Gonna nip this in the bud before it escalates.
In a traditional RPG, which translates to ROLE PLAYING GAME, you play a role. You play a role in the sense that you control the characters' actions and decide their decisions. All in battle, of course.
Is this prsent in XIII? No, strike one. In XIII you control the main character (which you can't even change up till the end of chapter 9, might I add) and that's it. Auto-attack is the preferred way of attacking, because manually selecting attacks is a pain to do every ten seconds.
That's right, kids. Every ten seconds. Because unlike in traditional (turn based) RPG's you don't spend time deciding your attacks, instead you have about 5 seconds to quickly make up some battle commands to attack.
Rinse, repeat. It's a bitch to do.
And worst of all, you only control ONE character. You can only point out a generalised direction the CPU needs to take. But changing parapligms gets annoying after a while and the shots of characters changing their stance ruins the flow of battle. Not to mention the times when Hope heals the wrong character, the character that is not me, after which I die. Well done.
Well, at least I can decide some things outside of battle an- uh oh.
It's just a straight path.
There is nothing to do.
Until chapter 11, of couse, but you're already bored before that.
Even Kingdom Hearts 2 had some diversity to it. Here it's just walk straight past, look at pretty graphics, fight, use a strategy that always work, rinse repeat and this is what the entire game comes down to on the worst levels.
You run down a corridor. It looks amazing and you get a sense you're in a fantastic location and you really want to explore it. You can't. You continue down that corridor, occasionlly picking up trasure chests. Eventually you run into a monster. You fight it, defeat it and get 3, mebber 4 stars. Infuriated you find something like it and fight again, changing your strategy a tiny bit to make yourself faster. After a few fights you eventually find the fight system that works for you and you will use that in pretty much every battle even remotely similar to the one you first fought and gain 5 starts every time. In fact you'll gain them with robotic precision as the computer does most of the work for you and all you have to do is get the timing of the Paradigm switch down. So in all of the game I've been running down pretty corridors, repeating button presses and eventully I started to feel like I was playing DDR. I'd just memorised a series of button presses and was using them on every fight and I rarely got less than 5 stars. Same with the bosses, you work out a strategy and button press away!
They forgot one thing though.
MAKE THE GAME FUN.
What's the goddamn point of a boss' gigantic HP which I take hours to deplete with little to no effort because I figured out his attack pattern and have found a way to counter them.
That's not fun, that's not rewarding. That's time wasting bullshit that only delusional FF otaku fanboys think is a great battle system.
I mean where's the IMMERSION?
In any of the old school ones if I just got hit with a powerful attack I'm thinking "Oh shit, where's my white mage, need white mage, everyone's on 5hp where's my white mage no fuck off knight go defend or something, i need a white mage, oh shit he's charging up, gonna die gonna die, better use an x-potion or something, last saved 3 hours ago, shit shit shit"
In XII "Just got hit, life's low, switch paradigms, spam A, spam A, spam A, spam A, all better, switch to attacking mode, better be faster on those button presses if I want to get a high score."
There is nothing enjoyable about the fights.
They are repetative.
They are annoying.
They take anywhere from 1.5-8 minutes for very little reward.
The locations are depressing.
The music is grating.
I have no desire to level.
And yet, I've spent a lot of time leveling the past few hours.
And since they've designed the game as such, despite having spent significant time and money leveling myself and weapons, with no stats EVER really giving you an advantage in battle and it being merely a game of attrition, I have no desire to continue.
It is a bloody waste of time.
As are all video games.
BUT AT LEAST THEY'RE NOT AS BORING AS THIS PILE OF SHIT.
Rot in fucking hell developers.
Subject: What games have i missed that you think i'd like? 
Thu Jan 13, 2011 12:01 am
