The “save-the-world” storyline, the character advancement system reminiscent of FFX, standard RPG attributes, collecting, purchasing, and upgrading items, character classes/roles, active time battle system, optional side missions. The lack of the free-roaming seems to be the direction the FF series has been taking for a while, ever since the elimination of the world map in FFX. But really it seemed like that game and FFXII were pretty linear too, unless you count the “go to some other place and kill some random monster” optional quests.
The whole game is a cutscene or a battle. In this sense it’s similar to, say, Disgaea or Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. But I would still call those RPGs.
exploration is an important part, though has taken a back seat in some recent RPGs, I’ll admit that. Character advancement and new gear is now standard in most games so while being important to RPGs is by no means a hallmark of them anymore. Story is obviously very important. Side quests. The ability to talk to NPCs and get side stories/information. JRPGs especially have been getting more and more linear and doing away with a lot of these things and thus, imo, becoming less and less rpg-like. IMO, Western RPGs have long since dethroned JRPGs as the kings of the genre
Err…in retrospect, it’s probably not necessary to have a debate over what an RPG is, and whether FFXIII is one. Kind of feels like hijacking the thread. I’ll concede that there are aspects of FFXIII that could lead one to reasonably think it’s at least not really the same kind of game as the ones that came before it (and maybe not an RPG at all, depending on definition).
Also, triple-post
EDIT: Simultaneous post! I see your point though.
EDIT2: Just had to do some grinding for the first time. I was kind of hoping it wouldn’t be necessary anymore!
True, we don’t need to discuss what makes an RPG, that could be it’s own thread (but i’m leaving work soon so it’d have to wait for another day, hehe). Kinda sucks about the grinding, that’s one thing that always turned me off of JRPGs, even though I used to absolutely love them. You should never make the player grind 10 levels just to have a chance at beating a boss, that’s just poor game design and used to pad out the play time.
As a fan of Transformers, I actually like the concept, if not the implementation. Brunhilda, Odin and the Shiva twins are good to okay, but the others are more hit-and-miss. Vanille’s one is the worst - a not particularly humanoid mech that transforms into a not particularly different mech.
So they brought back some of the original summoned monsters? While I kind of liked the fact that they tried to create new ones in FFXII, it didn’t feel as much like a Final Fantasy game without Odin and Bahamut.
Considering how few things there are that actually bind Final Fantasy together as anything other than a series of completely unrelated games with the same name, I think you can be excused for feeling this.
But yes. I feel that a certain amount of choice, at least regarding where you go and when you decide to stop putzing around and get on with the plot are in fact required to call a game an RPG.
I allow a certain amount of leeway in the Strategy RPG Genre (which is where I would put tactics advance and Disgaea) due to the more elaborate nature of battles and the game flow structure, but FF13 doesn’t seem to be showing much indication of really using that method. Though if battles actually ARE ten minutes long, then I guess they’re creeping in that direction.
Aside: Other info indicates that one doesn’t really collect and equip new equipment in this game, since each character only has about 8 weapons, and the differences between them are minimal.
Each character has 8 base weapons, but each of these can be upgraded along a separate path, by which they change name/appearance/abilities. After upgrading any of them 3 times, you reach the final weapon. So there’s a total of 25 for each character. I would liken it to FFVIII’s system. I think there’s actually a fair amount of differentiation between the weapons in terms of attack power / magic attack power / abilities. For example, if you upgrade one of Lightning’s base swords all the way to the final weapon, it can have more than twice as much attack power (but different abilities, which you may or may not consider to be worth the drop in power) versus upgrading a different base sword all the way to the final weapon.
Yeah, four of the six playable eidolons are classics: Alexander (defensive wall), Bahamut (glider-thing), Odin (horse) and Shiva (motorbike). The other two, Brunhilda (race car) and stupid-mech (stupid mech), are new.
Well, that sounds a little bit better, but I’m missing where you get 25 from. It sounds like 8 different weapons that just go from 1a to 1b to 1c via XP. Which I suppose is kinda like upgrading. Sortof.
I think I left out an important detail. The weapons don’t level up automatically as your characters do; they have their own XP which you increase by using items that you can get from defeated enemies, treasure chests, and stores. When a weapon gets to a high enough level, you can use a special item to upgrade it. At this point the name, appearance, stats, and abilities change, so I think that’s enough to call it a separate weapon. It’s really very similar to FFVIII’s system. With that in mind, I don’t see much of a difference between a) getting weapons from enemies, chests, and shops, and b) getting items from enemies, chests, and shops and then using those items to upgrade/change your weapons.
You can get an idea of the weapon system from this page which shows all of Lightning’s swords, their abilities/stats, and how you level them up:
EDIT: two more details: you can also get these materials/ingredients by breaking down old weapons/accessories. And accessories can be leveled up/transformed just like weapons.
Ah, I just sort of wanted to visually demonstrate how the weapons are divided (each “block” of 3 rows shows a progression of weapons starting with a base weapon and proceeding to a…“level 2” and “level 3” weapon, for lack of a better term). In the second column you can see the XP required to upgrade, and the fourth and fifth columns show attack and magic power. The chart at the top shows how the stats/abilities of the ultimate weapon will change depending on which base weapon you start with.
I posted the Japanese version just because I couldn’t find an equivalent English version, at least not one that visually shows how the weapons are divided. This has info about the weapon progression, but it’s just a forum post and doesn’t have the stats/abilities.
I’ve played through disc 1 on the 360. Wow, this is… uh… not very Final Fantasy-ish. Tack another name on the box and you’d never know it was an FF game. Well, that and take out the chocobo living in the black guy’s hair…
I’ve had a little time to think about FFXIII since finishing it and hopefully can now give a more objective view (I noticed that sometimes I love games while I’m playing them, and then a week afterward I wonder what exactly was so great about it).
Thoughts are in a spoiler box just in case. Although I’m not going to give away any plot points, I will talk about the plot in general terms (for example, “I thought the ending was _____”).
It’s pretty good. Not great, but not terrible–I’d rank it somewhere in the middle of the pack. The biggest problem is basically what Airk and others were referring to earlier in the thread: the world that you inhabit doesn’t really feel as alive as the worlds of previous FF games, mostly because the amount of interactions with NPCs is very limited. The story is somewhat interesting, but (as seems to be common with this series) doesn’t always make a lot of sense. It initially seems like it might be a standard save-the-world plot, and in fact I think I posted that it was earlier in this thread, but as the game progresses it seems to introduce more elements of politics like FFXII. I find this disappointing; it doesn’t seem as epic as, say, VI, VII, or a basically any of the games up to X. However, the characters are pretty interesting and memorable, and all of them are pretty likable (there’s one character that’s pretty damn annoying for the first part of the game, though). I think story/plot wise it’s middle-of-the road.
The battle system is pretty neat. I actually looked forward to battling for a lot of the game (with the exception of the end, where battles can take an excessively long time). I was initially disappointed that you could only control one character in battle, but the AI is pretty good and the pace is fast enough that you’re rarely left with nothing to do. The “break” mechanic is very nice and mastering this is key to getting anywhere in the game. Also very satisfying when you finally break some giant boss. The character advancement system is pretty good, basically being like an updated version of FFX’s system. The characters never become interchangeable (which was one of my biggest problems with XII), but they’re also not as specialized as in X. I love the fact that HP is restored after each battle and you can retry and battle that you die in. Lack of MP is a little weird, but I got used to it. The whole upgrading weapons/accessories aspect is cool but unless you spend a lot of time doing extraneous missions or grinding you’ll never really use it to its full potential (I think I upgraded a total of 3 or 4 items in my playthrough). Speaking of extra missions, there are like 64 or so of them but I never do that extra stuff so I can’t comment on it.
Well that’s basically my opinion. Decent but confusing story, good characters, good battle system, but the most disappointing part is the linearity and not feeling like you’re inhabiting a world like previous FFs (there’s not even an airship! Well technically there is, but you don’t control it). This is what prevents it from being great IMO. But I still think it’s worth playing.
