I don't know if anyone else picked this up, but I snagged a collectors edition (because I'm one of those weird people who actually enjoyed the original 13). So, anyway, I figured I would share my thoughts: It's not particularly stellar writing. Serah in particular is a genius. She just knows things, and people just accept that she does. Serah: "They're hacking the network. Oh, and they're doing it from the future." Noel: "lolok! 8D" With that being said, the time travel is really fun. It's interesting to meet characters, change history, and then go back to see that everything else is different (from characters actually knowing who you are to the landscape having been drastically altered). Another really neat aspect is that you can reset events. What this means is that any part of the game you have completed, you can literally turn back the clock and replay those moments of the game again (without losing any character progress). This is really cool when there was a particularly powerful enemy you had to avoid at first because it outclassed you so, only to replay the event and kick its ass and see how differently events play out because you took a different path. Also, taming monsters is really neat. Monsters are your third party member. The only playable characters are Serah, Noel, and which ever monster you've added to your Battle Team. Each monster has its own role (one of the six from FFXIII) and can level up like a character would. You can infuse monsters with others to compound their abilities, and teach monsters skills they wouldn't normally learn on their own. Just about every area you visit has NPC's that can be talked too. There are also no save points; the game auto-saves and you can manually save from the pause menu. As for shopping, Chocolina, a mysterious time traveling women dressed as a Chocobo, is following you around the game. She's your shop. As for breaks in the story, you have Serendipity, an area similar to the Golden Saucer in FFVII. You can even take Chocobo's you've captured in the wild and race them! There are occasionally guests that fight with you (Snow follows you around a particular area in the game), but they're few and far between. TL;DR: It won't win any awards for storytelling (or acting), but the areas are huge, there are multiple paths through events, and there are plenty of quests to do. And if you can, get it on the PS3. I'm playing it on the 360 (I don't own a PS3) and it does tend to have problems with frame rate, especially when there is a lot happening on screen. It's not terrible, and it hasn't ruined my experience any, but some people might find it quite irritating.
Sounds like an interesting game. I plan to get it, but I am wanting to wait till its around $20. Single player games tend to drop somewhat quickly in price so I figure by the time it comes around to having time for it the price will be much lower anyway
Well I wasn't a big fan of the Dress Sphere or the story of the game. Also the characters were just really annoying. Overall the game was just really girly story and character wise. I've played FF XIII a bit, and it was pretty good. When I saw FF XIII-2 I was like Uh oh and hoped they didn't do what they did with FF X-2.
No, girly is not an adjective I would use to describe the story. As for the characters... well... you'll have to do some research, because that's so heavily opinion based. (I adored FFX-2 btw <3)
It is not. They did decide to use adornments for your monsters (you can put.. bows, hats, other monsters on them) but thankfully it does not impact gameplay. Some of them are kinda funny though. Also they're releasing the Serah Bikini DLC in a few days iirc. (also got the CE, woo! )
Noel is eventually getting an Assassin's Creed inspired robe. Also, elite monster bosses will be released via DLC. They'll also be adding more paradox endings.
I'm another that actually liked XIII. Busy playing XIII-2 it now on the PS3. <3 the graphics. About 5 hours in and I have to agree, the time travel just adds something to the game. Its kinda cool to jump around and do things in a different order or take time to do side quests instead of ploughing straight through the main part of the story. Its going to drag me away from Aion and BF3 for a bit thats for sure ^_^
Hope in FFXIII literally killed my desire to play a Square Enix game again, true story. How far such a franchise has fallen.
Oh ya it's totally an opinion. Not pretending its ruined for everybody. edit: I want FF 6 remade with better sprites and no game changes whatsoever
Meh I played Final Fantasy games specifically because I like the old turn based combat they had for a change of pace everything after ten has be a huge disappointment for me. Need another action barley RPG franchise like we need another hole in the head.
Ten was the odd one out, though. The Active Time Battle system was in 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, and now 13. 11 and 14 don't really count since they're MMO's. 13 and 13-2 are still turned based.
I miss the old-school Final Fantasy games. The last one I truly enjoyed was Final Fantasy X. Before that, Final Fantasy VIII. I own Final Fantasy XIII for PS3, but for some reason I can't seem to stay attracted to it. It's an absolutely gorgeous game, and I see why they did the linear gameplay, and it all works together pretty well, but I just can't stick with it for whatever reason.
I still play 6, 8, 4 , 3 and 2 on my cell phone on a weekly basis. Also the original FFT and xenogears.
I bought Xenogears on the PSN. I still need to dedicate some time to sit down and play that. That was always a great game. Xenosaga (PS2) was also very good. I need to get those again too, dammit.
I saw what people liked about Xenosaga but it was never really for me. Exploring grey spaceship after spaceship got old. That was more of a personal taste choice though. I love Xenogears with a passion, one of the best MMOs made. Crazy good story. edit: The setting of Xenosaga was pretty rad though, I need to force myself to play through those for the story.