I suppose, personally I'm glad to see a disliked a good portion of the stuff i hated in the game. The battle system is just so amazingly bad, boring and plain simply no fun, I like how the old games offered way the hell more to do in comparison.

Its funny cause while I don't like how linear it is, I have played linear RPG's that were way more fun than this piece of shit. Is this what square thinks "linear" is in regards to how to apply it to Final Fantasy? They were all kinda linear to begin with, with 13 its overkill.

Also nothing like "side quest" that you have to beat the game to then go back and complete. nice...

I still haven't played, but i would say that, as long as it doesn't have the same 3-4 enemies with different colors like FFX had i'm ok with it being linear.

There's a lot of palette swap enemies in this game, plus the games idea of "exploration" towards the end is just dubious at best, not at all like you'd have expected...so yeah it sucks.

I really wanted to like it since iv been a fan for awhile, but the battle system alone is really what detracts, linear's one thing I'll admit, but the battle system is just so damned disappointing it really can't make up for any short comings in the story.

but hey, maybe you'll like it more than I did, maybe you'll find something in it that I didn't see.

The only too predictable part is when he mentions that the last FF game he really had fun with was 6, because that was the last one that was in any way redeemable.

Well, there is an auto-battle option, sounds ok to me. Anything in particular that makes combat so annoying? Because most of the praise i heard for the game goes to that part. Too much pointles menus?

everything all of you are saying could be said about any of the ff games

screw square. if EA makes a blitzball game, i'll buy that.

btw all my stars are for "kooky spice"

Combat is kind of hit or miss, Riskbreaker. I actually kind of enjoyed it. Basically, it's more about preparing for battle and adjusting the flow of it than actually fighting. You'll controll your leader while the two others act depending on the their rolls. Each character really has 3 roles of the game's possible 6-
Commandos deal physical/non elemental magic damage and keep enemies off balance so others can 'stagger' them (knock them off balance, lets you do a lot of damage quickly), Ravagers deal elemental damage and stagger foes fast, Synthesists and Saboteurs buff and debuff accordingly, Sentinels keep monsters focused on themselves and away from others, medics heal.

You have a party of 3, and can set 6 'paradigms' - which are combinations of the characters roles, which you can shift on a dime. So you'll fight, swap to something defensive when needed, fight some more, etc. There's a couple of different moves (a few cool ones late in the game) that let you mix it up a bit, but for most standard enemies, you'll probably just que up a bunch of attacks.

The game becomes interesting against enemies that your normal strategy doesn't work against, and you'll find yourself thinking up a new way to tackle it, swapping out a member or two, and making a few custom roles for that fight. That's what made me really enjoy it.

As for the whole 'linear' thing, don't let the complaints fool you. FF has always been linear, this one just stops pretending to be otherwise. I'd rather have these preset corridors and see the monsters I'm about to fight and try to get the drop on them than a world map that still points me in a single direction along with a million random battles along the way.

You'll spend most of the game with the characters the game tells you too. If you've played the old ones, I'd compare it to 4(2 in the US). You'll spend most of it where it tells you to be with who it tells you to use, but hey, that's half the challenge.

All in all, I liked FF13. It may not have been the best of the bunch, but I liked it way more than a good few of them, but you will need a little patience to play it.

Keep in mind I played enough Xenosaga to see all those clips I submitted, I have a pretty high RPG tolerance.

The whole knocking down enemies reminds me of Shadow Hearts Covenant. I felt that was a good idea, in that game at least. Stars for Candle and Rocket.

Actually it's pretty similar to SHC there. Once you get them to the breaking point, you can do some real damage. Also, two of the main characters get a passive ability called 'launch' as commandos, that knocks enemies into the air when they're staggered. They can't fight in that condition, so whenever I staggered a heavy hitter or enemy I just didn't like, I could switch to a paradigm that was all about heavy hitting with no defense or healing, knock them into the air, and safely pummel them. It was actually pretty fun.

I actually liked the combat. Yes, you'll end up selecting "Auto-Battle" every turn, but that's not where the stragegy is; it's in using the Paradigm Shift to change jobs mid-battle.

Is this the best FF in the series? No. Do you need to play more than 5 hours to honestly criticize the game, let alone refer to yourself as "unbiased"? Yes.

2 stars for degrading Hope. That guy sucks.

An rpg that lets you have your characters in auto-pilot doesn't sound that bad, considering how much grinding some of these games still throw at the player, having a "fast battle" option is more than welcome. But it certainly can't be the only thing going on in the entire combat system.

FFX has two big problems, and they are called Yuna and Tidus. They were written for a Kate Hudson/Hugh Grant romantic comedy where Grant charms Kate because HE IS JUST SO WACKY AND ALWAYS SMILING.

The story in 10 is fine but they forgot to put in the part where you play the game.

I really couldn't get much out of 10. For one thing, all the characters seemed like parodies of themselves. I've always kind of hated it in RPGs when you can get new weapons and 'rare' or 'ancient' ones at the end of the game, but characters have 'wacky' weapons so it's kind of weird. 10's a great example. Why the fuck did all these ancient dungeons have dodge balls and plush toys sitting about?

Plus there was that whole chunk at the ending in which it turns out you don't actually exist or some bullshit. What was wrong with the time travel story? At least it made sense.

At the end of the day 98% of video game writting is soap opera material. That's why i seek more games with a sense of humour, instead of games that are just so serious about their redundant fan-fic stories.

Riskbreaker hits the nail on the head. Dismissing JRPG plots as cliche factories, while accurate, is often hilarious because the accusers usually follow it up by singing the praises of various western cliche factories (Star Wars, Dungeons and Dragons, Bioware games, etc.)

Of course, the same is true in reverse. The total lack of self-awareness among hardcore video game fans in general is a sight to behold.

Anyway, what's funny about Fabio's post is that most people who loved FF12 seem to hate 13. Probably because while you COULD automate 12, only stupid people did that because the combat was fun and it makes no sense to intentionally skip the fun parts of a game. Not to mention that the game does little to encourage you to automate things. In fact, the game requires enough strategy that you'll end up switching your commands very often. So even if you're insane and actually prefer automation, it soon becomes easier to just play the thing manually.

Whereas with 13, the combat is a dull chore and thus getting past it as soon as possible sounds like a great idea. Plus the game already automates two of your party members, and even encourages you to choose auto-battle. It kind of hates the idea of you playing it. Which is fine, since before long the feeling is mutual.

Yahtzee did a pretty good job of explaining why 13 sucks. It's like they took everything people have always disliked about JRPGs, bloated these problems to gargantuan proportions, and shoved them right in your face.

The big problem with 12's Gambits was that it did take enough strategy that you couldn't rely on some very simple scripts to get by. Like Xenocide said, combat was fun and you'd spend way too much time in the menus if you tried to automate everything.

Not to mention there weren't always enough gambit slots. You could have your white mage set up to cast more powerful spells on people with lower health, conserve mana at high HP, cast haste when everyone's doing well, and attack undead with dia, but not at the same time. You'd either have to choose between what's important, or actually play the game.

Going into western cliches, Xenocide brings up a good point that Yahtzee did not too long ago in his dragon age review: a lot of our 'fantasy' titles, warcraft, DnD, and dragon age included all play off Tolkien with little innovation.

I'm afraid I'll have to disagree with you on 13 though, Xeno. I thought 13 was fun in it's own way. Favorite of the FFs? Not really, but it went for something different, and succeeded in my book.

"An rpg that lets you have your characters in auto-pilot doesn't sound that bad"

When a possible alternative is one so fun you'd never want to?

No, you're definitely still firmly in "that bad" territory.

To hell with it: Hey Xenocide, you use AIM or YIM? I've been wanting to talk games with you for a while. You too, pineapplejuicer.

I never thought I'd say this but...

punch black faces.

Well I gotta go and say Xeno pretty much summed up much more eloquently than I how 13 practically plays itself, and I think dull is being far to kind, how about tedious as hell. The whole stacking commands thing is pointless as the game really does feel like it is more effectively played in Auto, and since thats the case you have to ask, how the fuck is that fun? Since it takes far to long to manually stack the damn commands themselves, leaving you open to an ass beating half the time. That and Auto 9 out of 10 times like yahtzee said is gonna choose whatever you were going to choose manually anyways.

The paradigm system itself is far FAR more limiting than what square and game mags would have you believe. best way i can put it is this: say in FF6 depending on how buff you got your party, and who you had, you could say defeat an enemy using a combo of abilities that would result in at least 10 different ways to kill said enemy. In 13 using paradigm shifts you probably can only use maybe 2 different shifts to defeat the enemy, and even then with the whole stacking thing in the equation things get annoying fast. Say in 13 I want to cast haste, now if I stack it along with a bunch of useless shit like Ruin, considering how long it takes for things to be executed, by the time haste is cast, Its pretty much missed its window of opportunity to be even remotely useful in the fight. coupled with the fact that yeah I COULD switch to a commando and ravager shift, and yeah it COULD defeat a specific enemy ( as it was probably the only shift in the fight that didn't help prolong it for another 20yrs of combat and the ever delightful "staggering" which has been done better as a concept in other rpgs) but its so meat and potato's in execution and dull as shit to actually watch, you have to ask "how is this fun?".

Its like " oh now the enemy is Immune to :blank: attack, so time to swithch to :blank: paradigm, OH WAIT now hes back to his original state, time to switch back to :blank: paradigm" do this a couple million more times using the same limiting paradigm combos and you'll get the idea.

Personally I loath auto-play anything, unless its there to just streamline and help me make decisions in battle faster (key emphasis on ME making decisions, not preset shit the game recommends or auto battle) there's little point to it. if they wanted a faster pace of game-play while still retaining the interactivity and decisions making, why not just ape FF10 or 12? hell 10 had a waaay better "stacking" like system, plus you cold switch out party members on the fly which did make combat far more faster pace. Plus while I didn't like the spear-grid (at first), its a work of art compared the the limited as fuck crystarium system.

Oh and the storyline in this game is laughable, even by FF standards, they really haven't moved on with the rest of the world in terms of story telling, its like there still stuck in the mid 90's.

The last consistently fun game game Square made was Parasite Eve. It's like they took a chainsaw to all the bloated unfun fat of the genre and left you with the awesome remaining 10 hours.

What i mean with auto-battle is that is not bad to have a "quick attack/auto-battle" option to speed up things. It depends of the game of course, and if i'm using it too much then the game is just not being fun. In something like Persona 3 it's great to have the rush battle option because of how redundant the tower gets. Just press triangle and everyone goes on full speed meele attack mode. It helps to dispose weak enemies way faster, it's obviously not something you want to try against trickier enemies.

FFXII was fun, and the gambit system depends a lot on how the player will use it. It could also help speed up battles against weak enemies, but against other foes you certainly needed to adjust things different.

Xenocide is also right about "gamers" being all serious business with their games. At the end i boil down things to two options: either the game is fun and engaging or it isn't.

"The total lack of self-awareness among hardcore video game fans in general is a sight to behold."

If you think I'm going to read all this bullshit you're sorely mistaken.

Riskbreaker: I agree, with you and Xenocide on taking things too seriously, in the end it's all about having fun.

That said though, i do hope i havent come across as too "serious" (to late probably) with my critiques and all, just since I played the damn thing till like chapter 11, hoping it would improve (storyline wise, gameplay i.e. couple side quests or something) and alas it didn't.

So yeah I do have a bone to pick cause with all the long winded rambling I've laid down, it all stems from the fact that all that shit isn't fun, and that is whats most important. I would have rather they fine tuned shit more or thrown in more stuff to do, than waste their damn time trying make it "pretty" and more like "interactive film".

FABIO: Yeah Parasite Eve was pretty fun little game, shame part 2 was just Resident Evil-ish. Another good one was Vagrant Story, surprised they never tried to milk that one into the ground.

Oh don't get me wrong Candle, i liked your rant, i was talking about fanboys that go apeshit about trivial stuff. I'm also a fan of the franchise, but ever since day one this game has been looking about as interesting as watching grass grow. I still will give it a shot, but my expectations are quite reserved. Even if i do like the battle system it's safe to say the story looks like crap, and hey, i enjoy power-trip fantasies, but i just can't tolerate certain cliches anymore. Considering how well the Shin Megami Tensei games are doing there lately there's no excuse for Square Enix to be so lazy these days.

You should have stuck it out Jack, chapter 11 is the one with the two zones that aren't just a series of tubes.

If a game takes longer to "get fun" than it takes to play the entire game of Portal, I'll pass.

You've got some gay on you...

Yahtzee is a paid troll, take it for what he is.

'Cept those walls are saying it is shitty.