Gaming Retro FF13: “Might Even Have Been Worth Playing Like This!”

[tom_mai78101]

The tortured hopes of Final Fantasy fans have been dashed yet again, this time by a rather well-received SNES-styled “retro-spective” recap of the Final Fantasy XIII story released to help players make sense of the storyline of Lightning Returns.

The trailer:

It seems to have secured a somewhat more positive reaction than the original, at least:

“What the hell…”

“Shame it is just a PV recap.”

“I want it.”

“The 8-bit version looks more fun than the original.”

“It looks godly, if you just look at this!”

“I would actually have pre-ordered this…”

“Die Square Enix, die.”

Source. (Sankaku Complex, NSFW, with FF13 pictures!!)

 

[KMilz]

That actually does look like a fuckin' sweet SNES RPG. I would've preferred this to the real thing.

It seems to have secured a somewhat more positive reaction than the original, at least

Oh ho ho, high praise, indeed. How could anything secure a more positive reaction than Final Fantasy XIII?

 

[Accname]

I played 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 (9 and 10 only a little because I dont own these games).
When I saw 12 I knew that final fantasy was dead and didnt even bother to look at 13.
If a studio makes a game as incredibly bad as 12 was, without any redeeming qualities, then its game over.

 

[KMilz]

Twelve was far, far better than thirteen. At least you could go where you wanted to most of the time in twelve. Thirteen was linear the whole way through - point A to point B, boring as fuck. A good combat system was that game's only redeeming quality.

 

[Accname]

But 12 had nothing. The skill system was horrible, the combat system was horribler and the drop and item system was horriblest.

 

[KMilz]

It had the open-ended world and side-quests and story arcs that are typical of FF games, so at least it still felt like Final Fantasy. Only real difference in the combat system from previous games is that it goes by faster and different enemies can engage you while you're already battling something else. Kinda a good thing, really, 'cuz grinding in the earlier ones could get really tedious just going from one screen to the next to the next. Skill system was cool for the first bit of the game until you realize that everyone has the same skill board to learn from, so I won't argue with you too much there except that most FF games since 7 have followed that same pattern (maybe excluding 9, but I don't remember it well enough). Drop system... I dunno, what's been so special about any of them? I feel like they're all pretty typical and basically the same thing.

FF13 just didn't feel like a Final Fantasy game. FF12 didn't much, but it did more than FF13 did.

 

[Accname]

Dont agree with you there.

1) The world wasnt 'that' open. Yes, you were able to travel to places you have been before, but there wasnt too much to do there and traveling took so fucking long you didnt really want to do it in the first place.
It was not like any NPC's would tell you something interesting, and since the combat system was so boring there wasnt any fun in exploring either.

2) The battle system was really really bad. The characters fought BY THEMSELFS. All you had to do was occasionally press the D-Pad to move forward. It was just all kinds of noises and flashy effects and then the game went on. There was NO tactic, there was NO strategy, there was NO challenge and there was NO fun at all.

3) Grinding in the earlier games was not necessary at all. In FF8 the game became MORE difficult the more you leveled your characters. This was an adaptive difficulty that you could increase by leveling. If you played through the game on level 1 (which was totally possible) the game was super easy.
In FF7 the final boss was so easy that you could almost one-shot him. Leveling was never necessary to win that game. Although FF7 wasnt that easy it was very well doable if you knew the right tactics and the weaknesses of the enemies. And you had so many healing items that you should never really die to normal enemies in that game.

4) The skill system was absolutely terrible. There was not a single skill that was actually useful or good. They were either horribly underpowered, or horribly overpowered, or just PURE RANDOM.
Heres some examples:
1000 needles: Always deals 1000 damage to the enemy, ignoring armor, can never miss, can hit any enemy in the game. Costs NO MANA.
For the first half of the game, you never use anything else, because why?

Then the skill with 50% chance to DRAIN ALL YOUR MANA AT ONCE and 50% chance to COMPLETELY HEAL ALL YOUR MANA. Bullshit much?

And most of the other skills were just useless. They were in fact so useless that I didnt even use them once and cant even remember what they did.

By the way, in FF9 and FF8 not everybody could learn everything. In FF8 it was not the player characters that got skill points and learned stuff, it was the guardian forces, and they all had (kinda) different sets of skills.

5) The drops in this game were totally random. That were the most horrible drops ever.
I read the walkthrough for this game and I couldnt believe what I was seeing:

50% chance of a chest appearing on the map, when it was appearing 80% chance to NOT get any item and 20% chance to get a super duper powerful item.
What the FUCK is this???? Are you fucking kidding me? I am supposed to save the game each time I enter a dungeon and load over and over again until I find the loot I want???

 

[KMilz]

That's actually a really good argument. You win. FF13 still sucked ass, though. Really hard.