Yes, I liked its sophistication a lot as well. Final Fantasy Tactics' dialogue is of the same caliber too. At least The War of the Lions version.

You liked the plot?? really?? i didnt like it personally. i think that there was too much melodrama. the beginning of FF13 (with Ragnarok) dragged out until the end, all there was in between were a lot of cutscenes where the characters would behave over-theatrically. a lot of those cutscenes seemed to me to repeat the same thing; like "its our focus, Serah said so". it was filled with so many cliches and adolescent one liners "lady luck sure isnt on his side". but fair enough, the anelects were the best thing about it imo. but i really dont think its well scripted, imo.

yeah i agree the battle system was awesome, it was fun. and again your right about FF12, it was way too hard core, i think the tone of the game was good, and i really enjoyed the story etc, but theres no way you cant expect an ordinary gamer to micro manage gamits, or traverse sprawling environments for a prolonged hours, its simply too much. but i think that the game had  nice balance to the drama and the story, unlike FF13. but it shouldve been more balanced in terms of gameplay.

I love FFXII and im with you in every word, FFXIII was a very girly game, pretty bad dialogues and that voice style  was just very childish. Love FFXII, so much more mature and  much more exploration, with TOWNS, NPC and so many sidequests. Im a almost diehard fan of FF series but i feel FFXIII like a spin off and not a main tittle, it lacks so many things that are pretty basics for FF game, i hope that Nomura could make a great FF with versus.

I totally agree with you, i'm not sure what happened with the PlayOnline team, i assume their the ones who were having problems with Matsuno. but either way, i agree that Kitase's production team have failed. imo i think even if they handed the torch to newer developers, they still wouldnt come close to what Matsuno could produce. (oh and the current production team will not go imo, i think we're stuck with more of their melodrama).

FF12's Character all had motives to do what they did in all parts of the story, which is something most FFs lack. In the first hour the setting of the game was laid flawlessly, Vaan and Penelop's circumstances were understood, and they let you play their daily lives.

 The drama starts when Vaan decides to finally do something, where he meets 2 other characters. They get stuck together because of what another character was doing secretly.

When the drama moves on from Vaan and Penelop, people think that this is justification to say the game has no character development. The point is, why must every story be about the 1 protanoist? Vaan wanted to be a sky pirate, why would he not follow Balthier around like a little dog? His life was boaring.

lol, yeah thats partly what i meant about the game being too melodramatic, with a less relistic tone. but some people do like that type of direction where character development is at the top. and i was also reffering to the design style of the 2 games. FF13 is such a cutscene heavy game where we play the game to watch the next cutscene unfold. FF12 was about watching the cutscene so the gameplay would unfold. i just think its a much better development methodology. where the gameplay makes the cutscenes, not the cutscenes making the gameplay.

FF12 did lack in the character development side, which i think was evident by the end of the game. but you know i think that the FF13s battle system was a lot of fun and did things a bit better than FF12.

Edit: i dont know about Nomura man, i'm afraid that Notics is evolved from Squall and Stella evolved from Rinoa. i think we may get the same type of over theatrical teenage romance as we have in the past from the FF13 production team. where the story and gameplay take a back seat to teen romance.

About this; as a FF12 fan i half heartedly agree with you. i like the way that see the game through the eyes of Vaan and Penenlo, and we're taken on a whirlwind adventure, through thier perspective.

but heres what we dont really know. the orignal director of the game Yasumi Matsuno apparently never wanted Vaan & Penelo in the game. Basch wouldve been the main character. And we wouldve have lived his emotional journey of redemption for the country he failed, and finally confront the Judge who condemned him to false imprisionment. you've finished the game, so you already know i've barley scratched the surface with that.

but anyway, apparently there were people at SE who didnt agree with having such a mature character as the centre of the game because it dosent appeal to the demographic of FF titles (cleary neither did F13 if you ask me). but anyway Matsuno eventully left production half way because he feel ill 'apparently', and the character development we shouldve had between Balthier, Fran, Ashe and Basch was substituted for Vaan and Penelo.

thats the reason the story of Ivalice dosent have much relevance for them. and imo we only got a part of the game he wouldve delivered. i think had he had finished, the emotional story behind the characters wouldve been a lot better, and the story wouldve been a lot better. but i've rambled, and my original point was that the direction of FF12 with Matsuno wouldve been so much better than FF13's direction.

About this; as a FF12 fan i half heartedly agree with you. i like the way that see the game through the eyes of Vaan and Penenlo, and we're taken on a whirlwind adventure, through thier perspective.

but heres what we dont really know. the orignal director of the game Yasumi Matsuno apparently never wanted Vaan & Penelo in the game. Basch wouldve been the main character. And we wouldve have lived his emotional journey of redemption for the country he failed, and finally confront the Judge who condemned him to false imprisionment. you've finished the game, so you already know i've barley scratched the surface with that.

but anyway, apparently there were people at SE who didnt agree with having such a mature character as the centre of the game because it dosent appeal to the demographic of FF titles (cleary neither did F13 if you ask me). but anyway Matsuno eventully left production half way because he feel ill 'apparently', and the character development we shouldve had between Balthier, Fran, Ashe and Basch was substituted for Vaan and Penelo.

thats the reason the story of Ivalice dosent have much relevance for them. and imo we only got a part of the game he wouldve delivered. i think had he had finished, the emotional story behind the characters wouldve been a lot better, and the story wouldve been a lot better. but i've rambled, and my original point was that the direction of FF12 with Matsuno wouldve been so much better than FF13's direction.

I'll say this: I could hardly wait to play FFXII. I got it on launch day and played it for a whole week without even scratching half of the game (the endgame was just BIGGER!). I absolutely loved every seconds of it (other than the easiest boss battle in gaming history and the boring ending that didn't explain much of anything). I think I have the best Gambits combo ever! I could take on enemies with 20 more levels than me without even worrying about a game over! Truly awesome. Then, I went on online forums and found out that people hated the game for it's lack of character development and battle system... I was truly shocked and mad at the same time. That game had a more mature story with more serious themes, not a lot of zippers and long hair to be found on most of the characters either. They didn't force you to find out about the artificial past-life of certain characters you didn't care about. You take what you want from the story. I mean now there was also an interesting and more realistic battle system, but no, seems like people still liked more of the same boring turn-based stuff. Turn-based battle systems on HD RPGs don't make sense to me nowadays, it feels so archaic and not realistic at all. The graphics get better and better every new game release, the expressions on faces and the cinematic feel too. You want me to believe that characters are still going to wait for the enemies to attack before they can as well (the part that always made me laugh in RPGs for a long time)?

Anyways... then FFXIII got announced. I was hyped after that first trailer... until they showed the battle system in that Famitsu scan. I got scared A LOT. Then I thought "Hey, it looks like Xenogears so it can't be that bad." So anyways, when the game finally launched I was so happy and I got it on launch day as well, played it for 30 hours or something (got to Chapter 11) and then I had to stop playing because of college. After the hype went down a bit, that's when I realized how boring the game actually was for me. Only thing I've been doing was following linear paths, enter and watch somewhat exciting to look battles... but that was about it. I couldn't care less about the characters. I think the problem is that I can't be attached to anything in the game because the main struggle of the characters don't touch me personally. It talks about outcasting a certain group of people from a closed society controlled by some extremist government... I guess it can interest some people to find out what will happen to these people, but not me at least. Let's just say that a game needs more than graphics and "trap"-like characters to entertain me. I can live and play an RPG even if the gameplay is bad because I know that the story is at least going to be interesting, but when both of these things are not there, I would normally not bother. But then it's an FF game, and they usually have very weird final areas and interesting endings (I'm thinking about FFVIII here). So I asked on VGC a few months later if it would be worth it to finish the game and I got replies like "Play the rest of the game, it was probably the best gaming moments of my life." Wow, that got me excited! And then... the next chapters were still corridors and the story just got more confusing. What I didn't get is how they went away from Cocoon so they could find a way to save it, but then they decided to invade Cocoon anyways. I mean what the heck kind of logic is that? Also, couldn't they have used terms like Gods, Servants of Gods or anything more simple than l'Cie, Fal'Cie or whatever?

Last thing, good point about VersusXIII OP. Now that you mention, I'm thinking maybe Final Fantasy games are just not our thing anymore? Let me explain. When I played FFVIII for the first time, I actually loved the romance story going on with Squall and Rinoa. I used to find myself in Squall because he was scared to explain his feelings (or at least that's how I perceived it), like me before. The whole love thing was subtle at first, but then Squall got "badass" and you could really feel the chemistry building up between the two characters at some point in the story. For me it was interesting because I was in the age of starting to get interested in girls so I could relate. With a game like FFXII, I couldn't really relate to anything, but I had a feeling the story focused on more political problems and conflicts that we could see with the multiple races in the game. The world of Ivalice was already a nice one, now it was even better. The story didn't force you to focus on characters you didn't care about, you take what you want. I think that's good fantasy because there are so many other things to focus about that are even more interesting in my opinion. Get the point across, make it simple, and move on. That's how FFXII felt to me and that's exactly what I needed. When a game is very character driven like in FFXIII and wants you to feel emotional for them and that the characters just don't interest you at all in the end, well there's a problem. Maybe if I was at the same age as when I played FFVIII and that my mother died for some reason a few years ago, maybe I would like to see how Hope's story concludes and everything. Snow's story with Serah is kind of unrealistic in my opinion, that's why it doesn't interest me either. So in other words, I think I've grown tired of character driven stories. The datalog in FFXIII is not enough to explain the world of Cocoon and Gran Pulse, which are not uninteresting by the way. They just didn't focus much on it. I don't know if I'm the only, but now I prefer more serious stuff like Fallout (even the first two games) and Mass Effect. As long as the universe is well described and as long as you have one main character and that you follow most of the story through his eyes and decisions (like Shepard in ME), that's all I need. Finally, VersusXIII might not have a story that interests me, which we don't know yet, but if the gameplay is solid I'll gladly play and enjoy half of the game at least.

(And that was a freakishly long post!!!)

people forget about the "star wars universe " where the game takes place. that totally ruined the game for me.