Let me start by saying, I don't understand a lot of the flak this game gets. It's no more linear than my favorite game of all time (Final Fantasy X), the story was pretty good and I don't get why people say it's confusing, and the characters were pretty awesome. That being said... I hated this game >_> but not because it was bad necessarily.
If I had to describe my playthrough of this game in one word, that word would be: Struggle. I struggled at the boss that looks like Bulbasaur, I struggled at Sazh's Eidolon, I struggled at Barthandalus, all the way to Orphan (though his second form was a cake walk, tbqh) his first form took me like a week to beat though. Some of the bosses seemed really ridiculously hard to me, having instant death attacks and being able to inflict every status ailment under the sun on every party member at once, but maybe I just suck at this game, since I've heard through the grapevine that it's been beaten with no Crystarium (crazy)
Anyway, if we ignore the fact that I struggled more than Peja Stojakovic in the 2011 NBA Finals, this game is actually pretty cool. I really liked all the characters, which is more than I can say about most Final Fantasies. Oh, and for the record:
Snow > Lightning > Hope > Sazh > Vanille > Fang
That's not to say I don't like Fang, because I really think she's kinda cool. Snow makes a strong case for my 2nd favorite Final Fantasy Character, and Lightning is probably Top 5. Sazh is awesome, but he's kind of a negative nancy, whereas Hope straps the huevos on and becomes a man, so I gave him the nod here.
tl;dr I think this game gets a lot of unwarranted criticism, but I struggled and it seemed really absurdly hard but I probably just suck, and Snow is awesome.
-- MZero the extreme yes i am Yugi i have spike hair and i play card games with ugly monsters on them its time to Duel-ertyu
The story was actually absolutely terribly executed and you've got Sazh and Fang much too low, but I'm glad you arrived at a similar overall conclusion as I did!
Actually, ironically I wouldn't go so far as to say I hated the game. I was just far less than thrilled with it. I really didn't like the narrative execution though and yes sir the game is more linear than FFX.
Not to say that the game isn't hard, it's easily the hardest in the series by a fair margin... but it shouldn't have been so hard that it lowered your opinion of it. You have to read the cues and adjust instantly, I mean sometimes you literally do not have a second to spare when shifting paradigms, but none of it was ridiculously hard.
Glad to see you enjoyed it more than most, at least,
I dunno thundersheep, I wouldn't say it's the hardest in the series by a fair margin. I didn't find it any more difficult than the first five FF installments.
One thing I am pleased to say is that it was definitely more challenging than what we've been accustomed to with this series though, yeah.
I don't know... the first 5 weren't really that hard unless we're counting FF4 DS. I mean I found them hard in the sense that most boss battles made you feel like you were right on the edge of dying on every turn, but I can count the times that I actually died on one hand for each game in the series.. with 13 I died countless times.
From: StealThisSheen | #007 Why is it that whenever somebody makes a topic like this, somebody has to make sure they post "No, you're wrong. It sucked."
I was just typin' my opinion man. I'm far from as assertive with my posting vernacular on Board 8 as you're insinuating!
assertive vernacular insinuating
Man, what a f***ed up sentence. Anyway...
From: thundersheep | #006 I don't know... the first 5 weren't really that hard unless we're counting FF4 DS. I mean I found them hard in the sense that most boss battles made you feel like you were right on the edge of dying on every turn, but I can count the times that I actually died on one hand for each game in the series.. with 13 I died countless times.
I guess that's fair. I only died a couple of times to Hecetoncheir as far as I recall though. Really, I found the Eidolon battles rather unbalanced compared with the rest of the game's bosses... hmm, maybe the Barthandalus fights were OK too, actually.
I liked all of the characters though. Good game. And yeah, it takes some getting used to when it comes to enemy strategies. If you were having that many problems though, it seems like you might not have been staggering as much as you should, or using Synergist and Saboteur as much as you should have. I dunno.
From: MZero11 | #012 I also don't get why people think being linear is so terrible.
It isn't. Otherwise, Mario games wouldn't be as insanely popular as they are!
Also Jeff I've played FFX many times and I can't quite see how it's any less linear than 13.
Are you being serious here?
Every single location in FF13 until the very last part is a straight path with no diversions, and you can never return to previous areas.
That's completely incomparable to FF10, where you can turn around at any time and walk all the way back to Besaid, usually finding a ton of new sidequests and stuff along the way.
From: Takfloyd_mkII__ | #017 where you can turn around at any time and walk all the way back to Besaid
Has anybody actually wasted their time doing this? I can't see any reason to bother with this, especially considering you're going to have to deal with random encounters the whole way.
--
"I couldn't stand a day without a past or future. I need to live each moment to keep fighting here and now."
From: Takfloyd_mkII__ | #017 Also Jeff I've played FFX many times and I can't quite see how it's any less linear than 13.
Are you being serious here?
Every single location in FF13 until the very last part is a straight path with no diversions, and you can never return to previous areas.
That's completely incomparable to FF10, where you can turn around at any time and walk all the way back to Besaid, usually finding a ton of new sidequests and stuff along the way.
Yay I can go backwards, that's fun. Either way, there's a LINE and you can go either way. Big deal.
Why on Earth would you go back to Besaid before you get the Airship?
-- MZero the extreme yes i am Yugi i have spike hair and i play card games with ugly monsters on them its time to Duel-ertyu