Just Keep Running.
Final Fantasy XIII-2 is coming out in Europe in a few days! I don't really know what to expect from Final Fantasy XIII-2, as the main party consists of a character who didn't particularly interest me in the original game (although I did adore her relationship with Lightning) and some guy I don't know, but I loved XIII, so I'm certainly going to give it a try.
In order to get myself into the right mindset, I've been replaying Final Fantasy XIII. I'm liking Vanille a lot more this time around, now that I have a better understanding of how incredibly screwed up she is. (When I first encountered Vanille, I sensed that she was being somehow insincere and reached the conclusion that she was secretly evil. I was quite pleased to realise that she was, in fact, a good-hearted person; she just happened to be repressing everything in the world.) I considered having a Lightning-Fang-Vanille main team on this playthrough, when I actually reach the point at which you can choose your own team (incidentally, I really like that XIII makes you spend plenty of time with all the characters before you actually decide on your party), but then I remembered that I can't live without a good Synergist. Sorry, Vanille, but it's going to be Lightning-Fang-Sazh again.
Here's the thing about Final Fantasy XIII: the things it does, it does really well. It has a great battle system, a fascinating world and by far my favourite cast of characters from any Final Fantasy (there are individual characters from other games I like more - Yuna, Balthier - but as a whole, taking into account both the characters themselves and the relationships within the party, the XIII cast is definitely my favourite). The problem is that it doesn't do anything else; it's all fighting and character interaction. And it's great fighting! And it's great character interaction! But it does feel a little unvaried after a while. As a story, I absolutely love it. As a game... well, I still love it, but it's flawed.
A sentiment I often heard before playing XIII for myself was that the game became significantly better once you got to Gran Pulse, so I was surprised to find that Pulse for me was probably the weakest part. There are a billion missions for you to take on, but every single one of them is 'go to this place and kill this thing'. I was quite happy with the rest of the game being 'run along this path and kill things' because there was a sense of constantly moving forwards, but when it became 'run around this big space and kill things' the game seemed to lose its focus a bit, and without the arrowflight movement of the story the lack of variety in the gameplay stood out starkly. I wanted more to do on Pulse. Pulse was the one place where the game broke away from the plot for a while; it was the one place where the characters weren't forced to stay constantly on the move on account of being wanted fugitives. It could have given us more to do, but it didn't.
Well, yes, you can also hunt items with chocobos, but that just made me sad because it was like Chocobo Hot and Cold without being anywhere near as amazing. I would buy an entire game in which all you do is dig up Chocographs and then search for the locations depicted across all the Final Fantasy games.
All that said, Final Fantasy XIII is still one of my favourite entries in the series. But it could have been better, and I'm a little sad that it wasn't.
thebaconfat has linked to this fan translation of Episode Zero, a collection of official stories about the events leading up to Final Fantasy XIII, originally posted on the Japanese Square Enix website. There are some technical issues - tenses, paragraphing - but it's a translation with a lot of spirit, and I'm really enjoying it so far (I've read Encounter and Stranger). It's so interesting to see Vanille and Fang trying to make sense of a world where you're not being attacked all the time.
There's a scene where Vanille and Fang receive an invitation to lunch from some guys on the street, and they accept because on Pulse refusing such an invitation would essentially be a declaration of war, and they have no idea what a menu is and in any case they can't read it because it's in the Cocoon alphabet, and so:
Vanille motioned with her eyes, trying to ask Fang what they should do. Fang nodded, and went for her weapon.
I love Fang. 'I can't read this. What am I meant to do in this situation? PROBABLY KILL THINGS.'
In order to get myself into the right mindset, I've been replaying Final Fantasy XIII. I'm liking Vanille a lot more this time around, now that I have a better understanding of how incredibly screwed up she is. (When I first encountered Vanille, I sensed that she was being somehow insincere and reached the conclusion that she was secretly evil. I was quite pleased to realise that she was, in fact, a good-hearted person; she just happened to be repressing everything in the world.) I considered having a Lightning-Fang-Vanille main team on this playthrough, when I actually reach the point at which you can choose your own team (incidentally, I really like that XIII makes you spend plenty of time with all the characters before you actually decide on your party), but then I remembered that I can't live without a good Synergist. Sorry, Vanille, but it's going to be Lightning-Fang-Sazh again.
Here's the thing about Final Fantasy XIII: the things it does, it does really well. It has a great battle system, a fascinating world and by far my favourite cast of characters from any Final Fantasy (there are individual characters from other games I like more - Yuna, Balthier - but as a whole, taking into account both the characters themselves and the relationships within the party, the XIII cast is definitely my favourite). The problem is that it doesn't do anything else; it's all fighting and character interaction. And it's great fighting! And it's great character interaction! But it does feel a little unvaried after a while. As a story, I absolutely love it. As a game... well, I still love it, but it's flawed.
A sentiment I often heard before playing XIII for myself was that the game became significantly better once you got to Gran Pulse, so I was surprised to find that Pulse for me was probably the weakest part. There are a billion missions for you to take on, but every single one of them is 'go to this place and kill this thing'. I was quite happy with the rest of the game being 'run along this path and kill things' because there was a sense of constantly moving forwards, but when it became 'run around this big space and kill things' the game seemed to lose its focus a bit, and without the arrowflight movement of the story the lack of variety in the gameplay stood out starkly. I wanted more to do on Pulse. Pulse was the one place where the game broke away from the plot for a while; it was the one place where the characters weren't forced to stay constantly on the move on account of being wanted fugitives. It could have given us more to do, but it didn't.
Well, yes, you can also hunt items with chocobos, but that just made me sad because it was like Chocobo Hot and Cold without being anywhere near as amazing. I would buy an entire game in which all you do is dig up Chocographs and then search for the locations depicted across all the Final Fantasy games.
All that said, Final Fantasy XIII is still one of my favourite entries in the series. But it could have been better, and I'm a little sad that it wasn't.
thebaconfat has linked to this fan translation of Episode Zero, a collection of official stories about the events leading up to Final Fantasy XIII, originally posted on the Japanese Square Enix website. There are some technical issues - tenses, paragraphing - but it's a translation with a lot of spirit, and I'm really enjoying it so far (I've read Encounter and Stranger). It's so interesting to see Vanille and Fang trying to make sense of a world where you're not being attacked all the time.
There's a scene where Vanille and Fang receive an invitation to lunch from some guys on the street, and they accept because on Pulse refusing such an invitation would essentially be a declaration of war, and they have no idea what a menu is and in any case they can't read it because it's in the Cocoon alphabet, and so:
Vanille motioned with her eyes, trying to ask Fang what they should do. Fang nodded, and went for her weapon.
I love Fang. 'I can't read this. What am I meant to do in this situation? PROBABLY KILL THINGS.'