Final Fantasy XIII

[straier]

Το σημαντικό στην όλη υπόθεση είναι το ότι για πρώτη φορά θα μπορέσουν παίξουν final fantasy αυτοί που δεν έχουν κονσόλα της σονυ.Οι διαφορές στα γραφικά δεν έχουν μεγάλη σημασία.

Γιατί μέχρι το 6 που βγαίνανε;

[sOLiD SNAKE]

Γιατί μέχρι το 6 που βγαίνανε;

Εδω ταιριαζει αυτο που λενε για το δεντρο και το δασος

[Chief]

Γιατί μέχρι το 6 που βγαίνανε;

Εντάξει, λογικά μιλάει για την τελευταία πεντηκονταετία.

[Vaynard]

αντε ενας μηνας και κατι εμεινε

θα παραθεσω ενα review-impression ακρως αναλυτικο, η πειτε το οπως αλλιως θελετε που ειχα βρει λιγες μερες μετα την κυκλοφορια του παιχνιδιου και με καλυψε πληρως σε οτι ηθελα να μαθω πριν παιξω το game.
Πολυ καλυτερο απο καποια αλλα γνωστων ιστοτοπων που διαβασα (πλην του famitsu και του kotaku ισως)

σε μερικα σημεια ισως θεωρηθει απο καποιους οτι γινεται spoiler σε gameplay στοιχεια οποτε θα το βαλω σε spoiler tags

 

Story

I'll get this out of the way first. I won't reveal any spoilers. I'll say that I do like narrative structure. It feels like a tighter evolution of FFX and all characters equal screen time. The plot isn't really just about Lightning and those complaining about FFXII or any other FFs "I-join-you-because-I-can" playable characters won't find any here. Even Vanille, who looked like she might be this game ditsy girl with very little actually involvement turned out to be crucial. Snow is probably the one I think the least plotwise since he's too shonen for me. The plot is something that you would expect from a JRPG and if you go in with expectations of something larger you might be disappointed. The plot's strong suit is in it's presentation:the pacing, cutscenes and the constant switching of perspective leaves non of the PCs hanging with nothing to do.

The game uses flashbacks to reveal what happened in the 13 days before the start of the game. One letdown is that most of the plot from the web novel has been left out and condense into entries in the Autoclip option or very short scenes. I would agree, however, that putting in those scenes would make the pace less tight. There's no delay(none of that fight only a few fights in the first few hours of FFX) in throwing you right in. All that "calm before the storm" scenes are showed to us through flashbacks from various perspectives. Reminds me a bit like Lost actually. You'll only piece everything together after 8 to 9 chapters or so.

There is no filler in the plot at all and no fetch quests. None of that "fix the broken bridge by helping the builder find the axe that he lost in a cave that is 1 dungeon away" kind of filler in this. This means that there's no delay done to drag gameplay out. On one hand it keeps the pace there. On the other I wished that they could show even more of the characters.

If I have any complains at all, it would be that the villains didn't get enough screentime, especially 2 of them ( I will not mention). The ending also felt a bit short.






Graphics and Overall Presentation.

I would say that this is definitely the best looking JRPG on consoles now. The fields are gorgeous. The draw distance is pretty amazing and it seems that this is possible because they prerendered the things that are really far away. This includes the skies so you get FMV like skies instead of obviously fake clouds. The ground textures (as everyone had been complaining about once) could do some improvement but the art direction and other details really draw you away. Ground textures are only bad when you're in certain battle fields but battles are too fast for you to be concerned about them. The good spell effects and the character/enemy models are all very good and look even better when you explore places that are brighter.

Dungeons comes in a few sizes. They get longer as you progress further. Not all of them are very linear but usually distractions from the main section leads only to treasures or offer a way to make a roundabout for you to ambush your enemies from the back. I would say that the game offers a good balance between tight corridors and larger areas. Even when you get linear maps, the art design and the vast draw distances prevents you from feeling claustrophobic. There is no lazy repeating of areas. None of that cut can paste the same room and put them in every third room that you go to. Unless you nit pick of course, Caves can only look that different from each other, especially when we're talking about the same cave. Out of all the dungeons, I only dislike 1 of them.

The FMVs are the usual top notch FMVs from SE. The real time cutscenes are usually really good. SE really did use most of the polygons on faces and hair. Like FFX, they have a few different character models for each character but the differences are not bad like FFX's ( remember Tidus' expressionless low polygon model?). Some scenes had bad hand modelling but they're usually not important scenes. The characters all have expressions and react according even when they're not talking (again, unlike FFX). The final cutscenes during the last boss was particularly impressive in terms of how they bothered using all of their best character models (meaning round hands). Vanille even had necklaces that have parts that are almost as round as those early screen shots.

The Menu design is easy to use. No going into menus of menus to get something done. Every thing looks clean and easy to read. The Crystalium menus looks good gets better as you unlock more stats because it'll open up like this tree of coloured-discs with the character's crystal in the middle. It's really hard to describe. I can do without something though. Everytime you try unlocking stats, you press the button and this glowing light will travel forward, light up the path, and lights up the next node. The time taken is as long as the amount of CP needed. So it takes longer during endgame. It's very short, maybe a second but can get annoying after 77 hours of gameplay.

Another complain would be the weirdly named Auto clip. It's FFXIII equivalent of FFXII's Primer but it is like his lesser cousin. For one, it is very weird organised. It gives you a summary of the events so far as well as character profiles that get updated as yoy play. You also get lores of the world and short description of the terms and places. The enemy data base however is not like FFXII's. You get no short description nor lore, just stats. I would like to know more about the monsters. Why are King Behemoths wearing jeans?!! And why do Adamantaidais look like they have a seat on their back?
Changing Optima settings on the fly is also irritating. You have to go into the menu to do it. personally I think that L2 or R2 should be used for opening up a menu that is like the one in battles because that would make streamline it further. You need to change your starying optima while facing different enemies if you want to win quicker.

I actually like having shops at save points. Making everything available from save points means less pointless traveling (although that is not present here, you can't go back to places from Chap1-10). The game explains that online shopping is the norm in Coccoon. And that the shopping districts in Palomporum is a new but rising trend.

The menus in battles are much better than the ones in the demo, It is easy to find abilities since they've been separated into different roles. I would remove 2 things though. There is no need to display the Optima change button symbol on the top left. One could argue that the name of the Optimas is also there but there's no real need for the Optimas to be sbown. You know what roles your characters are currently in. The Driving Mode with a Square Symbol that appears when summons are around is also needless. Driving Mode could have been done with commands instead since you don't move the summon around anyway. Making us press up and circle(this does not really make you feel more actiony) to choose a command is only fun for the first 2 or 3 times. A stylised menu would have worked better.


Battles

The game introduces battle elements bit by bit. Anything new is always followed by a tutorial in battle. You start off with no magic because of plot reasons and is given time to experience with the basic battle system. After some 2 hours you get introduced to the Crystalium system and the Optima Change System. At this point in time, there is still very little need to switch optima to survive battles. The area ends with a boss fight that is accompanied by a tutorial for the Optima system. If you don't learn that changing optima at the right time is crucial, you will most likely fail to win.

The difficult levels spikes up from this point on. Sometimes it's due to character pairing and the lack of roles. But it does feel like they're trying to aquaint you and make you swicth strategies. Something that works with Lightning and Hope might not work when you're using Sazh and Vanille because they have different roles. The switching of perspective in the plot and gameplay not only works plotwise but also helps as a long tutorial for each different role.

As the game proceeds, buffs and debuffs become more and more important. Those who ignore them like in the older FFs will die from normal battles. They're no longer extra options that you can use to make fights easy but essentials. They work on bosses too (bosses also can inflict debuffs, sometimes a few at one go). There are enemies that resist magic or physical attacks and you have to use the right roles to defeat them. There's really quite a bit to the battle system. Listing them will be too long. You cannot button mash in this game.

The A.I. is as smart as the amount of information you have. You however have to decide what optima to change to. Should you take a risk and switch to an Optima that has 1 healer and 2 attackers/blasters? Or should I switch to one that has a defender that can help draw agrro away while my enhancer helps cure debuffs(by casting buffs) and healer heal damage.
The healer always heal HP first. Reviving and curing debuffs are secondary.(this can get irritating because sometimes you really want that dead healer to be revive because 2 healer work faster but the A.I. is more busy curing himself and the leader to health)
The A.I. for attacker seems to work like this---when there are mulitiple enemies cluttered, it will most likely use Attack all or Ruinga. Whether it uses Ruinga or Attack all depend on whether the enemy has resistance to physical or Magical attack. Blasters will use magic that the enemies are weak to.
There is no buffs that have ga spells. So enhancers have to cast spells on individuals. It decides what to cast first based on what attacks the enemies have. If the enemy uses magic more, it'll cast shell on every first before casting protect. If the enemy uses a particular magic, it'll cast the ba-element series (increases elemental defence against a certain element).
Jammers will only cast debuffs that can work on the enemy. If he has all the debuffs possible, the Jammer will do nothing.
But all this is only possible when you have all the enemy's data.Enemy breaking can become a bit tedious in the last dungeon(could be because I was slightly unleveled because I skipped all the optional places in Pulse to proceed with the story) but they feel fun enough most of the time. I thought some of the enemies in the last dungeon were more difficult that the last bosses, who are quite difficult already. Enemies don't feel cheap (death spells that are cast by enemies don't work as often as they do in some of the Megaten series).


Character Growth.

I must say that I like the Crystalium quite a bit. Like the rest of the game, it opens up slowly. As most of you already know, the game caps how much you can progress with the plot and this thing known as the Crystalium level. As the name suggest, when the Crystalilium levels up, the path for each crystalium gets longer.
Characters start with different number of roles. Some starts with 2, others just 1. As the plot progresses, they gain more and finally end up with 3 main roles. Unlike in FFx, the characters dont share a single board. Every character has their own and every role gives characters different abilities. As an attacker, Sazh does not have the ability to launch enemies because he uses a gun, only Lightning, Snow and Fang have them. I'm not sure about Hope and Vanille because I haven't doen their secondary role leveling yet, they don't get ATT until the game opens up all the roles for all characters at a point in the plot.

Likewise, characters learn different magic as Blasters. Only Hope gets all the black magic. Sazh and Hope are different Enhancers, Sazh gives more buffs that affect attacks ( Faith, Bravery, Haste and the En-element spells) while Hope learns primarily the protective buffs like Protect. They both learn most of the buffs but at a different point in the Crystalium. This is the same for Fang and Vanille's Jammer Crystaliums. Vanille for example never learns slow and a few other spells.

There are no ultimate moves in the game. The 1 unique ability that each character learns is not like the usual limit break but should be used if the situation fits. I do admit that including ultimate attacks would have been nice if one even gets bored with the difficulty.

I haven't tried leveling the sub roles (as I call them) since I'm still trying to max out the 3 main roles for each character. The last level of the main roles consists or leveing stats only. Purely meant for post-game since the Crystalium only unlocks after you beat the final boss.

Weapon & Accessories Customisation.

The weapon leveling takes buying for weapons and spin it into something else. Why do I say this?
Firstly each character only gets a few weapons this time. By using materials, you can level them up and increase their Physical and Magical Attack stats. Using materials that you get from monsters are not the most effective way of leveling and the drop rate is bad. The best way is to farm for items thats sell for a lot of money, buy the right materials from shops then use them to level weapons. You're still using money but instead of using them to buy weapons, you use them to buy materials to level your equipment. I guess this makes the system seems innovative. I do like seeing my stats for weapons go up though. Also I suspect the small number per character is due to them not waiting to model too many weapons.

The Ultimate Weapon system is also different. From what I know, Lightning's Ultimate weapon is Omega weapon. But you can have different versions of it. This depends on the base weapon that you've used right from the start. Each of the few base weapons that Lightning has have different properties/stats that suit different roles. That special ability and the stats proportion(whether it is stronger magically or physically) is kept throughout your crafting. So you will end up with the option to make a few Omega weapons, each of them suitable for a specific role.

Accessories (total of 4 slots can be learnt from the Crystalium system) are like armour. Because there's no stats for defence, you have to rely on buffs and these to help. There are those that increases HP and the ones that increase resistance of all kinds. They can be customised too but they usually capped at low levels. Accesories that do not deal with stats usualy capped with 1 level up. Sometimes special accessories like the Ribbon can be found by breaking down accesories that have been maxed out. Note that even ribbon is unlike the one is older FFs. It gives a maximun of 25% protection against debuffs.

By pairing specific accesories, you'll also gain extra abilities. I have yet to really explore and see whether this system is gimmicky or actually helps.



Post Game.

Like many others have complained, the game is rather linear and offers no distractions until Pulse.
There are no mini games unless you count one section where you had to control a robot and walk around and pound on enemies for 3 minutes. I do not have a problem with the lack of mini games however.

While Pulse is an impressive area that begs to be explore., the pacing managed to make me avoid trying the mob hunts and going straight for the plot. After around 58-60 hours(I'm a slow gamer and had to retry many battles in the last dungeon) I finally finished the main plot and started with post game.

In short, the only thing to do in Pulse are mob hunt missions, exploring the hidden areas and finding buried treasure with the Chocobo. Every mob hunt contains a short description, telling us a bit about the monster or the l'cie that failed to perform the task. I decided to follow the missions in their numbered order, starting from level 1. The first 15 or so were fairly easy. I suspect that these were meant to be done during the main game. I think the important thing is that some of these missions have a context to them

A few of the areas are locked unti you complete the missions. To get a chocobo you have to do 2 specific missions as well. One unlocks the place whil the other gives you the ability to ride. There is this series of mob hunts where you have to fight the six death generals of the fal'cie. Doing these missions gives you entries in the Auto clip that tells us more about Gran Pulse. I'm not sure what happens when you defeat them all because I've done only 4 out of 6.

There's also series of missions that are called the trials of Fal'cie Titan. Unlike normal missions, it is sort of like a gaunlet. You start of by choosing to do a specific mission. The Fal'cie will teleport you to a small area where you''ll encounter the monster. Upon completing, you'll be given 2 mission choices. Choose one of them and you''ll be teleported to the next area. This continues for 4 missions and at every point you'll get to choose between 2 paths/missions. The fifth tier missions are mostly difficult. If you decide to exit the area you'll have to start from the first tier again.
Once you finish all paths (you'll have to go through the trials at least 5 times I think) you would have done missions 35 to 51. I'm not sure whether you'll fight the Fal'cie. I'm not sure whether you understand what I'm saying but basically for the trial you'll start of with mission 35 then you'll choose between mission 36 and 37. At every point you'll choose between 2 missions until you complete 5. The missions are all fixed(doing 35 will always led to you choosing between 36 or 37) and the areas in which you fight them will always be the same. I just started so this is all I've got for the missions.

The most irritating thing during postgame(and any other point) would be the need to grind for money. Currently I'm fighting the biggest and second biggest Adamantoise types by relying on luck(Vanille's Death spell). They sometimes drop items that sell for 150 000 and also a rare material that costs 2 million (needed to change weapons to their ultimate weapon form). So most of my time was spent trying to kill them. CP is much an easier problem.

[Evans]

Toriyama explains reasons for Final Fantasy XIII linearity

In an interview in Ultimania magazine, both Motomu Toriyama and Yoshinori Kitase, respectively the Director and Producer of the highly anticipated Final Fantasy XIII title from Square Enix, discuss the reasons behind the linearity of the title.



In response to a question relating to such factor, which has been a noted criticism of the game in recent reviews, Toriyama responds “We made the map and battles function as part of the story, so that players get the same feeling as the characters. To achieve this, we wanted the story to progress non-stop [in a linear fashion], until Chapter X*.”


The interviewer then asks as to why Final Fantasy XIII has fewer towns compared to previous titles in the story, and whether this relates to seeking a ‘non-stop’ story, to which Toriyama explains “Yes, it is one of the reasons, but more importantly, it is a result of considering HD graphics will be the mainstream. Considering the amount of work to make graphics that deserve HD, it is hard to make towns in the conventional style.”



He continues “In the limited period of development time, to convey the the great story that deserves the name of Final Fantasy, and to convey the battles that entertain players enough, we condensed each element.”


*Chapter number removed as to prevent potential spoilers.

http://www.thelostgamer.com/2010/02/03/toriyama-explains-reasons-for-final-fantasy-xiii-linearity/

Λογική η εξήγηση για τη γραμμικότητα του παιχνιδιού (το ίδιο έκαναν και στο Χ). Η δικαιολογία που έδωσαν για την έλλειψη πόλεων ήταν λίγο άκυρη βέβαια . Ας μην έλεγα τίποτα.

[Ground_zero]

Symfwnw, an kai proswpika protimw ligotero story, perissoterh ekserevnish

Afto me tis poleis htan ontws akyro.

[BigBOSS]

Final Fantasy XIII 70% Review Score PSM3

http://n4g.com/ps3/News-471759.aspx

[Ramparter]

Μη με απογοητευσετε, περιμενω μεγαλα πραματα απο αυτο το thread...

[Evans]

Δε μου κάνει εντύπωση η βαθμολογία, από αυτά που διάβασα έχει αρκετά αμφιλεγόμενα στοιχεία. Και το RPGfan 80% του έδωσε. Και το FF XII που πήρε από παντού 9 και 10 τι κατάλαβε; Το ζήτημα είναι ότι υπάρχει πειραματισμός.

Αν ήταν exclusive 101% θα έπαιρνε .

[Chief]

Όχι, αν δεν ήταν multiplatform κάποιος δε θα πόσταρε χαμηλές βαθμολογίες.

[Ramparter]

Το RPG fan του εδωσε 85%, οχι 80% (σπαστικος ). Anyway να δουμε οταν θα εχουμε κι αλλα reviews.

[Evans]

OXI, θα δούμε όταν το λιώσουμε 80 ώρες και πάρουμε το platinum trophy :xp: . Αγοράστε το όλοι εσείς οι non-PS3 owners, δε φτάνει που σας λυπήθηκε η Square-Enix και σας το δίνει στο πιάτο για λίγα €€€, γκρινιάζετε κι όλας! Low life gamers .

[Ramparter]

Κανα demo θα ηθελα να δω... anyway θα θελα να χω την ευκαιρια να το δω καπου πρωτα. Διαφορετικα δε παιζει αγορα, ειμαι ασχετος με FF. Μολις 10 ωρες το IV στο DS.

Τα reviews παντα τα κοιταω να δω που κυμαινεται ενα game.

[Deus]

Έχω διαβάσει πάρα πολλά reviews και ξέρω πάνω κάτω τι να περιμένω από το παιχνίδι.Το μόνο σοβαρό αρνητικό που έχω διαβάσει είναι το ότι είναι γραμμικό.(δεν λαβαίνω σοβαρά υπόψιν τρολ reviews που βάζουν 4 μόνο και μόνο επειδή δεν έχει πόλεις )Το να απογοητεύσει κάποιον αυτό το καταλαβαίνω αλλά δεν μπορώ να καταλάβω γιατί να βαθμολογήσουν ένα παιχνίδι με 70% μόνο και μόνο επειδή είναι γραμμικό.Με αυτήν την λογική όλα τα παιχνίδια του είδους θα έπρεπε να πάρουν από 7 και κάτω.Τι να πω,θα βγει και θα δούμε.Προσωπικά είμαι σίγουρος ότι θα σπέρνει.

Πάντως οι περισσότεροι συμφωνούν στο ότι οι τομείς σενάριο,battle system,χαρακτήρες,πρόκληση παίρνει άριστα.Αυτά και μόνο νομίζω ότι αρκούν.

[paixtis]

Σκέφτομαι να το πάρω για 360.Πιστεύω να καταφέρω να ολοκληρώσω το XII. μέχρι τότε.