So I've been reading a lot on the new consoles coming out within the next year, and the future of video gaming as a whole. It's a bit disturbing to see the trend that two other power houses are going with over Nintendo. Don't get me wrong, I've owned both Sony and Microsoft products and generally enjoyed them (well when I can find a game that isn't a flat out gore fest or full of sexual content and zombies) but I'm a bit disheartened at the route they're taking.
The big issue that I think is on everyone's mind is "DMR" which is basically a form of anti-piracy that turns around to being like Big Brother, just lighter. Basically both of these consoles will require you to have a very active internet connection, or you can't play your games. While that's not an overly bad thing It's not a good thing either when you see that both of these consoles actively monitor you. Hence the big brother comment. Microsoft is taking it a bit further too with the whole "If you don't connect to the internet at least once a day, then your console can't play video games" Not to mention that they're going heavy with the "You can't play preowned, borrowed, or rented games on the system without buying a license for the game first. So basically you pay 40-50.00 for a preowned game, then you have to pay another fee to Microsoft to be able to even play the game you just bought. Lovely how that works isn't it?
Then you hit Sony who's doing a very similar thing. they're running the same DMR thing, and pushing hard for the online connection or no gaming at all. The only plus is they'll let you play rented/preowned/borrowed games w/o paying an extra fee to enjoy them. But on the downside to both of these consoles, neither one will have backwards compatibility and won't be able to play the previous generations games. So you'll have to have two different consoles out to enjoy your gaming. Or in the case of Sony, 3 (PS2, PS3, PS4). The PS4 is also having a major issue with 3rd party software developers too. The rumor has it that the company is forcing every game developer whose making games for the PS4 to make the games remote play for the PS-Vita, and that's going to make the PS-Vita a needed accessory to play games instead of an optional one. Great marketing guys.
And then we hit the old warhorse Nintendo. They've been doing everything right this console generation except for the premature launch of the Wii-U. The only issue that's being had with that console is the fact that it's going to be underpowered by mid next year. Other than that they've done everything to make the console appealing. Backwards compt. to the Wii? Check. Virtual Marketplace games being able to played on the game pad? Check. Constant stream of updates and new games? Check.
The basic solution if you don't want to buy or feel chained to a console is to basically drop them entirely and build a good gaming PC. It's going to run you about a grand to build a good one. But to constantly maintain it will be something like 200.00 every 3 or 4 years. VS 700.00 every few years for another console that can't play previous generations games. STEAM has made it very cost effective to be a pc gamer too. Constant influx of sales, great game content for cheap, big community for modding and other things and a huge variety of developers who are making games for both PC and console? Yeah it's time to leave the DMR behind and get on the pc gaming bandwagon I think. Though I still recommend keeping a Nintendo Console around for the Sonic, Mario, Zelda and Metroid games. You can't go wrong with the classics and those will never be on a console other than Nintendo anymore.
Just my two cents based on the information I've read over the past 2 months.
Monday, June 10, 2013
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Customer Service and rage
So my review was delayed by a few weeks, (going to be 3 soon...) partly because the copy of FF13 I had was faulty. The first disk played great and had no issues, but the 2nd and 3rd disks look like someone played hockey with them. So I had to contact the people I bought it from and request an exchange. Sounds like a simple process right? Well it was far from that. I mailed it out 2 weeks ago on Monday, and they got it on Thursday. No email saying they got it, or any status updates of the like.
So I wait till Tuesday and still nothing, so I decide to contact customer support. They claim they didn't get my copy of the game. Despite me telling them that the postal service has documented proof that they got it. Then they say "Well if we did get it, it'll take 2-3 days to process through our receiving department, before it gets forwarded to Exchanges"... then she says they'll send me an email when that happens.
Week goes and Monday rolls around, and I check my email and nothing. Irate I contact customer support yet again to find out what's going on. Ten mins on hold I get the same person I've spoke to the past 2 times (when i had to return, and when they got it), lovely. She tells me there's nothing wrong with my copy of the game, and they can send it back to me at no charge. Why would I want the game that doesn't work back? I sent it to you to get it exchanged /rage. After arguing for 20 more minutes, I finally get them to send me a different copy.
tl;dr
I'll get back to the review as soon as my new copy of the game comes in (hopefully with a working disk 2 and 3).
So I wait till Tuesday and still nothing, so I decide to contact customer support. They claim they didn't get my copy of the game. Despite me telling them that the postal service has documented proof that they got it. Then they say "Well if we did get it, it'll take 2-3 days to process through our receiving department, before it gets forwarded to Exchanges"... then she says they'll send me an email when that happens.
Week goes and Monday rolls around, and I check my email and nothing. Irate I contact customer support yet again to find out what's going on. Ten mins on hold I get the same person I've spoke to the past 2 times (when i had to return, and when they got it), lovely. She tells me there's nothing wrong with my copy of the game, and they can send it back to me at no charge. Why would I want the game that doesn't work back? I sent it to you to get it exchanged /rage. After arguing for 20 more minutes, I finally get them to send me a different copy.
tl;dr
I'll get back to the review as soon as my new copy of the game comes in (hopefully with a working disk 2 and 3).
Monday, April 15, 2013
Final Fantasy XIII - Disk 1
Final Fantasy XIII - Disk 1 retrospective
Having just finished Disk 1 this weekend I've got to experience the brunt of this game. (Though I'm sure I'm going to experience a lot more in the second disk onward but for the most part I've got the basics I'm assuming.)
The combat system has been fully flushed out, adding the paradigm system and the stagger system.
Paradigm let's you change the role of your characters, for example: going from having a tank like character (sentinel) to a warrior type (commander) and a variety of mages (medic (white mage), ravager (black mage), saboture & synergist (support mages, pro, shell, debuffs, etc.) This sounds neat in practice, till you find it's tedious and a bit over complicated. You /can/ switch during battles, but it usually causes a lag to happen between your actions and when your new "roles" take place. So if you try to switch in a pinch, you most likely will end up getting a party member killed before the person you assign as a medic manages to get the ability to cast something, or you get to fire off an emergency potion. It leads to a lot of frustration in the long run. Otherwise it's basically the same repetitiveness as before the system was added. You basically just keep hitting "Auto" every turn till something is dead, healed, buffed, or debuffed. There's really not a lot of strategy involved in the combat system so far.
I did briefly mention "stagger" in the first part of my review, but I'll go a little deeper into here. When you're fighting a monster, you deal 100% of your damage (unless the monster has protect or a similar spell/effect up) as the battle goes on if you keep attacking the same monster a small bar will begin to fill up. The more you attack the monster in succession, the higher the % indicator on the bar, and the more damage you'll do. The bar however, will begin to drop if you take no action on the monster. Once the bar reaches the bottom, you have to start over again, but if you manage to attack before it does it resets back to it's highest point and climbs up slightly based on the damage/attack you did. When the bar gets full, you start doing 200% of your damage, (ie: double) and the damage modifier will continue to climb till the bar empties out. Some monsters while staggered have a terrorized effect and can't attack or cast spells, or some have lowered attack and speed to go with the fact you're doing more damage. It does add a bit of extra flair to fights, but most of the time the monsters you stagger don't live long enough for you to get full effect of it, or they've got so much hp that once you manage to fill the bar up and stagger them (outside of boss battles of course) they're already pretty much dead so there's no point.
One of the fun parts though, is when you manage to get the ability to use summons. The summons in this game, work really similar to Final Fantasy X. You hit the action to summon, the eidolon comes out, takes the place of your other party members except for the one who summoned, and basically goes on an auto-attack rampage. Doing anything from melee attacks or casting spells. You do have the option to do special attacks with the eidolon, but once you do (depending on the ability) the summon leaves till you can fill your ability bar again. This sounds really cool but most of the abilities that are series staples for being impressive, really aren't. Take Zantetsuken for instance. In every other Final Fantasy game, it's a 1 hit K.O. move on anything bar a boss. In this game, (at least from my experience) it's a very very lack luster attack that hits all enemies for mediocre damage. I'd of done more damage with the eidolon, by just keeping them out on auto attack.
Another rather challenging (more so annoying) thing, is getting the eidolons to join you in the first place. You have to do mini battles against them where you have to fill a certain objective in the fight to get them to join you. This will lead to lots of rage. Lots of rage in some cases. Trying to get Odin took me three tries because of the way he attacks and bad placement by my characters. (Yes lets all huddle really close together and get hit by area attacks and all of us die...) But once you manage to get them to accept defeat, you're greeted by one of the biggest slaps to the face I think this game does. It takes industry standards of Super Monsters, and turns them into mechanical monstrosities. You get "Shiva" but it's not actually Shiva, it's her sisters? I'm fine with that, but when they go all contoured and turn into a motorcycle I get a little pissed off. And Odin, considered one of the strongest Summons in the series, he turns into a horse. Yes, the great Norse god Odin, turns into a horse, just a regular four legged horse. It really shows you have serious they take the fans and how serious they've taken this game.
I was also introduced to the "level-up" system this disk as well. It's based similarly to the Sphere Grid of Final Fantasy X. Almost a direct copy, I say almost because it, like much of this game, is very.... linear. You have a circular pattern you must go to unlock new abilities for the different "roles" your characters have, and also going around this circle will give you permanent status boosts like extra HP, STR or MAG. But you really have control on this, you have to go the direction they show you and tell you to go. Of course you'll come across some branch points to get a certain ability, or a path with slightly higher values for things. But the path is a dead end in most cases, and you'll have to go the direction they want you to go in order to progress up in ranks and "levels". There's no free roam or character customization. Yeah, all your characters will be different from one another, but if you compare them to someone else (like me to you) our characters will be exactly the same. Where as the system from Final Fantasy X, you could make anyone do anything. I could give Lulu full blown physical attack attributes, and made Tidus a black mage. Yeah they make no sense to do that, but I could if I wanted to, because there was freedom involved. Not here. You're very restricted on what kind of customization you want to do.
I won't comment too much on the content of the story (trying to keep this as spoiler free as possible), but I'll give a general opinion of it, and our "cast". It's very bland. Plain and simple, it's trying to be a mixture of the older Final Fantasy archetype with a spin on it to make it seem fresh. It doesn't accomplish that at all. It does accomplish the feeling that it's repetitive as all hell and boring to boot. I'm having a hard time trying to get any type of connection or feel for the characters. There's too much going on that they're trying to feed at you at once. You've got the central story arc that isn't really explained all that much. Followed by all these other stories trying to be woven together. Tied together with frequent flash back cutscenes and general discussion between characters. You can't really get a feel for anyone, or get a feel for the story because they don't give you the opportunity to really grasp at anything. What they give you comes off as something like garbled fan fiction story telling, the kind that just assumes you know what's going on and you're going to understand everything right away. This would be good for a game that followed just one character, but the game insists on feeding you these 5 characters (soon to be 6 in disk 2 I'm sure). So it doesn't accomplish what I think it set out to do.
The massive influx of inconsistent information delivery, and the erratic behavior that it puts you in a role to have experience with the characters, makes it hard for you to get attached to them. I really have no feelings either way if Lightning is supposed to be our lead, or that Snow is in love with her sister Serah. I know that it's supposed to be information that's supposed to be a general "yeah that's how it is" but I couldn't care less. You could kill off any one of the five "mains" and I don't feel like it'd affect anything drastically. That's how little I care for these characters. I do find some of their interactions humorous though. Some of the scenes with Sazh and Vanille are funny on a certain level. And on the reverse, a lot of the scenes with Hope make you want to slap the little pissant with a 2x4 across his skull and say "Stop being a little bitch". So if that's what the game set out to do, then well mission accomplished.
Final thoughts for the end of Disk 1?
It's not an awful game, but it's not a good one either. A lot of the fights so far have been like I said, repetative, and very boring. The story isn't all that interesting, and there's plenty of "gods this is a pile of shit" moments so far. When you compare this game to the previous 11 single player entries you really get a scope of how far this series has fallen. The focus really changed from "lets make a good game" to "lets make this look as good as possible". That's the feeling I get and stand by when it comes to any final fantasy game after X-2. (That's a guilty pleasure of mine, I know it's a very flawed game, but hey it's still better than 12 and 13 lol.)
What good do I have to say about it? I still really dig the music of the game, the battle theme and zone themes are very catchy and don't get stale even after you sit through you're 12th or 13th fight in a row. I find myself enjoying some parts but over all there's really very little focus needed to do much of anything. I could probably play a game on my DS or PSP at the same time I'm playing this and be fine. It makes me wonder if this game was for a hand held console, if I'd have different feelings about it. It has that vibe to it, you have limited controls, and objectives are pretty straight forward for the most part it seems like it'd be a perfect fit for the PSP or a version made for the Playstation Vita. I just expect more from the company when it comes to a console game.
After word:
I know this seems really long and winded, but this covers pretty much the basics of the game so far. At the end of disk 2, I'll comment more on the story and characters rather than the gameplay unless a new mechanic is added for me to go over. You won't hear another peep about mechanics until I finish the game and get a full review up, I swear *scout's honor*
(In case you didn't gather from my comment about disks, I'm playing the Xbox 360 version of the game, it's spread across 3 disks instead of just one Bluray disk like the Playstation 3 version.)
Having just finished Disk 1 this weekend I've got to experience the brunt of this game. (Though I'm sure I'm going to experience a lot more in the second disk onward but for the most part I've got the basics I'm assuming.)
The combat system has been fully flushed out, adding the paradigm system and the stagger system.
Paradigm let's you change the role of your characters, for example: going from having a tank like character (sentinel) to a warrior type (commander) and a variety of mages (medic (white mage), ravager (black mage), saboture & synergist (support mages, pro, shell, debuffs, etc.) This sounds neat in practice, till you find it's tedious and a bit over complicated. You /can/ switch during battles, but it usually causes a lag to happen between your actions and when your new "roles" take place. So if you try to switch in a pinch, you most likely will end up getting a party member killed before the person you assign as a medic manages to get the ability to cast something, or you get to fire off an emergency potion. It leads to a lot of frustration in the long run. Otherwise it's basically the same repetitiveness as before the system was added. You basically just keep hitting "Auto" every turn till something is dead, healed, buffed, or debuffed. There's really not a lot of strategy involved in the combat system so far.
I did briefly mention "stagger" in the first part of my review, but I'll go a little deeper into here. When you're fighting a monster, you deal 100% of your damage (unless the monster has protect or a similar spell/effect up) as the battle goes on if you keep attacking the same monster a small bar will begin to fill up. The more you attack the monster in succession, the higher the % indicator on the bar, and the more damage you'll do. The bar however, will begin to drop if you take no action on the monster. Once the bar reaches the bottom, you have to start over again, but if you manage to attack before it does it resets back to it's highest point and climbs up slightly based on the damage/attack you did. When the bar gets full, you start doing 200% of your damage, (ie: double) and the damage modifier will continue to climb till the bar empties out. Some monsters while staggered have a terrorized effect and can't attack or cast spells, or some have lowered attack and speed to go with the fact you're doing more damage. It does add a bit of extra flair to fights, but most of the time the monsters you stagger don't live long enough for you to get full effect of it, or they've got so much hp that once you manage to fill the bar up and stagger them (outside of boss battles of course) they're already pretty much dead so there's no point.
One of the fun parts though, is when you manage to get the ability to use summons. The summons in this game, work really similar to Final Fantasy X. You hit the action to summon, the eidolon comes out, takes the place of your other party members except for the one who summoned, and basically goes on an auto-attack rampage. Doing anything from melee attacks or casting spells. You do have the option to do special attacks with the eidolon, but once you do (depending on the ability) the summon leaves till you can fill your ability bar again. This sounds really cool but most of the abilities that are series staples for being impressive, really aren't. Take Zantetsuken for instance. In every other Final Fantasy game, it's a 1 hit K.O. move on anything bar a boss. In this game, (at least from my experience) it's a very very lack luster attack that hits all enemies for mediocre damage. I'd of done more damage with the eidolon, by just keeping them out on auto attack.
Another rather challenging (more so annoying) thing, is getting the eidolons to join you in the first place. You have to do mini battles against them where you have to fill a certain objective in the fight to get them to join you. This will lead to lots of rage. Lots of rage in some cases. Trying to get Odin took me three tries because of the way he attacks and bad placement by my characters. (Yes lets all huddle really close together and get hit by area attacks and all of us die...) But once you manage to get them to accept defeat, you're greeted by one of the biggest slaps to the face I think this game does. It takes industry standards of Super Monsters, and turns them into mechanical monstrosities. You get "Shiva" but it's not actually Shiva, it's her sisters? I'm fine with that, but when they go all contoured and turn into a motorcycle I get a little pissed off. And Odin, considered one of the strongest Summons in the series, he turns into a horse. Yes, the great Norse god Odin, turns into a horse, just a regular four legged horse. It really shows you have serious they take the fans and how serious they've taken this game.
I was also introduced to the "level-up" system this disk as well. It's based similarly to the Sphere Grid of Final Fantasy X. Almost a direct copy, I say almost because it, like much of this game, is very.... linear. You have a circular pattern you must go to unlock new abilities for the different "roles" your characters have, and also going around this circle will give you permanent status boosts like extra HP, STR or MAG. But you really have control on this, you have to go the direction they show you and tell you to go. Of course you'll come across some branch points to get a certain ability, or a path with slightly higher values for things. But the path is a dead end in most cases, and you'll have to go the direction they want you to go in order to progress up in ranks and "levels". There's no free roam or character customization. Yeah, all your characters will be different from one another, but if you compare them to someone else (like me to you) our characters will be exactly the same. Where as the system from Final Fantasy X, you could make anyone do anything. I could give Lulu full blown physical attack attributes, and made Tidus a black mage. Yeah they make no sense to do that, but I could if I wanted to, because there was freedom involved. Not here. You're very restricted on what kind of customization you want to do.
I won't comment too much on the content of the story (trying to keep this as spoiler free as possible), but I'll give a general opinion of it, and our "cast". It's very bland. Plain and simple, it's trying to be a mixture of the older Final Fantasy archetype with a spin on it to make it seem fresh. It doesn't accomplish that at all. It does accomplish the feeling that it's repetitive as all hell and boring to boot. I'm having a hard time trying to get any type of connection or feel for the characters. There's too much going on that they're trying to feed at you at once. You've got the central story arc that isn't really explained all that much. Followed by all these other stories trying to be woven together. Tied together with frequent flash back cutscenes and general discussion between characters. You can't really get a feel for anyone, or get a feel for the story because they don't give you the opportunity to really grasp at anything. What they give you comes off as something like garbled fan fiction story telling, the kind that just assumes you know what's going on and you're going to understand everything right away. This would be good for a game that followed just one character, but the game insists on feeding you these 5 characters (soon to be 6 in disk 2 I'm sure). So it doesn't accomplish what I think it set out to do.
The massive influx of inconsistent information delivery, and the erratic behavior that it puts you in a role to have experience with the characters, makes it hard for you to get attached to them. I really have no feelings either way if Lightning is supposed to be our lead, or that Snow is in love with her sister Serah. I know that it's supposed to be information that's supposed to be a general "yeah that's how it is" but I couldn't care less. You could kill off any one of the five "mains" and I don't feel like it'd affect anything drastically. That's how little I care for these characters. I do find some of their interactions humorous though. Some of the scenes with Sazh and Vanille are funny on a certain level. And on the reverse, a lot of the scenes with Hope make you want to slap the little pissant with a 2x4 across his skull and say "Stop being a little bitch". So if that's what the game set out to do, then well mission accomplished.
Final thoughts for the end of Disk 1?
It's not an awful game, but it's not a good one either. A lot of the fights so far have been like I said, repetative, and very boring. The story isn't all that interesting, and there's plenty of "gods this is a pile of shit" moments so far. When you compare this game to the previous 11 single player entries you really get a scope of how far this series has fallen. The focus really changed from "lets make a good game" to "lets make this look as good as possible". That's the feeling I get and stand by when it comes to any final fantasy game after X-2. (That's a guilty pleasure of mine, I know it's a very flawed game, but hey it's still better than 12 and 13 lol.)
What good do I have to say about it? I still really dig the music of the game, the battle theme and zone themes are very catchy and don't get stale even after you sit through you're 12th or 13th fight in a row. I find myself enjoying some parts but over all there's really very little focus needed to do much of anything. I could probably play a game on my DS or PSP at the same time I'm playing this and be fine. It makes me wonder if this game was for a hand held console, if I'd have different feelings about it. It has that vibe to it, you have limited controls, and objectives are pretty straight forward for the most part it seems like it'd be a perfect fit for the PSP or a version made for the Playstation Vita. I just expect more from the company when it comes to a console game.
After word:
I know this seems really long and winded, but this covers pretty much the basics of the game so far. At the end of disk 2, I'll comment more on the story and characters rather than the gameplay unless a new mechanic is added for me to go over. You won't hear another peep about mechanics until I finish the game and get a full review up, I swear *scout's honor*
(In case you didn't gather from my comment about disks, I'm playing the Xbox 360 version of the game, it's spread across 3 disks instead of just one Bluray disk like the Playstation 3 version.)
Friday, April 12, 2013
Final Fantasy XIII Part 1 (Or Final Fantasy - Crystal Lite)
So I finally broke down and bought this gods awful game, got it and 13-2 for around 10 bucks total from a recent game sale (both brand new copies) so after putting it off for the past month, here's part 1 of my Final Fantasy 13 review.
You start out with a very, interesting opening sequence, that explains nothing at all about who you are, what you're doing or what's going on. The opening segment is really similar in a way to Final Fantasy 7. You start on a train, have an interesting cgi sequence then get booted into a fight that explains the basics of the game through a tutorial system. (You better get used to this tutorial thing, you'll be seeing it a lot for the first part of the game.) Then you fight a giant scorpion like monster, again, much like the first boss fight for Final Fantasy 7.
The problem with the game right as of this point, isn't the long winded tutorial segments, but rather the fact that they've gotten rid of everything in the battle system that the series is known for. You have the classic active time system, but it's rather pointless. Items don't use your timing, you can only control one character period, so far you can't even direct your other character what to do. All you have is an "Auto-Battle" key, and a section to pick abilities. Which at this point is less than useful. The games AI system it uses to direct your character is really spot on for the most part, if you spam auto-battle it'll do exactly everything you need to do bar using items. And that's the problem. There's no semblance of strategy required in the game. In older Final Fantasy titles, you could pick strategically between using items, using abilities and attacking. But not in this one, the game does it all for you. Oh and did I mention you can't run away from fights? They took that mechanic out of the game entirely, instead you have a "Restart" function. This will automatically remove you from battle, no wasted items and put you to just before you encounter the enemy.
Oh and you don't get gil, or experience points for beating monsters anymore, hell the game's random encounter system is all but gone as well. You see your opponent on the field, like in Final Fantasy 12, and they give you a variety of field items so you can flat out avoid confrontation if you wanted to. And to beat all, you get your health restored fully after every fight no matter what. So the only time you'll use potions (by the way, they target the entire party now instead of just one person) is during a fight and you're getting your ass beat too badly to finish the mob off.
It's just amazing how they totally got rid of one of the most interesting parts of the game and moved it to being something that barely resembles the actual combat system of the old games. There's even this "stagger" system in the game, you do enough damage to something to fill up this bar and for however long this bar stays full you do 2-3x more damage. (Making fights even easier)
The exploration in the game is choppy too, you have a grid based map section that you get to explore in, and you have to interact with certain parts to get over obstacles, or reach the next cutscene or "mini-boss" type encounter to progress the story. The exploration system is sort of like 12's and the interaction is like 10-2. You can't control what you jump over, or when, but when you hit certain spots? Better watch out yo, I can jump like Mario.
So far the game likes to shift you between parties like crazy. You start out with playing as Lightning and another character, Sazh. Sazh, is probably the more entertaining out of the two, although he has that Chris Tucker from Rush Hour vibe to him. He's basically the comic relief at this point, I mean, tall black man, who talks like he's from the hood with a Chocobo living in his afro? After you play around with these two for a short period, it puts you in control of Snow, and his gang of "heroes". Get used to two things from this character, the words "SERAH!!!" and "hero" because he says them A LOT. Three or so hours into the game and he's said them both about 14 or 15 times so far. He reminds me of Tidus in that regard. He claims he's the hero, that he's on a quest to save his love when you don't really get the feeling that he's all that important to the story apart from being the love interest. After your brief stint with Mr. Hero you get shot back to Lightning and her token black friend, continue on, then back to Snow and then you get put with two other characters. Hope, who fills the role of emo problem child, the guy takes to his knees more than a two-dollar whore getting her work day done. He reminds me of Shinji Ikari from the Evangellion series, although with no redeeming qualities that Shinji has (granted he doesn't have many but he does have some!). And Vanille, Vanille is your started cheery jailbait character. She's basically Rikku from Final Fantasy 10, just voiced with a person with a British Accent. Yes an accent. Every single person in this game speaks flat standard English, then you get Vanille and she speaks with an accent, that's poor voice director work if you ask me. She's also the character who has the monologues between cutscenes and at the start of the game.
I'm not going to go into story details, as I'll try to keep this as spoiler free till the final part of my review. But so far what can I say about the story over all? It's rather dull. They just throw you into a situation with no back story as to what's going on, who these people are, why they're fighting, who they're fighting or even where they're fighting. In previous games in the series you got a feel for the characters right off the bat, or they were shortly explained as to what they were or who they were. The game doesn't give you any of this information out front (they do explain some things in the "data log" I'll get more into that in part 2 of my review) and what they do give you is just vague representations that don't really explain much. In final Fantasy IV for instance, you learned right away who the characters were, what's been happening in the world and what some of their motives were. Final Fantasy IX is another good example of good detailing. You get introduced to the major players of the story real quickly, and get told some back story, motives and even some history of what's going on in the world they live in. Maybe I'm just used to having something to go on, but I really don't like the approach that Final Fantasy XIII has taken with a lot of things so far.
I'll wrap this part up with some Pros, Cons and a few other things.
The Good: The graphics. The Music.
The game looks absolutely amazing. The character designs aren't too bad, though some are a little mind boggling. The world looks amazing, and the transition from CGI scenes to game play is pretty soft that it's not really easy to tell when it changes.
The music is stunning like always. For not being a game that has a soundtrack by Uematsu, the person working on it is very subtle. He's worked on Final Fantasy X as a co-composer and you can get the feel that the music from this game is really similar in tone to that game.
The Bad: The Battle System.
The battle system in this game is atrocious. Coming from a long time fan of the series, it's just awful. The only thing that makes it remotely similar to any of the older systems is the "Active Time" system. And even then they've changed that enough that it doesn't really resemble what it should be. Instead of taking an action during it, you can do a series of actions based on how much of the bar you have filled. (Attack twice, use a special ability, attack three times, etc.)
This blog site'll be for all the game reviews I decide to do, because of the size and scope of this game I'm doing it in multiple parts as this is my very first play through of it. I'm not sure how many parts it'll be but this is just my first impressions of the game. I call this game "Final Fantasy - Crystal Lite" because of how little it resembles the series.
You start out with a very, interesting opening sequence, that explains nothing at all about who you are, what you're doing or what's going on. The opening segment is really similar in a way to Final Fantasy 7. You start on a train, have an interesting cgi sequence then get booted into a fight that explains the basics of the game through a tutorial system. (You better get used to this tutorial thing, you'll be seeing it a lot for the first part of the game.) Then you fight a giant scorpion like monster, again, much like the first boss fight for Final Fantasy 7.
The problem with the game right as of this point, isn't the long winded tutorial segments, but rather the fact that they've gotten rid of everything in the battle system that the series is known for. You have the classic active time system, but it's rather pointless. Items don't use your timing, you can only control one character period, so far you can't even direct your other character what to do. All you have is an "Auto-Battle" key, and a section to pick abilities. Which at this point is less than useful. The games AI system it uses to direct your character is really spot on for the most part, if you spam auto-battle it'll do exactly everything you need to do bar using items. And that's the problem. There's no semblance of strategy required in the game. In older Final Fantasy titles, you could pick strategically between using items, using abilities and attacking. But not in this one, the game does it all for you. Oh and did I mention you can't run away from fights? They took that mechanic out of the game entirely, instead you have a "Restart" function. This will automatically remove you from battle, no wasted items and put you to just before you encounter the enemy.
Oh and you don't get gil, or experience points for beating monsters anymore, hell the game's random encounter system is all but gone as well. You see your opponent on the field, like in Final Fantasy 12, and they give you a variety of field items so you can flat out avoid confrontation if you wanted to. And to beat all, you get your health restored fully after every fight no matter what. So the only time you'll use potions (by the way, they target the entire party now instead of just one person) is during a fight and you're getting your ass beat too badly to finish the mob off.
It's just amazing how they totally got rid of one of the most interesting parts of the game and moved it to being something that barely resembles the actual combat system of the old games. There's even this "stagger" system in the game, you do enough damage to something to fill up this bar and for however long this bar stays full you do 2-3x more damage. (Making fights even easier)
The exploration in the game is choppy too, you have a grid based map section that you get to explore in, and you have to interact with certain parts to get over obstacles, or reach the next cutscene or "mini-boss" type encounter to progress the story. The exploration system is sort of like 12's and the interaction is like 10-2. You can't control what you jump over, or when, but when you hit certain spots? Better watch out yo, I can jump like Mario.
So far the game likes to shift you between parties like crazy. You start out with playing as Lightning and another character, Sazh. Sazh, is probably the more entertaining out of the two, although he has that Chris Tucker from Rush Hour vibe to him. He's basically the comic relief at this point, I mean, tall black man, who talks like he's from the hood with a Chocobo living in his afro? After you play around with these two for a short period, it puts you in control of Snow, and his gang of "heroes". Get used to two things from this character, the words "SERAH!!!" and "hero" because he says them A LOT. Three or so hours into the game and he's said them both about 14 or 15 times so far. He reminds me of Tidus in that regard. He claims he's the hero, that he's on a quest to save his love when you don't really get the feeling that he's all that important to the story apart from being the love interest. After your brief stint with Mr. Hero you get shot back to Lightning and her token black friend, continue on, then back to Snow and then you get put with two other characters. Hope, who fills the role of emo problem child, the guy takes to his knees more than a two-dollar whore getting her work day done. He reminds me of Shinji Ikari from the Evangellion series, although with no redeeming qualities that Shinji has (granted he doesn't have many but he does have some!). And Vanille, Vanille is your started cheery jailbait character. She's basically Rikku from Final Fantasy 10, just voiced with a person with a British Accent. Yes an accent. Every single person in this game speaks flat standard English, then you get Vanille and she speaks with an accent, that's poor voice director work if you ask me. She's also the character who has the monologues between cutscenes and at the start of the game.
I'm not going to go into story details, as I'll try to keep this as spoiler free till the final part of my review. But so far what can I say about the story over all? It's rather dull. They just throw you into a situation with no back story as to what's going on, who these people are, why they're fighting, who they're fighting or even where they're fighting. In previous games in the series you got a feel for the characters right off the bat, or they were shortly explained as to what they were or who they were. The game doesn't give you any of this information out front (they do explain some things in the "data log" I'll get more into that in part 2 of my review) and what they do give you is just vague representations that don't really explain much. In final Fantasy IV for instance, you learned right away who the characters were, what's been happening in the world and what some of their motives were. Final Fantasy IX is another good example of good detailing. You get introduced to the major players of the story real quickly, and get told some back story, motives and even some history of what's going on in the world they live in. Maybe I'm just used to having something to go on, but I really don't like the approach that Final Fantasy XIII has taken with a lot of things so far.
I'll wrap this part up with some Pros, Cons and a few other things.
The Good: The graphics. The Music.
The game looks absolutely amazing. The character designs aren't too bad, though some are a little mind boggling. The world looks amazing, and the transition from CGI scenes to game play is pretty soft that it's not really easy to tell when it changes.
The music is stunning like always. For not being a game that has a soundtrack by Uematsu, the person working on it is very subtle. He's worked on Final Fantasy X as a co-composer and you can get the feel that the music from this game is really similar in tone to that game.
The Bad: The Battle System.
The battle system in this game is atrocious. Coming from a long time fan of the series, it's just awful. The only thing that makes it remotely similar to any of the older systems is the "Active Time" system. And even then they've changed that enough that it doesn't really resemble what it should be. Instead of taking an action during it, you can do a series of actions based on how much of the bar you have filled. (Attack twice, use a special ability, attack three times, etc.)
This blog site'll be for all the game reviews I decide to do, because of the size and scope of this game I'm doing it in multiple parts as this is my very first play through of it. I'm not sure how many parts it'll be but this is just my first impressions of the game. I call this game "Final Fantasy - Crystal Lite" because of how little it resembles the series.
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