danpascooch said:
I am a huge Final Fantasy fan, but the worst part about FFXIII is that they stripped all the best parts of Final Fantasy out of it!
Good story: GONE! (this is just my opinion, but I'd prefer a story where all the characters are not depressed over being devoured by a terminal illness the entire time, it's a little hard to enjoy the story when you're constantly being reminded "oh right, none of this matters because I'll be dead in like 3 days")
Exploration: GONE!
Sidequests: GONE!
(Exploration and sidequests came into play when 95% of the games main story and narrative was done, even then, it was just exploring small patches of grassy wilderness and taking "go kill this" quests from FUCKING STONES, seriously, who at Square came up with THAT one. I would have loved to visit an actual shop at an actual town and see some normal NPC's that weren't trying to throw me in jail so I can spend the last six days of my life before I become a monster in a jail cell! JUST ONCE! I never thought a game could make me miss traversing towns filled with mindless NPC's, but somehow FFXIII achieved that.)
Oh, and this isn't a main point, but from my experience, Final Fantasy has two great equipment systems:
1.) The materia system (FF7)
2.) The Job System (FF Tactics Advance 1&2, and FF9?)
They should stick with one of those.
The ONLY redeeming factor was that you were healed after each battle, but when talking about major issues like the above, that's nothing. It's like having your legs eaten off by wolves, and then given a lollypop, the candy does NOT make up for the fact that you just had your limbs ripped off by a pack of savage animals!
For basically the entire game I was waiting for that I'M OUT OF MIDGAR! WOOOOOOOO! moment where it stops being linear and you're free to explore a giant world and take on meaningful missions, and when it never came (not in any significant way, it only existed as a half-square mile of grassy plains populated by rocks that just felt tacked on), it just left me going "what the hell was that!?" when the game ended.
I kept wondering, why was the game so linear? Until I saw the article with the rediculous statement that: "A new FF7 would take 40 years to make". Assuming that is true, and that Square plans to release a new Final Fantasy every 5 years at the longest, that means that because of their graphical standards, they will never make a game with even ONE EIGHTH! of the content of FF7 ever again. (and that's not considering the fact that all of the groundwork for FFVII is completed, and balanced appropriately) I for one am not alright with that, JRPG's have been nearly killed by new Western RPGs, and if they try to cut the content down by 90% for the sake of graphics, they're screwed.
PS: I didn't think that restoration after battle hurt the "hardcore" aspect of the game, but only being able to control one character was stupid, and DID water it down.
Oh shush!
The story is your opinion yes but the reason the story was good is because it effects the whole game, to the NPCs you love to chat to mindlessly you are monsters who are going to kill them all, they aren't exactly gonna invite you in for a cup of tea and engage in pleasantries with you, no, they're gonna run away.
At the start of the game (the bit where you control Hope before going after Snow) you can talk to a bunch of NPCs but instead of having you talk to them and say nothing back you just overheard their conversations. I personally think the story worked amazingly well and all the characters (aside from Vanille (but she does develop into a more human character)) react in a very human way, perhaps over the top for drama's sake but no more so than any film released in the last few years and at least the story dealt with something relatable and interesting.
Yeah the exploration and sidequests were little (they weren't gone completely) but it's exactly the same as FFX in that regards, the next big console FF title will have huge open spaces and towns etc etc, it took them 5 years to make Crystal Tools engine, now that it's been made they can work more quickly with it and keep the same graphical quality.
Also a big NO to materia, it wasn't at all interesting and made every character such a blank canvas, they may as well be literal squares with limit breaks being the only thing to tell who is who
Also, it DOES use the job system it's just under a different name, the job system has just evolved from being the static 1 job forever as in FF1 and 3, then to the interchangable job system outside of battle as in FF5 then the dressphere system where you change your job in battle in FFX-2, it's just been stylised and improved upon in due time.
In reply to this:
[I am a huge Final Fantasy fan, but the worst part about FFXIII is that they stripped all the best parts of Final Fantasy out of it!]
Being the huge Final Fantasy fan that you are, I'd thought you'd know the best and only real element every Final Fantasy from 1 onwards has held, the fact that each and every single one has a completely different system in place, whether it's levelling, equipment, movement, battle systems every title in the franchise has a big change with each game and whatever it doesn't change, it evolves from something in the past that was similar and improves upon it.
Final Fantasy XIII is an excellent story with a great feel of urgency to it (my opinion) with the world map and Sphere Grid from FFX changed to fit with the theme of urgency of the game, the battle system of FFX-2, improved to make it that much more streamlined and interesting, a strange equipment upgrade system that doesnt quite work, and amazing presentation.
