FFXIII-2 Impressions: 102 hours in

[lestatdark]

Christhor said:

lestatdark said:

Christhor said:

lestatdark said:

Lyrikalstylez said:
How the hell can you play a Final Fantasy game for over 100 hours??
This isnt Skyrim were talking about..

You're kidding right? Some FF games could easily rival any Elder Scrolls game in terms of sheer extra content.

FFVII with Chocobo breading, Chocobo racing, Emerald and Ruby weapon prep and so on could topple the 100 hours mark too.
FFVIII had Triple Triad in which you could easily spend 50+ hours before even leaving Balamb for the first SEED mission
FFIX ditto with Tetra Masters plus the Chocobo Forests and Chocographs, Treasure Hunts, Ozma preps. 
FFX with Blitzball, Monster Arena, Sphere Grid completion and so on could easily take over 300 hours.
FFXII with the License Plate, Hunts, Espers could easily reach 200 hours. 

And that's only Main FF games, because some spin-offs could topple the 100 hour mark easily as well. FFT, both Dissida games, etc.

"Final Fantasy games have tons of extra content because they have never-ending card games!"

Let's take Skyrim like you do. If someone plays Skyrim, does EVERY quest in the game and doesn't fast travel anywhere, then it can probably take upwards of 1000 hours. Getting every skill to 100 should take quite a while as well.

Are you even serious? Did you gloss over every other sidequest that I listed just to create your strawman argument? 

Oh i'll take skyrim like I did, because you know what? I've already done what you described there. I've visited every dungeon, done every quest (other than the infinite Radiant Quests), have 100 on almost every skill except pickpocket and speechcraft on my level 75 character, barely used Fast Travel (Shadowmere travelling FTW) and you know how long it took me? 206 hours. By that mark, on FFX, I was nowhere close enough to finish the Monster Arena and the Dark Aeons, but then again, it seems you only considered the card games for your argument.

And let's not forget the single fact that in terms of main quest only, any FF game total game time overcomes, in strides, the total game time of the MQ of any ES game. Oblivion MQ could be finished in 4 hours, Skyrim in less than 10, Morrowind's in less than 10 as well, Daggerfall in less than 3 and Arena in less than 5. Any FF main storyline easily climbs over the 10 - 20 hour mark. 

So my point still stands (the one that I made to Lyrikalstylez). A lot of FF's can easily last to over 100 hours, so the consideration that he made (which was clearly to belittle anyone who does play a FF game for over 100+ hours) is false.

You must have used a guide then, because I am currently on a hundred hours played and I've yet to even visit all of the cities.

Actually, sidequests like monster arena and dark aeons are exactly the same thing. Why do they take such a long time? Because you have to constantly grind. It's exactly the same thing as just playing the same card games over and over again. Your time playing a game that gets filled up by grinding and playing the same card game over and over again, is hardly worth calling content. Then you could argue that Tetris has the most content out of any game ever, since the game simply never ends.

You could also use the radiant quests in Skyrim as the same thing, they are never ending, so you could potentially fill up your timer with hundreds of hours doing those. That is exactly how I see the card games and the sidequests that take excessive grinding.

Oh, I'm not saying that Final Fantasies can take more than 100 (if you obsess over it), I've done so with IX, but to claim that Final Fantasy has generally more content than Elder Scrolls is laughable.

A guide you say? Why in the world would I ever need a guide for an Elder Scrolls game post-Daggerfall? Everything you ever need in information is given to you without effort. You want to do a quests where you have to track down someone around the map? Lo and behold, a marker mysteriously appears over the person who's supposed to be missing. If you ever get lost doing a quest is basically because you don't take the time to read. As for exploration, it doesn't get much easier than just following the compass. 

Funny though, now adding extra content that expands the game's length by forcing you to properly prepare for it is considered "hardly worth calling content". I bet that if a FF is announced with no extra content at all, people like you would be bitching at it for that fact....oh wait, that's what happened with FFXIII, which had almost no extra content. 

Radiant Quests doesn't compare, by far, to long and expansive sidequests such as Monster Arena. You don't unlock squat on the radiant quests, they're worth for nothing more than a few miserable gold pieces which are negligible at the point of the game in where they become avaliable (and some are worthless right from the start, such as the Bounty quests on inns). I'd rather take a Monster Arena quest any day over having to repeat the same "go here, kill X and collect 100 gold" RQs.

Your perception on the value of both sidequests is pretty skewed, basically because you're overvaluating the RQs much more than they're actually worth, especially since they're a poor man's implementation of the system they had on Daggerfall, which had a proper "infinite" quest system. Alas, Skyrim took a lot from Daggerfall (thankfully so), that's why I consider it the best ES game (my previous one was Daggerfall).

Now you're putting words I never said. I said some FF games could rival ES games in terms of sheer content, not topple them. And you know why? Because both games do extra content differently. While FF gives you expansive quests, which yes, you do have to grind in most of them, ES games gives you an expansive open world. But the problem with ES games is that the feeling of open world is marred (at least it was until Skyrim) with repetition between dungeons and content.

Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion all had tons of dungeons that were basically the same between them and added nothing to the game itself, and the only dungeons which were worth exploring or were noted for their actual different content could be counted by the handful. Heck, Oblivion itself, which was a "next gen" ES game, did a pretty shitty job with the Oblivion realm basically forcing you to play the same 4 only existing layout to exhaustion, even on important quests. Skyrim at least did a pretty good job in differentiating dungeons and adding "unique" content between them, giving you an actual perception of exploration that the ES series was lacking. 

Also, I see that you didn't comment on the actual time that any ES game donates to the main quest or main storyline behind them. It would be lovely to see the reaction of people if a FF game is released in the same fashion, only 5 hours of main story and the rest in "sidequests", the backlash would reach epic proportions.

My point will continue to stand. If anyone goes ahead and says "How can you play a FF game for 100 hours" then anyone has the right to say "How can you play an ES game for 100 hours" because you only do so in the obsession of "exploring the world" nothing more.