Final Fantasy XIII-2

I have nothing against QTE's.. not that I applaud them for being there.

I have nothing against QTE's in games that do them right like God of War, not random RPG's trying to be action games. It's a wonder why Square didn't just make it an action game when they obviously wanted to make that.

It's a wonder why Square don't make movies that are 100 hours long, instead of games.

You havn't played a recent FF have you?

The Return of Stevie wrote:

You havn't played a recent FF have you?

The only final fantasy's i've not played are XI, XIV and XIII.

You obviously haven't played an old FF game seeing as the older ones, were less about really long cutscenes.

Can't really have many lengthy cut-scnes involving 2-d sprites. There were many very lengthy segments that were just text and characters speaking in those gmaes though. XII especially lacked any significant story sequences which was one of the parts of the game that really bugged me.

Just because 12 didn't have lengthy cutscenes doesn't change the fact 7-10 and 13 did.

Especially if you consider the automatic nature of 13. My original point still stands.

Then you have to rephrase it to say that EVERY FF because 6 and 5 had some of the longest sequences of only dialog/scenes in the series as well. Basically all but the first three on the NES involved lengthy scenes to some degree.

The Return of Stevie wrote:

Then you have to rephrase it to say that EVERY FF because 6 and 5 had some of the longest sequences of only dialog/scenes in the series as well. Basically all but the first three on the NES involved lengthy scenes to some degree.

Now you're just arguing my point for me

So we agree they might as well make movies.

ew

All I was trying to say was that argument could be made about any rpg. Back in the day before cutscense and VA's it was like playing a book, now it's like playing a movie I guess. But everyone saw what happened with Spirits Within, I would not be excited for a legit movie from them.

The Return of Stevie wrote:

All I was trying to say was that argument could be made about any rpg. Back in the day before cutscense and VA's it was like playing a book, now it's like playing a movie I guess. But everyone saw what happened with Spirits Within, I would not be excited for a legit movie from them.

Sure most JRPGs are. But the fact is Squenix love pissing away millions on those very cool looking cutscenes.

All the FF games up to 9 are epic. But there PS2 and later games have definitely been outdone by the competition.

I never played the earlier dragon quest games but from what i heard they were all awesome. I'm not going to dignify Persona with recognition as the other SMT games are way better. People just wanted to play a dating sim and pretend they were just playing an RPG.

Honestly though RPG wise i prefer stuff like Shining force and Fire Emblem, those games entertained me way more then the FF games even if i did love them. They get rid of the other nonsense.

although I do agree that the PS1 era FF's were the best (to me personally) I still enjoy the later installments and still think they're great. just not on the same level.


don't care if they get outdone by others, as Final Fantasy is practically the only RPG i play now anyways... (ok, i got Skyrim now, but that's a different genre rpg)

The Return of Stevie wrote:

But everyone saw what happened with Spirits Within, I would not be excited for a legit movie from them.

Don't forget about Advent Children. The writing was awful, none of the characters were likeable, and half of the movie was just made up of long, boring action scenes. It felt less like a true sequel to FFVII and more like some insipid nonsense to placate ADHD children for 101 minutes.

Eevil-Psycho wrote:

although I do agree that the PS1 era FF's were the best (to me personally) I still enjoy the later installments and still think they're great. just not on the same level.


don't care if they get outdone by others, as Final Fantasy is practically the only RPG i play now anyways... (ok, i got Skyrim now, but that's a different genre rpg)

This just sounds like pointless fanboyism. If you still play the genre at all you should alwyas be looking out for the best of that genre, especially if you yourself know that the company has put out better in the past. Though the main thing is you realise the later games weren't on the same level.

but that's just it, I don't like or play the genre except for the Final Fantasy games.. ok, I liked Star Ocean and Suikoden on PS1, but that's it.. I have no real interest in the genre other than FF games, cause they've never disappointed me.

I know there might be better RPG's than FFXIII, but what's it to me if I'm not interested in playing them? I'm a Final Fantasy fan, not an RPG fan.


if that makes me a fanboy, then fine, I'm a fanboy. *shrugs*




anyways on topic:

there's a demo on the EU store if anyone wants to play it. I haven't finished it yet, but it's quite fun. it's a lot more open though, so there's kind of this "what the hell do I do now?" feeling. but that's probably also partly due to you just being dropped in without any real knowledge of what's going on etc. I should probably spent some time with the datalogs, and all to get a better feeling of it.

but overall it's fun. there's the same Paradigms as in FFXIII, so if you're accustomed to those, you'll do fine. you can recruit monsters to fight alongside you, haven't tried it too in depth, but it seems like every monster can only do 1 certain role. these monsters also have some sort of limit break or something that makes them unleash a certain attack..

as I said, haven't finished it yet, just skimmed through it for 20 minutes, did some battles, had a look at the crystarium and all. will check it out more in depth the next couple of days.

Eevil-Psycho wrote:

but that's just it, I don't like or play the genre except for the Final Fantasy games.. ok, I liked Star Ocean and Suikoden on PS1, but that's it.. I have no real interest in the genre other than FF games, cause they've never disappointed me.

I know there might be better RPG's than FFXIII, but what's it to me if I'm not interested in playing them? I'm a Final Fantasy fan, not an RPG fan.


if that makes me a fanboy, then fine, I'm a fanboy. *shrugs*

Well i'd get it if it was any other series but FF doesn't have any continuing plot so it just doesn't make sense to me. The battle systme is almost always different to. The job class ones or the materia from 7 are probably my faves.

In regards to FF XIII-2 i'lll check out the demo. Does it play the same as XIII? If it does and i like it i'll probably end up buying it.

yeah, i know that might not make a lot of sense to anyone else, I'm just weird like that sometimes, can't help it.


as far FFXIII-2, it does play the same as FFXIII. as far as i know that is. in battle, it has the same menu structure, it uses the same paradigms,... with the slight change that there are now monsters that act as a third party member, and they only have 1 role per monster. I currently have a Cait Sith and a Zworg and one is a Ravager and the other a Medic. (again, maybe you can unlock more roles, I don't know yet)

they also introduced these QTE's in battles, you start off in a battle that has some QTE's. they're nothing spectacular, they add something cinematic to the battle, and if you execute them perfectly it might give you an advantage damagewise but that's about it. I guess it's cool if you like cinematic actions.

as for general gameplay, it's pretty much the same, except now you have to press O if you want to jump onto something whereas in FFXIII it happened automatically. as I said, the world's a lot more open too, even in closed environment, on my way to where I needed to be, I stumbled into 2 tunnels/dungeons perhaps that i didn't need to be in...

I also met 2 guys who offer missions, haven't checked them out yet, but i figure it's similar to hunts. one mission has me searching for some things, the other makes me find and fight a Cie'th..

well, this sure is a long ass demo, been playing for at least 40 minutes now.


I still seriously dig it. I like how they did the enemies in this. in FFXIII, you could see all your enemies on screen and engage them or try to avoid them. this is kind of a mix of random encounters and FFXIII encounters.

meaning that enemies don't show up on screen, but they pop up randomly, BUT, you still have to chance to run away from them if you so desire. as soon as an enemy appears, a clock starts ticking down, if you engage them before it runs out, you get positive effects like a pre-emptive strike and the entire party starts with haste.

if you don't engage them within that time, but you stay in their awareness radius, the battle will begin anyway and you'll get negative effects like: whole party is slowed or poisoned or whatever.

it's a neat little touch imo.



the variety in this game is great too, on my way to do the story objective, I did 2 missions, and a minigame and I explored some tunnels in the ruins. it's great, no hallway maps like in FFXIII either. the tunnels have multiple entry and exit points and it just feels a lot more open.

I'm honestly not a fan of random encounters any more they really pissed me off in some games.

The ideas behind these ones do sound good though.

holy shit, when you've finished the demo, there's like a video that shows some battle sequences and other stuff from the game, and I've seen some things I really loved


- there's an aerial battle between Lightning and some guy, and it was a moving battle, instead of being in a static background, the whole level moved together with the battle

- chocobo racing is back

- another minigame with slots


all that in more in below video, starting at 8:49

are there bikini costumes?

lol, not that I know of.


anyways, got this game today. totally loving it. if you liked FFXIII for just a little bit, you'll definitely like this one.

first of all, the world feels a lot more open, and there's actual towns and safe havens where you won't be attacked by monsters. it's quite refreshing after having played FFXIII. Out of the 2 hours I've played now, I've spent at least 20 minutes, just running around and talking to people in a town.

if you talk to certain people, it opens up a Live Trigger. which basically means, that you get to choose 1 out of 4 answers to react to them. which answer you pick has no effect on the story, but from time to time, you get a certain treasure, and depending on the answers you picked, the treasure will be different.

so basically, you go around the world from place to place and time to time, and you need to collect time fragments. you don't need to get them all, but if you do have them all it opens up a secret ending, so I take it that should be worth it.

story started off kinda like: WTF is this and what's happening? but I take it I'll learn more about it as I proceed.


nothing else to say about it that I haven't talked about from the demo for now.

I still didn't like the battle system - Paradigm shift is a good idea, but rather poorly executed.

Hmm i got this today .... i'll play it later ... i hope