Dislike this but liked X?

[Suikojowy]

It seems a lot of the community is tying this game together with Final Fantasy X and on some level I can see resemblances, the problem is people assume that those who like X would also like XIII and those who hated XIII hate XIII.

Nowadays it seems a lot more people love XIII than hate it and despite my best efforts I'm unfortunately one of the haters. When I was younger and Final Fantasy X came out there was some hate but it didn't seem so bad maybe because I was just too busy enjoying the game to realize. I couldn't wrap my head around why fans of the series would dislike it because it honestly seemed like a good game to me, therefore when I see things the way they are now it makes me feel like I'm one of those people for today's Final Fantasy generation.

I don't know how else to put it so to sum up my confusing post - Does anyone else who enjoyed Final Fantasy X dislike this game? Was the backlash for X as bad as XIII? This is making me feel like I'm outgrowing the series and I really don't want that to happen.

[seiferalmasy2]

The only people I have seen using X as a comparison are those that are using it as an excuse to desperately suggest that XIII was just as good and that it did nothing wrong.

X had a better levelling system, one that allowed you to actually choose and to customise.

X had more stats, proper stats.

X allowed you to go back to nearly all game areas

X allowed certain distractions on the linear path like remiem temple, yojimbo's cavern, blitzball etc

X had a good story

X had side quests and minigames which were not yet more battles.

X allowed you to choose characters

X had no AI

X allowed summons to be fully customised stats and playable characters

In short there are far more differences between X and XIII than similarities and those arguing otherwise have a vested agenda in propping up this sad excuse for a game.

[Shin Gouken]

I enjoyed X and disliked XIII. They share similarities but X was a hell of a lot more fun. Seiferalmasy already hit a lot of these points for me so i wont go into all of them.

X's battle system was far far more enjoyable. You were encouraged to use all the characters for their specific skills, but at the same time, characters weren't limited to specific roles. After reaching a certain part in the game, or when using the expert sphere grid, you could customize your characters, and without them losing their identity as overdrives and weapon types still set them apart.

The weapon upgrade system was superior to XIII. To customize specific abilities into weapons, you needed the corresponding items to use on them. Such a wide range of items and abilities encourage you to visit every corner of spira and fight many types of enemies. Where in XIII all you need is money to bulk buy a single component, therefore you simply need to visit one location and fight just one enemy. Not to mention that auto abilities run out in XIII making pretty much every accesory with an auto ability almost completley useless. Of course the final nail in the coffin for XIII concerning the weapon upgrades is the fact that you will never use your fully upgraded weapons because doing so will make 5 star battles 10 x harder to achieve.

[Skyblade]

Actually, I compare it to X myself, and not just to excuse its faults. The games did have a lot of similarities, though each excelled in various parts.

There Sphere Grid was no less linear than the Crystarium was. You could only customize near endgame when enough Key Spheres became availible, and even then, the cost of backtracking meant that development was exceedingly predictable. Tidus, for example, almost always evolves straight into Yuna's path near the end, since that is where you hit the lock at the end of his. Auron's might be more useful, but you'd have to either save up Sphere Levels while waiting for the Key, or backtrack and waste a lot of Sphere Levels, neither of which is likely.

The Crystarium was a big improvement, in my opinion. The offshoots are plentiful, and short, and there is no cost for skipping them. The fact that you have several different jobs to work on that are all inter-related makes it even better. While it was hampered by the overall battle system and the terrible pacing, the Crystarium itself had a lot of potential and was a very worthwhile successor to the Sphere Grid.

X allows you to backtrack, yes, but in very limited sections until endgame. You can't backtrack from Kilika, from Luca, from Operation Mi'hen, from the Thunder Plains... Yeah, it all unlocks at endgame, but until then, it is just as forced and linear as XIII. If it wasn't for the towns and for the forced items/quests they put in that require going back, there would be no reason to backtrack in X (unless you miss a Treasure Chest, the way I did in XIII. Dangit! >.<). Now, I love the backtracking, but without NPCs to talk to or side quests to do, it's worthless, so the lack of backtracking itself is not the big problem here.

XIII's story isn't bad, even if it isn't as good as X's. But it also doesn't have Seymour ruining the whole thing. (SPOILER)Dysley pulled off the whole "Save the world through destruction thing way better than Seymour could ever hope for.

Tomb of the Unknown King was VIII. You are thinking of the Omega Ruins, I think.

The comparisons are made for a reason, and not just to excuse the faults of XIII. The similarities are painfully obvious at times. X did a lot of things better than XIII, but both games had a lot in common.

(SPOILER)The primarily linear path, the fact that your party is branded as outlaws/heretics by the power base, the fact that said power base is in reality misleading the people through fear and deception, Barthandelus/Seymour both state their goal as saving the world by destroying it, both parties are pushed to sacrifice a member to defeat their foe (become the Final Aeon, or become Ragnarok), the Crystarium/Sphere Grid system... The comparisons go on and on, if you have played both games, you can't help but notice them.

[Mo-Nercy]

I'm don't dislike FFXIII. It's not one of my favourite FFs but from where I stand, it's a decent enough addition to the line-up. In comparison to X though, I'd have to say I like X more. Mostly because of Blitzball, if I'm honest. The option of having a side-quest always available for you to do to get goodies when you didn't feel like moving on in the story or grinding is something I've always appreciated out of recent FFs (Triple Triad, Tetra Master, Blitzball, Marks). In FFXIII, you didn't get this until Chapter 11.

I find that the battle system is a big win for FFXIII though. I never liked FFX's battle system, though strategic, it felt slow. I much prefer the fast-paced, harder battles in FFXIII. In X, if you've got the wrong party member for the job, you just swap 'em in, but in XIII, you're made to have considered this beforehand and setup your Paradigms appropriately.

I consider the levelling up system in both games to be around the same in quality. Both start out very restrictive and open up later to let your character try out other classes. X had a little more room for customisation because you do pick up a few Lvl. 1-4 Spheres just as you progress through the story and it was always fun to mix-up Kimahri in replays of the game. But I still find both systems to be just as enjoyable.

^ Note that I say this having not ever tried out the Expert Sphere Grid before. So I might be missing out on something big here.

[Shin Gouken]

There Sphere Grid was no less linear than the Crystarium was. You could only customize near endgame when enough Key Spheres became availible, and even then, the cost of backtracking meant that development was exceedingly predictable. Tidus, for example, almost always evolves straight into Yuna's path near the end, since that is where you hit the lock at the end of his. Auron's might be more useful, but you'd have to either save up Sphere Levels while waiting for the Key, or backtrack and waste a lot of Sphere Levels, neither of which is likely.

I would refer you to teleport spheres there. They enable you to jump to anywhere on the sphere grid, thus offering you a choice of where to hit next.

The cystarium is filled with useless nodes that you cannot bypass. The most obvious example of this is the number of strength nodes dotted around around hopes primary roles. Even end game there is very little if any reason you would put hope in a commando role. Completley pointless through and through. Though this is also a problem on the sphere grid, it's much less frequent and far less irritating because it's not nearly as expensive to progress on the sphere grid.

The Crystarium was a big improvement, in my opinion.

I apreciate and respect your opinion, but seriously? The crystarium just sums this game up perfectly. A straight line with an incoherrent goal.

X allows you to backtrack, yes, but in very limited sections until endgame. You can't backtrack from Kilika, from Luca, from Operation Mi'hen, from the Thunder Plains... Yeah, it all unlocks at endgame, but until then, it is just as forced and linear as XIII. If it wasn't for the towns and for the forced items/quests they put in that require going back, there would be no reason to backtrack in X (unless you miss a Treasure Chest, the way I did in XIII. Dangit! >.<). Now, I love the backtracking, but without NPCs to talk to or side quests to do, it's worthless, so the lack of backtracking itself is not the big problem here.

Backtracking is only a part of the fun which is missing from XIII. Despite disliking blitzball personally, i understand that it serves as a deviation from the plot which is a huge part of final fantasy. The temples offered a change of pace and allowed you to solve puzzles, and despite the majority of dungeons being linear, towns still offered a small level of exploration. XIII is a constant walk-fight-watch cut scene
formula that becomes very tiresome very quickly.

I wont compare the story or characters to X because any story or character will be hit and miss with the player, and quite frankly a lot of final fantasies use recycled characters or plot elements. The most notable in FFXIII isn't in relation to X but actually VII - Cloud = Lightening.

[Skyblade]

There Sphere Grid was no less linear than the Crystarium was. You could only customize near endgame when enough Key Spheres became availible, and even then, the cost of backtracking meant that development was exceedingly predictable. Tidus, for example, almost always evolves straight into Yuna's path near the end, since that is where you hit the lock at the end of his. Auron's might be more useful, but you'd have to either save up Sphere Levels while waiting for the Key, or backtrack and waste a lot of Sphere Levels, neither of which is likely.

I would refer you to teleport spheres there. They enable you to jump to anywhere on the sphere grid, thus offering you a choice of where to hit next.

The cystarium is filled with useless nodes that you cannot bypass. The most obvious example of this is the number of strength nodes dotted around around hopes primary roles. Even end game there is very little if any reason you would put hope in a commando role. Completley pointless through and through. Though this is also a problem on the sphere grid, it's much less frequent and far less irritating because it's not nearly as expensive to progress on the sphere grid.

The Crystarium was a big improvement, in my opinion.

I apreciate and respect your opinion, but seriously? The crystarium just sums this game up perfectly. A straight line with an incoherrent goal.

X allows you to backtrack, yes, but in very limited sections until endgame. You can't backtrack from Kilika, from Luca, from Operation Mi'hen, from the Thunder Plains... Yeah, it all unlocks at endgame, but until then, it is just as forced and linear as XIII. If it wasn't for the towns and for the forced items/quests they put in that require going back, there would be no reason to backtrack in X (unless you miss a Treasure Chest, the way I did in XIII. Dangit! >.<). Now, I love the backtracking, but without NPCs to talk to or side quests to do, it's worthless, so the lack of backtracking itself is not the big problem here.

Backtracking is only a part of the fun which is missing from XIII. Despite disliking blitzball personally, i understand that it serves as a deviation from the plot which is a huge part of final fantasy. The temples offered a change of pace and allowed you to solve puzzles, and despite the majority of dungeons being linear, towns still offered a small level of exploration. XIII is a constant walk-fight-watch cut scene
formula that becomes very tiresome very quickly.

I wont compare the story or characters to X because any story or character will be hit and miss with the player, and quite frankly a lot of final fantasies use recycled characters or plot elements. The most notable in FFXIII isn't in relation to X but actually VII - Cloud = Lightening.

The Sphere Grid was much more costly, and much more unwieldly. First, there is the items. You need items to improve your characters. They are common at first, then get to be annoyingly painful boss grinds to get the end-game improvements. Then there is the Sphere Levels. These are annoyingly overcomplicated. Why the heck do they have both EXP and the Sphere Levels? Since each Sphere is unlocked by a single sphere level, consolidating out the Sphere Levels to simply CP was just removing an unnecessary number. Further, the Crystarium has the potential for better customization. Rather than just choosing what to spend your next Sphere Level on, you get to choose how to spend your CP. Do you level your most used role, getting abilities faster? Or spread your CP across all the roles, getting cheap stats quicker? Do you power straight through for the Role Level crystals, or spend the extra CP for the side paths?

The Crystarium has a lot of flaws, don't get me wrong. The amount of roles is way too limited. The side paths that only feature stat boosts usually feature inferior stats to the main path for a higher CP cost, which needs to be fine tuned. The stats should be more focused per role (as you say, Hope's primaries shouldn't be getting that much strength [I didn't notice it until the current tier, but the T9 has a ton of Strength for him]). The crippling progression needs to be freed up. It needs to be made less linear (and, yes, the Sphere Grid did too, Teleport Spheres aside).

But the system has a lot of improvements over the Sphere Grid, and has the potential to be a lot better than it is. As a system, I think it's brilliant, it just wasn't as well implemented as it could have been.

[kotora]

Further, the Crystarium has the potential for better customization. Rather than just choosing what to spend your next Sphere Level on, you get to choose how to spend your CP. Do you level your most used role, getting abilities faster? Or spread your CP across all the roles, getting cheap stats quicker? Do you power straight through for the Role Level crystals, or spend the extra CP for the side paths?

Yeah, there was so much customization. You could even choose between 3 kinds of stats! And there was like so much difference between the crystariums for each character's roles, I just loved how it's completely up to the player if he wants Fang to be the best mage or Hope the best physical powerhouse. Especially since the grid totally didn't decide for you which skills the character could or could not get.

[Skyblade]

Why do I feel you missed the entire point of my last post? I'm not arguing about which system had the best implementation or result, I'm saying which one I think had more potential. And I felt the Crystarium has far more potential for customization and choice than the Sphere grid did.

[ReloadPsi]

The only people I have seen using X as a comparison are those that are using it as an excuse to desperately suggest that XIII was just as good and that it did nothing wrong.

X had a better levelling system, one that allowed you to actually choose and to customise.

X had more stats, proper stats.

X allowed you to go back to nearly all game areas

X allowed certain distractions on the linear path like tomb of unknown king, yojimbo's cavern, blitzball etc

X had a good story

X had side quests and minigames which were not yet more battles.

X allowed you to choose characters

X had no AI

X allowed summons to be fully customised stats and playable characters

In short there are far more differences between X and XIII than similarities and those arguing otherwise have a vested agenda in propping up this sad excuse for a game.

Owned.

[Mo-Nercy]

Why do I feel you missed the entire point of my last post? I'm not arguing about which system had the best implementation or result, I'm saying which one I think had more potential. And I felt the Crystarium has far more potential for customization and choice than the Sphere grid did.

Potential is the right word for it, I think. It sucked how it was so CP-expensive to start new roles with characters. The stat gains weren't much if you wanted to make Lightning a Saboteur for example and I'm sure everyone just decided it was better and more cost effective to spend a little more on the much bigger stat gains to be had from consolidating their character's main roles. The choice was there, but it wasn't a 50/50. A shame, because with a bit of tweaking - making it more cost effective CP-wise to learn new roles, giving us the option to do so earlier etc. it would've been neat.

[Skyblade]

Add in not getting access to other roles for a long time. Improper balance with CP and stat/ability worth. Insufficient support for secondary roles. Improper stat distribution. Insufficient number of roles (we should get 20 something jobs, not just 6 roles!). Painfully slow tier system...

Lots of problems, but it did away with most of X's problems, and added in a couple new features. It removed the painful dependence on items, it removed the costs for respeccing, added a neato job-sharing stat feature...

[VeloZer0]

I found the Crystarium to be about equal to the sphere grid. Sure you need insane amounts of CP learn the non innate jobs, but in FFX you weren't really going to round out yourself completely with all types of abilities without a great amount of post game grinding either. Seemed about the same to me.

The story of XIII seemed kind of half assed to me, whereas in X it seemed much more fleshed out and complete. Only problem was I didn't like X's story in the least. So I get to chose between disinterest and aggravation. Whee!

I liked the 'dungeons' of FFX a lot more, but I am going to attribute that to my general distaste of designing areas based around a movable camera. Discounting the negative implications forced on the game due to the camera I would say they would both be equal.

Gameplay is about the only significantly different factor for me. I though battles in FFX were very fun, and the only saving grace of the game. The battles in FFXIII were merely adequate to keep me from quiting the game in boredom.

[seiferalmasy2]

correction to the above, haha I meant remiem temple, not tomb of unknown king, that was VIII

edit: ahh damn someone spotted my error too

oh yeah and let us add Cloister of trials and Destruction spheres to that list, something I think is vastly underrated. I loved it.

[Cloudane]

It's difficult to place XIII as a similarity to any of the previous ones, but yeah I guess X is closest on a few aspects (it's also close to VIII on some of the less positive aspects).

I don't hate XIII. I enjoyed it actually. But it's distinctly average, whilst I consider X tied for first place with VII so it's considerably better. At first I loved XIII, but that was the initial after-effect of it being a zillion times better than XII in my opinion.

The reasons have pretty much been stated and I agree with most. FFX had a relatively coherent story (for an FF) and I really liked that story in general. It flowed through to the end very well, unlike the "blah, we can't be bothered now, don't care how but let's just end it" feel that XIII has after Oerba.

It had very distinctive cultures from the laid back Besaid to the sport loving Luca to the highly religious Bevelle to the Klingons of Mt Gagazet etc, making it feel like a really well fleshed-out world and the pilgrimage really did feel like you were touring all of Spira. That's not what I see in XIII's world where I see basically "Cocoon people" and "Pulse (Zanarkand)". Also unlike Zanarkand you don't get to see what it used to be like, so it's difficult to relate to Pulse in the same way. Back to the general point about culture, there were small hints at the cultures of Nautilus and Oerba, but they were too few and too vague.

X was also very scenic. Pulse is very nice, but Cocoon is - in the main - corridor after corridor of dullness.

There was a real sense of purpose in X. You were going from one side of the world to the other in order to defeat Sin and make the world a happier place. From Tidus's POV you were trying to go home, or at least see what happened to it, eventually finding that you cared about *this* world and wanted to save it too. I like the concept of what they did in XIII with slavery but being puppeted around randomly (aside from Pulse which felt a little better and more purposeful for a short while) made me feel just as lost and confused as the characters. I know that was the idea, but it didn't work so well for me.

X was properly turn/strategy based - no matter how much you ended up throwing the controller, nothing could beat having to think in order to beat Seymour and Yunalesca, nor having the time to do so instead of mashing buttons to keep up with the AI.

XIII's characters are good, it's easy to identify with them, but nothing will match the uniqueness of characters like Wakka or the pure badass of Auron or the strong will mixed with fate mixed with cheerfulness of Yuna.

There was just so much charm to X. Think also of Maechen, or their incarnation of Cid. All of it just shines. I don't dislike XIII, but if you compare it to X it's not even close.