LINEAR MAPS :@

[black orb]

>>> I dont like linear maps but I can bear the pain, but that auto healing thing is totally absurd, and about the no towns part I hope thats not true..
BTW, the best thing about FF12 were the dungeons..

[VeloZer0]

I kind of took the Cloister of Trials out of the FFX equation, as I didn't really feel they were proper dungeons in the sense we are discussing. I have to say I did highly enjoy them though (with the exception of Bevelle) , and this is a perfect example of the no encounters in puzzle rooms concept.

As for healing after battles, I think it is an absolutely brilliant idea, allowing for each fight to be a challenge. I've been playing :ast Remnant recently (and while no means a perfect game), and that game allows Saving anywhere in a dungeon and full health recovery after battles. In that game you go into a separate battle screen when you touch monsters on the field screen, but it also allows you chain together multiple monsters into the single fight. So if I walk into a room with 3 monsters, I can face them one by one, or chain all three together. If I chain all 3 I probably have a 30% chance of getting a game over, and if I am 30 minutes into a dungeon there is normally no way I would do it. But since I can save right before, and I don't have to worry even if I get out of the battle with 1 hp left, I engage all three and have a very challenging and rewarding battle. Had I faced three separate trivial encounters the room would have been a simple boring grind.

One school of thought is that by making it harder to save you make it more difficult, but I think by making saving everywhere possible & HP recovery after battle you can make the game extremely difficult.

[Vyk]

Sounds like a pretty awesome concept, Velo. Get battles out of the way faster, and get better stuff for it. Battles are still tedious though. But supposedly XIII has made them intense and fun. We'll see

[Wolf Kanno]

Actually, out of X and XII, I'd give best dungeon design to X easily. The Cloister of Trials for the various temples were vastly better designed than any dungeon in XII.

And stick with Golden Sun. It's worth it.

I found the puzzles to be too easy and mostly tedious but then again I grew up with LttP and the Lufia series so I am very jaded when it comes to good puzzles. The only challenging part of the puzzles (and even then its only in the Macalania and Zanarkand temple, which once again is more tedious than actually challenging) was finishing the puzzle to get the special secret item you don't really need except to prove you are worthy to get game breaker Anima to go along with game breakers Bahamut and Yojimbo... guess you got catch em all.

I'm sticking to GS for my GFs sake but right now I find the game to be fairly generic, despite the Psynergy puzzles which come off more annoying to me than special. So far I'm not catching onto why people think this series is so special.

I have no problems with HP restoration after battle as long as the game is hard to warrant it. SE has a really nasty habit of making the game difficulty unbalanced with the first half of the game being challenging and then the later half is all but too easy. Just watching some of the battle videos, I keep imagining the game is going to give your party some bull "god mode" move like V's Dual Wield/Flare Sword/ Barrage, VI's Ultima, VII's KoTR, VIII's everything, and IX's Thievery/Frog Drop/Dragon Crest.

[Skyblade]

The puzzles may be easy, but the areas are still exceptionally well designed, far more so than the insane random mazes of XII.

How far are you in the game?

Halfway through? Not sure about all of those, but KotR wasn't unlocked until way later than halfway. And a lot of what I have seen seemed to be pushing for harder battles overall, so I doubt we'll have an ultra cheap shot added in.

[The Summoner of Leviathan]

Whereas, I agree about the complaints with the treasure chests in FFXII since I am the type that will go through every corner of a dungeon to get all the treasure, there's still something about discovering every corner on a map that appeals me. In FFXII, the treasure may have been weak, but I just couldn't help myself from wanting to explore every inch of Ivalice: I found the world engrossing.

While I did really enjoy FFX, the linear world felt too much of going from Point A to Point B, there was no sense of exploration. Even when you finally got to the Calm Lands, my thoughts were more of "Oh great, I have this huge area I have to cross to get to the next point. Hope there's not a lot of random encounters". The sense of exploration was completely taken away. Sure, I explored the Calm Lands but it was more of a task, because I felt I had to, than for the pure joy of exploring.

I hope that even with its linear built it will combine elements of FFXII that will make the world so much more fascinating.

Also, I sorta loathe random encounters; they annoy me to no end. I'm sure that is a part of the factor of why I loved the vast world in FFXII but when given the Calm Lands in FFX I just wasn't as interested.

[Wolf Kanno]

The puzzles may be easy, but the areas are still exceptionally well designed, far more so than the insane random mazes of XII.

We'll leave this to subjective opinion cause I don't think we'll see "eye to eye" on this one.

How far are you in the game?

I've met the Water Adept but I'm completely bored at this point.

Halfway through? Not sure about all of those, but KotR wasn't unlocked until way later than halfway. And a lot of what I have seen seemed to be pushing for harder battles overall, so I doubt we'll have an ultra cheap shot added in.

There are far more abilites in VII I could mention but I'm trying to lay off the trolling for this game for awhile. My point really is that I fear the game will get ridiculously easy by some point in the title due to several abusive systems within it. Its kinda been a bad trend for more than half the series life span right now. Watching videos of characters attacking monsters using Disgaea damage tables doesn't tell me "super special awesome battle system" as much as it nags at my little imp on the back of my head who claws into my brain and tells me something is a amiss here, why am I doing multi-hit attacks with 6K damage figures? I smell munchkin abuse...

[Skyblade]

I find it amusing that the only games we ever seem to see eye-to-eye on are the FFTA games. But, yeah, a lot of it is subjective.

[Goldenboko]

I loved the dungeons in FFXII Apparently I am the only one.

I liked them too!

I don't know how I feel about all this. I don't want every encounter to be a boss battle (it would sorta take the fun out of a boss battle =P) however, making them slightly more engaging then "Vivi->Doomsday->Loot->Ether" would be cool.

[VeloZer0]

I think an excellent model for battles is FFT (in difficulty, not battle system). The random battles WERE the game for the most part. If we start thinking cross genre, can you imagine someone playing an FPS and thinking "man, I wish there were less enemies so I could run through to the end of the level quicker." This idea seems so rediculous, because in FPS games, killing stuff is the game. Can you imagine if they made an RPG that had a battle system so involving that you just wanted to run around in circles in a dungeon for the fun of killing stuff?

[Vyk]

Legend of Legaia was that RPG for me. Like playing through a crazy turn-based fighting game. I loved fights :] Here's hoping XIII manages to feel that inviting for battles, or I'm always going to be massively under-leveled. 'Cause any game that has enemies viewable on screen, I rarely feel like walking up to them

[Miriel]

Ok, maybe I'm understanding it wrong, but how are there no towns? Is it just a big world with no civilizations whatsoever? Where to people live? Where does the plot take place? Doesn't make a lick of sense to me and I find it pretty hard to believe.

[VeloZer0]

From what I understand no towns is in the conventional RPG sense. All shopping and inn services have been outsourced, so all civilization only exists as plot points. There are still collections of structures in which NPCs live.

[Mirage]

almost like "call shop" in FF8, and I loved those skills!

[Wolf Kanno]

I find it amusing that the only games we ever seem to see eye-to-eye on are the FFTA games. But, yeah, a lot of it is subjective.

Even then we don't see eye to eye on the FFT series when we get into the details.

Ok, maybe I'm understanding it wrong, but how are there no towns? Is it just a big world with no civilizations whatsoever? Where to people live? Where does the plot take place? Doesn't make a lick of sense to me and I find it pretty hard to believe.

As VeloZer0 pointed out, it means towns lose their main gameplay purpose and serve as nothing more than a diversion until you talk to the right NPC or trip over the next story sequence while aimlessly wandering around. You will never see most of them again after their bit in the plot either from what I've read so ultimately it will be like VIII and X where towns are moot gameplay gestures.

I'm definetly not wild about this idea cause it always bugged me how pointless towns are in both those games cause you never need them (VIII technically has proper towns but due to gameplay structures they are still useless cause you almost never need shops or inns after the first half of the first disc) the world design is going deeper and deeper into territory I don't care for.