Well here is my opinion of Final Fantasy and, frankly, what is wrong with it. There may well be some mild spoilers along the way so I apologise/warn you for that in advance.
First and foremost they have taken everything that an RPG should be and thrown it out of the window. I'm about eleven hours into the game now, not an amazing amount I know, and it is still amazingly linear. In fact it was only an hour or two ago that I finally stopped receiving gameplay tutorials, seriously who needs that amount of hand holding? An RPG, for me, should be about freedom of choice and exploration - so what were the developers thinking by just forcing you down a very straight path with no control over where you will end up?
Webb has told me that you cannot really break free of this formula until you are over twenty hours in - but how many people are going to put up with walking down a path, fighting some monsters, then walking some more for twenty hours? I want to explore, do some side quests, pop into a town and level grind to my hearts content. None of which is really possible.
The side quests are kept to a minimum and can only really be attempted in earnest AFTER you complete the game - SAY WHAT?! In fact you cannot level up properly until you complete the game either as beating the last boss unlocks the final level of upgrades available to you, meaning grinding up to badass proportions is kind of pointless until post game. Great. There are also no towns at all to stop off in with all of the shops stuck in the save points, ugh!
There is a lot wrong with this game in terms of how it plays and it just doesn't feel like a Final Fantasy game at all. The constant flashbacks mean the story is revealed in a slightly confusing piecemeal fashion too, though at least it is vaguely interesting and the characters are a lot of fun. I certainly plan on finishing this bad boy and hope things pick up, but I have to say that I think Square have dropped the ball on this one and created a kind of RPG lite to appeal to the masses rather than a wonderful world of exploration that I would have expected. Oh well.......
I'm probably going to focus most of my attention on Final Fantasy and then play the odd game alongside it to keep things ticking over. I still need to finish Batman, but after that I'll probably give Brothers in Arms a whirl and go back to grinding towards both NHL 09 and GoW Annex wins. If I can finish up both of those games prior to hitting 200k it would make me a very happy bunny!
Other games on my semi-complete hit list remain the same: L4D (need to bug Thrawn, Wreckon and anyone who'll listen), Operation Flashpoint (need to bug Webb) and Damnation (need to bug Cru: BUGGED VIA TWITTER, ha ha!). My goal is to hit between 175-180 retail completions before 200k and I'd also like to have polished off every arcade game I own barring about 3-4 that I either don't play or are impossibly hard (Texas Hold Em and Geometry Wars mainly).
3 comments:
I've only heard appraisal towards Final Fantasy XIII so I am surprised to see you have problems with it. By the sounds of what you're saying though you're right to be complaining, it doesn't sound too RPG like to me.
I'm not as far in, but I agree with your accessment of FFXIII.
I'm down for L4D whenever. Just give me a shout.
I'm not having problems per se - I just don't like the game as much as the olde FF titles. This is from someone that LOVES me some FF too. I think they have made the game too linear and there just isn't as much to do as I would expect from an RPG........
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