A203D said:
I think this Square Enix's problem, they want spectacle and stunning battle visuals, yet that has removed the player from the gameplay decisisons. Resulting in an automatic process where AI fights AI, rather than having manual control.
Personally I think thats where this series is going wrong gameplay wise. I'm not saying we need a return to turn based battles, but I want to see the player control 3 players in real time, meaning less emphasis on fast battles that focus on spectale and animation, but slower battles that give the user enough time to input commands giving way to more manually controllable gameplay options that offer more tactical depth.
In a nutshell I think the problem is AI controlled characters during battles, which has reduced overall gameplay depth.
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Yes and no. I certainly think you're at least half-way right.
The problem with S-E is that game design has two steps, design and execution. To make a good game, you first DESIGN the game to be fair, but exceedingly difficult, and then you use your EXECUTION to dial that back to the desired difficulty. The key is, though, that you start with smart design.
For the record, From Soft does this wonderfully with the Souls series. The enemies there are designed to have attacks and combinations which could simply obliterate very high level player if they were used correctly, but because they telegraph their use and they don't always use them at the right time the games are tough, but fair.
Square Enix refuses to do this. They clearly wanted XIII's combat to look fast and energetic, but it goes by too fast to meaningfully make decisions and enter commands (Like you said: spectacle). Instead they made a collection of "obvious when you use these" paradigms against enemies which are dumber (and tougher) than posts. Two dumbs don't make a smart.
Paradigmed combat could have been phenomenal if opponents fought back with their own paradigms rather than monstrous HP bars. Slow combat doesn't mean you can't have Lightning doing fancy flip strikes, but it does mean she has to look winded afterwards to give the player time to think through using the paradigm deck for bluffs and feints.
I can see why some players would be upset by the indirect control, but personally I was fine with it. It's basically delegating tedious parts of combat to a friendly AI, and I'm all for that.
(mostly)
