Final Fantasy XIII: who am I, where am I, what am I doing here and why?

Final Fantasy XIII. One of the most eagerly awaited games of the year. I've played them from VII on, liked most of them, loved 10, and have been a great fan of the series ever since I found out RPGs. So, when XIII came out and I had a PS3 to play it on, I hastened to the shop to get my grubby fingers on the last release.

I am now about 60 hours into this game, and I still haven't got a clue what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. I mean, if I bothered to read my entire datalog, I'd know who is who in this world, what they want, why they fight or help me, and why it was so tragic (if) they died at one point in the game, and what the consequences are to the story. But I don't want to chew through 50+ pages of text that is written as if a bunch of fangirls were let loose on the script and give me a summary. I want to know what's going on by playing the bleeding GAME!

This entire game consists of running through corridors--rocky corridors, shiny corridors, underground corridors, god-knows-where corridors. I keep on running with my footsteps banging in my ears, and it leads NOWHERE. Occasionally I bump into an enemy, and while most of the time they are easily beatable, once in a while, and I mean totally out of nowhere, creatures poop up that completely and utterly own me. Sometimes, in the case of the Juggernaut thingy, that happens when you enter a special passageway, but sometimes it seems to happen completely at random, and that, my fine boys and girls, really pisses me off!

All final fantasies have bosses and hidden monsters and hard-to-beat enemies at one point in the game, but this is the first where I whistle my way through enemies in a city and am then, unexpectedly, crushed by a walking tulip bulb. Or frogs.

The plot sucks. I just don't know what I'm doing and why the hell I'm doing it. Ok, I haven't finished the game yet, but what is the relationship between Fang and Vanille (who thought up THAT name, anyway???)? Are they friends? Sisters? Lovers? I know nothing about them apart from the fact that Vanille only stops whooping and making orgasmic little sounds when she starts angsting like a suicide goth.

Snow is kinda cool, Lightning grew on my once she stopped moping (after the first 15 to 20 hours of gameplay). Hope is somewhat fanboyishly disgusting with his 'Together we'll beat them!' attitude, but he's ok. Fang rocks, Sazh (the negro with the chocobo chicklet in his hair) walks as if he's pooed his pants but actually is a very nice and believable character. But Vanille? Ugh.

What doesn't help, is that there are loads of long cut scenes, but very little actual interaction. None of the characters seem connected, maybe because this time, there is no romance. Snow's romantic interest, Lightning's sister, is gone if not dead, and neither Lightning nor Fang seem to be interested in making a pass at him. Hope and Vanille do some half-hearted teasing, but I never get a sense of friendship like I got from FF X and even the notorious FF XII.

Once you get to Pulse, things get a little better, but not much. Here you can do quests and walk around randomly killing monsters. Apparently you can catch a chocobo here, but I haven't found them yet because I've obviously missed a quest and I don't know where I can find it, so I'm...walking. Again. Miles and miles and FUCKING miles of grassland. And because the map keeps spinning when I change directions, I constantly get lost (yeah, my sense of direction sucks, thank you, I know!)

Additionally, FF XIII must have the worst music score I have EVER heard in a video game. Usually, the Final Fantasy series has nice, music, especially when it's by Nobuo Uematsu, but this! instead of rousing game music you get...a pop song. That goes on and on and on because well, you're combining grinding and world-exploration. Without a chocobo.

I will finish this game, and I will find a fucking chocobo, but I've never played a Final Fantasy game that was so completely uninteresting before. And it's odd, because the world is pretty cool, the battle system takes some getting used to but has its merits, and the characters are certainly better than FF XII's, but...gah! Learn how to tell a story, damn it! And stop forcing me to buy tons of pieces of monster so I can upgrade my weapons in the most boring, annoying, illogical way EVER!

Anyone else played Final Fantasy XIII yet? Liked it? Hated it? Was baffled by it?

tl;dr final fantasy is neither final or fantasy

SirDixonDongs wrote:

tl;dr final fantasy is neither final or fantasy

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (Fuck you the technology runs off magic), 9, 10 and 12(Same deal, no magic sky stones, no airships) would like to contest your disallowing them into the fantasy setting. The comment on the finality of these games is valid however.

Actually, let me start on a tangent by saying I don't really know why FFXII has such a bad rap (if that's the word—is it?). Apart from Vaan, who had all the interesting and lovable qualities of a sheet of sand paper, the characters weren't too bad. I never managed to play all the way through, but the story was interesting enough (if a little too "now do this now do that now go here" at times), and I liked the combat system. Oh, and the environments were interesting, as is par for the course in a Final Fantasy game.

Ahem. Anyway. Seconding the utter confusion as to the storyline. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know you wanted me to read the entire datalog in order to find out what a Fal'Cie is, or where exactly Cocoon is, or any one of a number of things. How thoughtless of me. And then there's that scene in the Vile Peaks where Lightning undertakes logic-acrobatics and somehow concludes that Sanctum must die. I tried to parse that, then decided that the line of thought wasn't that important so long as the objective (make more things dead) was clear.

I do really like the characters, though. Actually, I like the character subplots more than the actual storyline (which, I dunno if I haven't gotten far enough yet, but it seems kinda lacking to me). Like, the whole thing with Snow and Hope. Or Sazh and Vanille. Those two plot threads were frankly pretty awesome.

I'd also diffidently submit that the soundtrack is not all that bad, with a few tracks such as the battle theme, 'Those for the Purge', 'The Vestige' or 'The Gapra Whitewood' being really cool and ambient.

Then again, I did just come from playing Star Ocean: the Last Hope, which apart from needing better animators seems to think that YEEEAAAAH ELECTRIC GUITAR AND 80S SYNTH AND EXACTLY THE SAME BEAT EVERY TIME constitutes a good soundtrack. So my perspective may be a little... colored.

(Star Ocean 3 was better anyway.)

I got lost halfway through this game and gave up after ours of trying to figure out what the hell I did wrong.

I like the game

I do understand the gripe about the datalog, but I also think there'd be a lot of griping if you did explanatory exposition in-game for all the stuff that people are already supposed to know. It's a way around the curse of SF. (Also, I've played Xenosaga. FFXIII's datalog has nothing on the reading material for Xenosaga.)

It's never explicitly stated, but I'm of the opinion that Fang/Vanille = OTP, and I'm glad there isn't an improbable romance shoehorned into the story. I actually liked all of the characters in this game, versus liking half of them in XII, so this was a step up in that direction for me.

Don't get me wrong, I do like FFXIII, and I'm not opposed to reading material to flesh out my vidja games—it's just that in FFXIII I found myself having to read the datalogs to understand things that were vital to the plot and could have been explained in like a sentence. As in, something like:

Person One: "Blah blah blah Pulse L'Cie."
Person Two: [in grave tone] "A servant of the enemies of Cocoon? Oh no!"

... Or something like that. It's not that hard to just have someone reflect on things while coincidentally simultaneously providing something by way of information to the player. (Heck, they did it just fine in FFX, although at least there they had the excuse of Tidus not knowing jack.)

Sure, the whole 'repeat and explain' thing is a little stupid if you think about it in-universe. But it falls under acceptable breaks in reality, I'd say.

Also Fang is awesome. =D

Fang won me over with her line at Hope's place: "Okay, who ordered the batallion?"

Quote :

Person One: "Blah blah blah Pulse L'Cie."
Person Two: [in grave tone] "A servant of the enemies of Cocoon? Oh no!"

You mean that bit in the first chapter when Sazh spells out exactly why Serah being a Pulse l'Cie is Very Bad News?

If it sounds like I do, no, I don't think the game was completely perfect. I have serious issues with the pacing, and I didn't really get caught up in the story until about chapter three or four, but I also don't think it's as bad as so many people claim it is.

but what about

myeerah wrote:

Quote :

Person One: "Blah blah blah Pulse L'Cie."
Person Two: [in grave tone] "A servant of the enemies of Cocoon? Oh no!"

You mean that bit in the first chapter when Sazh spells out exactly why Serah being a Pulse l'Cie is Very Bad News?

I... uh?

I must have missed that. Whoops.

Perhaps my example wasn't the best, though, given that I knew more or less why the l'Cie were bad news. I was thinking more about what fal'Cie were, which was a mystery to me. There wasn't really anything to indicate there was even a difference between Pulse and Cocoon fal'Cie until... quite far on, I think. ("Okay, so the fal'Cie are these things from Pulse and they're bad guys. Wait, but there's a fal'Cie giving orders to Sanctum? So they're, what, an oppressive regime? And all the food and stuff comes from fal'Cie too? I am so lost.")

Mind you, things did get explained later on—such as what exactly the Purge was and why they were doing it and stuff—but I still spent a good portion of the game in a cloud of confusion.

(Ioknow, maybe I'm exaggerating, though. Not knowing what was going on without the datalog didn't really make the game itself any less enjoyable, though. And I'll say this right now, nobody does cinematography like Squeenix.)

SirDixonDongs wrote:

but what about

Do you EVER contribute something useful?

Anyway, if I thought FF XIII completely awful, I wouldn't have played it for over 60 hours. But despite the fact that it looks wonderful, there's just too much about I really don't like.

Both Hope and Lightning keep whining about Snow way too long. Hello, Lightning, what did Snow ever do to you that was so awful? Her excuse is that seriously fucked up inside by her own guilt, confusion and anger, but what's Hope's excuse? Did he look away when his mom got up and all but snatched the gun from Snow's fingers? Was he jerking off when Snow tried to catch Nora and tried to save her, almost dying himself when he failed? I get it, he's a kid, and he NEEDS someone to blame, but hell, Vanille was there, too, and no one, not anyone ever tells Hope to realize what really happened and deal with it.

All Lightning and Vanille keep saying is 'You need to confront him.' Why? Snow didn't do anything wrong! On the up-side, after they reconcile Snow and Hope are really cute. Apart from Vanille, all characters are pretty likable. It's just the story that completely fails to draw me in.

And if EVERY other FF managed to explain the story to me during gameplay, why do I need to read datalogs in XIII? Because if you don't, you will seriously NOT get it. I know Sazh explains some things at one point, but about every word he was saying at the time was a 'what? Who? What is that, again?' so I still didn't completely understand what he was talking about. Just like that whole Ragnarok thing. It's explained by a light show in that park with the cute sheep. Oh, so this show, which doesn't seem to make any sense anyway, is actually a major plot point and explains how Fang put a hole in Cocoon. How enlightening!

Then there is the whole L'Cie training cradle thing, which I simply walked through, beating monsters all the while, wondering WTF? all the while. It's not CLEAR! Neither is the whole Eidolon matter. So...L'Cie get helpers when they're in doubt? Eh? Are there any Black Eidolons around, since the whole world is crawling with L'Cie and Cie'th? Nope. And what exactly IS wrong with Fang's tattoo? Is that because she turned into Ragnarok? She mentions something like that, but nothing is ever explained. Usually, I don't mind some vagueness; figuring out how things work for yourself can be a positive aspect of a game, but this time, I just couldn't find the interest.

Such a pity.

My roommate picked it up for the 360 before it was available at the BX for the PS3, and from what he saw, he saved me $60. It was like it decided to repeat all the sins of XII and then expand on them.

kleine_kat wrote:

SirDixonDongs wrote:

but what about

Do you EVER contribute something useful?

Yes. Yes, he does.

kleine_kat wrote:

stuff

YMMV.

What the hell is wrong with SE? Do they have a fucking four year old naming characters?

Jesus. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

What the hell is wrong with SE? Do they have a fucking four year old naming characters?

Jesus. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Worse. Japanese people who think English is cool.

What's the Japanese version of a weeaboo?

a twinkie

I got some many clothes in Japans with Engrish on them. Hey, what is the term for an American person who thinks Japanese people who think English is cool are cool?

a moron

sorry reep

Reepicheep-chan's status: Told ☐ Not Told.

Ignoring this, Final Fantasy is about dead. SE has become incapable of making a RPG that doesn't suck. FFXI was good, FFXIV will probably be good, but that's it.

The battle system gets worse each fucking game. FFXII's was absolutely awful and unengaging, and the gambits were irredeemably retarded. Nothing was wrong with turn based asswhoppery like in FFX. And if you're going to have a real time fighting system, make it like Star Ocean: 'Till the End of Time or Tales of Symphonia.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

Ignoring this, Final Fantasy is about dead. SE has become incapable of making a RPG that doesn't suck.

SE can still, theoretically, make a good game. The World Ends With You was brilliant. The real issue is that they routinely make games that are only average despite having a massive budget, whereas outfits with only a fraction of their operating costs (like Atlus) routinely make RPGs that totally kick ass.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

And if you're going to have a real time fighting system, make it like Star Ocean: 'Till the End of Time

This. SO3's battle system is consistently engaging, to me, even though I'm about forty hours into the game. Which is a good thing, because the game itself is grind-tastic. (SO: The Last Hope's battle system, OTOH, I am not fond of—except for blindsiding, which is pretty cool.)

That said, I actually quite liked the battle system in FFXII. *shrug*

FFXII's battle system would have been so much better had there been some sort of indication that a party member was ready to act and a quick-swap button to go with it. Then you'd have something a little more like the old Active ATB instead of having to constantly switch individual Gambits or soloing the game just to stop your party from being utter morons and hacking up that rare dinosaur that only turns up after an hour of running back and forth through featureless desert / dungeon / drilling area and which you'd very much like to pickpocket.

Sutremaine wrote:

FFXII's battle system would have been so much better had there been some sort of indication that a party member was ready to act and a quick-swap button to go with it.

Oh, yes. That's one of the few things I felt the battle system was really lacking.

*remembers the race to get Balthier and Asche to cast Libra instead of attacking so Vaan could pickpocket enemies*