FinalFantasyXIII_Rodriguez

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Transcript

1. My Love-Hate Relationship with Final Fantasy XIII and XIII-2 It's no mystery by now that I love RPG's, so it was obvious that when the original Final Fantasy XIII came out I ran to the store and bought the game... And I must say I was really disappointed. While it wasn’t the worst Final Fantasy I’ve ever played (I leave that space to Final Fantasy VIII) it certainly wasn’t the best. With its 20 hour tutorial, linear world and lack of variety the game didn’t have much going for it. Final Fantasy XIII Gameplay While the game failed in exploration it shined when it came to actual gameplay. Battles take place once you touch an enemy, a seamless transition is triggered and you’re shown the game’s battle mechanics.
2. People have whined about the Auto-Battle Command but I do not see anything wrong with it. The game’s strategy doesn’t rely on you putting individual commands for each character; it relies on the party’s roles and combination of roles (paradigms). The game gave each character six roles: Commando: A knight type role where the character keeps the stagger bar stabilized. Ravager: A mage type role where the character uses elemental attacks to stagger the enemy. Sentinel: a paladin-like role where the character focuses enemy attack onto his/her self while defending, evading, regenerating his/her health, and/or counter attacking. Synergist: Buffs up allies. Saboteur: Weakens enemies and inflicts damage through poison or wound (the latter of which is only accessible in Final Fantasy XIII-2). Medic: As the name suggests this character is in charge of all healing. The game focuses on using the right roles for the right time. For example: An enemy is about to unleash a devastating attack? Switch your paradigm to Tortoise which consists of three sentinels. An enemy weakened your party? Switch to Recuperation which consists of two synergists and a medic. Is an enemy staggered? Switch to Cerberus which consists of three Commandos (Commandos have a bonus when it comes to making damage.) Combat was fast, fun, and unlike other Final Fantasy games, the game relied heavily on strategy not level grinding. Story I have to admit I liked the story. Sure it was a bit complicated at times but it still manages to engage the player and keep them playing from beginning to end. In the game you take the role of Lightning an ex-soldier looking for her sister Serah who has been turned into a L’cie (a slave to god-like beings) and kidnapped by the Fal’cie (the before mentioned god-like beings) she later is accompanied by Sazh (whom I would argue is the voice of reason for this game) a pilot who had his son taken away from him for being a Sanctum L’cie. They later meet up with Hope, (a cowardly kid who lost his mother) Vanille, (your stereotypical sex-appeal with a dark past) and Snow (Leader of a rebel group called NORA, and Serah’s Fiancé.) They all decide to kill the Fal’cie whom in turn, makes them it’s L’cie and their fate is laid before them. Now that I’ve talked (to great detail) about the few good aspects of the game let me talk about the bad aspect about it.
3. The Linearity! There was only one way to go in this game and that was forward. Forget about going left or right, there’s no point in going back either. I agree with people who have said that the game’s world felt like an endless hallway. Coupled with the constant cut scenes, and seemingly never ending tutorial windows. It makes for a slow and boring beginning. It wasn’t until 20 hours in that the game finally stops holding your hand and lets you explore a massive over world. But the sad thing is that it is already too late. The game opens up near the end of the game making it pointless, and to make things all the better the land is absolutely barren (besides your typical monsters). Yes, there are the Cie’th Stones, but they only give you monster hunting missions. Besides its major flaw the game received good reviews and some praise. Most fans criticized it and some even call it the worst Final Fantasy ever. But like I said even though I was disappointed at the game for its linearity and lack of variety I still don’t consider it the worst game in the series. Of course the outcry of fans eventually reached Square Enix where they decided to make a new game, and for the second time in Final Fantasy history, they made it a sequel to the original numbered installment, in an attempt to address all the problems with the original. Final Fantasy XIII-2 While Final Fantasy XIII-2 did fix most of the problems of the original it added more problems into the mix. Story While the first game’s story wasn’t anything special it was still rather interesting and kept you hooked from beginning to end. But not so in this game, the game gives you more freedom to do what you want and the story suffers because of it. The quality drops from “Okay” to “Meh”. In Final Fantasy XIII-2 you take the role of Serah (Lightning’s sister from the previous game) who claims that she is sees Lightning in her dreams, who tells her to set out and save the world. She is awoken in the middle of the night by the sound of gunfire; she goes out to investigate and finds that everyone is gone and that the land is barren. She then snaps back to reality where she sees everybody fighting against strange creatures that seemed to come from nowhere. She then meets Noel Kreiss who tells her
4. that Lightning is alive and that she is trapped in Valhalla. Serah and Noel then set out to look for Lightning. Difficulty Everybody will agree that this game is way too easy. If you’re just planning on going through the story, you won’t find a need to use strategy to beat most enemies. In fact you can beat almost anything with the “Relentless Assault” Paradigm. (Commando, Ravager, Ravager). It’s a shame that the game is so easy that it makes most of the combat dull. Gameplay Gameplay has barely changed from the original. The Active Time Bar (ATB) fills up continuously as you queue up attacks or abilities. It still consists of the same six roles from XIII (though some roles have new abilities and others are missing some abilities from the original). One of the few new things are the “Wound Points” an enemy can now cause permanent wounds that causes your Max HP to go down, they will be recovered once the battle is over or if you have a wound potion. There is also the fact that you can use monsters as your 3rd party member. Yes this game only consists of two human party members and three other monsters in your paradigm pack (you can add humans to your team but you need to buy the DLC.) While it does add more depth to the combat the fact remains that the game is so easy that there is no need to capture different monsters for different strategies. But it’s not all bad! Like I said before the game gives you freedom to proceed through the story in whichever way you want. There is a lot to explore there are a lot of goodies to find and I guarantee that there is a lot of fun to be had once you’re done with the story.
5. After you beat the game they give you the “Paradox Scope” which allows you to find paradox endings and makes some of the boss battles more challenging. Lastly I am going to talk about the dreaded DLC. That’s right I mentioned this in my previous post and I am going to mention them here. For all that the game has going for it, you always feel like there is something missing. The game just flat- out feels unfinished at times and that is where the DLC comes into play. There are three DLC stories (all of which help in making you understand the main story) which I feel should have been in the disc to begin with. In the main story you find a coliseum that is completely empty, when you go back to the coliseum a voice can be heard that says that you will be able to fight against others but you have to wait, and by wait they meant buy the DLC. That is ridiculous! It was obvious that the game wasn’t finished, but instead of keeping the game and adding all of the remaining functions they decided to release it as DLC, fantastic. While Final Fantasy XIII didn’t have much going for it, XIII-2 did. All that I see when I play this game is lost potential. This is a Final Fantasy game, that actually feels and plays like a Final Fantasy game. It is enough to make me want to wish for another Final Fantasy that used the same combat and the overall mechanics used in XIII-2. But unfortunately Square Enix has turned the page, and has given way for Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy XV. I wish that I could talk about Lightning Returns but unfortunately I’ve yet to play the full game. I did play the demo, and what I can say is that the gameplay is quite different from the other installments, you
6. only play as Lightning as a one-character team. Whenever your ATB bar runs out you can switch between schemata (Costumes) which act as roles or classes (each schemata has its own ATB bar.) As for Final Fantasy XV, I can only hope that they have learned from their previous mistakes and deliver us an incredible new installment. That is all! Thank you for your time!