Various role-playing RPG game stuff not deserving its own thread

[Vergil]

What went wrong with Final Fantasy XV?

The gameplay is holding down one (1) button and watching the game play itself for you.

[1998]

What went wrong with Final Fantasy XV?

The gameplay is holding down one (1) button and watching the game play itself for you.

Lead writer is also a woman

[Vergil]

What went wrong with Final Fantasy XV?

The gameplay is holding down one (1) button and watching the game play itself for you.

Lead writer is also a woman

Ssshhh the writing and setting are good....

[ArcaneLurker]

What went wrong with Final Fantasy XV? I haven’t had the chance to play it yet. From what I’ve seen, it has the same problem as Final Fantasy VII Remake—noticeable aliasing around fine details, to the point where it’s jarring to look at.

They ****** up development in various ways and ended up not doing half of what they planned to have in the game. The feeling of it being unfinished is quite noticeable as you get halfway into the game. They tried to supplement this with DLC, and had planned to do even more DLC as well as give modding tools but they eventually decided to cut their losses and leave it in a book.

The combat is underbaked and has a weird mixture of un-telegraphed enemy moves, with a button that lets you dodge everything as long as you hold it. FF7R has way better combat.
That being said, the idea of having four guys on a roadtrip to a wedding is a refreshing scenario, and the combat gameplay improves when you get further into the skilltrees to unlock certain things or play the DLC (they added the ability to play as the side characters for instance). Could have been the best Final Fantasy if they were more careful with development, and threw more money at that instead of hiring expensive actors for a barely relevant marketing movie that barely anyone enjoyed.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

What went wrong with Final Fantasy XV? I haven’t had the chance to play it yet. From what I’ve seen, it has the same problem as Final Fantasy VII Remake—noticeable aliasing around fine details, to the point where it’s jarring to look at.

It was originally not supposed to be a mainline title, but Nomura's dream spinoff game called Versus XIII. Unfortunately, Square at that time was poorly run, so whenever Nomura tried to get production running he and his devs got pulled off and reassigned to other projects, with devs being pulled off to work on FF13 and FF14 and Nomura being pulled to work on KH and FF7 spinoffs. In 2013, Square's flagship franchise had been damaged due to the prolific loss of several creators (Sakaguchi, Uematsu, Matsuno, etc), the mixed reception to FF13 (some of it undeserved, Western games "journalists" snubbed JRPGs at the time and you had the rise of bitter millennial youtubers like Spoony who flanderized the game), and the troubled launch of FF14 1.0. Under Sakaguchi, Square was releasing a brand new mainline Final Fantasy game every year, which kept the franchise's momentum going, keeping FF in the news and retaining public interest. But then Sakaguchi was ousted in a corporate coup (no, the movie was not going to sink square. It just looked bad on paper that financial quarter, but then FF10 came out the next quarter and made up for all that, but the accountats used that as an excuse to take over). But under Yoichi Wada, Square was going many years between releases, and FF was falling out of the public eye. You had an entire generation growing up that had never intimately known Final Fantasy. Square's investors wanted a turnaround fast, and Versus XIII already had a lot of preproduction work done. So Square ripped Versus XIII out of Nomura's hands, rebranded it as FF15, and assigned Hajime Tabata to make a game out of it in two years. It was going to ship out the door whether it was finished or not. So the base FF15 game feels really unfinished after meeting Noctis' fiance at Altissia. You spend several hours on a road trip to to your wedding, and the empire and the world of ruin is skimmed over in a couple chapters. Tabata tried retroactively fixing and improving the game with patches after the game released, but eventually Square disbanded his team and Tabata left Square after having been made the fall guy for FF15. Tabata's FF15 was also a completely different vision and flavor from what Nomura envisioned, which took place in a city that was always night, Noctis' family were mafia kings who worshipped a death god, and Noctis was being setup as villain protagonist with his fiance Stella (who became Luna in Tabata's FF15) being a hero antagonist out to stop him. So the game was going to have a more tragic vibe (as in the classical definition of a hero having a moral downfall) as opposed to the heroic tone of the FF15 we got.

The other issues with FF15 was that it was the first photorealistic, mundane mainline Final Fantasy games with no artstyle. Even FF13's characters were slightly stylized and the environments and FX very much so, whereas FF15 lacks an aesthetic identity. They drive through boring Barstow California as opposed to attractive fantasy environments. Everyone wears boring modern clothing. It was an action game where you controlled one character, as opposed to a command based game where you commanded a party with the characters posing dramatically in front of a boss and got cool cutscene attacks and camera angles showing off everyone's abilities. At launch, it was not clear what was up with the bad guy, so you had to wait for a DLC to retroactively find out what his deal was. Etc.

That being said, the idea of having four guys on a roadtrip to a wedding is a refreshing scenario

Underrated aspect of the game. It is so incredibly rare to get a married (or engaged) protagonist where the relationship has matriculated during the story, rather than people maybe getting together in an epilogue. The game was also good at getting you to care about your party members.

[psychic_dream]

How low can CRPG devs stoop really?

[Unhelpful Contrarian]

More gameplay got shown for Outer Worlds 2.

[Tangerine]

I don't need to watch it to know it's ****.

[Jordy]

Does anyone remember the .hack games? I have a very vague recollection of playing the first, finding the concept different but don't actually remember if I liked it or not. I didn't get that far into it so I'm going to assume that it didn't click with me.

Looks like they had a few games so I assume they were somewhat of a success.

[Nessa]

More gameplay got shown for Outer Worlds 2.

I couldn't get past the guy's voice. Looks somehow worse than the last one.

[psychic_dream]

Does anyone remember the .hack games? I have a very vague recollection of playing the first, finding the concept different but don't actually remember if I liked it or not. I didn't get that far into it so I'm going to assume that it didn't click with me.

Looks like they had a few games so I assume they were somewhat of a success.

I binge-played all of them and really liked the idea behind it—which, put simply, was about recreating the early 00s MMO and internet forum experience in an offline console game.The twist is that people experienced real-life psychological damage from interacting with the virtual world.

That said, I would've appreciated it more if the devs hadn’t turned the project into a full-blown franchise with multiple games, anime tie-ins, and all that. I don’t remember which part made me start losing interest, but I know it was pretty early on. There's also no point in watching the anime since it focuses on post-game characters from the fourth one, which are irrelevant to the main story.

It definitely could’ve used a PC port, given how tedious it is to cycle through menus just to heal or issue commands to party members you can’t even directly control. I believe the sequel series got one, but I can’t say how it plays since I haven’t tried it.

All in all, .hack is a neat concept if you want to see what the 2000s MMO scene was like. It’s a shame Bamco hasn’t given much thought to reviving the series, either with a remaster of the original quadrilogy or a small new game based in the same universe to start fresh.

[psychic_dream]

Speaking of Bamco, has anyone here tried the recent Tales of Graces F remaster yet? What are your thoughts on the Tales series in general?

[Unhelpful Contrarian]

Speaking of Bamco, has anyone here tried the recent Tales of Graces F remaster yet? What are your thoughts on the Tales series in general?

More grindy than a grindstone in the gameplay front. I only play Tales of Xillia with it being ok and not nothing exceptional about it ,just standard JRPG mellow drama.

[MrTwinkls]

More gameplay got shown for Outer Worlds 2.

Couldn't watch it. Showcasing first person games using a gamepad is absolutely haram.

[EternalBlindIdiot]

How low can CRPG devs stoop really?

► Show Spoiler

This. Since when has penis or vagina customization been an important part of character creation? And why the **** should I care about romanticizing my companions? I don't have time caring about feelings when I'm trying to strangle a troglodyte.

[Cipher]

[...] the mixed reception to FF13 (some of it undeserved, Western games "journalists" snubbed JRPGs at the time and you had the rise of bitter millennial youtubers like Spoony who flanderized the game)

While your entire post was very informative and well written, I want to chime in in regards to FFXIII, if you allow me to burden you with my opinion on why it was received poorly.

Spoilers for the story of FF XIII, for those who care.

► Show Spoiler

The Good

+Graphics: The visuals for the time, specially the pre-rendered FMVs were stunning. No questions or complaints about that. FF has always, since the very first one, been about nailing the aesthetics and a keen artistic vision.
+Combat: I am putting it as part of the Good things because the idea behind it was good, taking the best parts about the dresspheres from X-2 and making it snappy and a core element of the gameplay to adapt on the fly. I think FF is at it best when characters have a defined playstyle and set of skills unique or mostly unique to them, in contrast to the FFVII style of "everyone can do anything" (which I know it started in II, but you know what I mean ) but this was a good way to go about it and in concept, it would have been the best version of it. However, and when I gave the game another chance on Steam I noticed this was no longer the case, but my problems with the Combat shall be detailed later.
+Atmosphere: What I mean is, the scope of the setting. In similar fashion to XII, you can see the big monsters on the field and the buildings and such are to scale, which adds a lot to the game in my opinion. Technically should be akin to the "Graphics" portion but I think this was a big jump that was only done properly in XII and after, as X still used the random encounters.

The Bad

-Characters: I know this is subjective, but the cast is really bad. Lighting has an AMAZING design. She looks really cool, but her characterization leaves a lot to be desired and it comes off as a "girl-boss" type even if it wasn't really the intention, at least in my opinion I believe she wasn't written by a ***** to be a girlboss. She is not terrible but for a main character she doesn't really have the personality to carry. Snow has that personality of the typical JRPG protagonist and because its played mostly for laughs I think it works, similar to Balthier or Zidane, but the problem is that it really diminishes the serious moments. Fang is alright. I think she feels like a Freya/Fran type and she was characterized properly with that deep sorrow that she has to hide behind a rougher exterior. Vanille is just really annoying and Hope as well, I think the English VAs also missed the mark completely so that adds up to my dislike of them. Sazs is OK but I thought he was a little too one note. The problem keeps coming back to not having enough of a strong characterization and that's the fault of the writing and the VAs, but mostly the writing. I am not sure if the japanese script is any better, but I can't read japanese so I would have no way to know. The cast is really weak in my opinion.
-Story: This one I think is one of the biggest issues. The story ideas, meaning the lore and worldbuilding are not bad and are somewhat unique enough for the series. The problem, with a lot of things with the game, is the execution. I think IX is a masterclass in how to juggle the cast in the beginning so they get (mostly) equal screentime and game time so you can both get a feel for the characters, their personalities and stories, as well as their abilities in the game. I think XIII does a very bad job at it, specially because a lot of the characters lack strong characterization or are just written poorly.
-Music: Let's be real, not having the victory fanfare is a crime. Overall the soundtrack is not bad and it has some good, maybe even great tracks. But, removing the victory fanfare just hammers the point home of "forget about Uematsu, forget about Final Fantasy, this is something else", and that's not something they should ever want to shove into the player's face.

The Ugly

Apologies in advance if I get some details wrong, I played the game only twice. When it came out day 1 on 2009 and then when it came out on Steam again around a decade ago, so some stuff is fuzzy.

Now, what I mean by that? Well, the very idea of having a story that is incomplete is anathema to the spirit of Final Fantasy as described by Sakaguchi. He was very much against making sequels. And while I like the gameplay idea of X-2, the story is terrible. And XIII suffers a similar fate of giving you a lot of setup without properly paying it off. I read somewhere that Vanille was originally supposed to be the main character, not sure how true that is but it tracks, she gets the most pivotal plot relevancy and her quest is the catalyst for the story, its climax and its ending. Then there's the pacing, you are railroaded into corridor after corridor for 25 hours and then suddenly the game opens up? It's just too little, too late. And yes, it was also a problem when X did it. In a sense, all of the older FFs did it too with their pre-rendered backgrounds, but that's why they had stuff on the side and just shifted the path a little to not make it a straight line upwards. Yes, it's a very shallow fix, but the reason why no one complained in X or before is because it works. The game has to sell you on the illusion that you are not walking a straight line, even if you actually are. And most JRPGs don't have dungeons big enough to not be straight lines, but that's why they mask it. XIII didn't even bother to mask it, which was a huge mistake and a very valid complain. Add to that fact that there's also no real towns or anything but walking forward, cutscene, walking forward, cutscene, combat, cutscene and more walking forward and it gets stale real fast.

Let's be real, the way Nora, Hope's mom dies is just absolute garbage. This is a huge problem with the game, a lot of serious moments are under minded by absolute garbage writing. And the problem is that this is the reason why Hope is so whiny, angsty and terrible in the beginning before he gets over it. Don't get me wrong here, he is 100% justified in feeling that way, he saw his mom die in front of him. The problem is, why give him that arc? Why write him that way? But most of all, why have her die in such a way just to facilitate Hope's angst and character arc? There are a myriad ways this could have been executed and the way they went with it was amongst the worst possible ways they could go about it. It's the same with Sazh's son. The game really wants to try and play the scene with Nabaat as this big reveal but the very same video footage makes it 100% obvious it was not intended by Fang and Vanille to get him involved and he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and then that entire scene with him pointing a gun at her is so overtop melodramatic for no reason, as he doesn't really lash out at her and just forgives her anyways. Just like Hope's case, is Sazh allowed to be sorrowful for his son? Yeah, but the entire scene plays out like a terrible soap opera, specially when he saw how it wasn't her fault. And, unlike Hope, he is an adult so he should know better. He could be conflicted, he should be angry, but the "pointing the gun at her" and claiming she just doesn't get to die and make it all better is just pure, undiluted, raw melodrama to tug at the heartstrings of the player but its not earned. This is exactly like Hope's "I know it wasn't Snow's fault but I wanted something to be angry about and so I just blamed him". Again, why write that arc like that at ALL? A better way would have been Hope trying to stop his mom, and then she saying something about having to fight so he doesn't have to because he is so innocent and kind or something like that. Then he feels responsible for her death and then he tries to deflect his own guilt by lashing out at the world or something. Is my idea good? Not really, but that's just a very quick and dirty example on how to execute the exact same premise with the least amount of changes and still make it better. With proper planning, a proper execution could have been achieved but it feels like either they didn't cared or just got rushed with changes/rewrites and this was the best they could end up with. And sure, the entirety of the Fabula Nova Crystalis project is mired with terrible mismanagement, but that can only be used as an excuse so much before the people responsible have to own their mistakes and the terrible execution of many good ideas present in the game. There are many moments like that. Those are the two that really stuck out to me and really soured me on the game's writing. No, really, mute the music on that scene with Sazh confronting Vanille and you'll feel nothing. The music is trying to pummel the player in the face with what the writers want you to feel but the writing doesn't fill its end of the bargain. And sure, previous FFs had their own host of melodrama, but it was properly set up and properly paid off so it was earned, like Tifa in the lifestream trying to save Cloud or the "You are not alone" moment in IX. Or, when they don't do that, they play it for laughs instead of 100% dead serious like XIII does.

That's also the entire problem with Snow as a character. He really doesn't fit the tone of the story at all. And I love Bartz and Zidane, so its not about me not liking that type of character, its that the game really goes out of its way to harp on the melodrama, but then it throws everything out of the window with Snow because, "the writers want him to be the hero and win". You can't really have it both ways. Either chill on the seriousness and only go hard when you earn it, like with IX, or go full ham like V, that's why when Galuf dies its earned because even though the game is really wacky and full of ham and cheese, Galuf has a very strong characterization up to that point and earns his heroic sacrifice and the melodrama it ensues signaling the game is raising the stakes and basically making it so "now, its personal". So, when the party gets besieged by PSICOM when they are with Hope's dad, he steps out and tries to talk his way out, it's super convenient that the soldiers shoot on sight when they see him flashing his shirt or something he was wearing, but then when he steps out they suddenly are no longer in the "shoot on sight" mentality and not a SINGLE ONE fires, even before he starts rolling for Persuasion to incite feelings of guilt by shooting another human, when they have been fighting them all along up until this part of the game. But worse, the head honcho of the army waxes poetic about how they have to execute the party and then somehow he gets killed in the shuffle but not a single stray bullet catches Snow. It just comes off as a huge ***-pull. I don't even remember that guy's name because he was so wasted.

This is also a very similar in how the game way absolutely wastes Nabaat. PSICOM has been the enemy of the party all the game, and then suddenly the Pope is evil (of course) and then just kills her? For no real reason? And sure, "you have outlived your usefulness!" is a thing to show how evil the Evil Overlord is, but that usually is done to red shirts not the face of the antagonist we have known for the entire game and someone who at least 2 main characters have a proper beef that needs to be resolved, these being Sazh for sure and maybe even Vanille by proxy, after the aforementioned Sazh's son reveal scene.

And then there's the ending rushing at lighting (heh) speed leaving all those dangling plot threads unresolved, because of course, you need to play the next 2 games. Like I said, I played this at launch it and it was such a sour note to end the game on. I may be remembering wrong, but back then the "Fabula Nova Crystalis" was supposed to be this huge media project with a lot of stuff connected to it, so the idea of a sequel was kind of in my mind but this feels like an incomplete piece and there was no confirmation (IIRC) of a direct sequel to XIII so I had no way to know if the intention for the game was to be "part 1" from the beginning or not. Maybe I am remembering wrong or was just ill-informed and the plan for 3 games to tell the entire story was announced before the first game launched but since I thought this was supposed to be a complete story, I was left very much unsatisfied.

One last thing about the pacing. While I appreciate the lack of expository dialogue, it really requires a good writer to do it well. What I mean is, I do like when characters talk as they would, so they use terms and words that they know without looking at the camera to explain it to the audience. The problem, like I said, is that it requires a good writer to pull off properly. Most writers go the lazy route and give the audience a fish out of water character to be the window into the setting so the characters can explain things to the audience through that character. Great writers organically explain things without having to look at the camera and do exposition. Bad writers don't give you a fish out of water character and just vomit exposition while looking at the camera, such as explaining stuff to someone that should know it, like "as you know, here are the rules of Blitzball, which you should already know Tidus but the Player doesn't so I am going to explain it anyways". This game? This game says "**** you. I am too lazy for that. I am not going to give you a fish out of water or cleverly demonstrate the setting and worldbuilding to you. I am not even going to waste time looking at the camera and vomiting exposition to you. No, you have to read the in-game wikipedia articles about the lore to even begin to comprehend what the characters in the opening cutscene you JUST saw right after pressing New Game are saying." Once again, sure many many games have an in-game encyclopedia/glossary/wiki for their wacky fantasy/magitech/scifi jargon. But, let's take Xenosaga as an example. You can read those entries and the game even color codes them for your convenience, but the writers were skilled enough so that you don't really need to, you can get enough context with what's going on to understand what some of those terms mean and if you want to get specific, you can peruse their in-game glossary. So, as with the many faults the game has, the concept is not the problem, its the execution. There were many ways to go about it, they chose arguably the worst way.

Finally, my gripes with the combat. Keep in mind this was either patched on PS3 later or fixed for the PC version, but at launch the combat AI was broken. I don't know exactly when this was fixed because I no-lifed the game over the weekend and didn't touch it again until the PC version, which didn't had this problem, but at launch on console, the AI was absolutely broken. Remember gambits in XII? The Tales series has been doing that stuff since the very beginning. If you are only going to allow me to play 1 character, then let me give my bot companions directions on how to act OR make AI that works. Back then, the AI was absolutely brain dead, forcing you to play a healer. I wanted to play Commando and hack the monsters and then Ravager to blast them. But nope, I had to play tank to do it properly and specially medic. The AI would not wait until the medic bot companion got 2 or 3 ATB bars, as soon as the first bar was filled, it would waste its action with a single Cure spell, instead of waiting for a more powerful version that heals for more or heals the party. The amount of healing for a Cure spell when you had 2 bars of more was no longer enough, essentially making it so you HAD to play Medic or forget about healing and buffs. Oh right, same with buffs. Instead of waiting for the bar to fill up and give a single character 3 buffs, or the same buff to all characters, it would do the same, 1 ATB, then cast Protect on 1 character, spend the time with the animation and then do the same, which was considerably slower than doing it properly as a player. Essentially, this meant that you, the PLAYER had to play support for the bots so they got the chance to smack down the monsters and be the actual heroes. This was absolutely ATROCIOUS. And I actually like playing Healer in MMOs, but for this game I wanted to do the smack down when I felt like it, instead of being forced to play support because the game decided to have broken AI and also remove a feature that the previous game had, meaning Gambits, to tell the broken AI what it should do. Not letting us switch control amongst party members was also a terrible choice. Worse of all, if you died, you would lose the fight, even if you had a Medic right there and currently within the class (meaning, already as Medic, not requiring a paradigm shift), with readily access to Life. Nope, game over. Even if you had the enemy on the ROPES, nope, game over. I had to fight Cid twice, because the first time I was poisoned, and even though I had broken Cid and doing heavy damage while he was BROKEN, because Hope had brain dead Medic AI he never cured my poison, opting instead to using single Cures that didn't healed fast enough against the DoT of the poison. So, he was seconds away from death and I also had someone else as a hitter there, I think it was Fang, so both of us are wailing on Cid as he was broken and taking heavy damage, but oops, your leader died so restart the entire fight. Sure, it restarts the fight right there, you don't even have to walk back but I felt cheated of the victory that I earned.

Again, I am not sure when this was fixed, but the AI properly used the ATB bars on the Steam version, so that at least was properly remedied and I warmed up to the game a lot on my second playthrough on PC because I could actually fully utilize and enjoy the battle system as it was meant to be. The AI still made some terrible decisions at many moments, but at least it used the ATB properly and the problems then became mostly about who to target, like Hope preferring to heal my leader instead of himself and then dying, forcing me to turn Medic to revive him. So, the AI still wasn't executed well, but at least it wasn't as brain dead as the first time around. All of this could have been remedied had they given us control by allowing switching leaders or by copy and pasting the gambit system from XII, either wholesale or modified, but at least allowing for some amount of control. If you are going to deny the player any sort of input towards a bot, you have to make sure the bot has a really good AI and this, like many things in this game, (say it with me, fellas!) was not executed properly. Broken record, I know. This illustrates perfectly why a lot of us hated the game.

There was more stuff but I don't really remember the details very well only how I reacted so I don't want to go hard on those since I may be remembering wrong. Overall, the game was a huge let down on all the things that made the Final Fantasy series great and even as a JRPG not within the franchise, it had a host of problems in all areas outside of the visuals, art direction and for the most part the music. Essentially, it was the text book example of style over substance. At a glance, the game looked like a bona fide classic but under scrutiny the problems with execution of almost everything else outside of the presentation dragged the experience so far down that it was inexcusable unless you were too young to know better (and thus later look at the problems through rose tinted glasses) or just such a braindead die hard fanboy that would excuse anything as long as the branding "Final Fantasy" was in the title.

In conclusion, no... I vehemently disagree. I think the bad reception was very much well-deserved.

TLDR: It was really bad, specially at launch. While some of the gripes I describe either were patched in the original game eventually or where fixed for the Steam port, and some stuff in terms of the reception of the characters and their portrayal is subjective, the game is a mixed bag at best and a trainwreck at worst. As such, the bad reputation and all the flak the game got was well-deserved.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Spoilered reply for length in case people don't want to read a very indepth discussion on Final Fantasy XIII.

► Show Spoiler

+Combat: I am putting it as part of the Good things because the idea behind it was good, taking the best parts about the dresspheres from X-2 and making it snappy and a core element of the gameplay to adapt on the fly.

First, while I generally did enjoy FF13's combat experience, I did not think Paradigm shifting was very good, for two reasons.

First, I understand the desire to prevent players from just spamming their one most efficient, most damaging ability or spell over and over again, as that quickly becomes monotonous and the player isn't seeing all of the other cool abilities and spells that exist in the game. So you need to design combat so that the player has a reason to use these other damage abilities/spells, without getting into MMO cooldown rotation nonsense. So FF13 and GW2 came up with a stagger/break bar system where you start off a fight wanting to use a certain special type of attack to build up stagger/diminish the enemy's break bar, and then when the bar is filled the boss gets stunned and will take more damage, so you then switch to spamming your highest damaging abilities/spells. I suppose this is actually not too different from a boss that changes elemental weaknesses so you are then changing up your attacks, but presented differently. But in FF13, you are not consciously inputting commands to deal stagger damage or hard hitting attacks. You just push a button to change which type of damage you deal, and then if you are in the stagger phase then your characters are automatically air juggling the enemy without your input. I think FF7R is an improvement in this regard, as you have to deliberately input your characters to use stagger or high damage attacks, though it was unfortunately paired with action combat.

Second, the Paradigm system did not visibly change the characters like switching jobs or dresspheres, where they get new clothing, new weapons, and noticeably different abilities and spell effects. Getting new outfits and weapons is satisfying, but Lightning and Snow look the same as ravagers staggering the enemy as when they switch to commando dealing high damage within the stagger window. Maybe they used different abilities and I cannot recall off of the top of my head, in which case that might be a presentation problem of the camera being zoomed out from the battle and not exhibiting character's unique attacks.

+Atmosphere: What I mean is, the scope of the setting. In similar fashion to XII, you can see the big monsters on the field and the buildings and such are to scale, which adds a lot to the game in my opinion. Technically should be akin to the "Graphics" portion but I think this was a big jump that was only done properly in XII and after, as X still used the random encounters.

I do agree that this is an often sadly overlooked plus of the game, probably because you don't go down to the surface of the planet until some 40 or 50 hours into the game. Seeing herds of herbivore monsters fleeing from a large behemoth or T-rex chasing after them, or a behemoth or a T-rex fighting each other, or a humongous Adamantoise stomping across the land. Or the ginormous Titan walking behind the mountains (and sometimes clipping through them). Or large flying monsters zipping around in the sky and you are worried that they might aggro and swoop down at you. That segment did get across the idea that you are were in the wilderness of Jurassic Park with lots of much bigger monsters than you around that you need to be aware of. Sadly, in the 16 years since this game has come out, only the Xenoblade games have really sorta touched on this.

She looks really cool, but her characterization leaves a lot to be desired and it comes off as a "girl-boss" type even if it wasn't really the intention, at least in my opinion I believe she wasn't written by a ***** to be a girlboss. She is not terrible but for a main character she doesn't really have the personality to carry.

I did not feel like Lightning was a "girlboss". My irritation was that Lightning was trying to get her brother-in-law Snow killed when I quite liked him, and she was constantly running off from a group that was in peril when she was the most knowledgeable and well equipped to help them, including leaving behind an inexperienced 14 year old boy who is really going to die out there by himself without her help. And I especially did not like how she gave Hope the knife and aimed him as a weapon against Snow. I do agree that she is a bad protagonist compared to other FF protags, particularly Tidus, Noctis, and Zidane.

Snow was by far the most likeable party member. Yes, he does look a little punk-ish, but he is a man who actively trying to save his people, and seems pretty serious about marrying Serah. He was trying to dig Serah out of the crystal by himself when Lightning ran off, and then Snow was incredibly gracious when Hope tried to kill him.

Fang is alright. I think she feels like a Freya/Fran type and she was characterized properly with that deep sorrow that she has to hide behind a rougher exterior.

I thought Fang was okay. Cool character design and voice, uses a spear and flies on a robo dragon (which you already get to see in gameplay because you never summon them). I didn't think that she was hiding sorrow, but rather has learned that **** happens and has decided to go through life with a carefree attitude rather than get hung up on everything.

Vanille is just really annoying and Hope as well

Really? Vanille was quite cute and made a good couple with Hope, though I don't like mages with staves so I didn't want to use her in gameplay. Apparently dubbing the anime girl noises was embarrassing for the voice actress . I think Hope is a mixed bag. He is sympathetic in that he's just an ordinary sheltered American teenage boy who has just lost his mother, and has now been dropped into the wilderness with a swat team coming to shoot him and he has absolutely zero survival skills. But as a JRPG party member, he doesn't seem to become useful enough to the group. There are four other characters much better combatants than he ever would be, and he doesn't spec into a support role like Vanille. Throwing a boomerang and casting magic is novel, but he doesn't look as cool doing it like Yuffie in FF7R where she is flipping around and has the cool Naruto/FF14 Ninjutsu handseal effects when casting magic.

Sazs is OK but I thought he was a little too one note.

I quite liked Sazh. Story wise, he was my favorite character behind Snow, having been married and having a son, which is extremely rare in games and JRPGs. His story about trying to save his son is compelling, but unfortunately he gets sidelined compared to Snow and Lightning. The chocobo chick in his big hair was funny. I don't really like guns as compared to martial artists, so I didn't use him when possible.

The problem keeps coming back to not having enough of a strong characterization and that's the fault of the writing and the VAs, but mostly the writing. I am not sure if the japanese script is any better, but I can't read japanese so I would have no way to know. The cast is really weak in my opinion.

I think that more has to do with the extremely limited party selection for most of the game. For the first 40 hours, you are running around in preset teams of 2 or 3, with characters you may or may not like. It is not until after significant time investment that you can run around with your favorite characters. FF12 had limited characters too but at least you could change their weapons, ie turn Baltheir into a cool guy posing with a spear in one hand. But generally most other JRPGs give you a far larger selection of party members and lets you assemble a team of your favorites much sooner.

-Story: This one I think is one of the biggest issues. The story ideas, meaning the lore and worldbuilding are not bad and are somewhat unique enough for the series. The problem, with a lot of things with the game, is the execution. I think IX is a masterclass in how to juggle the cast in the beginning so they get (mostly) equal screentime and game time so you can both get a feel for the characters, their personalities and stories, as well as their abilities in the game. I think XIII does a very bad job at it, specially because a lot of the characters lack strong characterization or are just written poorly.

I think what made the first two discs of FF9 great was that you were 1. constantly exploring new whacky towns and kingdoms, and 2. there was near constant tension as you were being chased or swept from setpiece and as cities were blowing up. In FF13 you don't really get to visit cool whacky towns and walk into people's homes and talk to them and see a glimpse of their lives and then leave just as the place blows up and then want to avenge those people. You spend most of the game running through uninhabited industrial corridors or wilderness, and then in the handful of segments that do take place in populated areas, there are like real life modern cities where there are crowds of so many people you don't care about them since you don't get to interact with them individually as people.

-Music: Let's be real, not having the victory fanfare is a crime. Overall the soundtrack is not bad and it has some good, maybe even great tracks. But, removing the victory fanfare just hammers the point home of "forget about Uematsu, forget about Final Fantasy, this is something else", and that's not something they should ever want to shove into the player's face.

I think the issue with FF13's OST is that while I enjoyed the synth sounds, there were very few melodies to remember. I didn't like the noisy orchestral sound of the preceding FF12, but at least it had some melodies to latch on to. Good melody is really what defined classic Final Fantasy music.

I read somewhere that Vanille was originally supposed to be the main character, not sure how true that is but it tracks

I would take this with a grain of salt because at around the same time, fans were regurgitating a popular myth that "the older captain Basch was ackshually supposed to be the main character of FF12 and not that irrelevant uncool twink Vaan who I dislike!". But from what I remember, FF13 did have a turbulent and backwards production cycle where a combat game demo was produced attempting to make a "playable version of the Advent Children movie fights" and the team still didn't have a finalized vision for what the game or story would be, and then the devs were told to make a game around that demo.

Yes, the game's pacing is disatisfactory for what it was branded as. I think FF13's backlash is in large part due to Square's suits being divorced from their fandoms and setting wrong expectations. FF fans expect a few things, 1. being able to roam across and explore a huge wilderness, 2. menu based party combat with fancy camera presentation of the battle (as opposed to action combat where you control a single character), 3. melodic music, etc. Starting with the mid 2000s, you had SE shipping games branded as FINAL FANTASY but failing to meet several of these core fan expectations. FF10 did not have exploration. FF12 did not have fancy camera presentation during combat. FF13 you were running down industrial corridors for most of the game with the huge wilderness backloaded. FF15, 16, and 7R are action games where you control one character. Etc. If FF13 had not been branded as FINAL FANTASY, ie like The Last Remnant, then I think more people would have gone without those expectations and rated it better.

And yes, it was also a problem when X did it. In a sense, all of the older FFs did it too with their pre-rendered backgrounds, but that's why they had stuff on the side and just shifted the path a little to not make it a straight line upwards. Yes, it's a very shallow fix, but the reason why no one complained in X or before is because it works. The game has to sell you on the illusion that you are not walking a straight line, even if you actually are. And most JRPGs don't have dungeons big enough to not be straight lines, but that's why they mask it. XIII didn't even bother to mask it, which was a huge mistake and a very valid complain. Add to that fact that there's also no real towns or anything but walking forward, cutscene, walking forward, cutscene, combat, cutscene and more walking forward and it gets stale real fast.

The classic FFs had a huge world map plain that you could run around in any direction, so even though the actual levels were linear you overall felt like you had freedom. Starting with FF10, there is no world map you can walk around on in any direction, so you just notice the linear levels. FF13's Gran Pulse, FF15, and FF7 Rebirth have enormous zones where you can walk around in any direction without hitting a wall for quite a while, but then you start running into issues where this can get monotonous, whereas a world map allows you to shortcut past the monotony and get straight to the interesting locations.

I agree with your examples about the microlevel writing of certain scenes and character interactions. It is hard to diagnose why this happened, as to how the Square used to have "good writers" and then they dropped the ball here. One idea I have heard (from a Warcraft nerd on Spacebattles who reviewed WC3's writing and compared it to the writing of WoW) is that older games typically had much shorter scripts, so they accumulated fewer mistakes along the way. Whereas when game stories began ballooning in the 2000s, there are simply more mistakes that pile up and the stories start feeling worse by aggregate. I somewhat agree with this as the tightest and most engaging story experience of the PS1 FFs is frontloaded on the first disc (or first 2 discs in FF9's case), and then after that the writing starts having problems, but since those were short 30 hour long games as opposed to 60 hour long game people don't tend to notice them as much. Or perhaps people remember how great the first disc was and then quit and thus aren't exposed to the issues later on, whereas with FF13 it doesn't have a frontloaded good impressions and people are just exposed to issues from the getgo which lasts for 60 hours.

No, really, mute the music on that scene with Sazh confronting Vanille and you'll feel nothing.

I think part of the problem is that this comes deep into the game when there have only been 6 party members, split into teams of two. No party members have been killed off early on to create tension like in Suikoden 1 or Xenoblade 1, and the player is already struggling with the battle system with just pairs of two characters. There is no suspense because the player knows it is highly unlikely that either Sazh will shoot Vanille or shoot himself and that the player will have to struggle with through a battle system designed for three characters with just one person left (though the parties start merging into three man teams shortly after that scene).

I don't even remember that guy's name because he was so wasted.

I think part of the issue is that the bad guys in FF13 are just random bureaucrats just show up to stand around and talk or order random grunts shoot at the player, rather than actually do stuff themselves or have a relationship with the player characters. Aerith personally knows the Turks which humanizes them as people, and we see the Turks themselves blow up the pillar and drop the plate. FF7R Reno comes across as a caring commander of soldiers, and Reno and Rude care about each other. In FF9 Beatrix and Queen Brahne are personal friends and comrades to Garnet and Steiner. Seymour in FF10 has casual and personal conversations with Yuna and Wakka. I guess Vayne and the judges in FF12 stood around and talked a lot, but they were framed by excellent cinematography and an English localization and voice acting that lent them gravitas and made them look cool and sophisticated.

suddenly the Pope is evil (of course)

Oddly, I wasn't really peeved by that, probably because it doesn't feel like there is any Catholic Church or Christianity stand-in in FF13. We don't see any Churches or people praying to god or talking about their faith and such. What we see is a government bureaucrat who is dressed like a Pope, but everything else about the places he inhabits and the people he rules is just government buildings and officials.

And then there's the ending rushing at lighting (heh) speed leaving all those dangling plot threads unresolved, because of course, you need to play the next 2 games. Like I said, I played this at launch it and it was such a sour note to end the game on. I may be remembering wrong, but back then the "Fabula Nova Crystalis" was supposed to be this huge media project with a lot of stuff connected to it, so the idea of a sequel was kind of in my mind but this feels like an incomplete piece and there was no confirmation (IIRC) of a direct sequel to XIII so I had no way to know if the intention for the game was to be "part 1" from the beginning or not. Maybe I am remembering wrong or was just ill-informed and the plan for 3 games to tell the entire story was announced before the first game launched but since I thought this was supposed to be a complete story, I was left very much unsatisfied.

My understanding is that FF13 was supposed to be a standalone game. The Fabula Nova Crystalis thing was supposed to be like the FF7 Compilation in that you would have a franchise of games that had similar aesthetics so if someone liked one game then they would have more games that looked like it to buy, but there wouldn't be a continuous plot. The FF13 sequels happened because Square's suits finally realized that not releasing a new big FF game every year like what Sakaguchi had been doing in the 90s was causing the franchise to fall out of the public consciousness and lose steam, so they need to pump out more mainline releases. FF13's troubled development also led to an overproduction of assets that were not used in the final game. Supposedly Naoki Yoshida received a hard drive of unused FF13 creature models and recolors which he imported into FF14. So the FF13 sequels were commissioned as a way to keep the franchise afloat with new releases, and to get some revenue out of those FF13 assets.

This game says "**** you. I am too lazy for that. I am not going to give you a fish out of water or cleverly demonstrate the setting and worldbuilding to you. I am not even going to waste time looking at the camera and vomiting exposition to you. No, you have to read the in-game wikipedia articles about the lore to even begin to comprehend what the characters in the opening cutscene you JUST saw right after pressing New Game are saying."

I have heard this complaint often, but I never felt like I had to open a lore codex, read an ultimania or read a forum post explanation of what was going on. I think the game did a good enough job explaining that there are alien being that enchant people and they have 13 days to accomplish their assigned task. If they succeed they turn into crystals, if they fail they turn into zombies. I was irked about how the very opening pre-rendered cutscene began with a lot of jargon being thrown around, though. FF12's opening CGI movie had a lot of proper nouns being thrown around, but they were comprehensible as the names of kingdoms and places, as opposed to terms you don't know the meaning of.

Interesting about the AI being broken on release. I had never heard of that.

In conclusion, no... I vehemently disagree. I think the bad reception was very much well-deserved.

the game is a mixed bag at best

I think I stand by opinion that the game is actually quite good. Enjoyable combat to look at, gorgeous aesthetics, okay music, and the characters are not bad. The game itself is hampered by pacing issues, limited party selection, and a lackluster story. It would not be my first recommendation for a JRPG like classic FFs or Xeno or Trails, but I would certainly recommend it before a Tales of or an Atelier game, let alone the other JRPG drek that has been forgotten. The main issue is that it was marketed towards a fandom that expected several things that the game would not fulfill, and should instead have been branded as its own thing like The Last Remnant so that people would judge it as such.

[Cipher]

Spoilered reply for length in case people don't want to read a very indepth discussion on Final Fantasy XIII.

To which I will say:

► Show Spoiler

First, while I generally did enjoy FF13's combat experience, I did not think Paradigm shifting was very good, for two reasons.

First, I understand the desire to prevent players from just spamming their one most efficient, most damaging ability or spell over and over again, as that quickly becomes monotonous and the player isn't seeing all of the other cool abilities and spells that exist in the game. So you need to design combat so that the player has a reason to use these other damage abilities/spells, without getting into MMO cooldown rotation nonsense. So FF13 and GW2 came up with a stagger/break bar system where you start off a fight wanting to use a certain special type of attack to build up stagger/diminish the enemy's break bar, and then when the bar is filled the boss gets stunned and will take more damage, so you then switch to spamming your highest damaging abilities/spells. I suppose this is actually not too different from a boss that changes elemental weaknesses so you are then changing up your attacks, but presented differently. But in FF13, you are not consciously inputting commands to deal stagger damage or hard hitting attacks. You just push a button to change which type of damage you deal, and then if you are in the stagger phase then your characters are automatically air juggling the enemy without your input. I think FF7R is an improvement in this regard, as you have to deliberately input your characters to use stagger or high damage attacks, though it was unfortunately paired with action combat.

I agree, FF7R does it better, specially because you can actually hit pause and input commands and also switch the character you are controlling. This is extremely important and one of my main gripes with the combat system of XIII.

Second, the Paradigm system did not visibly change the characters like switching jobs or dresspheres, where they get new clothing, new weapons, and noticeably different abilities and spell effects. Getting new outfits and weapons is satisfying, but Lightning and Snow look the same as ravagers staggering the enemy as when they switch to commando dealing high damage within the stagger window. Maybe they used different abilities and I cannot recall off of the top of my head, in which case that might be a presentation problem of the camera being zoomed out from the battle and not exhibiting character's unique attacks.

While I liked FF's many interpretations of the "job system" due to presenting new class designs and such, I think the animations for the dressphere changes take too long if we account for the fact that the dress grids(or whatever they were called) expect you to change jobs multiple times in a single encounter to give you bonuses. In that sense, XIII does it better, as its snappy and fast, taking that idea of switching "jobs" on the fly mid-fight. The problem is still that X-2 lets you control the entire party, whereas XIII doesn't.

I do agree that this is an often sadly overlooked plus of the game, probably because you don't go down to the surface of the planet until some 40 or 50 hours into the game. Seeing herds of herbivore monsters fleeing from a large behemoth or T-rex chasing after them, or a behemoth or a T-rex fighting each other, or a humongous Adamantoise stomping across the land. Or the ginormous Titan walking behind the mountains (and sometimes clipping through them). Or large flying monsters zipping around in the sky and you are worried that they might aggro and swoop down at you. That segment did get across the idea that you are were in the wilderness of Jurassic Park with lots of much bigger monsters than you around that you need to be aware of. Sadly, in the 16 years since this game has come out, only the Xenoblade games have really sorta touched on this.

I am really disappointed that not many games care enough to go that extra mile. I understand is a budget situation, where its considerably more cost effective to have a "slime monster" as a stand-in on the map for everything and then transition to the combat map or just nothing, like most JRPGs but I like seeing the monsters in the field and I specially like stuff like Chrono Trigger where the field doesn't even change, you see the monster, monster sees you, draw steel and get ready for a fight. At least Xenoblade is being smart with its popularity and budget and putting it to work. I hope more JRPGs go that route.

I did not feel like Lightning was a "girlboss". My irritation was that Lightning was trying to get her brother-in-law Snow killed when I quite liked him, and she was constantly running off from a group that was in peril when she was the most knowledgeable and well equipped to help them, including leaving behind an inexperienced 14 year old boy who is really going to die out there by himself without her help. And I especially did not like how she gave Hope the knife and aimed him as a weapon against Snow. I do agree that she is a bad protagonist compared to other FF protags, particularly Tidus, Noctis, and Zidane.

Snow was by far the most likeable party member. Yes, he does look a little punk-ish, but he is a man who actively trying to save his people, and seems pretty serious about marrying Serah. He was trying to dig Serah out of the crystal by himself when Lightning ran off, and then Snow was incredibly gracious when Hope tried to kill him.

Lighting was essentially made to be like Cloud, but woman. But even the "cold mercenary" Cloud Strife would crack jokes and deliver one liners every now and then and wasn't (potentially) not so heartless as to refuse to buy a flower and give it to a distraught child or his childhood friend. Contrast Lighting basically wanting Snow dead and pushing Hope to be the trigger man. I get that she blames Snow for Serah's situation but... I already said it many times that I disagree with most of the ways the writers execute their ideas. Still, I loved her design and downloaded wallpapers of her from the official promo art for my laptop back in the day before launch. What I mean is, I wanted to like Lighting. I thought the gun blade turning firearm and melee weapon was cool and a good use of the sci-fi setting to make a versatile weapon that can do melee and ranged. I came in expecting to like her a lot but I ended up not really thinking her character had much dept or was very interesting at all. Fang does the "cool, hardened veteran" schtick much better. To me, this is a huge failure as Lighting was the main character and it turned out to be one of the weakest MCs in the franchise.

Really? Vanille was quite cute and made a good couple with Hope, though I don't like mages with staves so I didn't want to use her in gameplay. Apparently dubbing the anime girl noises was embarrassing for the voice actress . I think Hope is a mixed bag. He is sympathetic in that he's just an ordinary sheltered American teenage boy who has just lost his mother, and has now been dropped into the wilderness with a swat team coming to shoot him and he has absolutely zero survival skills. But as a JRPG party member, he doesn't seem to become useful enough to the group. There are four other characters much better combatants than he ever would be, and he doesn't spec into a support role like Vanille. Throwing a boomerang and casting magic is novel, but he doesn't look as cool doing it like Yuffie in FF7R where she is flipping around and has the cool Naruto/FF14 Ninjutsu handseal effects when casting magic.

Could have been the VA. I thought the voice felt too forced that's also a problem with realistic face expressions that clearly don't match the inflection of the voice coming out. I don't need perfect lipsync or mocap, it's more about the very japanese body language that is not replicated by the tone and inflection of the English dub and its jarring and it throws me off. Same thing happens with other games like it, like Rikku in X-2. I think the English VAs really reaaaaally struggle to nail that "genky" girl role and make it sound natural instead of painfully artificial. They just can't nail the cadence, even if sometimes they can match the pitch. It really depends how much the voice fits. I know Hope's VA was like 17 at the time but his voice is too deep and raspy to fit a 14 year old. I always watch anime with subs and japanese audio and JRPGs with japanese audio whenever possible because I think the voices almost always fit better, but this was way back before that became common place so I was stuck with the English VA. I do that with most things, always prefer the original language with subs, not just with japanese stuff. I think Lighting, Fang, Sazh and Snow are very well done and fit their characters, Hope and Vanille, not so much in my opinion.

I quite liked Sazh. Story wise, he was my favorite character behind Snow, having been married and having a son, which is extremely rare in games and JRPGs. His story about trying to save his son is compelling, but unfortunately he gets sidelined compared to Snow and Lightning. The chocobo chick in his big hair was funny. I don't really like guns as compared to martial artists, so I didn't use him when possible.

That's my point. He is OK, but one note. What's his character? "muh son". That's it. Sure, it's rare in JRPGs... or is it? Barret, Cyan, Galuf, Shadow and that's just amongst FF main characters. Sure, as the lion's share of anime is aimed at 13 year old boys, so too the JRPG stories are. As such, adults in general are rare and amongst them family men or women are even rarer. Is that really a plus? What is Sazh character and personality outside of being a father seeking for his son? This is what I mean with a lack of strong characterization.

I think what made the first two discs of FF9 great was that you were 1. constantly exploring new whacky towns and kingdoms, and 2. there was near constant tension as you were being chased or swept from setpiece and as cities were blowing up. In FF13 you don't really get to visit cool whacky towns and walk into people's homes and talk to them and see a glimpse of their lives and then leave just as the place blows up and then want to avenge those people. You spend most of the game running through uninhabited industrial corridors or wilderness, and then in the handful of segments that do take place in populated areas, there are like real life modern cities where there are crowds of so many people you don't care about them since you don't get to interact with them individually as people.

Yes, this is also a huge miss plaguing XIII. You get told all about Cocoon but you never get to really experience it. The towns also made it so you would get the character specific cutscenes in IX that gave the player a glimpse of who the characters in the cutscene were. As I said, a masterclass on how to shuffle a party without letting the player choose and give mostly equal screentime to all of them so the Player gets to know them well, who they are, what's their story and how they play. So, when the time comes to pick a party of 4, you know very well who you want to take with you. XIII executes this very poorly.

I think the issue with FF13's OST is that while I enjoyed the synth sounds, there were very few melodies to remember. I didn't like the noisy orchestral sound of the preceding FF12, but at least it had some melodies to latch on to. Good melody is really what defined classic Final Fantasy music.

Good melody is the hallmark of a good soundtrack. Sure, Dark Souls has great music, but if you can't hum a tune afterwards then it doesn't stay and become an earworm. You want to hum the Mario Bross theme. You want to hum the classic Final Fantasy I theme. You want to hum the wall market in Sector 7. You want to hum the man with the machine gun. You want to hum memories of life. Dark Souls music is fine to listen on its own as classical pieces, but as a companion to a game is terrible as it doesn't stick in the same way a powerful melody would. Since the NES had very limited options for sound, they had to get creative and that's why most NES and SNES soundtracks have absolute masterpieces in terms of melody. Nothing pumps me up harder than the Chrono Trigger theme, with the snare and the strings in the beginning going hard from the get go.

I would take this with a grain of salt because at around the same time, fans were regurgitating a popular myth that "the older captain Basch was ackshually supposed to be the main character of FF12 and not that irrelevant uncool twink Vaan who I dislike!". But from what I remember, FF13 did have a turbulent and backwards production cycle where a combat game demo was produced attempting to make a "playable version of the Advent Children movie fights" and the team still didn't have a finalized vision for what the game or story would be, and then the devs were told to make a game around that demo.

Oh, right. I remember that, Lighting used some gravity tech on her boots and everything. You are correct, even then Lighting was the one featured. I heard that rumor about Basch, I always assumed it to be true but never actually dug around to confirm or deny it. In many ways, Balthier seems to me the one that was most likely the hero in an early draft, but at the end of the day the story revolves around Asche so she is the main character?
Kind of how the game tells the Player that this is Tidus' story but its really about Yuna?

Yes, the game's pacing is disatisfactory for what it was branded as. I think FF13's backlash is in large part due to Square's suits being divorced from their fandoms and setting wrong expectations. FF fans expect a few things, 1. being able to roam across and explore a huge wilderness, 2. menu based party combat with fancy camera presentation of the battle (as opposed to action combat where you control a single character), 3. melodic music, etc. Starting with the mid 2000s, you had SE shipping games branded as FINAL FANTASY but failing to meet several of these core fan expectations. FF10 did not have exploration. FF12 did not have fancy camera presentation during combat. FF13 you were running down industrial corridors for most of the game with the huge wilderness backloaded. FF15, 16, and 7R are action games where you control one character. Etc. If FF13 had not been branded as FINAL FANTASY, ie like The Last Remnant, then I think more people would have gone without those expectations and rated it better.

I disagree. I agree that the series changed a lot after IX and in my mind, IX is the last "Final Fantasy" and the series after IX became something else. In that sense, XIII fits well with the games in the new FF brand, actually for the very reasons you described. But, I disagree with the idea that had it been called "Fabula Nova Crystalis" or something like that instead of having the Final Fantasy title would have made it so the game was better received. It has too many problems as a JRPG outside of the burden of being a mainline FF game.

The classic FFs had a huge world map plain that you could run around in any direction, so even though the actual levels were linear you overall felt like you had freedom. Starting with FF10, there is no world map you can walk around on in any direction, so you just notice the linear levels. FF13's Gran Pulse, FF15, and FF7 Rebirth have enormous zones where you can walk around in any direction without hitting a wall for quite a while, but then you start running into issues where this can get monotonous, whereas a world map allows you to shortcut past the monotony and get straight to the interesting locations.

I agree with your examples about the microlevel writing of certain scenes and character interactions. It is hard to diagnose why this happened, as to how the Square used to have "good writers" and then they dropped the ball here. One idea I have heard (from a Warcraft nerd on Spacebattles who reviewed WC3's writing and compared it to the writing of WoW) is that older games typically had much shorter scripts, so they accumulated fewer mistakes along the way. Whereas when game stories began ballooning in the 2000s, there are simply more mistakes that pile up and the stories start feeling worse by aggregate. I somewhat agree with this as the tightest and most engaging story experience of the PS1 FFs is frontloaded on the first disc (or first 2 discs in FF9's case), and then after that the writing starts having problems, but since those were short 30 hour long games as opposed to 60 hour long game people don't tend to notice them as much. Or perhaps people remember how great the first disc was and then quit and thus aren't exposed to the issues later on, whereas with FF13 it doesn't have a frontloaded good impressions and people are just exposed to issues from the getgo which lasts for 60 hours.

I agree with your premise but disagree that it applies to XIII. How much writing is left after leaving Cocoon? A handful of hours for the ending chapters, maybe? Gran Pulse is mostly free roaming with very little plot. So, almost all of the plot is in the first 20 or so hours that you spend in Cocoon. Very similar to what you described with IX about the first 2 discs being front loaded. XIII is also heavily frontloaded on the script on Cocoon. In comparable time frames, the game does less than IX. And keep in mind IX has arguably the biggest script, since it has all those NPC interactions in the whacky towns and dungeons and also all the mandatory and optional cutscenes. At a glance, I would say IX has a bigger script than XIII but even if its not, it can't be that much smaller than XIII but it does way, way more with its runtime than XIII did. Sakaguchi poured his heart as the sole writer for his swan song, and it shows. FYI, IX is my favorite FF so I admit I am biased here, but I've been playing all the games since the original came out in the NES back in the day so its not like I was a stranger to the franchise when VII launched, much less IX. Perhaps that is why it is my favorite, as it felt like that love letter made by Sakaguchi to old time fans, such as myself.

I think part of the problem is that this comes deep into the game when there have only been 6 party members, split into teams of two. No party members have been killed off early on to create tension like in Suikoden 1 or Xenoblade 1, and the player is already struggling with the battle system with just pairs of two characters. There is no suspense because the player knows it is highly unlikely that either Sazh will shoot Vanille or shoot himself and that the player will have to struggle with through a battle system designed for three characters with just one person left (though the parties start merging into three man teams shortly after that scene).

Even ignoring the meta way to look at it, both from a gameplay and from a writing stand point, it is unlikely for Vanille to die, but compare that to Barret facing Dyne in VII. Sure, Barret is not going to die but there was much more tension and when Dyne has his final change of heart, realizes he has stared into the abyss for too long and is no longer fit to be a father to Marlene and kills himself, that melodrama is earned. And that was without voice acting and with blocky lego characters. But because the writing was competent, it didn't matter that the characters are legos with limited animation. Your mind was able to fill in the blanks. Now, the graphics in XIII are stunning, specially for the time, but then the writing has to be on par or else it falls flat. As I said, the soundtrack does an extreme amount of heavy lifting on that scene and the character expressions and body language too so the animators where bringing their A-game. Its the writing that lets all that effort down.

I think part of the issue is that the bad guys in FF13 are just random bureaucrats just show up to stand around and talk or order random grunts shoot at the player, rather than actually do stuff themselves or have a relationship with the player characters. Aerith personally knows the Turks which humanizes them as people, and we see the Turks themselves blow up the pillar and drop the plate. FF7R Reno comes across as a caring commander of soldiers, and Reno and Rude care about each other. In FF9 Beatrix and Queen Brahne are personal friends and comrades to Garnet and Steiner. Seymour in FF10 has casual and personal conversations with Yuna and Wakka. I guess Vayne and the judges in FF12 stood around and talked a lot, but they were framed by excellent cinematography and an English localization and voice acting that lent them gravitas and made them look cool and sophisticated.

And that's exactly my point. It can be executed properly. It doesn't matter they are corpo jobbers, Biggs and Wedge in VIII where too, so where Solt and Peppor in Chrono Cross. What matters is that amongst the faceless goons, these were the antagonists that had a face and a name and that had crossed the party as we played along and progressed through the plot. To just kill them off like that without letting the party get their chance is just wasteful. And with that guy is one thing, seriously I don't even remember his name, but like I said, Nabaat has the scene that creates a direct beef with Sazh, he mocks him and uses his son to trick him. He should get his chance to put her out of her mysery, to beat her up and make her talk or to be the bigger man and forgive her but no, she is just killed by the real bad guy for no real reason. That's a huge problem with the writing. The writers know, or at least, SHOULD know how the scenario will play out. If Nabaat and the other PSICOM goons that have a face and a name are just fodder, then let them be fodder. You don't give the audience a face for the force antagonizing the protagonists spent time creating direct conflict with one of such antagonists and then throw it all away. It feels like one of those modern Hollywood "subverting expectations" moments but I don't think that was the case, I just think the writers were incompetent, not malicious or subversive.

Oddly, I wasn't really peeved by that, probably because it doesn't feel like there is any Catholic Church or Christianity stand-in in FF13. We don't see any Churches or people praying to god or talking about their faith and such. What we see is a government bureaucrat who is dressed like a Pope, but everything else about the places he inhabits and the people he rules is just government buildings and officials.

That was more about JRPGs always being about saving the world by killing God and the church always being evil. I know its not about demonizing Christianity and more about using "cool gaijin culture" for their stories. I wasn't really complaining I just had to point it out because is such a staple of JRPGs and fantasy anime that the actual spoiler would be if the Church is actually wholesome and pious instead of the evil masterminds all along in one of those stories and I find that funny.

My understanding is that FF13 was supposed to be a standalone game. The Fabula Nova Crystalis thing was supposed to be like the FF7 Compilation in that you would have a franchise of games that had similar aesthetics so if someone liked one game then they would have more games that looked like it to buy, but there wouldn't be a continuous plot. The FF13 sequels happened because Square's suits finally realized that not releasing a new big FF game every year like what Sakaguchi had been doing in the 90s was causing the franchise to fall out of the public consciousness and lose steam, so they need to pump out more mainline releases. FF13's troubled development also led to an overproduction of assets that were not used in the final game. Supposedly Naoki Yoshida received a hard drive of unused FF13 creature models and recolors which he imported into FF14. So the FF13 sequels were commissioned as a way to keep the franchise afloat with new releases, and to get some revenue out of those FF13 assets.

Interesting, so the Hollywood sequel slop strategy? I always wondered if perhaps after playing the entire trilogy my opinion would change but this just cements my idea that its not really worth my time. Yeah, Sakaguchi was keen on creating more Final Fantasy games but those were always about innovation and trying new things with the ever developing new technology for games. At least if the story was planned from the get go as a 3 part affair I would have been less harsh but if that was the case, yikes.

I have heard this complaint often, but I never felt like I had to open a lore codex, read an ultimania or read a forum post explanation of what was going on. I think the game did a good enough job explaining that there are alien being that enchant people and they have 13 days to accomplish their assigned task. If they succeed they turn into crystals, if they fail they turn into zombies. I was irked about how the very opening pre-rendered cutscene began with a lot of jargon being thrown around, though. FF12's opening CGI movie had a lot of proper nouns being thrown around, but they were comprehensible as the names of kingdoms and places, as opposed to terms you don't know the meaning of.

Yes, it was mostly about the jargon and not the plot itself. I think the idea of making the intro "in medias res" was not (say it with me fellas!) executed properly. I get that, I really do, but take a look at VII. You only get your character, you get told you are amongst the elite of the enemy forces that work for the company that you are about to raid. Your main character then corrects the others and explicitly says that he is not working for them anymore and that he is just a merc for hire. That's it. You are 100% up to speed on what's going on and the worldbuilding can be expanded bit by bit as you progress. It takes a little while until you even get your 2nd character and then finally Tifa when you reach 7th Heaven. IX does the same, the middle of the action is the play in Alexandria but before that, Baku explains what's the plan what are we supposed to do. All throgout that intro scene you get a strong characterization on who each of the members of the Tantalus is like. Cut to Vivi and now you are the fish out of water so the game can lean the worldbuilding gently into the Player. Then its time for a boss battle some cutscenes and now you are off to the races in the forest with a mostly full party and a reason to fight together as you seek to save Garnet, oh and what's that? You have to begrudgingly work alongside Steiner so you know the stage is set for some juicy character tension. XIII starts with Lighting and Sazh throwing jargon at you, as prisoners for some reason and then fighint ensues. Yes, it is easy to slowly grasp what's going on and at the end of the day is not really that important. But, I don't think we needed to have almost the entire party in the same place. We could have started like VII, just Lighting, maybe some inner monologue explains us why she is imprisoned, then opportunity strikes and as she tries to break free Sazh (or even better, Snow but that would require more aggressive re-writes) gets swept into her break out attempt and they stick together out of necessity. This is almost exactly what the game already presents but we don't have to jump back and forth with the others just yet. I am trying my best not to just bash the writing but is just really amateurish. Specially in comparison to other Square games, let alone other Final Fantasy games. Vi does the shuffling characters at the beginning as well as in medias res but it executes it so much better is just not even comparable. Like I said, I can be understanding of the writers being ****** over by the corpos that mismanaged the entire Fabula Nova Crystalis project but at some point they have to own the responsibility of the product that they put out with their names in the credits.

According to Wikipedia, Daisuke Watanabe's writing credits in videogames before XIII where a few scenarios for X, Dewprism(Threads of Fate (Which I actually really liked and I think the writing was solid). He has credits as scenario writer for FF X-2, which has terrible writing, and Kingdom Hearts 1, 2, Chain of Memories and 358/2. I don't like Kingdom Hearts and I think the plot is deliberately convoluted to obfuscate its faults. He is also credited as a scenario writer for Dissidia and FF XII. But XIII was the first time he was given the reigns as lead scenario writer and apparently Nojima did the worldbuilding early in development and gave Watanabe the rough plotline and Watanabe was in charge to make it make sense and adjust how the scenarios would play out and the personality of the characters to make it all fit together. This man was not a novice, but clearly wrote XIII like one. And on a personal note, I dislike almost everything he had worked on prior to XIII in terms of writing, except XII so... for me that resume paints a clear picture why this game has terrible writing.

Interesting about the AI being broken on release. I had never heard of that.

That was my experience, and I wasn't alone. I remember perusing the GameFAQs boards at the time and there were many topics calling out the braindead AI. And like I said, even on my 2nd playthrough on Steam, the targeting issues persisted but at least the AI was using the ATB properly. I am sure if you google that you will find such examples created around that time.

I think I stand by opinion that the game is actually quite good. Enjoyable combat to look at, gorgeous aesthetics, okay music, and the characters are not bad. The game itself is hampered by pacing issues, limited party selection, and a lackluster story. It would not be my first recommendation for a JRPG like classic FFs or Xeno or Trails, but I would certainly recommend it before a Tales of or an Atelier game, let alone the other JRPG drek that has been forgotten. The main issue is that it was marketed towards a fandom that expected several things that the game would not fulfill, and should instead have been branded as its own thing like The Last Remnant so that people would judge it as such.

I respectfully agree to disagree on that one. Specially in regards to Tales. Tales of Vesperia, which was also on 360 is a much more enjoyable and superior experience on almost all fronts. Sure, the graphics are not photorealistic like XIII, but the art design and aesthetics are on point and the game looks really good for the time and most of all its consistent in its design. If compared head to head on presentation alone, sure XIII is better, but in every other metric Vesperia blows it out of the water. And I am not even a Tales fan! And by the way, you can change who you control in combat on the fly AND also setup some guidelines for the AI, very similar to gambits so it really owns XIII on that front. I have only played the original, Phantasia, the 2nd one Destiny, the 3rd one Eternia and then Vesperia so I am neither a fanboy or a huge connoisseur. And while how much we like or dislike the game is entirely subjective, I do believe I have explained why the game received a lot of justified flak, which was the reason for my original reply to your post. I am not sure if you were around back then, but it doesn't really matter if you were or if you are younger and experienced the game later. I wanted to express that all the gripes I described where also echoed in gaming forums around the time, which I only found out after finishing the game because, as I always do, I wanted to avoid spoilers. I as surprised that many, many people were echoing the same gripes and problems that I had with the game at launch. This is why I believe that the bad reputation the game had was entirely justified and not pushed by "internet reviewers" or "e-celebrities".

I thank you for taking the time with such a thorough reply. And while at the end of the day I disagree with your opinion, I appreciate that you are very passionate and earnestly honest about your love for JRPGs.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

► Final Fantasy 13

While I liked FF's many interpretations of the "job system" due to presenting new class designs and such, I think the animations for the dressphere changes take too long if we account for the fact that the dress grids(or whatever they were called) expect you to change jobs multiple times in a single encounter to give you bonuses. In that sense, XIII does it better, as its snappy and fast, taking that idea of switching "jobs" on the fly mid-fight.

I think long animations have been solved, either by allowing the player to press a button to skip them (a lot of JRPGs do this now), or doing what Pokemon XY did with its Mega Evolutions where the first time during a play session you see the whole animation, and then on subsequent uses you will usually see a short truncated 1 to 3 second version of it.

I loved her design and downloaded wallpapers of her from the official promo art for my laptop back in the day before launch.

This conversation got me to browse Minitokyo and other galleries of old FF13 art, and it's just so cool. Reminds me of when FF13 was coming out and I would browse the website with the piano music playing and see the cool CGI renders of the characters and their eidolons and then see those cool trailers, and fantasizing about getting an Xbox 360 to play the game. These days, only new Trails arcs or FF14 expansions coming out get me that excited, browsing through all of the screenshots and renders and concept art available.


Seeing this on the website did get me very interested in playing the game. Also Fang sitting with her cool spear and Hope with his cool samurai mech.

I think the English VAs really reaaaaally struggle to nail that "genky" girl role and make it sound natural instead of painfully artificial. They just can't nail the cadence, even if sometimes they can match the pitch.

I think perhaps one option might be for English dubs (for Western audiences) to not even try, as genki girls are just uncommon in the domestically made media here, especially stuff with a live action or photorealistic aesthetic. Final Fantasy XIV has a somewhat similar energetic young heroine named Alisaie prone to high pitched fits, but in the British English dub she is given a deeper and more restrained voice. (example line timestamped). But with that game you get into interesting questions about authenticity because supposedly the lead English localizer is actually sitting in on creative meetings and having input at the source, not just translating someone else's work after it has been created.


@2:30




@2:32

I always watch anime with subs and japanese audio and JRPGs with japanese audio whenever possible because I think the voices almost always fit better, but this was way back before that became common place so I was stuck with the English VA. I do that with most things, always prefer the original language with subs, not just with japanese stuff. I think Lighting, Fang, Sazh and Snow are very well done and fit their characters, Hope and Vanille, not so much in my opinion.

I do find myself leaning towards listening to JRPGs and anime with the Japanese voices nowadays, not just because of the usual mediocrity of English dubbing, but also because I believe that the Japanese writers and animators (who pose or draw the character to match the voice) are influenced by the voice actors (anime voices are often recorded before any animation has been done, with the actors looking at rough sketches of a scene or just an image of their character), especially if it is a franchise or live service game where there is continual creation of content rather than it just being a one and done.

I heard that rumor about Basch, I always assumed it to be true but never actually dug around to confirm or deny it. In many ways, Balthier seems to me the one that was most likely the hero in an early draft, but at the end of the day the story revolves around Asche so she is the main character?

I think FF12 is supposed to be more of an ensemble similar to FF6, and there wasn't really supposed to be a "main character". Vaan's voice actor and CG was the first one to be announced, so perhaps the SE's (now corporatified and no longer the fraternity it was under Sakaguchi) marketing department thought they needed to push a main character, and that's why Vaan gets central focus in the marketing materials, leading to fan expectations that he is supposed to be "the main character", only to get underwhelmed when in the final product he doesn't seem to get much focus compared to three other characters. I think Vaan may have been a victim of the creator Matsuno leaving during development and other people coming in to finish the game. Whatever ideas Matsuno might have had for Vaan were not implemented, perhaps him having more focus later in the story and it was just never produced. After the Pharos, FF12 feels like it has a rushed ending with a death star and then the heroes killing the sovereign and then that magically just resolves all of the conflict even though there is still an enemy superpower that was encroaching upon Arcadia. To me that did not feel like what I would have expected from a Matsuno game, as if the other people came in and wrote that to wrap up the game.

Kind of how the game tells the Player that this is Tidus' story but its really about Yuna?

FFX is ultimately Tidus' story, more specifically FF10 winds up being about the looming ghost of the Zanarkand civilization as represented through their agent Tidus. The society of Spira touts that the Summoners will be their hero, unaware of the real problem that is the Zanarkand summoner Yu Yevon. If Yuna had done the hero thing the people of Spira were telling her to do, then the world would not have been saved. It is Tidus who derails the pilgrimage and leads to the final defeat and resolution of the story, mainly because he is an outsider who not been conditioned to accept Summoners as the only solution, and he has more information as to what the problem actually is.

I just had to point it out because is such a staple of JRPGs and fantasy anime that the actual spoiler would be if the Church is actually wholesome and pious instead of the evil masterminds all along in one of those stories and I find that funny.

You may enjoy the Trails series, as the Septian Church is a genuine force for good and does not have anything sinister about them, and several Church agents are party members. Sadly pretty much none of the many characters in the Trails games stop to pray to the goddess to ask for help in their troubles, go to service on Sundays to received the sacraments, etc, despite Aidios worship being ostensibly near universal.

I always wondered if perhaps after playing the entire trilogy my opinion would change but this just cements my idea that its not really worth my time.

I think FF13-2 might be worth it if you enjoyed the aesthetics and the battle system of the first game. 13-2 remedies some of the first game's problems by giving you some leeway to pick and choose where to go, and there are wilderness environments right from the get go. As opposed to being sent down long linear industrial corridors for 40 hours. The first hour is pretty cool. However, the writing problems from the first game persist. For example, there are some very strange oddities with how the adventure is set up. Serah either should have been a new original girl character for Noel to adventure with, or the duo have been Snow and Serah together. Etc. But it is easier to overlook because the story is less serious and is more of a fun adventure romp. However, you only have the two party members, but you can collect monsters like Pokemon and pick whichver one you want for your third party member in battle. The game is also noticeably lower budget from the first game, which had lots of prerendered CGI cutscenes, whereas they are rare in FF13-2.

According to Wikipedia, Daisuke Watanabe's writing credits in videogames before XIII where a few scenarios for X, Dewprism(Threads of Fate (Which I actually really liked and I think the writing was solid). He has credits as scenario writer for FF X-2, which has terrible writing, and Kingdom Hearts 1, 2, Chain of Memories and 358/2. I don't like Kingdom Hearts and I think the plot is deliberately convoluted to obfuscate its faults. He is also credited as a scenario writer for Dissidia and FF XII. But XIII was the first time he was given the reigns as lead scenario writer and apparently Nojima did the worldbuilding early in development and gave Watanabe the rough plotline and Watanabe was in charge to make it make sense and adjust how the scenarios would play out and the personality of the characters to make it all fit together. This man was not a novice, but clearly wrote XIII like one. And on a personal note, I dislike almost everything he had worked on prior to XIII in terms of writing, except XII so... for me that resume paints a clear picture why this game has terrible writing.

Interesting. So it seems that despite he keeps putting out questionable writing time after time, Square kept assigning him more games to write rather than replacing him with someone else (ie perhaps an acclaimed novelist). Perhaps Japanese corporate culture is to blame where people aren't fired and become entrenched. It seems something similar has happened to FF14's and Trails' writing where you have a guy who keeps pushing out wonky storylines but he doesn't get replaced.

I wanted to express that all the gripes I described where also echoed in gaming forums around the time, which I only found out after finishing the game because, as I always do, I wanted to avoid spoilers. I as surprised that many, many people were echoing the same gripes and problems that I had with the game at launch. This is why I believe that the bad reputation the game had was entirely justified and not pushed by "internet reviewers" or "e-celebrities".

I didn't have an Xbox 360 yet when FF13 came out (I got one with Skyrim), so I had seen the negative reception before I got to play it for myself. The way people talked about it made it sound like not merely underwhelming, but a truly unenjoyably awful 2/10 game that people were furious over. So when I finally played the game, I was pleasantly surprised that I found it enjoyable and better than many games I had bought and never finished. This has been my experience not just with FF13, but many other games as well. I heard that Trails of Cold Steel 2 and 4, Trails through Daybreak 2, FF14 Stormblood, and others were "bad" games and went in bracing for something bad, only to have thoroughly enjoyed them, much more so than the other entries in those same franchises that were upheld as being "better". I was often called a contrarian for my opinions, but I would just say that I can find positives in "bad games" that often go unremarked, and can recognize flaws in "good games" that are often glossed over as well. Pointing out the flaws in the darling baby of a franchise would nab a lot of heat, part of the reason why I became averse to interacting too much with fandoms as they are cultish.

[Acrux]

Tower of Time is celebrating it's 7 year release anniversary tomorrow. The released a free DLC (just concept art, etc.) but he's also asking people to play on April 12th, 2025, at 7:00 PM CET (that's 10:00 AM PDT, 1:00 PM EDT, 6:00 PM BST, 8:00 PM EEST, and 2:00 AM JST on April 13) to try to beat the game's peak concurrent player total (only 686, so it might not be too difficult to do.

[rusty_shackleford]

Tower of Time is celebrating it's 7 year release anniversary tomorrow. The released a free DLC (just concept art, etc.) but he's also asking people to play on April 12th, 2025, at 7:00 PM CET (that's 10:00 AM PDT, 1:00 PM EDT, 6:00 PM BST, 8:00 PM EEST, and 2:00 AM JST on April 13) to try to beat the game's peak concurrent player total (only 686, so it might not be too difficult to do.

Really underrated game imo. @Kalarion played it recently and enjoyed it, I think.

It shows how good RTwP could conceptually be compared to what we've actually gotten in e.g., IE games/NWN/Pillows.

[Tadeusz]

Looks interesting. Is there something conceptually close to get an idea of the game's gameplay?

[Cipher]

Reply

► Final Fantasy 13

I think long animations have been solved, either by allowing the player to press a button to skip them (a lot of JRPGs do this now), or doing what Pokemon XY did with its Mega Evolutions where the first time during a play session you see the whole animation, and then on subsequent uses you will usually see a short truncated 1 to 3 second version of it.

Agreed. Skipping animations with a button or a menu option is a must. I don't like switching them off entirely, I want the option to skip them if I want to or not as they come. I also appreciate when games give you all that and also a fast forward feature, like the SRW games. Sometimes I want to see one part of the combat animation, mostly my mech delivering its special attack and then skip the rest, but if you are the one countering, I like that I can speed up the attack animation of the enemy and then see the animation of my mech.

This conversation got me to browse Minitokyo and other galleries of old FF13 art, and it's just so cool. Reminds me of when FF13 was coming out and I would browse the website with the piano music playing and see the cool CGI renders of the characters and their eidolons and then see those cool trailers, and fantasizing about getting an Xbox 360 to play the game. These days, only new Trails arcs or FF14 expansions coming out get me that excited, browsing through all of the screenshots and renders and concept art available.

For sure, it was an exciting time since it was the new generation Final Fantasy game and after reading about their idea of the Fabula Nova Crystalis, I was really anticipating the game. That's why I mentioned it a few times now, I wanted the game to be great. I wanted to like it. And I already knew, since FFX, that the old era of FF as I knew it, FF under Sakaguchi, was long gone so I was very open to the new era and I liked what I saw in that tech demo with Lighting using the gravity boots and such. I knew it was going to be different and it was my expectation it was not going to be a classic turnbased JRPG. I just want to stress that my mindset coming in was of a fan wanting to enjoy the newest entry.

I think perhaps one option might be for English dubs (for Western audiences) to not even try, as genki girls are just uncommon in the domestically made media here, especially stuff with a live action or photorealistic aesthetic. Final Fantasy XIV has a somewhat similar energetic young heroine named Alisaie prone to high pitched fits, but in the British English dub she is given a deeper and more restrained voice. (example line timestamped). But with that game you get into interesting questions about authenticity because supposedly the lead English localizer is actually sitting in on creative meetings and having input at the source, not just translating someone else's work after it has been created.


@2:30




@2:32

The problem is not so the voice but, like I said, the cadence and the inflections. The issue started when we got photorealistic graphics that mimic the face expressions and specially the body language. Like I said, take a look at Riku in X-2, she has a very genky girl anime overexaggerated and histrionic body language that fits with the japanese cadence and inflections but English VAs really really struggle to nail because they don't match the energy. The English VA for Excel Saga did her best and came very close, the original Japenese VA for Excel is still leagues above, but this one got really really close matching the energy:



The problem is, the English VA almost destroyed her voice trying to match the energy. This is the gulf of skill that the Japanese have over the people in America. And it makes sense, most entertainment has always been done here so we didn't even had a proper VA industry until the PS2 era came around and it was still in its infancy. I argue the anime dubs still haven't gotten around to get to a good place to compete with the Japanese VAs but at least people doing VA have been around for decades so they have honed their craft and the demand for the industry has grown to a place that it was becoming a serious line of work... until Hollyweird started to have regular actors try to do VA and ******* over the veterans. But that's another conversation. Anyways, in regards to this, the problem is that the voice can have a lower pitch but the energy, the over exaggerated inflections and the cadence has to match or it creates too much dissonance when is paired with the facial animations and specially with the body language. America has a wealth of amazing VA talent, the problem is that those folks usually didn't dub anime and then didn't dub anime games, they would do voice work for western games. If we want to keep trying to do dub for anime shows and games, we either match the energy or stop pretending. But that's on my personal opinion and that's why I always prefer original audio with subs for everything foreign.

I do find myself leaning towards listening to JRPGs and anime with the Japanese voices nowadays, not just because of the usual mediocrity of English dubbing, but also because I believe that the Japanese writers and animators (who pose or draw the character to match the voice) are influenced by the voice actors (anime voices are often recorded before any animation has been done, with the actors looking at rough sketches of a scene or just an image of their character), especially if it is a franchise or live service game where there is continual creation of content rather than it just being a one and done.

Yes. Their industry has been around for a long, long time and they have many decades of experience and training than us so it makes sense. Also, the Japanese language itself is more melodic than English and as such the scenes and body language is meant to fit that cadence not ours. We can make do and there have been many great examples, but those are the minority and require big names and an even bigger budget. Most of the times its just inferior because the talent they get to do the dubs has inferior talent than the original VAs and usually less experience under their belt.

I think FF12 is supposed to be more of an ensemble similar to FF6, and there wasn't really supposed to be a "main character". Vaan's voice actor and CG was the first one to be announced, so perhaps the SE's (now corporatified and no longer the fraternity it was under Sakaguchi) marketing department thought they needed to push a main character, and that's why Vaan gets central focus in the marketing materials, leading to fan expectations that he is supposed to be "the main character", only to get underwhelmed when in the final product he doesn't seem to get much focus compared to three other characters. I think Vaan may have been a victim of the creator Matsuno leaving during development and other people coming in to finish the game. Whatever ideas Matsuno might have had for Vaan were not implemented, perhaps him having more focus later in the story and it was just never produced. After the Pharos, FF12 feels like it has a rushed ending with a death star and then the heroes killing the sovereign and then that magically just resolves all of the conflict even though there is still an enemy superpower that was encroaching upon Arcadia. To me that did not feel like what I would have expected from a Matsuno game, as if the other people came in and wrote that to wrap up the game.

Agreed. Matsuno leaving was definitely something that changed the outcome of the final product and you can see visions clashing in many parts of the game, specially when it comes to Vaan and like you mentioned, the last stretch of the game where we know for sure that was done without Matsuno. I love everything Ogre Battle and I loved FFT so I am curious to see what would his FFXII would have been but, we'll never know.

FFX is ultimately Tidus' story, more specifically FF10 winds up being about the looming ghost of the Zanarkand civilization as represented through their agent Tidus. The society of Spira touts that the Summoners will be their hero, unaware of the real problem that is the Zanarkand summoner Yu Yevon. If Yuna had done the hero thing the people of Spira were telling her to do, then the world would not have been saved. It is Tidus who derails the pilgrimage and leads to the final defeat and resolution of the story, mainly because he is an outsider who not been conditioned to accept Summoners as the only solution, and he has more information as to what the problem actually is.

I mean... sure. But, I don't see anything unique to Tidus' actions that makes it his story. At the end of the day it was Yuna's decision to reject tradition. And yeah, there's the connection of Jecht there, but we can argue that Auron had just as much of a connection with Jecht and the previous sacrifice was Yuna's father. To me, Tidus feels like it only exists to be the fish out of water so the writers can explain the lore of the world to the Player. In fact, and I may be remembering wrong here, but I think he is the only character you can change the name. Everyone else cannot be modified, reinforcing the idea that Tidus is the PoV, but the story is more about Yuna and arguably Auron as well. Its no surprise Auron is the most popular character from the cast by a country mile considering he is not the main hero or the main heroine. And that's a great example of a VA that understood the assignment. The voice fits perfectly but not only the voice, the inflections and the cadence. He is cool and calm most of the time, but when things gets serious he brings the raspyness and the energy to match what you are seeing with Auron's body language. However, I concede that you more know about the game than I do because I only played the game once around launch, didn't really liked it that much, I thought it was OK but very inferior to IX and that it felt detached from the previous 9 entries in the series.

You may enjoy the Trails series, as the Septian Church is a genuine force for good and does not have anything sinister about them, and several Church agents are party members. Sadly pretty much none of the many characters in the Trails games stop to pray to the goddess to ask for help in their troubles, go to service on Sundays to received the sacraments, etc, despite Aidios worship being ostensibly near universal.

I played Sky back in the PSP days and I really liked it. I am excited for the remake.

I think FF13-2 might be worth it if you enjoyed the aesthetics and the battle system of the first game. 13-2 remedies some of the first game's problems by giving you some leeway to pick and choose where to go, and there are wilderness environments right from the get go. As opposed to being sent down long linear industrial corridors for 40 hours. The first hour is pretty cool. However, the writing problems from the first game persist. For example, there are some very strange oddities with how the adventure is set up. Serah either should have been a new original girl character for Noel to adventure with, or the duo have been Snow and Serah together. Etc. But it is easier to overlook because the story is less serious and is more of a fun adventure romp. However, you only have the two party members, but you can collect monsters like Pokemon and pick whichver one you want for your third party member in battle. The game is also noticeably lower budget from the first game, which had lots of prerendered CGI cutscenes, whereas they are rare in FF13-2.

But then, that game doesn't really have an ending as they already knew and planned for the 3rd one, correct? And that one is more of an action hack and slash, right?

Interesting. So it seems that despite he keeps putting out questionable writing time after time, Square kept assigning him more games to write rather than replacing him with someone else (ie perhaps an acclaimed novelist). Perhaps Japanese corporate culture is to blame where people aren't fired and become entrenched. It seems something similar has happened to FF14's and Trails' writing where you have a guy who keeps pushing out wonky storylines but he doesn't get replaced.

Yeah, it appears so. It's a real shame, compared to what we had before this is a real downgrade for Final Fantasy. Surprised you mentioned Trails as I've always heard praise for the worldbuilding and writing for the series, what do you mean exactly? As I said, I have only played the Sky series so I am considerably out of the loop, but I liked Sky.

I didn't have an Xbox 360 yet when FF13 came out (I got one with Skyrim), so I had seen the negative reception before I got to play it for myself. The way people talked about it made it sound like not merely underwhelming, but a truly unenjoyably awful 2/10 game that people were furious over. So when I finally played the game, I was pleasantly surprised that I found it enjoyable and better than many games I had bought and never finished. This has been my experience not just with FF13, but many other games as well. I heard that Trails of Cold Steel 2 and 4, Trails through Daybreak 2, FF14 Stormblood, and others were "bad" games and went in bracing for something bad, only to have thoroughly enjoyed them, much more so than the other entries in those same franchises that were upheld as being "better". I was often called a contrarian for my opinions, but I would just say that I can find positives in "bad games" that often go unremarked, and can recognize flaws in "good games" that are often glossed over as well. Pointing out the flaws in the darling baby of a franchise would nab a lot of heat, part of the reason why I became averse to interacting too much with fandoms as they are cultish.

Well, the thing is that I always try to be fair but I can definitely see how someone that just hated the entire cast or was put off by the many problems with the story and then coupled with the hallways for hours and braindead AI would not even finish the game. If you don't like a single member of the main cast the game only has the combat to fallback on, and while the combat is fun the problems can be so frustrating. As I said, the fight with Cid wasn't even hard but I felt so salty when I had to redo it because I played it exactly the same just changed to Med for a sec to cure my Lighting and then went back to Commando/Ravager. You mentioned the Tales series but as I said, Vesperia has none of the issues the game has and a great aesthetic look to it. And sure, if you hate that main cast and that style of combat you won't enjoy the game but the difference here as that the combat is an improvement on what the serious previously offered, as now this one is truly 3d, as such it is a great entry in the series but a very solid game if it was the only Tales game you had ever played. And even though it's more action oriented, having to manually attack, move and input the combos, it still feels more like an RPG because you can switch control of characters on the fly, pause and give them commands aaaaaand setup their priority of actions in a very similar way as the gambit system of XII, which has been in all Tales games as far as I know and certainly was there with the 2nd and 3rd game, Destiny and Eternia back in the PS1. I can definitely see someone younger and/or someone that judges paid products more harshly giving it a 2/10 and again, I don't think that was due to online reviews and more out of playing the game and encountering only bad stuff. Would that be really accurate and nuanced? Not really, but then again such are opinions on internet forums. You also had people glazing the game online and acting like it was the best thing ever but those were the minority. As I said, I just wanted to point out and detail my own experience with the game and that reflected very much the main gripes the majority of folks expressed on the online discord at the time and I wasn't influenced by any online youtube reviewer so I still stand by the idea that the bad reputation was absolutely deserved. Sure, being an "angry" video game reviewer was popular at the time and of course a lot of folks just parroted the talking points just like they do now but even as someone that wanted to like the game, that was a huge fan of the series since the beginning and that tried to give the game a fair shake, I ended up with a very similar conclusion to most people online.

[Cipher]

Tower of Time is celebrating it's 7 year release anniversary tomorrow. The released a free DLC (just concept art, etc.) but he's also asking people to play on April 12th, 2025, at 7:00 PM CET (that's 10:00 AM PDT, 1:00 PM EDT, 6:00 PM BST, 8:00 PM EEST, and 2:00 AM JST on April 13) to try to beat the game's peak concurrent player total (only 686, so it might not be too difficult to do.

Thanks for mentioning it. I bought it and I'll take a look at it. I really like RTwP.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

► Trails series

But then, that game doesn't really have an ending as they already knew and planned for the 3rd one, correct? And that one is more of an action hack and slash, right?

Yeah, FF13-2 ends on a cliffhanger and Lightning Returns is the conclusion. LR is the action one.

Surprised you mentioned Trails as I've always heard praise for the worldbuilding and writing for the series, what do you mean exactly? As I said, I have only played the Sky series so I am considerably out of the loop, but I liked Sky.

Oh boy. There are so, so many things to say here, it would be difficult to keep it short. I'll try the best I can. I am going to give some spoilers, but I think it is important for someone to know what they are getting into before making a very expensive commitment.

The first few Trails games promise that the Trails series is going to be this big epic novel series about an escalating global conflict and the mystery box that is the Ouroboros supervillains. Unfortunately, after 12 games, 1,000+ hours of commitment and $500 sank, the result has been unsatisfactory.

The geopolitical conflict storyline eventually escalated into the annexation of two countries and then a world war... which was then called off after a few hours with no character deaths or any cities being captured or firebombed, and then the status quo and borders were reset back to what it was at the beginning of Sky. And then you don't get to see any widows or orphans or any lingering animosity. There was also absolutely insane, aggravating moral grandstanding about it (which still continues in the latest games about how "evil" Erebonia was and how they had to pay reparations for a defensive war that they were winning). The heroes routinely sabotage their own country during a tumultuous period and install their nice friends into power, who work against what is in their country's best interest. There is this defacto united nations that winds up being created, and anyone who is not part of it is treated with suspicion and must be infiltrated and subverted to open them up (and, in the recent games, opening them up to globalist agenda **** like mass illegal immigration of foreigners and how their culture is so much better and should be appreciated more than your own white culture, but I digress). No one is allowed to act in what is their countries' best interest or to express animosity or suspicion towards other characters. Etc. Over the last couple games, the geopolitical conflict has more or less stalled out and there is no tension internationally, which makes the series boring and future games less enticing to look forward to. After the mishandling of the world war in Cold Steel IV, a lot of people became very upset and dropped the series. IIRC week 1 sales in Japan halved from CS4 to Daybreak 1, going from 100k sales down to 50k sales, which the franchise has remained at for the releases of the two games after.







The Ouroboros storyline has gone absolutely nowhere since the end of SC. After 12 games, 1,000+ hours and $500 hours sank, we know nothing more about the big bads since SC, and have made no progress towards their defeat. In fact, we have had negative progress. Regression. Weissman who died was almost immediately replaced. There was another Anguis who died but has since then been replaced. Any Enforcers who quit the organization are then replaced by more enforcers. I think the net total of bad guys has actually gone up rather than gone down. Falcom have zero decency. Even FF14's director and writer realized after the first 2 expansions and 200 hours that they needed to hurry up and get around to explaining what the bad guys wanted and finally defeating them, and did just that with the Shadowbringers expansion. I am not sure if this franchise will ever get a ShB, and judging by how unsatisfactory the world war that had been built up for 9 games was, I have little hope it will be good.

Overarching issues aside, you have issues with the individual games. Of about half of the Trails games, most of their long runtimes is filler. 40 hours of the 60 hour long SC, 50 hours of the 60 hour Azure, 100 hours of the 130 hour long Cold Steel 3, 60 hours of the 90 hour long Cold Steel IV, one of the three routes in Reverie, 70 hours of the 100 hour long Daybreak 1, and the entirety of the 110 hour long Daybreak 2, is filler in which the heroes chase around Ouroboros supervillains never killing or capturing any of them and making progress. Egregious repetitive fights against the same people over and over and over that amounts to nothing accomplished. The heroes in Daybreak 2 even openly lampshade how they're chasing these villains around only for them to escape and how they should probably not even bother chasing after them anymore. Falcom's writers know what they are doing, and yet do it anyway. And it's not like they are incapable of making satisfying stories in which the player does feel like they accomplished stuff (see FC, CS1 and 2, the Rean and C routes of Reverie). They just don't want to.




There are other writing issues that by aggregate bring down the story experience, such as characters not being allowed to express animosity towards each other when they should. Unrepentant criminals and mass murderers being let off the hook for their crimes (often because they are cute girls). We have had something like 70 or 80 party members across the series and not one of them have died. Only two people have gotten married and had a child so far, everyone else (including Estelle and Joshua, who are in their mid twenties now. Zin is going to be middle aged soon) is still a lonely bachelor even after having had shipteases going on for many years and climbing up there in age. It's pretty infuriating because you want these relationships to matriculate and for people to get happy endings. Etc. But I think I have hit the biggest issues. I do think that the Trails games are still definitely worth playing, but you have to go in with tempered expectations that it is a lot of build up and hype for a payoff that never comes, and that you will spend most of the franchise meandering around. So you have to understand that you are there for the other things, namely the pleasant character personalities, the aesthetics, the music, unique setting, the turn based combat and character building, etc. I soured on the writing around Azure/CS3, but I still enjoy the games enough to buy them day 1. Looking forward to the latest game Horizon coming out later this year. I bought the CLE port of it a couple weeks ago thinking that the fan translation patch would be finished soon and that Durante's port of it would be at least a year off, but then it was announced so I refunded and will wait.

[Nessa]

I've actually been enjoying this one.



The gameplay is a bit sparse in spots, and it's usually better to always do stealth kills. And all the Russian reds are abject idiots but that may actually be realism instead of bad AI.

[Cipher]

► Trails series

But then, that game doesn't really have an ending as they already knew and planned for the 3rd one, correct? And that one is more of an action hack and slash, right?

Yeah, FF13-2 ends on a cliffhanger and Lightning Returns is the conclusion. LR is the action one.

Surprised you mentioned Trails as I've always heard praise for the worldbuilding and writing for the series, what do you mean exactly? As I said, I have only played the Sky series so I am considerably out of the loop, but I liked Sky.

Oh boy. There are so, so many things to say here, it would be difficult to keep it short. I'll try the best I can. I am going to give some spoilers, but I think it is important for someone to know what they are getting into before making a very expensive commitment.

The first few Trails games promise that the Trails series is going to be this big epic novel series about an escalating global conflict and the mystery box that is the Ouroboros supervillains. Unfortunately, after 12 games, 1,000+ hours of commitment and $500 sank, the result has been unsatisfactory.

The geopolitical conflict storyline eventually escalated into the annexation of two countries and then a world war... which was then called off after a few hours with no character deaths or any cities being captured or firebombed, and then the status quo and borders were reset back to what it was at the beginning of Sky. And then you don't get to see any widows or orphans or any lingering animosity. There was also absolutely insane, aggravating moral grandstanding about it (which still continues in the latest games about how "evil" Erebonia was and how they had to pay reparations for a defensive war that they were winning). The heroes routinely sabotage their own country during a tumultuous period and install their nice friends into power, who work against what is in their country's best interest. There is this defacto united nations that winds up being created, and anyone who is not part of it is treated with suspicion and must be infiltrated and subverted to open them up (and, in the recent games, opening them up to globalist agenda **** like mass illegal immigration of foreigners and how their culture is so much better and should be appreciated more than your own white culture, but I digress). No one is allowed to act in what is their countries' best interest or to express animosity or suspicion towards other characters. Etc. Over the last couple games, the geopolitical conflict has more or less stalled out and there is no tension internationally, which makes the series boring and future games less enticing to look forward to. After the mishandling of the world war in Cold Steel IV, a lot of people became very upset and dropped the series. IIRC week 1 sales in Japan halved from CS4 to Daybreak 1, going from 100k sales down to 50k sales, which the franchise has remained at for the releases of the two games after.







The Ouroboros storyline has gone absolutely nowhere since the end of SC. After 12 games, 1,000+ hours and $500 hours sank, we know nothing more about the big bads since SC, and have made no progress towards their defeat. In fact, we have had negative progress. Regression. Weissman who died was almost immediately replaced. There was another Anguis who died but has since then been replaced. Any Enforcers who quit the organization are then replaced by more enforcers. I think the net total of bad guys has actually gone up rather than gone down. Falcom have zero decency. Even FF14's director and writer realized after the first 2 expansions and 200 hours that they needed to hurry up and get around to explaining what the bad guys wanted and finally defeating them, and did just that with the Shadowbringers expansion. I am not sure if this franchise will ever get a ShB, and judging by how unsatisfactory the world war that had been built up for 9 games was, I have little hope it will be good.

Overarching issues aside, you have issues with the individual games. Of about half of the Trails games, most of their long runtimes is filler. 40 hours of the 60 hour long SC, 50 hours of the 60 hour Azure, 100 hours of the 130 hour long Cold Steel 3, 60 hours of the 90 hour long Cold Steel IV, one of the three routes in Reverie, 70 hours of the 100 hour long Daybreak 1, and the entirety of the 110 hour long Daybreak 2, is filler in which the heroes chase around Ouroboros supervillains never killing or capturing any of them and making progress. Egregious repetitive fights against the same people over and over and over that amounts to nothing accomplished. The heroes in Daybreak 2 even openly lampshade how they're chasing these villains around only for them to escape and how they should probably not even bother chasing after them anymore. Falcom's writers know what they are doing, and yet do it anyway. And it's not like they are incapable of making satisfying stories in which the player does feel like they accomplished stuff (see FC, CS1 and 2, the Rean and C routes of Reverie). They just don't want to.




There are other writing issues that by aggregate bring down the story experience, such as characters not being allowed to express animosity towards each other when they should. Unrepentant criminals and mass murderers being let off the hook for their crimes (often because they are cute girls). We have had something like 70 or 80 party members across the series and not one of them have died. Only two people have gotten married and had a child so far, everyone else (including Estelle and Joshua, who are in their mid twenties now. Zin is going to be middle aged soon) is still a lonely bachelor even after having had shipteases going on for many years and climbing up there in age. It's pretty infuriating because you want these relationships to matriculate and for people to get happy endings. Etc. But I think I have hit the biggest issues. I do think that the Trails games are still definitely worth playing, but you have to go in with tempered expectations that it is a lot of build up and hype for a payoff that never comes, and that you will spend most of the franchise meandering around. So you have to understand that you are there for the other things, namely the pleasant character personalities, the aesthetics, the music, unique setting, the turn based combat and character building, etc. I soured on the writing around Azure/CS3, but I still enjoy the games enough to buy them day 1. Looking forward to the latest game Horizon coming out later this year. I bought the CLE port of it a couple weeks ago thinking that the fan translation patch would be finished soon and that Durante's port of it would be at least a year off, but then it was announced so I refunded and will wait.

WOW... just, WOW. Thank you so much for the thorough breakdown. I must say, I am glad I didn't played anything after Sky and now I am not so sure if I want to get the Sky remake. I thought the biggest strength of the Trails series was supposed to be the writing, the ever developing worldbuilding and the ever advancing continuity, but if they are still meandering after 1000 hours across 12 titles, that's just unacceptable. I get what you mean about still liking the games because I played a little bit of Cold Steel 1 and I liked the combat. But wow, I mean... what a way to betray the trust the fanbase has put on the series and erode the goodwill of 2 decades worth of titles and waiting for the story to unfold. Unbelievable.

EDIT: And apparently they are saying the series is gearing for the end? That has to be wrong, correct? How can they meander so much for all this time and go to the lengths you described and then just rush to the end in the next arc. Surely, there has to be a mistake here, @Val the Moofia Boss -

[1998]

Beamdog is releasing some ****** portrait pack for BH, made by the winner of that nonsense community contest.

[rusty_shackleford]

libtards are obsessed with niggelves

[Tangerine]

Not a single attractive portrait in the bunch. If I wanted to see ugly people, I'd stop by the local college campus.