That's also the answer to "who should be rounded up and sent to a video game concentration camp?"Quote:
Originally Posted by Hero
Printable View
That's also the answer to "who should be rounded up and sent to a video game concentration camp?"Quote:
Originally Posted by Hero
Finally played a bit of this after I got home. The first 20 minutes are just outrageously over the top, and the CG is as beautiful as ever. Cutscenes are laced with QTEs, so I can't zone out like I did playing XIII. I'm only an hour and a half or so in, but already everything seems so much more...interactive. No more tubes, proper maps are back, you frequently get to choose which questions to ask/responses to make during conversations, and there's no bloated three hour tutorial before they let you start customizing your characters and paradigms. Speaking of which, they fixed the one issue I had with the otherwise excellent battle system: they nixed the lengthy paradigm shift animation from XIII. So now, instead of taking a beating while everyone does their little pose, it's actually possible to change while the enemy is in the middle of an attack to reduce damage (say, by shifting to Sentinel before a particularly nasty strike). Very cool stuff. Even the writing has improved. It's still cheesy as hell, but I now occasionally hear exchanges that almost sound like normal human interaction.
My only gripes so far are that Noel looks like a Kingdom Hearts reject in his default outfit, and the frame rate on the 360 is inconsistent when you're exploring. Don't know if that's an issue on PS3 or not.
I'm actually excited about a Final Fantasy game for the first time since XII!
I've been enjoying the hell out of this game. The monster system is fun if not a little too bloated (You can end up with SO MANY MONSTERS) but then you can fuse those monsters into other monsters. And a lot of the time it may be worth it to level up a monster just for fusing them.
The Crystarium is about as boring as the License Board, it's very automatic though I Have Serah as a level 50+ Commando with Noel as my Ravager. But the fact when you finish a Crystarium you get a bonus to apply was a really cool touch. They paced a lot of the leveling stuff in a good manner, so there was a reason to get excited.
Also Giant Metal Cactaur with a Moustache was amazing. Couldn't kill him yet! But overall this game just has so much more life to it, the universe of FFXIII seemed really cool, and it was a major shame you didn't get to experience it. Pulse was already dead and Cacoon you were just on the run the whole time. Now getting to know the actual universe seems to be one of the main reasons they did this game.
Noel's outfit aside, he's a really good character, very likeable and sensible. Even meeting old characters from XIII is kinda of exciting, particularly Hope. It made me realize the worst part of XIII isn't the silly dialog; it's the fact it's silly dialog about NOTHING. Whereas now there can be silly dialog with a little substance, which makes it less awful.
I did just get to an area that is really cool looking, but I"m being swarmed with incredibly easy battles and that's annoying.
I liked XIII, but this game is so much better on pretty much every level it's absurd. I'm at like 14 hours
Interesting, conventional wisdom would switch those two. Way to buck the trend, Thief Silver.Quote:
Originally Posted by Thief Silver
... I am exceedingly intrigued.Quote:
Also Giant Metal Cactaur with a Moustache was amazing.
From what I've read the framerate is more stable on the PS3.Quote:
Originally Posted by No One
That figures. It's not enough of a distraction that it's a game breaker or anything, but you definitely notice it. The more wide open a space, the worse it seems to get.
Yeah, unlike most you people I'm good at tuning out Framerate issues and I hardly notice it except on that loading screen when you go to a new time.
I just started chapter 4 and gained access to the casino (geeked out a bit when I saw Setzer's Dice in the list of rewards, and again when I discovered chocobo racing). I'm in the middle of chasing Caius through Academia, which is a very cool-looking part of the game. I'm really enjoying the monster wrangling stuff, especially so after I discovered you can pick silly names for them and even put stupid props/accessories on them. The game reminds me of some weird hybrid of FFXIII and Chrono Cross at times. XIII had a very troubled development and it showed in the final product, but it seems to me the development team for the sequel had a lot of fun making it. It brims with enthusiasm and interesting ideas, and there are neat little details and nods to long-time fans throughout. That pesky JRPG cheesiness is still there, but it somehow manages to charm more often than it offends.
Obviously we're only a little more than a month in, but this is the biggest (and most pleasant) surprise of the year for me so far.
I'm not going to be playing this for a while; the movers are taking all my worldly possessions away next week, and I won't see them for about a month. I just hope this game has as much Leona Lewis as XIII.
This was an excellent game though I also enjoyed XIII -- even on the ps3 the graphics, cutscenes, and framerates weren't as good as XIII but still were decent enough quality -- after all is said and done it feels like an append disc rather than a full game, and that's my only major gripe. I maxed out monsters and my characters and did a bunch of extra stuff and still only had 38 hours total compared to over 80 on XIII... that includes lightning DLC.
Game is really fun and the combat system is one of my favorites this generation for RPGs, though I felt the difficulty curve was too low and that you max out too quickly... there weren't really any difficult bosses once you break the game with chichu and higher stats... I wanted a bit more of the really tough stuff and some of those final levels are really lame, especially 500 AF... and the non-ending come on...
Overall an excellent game but hopefully DLC will extend a bit more for those of us who put the time in to max out and get really strong teams... and maybe give us a proper ending...