I have only played FFXIII once during a mad rush to experience as many final fantasies as possible. I made it to the Shiva fight and got distracted. It’s beautiful.
The series in general is such a time capsule of the always changing perception of what a big, ideal modern video game is. Like, final fantasy’s own identity was subsumed pretty heavily at this point by the desire to be the ultimate game.
I think it’s the most interesting post-FFX game in the series. I’m excited to give it another shot!
Thank you for creating this thread. Because of this I have learned that my FAT PS3 might be dying. I inserted the FF13 disc, PS3 turns off automatically and starts blinking red. Luckily I have a back up but I will have to figure out how to solve that problem.
As for Final Fantasy 13 I have never really played it so this is a good opportunity to dip my toes in and see how it goes. This game came out when I was a full-time University student and not into gaming at all and didn’t own a PS3. A friend of mine did however skip class to play it on release day which is cool. Maybe a year or two after that I helped then girlfriend (at the time) beat a boss she was struggling with which is how I got exposed to the combat system.
In terms of my attitude at the time I did buy in to the idea that it was a ‘bad’ Final Fantasy. There was that ‘the game plays itself’ video by Jon ‘Ethnostate’ Tron that was popular at the time, and I heard some friends complain about the combat system, the ‘hallway-ness’, and the lack of towns. I didn’t get much exposure to the ‘woman suck in video games’ discourse because I wasn’t chilling in any video game forums at the time.
I guess I bought into these views at the time because I did not have exposure to a lot of JRPGs so I had very narrow expectations. Final fantasy 7, 8, 9, and 10 gave you a lot of options in terms of combat. 12 came and the focus seemed to be more on the gambit system (the game plays itself) then FF13 comes out and it seemed like it took away even more control from the player.
Also I think everyone I knew hated Vanille at the time because she has an Australian accent??? We hate hearing that accent in media lol.
Edit: Sorry this was too long but in short happy to give this a go and form my own opinion on it. I’ve been meaning to do so for a while thanks to the lovely people on this forum.
There are some monthly ones that are a bit more structured, but I’m going to be playing this for more than a month. It’s mostly an excuse to post about a specific game and get people to discuss it.
Don’t worry too much: Just Post™.
It actually took me a bit of time to figure her accent out! I don’t hear it enough!
I won’t be playing along myself but I will definitely be following along with the thread. I played the game in 2019 as I recovered from septum surgery (lmao) and loved it. I dumped a ton of hours into this thing to beat all those Cieth Stones. In the years since, XIII has never totally left my mind.
I retain wayyyy too much knowledge about XIII’s game mechanics, and have had no outlet until now to talk about all of these little techs that make the game so enjoyable for me. So, if anyone wants some tips on how to take their gameplay to the next level, I offer the following as lagniappe:
This is kinda taught in game but might need to be explicitly laid out: party members gain passive benefits from all of the active party’s roles - what I mean is, for example, if you have a Sentinel on the field, everyone in the party will take less damage (but the Sentinel will take the least), if you have a Commando, it will boost everyone’s damage output (but the Commando’s will be boosted the most)
Waiting when to attack instead of always attacking right away can be helpful to keep the chain gauge going or to juggle a launched enemy
The game will automatically charge your ATB gauge once about every 12 seconds or so, but you need to switch paradigms to get the auto charge. Switch often!
Long attack animations (namely Lightning’s Army of One or Sazh’s Cold Blood) are actually a huge boon. If you start one of these attacks just before the enemy is about to un-stagger, they won’t be able to until the animation is finished. You can get nearly 10 extra seconds of big damage in if you time this well
Similarly, if you switch paradigms in the middle of an attack’s animation, you get the role bonuses for both roles e.g. if you start Army of One in Rav and then switch to a paradigm where Lightning is a Commando in the middle of the animation, her attack will have both effects (boosted Chain Gauge; boosted damage)
The first paradigm shift plays an extended animation of all of your allies switching their roles, however, you can skip/postpone this long animation if you switch paradigms when the leader is in the air
The rate the chain gauge depletes depends on how you filled it up - only using Ravs will cause it to drain the fastest; using Coms/Sabs along with Ravs will “stabilize” the gauge and cause it to drain slower. Using Quake sets the gauge to the slowest depletion possible
Renew can revive dead party members
Summon stealthily provides the same effects as Renew; also, I think they revive you if you die so you can use that to tank a big attack
A lot of people don’t like that you can’t move the characters around independently, esp given that the attacks actually have hitboxes and such… but you kinda-sorta can? Some of the paradigms have different AI baked in. For example, Relentless Assault (Com/Rav/Rav) your allies will always focus on the same enemy as you; Cerberus (Com/Com/Com) is programmed that you and your allies will all attack different targets if available. If you get really good, you can time a paradigm shift to Cerberus at the right time to dodge an incoming AOE
Oh and XIII-2 removed almost all of these fun techs
Yes it’s an Australian accent. I googled the English VA and she is from Melbourne. It’s still a very very interesting accent lol haven’t heard anything like it.
On a side note looks like I’m going to pause FF13. The game kept freezing during a cutscene where Snow gave a mum a gun. So I’ll see if I can get another copy.
If I were at home I’d play my PS3 copy (and share a photo) but as long as I’m “stuck with” the PC version I’m going to see what these basic mods can do. Thanks @sabertoothalex and @treefroggy
To add to this, if you don’t want to actually count, it is usually enough to Shift, use the “free” ATB gauge from that Shift, then let your ATB charge fully once and select another suite of commands (or auto-battle). Once you’ve done so, your next Paradigm Shift should give you full ATB immediately, even if the character doesn’t perform all of the queued actions
This becomes a crucial technique particularly in the late / endgame for getting 5 star rankings on boss battles and the like
It’s also why I never fully bought the “game plays itself” and “you can’t control your party” narratives: it’s set up this way so that, for example, if you need healing, your Medics will begin to act immediately, but with the buffer in place to prevent absolutely constant switching. You are, in fact, telling your party members what they need to do in the moment: it’s just that you’re instructing the team as a whole rather than one party member at a time
Did you go with the Nova Chrysalia mod manager or not? I’ve been poring over this guide and am pretty confused about whether NC is compatible with FF13fix.
I did the Nova Chysalia mod manager and also did FF13fix and don’t have any issues! No really noticable frame drops and I’m running with HD texture mod in 2k. Only thing I haven’t gotten working yet is the outfits to load from Lightning Returns (gives me error message 1).
No I agree. I belive a thing should be the thing it is, not try to be a different thing. I want FFXIII to be the most FFXIII it can possibly be, especially on the cover or the “tin”, as it were.
PS: I moved to a new high school in the year 2010, where I had my first austrailian classmate, who was similar to Vanille in almost every way, couldn’t help but make that connection.
Pretty sure I have this game installed fully on my Playstation 3, so I may play on my 17" CRT in my van. Though solar power is too low right now due to my sky being filled with ashes when I get home.
I played about an hour last night. Really slow start wrt the combat system, not much to think about yet, but as an ATB Hater I think the auto-battle stuff is actually really smart. I never felt like racing through menus just to cast the same spells over and over enhanced the experience anyways lol
Think I’m ready to start the game today. I skipped the HD FMV mod and HD FMV audio—too much data/space for too little reward. One issue I’ve run into: apparently enabling controller vibration prevents the game from registering keyboard input?? Which means when I quit to the main menu, I have to tab out and close the game from Task Manager. Yesterday I tried Alt + F4-ing and that not only failed to close the game, but made it freeze and left me unable to access Task Manager or any other kill switch, so I had to restart the computer. Ready to leave all this tech stuff behind and engage with The Game!
