Having finished FFXII I said I'd next give XIII another shot, so when I was up in the loft putting the Halloween stuff away I dug out my XBox 360 copy, then had to create a new password for my Live account as it's been so long since the One S was switched on that it had logged me out and I couldn't remember the password, then let the console install and update the game.
So my initial plan of starting this at the beginning of November, plus with all the other stuff going on regarding Charlys health, turned into me finally starting on Monday night.
In upto Chapter 4.
So far Lightning is your typical Final Fantasy moody blank slate protagonist, Sazh is Lionel Richie (in appearance) crossed with Denzel Washington (some of his mannerisms) without half the charisma of either, Vanille is eurgh, Snow is even more eurgh and Hope is a Kingdom Hearts character. Add in that I've spent as much time reading all the datalog and watching cut scenes as I have doing anything interactive and it all sounds like I'm not enjoying it.
And yet I am. Maybe it's my current situation but I genuinely care about Serah, even though she's nothing but a block of crystal/ice, and I actually like it's battle system, plus despite is being 12 years old it looks utterly gorgeous still and whilst I've no fucking idea what's going on with all of this fal'Cie l, l'Cie, Pulse l'Cie stuff despite reading the datalog's I'm intrigued by the games world.
I got far enough into the game when I played it that I started to make sense of the l'Cie/fal'Cie stuff, even without burying myself in the datalog, and it is genuinely quite interesting. And the battle system is great.
Hot take: I like Vanille.
Snow and Hope can both get in the bin, though.
Vanille has the worst flappy-armed run ever, she's intensely aggravating.
I do love the game though, I've been toying with the idea of replaying it (and then moving on to the sequels, which I've never played). Yes, it takes too long to take the training wheels off but it means you do actually spend time with each of the characters, and the battle system just gets better and better as the game goes on.
Snow is just a generic doofus but Hope is genuinely hateful, I think we can all agree on that. There's another character you get later on who's pretty cool, though.
The post-game stuff is the best in any Final Fantasy game I've played.
I would definitely recommend FFXIII-2, most people prefer it to the original, less corridors and slightly improved battle system and a very Chrono Trigger-ey plot.
Maybe it's because I'm playing Dissidia but I think Lightning deserves more love, I quite like her more realistic attitude to the group's situation and I think they did a good job of showing how she has a soldier mindset to things. It was Snow and his gang that really annoyed me when I tried this out on PC a few months ago if anything.
So, continuing on, this is proving a nice distraction from the loneliness once the kids have all gone to bed.
On Chapter 6 now, I still don't like how it forces certain pairings on you (why Lightning + Hope and then Vanille + Sazh when the characters in each of those pairings share similar traits?) but I am enjoying it's linearity in terms of you follow a set path, which is no different to X (for example).
It's still gorgeous to look at and (most of) the music is really, really good.
Lastly, my save says I'm in Disc 2 but I've not had to switch discs at all, is that because the One S has downloaded it and just uses a disc to verify that I own it?
Interested in seeing your thoughts to the second half if you're enjoying it now, man I wish I had time for this and the sequels. :<
Have you fought the first Eidolon? As for thel ast question, no idea sorry.
Yeah I've done Snows and Lightning's Eidolons fights. I like how the battle system as a whole relies on you not just brute forcing your way through as alot of FF games you can do the latter
Lastly, my save says I'm in Disc 2 but I've not had to switch discs at all, is that because the One S has downloaded it and just uses a disc to verify that I own it?
Yep, this is exactly right. You can pretty much ignore the "disc" thing now as it was only ever a thing on the original Xbox 360 version (the PS3 version ran off a single Blu-ray).
So I've been playing Final Fantasy XIII over the last few days and it's aged far, far better than I thought it might have done. Backward compatibility has increased the game's resolution and given it HDR and those things definitely help, but they wouldn't mean much without the underlying game looking good and this, it has to be said, still looks and sounds absolutely tremendous. 75% of the rendering budget has gone on floppy hair and boy does that hair look good. But the facial animations really hold up (they're far better than, say, modern AAA game Assassin's Creed Valhalla) and the voice acting is excellent and in general it just really works hard to sell these characters and what they're going through. The game switches seamlessly between in-game rendering and pre-rendered footage and both of them look great.
It's funny how trends change, too. When this was released in 2010, everything was going open world and this got a lot of stick for being too linear. (Anyone who criticises the game for this hasn't made it to the second half, but still). Whereas now absolutely everything is a dull generic open world, and a highly polished single-player narrative like this actually feels quite refreshing.
Anyway. Loving the characters, the world, the music and the battle system: what's not to like?
I always liked XIII - is this the one where they redid or re-rendered all the cutscenes? I remember them being a bit piss poor on the 360.
Yeah, they've added higher-resolution versions of all the pre-rendered cutscenes. And there are a LOT of cutscenes. The game regularly drops pre-rendered video into the middle of an in-engine scene, for instance, just so they can do a fancy camera move or a focus pull or something, then back to the in-engine stuff, so it's kind of essential that they look comparable or the constant switching between the two would be really jarring. It's not quite seamless - the pre-rendered stuff is still slightly softer - but the overall effect is superb. It doesn't look like a 360 game at all.
It's funny because the Xbox 360 version of FFXIII used to be massively inferior to the PS3 version - really low res, multiple discs, rubbish video quality - and now this is the best version by far. And it's still the same underlying code. Overall the whole thing looks far better than, say, the new Mass Effect, and that's an actual full price remaster.
I'm still playing this. As I type I've just made it to Pulse (?). All the l'Cie, Fal'cie, Cieth etc still feels confusing and mostly nonsense, but I've really warmed to the characters.
I'm probably projecting, but I think this is maybe a story about the process of grief? It certainly feels that way considering Serah and Dajhs roles and how they impact the cast
I think it’s mostly a story about how Australians are evil.
You are Djokovic and I claim my £5.
How do get Gil?
I've done 30 hours and only have 6,700 which is barely enough to buy a Phoenix Down.
In general you just sell all the crap you're picking up. I know you're probably using it to upgrade weapons and accessories but there are plenty of items that give you very few upgrade points but are worth a ton of cash.
Beyond that - I haven't got there yet in my current playthrough but I remember chocobo digging being a fairly reliable source of cash. I think you have to unlock it through one of the missions you get in the second half of the game.
Right at the end of the game there are some giant tortoise things that give you tons of gil if you bring them down, but you only really need to worry about those if you are going for all the achievements.
ah, yeah ive basically been using everything for upgrades, but then thats been slow going too. I imagine this all becomes much easier to deal with now I'm on Gran Pulse?
It's absolutely stunning the first time you run out onto the Steppe and theres monsters of all sizes everywhere!
It's absolutely stunning the first time you run out onto the Steppe and theres monsters of all sizes everywhere!
This was one of my all time favourite gaming moments. If I had time at the moment, I'd love to play this again in hd.
I actually really like all the Fal'Cie, l'Cie and Cie'th stuff in this, but I do wish they'd at least picked different sounding words for those things. It actually all makes sense but it does expect you to occasionally poke through the Datalog to work out what things mean. It's kind of doubly frustrating because there's that whole prolonged section in the Vestige at the start of the game where the characters could have had a couple of conversations and explained it all to the player, but no!
I can't help wondering if Fal'Cie is some kind of play on the word Fallacy, which would fit in with the themes of the game very well; or if it's just a fortuitous coincidence and it actually came from a Japanese word that had no such connotations.
I don't mind it all, but like you say, it's the fact the names are basically the same. That and "Cie'th" reminds me of the Spanish News sketch on the Fast Show. Scorchio.
I'm finding Vanille slightly less aggravating on this playthrough but her constant gasping and grunting is getting on my nerves. She's unable to have even the most basic conversation without making all these weird little vocalisations. She's a nightmare in battle as every time she lets out a stupid groan I think she's died.
I think maybe it's a Japanese thing, is it meant to be "cute"? Stoic badasses Lightning and Fang don't do this at all, and are much more bearable as a result.
Yeah it's definitely a thing with younger/cuter characters in other jrpgs and anime.
Fangs awesome, I've changed my Dragoon glamour on XIV to be inspired by her.
I've decided my favourite thing about this game is that the chief bad guy, a kind of cackling evil Space Pope, is called The Primark. There's nothing quite a band of heroes all leaping into battle shouting "We must destroy the Primark!"
Question on pronunciation: pry-mark or pree-mark? My partner is Irish, where the shop was founded over its original name of Pennys, and she insists it's the latter. This is deathly important.
Already showed her that ages ago, she refuses to believe it.
Got to the Archylte Steppe and I'm getting absolutely battered by everything, I don't remember this game being so hard. Thought I'd try and take on a handful of little gremlin things, they don't look too tough I though, until they summoned a King Behemoth halfway through the fight! All my characters seem to be lacking key skills, Hope simply ups and dies as soon as anyone looks at him funny, and the Crystarium levels up incredibly slowly now.
Maybe I should progress with the plot but the missions are kind of fun too…
I started it the other night - you were right about the CG work they've done, it looks great! Engine itself is a little creaky now, but perfectly serviceable. I don't think I have time/energy to play right through again, but it's a nice trip down memory lane.
And Sazh isn't anywhere near as stereotyped as I remember him being so far. And his throwaway "run! I meant… away" line actually made me laugh out loud.
But yes, it was always hard in places. There was one boss fight (I think it was at the end of the first level post-Steppe, in front of a ruined building) I remember being a right sod first time round if you hadn't done any extra levelling.
I found Hope to be woeful when I reached that stage, Gar. I've been using Lightning, Fang and Vanille as my main party. Fang's not as good at the Sentinel role as Snow, but she's more balanced. I start fights with whatever Paradigm has Lightning as Ravager, Fang as Commando, Vanille as Medic and switch to/between that and Relentless Assault, Combat Clinic and one that allows me to take advantage of Saboteur.
Behemoths in the Steppe, summoned or otherwise, are really hard unless you can catch them by surprise.
Cheers Wev. I'm sticking with Hope for now because, although he's an irritating little twerp, he at least doesn't spend the whole fight making orgasmic groans like Vanille does. Also, he's got Protect and the Synergist role which is more useful than Vanille's Haste/Saboteur. I'm sure in time they will both learn each other's abilities and then I'll be able to swap around more freely.
Starting fights with Decimation (COM/RAV/SYN) to get Protect up then switching to Diversity (COM/RAV/MED) with two escalations of "oh shit this isn't going well" in the form of Discretion (COM/MED/MED) and then Combat Clinic (SEN/MED/MED). Really not finding a whole lot of use for Sentinel overall, it's just a panic button for me.
I must admit I don't remember it being this confusing to get around. I'm running around Gran Pulse completely lost. I must have fought the same set of flans about six times as I criss-crossed their little patch of grass in my confusion.
I've been using Combat Clinic as a reset, it allows me to get the opponent to focus on Fang whilst I get Lightning and Vanille back in the fight, then its shift back to Diversity then Relentless Assault, I've been finding that the battle system really rewards going on the offensive and whilst buffs are very powerful, it often results in the fight taking longer and leading to you being more likely to land in trouble, especially with the Behemoths as they have a fucking annoying habit of both healing and becoming stronger if you don't manage to Stagger them before they get to half health.
