initial impresssions: ff13
finally started playing final fantasy 13. it came out last month, but i had end of the year work madness, a huge family visit, the holidays, and then an escape to costa rica, so haven't gotten around to it until now.
i've only played through the first 3 chapters so far but i can uniformly say that i like it better than ff12, which i had a lot of trouble connecting to. of course, it's gorgeous. aniki's also playing the game, and we agreed that we turn to the ff series for visual inspiration more than anything else, and in this respect, ff13 doesn't disappoint. the environments are stunning. everyone is highly detailed and very pretty. there's a slick aesthetic appeal in everything. it feels like a highly polished mix of ffx, ffviii, and ffvii.
a brief rundown of the playable characters
lightning: our main character, the badass grumpy chick. nomura was told to design a "female cloud". sadly lightning looks less female than, uhm, "female cloud" of ff7 for those of you have played it. i've realized, though, that my problem with lightning's character design probably mostly lies with her hair- it's a weird crazy mullet deal where the right side is long and the left side is cropped short, and the effect isn't cool or unique, it's just kind of stupid looking, like you went to a drunk barber or something and are now too embarrassed to fix it. nonetheless i enjoy her as a protagonist- she's strong, no nonsense, lithe, and has a lot of anger issues. she routinely punches the dumbass of the group in the face, and i don't mean like playful or cartoony punchy stuff, i mean she full-on smashes him in the face the way i imagine my sister's best friend got punched in the face by her brother at thanksgiving*. then again i'd be angry too if i was a soldier whose parents were dead and my baby sister fell in love with AND GOT ENGAGED TO a dumbass "rebellion leader" on her summer vacation before college and then we were all forcibly evicted from the city while my sister got turned into a _spoiler_. overall though i'm enjoying having a female protag who is practical and kind of bitchy, but in a likeable way. bitch gets shit done, yo.
*a hilarious story for another time
sezh: the affable black dude who complains a lot and has a BABY CHOCOBO LIVING IN HIS HAIR WHO HE CALLS DADDY. i can't make this shit up people. as far as i can tell he's there from the beginning to show you how awesome lightning is. while she's doing crazy balletic kicks and jumps all over the place he's the one groaning behind her and climbing and falling down things in an awkward manner. and of course he has some kind of HIDDEN PAST!!!1!!111 which is why he gets all mixed up in your fight against _spoiler_
snow: the resident dumbass. if i did a drinking game with how often snow talks about PROTECTING EVERYONE i'd already be dead from alcohol poisoning halfway through the first chapter. he has tourettes, except instead of screaming expletives at random intervals, he just screams about PROTECTING EVERYONE. aniki doesn't like him because he thinks he's a weird pedo; in his defense snow's fiancee is 18 even if she looks 14. still, i find him entertaining, but i tend to find stupid people entertaining as long as they aren't making any decisions that personally affect me.
vanille: i think vanille is the reason i'm playing this game in japanese instead of just buckling down a couple months for the english release. i saw the english trailer and realized that vanille is so japanese that she would completely annoy the shit out of me in an english dub. having lived in japan i can tolerate stupid cutesy japanese girls (they pop up all over tokyo like mushrooms) but present them to me in english and i'll go apeshit because girls in america shouldn't fall prey to that bullshit. i think vanille is there for comic relief though so far it's been pretty ineffective on me. she's always inappropriately excited about everything- "oooh, look at that huge ship coming to destroy us! it's so WONDEROUSLY BEAUTIFUL let me ooh and aah cutesily" and when you're in dire danger she runs ahead giggling like a retard. she does stupid japanese girl poses, she is EVERY SINGLE GIRL in the blog asian poses. she is relentlessly optimistic, always telling you to chin up just as you're about to be killed or cursed or whatever and always inappropriately grabbing and hugging people who look like they want to tell her to fuck off.
hope: the resident wangtsy little boy. i think he and vanille are the van and penelo of this game; as far as i can tell they're the surrogate kids for the japanese teenagers playing this game to identify with who aren't directly tied to the storyline and ended up "along for the ride" just because hope is a emo little coward who blames snow for his mother's accidental death and seems to only be following him around to eventually tell him off about it. in fact, they end up IN the story because stupid vanille forces him to steal a plane and CRASH LAND IN SOME DANGEROUS RUINS for the chance to run after snow and be all like "hey asshole! you killed my mother! ima bitch you out about it, angsty japanese boy style". mostly he runs around ducking for cover and screaming and not being able to tell off snow and being wangsty about his fate.
brief rundown of the gameplay
exploration: many people have complained about this and it's hilariously been blogged about, but every single area and dungeon is basically a tube that you run down. if there are tiny alcoves, they predictably have an enemy to fight and a treasure chest to open. otherwise there's no exploration. don't get fooled, one time i got all excited because i touched something in a temple and all the staircases rearranged harry potter style and i was like goodness! a puzzle! i shall have to find my way! ...but then i actually didn't get to walk around in it, i just sort of magically ended up at the end of it, where there was a cutscene. there are also no towns or cities. you buy items from an electronic store in the savepoint. come on people, if you're going to make me buy all my stuff online, can't you at least have pictures and user reviews? i want to know if i'm getting my gil's worth on that there accessory.
battle system: i'm divided about the battle system. it's a weird amalgamation of turn based ATB nonsense and the zodiac or whatever the fuck it was called system in ff12. also "breaking" the enemies is the best way to defeat them but it's a bit unwieldy. there's a ranking system after battles that makes you feel stupid if you get less than 5 stars. the character development is handled similarly to ffx with crystal points that you spend to get abilities and power ups like hp or tp. you can equip accessories and weapons, but weirdly enough you can't equip armour, unless i'm missing something (very likely- i think this game was made for large hd tvs and my gaming tv is a bit small, so all the tiny kanji when i go into status screen blurs into a small mess of white pixels). like persona 3 and ff12, you can see the enemies on the screen. if you can sneak up on them you get a preemptive strike, yada yada yada.
the overall gameplay: squeenix needs to sit down and play an american game like uncharted. it doesn't really help that i played uncharted before this game: in uncharted, you LIVE the cutscene. you're the one jumping out of the car, you're the one exploding shit, you're the one riding the jetski through the rapids. in ff13 you're just watching it all. sure, it's very, very pretty. but i want to be the one flying the ship through all the enemy fighters, i want to be the one jumping aside when the boulder falls, and the fact that i just played a game where it could happens tells me the technology is already possible. interactivity is the key to immersion, and it's something i wish that japanese games would take up. the most interaction you have with the environment is that sometimes if you walk to a glowing circle, you jump over stuff. that's about it.
character interaction: this is probably my favourite part of ff13, as it was one of my favourite parts of games like persona, dragon age, and mass effect- the characters interact a lot more. as you're running through a dungeon they're usually chattering behind you- arguing, learning more about each other, bitching about how cold it is, wondering why you're running in circles, telling you they don't want to run across that pipe traversing a gaping chasm, whatever. it's a nice touch, given that it was always kind of weird to be running through a dungeon in silence with only your main character as the avatar on screen.
overall impression
i like the game so far but i don't LOVE it. this is more or less more than i hoped for as i kind of thought i might hate it given how mixed all the reviews were for the game on amazon.co.jp, but wanted to try it out anyway (...i have this same approach in relationships, by the way. not really advised for ANY portion of your life). maybe my mind will change later, but so far it's a serviceable, somewhat addictive japanese RPG. i have my problems with it, but overall i'm enjoying it. since i tend to play japanese releases of games it's always a little bit lonely because i end up playing things 6 months to a year before everyone else does, when no one really cares about it yet, and am long done with things and playing something else by the time everyone finally picks it up, and i only know a handful of other people playing this game, but if anyone out there IS playing and wants to chime in, please do~
i've only played through the first 3 chapters so far but i can uniformly say that i like it better than ff12, which i had a lot of trouble connecting to. of course, it's gorgeous. aniki's also playing the game, and we agreed that we turn to the ff series for visual inspiration more than anything else, and in this respect, ff13 doesn't disappoint. the environments are stunning. everyone is highly detailed and very pretty. there's a slick aesthetic appeal in everything. it feels like a highly polished mix of ffx, ffviii, and ffvii.
a brief rundown of the playable characters
lightning: our main character, the badass grumpy chick. nomura was told to design a "female cloud". sadly lightning looks less female than, uhm, "female cloud" of ff7 for those of you have played it. i've realized, though, that my problem with lightning's character design probably mostly lies with her hair- it's a weird crazy mullet deal where the right side is long and the left side is cropped short, and the effect isn't cool or unique, it's just kind of stupid looking, like you went to a drunk barber or something and are now too embarrassed to fix it. nonetheless i enjoy her as a protagonist- she's strong, no nonsense, lithe, and has a lot of anger issues. she routinely punches the dumbass of the group in the face, and i don't mean like playful or cartoony punchy stuff, i mean she full-on smashes him in the face the way i imagine my sister's best friend got punched in the face by her brother at thanksgiving*. then again i'd be angry too if i was a soldier whose parents were dead and my baby sister fell in love with AND GOT ENGAGED TO a dumbass "rebellion leader" on her summer vacation before college and then we were all forcibly evicted from the city while my sister got turned into a _spoiler_. overall though i'm enjoying having a female protag who is practical and kind of bitchy, but in a likeable way. bitch gets shit done, yo.
*a hilarious story for another time
sezh: the affable black dude who complains a lot and has a BABY CHOCOBO LIVING IN HIS HAIR WHO HE CALLS DADDY. i can't make this shit up people. as far as i can tell he's there from the beginning to show you how awesome lightning is. while she's doing crazy balletic kicks and jumps all over the place he's the one groaning behind her and climbing and falling down things in an awkward manner. and of course he has some kind of HIDDEN PAST!!!1!!111 which is why he gets all mixed up in your fight against _spoiler_
snow: the resident dumbass. if i did a drinking game with how often snow talks about PROTECTING EVERYONE i'd already be dead from alcohol poisoning halfway through the first chapter. he has tourettes, except instead of screaming expletives at random intervals, he just screams about PROTECTING EVERYONE. aniki doesn't like him because he thinks he's a weird pedo; in his defense snow's fiancee is 18 even if she looks 14. still, i find him entertaining, but i tend to find stupid people entertaining as long as they aren't making any decisions that personally affect me.
vanille: i think vanille is the reason i'm playing this game in japanese instead of just buckling down a couple months for the english release. i saw the english trailer and realized that vanille is so japanese that she would completely annoy the shit out of me in an english dub. having lived in japan i can tolerate stupid cutesy japanese girls (they pop up all over tokyo like mushrooms) but present them to me in english and i'll go apeshit because girls in america shouldn't fall prey to that bullshit. i think vanille is there for comic relief though so far it's been pretty ineffective on me. she's always inappropriately excited about everything- "oooh, look at that huge ship coming to destroy us! it's so WONDEROUSLY BEAUTIFUL let me ooh and aah cutesily" and when you're in dire danger she runs ahead giggling like a retard. she does stupid japanese girl poses, she is EVERY SINGLE GIRL in the blog asian poses. she is relentlessly optimistic, always telling you to chin up just as you're about to be killed or cursed or whatever and always inappropriately grabbing and hugging people who look like they want to tell her to fuck off.
hope: the resident wangtsy little boy. i think he and vanille are the van and penelo of this game; as far as i can tell they're the surrogate kids for the japanese teenagers playing this game to identify with who aren't directly tied to the storyline and ended up "along for the ride" just because hope is a emo little coward who blames snow for his mother's accidental death and seems to only be following him around to eventually tell him off about it. in fact, they end up IN the story because stupid vanille forces him to steal a plane and CRASH LAND IN SOME DANGEROUS RUINS for the chance to run after snow and be all like "hey asshole! you killed my mother! ima bitch you out about it, angsty japanese boy style". mostly he runs around ducking for cover and screaming and not being able to tell off snow and being wangsty about his fate.
brief rundown of the gameplay
exploration: many people have complained about this and it's hilariously been blogged about, but every single area and dungeon is basically a tube that you run down. if there are tiny alcoves, they predictably have an enemy to fight and a treasure chest to open. otherwise there's no exploration. don't get fooled, one time i got all excited because i touched something in a temple and all the staircases rearranged harry potter style and i was like goodness! a puzzle! i shall have to find my way! ...but then i actually didn't get to walk around in it, i just sort of magically ended up at the end of it, where there was a cutscene. there are also no towns or cities. you buy items from an electronic store in the savepoint. come on people, if you're going to make me buy all my stuff online, can't you at least have pictures and user reviews? i want to know if i'm getting my gil's worth on that there accessory.
battle system: i'm divided about the battle system. it's a weird amalgamation of turn based ATB nonsense and the zodiac or whatever the fuck it was called system in ff12. also "breaking" the enemies is the best way to defeat them but it's a bit unwieldy. there's a ranking system after battles that makes you feel stupid if you get less than 5 stars. the character development is handled similarly to ffx with crystal points that you spend to get abilities and power ups like hp or tp. you can equip accessories and weapons, but weirdly enough you can't equip armour, unless i'm missing something (very likely- i think this game was made for large hd tvs and my gaming tv is a bit small, so all the tiny kanji when i go into status screen blurs into a small mess of white pixels). like persona 3 and ff12, you can see the enemies on the screen. if you can sneak up on them you get a preemptive strike, yada yada yada.
the overall gameplay: squeenix needs to sit down and play an american game like uncharted. it doesn't really help that i played uncharted before this game: in uncharted, you LIVE the cutscene. you're the one jumping out of the car, you're the one exploding shit, you're the one riding the jetski through the rapids. in ff13 you're just watching it all. sure, it's very, very pretty. but i want to be the one flying the ship through all the enemy fighters, i want to be the one jumping aside when the boulder falls, and the fact that i just played a game where it could happens tells me the technology is already possible. interactivity is the key to immersion, and it's something i wish that japanese games would take up. the most interaction you have with the environment is that sometimes if you walk to a glowing circle, you jump over stuff. that's about it.
character interaction: this is probably my favourite part of ff13, as it was one of my favourite parts of games like persona, dragon age, and mass effect- the characters interact a lot more. as you're running through a dungeon they're usually chattering behind you- arguing, learning more about each other, bitching about how cold it is, wondering why you're running in circles, telling you they don't want to run across that pipe traversing a gaping chasm, whatever. it's a nice touch, given that it was always kind of weird to be running through a dungeon in silence with only your main character as the avatar on screen.
overall impression
i like the game so far but i don't LOVE it. this is more or less more than i hoped for as i kind of thought i might hate it given how mixed all the reviews were for the game on amazon.co.jp, but wanted to try it out anyway (...i have this same approach in relationships, by the way. not really advised for ANY portion of your life). maybe my mind will change later, but so far it's a serviceable, somewhat addictive japanese RPG. i have my problems with it, but overall i'm enjoying it. since i tend to play japanese releases of games it's always a little bit lonely because i end up playing things 6 months to a year before everyone else does, when no one really cares about it yet, and am long done with things and playing something else by the time everyone finally picks it up, and i only know a handful of other people playing this game, but if anyone out there IS playing and wants to chime in, please do~