XIII: The Flaw thread

[Shin Gouken]

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.

This is a major flaw in crisis core too.

Too many cutscenes - 11minutes is far too long. 30 seconds between cutscenes makes you wonder why they even gave you control in the first place, why not just carry on. Saving several times during cutscenes is a sign they are going on too long.

AI - If i have a party of COM-SEN-SYN and the sentinel is the only one being attacked, why the does the synergist repeatedly cast protect on them when the enemy is dispelling it every turn? Hello but i'd like bravery on my commando but as long as protect is being removed, my synergist will recast it every turn. That's pretty smurfin flawed


Battles should be FUN, bosses should be challenging. When enemies start to appear that are impossible to stagger and have HP in the millions, battles can last upwards of 10minutes. Every encounter feels like a chore

And where the hell is blue magic/enemy skill, Steal/mug and Gilltoss. Where is Holy, Flare, Ultima and Meteor? Why are characters still casting Cure post game???

Battles were fun in previous FF's because it wasn't about Buff-stagger-attack-win. You could control enemies, learn their skills, steal from them or poach them. Chain them or capture them. Trying to find rare enemies for their beastiary entries, drops or steal items. But here, the only thing to do is win. And there's no fun in searching for rare enemies because everything is nicely lined up for you one after the other.

People can love this game. Good for you. But as far as i'm concerned you're still merely accepting what you have and failing to see what this game should of been. And by buying into to this illusion of a game you are simply contributing to the that will follow

[Cloudane]

I actually thought the boss battles were really good fun. Not as good (or as frustrating) as, say, FFX's (SPOILER)Seymour or Yunalesca but more fun than many FF bosses have been lately.

Totally agree about monsters that take forever to kill though, like those damn sandshrew like things (though it's satisfying when they do stagger, and you get to beat the crap out of the alligator thing underneath)

Throwing gil is probably another unfortunate loss to realistic graphics and the integration of monsters into the world itself... it would've looked a bit silly IMO. Certainly bring back Mighty Guard and White Wind though

[Shin Gouken]

I actually thought the boss battles were really good fun. Not as good (or as frustrating) as, say, FFX's (SPOILER)Seymour or Yunalesca but more fun than many FF bosses have been lately.

Totally agree about monsters that take forever to kill though, like those damn sandshrew like things (though it's satisfying when they do stagger, and you get to beat the crap out of the alligator thing underneath)

Throwing gil is probably another unfortunate loss to realistic graphics and the integration of monsters into the world itself... it would've looked a bit silly IMO. Certainly bring back Mighty Guard and White Wind though

Mighty Guard was and white wind were absent from FFXII too, but i considered techniks a form of blue magic because they're sort of an unorthadox form of attacking which many blue magics were. I can understand Gilltoss looking silly, but punching a 50 tonne machine into the air and juggling it seems to work alright. Steal is the major complaint, it just isn't final fantasy without steal =/

[Cloudane]

punching a 50 tonne machine into the air and juggling it seems to work alright.

touché. A fair comment.

I've never been a fan if stealing unless it's easy. Sitting there hammering buttons for an hour trying to acquire a curaga flute or whatever has never been my idea of fun.

[arcanedude34]

The first two games didn't have steal =p

As for problems with the game, did anyone else dislike the way the character controlled on the field? I know it's more realistic than in previous games where you could go from facing one way to the polar opposite with no transition, but it kinda made navigating a bit of a chore, especially considering the narrow hallways they wanted you to traverse.

[VeloZer0]

Yes.
At first I thought the animations were really cool and realistic looking, how they actually had to make an effort to do an about turn while jogging. Then it just became irritating because of slow handling.

Just another example where making games more realistic makes them less fun.

[Cloudane]

Yeah, that and trying to figure your way around the Calm Lands steppe thing for the first time, when the map rotates with you. Arrrrgh!

It's true that we seem to be losing a lot to modern graphics and realism. I say what we need is a mini computing apocalypse to send us back to the SNES era

[seiferalmasy2]

Eventually these great graphics will hit a bottleneck where they arent perceived as amazing anymore and I pray for that day because when it arrives graphics will no longer be able to sell a game.

[Flying Arrow]

Yeah, that and trying to figure your way around the Calm Lands steppe thing for the first time, when the map rotates with you. Arrrrgh!

Yes. Christ almighty, yes.

I'd also like to add some general hate for the camera, which rotates like it weighs 300 lbs and doesn't strafe properly. All those years of work and all those resources and SE couldn't put together an intuitive camera or map to go along with the straight lines. What in the hell is going on over there. There isn't a single element of XIII's gameplay that isn't flawed or infuriating in some way.

[ShinGundam]

It's true that we seem to be losing a lot to modern graphics and realism. I say what we need is a mini computing apocalypse to send us back to the SNES era

Not really, It is all about creating the game engine and technical limitations not the visuals, the pre-PS1 Final Fantasy games share a lot of their assets and FF13 designers have to create everything from scratch which is the real difference.

[Cloudane]

It's true that we seem to be losing a lot to modern graphics and realism. I say what we need is a mini computing apocalypse to send us back to the SNES era

Not really, It is all about creating the game engine and technical limitations not the visuals, the pre-PS1 Final Fantasy games share a lot of their assets and FF13 designers have to create everything from scratch which is the real difference.

That's my point really? It was a lot easier to develop games in those days because it was just a few sprites, you didn't need a huge complex 'engine' to build it from.

Nowadays the emphasis is on pushing the hardware as hard as possible, in what is basically a competition to create the best graphical output on the platform. That means the competitors need to develop their own graphical engines and sometimes go through several iterations until they're satisfied that it's the best they can possibly achieve - by which time there is something better (this is what killed Duke Nukem Forever and will probably kill Gran Turismo 5. Others manage to squeeze a game out if they don't mind making gameplay/content sacrifices, such as what happened with XIII.)

They're still managing 3 games (well, 1 and a 2-parter) per console generation, but a heck of a lot is being sacrificed for that. It's either that or 1 hopefully really good one per console generation, which would also suck.

There's just so much detail now that the engine has to be more complicated - instead of say a painted backdrop and some polygon models (VII era) you have to consider every little blade of grass, the exact placement of millions of rocks etc. Even if they keep the same engine for the rest of the PS3 releases, it'll still take longer to create the same output as previous generations because of all those little details that they have to specify.

Me, I'd be happy with a REALLY GOOD game (VII level good preferably!) that sacrifices some of the graphical detail. Imagine a HD remix of VII-IX with more detailed character models and higher resolution backdrops but basically the same thing underneath - a bit like what they did with the NES games on the PSP/DS/iPhone - that would be fine. You can't have both though unfortunately.

Edit: Well, you can - but it'd need a HUGE team to create it and so the game itself would end up costing twice as much - and modern games are already criticised for being hideously expensive! Or you go for optional addon packs, which makes less sense with this type of game which is better taken as a 'whole'.

[seiferalmasy2]

It's true that we seem to be losing a lot to modern graphics and realism. I say what we need is a mini computing apocalypse to send us back to the SNES era

Not really, It is all about creating the game engine and technical limitations not the visuals, the pre-PS1 Final Fantasy games share a lot of their assets and FF13 designers have to create everything from scratch which is the real difference.

Graphics are exactly the reason XIII suffered from lack of towns, minigames and sidequests and the developers said so. It isn't impossible to downgrade graphics somewhat in order to add these things and half production time, but they choose not to because they want to entice the casual gamer, which is a bad idea imho.

[Skyblade]

It's true that we seem to be losing a lot to modern graphics and realism. I say what we need is a mini computing apocalypse to send us back to the SNES era

Not really, It is all about creating the game engine and technical limitations not the visuals, the pre-PS1 Final Fantasy games share a lot of their assets and FF13 designers have to create everything from scratch which is the real difference.

Graphics are exactly the reason XIII suffered from lack of towns, minigames and sidequests and the developers said so. It isn't impossible to downgrade graphics somewhat in order to add these things and half production time, but they choose not to because they want to entice the casual gamer, which is a bad idea imho.

Since when are casual gamers the target of the ultra-HD graphics? The most successful games among casual gamers have not been focused on graphics at all.

Still no battle mechanics. Seriously, are we ever going to be able to do anything but attack in this game?

[ShinGundam]

Nowadays the emphasis is on pushing the hardware as hard as possible, in what is basically a competition to create the best graphical output on the platform. That means the competitors need to develop their own graphical engines and sometimes go through several iterations until they're satisfied that it's the best they can possibly achieve - by which time there is something better (this is what killed Duke Nukem Forever and will probably kill Gran Turismo 5. Others manage to squeeze a game out if they don't mind making gameplay/content sacrifices, such as what happened with XIII.)

Pushing hardware doesn't mean pushing the graphics alone . I mean
the production process of FF13 in reality isn't as productive as it should be, they end up doing a lot of prototyping during production
for example; Originally there were plans to move characters around the battlefield, It was taken out to increase difficulty.

Graphics are exactly the reason XIII suffered from lack of towns, minigames and sidequests and the developers said so. It isn't impossible to downgrade graphics somewhat in order to add these things and half production time, but they choose not to because they want to entice the casual gamer, which is a bad idea imho.

I respectfully disagree with you, because the main director Toriyama isn't known for pushing the traditional elements, just take a look at Blood of bahamut , FF12:RW and FF13. I can say that even if he released FF13 on PS2 , It will have the same structure.Towns like Eden and Nautilus are already rendered.

[Garnie]

Me, I'd be happy with a REALLY GOOD game (VII level good preferably!) that sacrifices some of the graphical detail.

Me too! I would rather stick to say FFX graphics then XIII if it meant I would be getting a better story line and game play. That's where they went wrong in XII. They spent so much time making a beautiful cg game, but forgot to put in a good story.

XIII has a good story so far, but i heard a lot of people didn't rate the ending as much. But even if it was say VII that they just released and they made it like XIII game play; such as no villages, towns or what not to explore, VII would have never been the sucess it was.

I liked FFX because of the newer graphics and the game play was enjoyable. So its not as if its not possible. Just focus on what made the Final fantasys great. That's my opinion anyway.