Ok, so Final Fantasy XIII or Resonance of Fate?

[Veno]

I really want to play Resonance of Fate. I've been watching it since I found out it was End of Eternity in Japan. But, I'm a huge Final Fantasy fan. My brother in law would let me borrow FF13 when he's done, but I'm one of the people that have to own it. You know, add to my FF collection.
I'm a guy who doesn't make a lot of money, at all. I just got Bioshock 2 a few weeks ago, and I have $21 to go towards a next game. Which do you think?

Edit- For the record, I AM actually leaning towards RoF.

[Gamerforlife]

Haven't played Resonance of Fate, but I can tell you that FF13 is, overall, one of the weakest entries in the entire series. It feels like half of the game was left on the cutting room floor quite honestly

[yomomma1]

They both are rated pretty meh... I did play through about half of ff 13 and I didn't like it. There is a cutscene every oh.. 2 minutes. This would be fine if there was a good story.

[Veno]

I don't really care about the ratings. Someone on this forum already said Resonance of Fate was pretty good. Me just looking at RoF thought it was pretty good.
So, even as an FF series regular, it wouldn't kill me to not have FF13?
RoF to me seems like a better game.

[dsheinem]

Dragon Age!

[Veno]

Maaayyybeeee.....

[baschlives]

I feel like Final Fantasy XIII is being vastly underrated on this forum and other forums acrosss the internet. in my opinion it is no worse than Final Fantasy VIII or X, and is better than Final Fantasy II,III,V,and X-2.

If you are a big fan of the franchise you owe it to yourself to give the game a try. Yes the game starts off slow but the great battle system and the more free-roam latter half of the game make this game worth the commitment.

[yomomma1]

I feel like Final Fantasy XIII is being vastly underrated on this forum and other forums acrosss the internet. in my opinion it is no worse than Final Fantasy VIII or X, and is better than Final Fantasy II,III,V,and X-2.

If you are a big fan of the franchise you owe it to yourself to give the game a try. Yes the game starts off slow but the great battle system and the more free-roam latter half
of the game make this game worth the commitment.

If you like it, thats cool. But having more than half the game suck, and the other being okay just isn't worth it for me. I want to talk to a person to buy weapons, not use a vending machine.

[Gamerforlife]

Yeah, FF13 is pretty lame. I've beaten the game and done the optional marks and I just recently beat the strongest monster in the game. I'm sort of bored with it already, which is a LOT faster than I've ever gotten bored with ANY game from Square. There just isn't much else to do in the game beyond farming for cash to upgrade every item for that stupid Treasure Hunter trophy.

The story=lame. Some of the characters I like(Sazh and Fang), but the tale FF13 tells is rather uninteresting and it seems like they have to throw an action packed cutscene at your every now and then just to make you care

The game is ridiculously restrictive too. After you beat the game, you are rewarded by FINALLY being able to max out your characters, which is something a lot of players like to do BEFORE the end boss battle. Geez, FF13 is a good example of a game that is way too balanced. They tried way too hard to keep your party's power in check, which in turn makes you feel like you have no real freedom in developing them. Oh, you want to continue levelling? Sorry, this is as far as you go until you beat the next chapter. WTF!? Who actually thought that was a good idea?

This game has all the right ingredients. The graphics are truly gorgeous and that is coming from someone who is not a graphics whore. You put your controller down and just look at your party, or look at the background in some areas, even the animation of your characters in movement. It's all great stuff. Music is very good and the combat system is nice, but everything else is just meh. No sidequests, bad story, no freedom in developing your characters and a combat rank system that is poorly thought out(the stronger your party, the harder it is to get high ranks and you HAVE to abuse pre-emptive strikes a lot, which the game does NOT make easy for you)

FF12, flawed though it was too, was a better game. FFX was the last GREAT FF in my opinion though

[MrPopo]

I still need to finish off the last couple marks and the strongest enemies in FFXIII, and right now I'm in the middle of RoF. Here's my take on things.

FFXIII for the first half of the game is about a terrible event that happens and how the members of your party react to that. They go in different directions, and as a result you get a better sense of each character and their motivations. At the halfway point they all come back together with a single resolve, and this leads to the goal of the second half of the game.

Resonance of Fate's plot hides in the background. It reminds me of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, where you have a lot of these one-shot episodes, but there is an overarching plot in the background that keeps poking through. That said, I'm currently in chapter 10 of 16 and I've only started getting hints of how the characters in my party are related to the main plot that gets shown in the between chapter cutscenes.

FFXIII uses the same linear design as FFX, until the halfway point where you get the more open world and can start doing the marks. Once you leave mark territory its back to the FFX design. RoF has a more traditional overworld, with new areas being unlocked as you progress. Many of the missions will involve dungeons in sections of the world you've already passed through. The actual dungeons, though, are even more linear than XIII; they exist as a series of battle screens.

Both games have interesting combat and character development systems. FFXIII takes the AI-controlled real-time approach of XII and brings it back to the ATB system. You control one character and you build up action charges, and each action takes one or more charges. It has a very good "auto-battle" that will select appropriate actions based upon what you know about an enemy and your class. Rarely will you find a need to override it, so the majority of the decision making is how you utilize your paradigms to switch around your classes. RoF, on the other hand, is Valkyria Chronicles-styled turn-based, and the battle system is based upon positioning and target prioritization. It leads to interesting fights, but it also makes random world-battles tedius, as the nature of the combat system prevents an easy "auto attack spam for win" like you can do in Final Fantasy or Star Ocean.

The character development in FFXIII is a better version of the sphere grid; you can actually decide how to focus your characters in terms of class development, though going outside their three primary classes is expensive. In RoF you gain levels from doing damage, which affects your HP and equip limit and also gives you skills. The main customization is the gun customization, where you can specialize the parameters of your weapons. Unfortunately, there is a VERY clear way to effectively customize.

I honestly can't rank one over the other. They are trying to do different things that fit under the general umbrella of "RPG". Both are worth getting, but since you're such a big FF fan I'd say to get XIII first. Then sell a kidney and get RoF and Dragon Age (on PC).