who cares

FF13 will still be the 2nd best game this gen, knocking on MGS4's door!

Nah, I doubt it could beat Valkyria chronicles (which already kicks mgs4's ass) and it will lose a lot more respect points from me if I can't access half the world at endgame because that idea is supposed to have died in the ps1 era but may be returning again thanks to multi discs.

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is also up there in my top games of this gen even though the reviews suggest otherwise. Who pays attention to reviews anyway?

Tell me about it. This is were i have te most fun

Did you play any ps1 FF game? If you did, you'll notice how there's some excuse as to why a previous location can"t be accessed later in the game. The game that makes it very obvious is final fantasy 8. When you get to disc 4, NONE of the towns in the game can be accessed anymore. The excuse the game gives is that the SeeDs have travelled through time so the old towns dont exist in the new era but we're smart enough not to buy that excuse right? Can you guess the reason? My guess is that the all the town data cant fit on every disc along with all the extra content that pertains to story progress.

This wasn't a problem on ps2 because both ffx and ffxii came on 1 disc. Notice how every previous location is still accessible at endgame in both ffx and ffxii?

Now, one way to solve this is the way Legend of Dragoon (another ps1 game) was programmed. In this game, you have to swap discs if you return to an old town and swap again when you return to the newer town. It could become a serious pain quick so I highly doubt this is the approach S_E has taken on the 360 even though I hear they had a hand in the making of LoD.

In order for the ps3 and 360 versions to be "equal", S-E may have to create excuses for why certain areas can no longer be accessed due to not being able to fit all the area data on every 360 disc so this would have to be passed on to the ps3 version as well, hence, the downgrade in my eyes. I care little for minor graphica differences but this one is a mega-bummer. For completionists like myself, this may mean missing out on certain items because I didn't glue my eyes to a guide and it gets pretty annoying.

I hope I have been able to explain what I mean by limited roaming...

My hope is that S-E has found a way to avoid this but I just don't see how. Dual-audio, I can manage without but this one is like reliving ps1 era issues again and its not cool at all.

Star Ocean 4, which Square Enix had a hand in producing did exactly this, and that game did not have any limited roaming whatsoever. I wouldn't be suprised if the 360 version of FFXIII adopts this method as well.

Like I stated earlier, the PS1 Final Fantasy comparison doesn't work, because Square structured the games so that the point of no return was on the last disc. Many JRPG's have a point of no return, where if you save after, you can't go back. Many single disc PS2 games and single catridge SNES games had them as well.

I find it really hard to believe that Square Enix would cut out significant portions of this game when they have other viable alternatives that have worked well in the past.

i knew this was happening, 360 is holding the ps3 back, its not far, to all of us, all the 360 fan boys want to run there mouth about how much better graphics are on 360, thats because there all ports to the ps3, they should do the best they can for bith systems, if one is better that is the way it goes . its called compaticion, just because the 360 cant hang does not mean all should suffer. this will happen a lot.

I have come to see the "point of no return" as a thing of the past. FFX and FFXII didn't have it so it would've sucked if FFXIII did. No ps2 JRPG of recent times even comes to mind that had the point of no return.

Anyway, thanks for clarifying on star ocean 4. I've never played it but it looks like thats the likely path for ffxiii 360. I didn't think it was going to happen due to the fact that the last game I remember experiencing that method is a ps1 game. I'm glad I used the word "may" to avoid fooling myself lol. I hope that is the case

It looks like the only potential thing the ps3 loses is dual audio but if the english dub is as good as they say and as good as ffxiii, I can live without the novelty.

since I know opneed the thread, that is a big difference.

Everything I've said in this thread has had purpose. The most important bits were after the photo analysis. Trust me, he read that far.

Radiant Dawn was magnificant, and VC was also great, but Vesperia is better than both.