FFXIII-3: Lightning Returns demo. Thoughts?

[Sarah Kerrigan]

I loved it. I thought the combat was pretty well fluid (it did catch itself at times when I switched to the wrong Schema and turns out I had no attack power left) The game is pretty as hell, and as a fan of the FFXIII games as a whole, I thought it was great. It's cool to finally have a different battle system. The past one was cool, I just always seemed to have trouble with it.

 

[EternallyBored]

I'm sick of the characters angsting when they have no real reason to and do it poorly.

Lightning lost her sister Serah.
Snow lost his fiance (Serah)
Sazh had his child held hostage by the government and the kid was branded a l'cie.
Hope (14 years old) watched his mom die and was thrust into conflict.

And with all the above, they are branded l'cie by cruel god-like beings, are given a task they don't know what to do and if they fail, they become monsters and have the entire world against them.

Um, yeah, they are allowed to angst all they want. I get that some might get sick of the moping and doping but come on, they can't really get fucked over much more than that and some of them handle it very well (a lot of people call Hope whiny, but if you think about it, he is a kid and his entire life has been fucked up completely)

In fact, most "angsty" characters in the series have very good reasons to do so.

I'll agree that they have good reason to be angsty, and when set up well it can work, even in FF, While it wasn't the best drama ever, I could get behind Cloud's angst in FF7, and Squall and Rinoa's angst in FF8, well, most of the time anyway.

FF13, however, for some reason the angst just comes across as half-assed. The situations caused by the angst are outlandish and ultimately they are all doing it. I think that's the games problem and why people complain about these characters being whiny, while giving people like Cloud or Squall a pass, is that after the characters become l'cie, you've got a good 10 hours of walking down a hall broken up by cutscenes where the characters argue and talk about their problems, and that's all they do, the very few cutscenes where the characters talk about something other than being l'cie, or serah, or Hope's mother, are swiftly interrupted and derailed by more talking about how screwed they all are.

Hope is the poster child of this, with past characters angst, we are usually given some time to relate to the character to better sympathize with their loss. In FF7 we get the whole first disk to get to know Aeris, so ultimately Cloud's angst over her death makes sense and moves us as an audience. Hell, practically entire plot of FF8 revolves around Rinoa and the drama of her becoming a possessed monster at some point.
Hope, on the other hand, his mother is offed within 10 minutes of his introduction, and then the next 13 hours of the game, his entire character consists of being angry over his mom (a character we didn't spend enough time with for the audience to give two shits about her), or angsting over being a l'cie (which every character constantly angsts about for the first half of the game). That gives him a justifiable reason to be angry and depressed, but if his entire character for over a dozen hours of gameplay consists of nothing but downer moments, in an entire group that spends the first 20 hours of the game bitching at each other, and having soap opera grade drama, then reason or not, people are going to call him a whiny *****, because the game failed to make us actually care about him beyond being a two dimensional vehicle for cheap drama.

Its a futuristic sci-fi fantasy setting, its not grounded in reality and they (the army) have special gear that lets them do it, if they didn't have that, the world would have much less of an impact. Its not Call of Duty, its Final Fantasy.

Yeah, except Lightning is apparently the only one in the game who possesses the snappy gravity defying device, guess that's for special forces people only, well special forces that you never actually fight in the first game, and I'll be damned if they ever even try to explain 90% of the tech in the game, FF6-10 at least gave you a hand-wavey excuse for its magi-tech. 13 hides 90% of its lore, the kind of stuff you found out about in conversations or sidequests in the previous Final Fantasies, in that stupidly massive codex that pretty much no one read. I spent 20 minutes digging through that thing to find out why Snow apparently has shirt patches that give him super strength, still never found out what the fuck was up with hope's boomerang. In previous FF's, character abilities usually extended from uniquely magical artifacts, or special abilities inherent to that character, the problem with switching it all to readily available in-game technology is that you have to come up with at least an excuse for why none of your enemies seem to have it, 13 doesn't seem to bother even trying to explain why the main characters have this unique technology.


Also, the characters just pull random shit out of their ass as needed, like those gravity bombs that were never mentioned previously, no indication that the party had them, and are never mentioned again. Yes, sci-fi fantasy doesn't need to be grounded in reality, but it still needs to follow its own internal logic, otherwise its just a plot device that doesn't make any sense and breaks a players suspension of disbelief.

 

[Maximum Bert]

Of course, the battle system was the weakest part of the game, a lot of people complained FFXII played itself, but it only did that if you yourself made it do that (gambit system was excellent) In XIII, the auto-battle feature selects the absolute best possible commands in your paradigm and was hyper competent, the bosses with long ass health bars that cast doom on you if you aren't fast enough was downright awful.

The tutorial in Lightning Returns is short enough as the combat system is easy enough to get a grip on (Stagger and stuff has been changed, so you get short new tutorials for them) But I am not sure how long they will be in the main game.

I found the gambit system very weak there were way to many what ifs and exceptions for it to account for in every situation so that I found myself changing it constantly and actually taking physical control myself a lot of the time to make sure the computer didnt do anything stupid i.e cast sleep on this group and then cast this but there was no way to say only cast the next spell if sleep worked on everyone if not recast sleep basically the one it targeted was asleep so it went on which could be very bad as in the spot I grinded in that would mean death for me if some were left awake.

The AI also spazzed out if two conditions were met in quick succession this could also get you killed and so I always had to watch them constantly in harder battles to make sure they did not do this.

One thing that really annoyed me was you couldnt direct them to attack there was attack when attacked (which was bad as you lost the initiative), attack the one you attacked (which wasnt good because again you didnt get the huge initiative as they would invariably be to far away to attack directly after you) and ofc attack on sight which meant they would just run off an attack stuff which was ok as you got the initiative but you had to watch out the idiots didnt go off and attack some elemental or tyrannosaurus early in the game and thus wipe your party.

I really just wished for a menu driven battle system when playing as then I could direct them properly instead of wasting loads of time sorting out gambits for different enemies and then in the harder fights still having to watch them to make sure they didnt go full retard.

It did make grinding in safe spots easier though as you didnt have to touch the controller but overall I found it at be a very lousy system.

I would also disagree with the Auto battle picking the best outcome for a lot of the game what it picked was good enough but for the tougher fights you did not wanted to pick auto battle you wanted to stack things manually and actually time when to activate the abilities (and whether to fully stack or not) it made the harder fights much more manageable and holy hell you had to be quick and accurate with your paradigm selections and attacks if you wanted to survive and 5 star the ultimate boss as one wrong selection or having to move more than 2 paradigms to select the required setup could literally mean death (I always kept my cursor in the middle when fighting him / it so I could get to any other selection asap).

Your party was more competent though especially if you were scanning everyone I think there was only two moments in FFXIII where I was wondering what the hell the AI was doing unlike in XII where I was surprised when it did what it was supposed to.

Getting off track though all that difference of opinion on the final fantasies One of my friends also liked XII a lot personally I cant see much in it except for the epic end game which is second only to X incidentally the best part of XIII was the end game imo.

It seems from what you are saying though that the battles will be less press attack/ auto battle for 85% of the game this time which I hope is the case.

I have yet to find anyone who actually likes lightning other than in an er shes ok kinda way but I dont doubt there are people out there and there certainly have been worse leads right Vaan, Tidus, Firion and Luneth.

 

[Atmos Duality]

It's no The Third Lightning.
(*yeeeeaaaooooww!!!*)

Seriously. I'm going to get a look at the demo this weekend. Not by my choice, but eh.
Maybe it won't be the ass the other FF13 games have been thus far.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

I'm sick of the characters angsting when they have no real reason to and do it poorly.

Lightning lost her sister Serah.
Snow lost his fiance (Serah)
Sazh had his child held hostage by the government and the kid was branded a l'cie.
Hope (14 years old) watched his mom die and was thrust into conflict.

Ha yeah. People bitching about Hope's angst in particular always cracked me up. I mean the kid watched his Mum fall to her death, what more do you need for his angst to be justified lol.

 

[pjiutzi]

Ha yeah. People bitching about Hope's angst in particular always cracked me up. I mean the kid watched his Mum fall to her death, what more do you need for his angst to be justified lol.

Yeah, for me, the problem wasn't that Hope was being angsty. The world of XIII would really suck to live in, and there is lots of reason for everyone in the party to have all the angst they want. The problem I had with him was that he was an annoying brat about it, and that's just not enjoyable to have to sit through.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

Ha yeah. People bitching about Hope's angst in particular always cracked me up. I mean the kid watched his Mum fall to her death, what more do you need for his angst to be justified lol.

Yeah, for me, the problem wasn't that Hope was being angsty. The world of XIII would really suck to live in, and there is lots of reason for everyone in the party to have all the angst they want. The problem I had with him was that he was an annoying brat about it, and that's just not enjoyable to have to sit through.

True. Despite being justified that doesn't make it enjoyable.

 

[havoc33]

I don't really know what to say than you didn't set the gambits to be efficient, if characters went off and attacked enemies you didn't want them to fight, you should have changed the gambits to reflect that, you can prioritize them to attack what the player is attacking or just not attack anything other than the monster the player has selected. I remember thinking my gambits through and I had a hyper competant team that revived and fully healed me so fast that the "please switch to another party member" message came up.

If the AI doesn't do what you want or behaves erratically, its your fault, you set them to behave that way and sometimes the game has a different idea of what your commands ensue. For example, I have the gambit to auto use haste, I equipped a reflect ring for a boss battle, my unit stood there trying to haste themselves (it was reflected each time) the game is not at fault, it was me not thinking it through (when I see monsters like elemental's I wanna get past, I either flee or turn off the gambits briefly)

I see no reason to dislike the gambit system, think about it, you control the AI completely, if its too competent, tone it down, if they aren't good enough, set them up to be better, if they didn't work, you try something else, I never had a problem with it.

I'll second that. The Gambit system in FFXII was amazing. You had full control over your characters if you set it up right, and it totally took the pain and chore out of leveling. Best battle system in a FF game next to FFVII.

The FFXIII-3 demo made me pick up FFXIII again, as I still haven't finished it. I've finally reached Gran Pulse, and I'm totally enjoying it. I'm very happy I kept going even though some of the first ten chapters were pretty dull. If it continues the rise in quality towards the end, I might be keen on picking up XIII-2 as well. I still think the story is pretty stupid though, and this is where SE needs to improve in future games in the series. Like others have pointed out, they need better writers to make us care about the characters again.

 

[KarmaTheAlligator]

I finally had the chance to play it, and I liked it (although I was hoping it'd be more dynamic, a la Kingdom Hearts). Much better than having to wait around while your ATB would fill up, although I didn't care for the wardrobe changes when you change job (hopefully you can use whichever you want). Really made me want to know what the hell is going on, though. Good job, demo.

Also, is it dependent on timing when you fully block an attack? I've had it happen a couple of times, and took no damage, but for the life of me I can't redo it whenever.

 

[normalguycap]

Ha yeah. People bitching about Hope's angst in particular always cracked me up. I mean the kid watched his Mum fall to her death, what more do you need for his angst to be justified lol.

Yeah, for me, the problem wasn't that Hope was being angsty. The world of XIII would really suck to live in, and there is lots of reason for everyone in the party to have all the angst they want. The problem I had with him was that he was an annoying brat about it, and that's just not enjoyable to have to sit through.

Maybe I'm a heartless unfeeling bastard, but most of that shit you get over. By the 3rd FF13, they are still angsting over that shit. "Well, I lost a loved one. Guess I'll have to find someone else." Yeah it sucks, but these people I guess, live for *ucking centuries! More than enough time to come to terms with the event and move on. Angst only works effectively if we as an audience have been with a character when they are happy. If we see their emotions, then we better connect with them when they get all shitty. I think I remember even Cloud had a small sense of humor which most people forgot.

 

[BrotherRool]

As far the heroine sidetrack goes, I actually always liked Yuna. I like the way she a doormat, but she's proud to be a doormat. That's a kind of heroism, to choose to contain yourself for the good of others, to not be powerful or flashy and let people mock you a bit for your gentle ways but to do them anyway because at your core you know them to be right.

She would bend over backwards to accommodate someone, but if you tried to get her to stop it you'd find she's an absolute rock.

Also, the story was bollocks. I am not sure if the demo was from a middle section, or a missed a lot by not playing the previous games (only played through the first one), but it made no sense at all. The characters were all the same, but different: Lightning was a messiah/reaper, Hope was Otacon, Snow was an AC villain and Serah had a dark clone... Of course, I don't blame it on the demo, but it made me extra sure it would be pointless to play this one if I didn't bought the last one first.

Most of this is FFXIII-2 stuff. The game involved time travel so a lot of it was 'look what happens to this person and what they become in life', particularly with Hope. I didn't quite complete the game so I don't know about Snow or the dark clone (or maybe I've come across the dark clone? FFXIII-2 is a long game still) but Snow was paying some heavy consequences for the things which had happened and I think they could have been leading off to something that unhinges him. My memory of XIII-2 is really fuzzy, but I think he might even have come to believe that Lightning was going to cause some great disaster and he had to stop her?

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

I think I remember even Cloud had a small sense of humor which most people forgot.

Indeed, mostly throughout disc 1 of FFVII. He was very sarcastic and even kind of outspoken; he was just a bit of a prick and tried too hard to act the part of the heartless mercenary when that wasn't him. He's a bit more dour on disc 2, but still nowhere near his AC personality and by the end of disc 2/disc 3 he's a typical hero in most ways.

OT: I found it very meh. Combat felt clunky, and didn't even look especially cool. Plot still seems like ridiculous melodrama (that's FF in general, but the XIII-saga seems to have taken it up to 11) and the colour pallet in the pre-rendered cutscenes still makes my eyes bleed.

I didn't like XIII, thought XIII-2 was an improvement but still wasn't a huge fan and it looks like I'm going back to dislike for this. Also, what is it with this series and starting out every game with a ridiculous, OTT, flashy fight scene? It wasn't as silly or cringe-worthy as XIII-2's opening ("Lose yourself in battle and rejoice!" ... ugh) but it still wasn't good. Advent Children ruined this franchise XD

 

[Severian]

I actually enjoyed FFXIII and XIII-2. I love FF and have played every one. I quite disliked this though. XIII has been run into the ground and I just don't like Lightning anymore lol. Do not want...

 

[Maximum Bert]

*snip* for space

Yeah we will just have to agree to disagree I finished XII and beat Yiazmat and Omega weapon and I still think the Gambit system was deeply flawed there were only so many ways you could set it up and the A.I still got confused during the worst possible times (and I had a pretty good grasp of it after 126 hours of playing) it would have been easier to just select through a menu.

This confusion rarely lasted more than 1/2 a second only a few times did I catch them completely spazzing out for no reason but in the tricky fights that 1/2 second may be all thats needed for the battle to start going downhill the Omega weapon fight is a good example as if you get behind its very hard to catch back up. FFX has the best combat in the series for me personally.

I also found the gambit in Dragon Age origins horrible there really just is not enough slots to account for every situation meaning constant switching which takes longer than just running into a battle and selecting everything manually unless ofc you are grinding on the same mobs (and they arent dangerous to your team).

As I said selecting your team to attack the one you are attacking or attack when attacked are pretty bad as you lose the initiative either in part or completely while attack everything was ok but you had to make sure they didnt commit suicide.

I have a friend who liked the system though but for the vast majority of people I know they strongly disliked it, actually come to think of it I am the only person I know IRL who actually finished XII or XIII (I dont know anyone who bought XIII except me) but I know loads who finished VII , VIII and X and a few on VI and IX.

Dosent matter though as that system is gone I look forward to trying out XIII-3 and its system but I am more interested in FFXV now really I am getting tired of Lightning and co but as long as I get to kill Snow I will be satisfied actually im not tired of Sazh and Fang was ok to but the rest yeah not great. I dont know how you could like Vaan usually I can see how someone may like them even if I dont but im at a loss here its like someone liking Snow or Rush from The Last Remnant I just cant see any redeeming factors at least he had more personality than Fran though I will give him that but then again a beige wall has more personality than her as well.

I hope they dont start making a lot of the game DLC again im not paying for any on FFXIII-2 how it ends on the disc is the full story as far as im concerned just like with Asuras Wrath (still salty over that).

If you just played the main story in FFXIII you could get by with auto battle but later on fights are still easier if you select your own try taking down a Long Gui with auto battle or indeed any tricky enemy i.e the post game enemies some you probably could win doing this but I dont think you would be getting five stars. The trouble is as I said most of the game there is little reason not to just use auto battle.

The only creature I had trouble casting Doom on me was one of the end game creatures cant remember its name it may have been a superpowered Ochu but it had super high damage to go along with Doom making it a nightmare to deal with dont remember having any trouble with Barthandelous but I know I stopped using auto battle all the time when I got to gran pulse (i.e the first fun part of the game) so maybe thats why I had an easier time beating him.

For giant health bars nothing beats Yiazmat though in FF offline games anyway that thing takes forever to go down luckily hes not that hard its just a massive battle of attrition and patience ofc goddamn having to pause and switch in equipment for different attacks he is preparing was annoying. Watch battle oh attack telegraphed pause change equipment unpause attack happens pause change equipment back carry on.