SHMUPGurus said:
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!!!)
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It was a long post, lol, but well said. i think the reason that people didnt like FF12 is because of the gambit system, i thought it was very good, but the average gamer dosent want to mirco manage gambits and traverse sprawling large environments for hours. i think that it was a bit too hard core in that sense, but the 2nd half of the game was a lot better because of that gameplay design. i prefer FF12 in the gameplay side though because FF13 was far too boring. in every area you would fight the same enemies, using the same paradigm strategy, and you would then fight that same enemy or group of enemies over a dozen times. and when you fight different enemies, you would repeat the same paradigm strategy, lol.
theres not enough character development in FF12 because the developers forced Vaan and Penelo into the game (they were never meant to be in it). but i did like the subtle hints they gave us with the chemistry of the character relationships. thats why it was difficult to understand the story, it wasnt completed by the director, and there conflicts with the team when he left that affected the story. imo it was still better than FF13.
the reason i really dont like FF13 is because of melodrama; if you think about the script, we start off learning about Ragnarok, we then proceed to stop Ragnarok, its not until the end of the game we complete this task (you know what i mean). but you know the story in other FF games change during the games, we dont know what we have to do at the beginning of the game, theres a lot of mystrey packed into the game, like FF12. in FF13 i was upset with the way from the beginning to the end the game was packed with 6 hours of cutscenes that didnt go into the mythology of the worlds of Pluse and Cocoon, they were simply packed with too much melodrama and poor dialogue. and imo it feels too overtheactrial, and the material in the cutscenes is repeated many times, unecessarily. sadly i think that Nomura is heading in the same direction with Versus. (too much repitition of melodrama i think, sacrificing gameplay in the process).
Personally i prefered FF12, where the focus is more on realism, and telling a world story, imo sometimes Ivalice feels like the central character in game. the reason that the team havent told the whole story in FF13 is because they're trying to make Fabula Nova Crystalis a 10 year series, the story will be told over the course of the series, imo is really not good enough! anyway, about what you said about getting to old for FF, i agree with you on some level, but i could still play something like FF12 and still enjoy it, despite it being an incomplete game. or other RPGs and still enjoy them. i just dont think FF13 is one of those games. oh and imo the production team of FF13 must of played FF12 and really liked what they've seen because a lot of the themes with Gods and servants are very similar to FF12. i think they had to give them different names to avoid ppl asking that question, lol.
