII with linear corridors because everyone qqd about the wide open spaces that made them all lost and small and alone and confused. (Of course, the linear corridors just made everyone qq more, and complain that they didn't like these linear corridors and they wanted the ones from FFX back).

 

[Hollywood Knights]

So obviously what everyone wants. Hate the linear corridors, love the free roaming WORLD MAP!

I'm enjoying the airship themes, too, especially the Highwind one

 

[Ben Legend]

*ahem* *walks up to a microphone overlooking several thousand people*

"FUCK.....YEAH"

I honestly cannot wait, oh and yeah, Lost Odyssey had travel similar to the older Final Fantasy's.

Check it out on You Tube if you can spare a few minutes and let me know what you think of it?