Review: Final fantasy XIII

Now i finaly finished the game, but to be honest i didn't like it at all.

For starters it lineair gameplay, they just set a marker for you to walk to for some cutscene or a boss fight, now mostly i don't really care that it would be lineair but this is off the charts; Normaly if i arrive in a town, i want to explore, explore and explore, now you just follow the path to the marker, no shops to visit, no NPC's to talk to (well sometimes they are there and reduced to nothing usefull to the game), there is nothing to interact with, just follow that orange thing on your minimap; I got the feeling i was walking trough a metro tunnel where the sideways were actualy painted to give me the idea i had freedom of choice. This goes on until you get to chapter 11, now you get in a huge area where you can explore, but not for long because they locked most of the pathways that goes from that huge area to another small area. Even from this chapter 11 i never had a good feeling of freedom, more a feeling like:"hey this is your new area, explore for half an hour, momma will be back by then so you can put back in the cage" and after you did the most you could from missions etc, you decide to go to the next area and guess what, we are back in the tunnels. Now i don't want to break it totaly down (if you are reading this i can hear you say: "Yeah, right") but this is depressing, in comparison with former final fantasy's this is really sad, now you can say: "final fantasy 10 was linear to, you just need to follow the marker", i say: " ok, but at least i could turn back to besaid island at the end of the game or had fun minigames.".

Now for the worst part, the story, i have a lot to say about that. For starters, WHAT WERE THEY THINKING, i mean the story they have come up with is waaaaaay below their usual lvl, i feel like they have listend to a 5 year old sputtering words while drawing something. The story is a mess, there were things that were so stupid, i was thinking: " this game has gone to hell", like i first stated in my review part 1 (or 2 whatever) your characters are retarded, snow Villiers in particular, he runs around yelling :" It was a sign of serah" every time something minor happends or when they got some luck and escaped death. Hope was the next in line, while losing his mother and becoming to hate snow for it, he is perfectly able to fight alongside him with not any troubles, that is really unrealistic in rpg games, even in final fantasy 9 some times the story had effect on your battles, like Dagger who lost her voice of the shock and is so unable to cast in combat, making her totaly useless, But hope has no troubles with that, If i was him i would have stopped healing snow and just run off. Lightning was then something strange, i have come to like her attitude, but the way she thinks was something that i didn't like, she goes from realistic to suicide attacker to someone who knows she is wrong but fails to do something about it. Sazh was the person who i liked the most, he is normal, he has funny comments, his actions are in the best way said something i expect from a final fantasy game. fang was then again a annoying character, even though she had bahamut as summon , i never found a good reason to put her into my team, or even listen to her rambling (i did listen for the story's sake). At last Vanille was the second closesd character that came to the final fantasy mindset, in someway she reminded me from vivi in final fantasy 9, lost, the feeling you're alone and many other things. The fact that the story isn't that great almost makes this game worthless, a final fantasy game is soley based on its great story. When i finaly reached the last boss (there are 3 of them) i had more trouble with the first of them, then i got with the last, they almost feel like routine bosses, "oh it has been 20 minutes, time for another boss" , most bosses doesn't really have anything special that really makes them bosses, they have high hp, much dmg, and some moves. So in short, this game story is really no worth the trouble of playing.

Next on the list is the endgame stuff you can gather, in short: almost nothing. Execpt for some material, you don't really get anything extra, some boss cource that are practicly ciet'h missions, but nothing that is worth to get, only the chocobo's are worth to find and unlocking the teleport stones, other than that there isn't much. Well you can upgrade your weapons, but it takes a lot of items just to get one weapon upgraded, so why bother to do all 8 of them for every character and don't forget the armlets etc, i beated the game with a star lvl helter skelter (or something like that) for lightning , that did the trick.

Now for its positive point, the graphics. Anywhere you look, you see details, enemy's well designed, the areas are something that i said: "oh my god" i can't denie it, it's so beautifull, but there is a downside, graphics don't matter to me in a game, i'm perfectly able to play a ps1 game graphics, as long the story is worth the trouble. What also come to my attention was the repeated use of enemy skins, how many times have i beated those flan creatures, so there weren't many different enemy types. next to that there is nothing bad to mention.

We move on to the next part. The FFX Sphere looking grid thingie. Here you can upgrade your character in a chosen role by spending CP earned in battles. Now i don't believe this is a bad system, but the roles are open to every one, making the person with the lowest hp the most useless one (and yeah that's Hope). because none of your allies are really unique, you only need a combination of characters, that have a decent hp and have usefull roles. All the roles are usefull, so i decided to implement Lightning into my party as my favorite commander with a sucky summon, followed by vannile who was the best healer in the group and as last there was Sazh, he is funny he is very usefull, he has the buffs and the magic. The grid doesn't give you much choice of where to go and what to learn, unlike FFX you can't go off that path and start learning another characters grid, here you need to follow it to the end.

The battle system, I agree that it works and it is ballanced, but it also makes the rpg element fade away, in other games where it was turn based, you could choose what you were gonna do and so control the battle, now you can hope for the best that your npc heals you instead of the other one. the paradigm system lets you control them to some extend, but not much, i have spend most of my time staring at my atb bar, my hp, and to my enemy life bar, i have absolutly no clue what is going on, on the battle field, i don't care, i'm just smashing the X button so auto combat would be selected, Yathzee from escapist does a good job explaining it watch it here. I don't want to select my actions into that bar, auto battle does it for me and hey i played it out with it, stacking them takes time, and when i have haste i'm wasting more time stacking then i would be smashing that auto button, so on that point the battle system is a serious letdown.

Now the music, for many years squaresoft and square enix were known for their high quality music, story and graphics, today it nearly grinded almost everything into dust. The music is not bad, but not outstanding either, when i was in chapter 13, the last steps from the boss, i heard a sound that made me think of final fanatsy 9 memoria, i wouldn't believe it, they don't even have the orginality to create new music, even in the battle, no victory music or nothing that even resembles that.


There isn't anything else for me to Fanrage on, i have took the trouble to summon up the wikipedia page and there was something that totaly shocked me rightout. Most of game reviewing magazines, rated this game actualy as a good game, at that moment i was thinking that square - enix must have bribed them all, i mean i agree that this was an higly anticipated game, but that doesn't mean you need to shove it bad points under the carpet. Or maybe it is because people only watch at the graphics, the better the graphics the better the game, bullshit, thats not true and will never will be, i have friends who say, that the game is good because "look at thoise graphics man, awsome" that doesn't imply that the game is fun.
Now if i would rate this game, it would be a 5/10, the bad story takes most of the points away. Also this game has no moogles ...

Now if i offended some people, or you want to argue, go ahead make me see why i was wrong. I will answer to people who give smart arguments, dumb arguments are left alone for other people to read and think: what the...

Hints and Tips: Final Fantasy XIII

A little what to do list when you are starting to play final fantasy XIII
This wil contain spoilers about the game, so if you want to be suprised (in a good and a bad way) stop reading here.

The first thing you need to know is that the game really starts when you are able to cast magic and that will be about 3 hours from the intro cutscene. In that timeframe the only thing you can do is attack and blitz (aoe dmg melee attack) your enemies will not drop anything usefull if they are humans, only some potions and phoenix down (those are worth to get but rarly drops) if you encounter non human enemies they will drop usefull things, the game will advise that you can sell these items, DON'T SELL THEM, they become very usefull in the game later on.

Second is that until you know how to cast magic you wont gain any exp and so you don't have any use on battles, if it is your first time in final fantasy 13, i suggest you fight them all, if not try to avoid the human enemies only battles as much as possible, they only will slow you down anyway.

If you get into a new area because of a cutscene, try to search the area where you came from in the cutscence, most of the time some items spheres will be there.

when you can cast magic, don't be afraid to encounter every damn enemy you come across, the more exp you can get the better, plus if you succesfully research every enemy (kill them often or use libra twice on them) you come a across you can get a trophy called loremaster, its 100 different kinds of monsters, in about chapter 9 or 10 you should reach this and you will get a gold trophy (its utterly easy for a gold trophy, i can ony imagne that they did this on purpose to increase the ff13 trophy values)

read your enemies info, this can be extremly usefull, its good to know were that goddamn boss his weaknesses lies, to make things extremely easy they even spell out what the enemies are able of and what you can use to defeat them.

Eidolons apears before your characters at a point in the story and most people have troubles defeating them, there are different ways to sumbit them to your will. The first way is to do what stands in their info when you cast libra twice, Ther will be something like yields to those who heals his allies, meaning you will fill the gesthal bar faster when you asume the roll of medic and start healing your allies. Now from personal encounters i know that being medic sucks, i will place a eidolon guide later on or you can look at achievement hunter on Youtube or on the site Rooster teeht. Now the second way is to hit them with their elemental, not all eidolons have elements, but the most of them have some elements that fill the gesthal bar faster than normal attacks. for the first eidolons i suggest you use the element attacks, so be sure that snow and lightning know some magic attacks.

Now the use of items, as i said before don't sell the items you get from battles or find in spheres, the only thing you can sell to my opinion are the spare armlets and stuff, you can dismantle them, bu that is a waste of money, you can get a stupid item from it and when you sell the armlet you can buy almost 5 of the items you can get out of it. Now there is a diifrence between electrical items and natural items, electrical are things like integrated circuit and natural are Chipped fangs or things like that. You can upgrade your gear in this game, and every lvl needs an good amount of exp, you can increase the exp with the electrical items and so lvl up easy, the natural items doesnt give much exp but when you add enough items to it you can get multiplier bonusses, i have only got to 3 times multiplier but i dont know if that is the limit. If you have an electrical item that gives a lot of exp and you got lots of that item, be sure to get a 3 times multiplier first, otherwise it will be a waste. As example you have an item that gives 800 exp and you have 5 of them, that would give 4000 exp but when you have a multiply by 3 bonus, that would be 12000 exp, i would know what i should choose.

Try to think tactical, most of your allies will have usefull jobs or paradigms. Out of all the final fantasy games, this would be the first where i use the buff spells and the debuff spells, you also need them because some enemies wil be that powerfull you can't go without it.

Eidolons are useless, i think they are only flashy things that do minimal dmg. I never used any eidolon on a boss, only onn some enemies that are sligtly superior than me. This could also be becaus i only summond odin and the shiva(s) and they didn't do much dmg. I have to admit that they are cool though.

dont use you deceptisol, fortisol, etc immidiatly, they can make battles easyer, but are hard to get, so save them for battles you have difficulties to get past them.

phoenix downs are your friend, they aren't usefull at the start, but later on your allies will die frequently because they hev a low hp max and/or make retarded decisions (like healing an ally who have 60% when they are on 30%).

Thats about it for now, i will try to find some good tricks and/or tips later on.

Review: Final fantasy XIII part1-2

Lets continue with the review. At this moment i'm in chapter 11 and i can clearly feel that my enemies surpass my current strenght, so i'm busy grinding myself some serious amount of crystanium (used to upgrade your charachter)

Graphics.

When i put the disc in my playstation 3 for the first time with great anticipation , i was utterly stunned by 2 things.
First the graphics were of the charts for me, normaly i wont rate a game on his graphics but this time it was different, it was like a part of the game and story.
Second was that my playstation 3 was lagging at the intro cutscene. seeing that my playstation is a 1st generation of its kind (20Gb) it was something to think about: Just how hard is the strain of the game on my playstation?
In conclusion the graphics are so good you will need some sunglasses :p.

Character development (Background story, reactions, personality, etc..)

In the first 6 houres i had already made a choise of who i liked in my team and who were just some tagg alongs. the first one who jumped on the black list was snow villiers, seeing him as a total retard i was eager to drop him out of the team (not that i had a choice to drop him at that point in game) His background was well defined but his reactions in the story and his conclusions made me think that he was better off death. Next was lightning who i liked and disliked, she has a good amount of badass personalit, but sometimes that goes a little of the charts, if you ignore that then she is a good char for story and battle.
Vanille had a little annoying voice, but i got used to that. The little 'dark secrets ' made her at least interesting. Hope estheim was my favorite at that time, he is a kid so he don't need a lot of background story.
Sazh was the most normal person of the team, that is if you ignore the chocobo chick living in his hair. Fang who later joins the team looked like a decent person to me.
come to think of it, most background story is explained in the 13 days before the game began, and your story line gets interrupted sometimes for a backflash.


Thats it for the part 1 review, when i finnish the game i wil review everything in whole. I will also post some little tips about the game, what you can do and what is best for certain enemies and eidolons.

Review: Final fantasy XIII part1

At this moment i'm busy fighting my way troughout cocoon and the world pulse, so i haven't finished yet; So here is my impression so far. This can contain a little spoiler on battles, i never post spoilers about the story.

The battle system.

This new system is annoying and interesting at first, i'm a old school final fantasy fan (note, i have played ff6 to ff10, ff12 was the worst in history, never finished that one due to boring battle system)and so i'm used to turn based battles. this new system was a bit hard to start with because it has a point based system on how fast you finish the battle.
The part that annoyed me first is that i have almost no control of my allies and that i am at the AI's mercy when i'm in a big pinch. After the 6 first houres i was finaly able to effectively kill my enemy in a good time frame. The Paradigms makes you able to control the allies AI in a rough way by switching the roles(roles are like jobs: magic users are ravangers, fighters = commanders, medic = healer), setting the paradigms makes you able to create a very tactical team, for instance i found the commander (leader, means you) medic ravager a very good combo.
In this system it will be wise to know how you can stagger the enemy, stagger increases the dmg you deal by % value, you can also interrupt enemy moves (staggerd bosses moves will not be so easily intrerrupted). Getting the enemy to stagger is very easy, you need to attack him, only melee attacks will hardly fill the stagger bar but it will drop slowly, you need magic, but with magic that bar will easily drop back to 100%, so you need to find a good team so it will stay up.

Source
Overall the battle system is something you need to get used to, after you succeeded in that, most battles will become easy to finish unless the enemy is to strong.


Story

So the story is divided in chapters, altough i don't see the use in that
My first impression of the story was "a total mess", most things were hard to follow because you don't have the knowledge. As i played longer the story wouldn't increase much in intrest, it didn't feel final fantasy to me at al. But then i reached a certain chapter, it slowy turned around and i got a good feeling of it.

That's it for now, i will point out other points in the upcomming blogs.