View from the Road: The Lesson of Final Fantasy XIII

[Rack]

This is an interesting point and it's largely true but there are a number of things to watch out for.

While the old school resource management is somewhat flawed in that you had to save resources based on incomplete information so it wasn't all that an effective strategic choice most RPG systems have very limited tactics in battle. Making these more difficult doesn't necessarily mean making them more tactical.

If you start each fight in the same position you can't really have trash encounters. While it's one thing to have the same easy encounter multiple times on the trot as an extended game of resource management, the same encounter multiple times on the trot at a high level of difficulty stating in exactly the same position will quickly feel like a grind.

Fix these problems and it's a huge step forward for RPGs. Otherwise it's just a mis-step.

 

[MisterColeman]

I too skipped most of the baddies in the last dungeon. When it got to the point that I was starting all my fights with 2 buffers and a tank then to debuff debuff tank before switching to damage builds just so my people could be viable it was a little silly.

 

[duchaked]

I'm down with that
I hate it when I make one mistake with a minor encounter RIGHT BEFORE a major boss battle and find myself starting a save point there with half health or whatever
lol of course you can't pwn like Cloud or Titus, cuz Lightning's a girl jk (she was always designed to be a female Cloud anyway...)

 

[tkioz]

When the author mentioned long cool downs he didn't really go into how the longer the cool down the less likely a player is to use that ability.

1 minute cool-down? blow it whenever I want, no hesitation at all.

2 minute cool-down? No worries.

5 minute cool-down? err generally only when I'm in a little pickle.

20 minute cool-down? only when I'm at 5% HP and everything else is used... oh screw it I'll just die, after all I might need it later there's a boss coming up soon.

So when I see long cool-downs I often wonder what the designers were thinking, don't they want the players to use that ability?

 

[w3dg3]

"Halfway through the game, I found myself dying to regular enemies far more frequently than I ever had in any other Final Fantasy game I'd ever played. It was challenging, it was engaging, and it was fun. No longer was I just running through the world mashing Attack with the characters of Tidus or Cloud, trusting that I'd slay the monsters in one or two hits; I now had to pay attention or I'd get smashed."

oO dieing? just when i diddnt pay any attention,it was just like in the old games, just train that much that normal trash mobs would die if i just press x x x x x x...
in ff XIII they copied wow in some ways, healing was never the biiig point in ff but in 13 it is, if you dont watch your hp you die in a sec, but if you have a healer active its just back to x x x x x x.... doing random attacks and killing everything with no big prob but just getting 1-2 stars. if you were really hunting for the stars in each battle to get it perfect its okay but so it wasnt challenging at any point with the trash, even the bosses. u played them once if u were lucky u killed him in the first try, else u watched his attacks, thought for a moment, and ahh thats how it goes, but even in the boss fights u could use the standart way, buff everybody, have a healer allways active, when everybody is buffed change to dmg. if the buffs run out, redo everything...
i dont know the most fun part in ff were always the exploration.
the most awesome thing were when i discovered in ff5 the secret town and dump town folk was saying something like: ahh i wonder if you could run around the world with a chocobo. so i tried the treasor was small but still these little side quests of exploration where a big part of the game... and now its all cut away

 

[pneuma08]

REPLYSTRAVAGANZA

Spoiler

Who says that a game has to be what you think it should be? I support developers bringing something new and fresh to every iteration of their franchises, even if the results are mixed. It keeps the series from feeling like endless retreads, similar to Dragon Warrior or anything by Bethesda.

EDIT- Whoops, sorry for the double post.

It's a matter of common sense. The entire point of having a series is the continuation of a successful formula and concept. Final Fantasy has always been about producing intermediate level RPGs, using a set of general concepts like the -ra, raga, etc... spell system.

Once you start messing with something too much it ceases to be the same series. You alter something too much and it loses it's identity. I'm all for them doing something new, but they shouldn't be attaching an existing label to it. If Squeenix wants to do introductory level RPGs that mess with the formula to this extent, more power to them, but don't sell it as a Final Fantasy game. The only reason for doing that is the marketing power of the name.

It's sort of like putting vanilla wafers into a package of chocolate wafers, and then trying to tell people that they are chocolate wafers because you put the "chocolate" name on them.

Final Fantasy comes with a certain set of expectations, especially when it comes to the general complexity level.

Truthfully, if they really felt they needed to use the Final Fantasy name they probably should have done this as another spin-off title, rather than numbering it as part of the main series.

For what it's worth, the Final Fantasy series has had its guts ripped out for each and every installment, most visibly post-VI (3 in the US). In this sense Final Fantasy has always been somewhat experimental (although not as experimental as the SaGa series). Nonetheless, Final Fantasy has been anything but formulaic.

If it did follow a formula, what would it be?

Pretty much, your Final Fantasy XIII experience was about the same as mine, which is unacceptable for an RPG.

I think you hit the nail on the head here, what most people complain about when they say, "it's too linear". The problem is that the game doesn't give you any freedom to explore, develop your character, or even mess around with items until you're 20+ hours in.

Oddly enough, this is entirely appropriate thematically. How...frustrating.

While the old school resource management is somewhat flawed in that you had to save resources based on incomplete information...

But, real life resource management is all based on limited information. I'm sure the army/businesses/gov't/any organization would love to have full information on everything when making a decision, but sadly that's not possible - even simple questions like "how long will this take" are very difficult to answer. It's one reason why you see so much money spent on surveys, polls, pre-orders, high tech surveying equipment, and information gathering centers. Even an inherently flawed method giving a quantum of insight is highly sought after.

For me, incomplete information in theory just provides for more complex strategies full of contingencies and meaningful choices (do I press on, knowing full well that beyond this point I won't be able to make it back?), although in practice it just means overspending on large stockpiles of useful items (if applicable; some games are much more restrictive about carrying limits as well as money and item supply).

I suppose I'm saying I don't really see limited information as a flaw.

 

[John Funk]

This game sucks, I'm usually the guy who says its a matter of opinion but no this games sucks. The healing after battle makes the game a slog, it hurts the pacing even more and it was slow to begin with. The characters are annoying, the story is confusing and bullshit, the exposition is not well weaved into the narrative. It's boring, repetitive, stupid, annoying and I hate it with the white hot intensity of a thousand first gen x-box 360's.

And guess what? It's a matter of opinion

 

[Crimsane]

The battle system was fresh, for a few hours. By the time I was in Chapter 11, it was pretty stale. Most of the strategy involved avoiding the roving mobs I knew could probably oneshot half my party, which I learned after encountering one of said mobs. Those mobs aside, which I'm told only really happens at the beginning of Chapter 11 (I quit there, after a few quests - the game was supposed to 'vastly improve' there, but I didn't see it)... If you've set up the right paradigms, you can pretty much autobattle every non-boss fight, with the occasional shift to buff/debuff/heal (or in the case of Eidolons, to meet the requirement to win.)

Sounds familiar. Auto-battling through most fights... Like all the rest of the FFs. I guess the only question remaining is, which form of auto-battle is more boring? I honestly can't say.

 

[Enigmers]

The only thing that I hated about FFXIII was the slow start. Everything else, yes, even the codex, was acceptable. Hey, it's not like it's FFXII or anything. Goddamn that game was terrible.

When the "Slow" start takes up pretty much the entire game, guess what, it's not really a slow start anymore. Final Fantasy 12, at least, gave you the liberty of doing shit that's supposed to be in every RPG, like, you know, customizing characters, choosing how you level up, interacting with NPCs, doing side-quests, that sort of thing. It was pretty freely available from pretty much the start of the game. If you wanted to spend a few hours using quickenings to powerlevel yourself to the point where you can crush anything by batting your eyelids, you could. Final Fantasy 13 is built so that you are experiencing exactly what the developers want you to experience, kind of like a movie. I didn't buy an XBox 360 so I could watch movies.
Another smart thing Final Fantasy 12 did was it decided that maybe it was a good idea not to include a shitty love story or characters that make the average person's blood boil. I mean, sure, hearing Vanille audibly sign and gasp over everything might be interesting from an anthropological point of view, but when the story dictates that she has to piss you off all the time things get a little irritating.

 

[NamesAreHardToPick]

I didn't buy an XBox 360 so I could watch movies.

That would have been a horrible choice.

FFXIII is a great rollercoaster... other FF games are sandboxes (sort of, well not really, they're still horribly linear) but it's a critic's failure when they complain that a rollercoaster isn't a sandbox instead of telling people if the rollercoaster is fun or not.

 

[Moffman]

Good article. I have only just started playing XIII and at the moment am loving it and I've been playing 7 hoursish. It certainly doesn't top VII or VIII for me atm but I am glad it is part of the franchise.

The auto attack option imo is not the best route to go always (of course I realise I am only 7 hours in atm and this could all change). My fav team leader atm is Lightening due to the Commando class, however sometimes she casts Ruin in auto attack when it is quite frankly better just to hit head on with three attacks, I also enjoy searching for the most oportune moments to cast blitz with her.

I am finding the game pretty pacey atm, I am perplexed as to why people find it slow. While yes the enemmy encounters are harder (thank god! putting story and challenging gameplay hand in hand is wonderful) you are constantly aware during the battle, checking when to switch paras and inputting commands. One of my only complaints about FFVII (my second favourite game ever after Breath of Fire III) is that you would sit around waiting for your time bar to fill just to ram the attack button... Every one complains about just hitting auto attack but the only duty it has taken away is specific spell use which the para system replaces.

All in all it is a hugely different feel to the other games and I see why people disliked it. Change it's name... may be you'll like it more

Oh and I abhored FFXII MMO for one player ewwwwwww I just can't play it without getting bored. I've tried to push through it, I just can't . Goes to show that there will always be part of a long series like FF that you will not like, does not make the game bad, just not to your taste.

Wow that was much longer than intended

 

[OmegaXIII]

What you have here is a GINORMOUS jump in difficulty with no content in between. If you want to even stand a chance at beating this guy, you need to have a full party of max level characters with max level weapons. This means you have to grind for about 50 hours for XP as well as money, with nothing else to do and with no host of options to do it like in FFXII. Basically the only way forward is to grind Sacrifices for 50 hours. That is bullshit, and it is because of that shit that the game fell flat on its face for me. I went through the rail-shooter Attack-fest that is the main game, expecting a rich, epic post-game, like in FFXII. But no. It's like they suddenly forgot how to please the hardcore fans in FFXIII. Of course what can you say about a developer who moves from something like the schizophrenic sadistic design of the Great Crystal dungeon in FFXII to the rail-shooter that is FFXIII? It's like the game wasn't even made by the same people and had an entirely different species as a target audience...

Or you could, you know, fight him how you were pretty much supposed to and use Vanille's "Death spell"...The fact it's vulnerable to that move unlike most high level bosses, and that this is pretty much the only easy way to kill him, certainly to 5 star the fight, gives the impression it was deliberate - almost like you'd have to use a tactic besides mashing auto-battle...

The Death spell is not a tactic. I have used the spell more than 500 times on different kinds of enemies that ARE susceptible to it, and it NEVER worked, not even once. Anyone who mentions something that has a 1 out of 1000 change of working as a viable tactic needs a slap in the face

Malboro Wand + Increased Debuffing synth ability = Only took 5 Death attempts to take him down. I regularly use the same tactic for the Oriotoises too. The tactics come in your equipment/ability loadout and Paradigm management

 

[Danpascooch]

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.

Correct me if I'm wrong but, with things like the materia system at least, didn't they change every game? VII had materia, VIII had junctioning, X had the node thingies, stuff like that.
I thought mixing it up was what kept bringing fans back, for better or worse.

Anyway, the article.
Although I agree with all the good points, it seemed pretty unbalanced seeing as how the bad points were barely mentioned.
Or is that just Mr. Funk's positive way of writing? I wouldn't know, this is the first of his things I've read.

I don't think that "mixing it up" as far as leveling systems is a big incentive to come back.

I loved the materia and job system, but FFX, FFXIII and FFVIII royally pissed me off in how annoying their leveling systems were.

FFX was complicated and stupid, instead of saying "I want to invest points in ability A" you had to choose a path to it, precluding you from going for other abilities for quite a while

FFXIII was like FFX, but like everything else in FFXIII, it was MORE LINEAR. It was basically a, "We'll choose what you get when you level up, but here's a pretty graphical representation to give it the illusion of depth"

FFVIII was probably the worst, to get a good junction you had to stock 100 of the magic, which means every time you find a new magic, you're best bet is to spend a half hour in that battle hitting the "draw" command 50 times till you max it, it was tedious and unnecessary, and the worst part was that if you junctioned magic, you couldn't use it without becoming weaker, I'm playing FFVIII now, and it annoys me to all hell, I'm basically avoiding all magic for fear of it lowering my stats, and that has turned battle into me mashing X till I win.

I like it when they mix up gameplay and storylines, it keeps it fresh, but don't fuck with the leveling system when you've already got two perfect ones (job system and materia system), that's like trying to make a game series "fresh" by remapping all of the buttons with every sequel, sure it's different, but it doesn't make the game feel any fresher or distinct, and it just annoys the fuck out of everyone to have to learn all of the new buttons because the developer arbitrarily decided to remap them all simply so it would be different.

 

[Danpascooch]

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.

In FFX you eventually got an airship that you could fly around to previously visited locations, and could find secret and optional locations with, that is in fact very different.

As for the materia system, I thought it was the best, on the contrary, I felt that it didn't make each character a blank slate, I felt that it made each of them customizable to my playstyle, I love that level of choice.

My point about missing NPC's and towns was simply that, besides the very few parts where you're in a town, (and even then you only really see people in cutscenes) you were off in the wilderness or some shit. It made me feel like the world wasn't really alive, it totally trashed the immersion for me. For about 90% of the game it was just like: "Where the hell is civilization?" As far as I was concerned, at LEAST the first half of the game had no real purpose, and was completely interchangeable. It was basically like "walk through this floating city". "ok, now walk through this forest". "Alright, now through this junkyard". "Ok, now through this jungle" and when I was wondering why, the answer was always basically just "to get to the other side".

The presentation was nice, but that's about all there was, the gameplay was about as deep as an old-school Sonic game. It didn't feel like a Final Fantasy game, I didn't feel like I was immersed in an incredible adventure, I felt like I was a terminal cancer patient who was pissed off and wanted to get revenge on the world before I died, and that nothing I did mattered because (until the game was over and it was no longer relevant) I was constantly being reminded "yeah you just did something good, but it's not going to matter, you'll be dead real soon". The lack of purpose certainly wasn't fixed by doing sidequests for rocks based on a one paragraph backstory.

As a Final Fantasy fan, I know that all the games have different systems, but that doesn't mean I'm going to like a system that sucks just because it was different, and this system of "you have a terminal illness, now walk along these interchangeable linear paths for 40 or so hours" was definitely a huge fucking mistake.

When it came right down to it, the world didn't feel real, the bulk of the game was walking down linear paths with no real reason other than "well, we can't stay here". And it stripped the game of any sense of adventure or depth. The entire time I was well aware that I was playing a game, and was just waiting for it to "get good", but it never did.

 

[Harlemura]

Spoiler: Snip box

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.

Correct me if I'm wrong but, with things like the materia system at least, didn't they change every game? VII had materia, VIII had junctioning, X had the node thingies, stuff like that.
I thought mixing it up was what kept bringing fans back, for better or worse.

Anyway, the article.
Although I agree with all the good points, it seemed pretty unbalanced seeing as how the bad points were barely mentioned.
Or is that just Mr. Funk's positive way of writing? I wouldn't know, this is the first of his things I've read.

I don't think that "mixing it up" as far as leveling systems is a big incentive to come back.

I loved the materia and job system, but FFX, FFXIII and FFVIII royally pissed me off in how annoying their leveling systems were.

FFX was complicated and stupid, instead of saying "I want to invest points in ability A" you had to choose a path to it, precluding you from going for other abilities for quite a while

FFXIII was like FFX, but like everything else in FFXIII, it was MORE LINEAR. It was basically a, "We'll choose what you get when you level up, but here's a pretty graphical representation to give it the illusion of depth"

FFVIII was probably the worst, to get a good junction you had to stock 100 of the magic, which means every time you find a new magic, you're best bet is to spend a half hour in that battle hitting the "draw" command 50 times till you max it, it was tedious and unnecessary, and the worst part was that if you junctioned magic, you couldn't use it without becoming weaker, I'm playing FFVIII now, and it annoys me to all hell, I'm basically avoiding all magic for fear of it lowering my stats, and that has turned battle into me mashing X till I win.

I like it when they mix up gameplay and storylines, it keeps it fresh, but don't fuck with the leveling system when you've already got two perfect ones (job system and materia system), that's like trying to make a game series "fresh" by remapping all of the buttons with every sequel, sure it's different, but it doesn't make the game feel any fresher or distinct, and it just annoys the fuck out of everyone to have to learn all of the new buttons because the developer arbitrarily decided to remap them all simply so it would be different.

Wouldn't leaving certain systems as they are just run into another problem? If every Final Fantasy from now on used the materia system, it'd just start to feel like you're playing VII but with different characters, story and graphics.

There's also that age-old dilemma of personal taste. Sure, XIII's system was linear, heck, the whole game was. But it was simple, and was easy to understand from the start. Or from when they actually let you use it, anyway.
That's the reason I'm not actually a big fan of the materia system. It's probably just because I'm one of the blunter tools in the box, but I didn't completely understand how the materias worked and got stronger until I was some way through the game. It meant that I'd let a whole load of experience go to waste on materia I didn't even want to really use.

At the very least, we can agree that junctioning can go sit in the corner where no one can see it anymore. It bored me so much I never even gave VIII a chance.

 

[thisbymaster]

I got bored so quickly with FFXIII, it was the same fights again and again. Along the same pathway, the characters look like rejects from a fashion show. The main character was unlikable and gender confused. You had no idea what your goal was just slugging through meaningless battles. I can understand giving a few single battles to get you used to the battle system but what you are really doing is forcing the player to do simplified quick time events for hours between boring hallways. The leveling system, way to complicated. I do not need control over every single stat point, and I shouldn't have to work for them outside of winning battles. I shouldn't have to hunt down mats to build people. I don't want to micromanage characters, they have already automated the battles(the interesting part) and replaced it with boring micromanaging of characters. They need an editor in there to start cutting out large parts that do nothing at all.

 

[Pots]

Yeah, FFXII was terrible. After all, it only had the most massive, open, populated and varied world to ever appear in a JRPG, did away with the combat transition cutscenes that everyone outside of Japan loathes, and had the deepest customizable party AI system ever developed, which allowed for some fiendishly clever boss tactics (such as Omega Mk.12), a system that Bioware shanelessly copy pasted into Dragon Age but completely failed to utilize. Oh well...opinions, right?

You forgot to mention the deep history and realistic political plot populated by well motivated villains who had good reasons for what they were doing and didn't just fall into generic JRPG villain tropes like trying to destroy the world because of mommy/daddy issues.

I think that I will have to finally play FFXII. All of my friends told me about how terrible the game is, saying that you can use the customizable party AI to basically play the game for you. After reading these posts FFXII has piqued my interest.

 

[Pots]

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.

Correct me if I'm wrong but, with things like the materia system at least, didn't they change every game? VII had materia, VIII had junctioning, X had the node thingies, stuff like that.
I thought mixing it up was what kept bringing fans back, for better or worse.

Anyway, the article.
Although I agree with all the good points, it seemed pretty unbalanced seeing as how the bad points were barely mentioned.
Or is that just Mr. Funk's positive way of writing? I wouldn't know, this is the first of his things I've read.

FFX and FFVI had my favorite leveling systems. In both you could customize each character how you saw fit. The Sphere system of FFX is obviously better than the Esper system of FFVI, since in VI you had to make sure to keep track of when you were about to level and equip the Esper that would raise the stats you wanted but atleast the option to take any character in any direction you wanted was there.