Final Fantasy XIII, why quit after Gran Pulse?

scorptatious

The Resident Team ICO Fanboy
May 14, 2009
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INB4 FF XIII hate...

WHOOPS! Too late. :p

I actually got inspired to keep playing at Gran Pulse. I thought that area was pretty awesome considering how big it was and how much stuff there was to do.
 

Shoggoth2588

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Aug 31, 2009
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After all the hype that Grand Pulse was the point where the game got good, I felt extremely let down when I did make it and found that it was just more of the same. It took too long to get there in the first place but there just wasn't enough of a difference between it and the rest of the game to make me want to continue.
 

Sleepy Sol

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Feb 15, 2011
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I did only rent the game, but I did make it to Gran Pulse, and it just felt kind of boring and empty to me. That, and soon after you reach the area enemies start to kill you in 1 to 2 hits if you don't grind the hell out of the crystarium.

...I don't feel any motivation to purchase and finish it after that.
 

Warrior Irme

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May 30, 2008
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reonhato said:
i will never understand how some people find final fantasy games difficult. sure occasionally there is an optional boss that is really hard to beat, but the main story is never difficult. i remember getting frustrated in ffx coz it took me more than 2 attempts to beat seymour flux. difficulty has never been a selling point of most jrpgs
Did you ever finish braska's final summon the first time you can access it? Most people think, I'll go farm, do the extra missions to get the super weapons, wait until I can dominate it. I decided to do ~350 chip damage a turn for over 2 hour because the two attempts it took were far better than dozens of hours of farm. And I was blowing through all of the other bosses with ease until that point.
 

TakeyB0y2

A Mistake
Jun 24, 2011
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To be honest, I was actually enjoying FFXIII until the Gran Pulse part started because there was actually a story going on. Then the difficulty spiked, regular mobs were kicking my ass and I found myself having to sneak by because I was too lazy to grind (and this is coming from someone who beat Shin Megami Tensei I, II and Nocturne).

The bosses were easier than the normal enemies (although half the time I only won due to AI roulette). Also the ending was one big desu ex machina and the character's actions REALLY went against what they've been planning to do beforehand.

It was all just... Yeah.
 

dimensional

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Jun 13, 2011
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The few people I have spoke with who stopped playing at Gran Pulse say it was because they were expecting more so obviously it is because they had too high expectations.

I personally actually started to enjoy it at this point the fights started to become more tactical making me think about my actions and time moves to control the flow of fights rather than just hit auto battle like I had been doing for most of the game prievious, I also really liked the missions here especially the post game stuff when you return again and can polish everything off the only creatures I remember having any real problems with were the Long Gui (if you dont use summons anyway) and jumbo cactuar due to his annoying status effects, instant death effects werent a problem usually if you are ready for them.

However if you didnt like gran pulse then you arent going to like the rest so you may as well stop playing but you know that if you are hating something but push on because people keep telling you section x is awesome or it gets better after, odds are you will be disappointed as the more you are hating the journey the greater the destination has to be to satisfy you. I had this happen myself in COD4 everyone was rabbiting on about ghillies (ghillie?) in the mist mission and how awesome it is so I kept going despite not liking the campaign and when I completed it I just thought `thats it? that was crap` and stopped playing.
 

Moonlight Butterfly

Be the Leaf
Mar 16, 2011
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I got bored, simple as. I realised that I just wasn't enjoying the game or the characters and it wasn't going to get any better. Hope reaches maximum annoyance factor there too. Personally I didn't see that it got any harder there. I did a few quests for those ghosty/crystal things.
 

LooK iTz Jinjo

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Feb 22, 2009
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I had to spend literally HOURS grinding just to get strong enough to advance, then I lost my data due to my hard drive having a freak out. Game isn't good enough for me to go back, won't bother with XIII-2
 

Crises^

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Sep 21, 2010
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Im not a fan of ff13 but am currently platting it now for ff13-2 have to say the end game stuff is ok like titan trials and other cieth stone mission above 50.
Tip for people who find it difficult when you arrive at pulse go to the north west you will see a behemoth and a wolf dog thing fighting you can kill the two of them in 2 mins for 6600 cp this will max out the first three roles very quickly.
Then once you reach batandules again beat him but before going on to chapter 12 go back to the village grab cieth stone mission 53 or 63 its a neochu fight use death against this guy to get the gropwth egg. This will double all cp.

Also make sure to use sab and syn to there benefit. These two roles makes every boss fight in the game(story line related0 very easy.
 
Jun 11, 2008
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There were a lot of other problems in FF XIII so by the time people got to Gran Pulse a lot were sick of it. That and Gran Pulse is made to be a sort of light New Game+ type affair so they kinda fucked up the difficulty for that section of the game as your power fluctuates wildly. I mean your party goes from kinda shit and keeping up with the Crystarium to been given the extra ones with ridiculous amounts of currency needed. Then the game opens up several levels that send your stats through the roof without warning.

Stuff like that is what annoyed people about Gran Pulse.

I mean if you aren't told about or find out about farming areas or Growth egg it makes that section of the game a pain.
 

nobodysomebody

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Jun 30, 2011
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Well, I'm one of the incredibly few people that seem to have actually finished Final Fantasy XIII, but I've got to say, that I thought it only got better. The first few chapters were arduous and linear, yeah, but from around chapter 7/8 onwards, it actually manages to be one of my favorite Final Fantasy games.
I never thought that the battles got too difficult in pulse. As soon as you get there, maybe, but I spent a lot of time grinding to be prepared- which I presume is something people didn't want to do.
I've felt that it is definitely a game worth finishing, even though a gigantic part of it isn't that fun.
 
Jun 11, 2008
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Warrior Irme said:
reonhato said:
i will never understand how some people find final fantasy games difficult. sure occasionally there is an optional boss that is really hard to beat, but the main story is never difficult. i remember getting frustrated in ffx coz it took me more than 2 attempts to beat seymour flux. difficulty has never been a selling point of most jrpgs
Did you ever finish braska's final summon the first time you can access it? Most people think, I'll go farm, do the extra missions to get the super weapons, wait until I can dominate it. I decided to do ~350 chip damage a turn for over 2 hour because the two attempts it took were far better than dozens of hours of farm. And I was blowing through all of the other bosses with ease until that point.
Or you know just use Yojimbo.
 

The Pinray

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Jul 21, 2011
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I didn't quit. It wasn't even that hard for me. The only fight I had trouble with was the Cid fight. Well, the first Dysley was a ***** too, but moreso was Cid. I honestly couldn't figure him out. I quit and went back like a month later. Beat him in a few tries then. It's amazing what just stepping away for awhile can do.
 

LittleBlondeGoth

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Mar 24, 2011
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I didn't really have a problem with it.

Yes, there was a noticable spike in difficulty once I got to Gran Pulse. I'd been running mostly with a Commando / Ravager setup until then, and when I tried that on the Pulse denizens, I got my arse handed back to me. But I found that if I swapped my paradigms a bit and used a Sentinel to soak up the damage (which I hadn't needed till then), things got easier. Wasn't long before I could take on the bigger guys.

XIII isn't my favourite game in the franchise, but neither is it horrible. I won't deny it's linear, but then so is something like Uncharted - it's because it needs to do that to tell you the story. I prefer something that feels more open, but I'm not going to ***** and complain just because this iteration did it differently.

This is the thing we have to remember about Final Fantasy. They change it with pretty much every game. The battle systems, the magic, classes, jobs, story... Some of them you'll like (in my case, Materia from VII) whereas some will rub you the wrong way (drawing magic in VIII was my bugbear). We all have different tastes; just because a game (any game, tbh) doesn't cater to your particular likes, doesn't mean the series is "over" or "ruined".

Sorry, I'll get off my soapbox now. :)
 

Plinglebob

Team Stupid-Face
Nov 11, 2008
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dimensional said:
The few people I have spoke with who stopped playing at Gran Pulse say it was because they were expecting more so obviously it is because they had too high expectations.
I have to agree with this. Every review I saw was generally boiled down to "Game is boring til Gran Pulse" and to be honest I can't see why if you've hated playing a game for 20hrs just to get to a supposed "Good" part but thats me.

Fensfield said:
Don't worry, you're not alone. XIII is the only FF game I've ever completed twice. Playing again when you know how all the character arcs will resolve themselves really adds some depth to it.

Dr. McD said:
EVEN THE GRAPHICS WERE UNIMPRESSIVE FOR FUCK SAKE.
While I'd accept/understand a lot of your complaints, I find it strange that you find the graphics unimpressive when even the most critical reviews generally came out as "Games shit, but sure is pretty"
 

Darkong

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Nov 6, 2007
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I quit just as I got there (after the fight with Alexander) because I was so bored and tired of the game I couldn't take it any more, 25 hours of clopping down linear corridors and that awful combat system had broken me.
 

Moonlight Butterfly

Be the Leaf
Mar 16, 2011
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LittleBlondeGoth said:
I didn't really have a problem with it.

Yes, there was a noticable spike in difficulty once I got to Gran Pulse. I'd been running mostly with a Commando / Ravager setup until then, and when I tried that on the Pulse denizens, I got my arse handed back to me. But I found that if I swapped my paradigms a bit and used a Sentinel to soak up the damage (which I hadn't needed till then), things got easier. Wasn't long before I could take on the bigger guys.

XIII isn't my favourite game in the franchise, but neither is it horrible. I won't deny it's linear, but then so is something like Uncharted - it's because it needs to do that to tell you the story. I prefer something that feels more open, but I'm not going to ***** and complain just because this iteration did it differently.

This is the thing we have to remember about Final Fantasy. They change it with pretty much every game. The battle systems, the magic, classes, jobs, story... Some of them you'll like (in my case, Materia from VII) whereas some will rub you the wrong way (drawing magic in VIII was my bugbear). We all have different tastes; just because a game (any game, tbh) doesn't cater to your particular likes, doesn't mean the series is "over" or "ruined".

Sorry, I'll get off my soapbox now. :)
Yeah but there is 'Different combat system' and then completely changing the way a game works.

For me FF13 was like watching a movie it just didn't draw me in at all. It just fails compared to other games like Tales of Vesperia or Dragon Quest 9 that actually present their world as a fully realised background through which your story is progressing. Those games did 'Final Fantasy' better than FF13.

There are linear and entertaining games that exist like Uncharted but then they haven't got a reputation for in depth fantasy worlds and some measure of exploration, discovery and character development on the part of the player.

It's the same problem as Dragon Age 2 has. Fans feel tricked into buying something that they otherwise wouldn't have bought; As if I bought Mario Galaxy 3 and it was an FPS.

Edit: The game also had other problems like completely unlikable characters (Vanille ugh) ridiculous and nonsensical dialogue and the aforementioned combat system was really lackluster. The only good thing about it was the graphics. The linearity and 'It's different so it sucks' was the horrible icing on the burnt cake.