| routsounmanman said: Linearity didn't bug me that much in FFXIII. It was that stupid, boring and shallow as hell "new battle system" that it implemented. I made myself to get to the ending (couldn't stop playing through any of the previous FFs) and I did so with a button-mashing fest. Utterly dissapointed; thank God for Atlus and their amazing games (Demon's Souls, Etrian Odyssey, SMT, Persona). They totally replaced Squaresoft for me... |
I don't know how seriously to take this post, but button-mashing will not get you through the battles. Especially on boss fights and late-game battles, you need to know what you are doing and have a clear strategy. WIthout doing this, you have no chance of winning. Going into a battle and mashing button won't get you anywhere in many of the later battles. Now, Final Fantasy XIII is faster paced than many other RPGs, so there will be more button presses, but this does not make it a button masher. As I mentioned in an earlier post too, the higher-ranked battles on Gran Pulse are quite challengong and provide further proof that the game is far from a button-masher. Just as an example, almost all of the higher-ranked battles require you to react to battle animations as you switch from commando/ravager to sentinel, and these switches have very little margin for error and must be performed quickly.
It just seems you are oversimplifying the combat system in order to critique it, or maybe I don't understand what it means to be a button-masher. I generaly take that to mean that someone can power through the game with little regard to learning gameplay mechanics because just hitting the same button, combinations of buttons or using the same strategy is a sufficient means to beat the game. The term button-mashing is generally used for action games though, so the fact that Final Fantasy XIII uses the same buttons is inconsequential. Most RPGs use the same button for command inputs. RPGs are more about strategy than action, and Final Fantasy XIII is no different. The strategic inputs are just more time-sensitive if they are to used correctly.
