What RPG are you playing right now?

[Opa Opa]

I finished Final Fantasy XIII. Now I have to go and complete Persona 4.

How was XIII?

[MrEco]

I finished Final Fantasy XIII. Now I have to go and complete Persona 4.

How was XIII?

Very good actually.

I liked the characters a lot more than most people, but I think most people that complained about the characters probably stopped paying attention to them after the first few hours, which is a big mistake because the characters actually have arks to there personalities. They start off extremely flawed (And in some cases just outright cliched) and grow to become better people as the game progresses. I loved the combat, though the AI that controls character movement is batshit retarded. The linearity pretty much never let's up. Even when you reach the "open" segment of the game almost all of the enemies are too high a level for you to stand any chance against until you return after beating the game and to follow the actual main story you have to go down more conveniently placed "tunnel dungeons." Once again, however, I wasn't bothered by that nearly as much as most people. The soundtrack is amazing. I'm not gonna lie, it was quite honestly the best soundtrack I've ever heard in a game. The graphics were very good as well but more importantly the art style was very well done. Though I didn't like a lot of the enemy designs the character designs were fantastic.

Over all a very good game that I recommend to anyone who likes RPG's and can stand a good amount of linearity. Also a fair bit of grinding.

[Xeogred]

I liked the characters a lot more than most people, but I think most people that complained about the characters probably stopped paying attention to them after the first few hours...

That's actually impossible when those 6 characters took up 99% of the game. Now THAT is probably my biggest complaint for it story/character wise. You don't like them? Too bad, that's all the character development you're getting. There was a lot of possibilities, a lot of depth they could have reached with that world, and it went nowhere because the camera was permanently glued to those 6 dull nonsensical characters.

The game started off fairly well to me but just got worse as it went on. And when Lightning stood up at the end of the game to say "We're the chosen warriors, it's our destiny to save the world!" ... phew, the cliche explosion blew my face off.

@Opa Opa: I've been seeing on backlog you're struggling through FFVIII, is the gameplay or story? If you don't like some of the convolutedness of FFVIII's story/characters, I don't think there's any chance in the world you'd be able to put up with FFXIII.

[Opa Opa]

@Opa Opa: I've been seeing on backlog you're struggling through FFVIII, is the gameplay or story? If you don't like some of the convolutedness of FFVIII's story/characters, I don't think there's any chance in the world you'd be able to put up with FFXIII.

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The following post may be a little incoherent due to my exhaustion.
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I don't mind the overly complex story and I half-way don't mind the characters (although, Squall's emo nature does get on my nerve at times and why am I letting Selphie fly the spaceship??). It's the freaking gameplay that gets to me. I really dislike the junctioning system.

Right now I'm towards the end of disc 3. I've gone this long and haven't thrown the game out the window so I've got to finish it. I'm at a point where I need to spend a long time drawing magic or refining it from items to make sure I feel comfortable enough to continue.

I'm booting up FF IX right now so I can relax and play a game that's a little more traditional. I probably won't be checking out FF XIII if it's anything like VIII.

[MrEco]

@Opa Opa: I've been seeing on backlog you're struggling through FFVIII, is the gameplay or story? If you don't like some of the convolutedness of FFVIII's story/characters, I don't think there's any chance in the world you'd be able to put up with FFXIII.

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The following post may be a little incoherent due to my exhaustion.
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I don't mind the overly complex story and I half-way don't mind the characters (although, Squall's emo nature does get on my nerve at times and why am I letting Selphie fly the spaceship??). It's the freaking gameplay that gets to me. I really dislike the junctioning system.

Right now I'm towards the end of disc 3. I've gone this long and haven't thrown the game out the window so I've got to finish it. I'm at a point where I need to spend a long time drawing magic or refining it from items to make sure I feel comfortable enough to continue.

I'm booting up FF IX right now so I can relax and play a game that's a little more traditional. I probably won't be checking out FF XIII if it's anything like VIII.

In terms of combat, XIII wasn't anything like the rest of the games in the series. It's it's own entity.

[Xeogred]

@Opa Opa: Can't blame you then. I played FFVIII and really enjoyed it back in the day, finished it along with all the sidequests and whatnot... but I think it's a game that I've played once and don't need to touch again. I tried replaying it again finally last year and only got midway into the second disc or something before I got really bored, the junctioning system, drawing (I get OCD about things like this lol), and lack of difficulty... yeah it just felt like a chore. A bit too experimental for its own good.

FFXIII isn't comparable at all in terms of gameplay, but also... felt like a major chore to me. Not to mention the fact is you don't have control over most things until 20-30 hours into the game, nobody can argue against that.

I think the gameplay was about 20 steps backwards from XII in everyway though. In XII you could switch between the characters in battle and they had Gambits, custom perimeters you could set for the friendly AI to follow that was pretty in depth and very awesome. That's not in FFXIII. Instead, you can only control one person in battle and if that person dies it's game over, even though technically later on you can choose anyone as the playable character. Then there's the issue that characters will spam buffs/debuffs in a preset order that's not customizable at all, that really bugged me, and to top it off... I had some issues where some characters needed healing, but me the leader of the party needed to be healed the most even if I had the highest HP, I just knew one more hit would be devastating or something... but instead the AI automatically heals whoever has the lowest HP. Again, that is a huge issue when it's game over if the main player dies.

It had some good idea's, but needed some serious flexibility and customization.

Also whoever designed the Crystarium menu should be fired. That was so tedious and annoying to navigate.

[MrEco]

That's actually impossible when those 6 characters took up 99% of the game. Now THAT is probably my biggest complaint for it story/character wise. You don't like them? Too bad, that's all the character development you're getting. There was a lot of possibilities, a lot of depth they could have reached with that world, and it went nowhere because the camera was permanently glued to those 6 dull nonsensical characters.

A story based game that spends most of it's time focused on the six (A lot larger number than most games) main characters? That's just unheard of. And it's fine for you to form your own opinion on whether or not you liked the characters, but if you choose to ignore how there personalities changed over the course of the story then that's not the games fault.

The game started off fairly well to me but just got worse as it went on. And when Lightning stood up at the end of the game to say "We're the chosen warriors, it's our destiny to save the world!" ... phew, the cliche explosion blew my face off.

Don't like cliches? Maybe you should play less Japanese games? Also, you do realize that one of the biggest (Perhaps THE biggest) themes of the game was destiny right?

Also whoever designed the Crystarium menu should be fired. That was so tedious and annoying to navigate.

Lolwut? It was a straight line with some dead-end branches.

[Xeogred]

A story based game that spends most of it's time focused on the six (A lot larger number than most games) main characters? That's just unheard of. And it's fine for you to form your own opinion on whether or not you liked the characters, but if you choose to ignore how there personalities changed over the course of the story then that's not the games fault.

I don't know if you're being sarcastic here or what, was FFXIII your first Final Fantasy? I don't know how my point is arguable at all. I've beaten the game and didn't "choose to ignore" any major personality developments. My point was that the entire game focuses 110% on the main cast (and six characters is NOT a lot at all for a Final Fantasy game), whereas most other FF's or JRPG's focus a lot on even bigger casts, the villains, and the overall story. I can easily say that I was not a huge fan of FFIX's cast at all, but the game still had a lot of depth to the world with some history, the cool story and how involved the summons were, and everything else made up for that. Nothing made up for that in FFXIII to me. I didn't like the characters at all and the game offered nothing else to fix that balance, it was tough luck. It felt like FFXIII could have been something huge, but the "scope" of the story was minuscule when it just focused on 6 characters and developed nothing else at all, no good rival villain or anything. The world was not engaging and I felt like there were practically no stakes to what they were doing.

Games can be unoriginal and I'll still love them, but phew. This game had about as much depth as the first Final Fantasy to me. I just replayed IV and it accomplishes so much more, much bigger cast and character developments, villains get the spotlight (I'd say Rubicante is more memorable than the main villain in FFXIII), a bigger story with more on the line... 20 years ago.

Don't like cliches? Maybe you should play less Japanese games?

Lolwut? It was a straight line with some dead-end branches.

I missed a branch or two once and didn't notice until I was pretty much at the end of the game, felt like it took 5 minutes to travel back down that mountain. It was utterly pointless. A simple flat line would have been more audible.

Sorry, I don't like FFXIII. It was a step backwards in every regard to me and I'm just warning others, there's no saving grace in this one outside of the main cast. If you don't like them like I didn't, the game offers nothing else to replace that.

[Ack]

Ok, a quick question for the experts on Final Fantasy IV.

SPOILERS for those of you who haven't played this great game!

I'm pretty much at the end of the game, returning to the moon for the last time to take out Zeromus. I've got my final party, level-wise I'm about 47-50. I've done most of the side quests, like getting Asura, Leviathan, Sylph, and Odin, though I need to get Bahamut. I've heard there are a few other summons dropped off from regular creatures though...is this true in the NTSC-U Super Nintendo release? Because I'd really like to get all the summons if possible.

Anyway time wise I'm sitting near the 20 hour mark. Slow I suppose, but it's been over a decade since last I played it, and I've never beaten the game before. I'm looking forward to that final encounter and finally being able to check this title off my list.

[brunoafh]

Yeah, you can get the Bomb, Cockatrice, MindFlayer, and Goblin summons via drop. There might be another one but I don't think so.