Final Fantasy XIII

[ingandeul]

I must have to say that this game was far better than the negative things I've been hearing about it. For instance, the linearity was not all that noticeable when I played the game. It was only after playing did I think about the replay value while continuing the same save before the final boss. FFX was like this though it allowed for some freedom towards the end of the game. I also felt that the characters themselves were nicely done despite the apparent flaws of character development. The key highlight points, to which I extremely enjoyed, were the battle system, the "Sphere Grid" + 1/2 "License Board" = Crystallium, and of course, the amazing soundtrack. The visuals were indeed stunning as well and sometimes I would just stop and just take in the backgrounds. I just felt that I needed to share this as my friends are all waiting for the US release and I have no one to discuss it with. Haha

P.S I have a huge favor to ask for anyone who got the Collector's Edition of the FFXIII OST. I would like a desktop and iphone wallpaper of the two two-page spreads towards the end of the art book, the ones with the entire gang. I would be very much thankful if someone can do this. I thank you ahead of time!

[Duo Maxwell]

Originally Posted by Noctis Lucis

After FF7, which is the landmark FF game till now, I thought that all the games had a good base, but characterisation was screwed up. (THANKS NOMURA).

FF8: Weak, weak, weak...
FF9: Not to my taste; the screenshots with random sayings like Love; ... you know those, made it worse.
FF10: I thought I was watching a Korean love drama. Fail.
FF10-2: I thought this was some Taiwan idol drama. Big Fail.
FF12: It got better, but this wasn't FF7 levels yet.

So yes, FF13 is placing FF back where it should be, and I have no doubt that FFvs13 is going to do equally well.

I always thought I will be able to enjoy FFXIII, and now I'm seriously having doubt.

[Iron Maw]

Subscribers to GameInformer reported that it got a 9.25 in the magazine.

[Von Himmel]

So much bashing around these days...I had gone to gamefaqs a couple of minutes ago, and it's so disgusting that I don't want to be around there for a while >_>;

Well, I guess people opinion really do differs a lot

[Noctis Lucis]

Originally Posted by 2H-Dragon

I thought nice, another user impression of FF13. Then I see your tastes...I feel like your opinion is worthless to me.

Elaborate on the gameplay though. FF gameplay ranges from terribad to surprisingly awesome.

I'm only refering to characterisation here... I'm not too picky on gameplay. All FF games had good gameplay, IMO. Except FF9, which I really didn't get for some reason. People hailed it as a return to FF roots. Each to his own.

Originally Posted by Duo Maxwell

I always thought I will be able to enjoy FFXIII, and now I'm seriously having doubt.

Well, I said that it was good.

[Sassarai]

Originally Posted by Noctis Lucis

After FF7, which is the landmark FF game till now, I thought that all the games had a good base, but characterisation was screwed up. (THANKS NOMURA).

FF8: Weak, weak, weak...
FF9: Not to my taste; the screenshots with random sayings like Love; ... you know those, made it worse.
FF10: I thought I was watching a Korean love drama. Fail.
FF10-2: I thought this was some Taiwan idol drama. Big Fail.
FF12: It got better, but this wasn't FF7 levels yet.

So yes, FF13 is placing FF back where it should be, and I have no doubt that FFvs13 is going to do equally well.

Sigh, FF7 should of never been made

[ZGoten]

I think it would be interesting to start a vote to see whether people like the more or less dynamic battlesystems more (aKa FF12/13 vs. rest).
I think most would say the more traditional JRPG-battlesystems are best, whereas I still think FF12 had the best battlesystem out of all rpgs I've played.

[Xellos-_^]

is the NA ver going to have the Jap audio track in it or it is still just eng dub?

[Shiroth]

Originally Posted by Xellos-_^

is the NA ver going to have the Jap audio track in it or it is still just eng dub?

I don't remember hearing anything official on the matter, though i do keep hearing a lot of people saying that the NA version will have dual audio. So yeah, would be nice if someone could clear this up for us.

[ShinGundam]

An Interview With Final Fantasy XIII’s Kitase And Toriyama

http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2010/...-and-toriyama/

Some interesting parts :

What made you decide to make Final Fantasy XIII a series, rather than a standalone title?

If you look back at the Final Fantasy series, at VII for example, this later let to Advent Children and Crisis Core. Also, for FFX, we created FFX-2 after its release. In those cases we obviously released the original title first and then created the sequel. This time we wanted to create several games in the same project from the outset.

How do you feel about Yoichi Wada’s statement that Final Fantasy XIII will be the last game of its kind for Square Enix?

We don’t know exactly what he meant by that. We don’t really know what he meant by this style of game. If you consider that during Final Fantasy XIII’s development, at peak time the team consisted of over 300 people. It was a huge team, plus it took a several long years to get the game finished. So, if Mr Wada meant that we would never make another Final Fantasy title with the similar number of people, taking as long as FFXIII did, we would agree.

Obviously in the future we want to be much more efficient. Having worked on XIII, we feel that we have got much better at making good games for high definition consoles. In the future our teams will be smaller and more effectively run. We suspect that is what Mr Wada meant by his statement.

Is there a specific reason why Japanese voices were left out of the game?

For the European version, the facial expressions and lip syncronisation are all lined up with the English lines, so the Japanese voices would not match up right. That was the main worry.

People are aware that there is a lot of content that has been cut from the game. Do you have any plans to use this content in the future?

You say “content” but, in reality, it’s more like “ideas”. Maybe a map was a little bit too complex and we felt like the player would get completely lost, so we simplified, or whatever. So this content won’t be coming out separately, as it has been binned.

[kyosak]

Originally Posted by Xellos-_^

is the NA ver going to have the Jap audio track in it or it is still just eng dub?

No Japanese voices. Just the English dub.

This is the main reason I opted for the JP version actually. -_-

[problemedchild]

Originally Posted by kyosak

No Japanese voices. Just the English dub.

This is the main reason I opted for the JP version actually. -_-

It is SE after all. I can't recall the last time any of their releases had the Japanese Audio Track.

[DragoonKain3]

^
They actually have done it.... for The Last Remant PC and Star Ocean 4 international that comes out later today.

Do note though that in both cases, they are rereleases, and both are niche games that didn't sell all too well.

And FF13 having the 'Final Fantasy' brand name, I highly doubt they will ever rerelease it in NA (see past International versions of FF not making here), the name Final Fantasy is pretty much mainstream, and I can bet you dollars to donuts that it will sell tenfold than what those two games did.

So yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath for dual audio for anything named Final Fantasy... or Dragon Quest for that matter.

[problemedchild]

Oh right, I had forgotten about SO:4, tried to erase that game from my memory. I didn't realize that Last Remant's PC release had dual audio, figured it would share the same audio tracks as the Xbox release.

[kyosak]

I think problem is space on the Bluray disk more than anything else.

I forget where I read this but the CG movies apparently take up way more space than the actual game content, and they are squeezing every bit of data onto that disk. It's unfortunate, but I can't see how they would fit redone English language CG movies into this game. Games like SO4 and TLR probably take up a lot less space, allowing for features like dual audio.

Games in the FF series aren't exactly known for skimping on the CG movies!

BTW, going off topic here but did anyone order their copy of FF13 from YesAsia.com? My order's been stuck at "Ready to ship" status for the last few days now... Are they always this slow? -_-

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by DragoonKain3

^
They actually have done it.... for TSo yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath for dual audio for anything named Final Fantasy... or Dragon Quest for that matter.

Dragon Quest didn't have voice acting at all to begin with. In fact, the very first voice-acted DQ game was actually the Western version of the DQ VIII, in ENGLISH. DQ being such an old fashioned game intentionally, that Japan wasn't willing to use voice acting even when it was possible.

[Xellos-_^]

Originally Posted by DragoonKain3

^
They actually have done it.... for The Last Remant PC and Star Ocean 4 international that comes out later today.

Do note though that in both cases, they are rereleases, and both are niche games that didn't sell all too well.

And FF13 having the 'Final Fantasy' brand name, I highly doubt they will ever rerelease it in NA (see past International versions of FF not making here), the name Final Fantasy is pretty much mainstream, and I can bet you dollars to donuts that it will sell tenfold than what those two games did.

So yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath for dual audio for anything named Final Fantasy... or Dragon Quest for that matter.

.hack also had dual audio but then again they seperate it out inot 4 different games/disk

[DragoonKain3]

Yeah, Bandai has numerous times sold dual audio games. NISAmerica though is at the top, with Atlus being a close second for their frequency of dual audio games.

Square Enix though? Very rarely, and only then if they're trying to make a game sell more because the game is not mainstream.

And DQ8 JP version did not have audio at all? Wow, you learn something new every day.

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by DragoonKain3

And DQ8 JP version did not have audio at all? Wow, you learn something new every day.

Yep, the JP DQ8 used beeping noises to represent speech, the same sounds used since the very first DQ. DQ as a franchise is extremely old fashioned, and will stay that way now that FF is specialized in innovation/experimental formats.

[Xellos-_^]

anyone got a list of dual audio rpgs?