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Egann on 22 October 2014
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CladInShadows said:
LubeMeUpUncleAlfred said:
teigaga said:
CladInShadows said:
teigaga said:
Xxain said:
Ok.

I do have to say though, your perception of what the"forced main cast" did for the world/story of FF12 is ironic. The choice to present the main cast as just simple, non special, non directly related to main villian, actually strengthens the world and story lore. FF12 focused on world events themselves as the main character not singular direct events(cloud,sephiroth,shinra). FF12 has the richest lore of Any FF minus the MMO's wether you like it or not.

!!!!

Final fantasy XII is held back only by oversights in the battle system and the lack of emotive investment in the story (and how hard it was to follow). It is still my opinion the most progressive FF in recent memory. 

You thought FF12 was a hard story to follow?  Jesus Christ, stay the hell away from FF13 then.

WIth the old english and different fractions, I often lost track of who was doing what. 13 was convoluted in the way it was told but was ultimately quite simple. Whilst 12 alongside the things mentioned above was actually plot heavy with tons of twists and turns, so it kinda mattered that you paid attention.

I never understood why people think FF13's story is hard to follow.  There's like one or two instances that are weird because the meaning is lost in its effectiveness, but the story is never hard to follow:

*spoilers*

Like Barthandelus tasking the characters to fulfill their L'Cie mission to kill Ragnarok, but at the end all of a sudden Bart wants them to kill him  so he can ascend.

It's never hard to follow, it just doesn't make sense.  They were really reaching for creating their own logic in a story.  But unfortunately you just can't do that and succeed without providing consistency for this logic.

I kind of lump those two sentiments together. FF13 throws a lot of new terms and concepts at you but does little to inform you of what they actually mean. You spend a good chunk of the game working your way to some goal that you don't really understand or identify with.

I honestly don't get how people think FF12's plot is confusing.

I didn't have a problem with them. I haven't actually played 12, but 13 threw a lot of terms out there, but Sasz did a fair job of explaining what a l'Cie and a focus were early on. That's all the information you actually need to understand XIII.You don't even need to know what a Fal'Cie is, and there's a ton of context telling you what Cocoon and Pulse are. The problem was they didn't work the theme into the mechanics and they didn't think the party chemistry through properly.

How do you make "fighting fate" into a gameplay mechanic the player can identify with? Since Oedipus Rex it has been a narrative theme, and it's hard to apply it to game mechanics. It's quite easy for a character to wrestle control from the player (MGS2) but it is essentially impossible for the player to wrestle control from the designer, and that's more or less what this theme required.

Then there's the party chemistry. Snow outright ruins Lightning because he's charismatic and wrestles authority from her. Compare this to Duodecim, where both Kain and Laguna make mistakes which REQUIRE Light to step up and take charge. Now if Snow had been wrong on several really important regards and Light had to veto him, that would change things drastically, but as is Snow is the unintended protagonist of XIII. It's sloppy design choices like this which ruined XIII's potential.

Add in the enemy design and you have XIII. Enemies have billions of HP, and then make up for being tedious by lacking the wit of a gerbil, and then make up for THAT being too easy with uber-secret double-special attacks. What is with these retarded design choices?