I like his too-old-for-this-personality. I can definitely relate.
I like his too-old-for-this-
Sazh is the man! Far and away my favorite character in the game. He reminds me of Roger Ebert's review of Robin Hood:PoT where he comments that Morgan Freeman's character is the only one played on the right note: a perfect mix of heroism, seriousness, and dry humor. Sums Sazh up neatly for me.
My favorite character was Sazh.
I think that the issue that many people have with the game is that it is too different from its predecessors that people have learned to enjoy.
If you enjoyed Final Fantasy XII, you probably would not like Final Fantasy XIII; if you enjoyed Final Fantasy XI, you probably would not like Final Fantasy XIII.
There are similarities between Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XIII, at least, but how do fans of Final Fantasy X feel about Final Fantasy XIII, I wonder?
I believe in the power of humanity.
FFX was my favorite until FFXIII became my favorite.
Being able to choose your characters before the point where they all meet up would sort of...undo the story wouldn't it? I mean they're all separated until halfway through the game. I can certainly see why it would annoy people on a second playthrough, but I didn't mind it. There was never much variety to the way I selected my party and paradigms after I was given total control. Lightning (replaced by Fang post-game), Hope, and Vanille could cover most situations that didn't require a Sentinel.
I don't mind the game forcing party membership for storyline battles or keeping the characters separated (a big plotline for FFVI, which is a favorite of mine). But giving the player total control on regular party composition took far longer than necessary.
Basically. There's no reason they needed to stretch out the tutorials for half the game.Originally Posted by BG-57
The games doesn't effectively weave the narrative into the game so your left confused most of the time. Having to have an encyclopedia to explain the story speaks volumes about the quality of Squares writing team.
The game can be broken down to three things. Battles, cutscenes and walking to either of the two. Any diversion from the games path would be to collect a treasure chest. The game had such a predictable structure that playing the game just became a chore after a while because you going through the motions over and over again.
Ultimately FFXIII is a movie first then a game. Maybe if the story was good then you could forgive a lot but it simply isn't so your left with well......a pretty bad game.
I agree with Dreddz. This is probably one of the worst pieces of story telling in the world. An incoherent meth addict is more engaging than this game and I'm pretty sure you can understand him/her better than this game.
I should've seen this coming as previous Square Enix RPGs like Infinite Undiscovery and The Last Remnant had very annoying narrative, but great gameplay.
I really liked the gameplay of FFXIII, but the bad story and stupid characters (not Sazh) made me sell this game ASAP!
When I played through XIII, I liked it enough at least to keep playing. Hope, Vanille and Sahz were my favourite characters (even if I used Fang, Lightning and Hope endgame), and I liked some of the bosses and the music. The Final Boss was entertaining. Tacked on, sure, but entertaining. Nice music. Not as good as for example Necron, who was awesome, or as good as the Undying, who was great, but good. Unlike some other final bosses in FF. Like Kefka or Emperor.
However, now I'm at the point post-game where I can do all the sidequests, and I just can't do it. It's too boring, there's no appeal in it. I wanted to get all trophies, but gave up, it's not worth it. I've started continuing my third playthrough through IX, spend two days straight doing nothing but grind for abilities on the beach on the lost continent on disk 3, and help, I enjoyed it more than the sidequests in XIII. I dunno, does that make me sad?
I blame IX being the superior game.
All in all, XIII is good when you play through the story with your brain turned off, but after that, it gets forgetable quickly. There's zero replay value, too.
I was sure people were being way too harsh about this game, so when I started it I expected it to be great in it's own way. Hell, people gave FFXII a bad time, but it wiped the floor with half the entire series. Not the case for XIII though. I read it gets better near the last few chapters and that just can't make up for how terribly dull and boring the first 25 hours of game play has been. I am determined to finish this game, but it feels like a job having to turn on that ps3 and push my characters further and further into a game that doesn't even feel like a Final Fantasy. I don't mind the characters and I don't mind the battle system, and the story is not terrible but altogether the game play is wretched. Where the heck is the world map? Why is so much time wasted in ugly dungeons and who thought it was a great idea to force the player down a never ending story that has no time for a breather or exploration of the worlds or side quest or anything remotely fun? Still unsure why FFX got such a hardcore fan base, but I blame it for FFXIII for they are a lot a like in many fashions. But one thing this game has done for me is bring back an urge to play FFX, because I have a feeling I will finally like it more. So how did this happen? For one of the prettiest games, it wreaks of fail no matter how good the final chapters are.
I probably wouldn't have minded it being so stream-lined. Considering that is one of the few reasons I -don't- hate FF10. I haven't personally played this game. But for some reason my nephew was desperate to check it out last time he visited, so we rented it, and I got to actually witness it personally for once. And the only real thing that bothered me was the writing. The plot moved along at a really quirky rate. And the quips from the characters are oddly neither dramatic, melodramatic, charming, or badly acted. They're just weird. Which I figure is a problem with the writing. Though I can't say I would have enjoyed a gauntlet of dungeons and battles as a game, but its been done before. Some breathing time probably would have been nice. But I never played Final Fantasy games just so I could explore dungeons and towns. But pacing could have probably used some tweeking regardless. And I can probably blame the writing for that too. So pretty much like a few declared in the thread about whether or not it'd be a good idea if Square handed off FF to a western developer, the main argument is that Square just needs better writing and fresh ideas. They're not a bad company for designing games. They're just running out of ideas and burning themselves out, and you get boring and wonky results. In my opinion anyway
I think the biggest problem that someone brought up is that for a long time, there was a new main Final Fantasy every year, to a year and a half at most. There was always a team working on the next game, even for the next generation. FFX, for example, came out around the end of the first year of the PS2's lifecycle. What happened this time is that we kept getting a new FF every year, but they were spinoffs. Instead of working on the next FF, Kitase and co. were making FFX-2, Dirge of Cerberus, Crisis Core, Kingdom Hearts (then Kingdom Hearts Spinoffs), Dissidia, Revenant Wings, the list goes on and on.
If I'm not mistaken, by the time they started thinking about FFXIII, the PS3 was a year away from launching. I think they just need dedicated teams to making original, good games. That's what's going to bring in revenue for them, moreso than the spinoffs I would assume, which they could just outsource or give to newer developers to cut their teeth on, like Kitase, Nomura, and Nojima all did themselves.
I see you guys talking about the character split ups, and I feel it was mostly for telling a cool story with different characters omre than a nything. Honestly, I wish they broke up the duos over the rest of the game, spliced in with 3 party teams instead of just slacking off for the second half. I think I'm one of the few who likes the first half of the game more.
I've always been a fan of split parties in RPGs. It brings an interesting dynamic to the system. I can only think of old examples, but I really enjoyed when groups split up for whatever reason in a couple of the Shining Force games. And the first few hours of Wild ARMs was especially nice when you switched between playing each main character individually for a while, before they all met up. And I liked it in FF8 during the missile crisis issue. I think more games need to do that kinda stuff. It'd help flesh out minor characters better, and you wouldn't have to feel rushed to get to a certain place as the story would have two groups to choose from to aim at that place. But it probably would grow old if over-done
I certainly won't take credit for this idea, but I've written about it in a number of places on this board and do believe the wonky quality of XIII is partially due to the huge gaps that have developed between FF main games.
My main issue is that XIII is a call-back of sorts to X. It more or less picks up where X left off (minus the combat) but it doesn't incorporate much of anything else. Not only that, but it seems no one at SE questioned the idea of designing a game world in 2010 like one would design it in 2000. Most of FF 1-10 were good because they built on what came before. XIII just kind of takes X as its model and leaves it at that. Imagine if FFIX had been just copied FFIII's design and called it a day. FFIX was great because it built on half a dozen acclaimed titles. XIII just went back to the last FF game that seemed to get unanimous praise.
Sazh deffinatly is the man.
FF X was what got me into the series, and is probably my favourite of all, not sticking to the norms off Original FF games i'm sure it did dissapoint many older fans, and even that game had characters that were very unlikeable like Wakka, Seymor and even Tidus (personall opinion). I felt titdus was to much of a little baby to be likable, crying about he's dad all the time and that voice (plus the random laughing seen made me cringe) but somehow neer the end i felt sorry for him and Yuna. For me FF XIII has no likeable characters (apart from Sazh). Lighning was to depressing and quite, Snow had no personality, Hope....... God i want to punch him in the face, another Tidus, Vanille was just too weird and fang....... meh she was allright.
I think what the game was missing was an Auron.......
Twitter: @Scottyboy081292
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