I haven't laughed this much at a ZP in a very long time. Well done. I'm a fan of Lightning myself, but I'll be goddamned if all of her dialogue and personality in this installment wasn't penned by a group of high-functioning howler monkeys. The combat and difficulty in the game takes a lot of getting used to but once you understand why game mechanics function the way they do it all sort of comes together to become and incredibly satisfying system.
Zero Punctuation: Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
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I get the feeling by putting a direct time crutch to the game quoted at the first page might be an intentional turn to try and kill it, after all an final fantasy has always been fond of grinding to level up characters or skill, materia, etc. So my conclusion they ayre trying to kill off their franchise for good.
Actually, Lightning's name is a nickname. Her real name is Claire. Plus, Japan and other eastern countries like her a lot. Popularity polls show such. And believe me the "Brood-Loud Mouth-Whiny" trio that make up Lightning-Snow-Hope is popular over there. Just look at the manga Naruto. Sasuke is the brooder, Naruto is the loud mouth and Sakura is the whiner.Darth_Payn said:
I recall seeing a video about a model in Hong Kong dress up in Lightning's XIII-2 outfit and Chinese people were all like "OHMAIGAWD SHE'S SO CUTEI!!!" Eastern people just have such different tastes in what makes a good character than to us.
How so? literally. The posts are already hidden, so I doubt flagging them would do anything more. How would I go about contacting or even petitioning a moderator with enough power to permanently -or even IP- ban that joker?sky14kemea said:
She's popular in the way a one-hit wonder rock band is. She's popular. Right now. Sure, she has won polls before, but then you look at the sales of the FF games and realize that maybe those polls aren't as objective as Toriyama wants you to think. She'll inevitably just sink into obscurity along with the rest of the XIII sub-series. As there's really nothing about her that's as iconic as Cloud, Aerith, Tifa, or even Tidus and Yuna. She's just another boring, brooding wannabe badass.LordOfInsanity said:
Anyway, I can't be the only one who noticed that this game's plot is essentially a worse version of Valkyrie Profile. You:
A) Play as a woman
B) Tasked by the gods
C) To collect souls
D) Due to the end of the world
E) And you have a limited amount of time to do so
But whereas Valkyrie Profile had a rich world, interesting characters, an intriguing and understandable battle system, and a plot that you could care about, LR has Lightning and is nothing short of a mess. Now that the XIII experiment has flopped, can we move on.
Hey it's not the first time Toriyama ruined a great name of a franchise that isn't final fantasy...
http://pspmedia.ign.com/psp/image/object/143/14353960/front_mission_evolved_pc_t.jpg
Toriyama penned the story for a great game that was great by itself. But he ruined it with his horrible storywriting.
http://pspmedia.ign.com/psp/image/object/143/14353960/front_mission_evolved_pc_t.jpg
Toriyama penned the story for a great game that was great by itself. But he ruined it with his horrible storywriting.
Well, firstly there's a list of Moderators and Community Managers in the Code of Conduct [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/codeofconduct]. It's right at the bottom, so just scroll down. Each username in that list also links directly to that Moderator or Managers profile, which has a "Send Message" option on already.Ryan Hughes said:
There is also a Moderation Team [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/groups/view/Moderation-Team] user group that is Open To All, which means you do not need prior permission to join. This allows you to join straight away in order to post about a problem with Moderation that you've encountered.
Alternatively, there is the Contact [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/contact/] form that's available directly on the front page that sends an Email directly to the Escapist Staff. On this form there is a drop down menu for the Subject. The options you could use for this situation would be: Forum Posting/Moderation Issues. Which I believe is the 4th option from the top.
Don't forget how he utterly mangled the Parasite Eve franchise beyond repair and how, under his rule, we wasted an ENTIRE CONSOLE GENERATION on Lightning and her merry band of idiots.gyrobot said:
You'll notice Cloud was never the central character in any of them, and NONE of the games were anywhere near as good as the original. Nobody considered them more than cheaply produced spin-offs, usually on systems like phones and the PSP (which even in Japan didn't have the largest install base), whereas FF7 sold gangbusters on one of the most popular systems of all time. The fact that an utterly atrocious game like Dirge of Cerberus sold over 1.7 millions is actually a miracle and a testament to how much people loved Final Fantasy 7... because the game itself was nearly unplayable.KingdomFantasyXIII said:
Your information is a tad inaccurate. It eventually cracked 1 million sales after TWO years years on the market in Japan. The numbers you mentioned are global, not in its home territory. It took a long while for it to crawl past 1 million here in Japan. There was no sudden "jump" in interest. Even if it was 3 million, that would have still been a catastrophic drop off of players from the original.KingdomFantasyXIII said:
You're mostly correct... for games that, as you said, have "critical acclaim". Persona 4 is critically acclaimed. Xenoblade Chronicles is critically acclaimed. Mario games are critically acclaimed.KingdomFantasyXIII said:
Lightning Returns is the lowest rated Final Fantasy game in a LONG time, with a paltry 66/100 Metacritic (compared to Persona 4's 93, Xenoblade's 92, and Mario 3D World's 93). There's a REASON those games continued to sell well after soft debuts, because the games themselves were utterly fantastic and positive word of mouth spread like wildfire. That has not been the case for Lightning Returns. Sales in Japan have not remain constant, showed no growth, and are going to bottom out faster than any other FF13 game thus far, easily making it the poorest selling game in the series based on the reception, lack of enthusiasm, and direct competition from better JRPGs (including rereleases of Final Fantasy X and X-2 outselling it).
Lightning Return's spotlight is over. She burned bright and brief, but already eyes have turned from her and the series to the inevitable Final Fantasy 15.
I mean, Kojima gets away being a creepy old man now in his games because he's made some really good games in the past.Trishbot said:
Has Toriyama made a SINGLE good game?
Seriously. Also there *was* something released where Cloud was front and center the main character again: Advent Children, which sold 400k+ in the first week (more than FF13-3 lol) and over 4.1 MILLION worldwide. So yeah, Cloud is definitively more popular.Trishbot said:
Motomu Toriyama is responsible for literally everything I hate in the FF series. Starting with FFX-2, taking a massive nose-dive into the excrement pool with FFXII-Revenant Wings, and everything in XIII. He was also senior scriptwriter in Front Mission Evolved, which explains the utterly horrible dialogue in that game.Thanatos2k said:
Here [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motomu_Toriyama#Works] is a nice list of what he's responsible for. Note that the more involved he is with a project, the worse it seems to become.
... "Event Planner" FFVII. Wonder if he came up with the motorcycle and snowbording games...
Correction:AndrewC said:
"The combat underpants system was confusing, the targeting doesn't work, and I am expected to grind up to the proper level when this quest has a time limit, so I quit to eat some pies."
I wonder if the plot makes more sense in the original Japanese and the translation was extremely rushed or something.
You know what, I hate myself enough to voice my unpopular opinion: I like lightning returns. The combat is one of the better JRPG combat systems I have ever experienced, Lighting is the least intolerable FF protagonist ever (granted that isn't a high mark), and a sever of the supposed "plot holes" are explained if you actually play the game. If nothing else its the best FF game since IX and I'm not sure why it is attracting such a unique amount of bile.
The thing that strikes me the most about Lightning Returns is that it's a story-driven game in a story-driven series with zero emotional attachment to any of the characters.
If the game hadn't flat-out told me that Lightning had lost her emotions and instead buried that factoid inside of the nested menus the game loves so much, then I would have never known, ever. She doesn't behave any differently, at all. I find it appalling that something that should be so central to a character, something that should define every interaction they have with a world to be so nonexistent for a character who was supposed to be the focal point of the series. The entire story just falls apart because we're supposed to sympathize with Lightning and her attempt to get back those oh-so-valuable emotions of hers, except it's clear that she never really used them anyway.
It's a shame because LR's combat is actually a very slick system despite what Yahtzee said about it. I was impressed at how GOOD they made the combat feel like. It's actually something I could have played for hours if it weren't for almost everything else surrounding the game. Every job class gives several new abilities and you get dozens of job classes to choose from, it's an ideal system for a game where you only control one character at a time. My guess as to why Yahtzee had problems later on is because he didn't focus on any particular job and instead tried to use them all which resulted in a bunch of mediocre stats on all of his jobs when he should have been focusing on a few.
Really, if this were a game about any other Final Fantasy character, if this was the Snow game or the Cecil game or even the Squall game, It would probably be one of the best JRPGs I've played in a very long time. It's too bad such potential was wasted on the dress-me-up window mannequin that is Lightning.
If the game hadn't flat-out told me that Lightning had lost her emotions and instead buried that factoid inside of the nested menus the game loves so much, then I would have never known, ever. She doesn't behave any differently, at all. I find it appalling that something that should be so central to a character, something that should define every interaction they have with a world to be so nonexistent for a character who was supposed to be the focal point of the series. The entire story just falls apart because we're supposed to sympathize with Lightning and her attempt to get back those oh-so-valuable emotions of hers, except it's clear that she never really used them anyway.
It's a shame because LR's combat is actually a very slick system despite what Yahtzee said about it. I was impressed at how GOOD they made the combat feel like. It's actually something I could have played for hours if it weren't for almost everything else surrounding the game. Every job class gives several new abilities and you get dozens of job classes to choose from, it's an ideal system for a game where you only control one character at a time. My guess as to why Yahtzee had problems later on is because he didn't focus on any particular job and instead tried to use them all which resulted in a bunch of mediocre stats on all of his jobs when he should have been focusing on a few.
Really, if this were a game about any other Final Fantasy character, if this was the Snow game or the Cecil game or even the Squall game, It would probably be one of the best JRPGs I've played in a very long time. It's too bad such potential was wasted on the dress-me-up window mannequin that is Lightning.
It isn't really turn-based, though. If anything it resembles the first Valkyrie Profile. Not just in combat, either. Even the story is similar as another poster mentioned earlier.Sticky said:
Hey man, you leave Cecil out of this, haha. Final Fantasy IV already had a follow-up game. The After Years.Sticky said:
But yeah, I get what you're saying. I would have found XIII-2 more interesting if it was a new Chrono game or something.
It already had a time-travel plot, so it was part-way there.