fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2231 ]

[ SECRET POST #2231 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2231 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 086 secrets from Secret Submission Post #319.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
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11. http://oi49.tinypic.com/kdolkz.jpg

I'm playing and enjoying XIII, but can see how it would be improved. What sorts of (low-spoilers, please) changes were made in XIII-2?

Not to give away any storyline-related spoilers, most of the changes not related to playable characters are to do with the battle system.

The major complaint in FFXIII, and it was certainly my main issue, was that it was 'Game Over' if the player-controlled character dies. In FFXIII-2, the 'leader' designation simply switches to the other character, making the whole thing less annoying and less chance-based in terms of instant-death moves and the resulting game over. Another aspect that altered battle-related gameplay in FXIII-2(and this, for me, was a downside, albeit a very, very minor one) was that it considerably less tactically slanted than the first game. By this I mean that it wasn't as necessary to break out the Saboteur/Synergist roles in order to progress.

For the record, I enjoyed both games rather a lot. c:

That DOES sound like something to look forward to. Thank you.

It's practically impossible to die in FFXIII though. The battles were too easy.

(no subject)

azi - 2013-02-11 14:49 (UTC) - Expand

Yeah I really like the tactical, strategic method that is basically forced on players in XIII. I hate when games just give you an option to zombie bash your way through every battle.

To add to what

azi said, Final Fantasy XIII-2 also put more focus on exploration and introduced a lot of sidequests and minigames, which was nice, given that XIII's gameplay generally lacked variety.

The 'which was nice' does not apply to the Hands of Time minigame.

I haven't finished XIII. (I'm terrible about finishing FF games. Idk why). But I have found myself *bored* to some extent. I played X on my PS2 and there was always something extra to do it felt like... this one has been painfully straightforward. Probably why I haven't picked it up in four or five months :(

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2013-02-11 07:00 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

azi - 2013-02-11 00:47 (UTC) - Expand

Eh, to each their own.

But with experience comes enlightenment, so it's not surprising that after making XIII they changed some things to improve the experience.

That said, I've loved my fair share of flawed games, and will again. No shame in that. (Though if playing XIII-2 made you actively dislike XIII, that's understandable too.)

Hell, I still haven't beat the first one. (And hopefully XIII's game-data can be moved to a different PS3 or I never will.)

I love Final Fantasy XIII - it's got my favourite cast of any Final Fantasy game - but I have to confess that it's severely flawed. The battle system is great and the character interaction is great; the problem is that it's absolutely nothing but battling and character interaction, with perhaps two incredibly half-hearted one-off attempts at a minigame (the Chocobo chick hunt and the thirty-second vehicle section). Pulse, despite opening the map up a bit, really drove home the lack of variety: all these Cie'th missions, and every one of them is 'go to this place and kill this thing'. The exploration and sidequests and minigames in XIII-2 were a breath of fresh air.

Personally, though, although I think XIII-2 is better as a videogame, I like XIII more. I felt that, although XIII-2 had stronger gameplay than its predecessor, its plot and characterisation were weaker, and character is what I play the Final Fantasy series for. That's just me, though, and I can definitely understand why people would prefer the sequel. It all depends on what you value (and personal taste, obviously, because others who play for character might have found the characters of XIII didn't appeal to them).

I also think that the battle system is a bit better in XIII. The Crystarium limits annoyed me at first, but playing XIII-2, which didn't limit Crystarium development, made me realise how important they were; the limits forced you to use strategy in boss battles, rather than just levelling up and hitting the boss a lot. That said, speeding up the paradigm shifts was a great idea.

I suppose what I'm saying is that Final Fantasy XIII is flawed as a game, but as a story I love it to bits. All the characters! All the inter-party relationships! All the concepts! (I want to write a million 'oh no everyone's a l'Cie!' AUs for all my fandoms.) I do like XIII-2 as well, but I think the characterisation suffered because of the two-person party; Noel and Serah only really had each other to bounce off, so we didn't get much of an idea of their personalities outside the context of each other. The Sunleth Waterscape 300 AF was one of my favourite parts, because adding Snow to that dynamic gave Noel a new dimension. (Making it less linear also had an adverse effect on characterisation; it's difficult for the game to develop Noel and Serah's characters and relationship smoothly when it doesn't know what order you're going to play some of the episodes in.)

Er, sorry for rambling! I just really love XIII, which is frustrating when so many people hate it and even more frustrating when I know they have a point.

Edited 2013-02-10 22:23 (UTC)

This post is amazing! I'm huge on character when it comes to video games, film, TV, etc. so this was nice to read :)

+1 and a round of applause! XIII is not my all-time fave but I wholehearyedly agree with all your points.

XIII is the only game in the past 7 years that I've managed to wrote over 5000 words on why it is flawed, yet it had the soul that I've never seen elsewhere. I can list all the things wrong with it, but it has drawn me in, and fundamentally altered me, in ways that no other games have.

When I was playing through 13 I had this really weird feeling of anticipation, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was because the plot was both incomprehensible and boring. Then I realized - I was waiting for the game to start being good. Unfortunately, like most of the other FFs that become enjoyable once you give them a chance, there was absolutely no payoff.

I'm the opposite OP, XIII-2 made me realize how much more I liked XIII. The time travel plot was absolutely terrible.

I haven't played XIII-2, but I like what I'm hearing about the changes to the battle system.

I'm still probably not going to buy it though, because I still can't figure out what the fuck happened in XIII. And I've played it twice.

It has so many plot holes I just can't wrap my head around it, and from what I've seen of XIII-2, I don't think any of them got answered.

This is a complete matter of opinion. Just because yours has changed doesn't make it fact. Everyone likes games for different reasons, and there isn't really a hard a set rule of what makes a game good or complete fail, it's up to the player to decide that.

XIII will always, ALWAYS be better because it has Fang and Vanille and not some douchebag future boy jumping timelines with a lobotomized blonde. Now, if I had my XIII party with XIII-2 gameplay, I will be happy.

Know what XIII-2 made me realize? That l'Cie are strong as fuck and Noel is weak as shit. I'd fucking pay to see him get slapped around by the XIII cast that got fucked over just because they wanted to use Fang's rejected (and ugly) male character design.

I'd wait until you beat it before declaring it better, OP. Not to get spoilerrific on you, but: holy shit, that ending.

/liked both

Wait, so you're saying you can tolerate Noel? Huh. Must be a Hope fan.

Don't even. Noel isn't even halfway comparable to Hope.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2013-02-11 10:05 (UTC) - Expand

Don't worry, they're both terrible games.

I can't even start to play this because I actually liked the FFXIII cast whereas Serah and Noel are just extremely boring to me. Even what I read of the story seems boring. Oh, and even though they only have two playable characters they still decided to implement a tier into the game and I hate when RPGs do that.

I found XIII-2 is more user friendly, but while I enjoyed it it failed to make a long lasting impression in me. I loved the strategy aspect of XIII, and I loved just the bleak impeding doom of it.

My main problem with XIII-2 though, is that Serah simply doesn't have enough of anything to pull off the role of a lead. I ended up liking Noel more than I thought I would, but they still had nothing compared to the XIII cast.

I liked FFXIII at the beginning... and then started to dislike it. I love the characters and I think they're really the only thing that kept me playing this game. But when I stopped playing it for a while because of other real life stuff and I came back to it sometimes later, I suddenly realised that... I really couldn't be bothered finishing it. I got so far, too (I'm on Pulse), but I didn't want to do the Cie'th missions, so I tried to keep going just to advance the storyline... but I found out I couldn't. If you do not have enough Crystarium abilities (idk how to call them, since there's no levels in this game), the enemies at the end of the game can kill you rather easily, so you're stuck battling against practically invincible enemies for eternity. Turns out those Cie'th missions, which you can totally skip, are actually something you need to do to advance the plot of the game.

Other than that, this game has just so many flaws. You're constantly confused when you're playing the game, because nothing is explained. Don't get me wrong, I don't need huge dialogues of exposition to enjoy a game, but some explanation would be nice. I don't want to read boring datalogs for hours on end. I think I started getting what was going on only halfway through, but if you ask me to explain FFXIII to you, I'm not even sure I can answer that without having to go on Wikipedia first.

The combat system is just pushing the X button over and over again. Sometimes you have to switch to this or that Paradigm to heal or sabotage the enemy and then it's back to pressing X.

The gameplay is boring. I saw Spoony's review of FFXIII and he's right when he says the game is one giant hallway. There's no towns, shops or places to explore, you just always walk forward. How boring is that? A friend of my boyfriend's, who played FFXIII, once asked me if I had gotten to the "free roaming bit" yet. I was confused when he asked this. "Free roaming bit"? What does he mean by that? This is a Final Fantasy game, there should be plenty of places to explore! And then I got to Gran Pulse and I finally knew what he meant. There is no exploration in FFXIII except for Pulse, which is just a huge field with monsters.

I love RPGs, I've played a lot of different ones, including Final Fantasy ones... and FFXIII is the first one that bored me and that I will probably leave incomplete. I'll watch the end of it on youtube or something, just so I can play XIII-2 (I've heard it's better, so I want to try it... keeping my fingers crossed here). But as far as RPGs, or even FF games go? This one had interesting characters, but the gameplay was just wrong.

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