Quote Originally Posted by Rase View Post
I freely admit that my personal experience with this game is limited to the first few hours and watching friends on the rest. However, one of the main complaints I hear is "They got rid of the towns!! :mad2:" I'm just curious what made people like towns so much inn previous games.

Personally I saw towns as one thing: shops. I could not care less about talking with NPC's, checking every pot for a hidden item, and so on. In almost every JRPG my journey through a new town consists of Inn, Weapon Shop, Armor Shop, Item Shop, and on with the story. The only games I can think of where this isn't the fact are the Dragon Quest games, and I can't really say why I feel this way.

So, do people really find talking to one-line NPC's and running around a sterile area to be... fun? Something to really be missed? Apparently, so if that's you feel free to explain why, if possible.
All right. To me, towns are important in terms of fleshing out the world you're playing in, and pacing the story.

Entering a normal town gives you a break from the fighting, a breather, the ability to still play the game without having to worry about monsters lurking around and crap. There's almost no breaks like that in FF13, just a relentless push forwards at all times, and it really stresses me out. The only way to get a breather is to turn off the game.

Towns, and their NPCs, also lets you explore the world you're in, beyond just the main storyline. It helps giving you the impression that you're in a world that exists beyond just supplying locations where the main story can take place. It lets you find out back stories of characters, events, locations, customs, the world's history and lore. Things that in FF13 were just fed to you though a very uninspiring data log in the main menu.