The last JRPG i played was Chrono Trigger (last year). Now I'm about 7 hours into FF13. What they said about the linear nature of the first part of the game is true. It's all story/cut scene with some battles thrown in. If you can deal with that and are ready for some JRPG ass melodrama, then I would say to get it.
For what it's worth, when I get into a JRPG I want a traditional experience. And I have fun when I find time to play FF 13. I liked the time I spent with FF13 enough to buy the sequel today.
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We can't see in your head what you like or not, it's very different then the other FF games. I got about 15 hours in it and haven't played it for awhile, not because it's bad but just other games got in the way (even some other FF games and Ys). Supposedly FF XIII-2 is better, but have never played it.
Just watch a gameplay video on youtube.
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FFXIII is more of a tactical combat simulator than a JRPG. If you are used to the series' "hold A to win any fight" combat, you'll hate it since it requires battle planning and execution, while the story is literally on rails and poorly told. (It is a great story, but the direction is horrible, most of the plot is told in datacubes.)
It's an excellent game for a relatively newcomer to the franchise when you have no preconceptions.
Also, FFXIII-2 is a more traditional JRPG, but the plot kinda requires FFXIII.
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90% of the game (which is only 25~30 hours long) is easily beaten by repeatedly pressing "A" (as in, whatever is the confirmation button, and the ending of the game is a lot about using the repeat command and changing paradigms every few seconds).
Planning is rather minimal too, since only need to do it like, twice through the entire game, and only because of how dumb the AI is, and how you can't trust the characters controlled by the AI, so you are better of letting them do the attack and do the buffs/debuffs/healing yourself because they can't do it properly (AI takes twice or 3 times more time to buff/debuff, they are crap at healing).
Any additional planing comes from the same place where you have to do planing in pretty much every game like this, harder additional content that isn't required to beat the game.
FFXIII-2 is a much better game, a million times better than the first, since it manages to improve the terrible combat system into something not as terrible, overall gameplay is better, the story is better, it doesn't have Lightning in most of it, which makes it better as well (because she's one of the worst characters in the series, funny how she's the "main").
Both games are poorly optimized for PC, and usually give you quite the low performance unless you are on a high tier machine. Both also have really bad controller support, worse than what indie games provide in that matter.
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No, trying to autobattle can carry you at best to chapter 10, which is roughly somewhere before the half point. Trying to go that way after that almost guaranteed to result in slow, low-rated battles, while actually playing it as a combat game (like for example Valkyria Chronicles) can boost you efficiency a lot. Many people cannot realise that killing long guis, the normal spawn superboss enemy, is more than possible in chapter 11 (stage 8), essentially about at 2% power of where most players try and fail against it. This is how deep, yet unused the combat system really is.
Combat in XIII-2, on the other hand, is all about your gear. If you can find and level up the odin level of weapons, you faceroll everything. If not, then you cannot complete the Coliseum, ever. In XIII the most important class is the saboteur (grey mage) who can cripple monsters way out of your league. In XIII-2 after the quarter of the game, when you can finally get Chichu, I started to forget that roles besides commando, ravager and medic even existed, or that you can have more than two paradigms. Even with autobattle, the steppe superbosses were just a joke. The only place you ever need manual battle is the Coliseum, and even there because all fights are just scripted gimmicks with long invulnerability times on bosses to artificially boost combat time.
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I'm wondering about Final Fantasy IV: The After Years. It just dropped to 50% off (had been 33% since noon so not sure why it just changed, but I'm okay with it.) Has anyone here played it or recommend it?
I was hoping for a better than 50% sale on Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition. :(
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Unfortunately I don't have a PSP or Vita to get the PSN version.
I think I have the majority of the Final Fantasy collection on Nintendo, PSX and PC, but I'm certainly no expert with the series. And I think I only have the original IV game and Chronicles for PSX, but they wouldn't have The After Years or The Interlude.
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Time to hunt for a cheap model 2000 / 3000, stick custom firmware on it (sure, buying is preferred, but its old and many will be difficult to find, plus PSN store support was already shut down, you need to use PS3 transfer for downloads now) and use a 4 / 8GB stick. There are enough games on the system to make it worth it.
Emulation exists, but I like the systems over PC emulation. Besides, you can play PSP in bed and never sleep again because you are busy with Final Fantasy Origins (the first two), III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, Tactics, Crisis Core and both Dissidia games. And some other stuff.
Now do you want one?
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YES!
But seriously, I have to limit myself to one FF per sale (I have to choose, work or FF I don't have enough time for both, and sadly I need work to have money for things like food - I kinda don't like starving) So I think I will buy PSP in unspecified future.
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Worth hunting for a cheap used system at least. I'm just waiting to find one around NZ$50 - $60 myself (had one a few years ago, was stolen, now I just have a few of the games I couldn't stand selling), long as it isn't a 1000 model (they had only half the RAM). While the Y'ARR route sucks, several of those are limited to PSN and require a PS3 to download now that the PSP can't access the PSN store itself.
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Still it won't help me in my time management. Maybe if I would change job from the one which requires me to be at work for 60-70 hours a week...
But I live in a crazy country where only miners are allowed to work 30 hours a week, to mine coal from 1 km below surface, while rest of the country must pay for over 20 work related benefits for them. (It costs average person about 1500-1700$ a year to keep miners happy, while minimum pay is below 500$ a month, with average pay of 1140 $ per month) And that's just one of many broken things around here.
So PSP for me must wait until better times.
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I hope you will enjoy it. With this one, keep in mind the early 3D graphics with low-res backgrounds really didn't aged well but the story, characters, music, magic system, dozens of minigames, it's still all there and is just as good as Chrono Trigger was :)
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There are a few graphic mods to help you with this. Because original FF7 got all backgrounds in 320x240 resolution and some of them were restricted to 8-bit colour. Mostly because it was designed to work on a machine which had 1 MB RAM. (Yes, MB. That's about 4096 times less than today's low-end PC) And if you want to add insult to the injury - turn on steam's fps display.
Graphics are about as sharp and as detailed like sex scenes in Street Fighter IV.
And it is still one of the best games of all times.
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Oh yeah. Nothing like hitting the damage cap and one-shotting all the bosses with level 7-8 characters :)
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I actually compare FF13 to Chrono Trigger a lot in terms of gameplay. You can dodge encounters on the map freely and switch out your party whenever you want. The transition to battle is extremely quick because there's no separate battle background. Battles take place on the same map that you're walking on. The game has a wide variety of environments and looks absolutely stunning by comparison to other games from the same time.
Whether or not you like the story is a different question, but the flow of the gameplay is very similar to Chrono Trigger.
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FF13 and Chrono Trigger are AMAZING games and very alike except you need to know in FF13 will make characters either get close to enemy or attack at range since you might prefer to start the fight at a distance then go all melee at them but its a simple but easily ignoble feature and end up being just like Chrono Trigger. Also your skillsets in FF13 are based on special modes like Commando, Ravanger, Medic and so on but can be changed whenever in combat and determines AI of allies so you mainly take care of one character instead of 3 characters like you would in Chrono Trigger.
Edit But details how game works will probably seem confusing and different till you play it then you see its super simple.
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I played FF IV and Chrono trigger, should I get FF XIII?
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