Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

Mobs with the ability to insta-kill(or near enough) does not a good game make. It's a mechanic made to falsely increase the difficulty by adding what seems like an impossible odd to overcome. As for navigating the tower of Babil without a map, I honestly never found it that hard.

Don't EVEN get me started on the utterly POINTLESS crystarium.

We're not talking about what makes a good game, we're talking about difficulty of FFXIII compared to previous titles.

It wasn't hard hard but it was much more challenging than the friendly stroll through Cocoon.

I for one, enjoyed FFXIII

Oh man today is on fire.

Start physics homework; says due at midnight tonight.

Check email hour later, TA extended it to Wednesday. :D Score.

It should come from population or the government itselfe and not from other countries to develope a real sense for it. And which country can blame others? Nearly every has a corpse or more along its way through history.

quick, go buy a lottery ticket

I dunno, I know I turned the clock red at 100 hours on FFVIII, never understood that. My FFIII DS has a capped playtime, the clock stopped. FFIX I know I've beaten over 50 times. In a playthrough, I know where most hidden "?" and "!" items are without help. I even know about the waterfall in Evil Forest. If you're asking about playtime and at one's own pace enjoyment, pre-PS2 era was best. Even FFX/-2 and FFXII were enjoyable, but not like the older games. PS2's problem seemed to be that Square(-Enix?) was more focused on "This time, better graphics AND VOICES!!" than story. FFX had a decent story, good graphics for it's day, FFXII was the closest they came to balance, I enjoyed FFXII, myself.

GOOD IDEA.

and what I'm saying is near insta-killing mobs only artificially makes a game harder. Sagi, I'd be more willing to agree with you if it wasn't for the fact that I've seen you have such hardcore hard-ons for old games and completely detest anything newer, only to have you later try a new game and show interest in it when you would have earlier shown nothing but distaste.

I believe this happened with FFX-2 or a similar title within the last year, did it not? (my apologies if this is a different person that I'm thinking of, my memory is certainly not the best)

The only point I'm honestly trying to make is that I'm tired of constant hating on games, whether they're actually good or bad. If you enjoy the game, play the game, if you don't, good for you don't play it. You can talk about how much you hate it if you want, but I don't see any point in bringing it up over and over and over again or bashing the gaming industry the same way. ***changes, deal with it.

playtime isn't everything.

I want to be immersed in the story and battles, and SE has failed to get me there for half of X, most of X-2, XIII, and XIII-2.

Games are starting to abuse QTE's, taking me out of the moment just to make sure I hit the button. It sucks, it takes away from the experience.

There is too much focus on making cutscenes look beautiful that they add too many of them. I don't want 60% gameplay 40% video, it should add to the moment, not be a huge chunk of the game.

Being able to explore is very important to me, and when you make maps that are linear it ruins it completely. They can take advantage of 3D by hiding a path, but that really isn't exploring. Give me a reason to go out of my way and find something special, don't just make a path to lead me to my destination and fight a few things along the way.

The most important thing for me is having characters I care about. If I don't care about them then it's a huge issue with me. If I don't like the characters I'm controlling then I'll lose interest very quickly.

5 ARAMs tonight someone has D/C in each game... ;;

The thing FFXIII had against it was it's layout, WAY too linear, 20~ straight hours of battles, and bosses that weren't hard, just had massive HP and one or two insta-kills. Remember old FF games? "Well, we should rest in this here town, they have an inn, over here." then storyline relevant scenes and NPC/Party member interaction, you know, free time. Time to enjoy things, play a mini-game, customize, find easter eggs, etc. FFXIII didn't have that. As I said a few days ago, it didn't have a world.

QTEs need to die. Especially when you can only beat a boss by pressing a bunch of buttons for a cinematic instead of normal battle.

While older FFs were kind of linear there was always stuff hidden that you had to really look for to find so you always ended up exploring every inch of the map. I miss that :| XIII was a big corridor AND had a map :/

Agreed, you put it more eloquently that I can, it appears.

Backtracking to find new things and changes to places was fun too

Kali addresses my more pressing concern quite well, character depth.

It's really hard to enjoy a game that doesn't have an good character development not to mention the interaction between characters in a party staying dynamically consistent.

Exactly! Hold on...I'm about to go into a tangent in a sec...

I find it funny that lately Germany and Merkel are basically being touted as the whipping boy for Europe's financial woes at the moment. Just reading articles from 'The Local' (DUE) and 'The Telegraph' (UK) and the commentary sometimes, there's a lot of anti-German sentiment lately, and maybe even a smidge of unfounded jealousy.

Last time I was in Germany in 2007, things were also rough as far as the economy and job-market were concerned. I find it appalling that people use Germany as the current scapegoat now just because their economy is pulling the weight of a few others, and are in the leadership position of Europe again.

As far as freeing up the EU citizenship to move freely around Europe they've damned themselves for having the opposite social and political stance that has plagued them over the years.

Germany! Damned if you do, damned if you don't!

There are rumors being circulated of PS4 supposedly having a price of $399. Though this is just a rumor.

I felt bad for not giving the old man his coffee in IX the first time I played (I came back too late)

oh, that's actually the first time I hear this. Did you get stuck somewhere which threw you Out of the Story? Iirc there was story progression in every area without too long ways Till the next Event.
I had quite the Few people who enjoyed just watching someone Else playing it because everything happened quick and steadily.

I found it really difficult to enjoy XIII because every character felt like they came straight out of an anime and they didn't feel like real people at all. I dunno, maybe the west is just better at making characters feel more real (to me)

All I can say is the only boss I remember taking a while to kill in XIII was Vercingetorix (aka Mission 64). Even Attacus (Mission 51) was a pushover using the correct classes and taking advantage of ATB paradigm switch charging (not sure what to call it).

That said, I really loved XIII. Almost as much as I love XII and IX (my favorites). Though everyone is entitled to their own opinion and some just don't like the game, fair enough.

The character development is one thing I didn't really like about FFXII, but I feel it more than made up for it with things such as seasonal changes in zones, Mark hunting, misc. quests. The Bazaar/Loot system was a nice touch.

Morrid lol. Gotta leave Treno and search the Dali Mayor's house to find a key to get the last one in the Choco Pen.... One is on Eiko's porch, the other is at ground level South Gate in Alexandrian territory IIRC.

I could get into using the correct classes, but many kept you switching repeatedly. I find no enjoyment in swapping roles repeatedly.

FFXIII was 1/2 to 1/3 of a normal FF game. The characters received one "arc" of development each, as opposed to two or three like previous strong titles, and the "end game" is reached mid-way through the game, and although it's large for an area, it was small in the scope of a normal FF end game.

Misa, have you been tempted to time travel yet in this damn game? lmao

Yeah I gave him the coffee the other times but the first time I played I felt bad that I couldn't finish it before he died lol

"Thank you for applying, we don't have any openings at this time..."

Okay, that line is understandable if this was from a small business I was applying to. Not a huge retail chain where I've gone into multiple times and there would be like 2 cashiers working and 15 vacant registers. And sometimes those cashiers got the stankest attitude ever (understandable, customers do suck) and would *** around every chance they got.

Wish I had the know-how to just basically work at home. Saves us from having to find childcare anyways. But it's frustrating to get turned down for jobs monkeys can do. -.-

Right, because upgrading your party's equipment has never been a big part of FF games; it's always just been there for completionists.

Long? Random encounters can be finished in 3 seconds flat, unlike previous FFs where random encounters became an absolute chore at endgame (due to time, not difficulty).
The longer battles in XIII are only long because they're difficult. A certain Cie'th enemy at endgame has just as much HP as other enemies at that point, but can be taken down in less than a minute because it's hardly a threat for the majority of the battle. The others, however, take time to kill because they pose an actual threat, so you can't just blow through their HP.
How is being able to (sometimes) avoid the battles any different from being able to choose to (sometimes) escape after it starts?