[GaZ]

I reserved a copy a few days ago. I hope that it's good. Who else is planning on getting it?

I heard the 360 version will be like 4 discs. Ha. :D

[Jamie L Goehring]

Mr. G, on 04 March 2010 - 02:35 AM, said:

I reserved a copy a few days ago. I hope that it's good. Who else is planning on getting it?

I heard the 360 version will be like 4 discs. Ha. http://www.blackdragongames.co.uk/forum/public/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif

I'm thinking about getting it but I really do need to save money so I may wait a month or so. There are positives an negatives to both 360 and ps3 versions honestly...and graphics ironically has nothing to do with it as it's almost a direct port in that aspect.

Positive:
PS3: No disc swapping due to blu-ray
XBOX360: Due to disc swapping texture and file compression was reduced, this results in SIGNIFICANT load time reductions compared to the ps3 that has to load everything from one disc and or hard drive (which causes much much longer load times)

Negative:
Xbox360: You'll have to open up the tray and swap discs every 20-30 hours http://www.blackdragongames.co.uk/forum/public/style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif.
PS3: Increased load times due to texture compression to fit it on one blu ray disc

Either way it's going to be a hell of a game...I'll eventually get it for 360 just because that's what I have...but if given the choice...that's probably what I'd get it on anyway for this game. MGS had the exact same issues on both systems, and honestly the disc swapping and reduced load times appeals to me more then increased load times and no disc swapping. But I think that's more just personal preference.

[GiantKiller]

I have not played Final Fantasy since like XIII. Love the series and might actually buy the new one as it should be good gaming on the PS3

[Jamie L Goehring]

GiantKiller, on 04 March 2010 - 11:35 PM, said:

I have not played Final Fantasy since like XIII. Love the series and might actually buy the new one as it should be good gaming on the PS3

I assume you meant... VIII instead of XIII as that's the one that comes out in a week :P

[GaZ]

I just bought the game (Disgaea 3) that I was renting from GameFly and it says that they are going to send me Final Fantasy XIII next. I'm gonna give the copy that I reserved to my cousin since he is a huge fan of Final Fantasy and RPGs in general and he has no way to get it until probably months from now. :)

It's also cool that I will be able to keep FF13 from GameFly for only $45 if I want to. :D

[Carl B]

So guys, got it? Played it? Any good?

[Jamie L Goehring]

Carl B, on 10 March 2010 - 03:02 PM, said:

So guys, got it? Played it? Any good?

Traded in a bunch of old games at gamestop and got it for free. Pretty decent so far though it's a typical JRPG and is melodramatic:). The Datalog (equivelent of the codex in ME1 and Me2) helps alot if you read it as you go it develops the world soooo much more and you get what's going on, but if you don't you're pretty confused. Personally I see it as a design flaw and didn't like the game very much till I realized that reading that would help so much. Once I started reading it I really started to enjoy the game. The games also fairly boring for the first two hours as far as combat goes as they lock off alot of stuff at the start...but after that it's alot better. Overall I'd say it's a pretty good game with a few poor design choices but once you get into it it's pretty good. I do want to kill one of the voice actors though lol (all the others are good).

[GaZ]

Everything he said is true. I want to kill that dumb little girl as well. What the hell is wrong with her? :)

It is confusing as hell when they start talking about all of this gibberish that doesn't make any sense unless you read up on it. At least the added that in. So far I think the game isn't too bad, but it just doesn't feel like Final Fantasy yet. It seems like they dumbed it down and simplified it so more people would want to play it. I don't know how much else there is to unlock in the battles, but I am already using the paradigms and tech abilities and a few other things and almost every battle is way too easy. I only died once and that was because I wasn't paying attention to my HP and got killed by some random crappy enemies. I came back and beat them in like 10 seconds.

From where I am which is a few hours in, most of the battles including the boss battles are super easy and don't take more than 1-2 minutes to complete.

There are some things I like such as how you can sneak up on the enemies and how even though you can only control one character, you can switch paradigms and the computer characters respond fairly quickly and do what they are supposed to.

The leveling up system isn't that great. It's similar to the system from FFX, but I think it's way more simple. It looks like it offers you complete customization of your characters, but it doesn't really. There are only a few forking paths and basically what you are doing is choosing the order of the skills that you learn from a predetermined list. The materia and draw systems from FF7 and FF8 respectively were far better.

I heard the game starts off slow, so we'll see as I get further into the game.

[Jamie L Goehring]

Mr. G, on 10 March 2010 - 06:56 PM, said:

Everything he said is true. I want to kill that dumb little girl as well. What the hell is wrong with her? :)

It is confusing as hell when they start talking about all of this gibberish that doesn't make any sense unless you read up on it. At least the added that in. So far I think the game isn't too bad, but it just doesn't feel like Final Fantasy yet. It seems like they dumbed it down and simplified it so more people would want to play it. I don't know how much else there is to unlock in the battles, but I am already using the paradigms and tech abilities and a few other things and almost every battle is way too easy. I only died once and that was because I wasn't paying attention to my HP and got killed by some random crappy enemies. I came back and beat them in like 10 seconds.

From where I am which is a few hours in, most of the battles including the boss battles are super easy and don't take more than 1-2 minutes to complete.

There are some things I like such as how you can sneak up on the enemies and how even though you can only control one character, you can switch paradigms and the computer characters respond fairly quickly and do what they are supposed to.

The leveling up system isn't that great. It's similar to the system from FFX, but I think it's way more simple. It looks like it offers you complete customization of your characters, but it doesn't really. There are only a few forking paths and basically what you are doing is choosing the order of the skills that you learn from a predetermined list. The materia and draw systems from FF7 and FF8 respectively were far better.

I heard the game starts off slow, so we'll see as I get further into the game.

Definitely agree about the leveling up system, though from what I've ready the battles get consistently more challenging as you go and you see a considerable spike in difficulty in the last 2 chapters. From what I've read it's some of the most challenging battles in an rpg at that point...I'm hoping what I read wasn't a lie lol.

[Jamie L Goehring]

Update: After lake beshara (chapter 3) it picks up quite a bit. The battles while still not hard are more interesting and challenging. The introduction of summons (particularly the main characters thing with them) is particularly interesting. It definitely seems to be getting much better each chapter so if you just stick with it it seems like it'll be a very good game by the end lol. Onto chapter 5 now and taking a break to do some programming.

[GaZ]

I'm in Chapter 5 now as well and it does get better. Most of the battles are still rather easy though.

[Jamie L Goehring]

Mr. G, on 11 March 2010 - 02:38 PM, said:

I'm in Chapter 5 now as well and it does get better. Most of the battles are still rather easy though.

Yeah most of them are though the odin one was a little challenging. I'm hoping it kicks up considerably like they say it does around the end (chapter 10 or so).

[GaZ]

The Odin one wasn't challenging really - it was just cheap. The first 3 times I fought him, he killed my other guy with like 3 hits. Then I revived him and he killed me. The 4th time that I fought him, he didn't bum rush me and I was actually able to use a strategy against him. Strange that my cousin is playing the game at the same time and he said the same thing happened to him. He didn't beat him until the 4th try. :P

I didn't play today since I didn't feel like doing anything. I stopped where there are some bodies lying on the ground.

[Jamie L Goehring]

Mr. G, on 12 March 2010 - 12:31 PM, said:

The Odin one wasn't challenging really - it was just cheap. The first 3 times I fought him, he killed my other guy with like 3 hits. Then I revived him and he killed me. The 4th time that I fought him, he didn't bum rush me and I was actually able to use a strategy against him. Strange that my cousin is playing the game at the same time and he said the same thing happened to him. He didn't beat him until the 4th try. :P

I didn't play today since I didn't feel like doing anything. I stopped where there are some bodies lying on the ground.

The concept in that fight is actually your suppose to plan ahead and go with a defensive paradigm to start (hence why they tell you to on the tutorial at the start lol) that way you heal and shell through his massive spike dmg at the start. Likewise later if he lasts that long he does the same thing again (both times it warns you when he starts charging up if you pay attention). After I figured that out and went DOH because the game pretty much directly told you to go defensive before hand lol I got through him but it took me 2 or 3 tries.

[GaZ]

Yeah, that's what I did the last time. I had to heal the other guy while he got pounded on.

[Jamie L Goehring]

Mr. G, on 12 March 2010 - 09:53 PM, said:

Yeah, that's what I did the last time. I had to heal the other guy while he got pounded on.

Yeah that was basically the purpose of the fight to force you into a defensive stance at the start to show that you'll need to shift paradigms sometimes to stay alive and win. Not a bad way to drive a point home imo lol.

[GaZ]

Jamie L Goehring, on 12 March 2010 - 10:41 PM, said:

Yeah that was basically the purpose of the fight to force you into a defensive stance at the start to show that you'll need to shift paradigms sometimes to stay alive and win. Not a bad way to drive a point home imo lol.

You rarely run into that problem with regular enemies, so changing paradigms before battles wouldn't be needed. The only time you would need to do that is when you fight a new enemy, but even then you won't know what to change before the battle until you fight them and die. I would rather have things change in battle since there is actually strategy involved instead of realizing that you have to change to some obscure paradigm before a battle because the boss killed you in 3 seconds.

I still haven't picked up the game again yet. I spent most of the day working on my sisters iPod. :P

[GaZ]

Just wondering how far along you were in this Jamie. I'm at the start of Chapter 11 right now and it's a little better since you get to finally go where you want to go and do what you want to do in the order that you want to, but there are still hardly any challenging enemies.

I was having trouble with a couple of the summons before I realized that you have to use Libra 2 times to get all of their information to show up. It's sad because the battles are sometimes tough, but then you change to a certain paradigm and you kill them in like 30 seconds. There is no middle ground. A great example of this is the Bahamut fight. He was crushing me until I figured out to use Libra twice to see what else you have to do to him. Then I just used the Saboteur and finished him off in like 30 seconds. :P

It's basically set up where you will run into someone and easily kill them in less than a minute or you will run into a huge monster that is still easy but takes forever to kill. :P

The only good battle so far was the one with Cid since he was tough, but not cheap. I barely survived, but beat him on the first try though.

[Jamie L Goehring]

Mr. G, on 16 March 2010 - 06:17 PM, said:

Just wondering how far along you were in this Jamie. I'm at the start of Chapter 11 right now and it's a little better since you get to finally go where you want to go and do what you want to do in the order that you want to, but there are still hardly any challenging enemies.

I was having trouble with a couple of the summons before I realized that you have to use Libra 2 times to get all of their information to show up. It's sad because the battles are sometimes tough, but then you change to a certain paradigm and you kill them in like 30 seconds. There is no middle ground. A great example of this is the Bahamut fight. He was crushing me until I figured out to use Libra twice to see what else you have to do to him. Then I just used the Saboteur and finished him off in like 30 seconds. :P

It's basically set up where you will run into someone and easily kill them in less than a minute or you will run into a huge monster that is still easy but takes forever to kill. :P

The only good battle so far was the one with Cid since he was tough, but not cheap. I barely survived, but beat him on the first try though.

Sadly not terribly far I have a friend in town for spring break so I wont really be able to program or play ffxi Monday (yesterday) through Saturday.

[GaZ]

I probably won't be playing it as much now that I just got GOW3 from GameFly. I'll be switching between the two games. :D