So what's the deal?

[Mirage]

Nah, people who don't want to write up all their stuff again could just, you know, not post. :p.

[Shin Gouken]

EDIT: And I found there was far, far, far, far more strategy involved with the battle system than there has ever been in a Final Fantasy game. I'm not sure what you were after, to be honest, but outside of the strict "black mage is only ever black mage, fighter can't use magic, etc." games, FF has never really had much strategy in the vast majority of battles.

wow, i'm going to have to heavily disagree with that.

In FFXIII, you bring out a synergist to cast buffs, a sabetour to debuff your oponent, a sentinel to block an attack, a medic to heal and then Rav+Com for damage - For more or less every single battle. That's not strategy.

The arguement follows, how is that different from any other final fantasy. The answer is simple - you choose what buffs to cast depending on your situation, you decide what benefits you most and what you have time to cast. Instead of bringing out a synergist and hoping he casts the one you want.

Previous FF's had more options.

Something as simple as Reflect allowed you to build new strategies. You could reflect enemy spells but would have to create ways of bypassing it to heal or cast stat buffs. What about the old classic Blue magic spells like white wind and ????. Giving these to a class with high HP makes them a reliable healer but also provides them with a desperation attack when low on HP. What happened to two of my personal favorites: Beserk and Bubble? I make it that FFXII has about 25 more commands than FFXIII and also gives you the ability to strategize with the positioning of your team and allows you to carry reserves for different purposes.

I'd like to ask, how many people can really distuigish the attacks of a sentinal? Do you really need different types of defend and provoke? Half the commands in this game are lazy ways to justify certain job roles. The medic has just a few commands and yet its one of the most used classes.

FFXIII is not without some strategy, but to compare it to any other FF is insulting them, to claim that it's better is just nonsense

[Loony BoB]

No, it's not insulting and it's not nonsense. Keep reading, though, before I lose you on my first statement.

I don't know about you, but in previous FF's all I did was attack, attack, attack once I was at a high enough level. Sure, when you're at a high enough level in FFXIII, you too can do this, but ideally you'll still cast things such as Haste etc. first, so it's got a bit of thinking to do. So either way, there's not much thinking to be done. However, if you're going to fight things earlier on, you don't have the simple options. You make do with the jobs you have available to you up until around chapter 10, and sometimes those options aren't favourable and you have to come up with alternative strategies. And even when superpowered, you still tend to need to know what you're doing if you want to get five stars against some of the harder monsters.

I'd say I thought far more during FFXIII battles than I did during VII, VIII or X. XII possibly required some more thought for particular battles, mind you. For FFV, which I've been playing recently enough, I just attack, attack, attack through most battles, too. With any job, too. If you want to level up four white mages you just put barehanded onto their second job thing and unequip whatever and go hunting, no problems will be had at all. It's a walk in the park. Strategy, as I said, mostly goes out the window when you can level your party as much as you like. With XIII, they restrict that so on occasion you will have to think things through. If the thinking is quick and easy for you based on your experience of FF enemies, then good for you, but that doesn't mean they're that much easier than previous FF's, just that you already know what to expect.

EDIT: I will concede absolutely that Reflect allows for a dramatic increase in potential strategy, however I will also point out that you will rarely need it. I only used Reflect on about one battle in each previous incarnation if I recall correctly. It may have been useful in other areas but when you can just attack for buttloads to begin with and walk through your enemies after you've been gil hunting for a while, it's not worth the waste of MP.

[Shin Gouken]

No, it's not insulting and it's not nonsense. Keep reading, though, before I lose you on my first statement.

I don't know about you, but in previous FF's all I did was attack, attack, attack once I was at a high enough level. Sure, when you're at a high enough level in FFXIII, you too can do this, but ideally you'll still cast things such as Haste etc. first, so it's got a bit of thinking to do. So either way, there's not much thinking to be done. However, if you're going to fight things earlier on, you don't have the simple options. You make do with the jobs you have available to you up until around chapter 10, and sometimes those options aren't favourable and you have to come up with alternative strategies. And even when superpowered, you still tend to need to know what you're doing if you want to get five stars against some of the harder monsters.

I'd say I thought far more during FFXIII battles than I did during VII, VIII or X. XII possibly required some more thought for particular battles, mind you. For FFV, which I've been playing recently enough, I just attack, attack, attack through most battles, too. With any job, too. If you want to level up four white mages you just put barehanded onto their second job thing and unequip whatever and go hunting, no problems will be had at all. It's a walk in the park. Strategy, as I said, mostly goes out the window when you can level your party as much as you like. With XIII, they restrict that so on occasion you will have to think things through. If the thinking is quick and easy for you based on your experience of FF enemies, then good for you, but that doesn't mean they're that much easier than previous FF's, just that you already know what to expect.

EDIT: I will concede absolutely that Reflect allows for a dramatic increase in potential strategy, however I will also point out that you will rarely need it. I only used Reflect on about one battle in each previous incarnation if I recall correctly. It may have been useful in other areas but when you can just attack for buttloads to begin with and walk through your enemies after you've been gil hunting for a while, it's not worth the waste of MP.

So your arguement is basically that because FFXIII prevents you from over-levelling, it's more strategic than FFV because you can over-level and not need strategy? FFV offers hundreds more potential party set ups that allow for an incredable amount of strategy, over-leveling so you wont need to bother with strategy isn't a flaw in the game, it's a choice you make when you play.

(On a quick side note, i like that players have the option to power level. It's like an in-built difficulty setting. If the game is too easy then keep your levels lower, if it's too hard then level up.)

I also don't agree that barefist on a team of white mages will work. White mages lack both speed and defense, using barefist effectively would require bringing your mages into the front row which is essentially asking for them to be killed. If this is something you have done, then i can only presume that you were over-levelled or fighting enemies much weaker than yourself.

Again, i'm not arguing that there isn't any strategy to FFXIII, but even the most powerful marks can be destroyed with a 5star ranking with little difficulty. In fact i only remember 3 giving me trouble: Vercingetorix of course, the pair of Ratkavija's and gigantaur. Though gigantaur can only be beaten with 5stars with luck, Ratkavija's just needed a little magic defense, and V-torix though understandabley tougher wasn't on the same level as Yiazmat, Neo shinryu or any other uber boss from any FF.

There are very few occasions in FFXIII where you find that you have to manually pick a command, 95% of the time you just need to change to one of 6 paradigms. I personally miss the days when fighting a hard-ass boss when i had to decide if i would revive my KO'd party member or heal my existing ones. When you had to choose whether you wanted to get up protect or shell and whether you would use Ultima or conserve your MP to heal. These choices are just absent in FFXIII which not only reduces the tension of harder battles, but removes half the fun.

[Loony BoB]

Thing is, for the most part I don't even need to power level. I just like to have enough gil to get the things you can purchase in the game. Doing that makes me walk through most enemies. Also, the fact that you run out of HP and MP means the enemies in previous FFs were far easier to compensate for that. However, if you knew what you were doing then you never really ran low - you found tents lying around so often that you could always heal up again. Depending on your enemy in FFXIII, you need to approach them in different ways. You can't tell me that the Gui, the Munchkin, the Behemoth and the "what there are like ten enemies" battles all require the same strategy. You simply have to know what you're doing. Sure, that might be a pretty obvious thing, but then, you still have to do that or you're dead.

If you think the most powerful marks are easy to get a five star ranking in then maybe you're calling them the most powerful just because they're a high number or a high ranking. Don't mistake the grade of the mark for how powerful they are. I could walk over some A marks but some B marks required me to think a bit. Also, again, it depends on your own level and equipment. If you use +STR or +MAG stuff, it'll be harder to get the five stars. How easy is it to get five stars against the hardest mark of them all, anyway - Gigantuar? Pretty hard!

As I said, maybe our different strategies made things easier for you than for myself in XIII but there are definite strategies for most enemy groups/individuals and you need to approach them with that in mind, particularly when you aren't of a high level and don't have every job unlocked.

"But power leveling is a choice!" - so? I could say that using the crystarium at all is a choice, too. You could call that power leveling. Either way, it removes the need for strategy altogether in older FF's whilst in this one it doesn't, because you can't. At the end, you can generally get through most things easily, but only once you're maxed, and even then, you still need to use certain paradigms at certain times if you want to get things done efficiently.

Unlike FFVII and VIII, where as I said, attack, attack, attack. You simply can't get away with that in XIII.

[Shin Gouken]

Thing is, for the most part I don't even need to power level. I just like to have enough gil to get the things you can purchase in the game. Doing that makes me walk through most enemies. Also, the fact that you run out of HP and MP means the enemies in previous FFs were far easier to compensate for that. However, if you knew what you were doing then you never really ran low - you found tents lying around so often that you could always heal up again. Depending on your enemy in FFXIII, you need to approach them in different ways. You can't tell me that the Gui, the Munchkin, the Behemoth and the "what there are like ten enemies" battles all require the same strategy. You simply have to know what you're doing. Sure, that might be a pretty obvious thing, but then, you still have to do that or you're dead.

If you think the most powerful marks are easy to get a five star ranking in then maybe you're calling them the most powerful just because they're a high number or a high ranking. Don't mistake the grade of the mark for how powerful they are. I could walk over some A marks but some B marks required me to think a bit. Also, again, it depends on your own level and equipment. If you use +STR or +MAG stuff, it'll be harder to get the five stars. How easy is it to get five stars against the hardest mark of them all, anyway - Gigantuar? Pretty hard!

As I said, maybe our different strategies made things easier for you than for myself in XIII but there are definite strategies for most enemy groups/individuals and you need to approach them with that in mind, particularly when you aren't of a high level and don't have every job unlocked.

"But power leveling is a choice!" - so? I could say that using the crystarium at all is a choice, too. You could call that power leveling. Either way, it removes the need for strategy altogether in older FF's whilst in this one it doesn't, because you can't. At the end, you can generally get through most things easily, but only once you're maxed, and even then, you still need to use certain paradigms at certain times if you want to get things done efficiently.

Unlike FFVII and VIII, where as I said, attack, attack, attack. You simply can't get away with that in XIII.

I agree you still need to make use of certain strategies in FFXIII (whether mazed out or not) but i still can't agree that it is more strategic than previous FF's. VIII was pretty broken btw so i can't argue with mashing attack there. VII too was pretty easy so i can't really argue with that either.

But i still fail to see how needing to bring out a sentinel at specific times, or by switching from COM/RAV/RAV to COM/COM/RAV is really an in depth strategy. Having most battles require each class to participate isn't really highly strategic, it's just common sense. I don't feel a sense of accomplishment when i switch in a sentinel to take the blunt of an attack, i feel like ive more or less been told to do so.

Just on another quick note. FFXIII discourages the use of almost all weapons and accesories. Higher grade weapons and STR/MAG + accesories make it almost impossible to score 5 Stars on anything, not to mention that Auto-abilities or critical-abilities provided by accesories are one time use which again discourages you from using them. However in FFXII each weapon behaves differentley (targeting def or mag def, ignoring def, short range, long range, one handed, two handed, multiple hit rate, charge time, elemental properties or status effects, changing ammunition and adding shields etc) this plays a huge part in how you strategize.

FFXIII just doesn't allow for much imo. Switching between 6 roles is fine, it's strategic enough to keep you entertained for a reasonable amount of time. But like i said, a medic has just 4 abilities, a sentinel simply has a few variations of the same two attacks. For the most part, it's not particularly important what spells your ravager casts, and you don't really get a say in what buff/debuffs your Syn/Sab is casting.

At least you have the option to be more strategic in previous FF's. I understand there comes a point where you can simply attack repeatedly, but it's not really fair to over level your characters and then complain there was no need to use strategy

[champagne supernova]

I agree with Loony Bob. XIII might not be the most strategic game in the world, but no Final Fantasy has ever been. And yes, if you decide to over-level, then obviously the game will be simple.

But you know what is interesting about XIII. Google what is Lightning's best weapon. Or Sazh. Or any of the characters. Then Google a boss and see the strategies people use. And then note: everybody has a different opinion.

Surely that is a sign of a great battle system - that there is not one fixed way of beating a boss.

And again, I've been playing IX recently. I must have hit the Attack button 95% of the time. Lots of strategy there.

[Lamia]

No way. Final Fantasy XIII is easily more strategic than most other FFs. Heck, if you're not careful a regular mob can destroy you.

What paradigms to use, in what order, and their timing are very important to the flow of battle. For instance, I have found that I can be "too defensive" by spamming Combat Clinic and the enemies end up damaging through my healing. Another healing paradigm worked better. Also, the way the characters move around the battle area is affected by their role, and this strategy can be used to dodge some AoE attacks.

Meh. I could go on. It seems simple, but it's surprisingly nuanced.

One more thing though--sure, there are easy, and obvious paradigm strategies to use that are safe and situational however those don't yield a very high battle rating. I think the developers were smart for measuring the success of fights as this gives the player an incentive to develope more efficient strategies.

[Mirage]

Sazh blitz spam with 3000 str sure is tactical, guyz

[Mo-Nercy]

Yes, rent it. Then buy it, if you like it.

If you go into this expecting it to be just as good as whatever your favourite FF is, you'll likely be disappointed. If you go into it expecting it to be your new favourite FF, you probably haven't played very many. It's relatively weak compared to others in the series, but IMO, it's still a very good game. A worthy inclusion to anyone's 360 or PS3 library.

Where aspects of 'traditional' FF elements have been given less emphasis or omitted, you find a battle system that makes you think (as others have said, it's not just Attack, Attack, Attack. Even the average, non-boss monster can be demanding enough for you have to do a few paradigm shifts and work out a loose strategy). So there's no world map, towns, shops or end-game airship. It doesn't make it less of a game. A crappy battle system would - and FFXIII certainly doesn't have that.

[champagne supernova]

Sazh blitz spam with 3000 str sure is tactical, guyz

Sazh can even reach 3000 STR? Seriously? Okay, I finished the game and he was chilling on like 400/500. 600 tops.

But you can throw that analogy at any FF game. Squall - junction Ultima to Str - Renzokuken (bye bye any boss).

X - Get Ultimate Weapon. Break Tidus' HP limit and get it to 99 999. Kill Jecht in one hit (okay, I got it up to about 18 000 and killed Jecht in 2 hits).

[Mirage]

yes, it's not too hard to do

[champagne supernova]

yes, it's not too hard to do

How many hours are we talking here?

[Mirage]

yes, it's not too hard to do

How many hours are we talking here?

Time doesn't equal difficulty :p.

But anyway, just get a maxed out hyades magnums and 4x power gloves. It'll cost you perhaps a million gil, which you should already have (or have in unsold items) when you're at chapter 13 if you've done that robot sidequest in oerba. The actual upgrading doesn't take a lot of time. With this stuff, you can even take down those hard adamantoises in pulse without having more than like 12k HP, if you play your cards right.

[Proxy]

So i rented the game. Played it, and loved it. but for the most part it didnt share too much with other final fantasy games, but I did really enjoy it, and am now debating whether to buy it or not. thanks for the tips guys! much appreciated.