I never played XIII, but I was acutely aware of the hype leading up to it, as well as the generally critical reviews decrying the unusually linear structure for an FF game. That’s probably not the main reason I never got around to it–I was already beginning my transition into a games observer more than a games player–but my interest has been slowly building over the last several years and this thread finally tipped me over into actually launching it.
I really would like to experience the game with minimal fuss, so I was originally going to try the XB One X BC or maybe locate and excavate my PS3, but PC seems to be the only reasonable way to go if I want Japanese voice track/English subs.
So far I’ve done some basic testing with the PC version–Steam install + ff13fix + 4GB Large Address Aware patch (linked on the ff13fix github). The limited gameplay I’ve experienced looks great in 4K, though the high resolution isn’t doing some of the lower poly assets any favors. I’m totally fine with it, though. The cutscenes are another story altogether… I can deal with the grungy compression, but the intermittent stuttering during the FMVs is pretty off-putting, especially during slow pans. From what I read most people seem to blame this on the controller polling behavior, but ff13fix supposedly takes care of that so I’m kind of at a loss. Does anyone else have that issue with FMVs?
You could have been playing the game in the vernacular by now!
I will PayPal the next person on the forum who posts here to claim it (and we will negotiate payment over DM) up to “Final Fantasy Thirteen Dollars” so they can buy the game and actually beat Kory to completing chapter 3. This may include shipping time such is my level of trash-talking my forum friend @kory!
One caveat with this offer, if you get the Steam version you have to promise me you’ll talk about the game and not about the mods you installed!
Played through Chapter 3 and the opening of Chapter 4 and have some thoughts! I’ll save my story-related thoughts for later today when I have some more time.
From a User Experience perspective, I think the game is a little too honest to the player and there are a few things that would have benefited from being obfuscated more. The game actually has a good amount of exploration, but the map being so huge in the top right of the screen and mapped to a face button and menu option, is just too accessible for what is essentially a line with a couple branching paths that come together at the end. Importantly, it also points out where enemies are so you can plan your ‘stealth’, and without respawning enemies and having hard caps on the Crystarium, the experience does feel on the rails, because it is for now.
Late game spoilery criticism: The fact that so much of this game cannot be returned to later, means that the secret chests that are hidden are not that meaningful. This game doesn’t have collectables like the Al Bhed texts or treasure chests that contain high powered weapons just out of reach, making the world feel smaller.
In addition to Auto-Battle, the game also has auto-heal, auto-jump, and auto-talk. All of these names combined could be coloring people’s perception about the game design. I can understand how having the game tell you things are automated can feel a little insulting to the player who loves the core experience. In practice these changes aren’t really to streamline anything, it’s just a totally different design. Battles are meant to carry more moment-to-moment tension than older games where a dungeon was a war of attrition. Instead every fight having the possibility for an HP bar to hit zero, you you’re forced to change strategies multiple times mid-battle is neither better or worse design, it’s just completely different.
I wonder if the game used other terminology it would have been received better. I think people like the Paradigms for what they are, because it’s a unique thing given a unique name (instead of them reusing a name like Gambits or Dress Spheres). With “auto battle” the nomenclature reduces the experience of playing down to a single click, when that’s not the case. A great example is auto-jump, which sounds like they’re subtracting the ability to jump by making it automated, but in reality it means the addition of vertical exploration to a series that hasn’t really done much with that idea yet.
Not really! We just had a few people independently start playing and talking about FF13 around the same time, so we made it a game club to invite others to join! Same thing happened with Void Stranger when it came out. Feel free to jump in, it’s just an excuse to talk about the game with others!
I just started the game and was struck by the minimap, which does indeed look a little silly at this point (first hour, still). It occurs to me that it may be less useful as a traditional map and more as a different solution to a problem introduced in Final Fantasy VII: in that game, pushing Select highlights all the doors and the player character, in case the player can’t quite parse the pre-rendered backgrounds/gameworld. Here, Select similarly brings up the map and allows the player to decode what might be visually busy/complicated level geometry. Granted there are floating rings showing where you can jump, and in the first hour it is really just a hallway, so not too useful, but already I’ve thought “Can I interact with that, or is that there for a visual effect?” At this point I’m playing with the map turned off but expect I’ll toggle it on and off at some point.
Final Fantasy X’s minimap, however, is truly useless.
This reminded me that I actually like this feature quite a bit and I wish more RPGs saw this as a valid way to make the player play with what they have at their disposal. I still hear way too many complaints about RPGs being boring grindfests with “big number beats smaller number” and I’d love if more people could see the fun in the strategy and problem-solving they offer
Also, I think hard cap exp barriers might’ve helped FFXV a little. That game’s combat has larger issues but I think this might’ve helped
It’s a tough balance as people also enjoy the release valve of grinding out a situation too. Dragon Quest XI’s optional “Reduced Experience from Easy Fights” was the best I’ve seen for a game having it both ways. No hard cap but exp dwindles instead. Then when you reach new monsters/boss/etc you get an exciting burst of exp and character progression again.
I’m not joining the Cocoon-insurgence-resurgence at the moment, but am following with great interest.
The Crystarium is a pretty linear skill tree/sphere grid with a 3D UI designed to hide the fact it’s a pretty linear skill tree/sphere grid. Change my mind.
Game is still fun and neat. And I’m certainly resonating with the combat in a way I never did with XV. I am just now able to upgrade weapons. So like, chapter 3?
Holy hell, the camera is awful and there’s no options to tweak it. It makes just walking around annoying AF and that’s my favorite part of RPGs - occupying a neat space and wandering around in it. I don’t understand why the game even gives me control of the camera, because the second I release the tilt of the joystick it abruptly snaps back to its initial angle. The general jostling of the camera as I move my character, the abrupt panning - why is this camera constantly working against me? I hate everything about the camera, it’s sapping all joy from controlling my character.
Yeah I thought it was just me? I can’t help but throw the camera around everywhere as I walk around. I initially chalked it up to the PS3 controller being bad.
This seems true to me, and I also think the game introduces auto-battle far too soon: it’s more engaging to select individual actions in the early game, I think. Auto-battle becomes much more important when you have more roles unlocked, have Libra, and are Paradigm shifting regularly
It’s the first thing they teach you, though, and that probably colored a lot of people’s perceptions of the combat
