What are you playing?

[Sload Soap]

But the battle system isn't the summation of a RPG's gameplay so why should anyone address it and it alone as if it validates the entire experience? That's similar to the reasoning people use to praise the Transformers films: yeah they have shit story, characters, pacing and direction but there was some action so that's okay. I'm not nitpicking, I'm talking about the majority of the experience.

In my experience all I found myself doing in battle was hitting paradigm shift to medic when losing health and to Ravager when I needed to soften up a more difficult enemy. For the vast majority of my game that is about as deep as the combat got. It's a single button press every 30 seconds. I felt so railroaded.

And since it is essentially automated I spent most of my time watching overly elaborate attack animations play, unnecessarily drawing out even basic encounters. The Eidolon's are worse than useless and you are forced to fight stupid battles to win them. It's really boring. Then I walked a few steps, bumped into another enemy and did it all again for hours and hours on end. It's a slog.

For me, a RPG is usually built on the pillars of world building, interesting story and engaging gameplay both in and out of battle. It's pretty disingenuous of you to dismiss the exploration part of an RPG's gameplay. By doing away with exploration FFXIII is rejecting a lot the language of the RPG. Talking to people in towns, travelling the world map, engaging in mini-games are all part of the gameplay of an RPG. FFXIII in contrast is structurally more like an action game: confined spaces wherein the player encounters enemies, punctuated by boss fights and cut scenes. That's not an RPG, that's a Mario game. Even if it does open out at the end, so what? It took longer than the running length of most games to get to the point where it actually resembles what it says it is.

Even if the combat was fun or deep, Final Fantasy XIII would still be a sickeningly linear, badly paced, 50 hour slog where the badly written and melodramatic cut scenes are the only "respite". That's my point. It'd have to improve in several areas to be considered merely good. I can't separate the battle system from the quagmire of horrendous design that is the rest of the game.

Imagine if FF1 was just a 50 hour long corridor to the final boss. Strip the bells and whistles from XIII and that's all it is. Sazh might be doing wicked cool gun-fu in battle but functionally nothing more advanced than FF1 is happening. It's just now it takes much, much longer. How is that better?

If Final Fantasy XIII was a FPS each level would just be a bunch of bullet sponge enemies in a completely square room while Leona Lewis plays in the background. GOTY!

I've given up on RPG's with good combat because they had shit stories (FFX) and I've given up on RPG's with good story because it had shit combat (FFII). XIII gives you both bad story and bad gameplay simultaneously. It's suffocating.

I'm also not entirely sure what worth there is in comparing XIII with the other games in a series known for having different combat set ups in each installment. Yeah, FFVIII's combat is easily broken. Again, so what? Does bringing it down a peg suddenly raise XIII's stock? Is it relevant to XIII's extreme linearity and awful narrative? Equally does FFVI's relatively shallow battle system bring down the perfectly paced narrative, intriguing world and beloved characters?

I don't get where you are going with that argument. If you want a better comparison you should be looking at more contemporary JRPG's like Lost Odyssey or the Tales series. Even there, FFXIII comes off very unfavourably.

[Xeogred]

Dude.

I got about 12 hours of tube walking done before I had the dreadful realisation that this was all the game was. And those 12 hours were mostly down to Sazh.

You also only got 12 hours in. What you played was hardly a representation of the gameplay.

Gotta be an ass calling you guys out on the clock time, lol. But really, the tutorial joke cannot be emphasized enough. I'm not trying to argue the games quality with this at all either, the gameplay simply changes dramatically once the game finally opens up on Gran Pulse, 30 some hours later. If you can't make it that far, that's fine. It's 30 hours of boring crap. But I have a hard time seeing any weight in arguments about the battle system when some didn't even "unlock" it and really see what it could do in the second half. SE funked up there big time.

You hated it, that's cool. Just don't need to knock on aspects you didn't really experience.

Lost Odyssey

I found that game fairly easy to break too. The second half was pathetic (and I got every achievement doing the extra stuff). any JRPG where everyone can learn everything turns into a cakewalk to me it seems.

I can see where you're both coming from though. There needs to be some balance. One of my old friends would always love watching me play JRPG's (talk about a snooze fest if I were watching), he could totally get into them if they had an awesome story and crap gameplay. I definitely can't do that at all and find myself to be more gameplay driven, so maybe that's the mystery behind why I somehow finished XIII. Who knows. Then there's stuff like the Tales games to me, I've gotten pretty far in Phantasia, Symphonia, Destiny, and Graces... but didn't care to finish any of them because the story was so bare bones and generic.

Anyways since we might be throwing down some unpopular opinions, if I had to pick the near perfect Final Fantasy from a gameplay perspective... it would be FFV. The job system lends itself well to numerous replays and experimentation. The difficulty is consistent with some standout bosses. Utilizing enemies weaknesses can be very vital. But you can still power level near the end, kind of like FFIV... but still, these two are miles more balanced and consistently challenging than the rest of the series. VI-VIII are probably some of the easiest games in the genre to me. But? Still mostly fun (VIII aside, even if I do love a lot about it otherwise), so I'm still a big fan. I guess they strike that "balance".

[marurun]

Dude.

I got about 12 hours of tube walking done before I had the dreadful realisation that this was all the game was. And those 12 hours were mostly down to Sazh.

You also only got 12 hours in. What you played was hardly a representation of the gameplay.

I gotta say, if a game can't hook my interest and entertain me within 12 hours, RPG or no, I'm not gonna spend more time with that game. If this is a 48 hour RPG, that's 1/4 of the game right there that came across to Sload as boring.

Maybe the game changes a lot later on, but that's still 12 hours that failed to hook him. That's kinda inexcusable as far as game design goes.

[Xeogred]

Which is pretty much what I said too, it's SE's fault they slipped up big time there. I'm just saying, it's hard to see any real points being made when some don't even get to the actual game. It's entirely acceptable that if they don't care for it at that point that's fine, that's way more than enough time.

I'll accept "It sucked I hated it" instead of going into details.

[marurun]

Yeah, at the 12 hour mark it's pretty safe to say that what you're playing is part of the real game. It may still get better, but that doesn't make that first 12 hours somehow not actually part of the game.

I know I'm getting nit-picky here, but it seems like you are putting up some bizarrely specific constraints about what is and isn't the game. If you're playing it, it's the game. If you're playing it at 12 hours, it is DEFINITELY part of the game. It may not be the best parts, but it is still actual game.

[Xeogred]

That's a 30 hour tutorial!

[Sload Soap]

Once again, my arguments are NOT just about the battle system. I'm not knocking aspects I didn't experience, I'm knocking everything. It doesn't matter to me if it becomes super deep later on, I hate every other aspect of the game anyway. Is that somehow unclear?

12 hours isn't a short period of time in gaming so I don't appreciate my (or Retrogamers) criticisms being passed over because of that. I also don't appreciate writing up long posts clearly explaining my reasoning only to have small snips used as rebuttals.

Logging out of this now.

[Xeogred]

I didn't think I was that mean about it.

[Retrogamer0001]

Completely agree, making excuses for boring, asinine combat systems and gameplay at the 30 hour mark (where I am now, nearing the end of Chapter 12, where I forced myself to get because I want to beat this pile of crap) and saying my opinion isn't valid because I'm not far enough into the game is ludicrous. At the 20, 25, or 30 hour mark I can't make a fair judgment? If I need to play a game for more than 30 hours (three times the length of an average game) just to get to the parts where it doesn't suck, then something is wrong.

What games in the series were better than XIII? ALL of them. Hell, Mystic Quest was better than this game. Dunpeal, you seem to like this game because it doesn't offer a chance to "break it" until after the game is already over. That's fair, but "breaking" a Final Fantasy game isn't exactly easy - it's easy to beat up on the older games because they're based on systems that reward you for the amount of time you put into them searching for items, weapons, magic, and summons (you know, in the many, many towns, dungeons, and other places in the worlds, something that XIII doesn't have). FFVII, for example, is one of the most broken games in the series with the materia system, but it takes a hell of a lot of work to find and max out Mime, KOTR, Phoenix, etc. The time you put in pays off and you feel like you're accomplishing something with these things, something no one could ever argue that XIII even comes close to replicating.

The combat system sucks hard in XIII because you lack control over your party's actions. You make fewer decisions in this game than in any other Final Fantasy and are rewarded less for it. Paradigms are a lazy way to implement the job classes that you could customize in the other games in the series - Weaken, Attack, Heal repeat. It doesn't get any deeper than that because it's not designed to be able to. They made the summons into a complete and utter joke (one turns into a race car, really?) and they're worthless when you do summon them.

All enemies are very strong and makes each and every battle a boring ordeal. Square's idea behind this? If you can't make a game interesting, then make it longer so that people think they're getting their money's worth. This is completely obvious when I hear things like "it gets way better after 30 hours!". Making each and every fight with common enemies so tedious ruins any kind of enjoyment I might have gotten out of this game (the amount of which is debatable anyway, considering all the other flaws it has). In case you can't tell, I really despise this game, and I don't see how people can either defend it or compare it favorably to other games in the series.

[Xeogred]

I wonder why you plan to finish it. There must be something, deep down in there, that you secretly enjoy? Masochist?

Anyways I'm done talking about XIII forever around here. People hate me when I hate on it, people hate me when I try to defend some elements. I'd give it a 5/10, I hate a lot about it but it was okay enough that I can look back fondly on a few elements. I've seen worse. Oh well. Good riddance.