XIII: The Flaw thread

[No.78]

Yes because we need more negativity for FFXIII.

/sigh

[Loony BoB]

There's nothing disastrously negative about conceding flaws in a game - I mean, every good game has it's flaws.

[Raistlin]

1. Paradigms aren't 'saved' to your character line-up. Whenever you feel like changing up the party, you have to reset/re-customize all the paradigms from their default settings.

YES! Holy crap that was annoying. Another technical problem: the menu map always facing the same direction as your character instead of north.

[Madame Adequate]

1. Paradigms aren't 'saved' to your character line-up. Whenever you feel like changing up the party, you have to reset/re-customize all the paradigms from their default settings.

YES! Holy crap that was annoying. Another technical problem: the menu map always facing the same direction as your character instead of north.

Yes and yes.

Being a healer in battle is ridiculously boring. It just doesn't feel like you're doing anything - I know what you're doing is the same as when you're anything else, but it doesn't feel it for some reason.

[Garnie]

The problem I'm having is i do really like this game but there just parts that wont stop annoying me! I'm in total agreement with the party leader dies game over thing. At least you can retry though. If that wasn't there I would have given up ages ago. Theirs another thing that annoys me to, the whole cant flee from battle thing. Every time i even go in the vicinity of a king behemoth I'm screaming like a little girl and doing one >:/

[Madame Adequate]

Oh one thing that really does make my asscrack itch: you can only summon your party leader's summon. I like Vanille. I like her summon. I do not like controlling her in battle. I just want to call in Hecaton when I'm doing my usual Sazh or Lightning thing

[Wolf Kanno]

The main plot is bad, and it takes 20+ hours to care about the cast. Not to mention the ending is terrible. The game's plot peaks at Chapter 7 and 8 and then proceeds to spiral downward as each new plot twist seems to dumb down the moral complexity of the game into a boring good old fashion Good Vs. Evil. The story NPCs are completely wasted on this game.

The Upgrade system is hindered by having the items needed to upgrade also being your gil and furthermore the majority of item in the game give you crap for gil and enemies never drop them in bulk. This leads to the system not really opening up until Chapter 11 (practically the last 10% of the game) when the game gives you Mark Hunts that are kind enough to give you expensive items. You just reach a point where it becomes obvious the only way to get the necessary items to upgrade is by buying them in bulk cause the game constantly fails to provide enough materials that are worthwhile.

I wish there character stats were not so streamlined and that Paradigm Roles reflected the stats they need so I could actually have real customization options as opposed to the illusion of such. I just wish it wasn't purely skill based.

The dungeons are boring. Pretty but incredibly boring and overly simplistic. Consequently I will also point out the game lacks any form of immersion into its world, I never once cared about Cocoon cause it simply never felt like it existed for me. It was just a place that had one road after another with brain dead NPC occasionally popping up to due nothing relevant not even create the illusion of terror or any other form of human emotion. Gran Pulse feels a bit more realistic but suffers from being terribly empty and stale at times.

Stealing the MegaTen rules about party leader death. You know what? This works in MegaTen cause the game is based off a elemental/weakness exploitation system and your party leader can be equipped in such a way where they are invincible to such weaknesses, drastically reducing party death. XIII does not have this feature and enemies like AoE... so yeah. I can't tell you how obnoxious it was to get a game over cause I'm playing as Hope or Vanille and its because only they died while the rest of my party is fine and I have 20+ Phoenix Downs. This was a very bad move created to give the game a bad difficulty increase.

EDIT: I also forgot to mention the Data Log which constantly told the story better than the cutscenes and dialogue ever did and even had problems of revealing plot elements before the game did or even some plot twists the game only hinted at but never said.

[Cloudane]

The upgrade system was an annoyance, yeah. "Right so I can use these items as components... but should I be saving them for anything else? Some of them are also available from 'creature comforts', does that mean they might be for a creature related sidequest or perhaps for strengthening Eidolons like in FF8 and others? Are some of them better sold for money so I can buy better components instead?" etc etc, this was going through my mind all the time.

And then that awful thing where you don't know how much EXP (or whatever) the component will give a specific weapon or armour until you press X on it - and on another component - and on another component - and on another component... so that you don't waste a component that gives 15000 to one item on something that only gets 4000 from it. Possibly one of the most tedious game mechanics since FF1's "find out the attributes by noting your character's existing attributes then equipping the new item and using maths" system.

[Karifean]

The two things I truly hate about this game are 1.: not being able to switch the party member you control during battle (would be a great improvement) and 2.: the freakingly dumb AI of Medics. Seriously, I think I keep failing Gigantuar just because my Medic always casts Esuna on my Sentinel instead of Curaga. And why the hell don't they use Cura or Curaja when everyone is at green HP, but not at 100%!?

[louby_4eva]

Theirs another thing that annoys me to, the whole cant flee from battle thing. Every time i even go in the vicinity of a king behemoth I'm screaming like a little girl and doing one >:/

If you press select (maybe start) in a battle and then click retry it spawns you out of the fight. You just reappear next to the bad guy so you can run away You can still end up back in the fight if you're unlucky enough to walk straight back into it but most of the time you're far enough away to escape

Smile and Be happy

[Cloudane]

Yeah I did have one occasion (can't remember where, somewhere on the plains I think) where it kindly placed me back within instant aggro/battle range on retry, so I had no choice but to keep trying until I won (or quit to the last save and lose a couple of hours work). It's very rare though, as far as I can tell.

[Skyblade]

Biggest Flaw in the Game: The Battle Mechanics are too damned slow to show up. You complete the entire first chapter and can't do anything but attack. The wait for new abilities and the chance to level up/customize your characters is so excruciatingly slow it is killing the game.

[asukaevaunit02]

Oh one thing that really does make my asscrack itch: you can only summon your party leader's summon. I like Vanille. I like her summon. I do not like controlling her in battle. I just want to call in Hecaton when I'm doing my usual Sazh or Lightning thing

Yes! I didn't like summoning Alexander since Hope was my controlled character, only as a synergist so I could buff the party with haste, bravery or faith straight away. I hated how AI synergists would apply everything when it usually wasn't neccessary.

I would have loved to play as a different character besides Hope (nothing against him) but there were better summons (Bahamut and Hecatoncheir) and would have been interesting to play around with other classes/character more.

[Mo-Nercy]

I've just realised I've only ever summoned Odin and the Shiva sisters. Wow, I better go try those other ones out. xD

I'm with Karifean on the poor AI of the Medic role. I think it's actually spellcasters in general that need to up their game. I really wish my Saboteurs would cast Imperil right off the bat and my Synergists would En[element] me right afterwards. Instead, I get my Synergist casting Faith on my Commando. What a big, fat waste of time.

[Madame Adequate]

Okay SE, bit of free advice: If your game has a system where the loss of one character means game over, DO NOT include a Death spell.

Second: Losing control over your character is pretty widely known to be one of the most annoying and stupid things in games. If it's done right then okay, but when it happens because you're up against a group of enemies who can just spam knockdown attacks, that's pretty retarded guys.