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Squeenix Final Fantasy XIII

Raghar

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Considering they made FF XV running on high end PC, and only degraded GFX and other stuff to make it run on consoles, it's not that strange it runs on PC. (It would be nice to have GFX options and be able to set it to the original high quality.) I wonder, did it require 2 Titans?
 

Duraframe300

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I wonder if anyone ever managed to finish the whole Gran Pulse content on Chapter 11. It would be insanly hard to do it without the full crystarium of course, but I wonder if its even possible.
 

Raghar

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I wonder if anyone ever managed to finish the whole Gran Pulse content on Chapter 11. It would be insanly hard to do it without the full crystarium of course, but I wonder if its even possible.
Of course they did. They are FF fans. Why would they stop over minor challenge when they could do that 200 lightning dodges which was medium challenge.
 

Delterius

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I actually like when games are trying to do unexpected things, it destroys monotony of we must save the world normal stories. Thought Kefka was funny guy.

Oh I know. Real issue though are the Final Fantasy VII fanboys who muddle much of this old discussion, but I think its pretty clear: Final Fantasy was much like Ultima, it was reiteration after reiteration in every way possible. Which is, of course, Great! However, when it comes to FF X and FF X-2 we can ultimately say that the former wasn't enough of a spin on the old formula and the latter goes bonkers. Which was destined to be a polarizing product.

Well, the thing went PC and I might as well. I have only one question about FF XIII before I try it. Are the claims that diminished interactivity true? Was Spoony and half the internet correct to bitch about how the players have been removed? Paging all Heretics. Crooked Bee felipepepe
 

felipepepe

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It plays very differently. You directly control one character only, but the thing you must really manage isn't the individual attacks, but what role each party member has.

In olden FF games, you would make your spellcaster cast shell & protect by individually selecting and targeting the spells. Here you tell your mage "go buff-mode" and he'll start to cast buff spells. You are more of a coach then a god directly controlling each character. But you can of course ASSUME DIRECT CONTROL of a character and tell him exactly what you want him to do.

That with the VERY linear map & progression leads to people going "Interactive Movie!!111", but I had a fun time. Especially with the sequel.
 

Raghar

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Well, the thing went PC and I might as well. I have only one question about FF XIII before I try it. Are the claims that diminished interactivity true?

Pressing enter does:
Opens shopping terminal.
Opens treasure chest.
Start a new quest.

Actually it also opens doors, or calls lift.

And that's about it in first 11 chapters.
 

Crooked Bee

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Final Fantasy games ever had "interactivity"??

It plays very differently. You directly control one character only, but the thing you must really manage isn't the individual attacks, but what role each party member has.

In olden FF games, you would make your spellcaster cast shell & protect by individually selecting and targeting the spells. Here you tell your mage "go buff-mode" and he'll start to cast buff spells. You are more of a coach then a god directly controlling each character. But you can of course ASSUME DIRECT CONTROL of a character and tell him exactly what you want him to do.

That with the VERY linear map & progression leads to people going "Interactive Movie!!111", but I had a fun time. Especially with the sequel.

Yeah, pretty much. Be aware, though, that you only get direct control over the party composition in chapter 10 of the game's 13 chapters.

But still, I think the concept of the battle system is pretty nice, and I don't think that switching paradigms is any less "interactive" than switching jobs or telling your healer to cast this or that healing spell.

Actually, now that I've beaten the game (though I still have a lot of the optional Gran Pulse content to explore and many of the tougher fights to tackle, which I actually look forward to quite a bit (decline is strong with this one, I know)), my main complaint is that you only get to set up 5 or 6 (I forget how many exactly) active paradigms for your party. There have been fights where I switched between different party setups pretty much every few turns, and wished I had more of those to switch to.

I did aim to achieve the highest rank I could, though, so generally I wasn't playing it safe; hence sometimes my need for more active paradigms. If you don't care for rankings and efficiency, you can probably just go with whatever.
 

Delterius

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But still, I think the concept of the battle system is pretty nice, and I don't think that switching paradigms is any less "interactive" than switching jobs or telling your healer to cast this or that healing spell.

Let me put it differently.

Back when FF XIII was released people bitched a lot about it. This being Brazil and final fantasy being the one non-MMO RPG people know exist, FF XIII's release was as infamous as BioWare is in the Codex. Everyone talked about the single corridor syndrome, which I easily dismissed since I always thought FF was a linear experience. But everyone also talked about how combat was on auto pilot, which is what I am asking about here. From your post, however, it becomes clear that the game does put pressure on you to change your paradigms and the real issue is that Square's version of a tutorial lasts 150 hours.
 

Crooked Bee

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That has pretty much been my experience, yeah.

I imagine if you're a perfect min-maxer who follows a guide/has meta-game knowledge or are a better player than I am or grind to become overleveled, then I guess you can build your characters in such a way that you never have to switch paradigms (possibly, not sure), but for me many of the later chapters' boss and optional battles would've either been impossible or taken too long (= 0 ranking) without first carefully setting up the paradigms and then switching between them in combat.

(That doesn't mean the game is "hardcore," of course. <- Disclaimer.)
 

felipepepe

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Truth be said, you can beat a lot of regular battles on "auto-pilot", but you'll get shitty ranks. FFXIII-2 addresses this by giving more gimmicks to enemies, but in FFXIII they only appear in late game. Ranks also matter a lot more in XIII-2, especially in boss battles (new weapons, items and costumes :3)

And the game has a more linear feel that even FF games, because you're always going from one place to another. There are no towns for you to derp around, talk to the NPCs and do side-quests. There's no "I'll walk back to town X". No shops to visit as well, they are coupled with the save points. And no airship at the end of the game for you to hunt for secrets all over the map. In fact, there is no world map! That was a big letdown for me, as FF XII already suffered a bit from this, only having one real town.

Really, it's a shame that FFXIII-2 will still take some months... it's a great upgrade from XIII.
 

Crooked Bee

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Yeah, ranks are probably a bit too "gamey" mechanic for many, which I imagine may have been another reason for complaints. I like them though. Also, I wasn't talking about trash fights obviously, though those too become more interesting and challenging during the end game. And I don't think that, unless you're min-maxing heavily, auto-pilot can work for (m)any of the later bosses.

Haven't played FFXIII-2 yet, but I will once it's released on Steam. :3 Iirc, FF Type-0 also had special S-rank rewards for missions, though it had a LOT of problematic things about it too and overall my impression of it was even more mixed.
 

felipepepe

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I liked the ranks. XIII-2 has tons of optional content, some of them really hard. It's nice to challenge yourself to beat them with high scores.

I.e., one of the first boss battles can be weakened by using X. However, if you beat it without using X, the battle is a lot harder as has different rewards. And since you can "reset" a level after beating it, you can go back later to try bolder stuff.
 

Duraframe300

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That has pretty much been my experience, yeah.

I imagine if you're a perfect min-maxer who follows a guide/has meta-game knowledge or are a better player than I am or grind to become overleveled, then I guess you can build your characters in such a way that you never have to switch paradigms (possibly, not sure), but for me many of the later chapters' boss and optional battles would've either been impossible or taken too long (= 0 ranking) without first carefully setting up the paradigms and then switching between them in combat.

(That doesn't mean the game is "hardcore," of course. <- Disclaimer.)

Don't know if its possible (though I doubt it) the grind necessary for getting all the equipment you need to do this isn't worth it.

Maxing out a charachters roles only gets you so far.

Well on the other hand on pc you can just give yourself unlimited money.
 

Duraframe300

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I liked the ranks. XIII-2 has tons of optional content, some of them really hard. It's nice to challenge yourself to beat them with high scores.

Its a bit disappointing though thatsome of those challenges were rehashes from XIII. XIII-2 was imo too easy overall.
 

Duraframe300

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That has pretty much been my experience, yeah.

I imagine if you're a perfect min-maxer who follows a guide/has meta-game knowledge or are a better player than I am or grind to become overleveled, then I guess you can build your characters in such a way that you never have to switch paradigms (possibly, not sure), but for me many of the later chapters' boss and optional battles would've either been impossible or taken too long (= 0 ranking) without first carefully setting up the paradigms and then switching between them in combat.

(That doesn't mean the game is "hardcore," of course. <- Disclaimer.)

Don't know if its possible (though I doubt it) the grind necessary for getting all the equipment you need to do this isn't worth it.

Maxing out a charachters roles only gets you so far.

Well on the other hand on pc you can just give yourself unlimited money.

Sorry, misunderstood. You're only talking main content, right?

In that case it should be possible.
 

felipepepe

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Heh, just sold my FF XIII & XIII-2 PS3 discs for 90 reais. That's exactly how much it costs to buy all 3 FF XIII games on PC, hohoho!
 

Bahamut

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SE after hard weeks of work patch is out:

Changelog:
-Added windows prompt for closing the game when you press ESC

They should really commit seppuku
 
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Raghar

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Well they patched Asia version first.

Actually can you post screenshot of options? I'm currious about something, and Steam does I don't talk to ya, after I changed locale.
 
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