Final Fantasy xiii-2

[dragon]

What it's out and no one made a review. How are the rest us supposped to know if it's good or not. Actually plan on buying it no matter what.

[Questor]

Pre-Order should arrive by the weekend. I don't expect much, but I'll let you know.

[dragon]

I know it's been getting better reviews then the first one. At least according to my coworker.

[Anacronian]

Review here (a couple of days old)

[Stark]

Dude FF3 came out like twenty years ago. I'm curious to hear how far FF13.2 went to appease all the hate from English-language players.

[Vendetta]

Y'know, I thought FFXIII basically ended at a point with more story and game potential than it had possessed throughout, what with taking this group of sheltered people from Coccoon and throwing them into a big, bad, hostile world on Pulse.

And then I heard that FFXIII-2 was going to ignore all that so we could be Lightning's stupid sister having time travelling adventures.

At which point I completely lost interest.

[Stark]

I hear people really hated he time travel stuff.

[Questor]

Y'know, I thought FFXIII basically ended at a point with more story and game potential than it had possessed throughout, what with taking this group of sheltered people from Coccoon and throwing them into a big, bad, hostile world on Pulse.

And then I heard that FFXIII-2 was going to ignore all that so we could be Lightning's stupid sister having time travelling adventures.

At which point I completely lost interest.

This is worrying. I got my copy today. Expect a first impression in a few hours.

[Questor]

OK... First impressions (given from an hour in, as that's all I really have time for tonight.

Not much has been changed about the combat, and I'm as confused about what's going on in the story as I was at the same point in FF13. So far, just based on my desire to find out what's going on, I'm going to give it a B-

[darkjedi521]

One minor annoyance is the single save file. Makes it hard to go and replay a section differently.

[Questor]

You can create new save files in the Historia Crux.

Next part (Got in a few hours yesterday between trip to airport and some projects.)

Thought 1: I really like the new Crysterium. Instead of the cross-classing being free (the way it was in FF-XII (I always was maxed out on everything when it expanded, and would occasionally max out again as soon as it expanded), it behaves a lot like in D&D. Each level is for one of the different classes, and progression is independent. I think it will result in the two characters being more diverse, I know mine are right now, with Noel as a kind of fighter, and Serah is a caster.

Thought 2: Quick time events need to die.

Thought 3: How are these "live" events being built into the story?

Thought 4: While this looks like the same gameplay mechanics from FF13, there's enough differences for me to wonder exactly how much is in common under the hood. There's more commonality that between 10 and 10-2, but still a lot of differences. For example, random encounters seem to be back (yay), but they still have a realtime element (yay again). Some of these changes appear to flow from where I am in the story though, so it will be interesting to see if they continue.

[Chirios]

I really didn't like xii, so I'm not that interested in this one. Versus XIII looks like it might not suck, even though I'm worried about the storyline.

[Vendetta]

Has there been any actual detail about FFVsXIII other than a few trailers depicting Tetsuya Nomura's newfound interest in bromance?

Cause, y'know, despite the fact that FFXIII was a great gaping void where it came to storytelling (I'm sure there was a plot, but fuck knows what it was or why I was supposed to care, given that it explained nothing as I was playing it and everything worth knowing about what was going on was in the stupid codex, and it had that tendency unique to animu, jrpgs and bad fanfiction that everything has to have a silly made up name that means nothing to anyone (Fal'cie, l'cie, etfuckingcetera).

Despite all that, the battle system was the best and most involving one in a Final Fantasy game. (There were problems around that, the lack of attrition combined with the small pool of possible encounters meant that once you'd "solved" an encounter your strategy would work 100% of all the time, and you would have to do it repeatedly in each area. Even something as simple as the stamina bar from Enchanted Arms would have been an improvement (in that you were restored to full HP/MP at the end of each battle, but doing so depleted another bar, when that ran out you didn't restore any more, so there was always the goal to refine your strategy for each encounter so you took less damage and beat the enemy with less moves. It doesn't matter in FFXIII if you trash the enemy instantly or scrape through on your last 1HP, you still won just as much).

[Chirios]

Despite all that, the battle system was the best and most involving one in a Final Fantasy game.

Really? I thought it was wank, although I've been told that it got better & you got more options like 18 hours in but I got bored enough to stop playing well before that point.

The moment that I was like: "fuck this" was during the first summon battle. Each summon has a trick that you've gotta figure out to win, but there was no way to figure out the trick, and then if you don't win in a certain time limit the summon insta killed you. Didn't understand the logic in making that kind of battle system, didn't care about any of the characters, and after about eight hours of play I had no fucking clue what was going on.

[Ford Prefect]

(I'm sure there was a plot, but fuck knows what it was or why I was supposed to care, given that it explained nothing as I was playing it

Maybe you should have paid attention.

[Ryan Thunder]

The moment that I was like: "fuck this" was during the first summon battle. Each summon has a trick that you've gotta figure out to win, but there was no way to figure out the trick, and then if you don't win in a certain time limit the summon insta killed you. Didn't understand the logic in making that kind of battle system, didn't care about any of the characters, and after about eight hours of play I had no fucking clue what was going on.

There's a Libra spell or somesuch you can use to figure it out. This was explained in like the first hour of the game or so.

[Vendetta]

(I'm sure there was a plot, but fuck knows what it was or why I was supposed to care, given that it explained nothing as I was playing it

Maybe you should have paid attention.

Would there have been a rewarding experience if I had? Signs point to no.

I really can't say that I rate Final Fantasy storytelling as a whole, to be honest, and FFXIII2 is symptomatic of the reason. The overcomplicated timetravel bollocks is there because they seem incapable of using plots that aren't a bunch of convoluted nonsense. The idea of the people of Cocoon thrust into the dangerous world of Pulse has some kind of human resonance. Lightning fighting a jpop boy band reject 700 years in the future whilst her sister chases her through time does not..

[Ford Prefect]

Would there have been a rewarding experience if I had? Signs point to no.

You just claimed that you missed all the signs. And if you missed something as simple as Barthandelus actually telling you that the entire party has been his tool in engineering the cataclysm which will return the creator deity to the world, you definitely would have missed how that played into the party's fears and insecurities and interpersonal conflict.

[Revy]

I got FFXIII for Christmas and I can barely work up the energy to play it. It's just so Meh. Don't like the combat system (I might if I could pick my own team or select who learns what combat roles rather than having no control over either), and whilst I understand the story completely, that doesn't make me actually like it. Seriously, there's no 'Shoot Hope in the face and dropkick his corpse off a cliff' option? I'm really stuck dragging this whiny brat around everywhere?

It would help if everyone had something new to say once in a while. I've been playing for ... what? Ten hours at least? And so far everyone has repeated something I already know at least fifty times. It's gotten so I'm shouting at the screen: "Shut up! I know what a l'Cie is! I know people think Pulse is bad! I know you're fucked if you're a fal'cie! I know this shit already! Christ, tell me something I DON'T KNOW! You've already said that same damn thing ten fucking times! SHUT UP!"

Everyone's like a broken record in this game. Talk about the weather. Talk about your bad breath. Just stop repeating yourself. I'm not a retard, I don't have ADD. I am paying attention to the story, so get on with it already!

I do have to say that I love Lightning. If she had been given a bit more leeway XIII would have rocked. She tries to ditch the plucky comic relief right at the start, tries to leave whiny emo brat Hope eating his own dust, knocks Snow onto his ass for being a useless and annoying waste of space, and rather than sitting around angsting over her fate decides to march straight up to the guy/thing in charge and kill it, because fuck it beats moping. Insurmountable odds? Does she look like she cares?

That girl is awesome. Let me play as her and ditch the rest of those deadweights and I would be all over this game. Unfortunately I hear her role in XIII2 was reduced to a cameo, and you're stuck playing as her blander than vanilla sister instead. Whoopee. There's a demo on the PSN store, maybe I'll give it a shot anyway.

[Ford Prefect]

I don't know how 'is the central figure of the plot' is supposed to be a 'cameo', but then again you've pegged as a 'whiny brat' which says something about your ability to think critically. How would you feel if you saw your mother killed and you kept running into the guy responsible and he didn't care?

[Revy]

I say 'cameo' because, central to the plot or not, from what I've read you still play as someone else for the vast majority of the game. Despite being on the front cover, Lightning isn't the main character, and it sounds like the bulk of the game consists of trying to actually find her. Hence my complaint. My favourite character and one of the few I actually liked goes from the main PC to a secondary character who spends the bulk of the game in a parallel reality. It's almost like the shit they pulled with Metal Gear 2. "Here's Snake! You can play as him for ten minutes! Have fun! Now here's Raiden! You're playing as this wet drip for the rest of the game! Have fun!".

And it doesn't matter if Hope lost his mother tragically or not - that is no excuse for the producers/writers whatever portraying him as an utterly insufferable and annoying brat that you can barely stand. Tifa in FF7 lost her entire hometown to Sephiroth and he certainly couldn't give a shit about the place, yet she didn't spend all her screentime being annoying to the point where I wanted to kill her. It doesn't matter if Wesley Crusher's behaviour makes sense for the character, they shouldn't have written him the way they did because a hell of a lot of people couldn't stand him and were annoyed every time he appeared on screen. It doesn't matter if a character is justified plotwise in being an annoying whiny brat, the fact that they are will still piss people off.

[Vendetta]

I don't know how 'is the central figure of the plot' is supposed to be a 'cameo', but then again you've pegged as a 'whiny brat' which says something about your ability to think critically. How would you feel if you saw your mother killed and you kept running into the guy responsible and he didn't care?

The trouble is that that's all there is to Hope. Because of the ultra-narrow focus of the narrative in FFXIII you never see any of the characters interact in ways other than their single defined trait. Hope hates Snow because he caused the death of his mother, but that's all we know about Hope as a character. (and the less said about Snow the better. Besides which that whole subplot was repeated and done better by Sahz and Squeaky over Sahz' son. Largely because Sahz was actually somewhat likable on a human level).

And none of the rest are much better, they're all cardboard cutouts of characters, and they don't have any human conversations, they barely ever weigh in about anything not directly related to their one motivation.

I think this is something that's missed from the older style of party structure. In FFVII, for instance, any major plot event that happened would be commented on by the two characters you'd brought along. That meant that everyone had to have something to say to every event, they had to, in effect, have a consistent character. And sometimes those things strayed outside of their single character trait. For instance, in the scene where Aeris gets shanked, most characters will just say their line and walk out. But if you take Yuffie she actually breaks down and cries on Cloud's chest. Something that's somewhat unexpected given her overriding monomania for nicking all your shit, but actually works to give her some kind of dimension as a character.

[Ford Prefect]

The trouble is that that's all there is to Hope.

Uh, no, that isn't all there is to Hope. He's a well-drawn character with an arc based around the dangers of grief. He isn't able to deal with the loss of his mother and is totally lost, and when Lightning attempts to give him direction (based on her own misapprehension of other people) he focuses his grief into an unhealthy obsession with revenge, but he's just fooling himself. Like that's good stuff, core human drama, but nerds just think he's a 'whiny brat' because, I don't know, they think it's better that characters be emotionless sociopaths just for their own convenience. Or otherwise they're like you and think that he's 'one-note', but again that's just because you weren't paying attention. The game goes out of its way to compare and contrast Lightning and Hope - she is confident and he is insecure, she is outspoken and he is shy and withdrawn, but they both share a similar awkwardness in dealing with other people

It's the same thing with Snow. People think he's just some huge empty guy, but he has an arc based around trying to be the hero, constantly causing harm to other people and not being able to confront that. That's not a 'cardboard cutout' by any stretch of the imagination. None of the characters are. They're by far the most well drawn main cast in any Final Fantasy. After a billion games of largely flat characters being involved in half-way decent narratives (and one seriously interesting character which no one liked), you got given a cast full of complex, fallible people and everyone complained. I mean I am sitting here marveling at the both of you bringing up Final Fantasy VII as an example of 'good writing'.

[Vendetta]

Uh, no, that isn't all there is to Hope. He's a well-drawn character with an arc based around the dangers of grief. He isn't able to deal with the loss of his mother and is totally lost, and when Lightning attempts to give him direction (based on her own misapprehension of other people) he focuses his grief into an unhealthy obsession with revenge, but he's just fooling himself.

I think you're giving way too much credit to the writing of the game here. Y'see, at the point where Lightning and Hope do most of their interaction around this point you can't really say anything about Lightning's ability to deal with other people because the game really hasn't had her interact with other people beyond the few scenes with the other party characters before they all paired off for the long period of two character parties.

And Hope's revenge arc is something that simply does not ring true. If you're going to try and sell a 12 year old boy as someone who is planning to commit murder in cold blood (which Hope was, and would have succeeded at if not for being shot at with missiles) you have to have some deeper look at how he got that way. Because believe it or not it's not a normal reaction to grief, even in the circumstances Hope was in.

It's the same thing with Snow. People think he's just some huge empty guy, but he has an arc based around trying to be the hero, constantly causing harm to other people and not being able to confront that.

Except as soon as he looks like he's in danger of encountering any character growth because of it he drops right out of focus and we're back to convoluted world saving nonsense. And we barely actually see him "trying to be the hero", we hear him say he is the hero (which was amusing when Balthier did it, not so much for Snow), but he doesn't really do anything that fits most definitions of heroic. Even his playing at revolutionaries doesn't work, because we only ever see him and his two mates doing it.

You're reading things that aren't there into FFXIII.

[Ford Prefect]

You're reading things that aren't there into FFXIII.

Am I? You admitted that you didn't understand the plot when it was explained to you in no uncertain terms. Yet you're able to determine that there is no subtext in the game at all?