Final Fantasy XIII Comments by Oli Welsh

I always wonder how many Eurogamers have never played a Final Fantasy game before. I haven't because I have never had a PlayStation. So this is going to be new to me. I am looking forward to this.

I was actually rather disappointed by XII, despite its 10 from this site. I'm really hoping that this is a return to form as I loved VIII and X. More stunning futuristic fantasy worlds and Triple Triad please.

I have never played a "real" FF game. Tried Revenant Wings and it is total rubbish.. Really turned me of the series.

The original Final Fantasy's were on Nintendo Systems... I think 7 was the first onto the PS (off the top of my head)

I borrowed someones PS years back to play FF7... quite enjoyable (other than having to play with the PS1 upside down)

I played FF8 on the PC and loved it :)

Not overly interested in FF games nowadays I have Sacred 2 on the PS3 for my Action RPG goodness and I'm loving it :D

"Well, there's Lightning, the series' first ever female lead"

Are you suggesting Terra in FF VI was a bloke, Oli?

I'm playing through Lost Odyssey now and loving it! FF VIII is one of my favorite games of all time! Looking forward to this!

Never really been into FF, and despite how gorgeous XIII looks visually, I sincerely doubt that it will be a revolutionary new jump for the JRPG genre. I played FFVII back in the day, it was great, but when I dabbled with FFs since then they've just been stale, boring masterclasses in how to not make a game. JRPGs in general just feel hideously old. I know WRPGs still play on their own stereotypes as well, but I found a lot more charm in and loved Mass Effect a lot more than the hour or so I played of FFXII.

Still, as long as there's a market for it in Japan I suspect that the plots will remain awful, the graphical style will remain identical and the gameplay will remain stale.

Also, there's Final Fantasy Versus XIII that's in the works as well, and we wanted to keep a male lead for that.

Wonder how many people missed this? Bearing in mind the game was put on hold to make sure FFXIII received the full attention it deserved... So it's back on then?

Evolution - they said it, not me. He said frantically covering the fact he's never played FFVI, but still.

@ Evolution

I concur! Surely they haven't overlooked FFVI!

Ahh i prefer turn based attacks...
haven't liked any Action RPG's sop far.

"slick younger colleague Toriyama, director of Final Fantasy X-2"

The bits about 'Devil May Cry' combat using the Shivacycle worried me, but the above statement is the major concern for FFXIII.

FFX-2 was not only the worst FF I've played, but possibly the worst JRPG I've played, period. Such a terrible shame as FFX was a true masterpiece.

Still, JRPG's are very much about 'feel' so I'll reserve judgement until I've played a demo.

@Seasidebaz

Yeah Nomura mentioned development restarted a month or two ago. As far as I'm aware all that's happened is that the whole FFXIII line of products has gotten backlogged. The PSP thing (Agito) is still coming and so is Versus.

Realistically if SE are serious about getting FFXIII out in Japan this side of Christmas the game must be virtually feature complete by now, as testing/balancing is going to take a long time. They've probably thrown a lot of the coders onto doing the 360 version and moved the art/animation team straight onto Versus.

I always wonder how many Eurogamers have never played a Final Fantasy game before. I haven't because I have never had a PlayStation. So this is going to be new to me. I am looking forward to this.

Why not give another FF game a go first, then move onto this? The series has taken quite a dramatic turn for the worst since X if you ask me, although XIII does look quite promising.

Technically FFVI was more of an ensemble, like XII, than anything else. Terra, Celes, Edgar, Sabin, and Locke all had equal time as the main protagonist. Still looking to this, even if the battle system seems like a half hearted attempt to not ostracise the turn based fans and the fans of XIIs combat system.

Oh, i'm so excited!

Final Fantasy VII was my first and boy i was hooked after that!

I have complete faith in Square/Enix that they will do a splendid job on both PS3 and Xbox 360. Can't wait!

I liked them more when the characters were sprites or very stylized. The unisex-pretty-teenager stuff totally puts me off.

I agree... maybe my girlfriend will get it.

I find it funny how many say the series has dropped in quality since X yet ignoring the spinoffs theres only been one other of the numbered series thats a 'true' FF and thats XII. The spinoff side also was a mixed bag - X-2 was hit or miss depending how you looked at it, Crisis Core was actally good on a handheld and clocked a lot of play hours, Derge was 'ok' once you get your head around everything, and Rev Wings was 'so so'.

Back on the numbers XI led the MMO market into the light, before WoW stoved the whole indrutry into online madness and XII itself was good as long as you didn't nitpick at the story and actally manually control the characters instead of watching all the AI do all the work for you - everything else about the game wasn't that bad.

It's true VI-X was the high point but it's very rarly that we've seen some big stinkers from SE since Mystwalker was created, the real shockers where the ones only pubishled by SE with other devs groups behind it. All that said a LOT of hype and faith has been put behind XIII so it has to perform above the standard but out of the trio of games I personally think VSXIII will be the bigger title to look forward to so far that half of SE has pulled off some qualitly work and a very unlikly smash hit IP

Back in 1997 I bought Final Fantasy VII for *RANDOM BATTLE* PlayStation. My first impressions *RANDOM BATTLE* were that it was like some DOS menu *RANDOM BATTLE* selection; which I thought, OK I can live with *RANDOM BATTLE* that. But then when I tried to move *RANDOM BATTLE* anywhere there random battles and encounters happened.

Chucked it in the bin, never played one since. Have they improved?

Not sure how much I like the sound of only being able to control one character in battle.

It was fine in a system like FFXII, but if this is mainly going back to turn based control, it makes no sense.

.....unless I picked up what he was saying completely wrong

@Stoo XII was the first one that actally allowed you to pick your own fights - I'm hoping XIII will have the same open world sence..

@Abel I'm hoping that isn't the case as IIRC it's going back to the old ATB system where you only inputted the commands for each character speratly however you still had control over all the characters. If we are going back to XII's 'botting' then I hope theres an option to turn it off, FF has never been that fast pased to justify it being required

Its weird, given that I played and beat most of the final fantasys since 7 (I haven't gone near the remakes), I'm more excited for Mass Effect 2 than FF13. I'll get it for sure but its not the RPG king in my mind anymore and for ages it pretty much was my watermark for console RPGs especially FFVIII. I can only assume that Mass Effects story and setting appeal more I guess.

Put me in the "worried about only controlling one character" camp. Still, I know this is going to be seriously special...

Oh and next time somebody talks to SE about Versus, ask them if we are going to be able to fly around in an airship again. I miss the world map/airship thing in the newer JRPGs...

I actually liked the battle system in X, completely turn based and I could see what was coming in the top right.

I don't want fast paced control your character battle, I played XII for a while and just didn't like the battle system.

Glad this is coming to the 360, means I don't need to buy any new hardware which is nice, I guess there is no news on a PC version.

Gestalt mode, I'd never heard of that word until now.

Thank you FF devs, my vocabulary has increased by 1 word.

Real time comabt. Why!? WHY?!
Button mashing bollocks..

@Scimarad

"ask them if we are going to be able to fly around in an airship again. I miss the world map/airship thing in the newer JRPGs... "

Have you played Lost Odyssey or Star Ocean? Both give you a ship and allow you to explore.

I also like being handed the means to scour the map for things like collectable monsters/items and hidden dungeons. Extends the life of a game by huge amounts.

Looks good, gonna have a Final Fantasy summer when my mates leave for home between 2nd and 3rd years of Uni.

I find it funny how many say the series has dropped in quality since X yet ignoring the spinoffs theres only been one other of the numbered series thats a 'true' FF and thats XII. The spinoff side also was a mixed bag - X-2 was hit or miss depending how you looked at it, Crisis Core was actally good on a handheld and clocked a lot of play hours, Derge was 'ok' once you get your head around everything, and Rev Wings was 'so so'.

Oh I'm not judging the spin-offs, in fact I think X-2 gets far too much flak and Crisis Core wasn't bad nor great. X was actually a very good game, but it deviated from the series's hallmarks and it didn't turn out to be for the betterment of the franchise I'd say. Not that I'm one of those same-old people who isn't satisfied with change, I just don't like the direction the series has taken, it's a decline in so many ways. But I'll give XIII a proper chance definitely as I have every FF game I've played.

Is it still going to have androgynous emo boys and nauseatingly melodramatic dialogue and story? I've always wanted to like JRPGs (and I almost did with a few on the PS2) because of their style of turn based combat, but that has unfortunately never been enough to help me ignore the aforementioned aspects past the first few hours of any I've tried.

I'm sure I'll be giving FFXIII a try though, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

I've never noticed anything ' emo ' about Final Fantasy personally

@Miths: Yes

Also, just echoing the thoughts that FFVI had a few strong female characters.

You'd have to struggle not to notice Squall and his radiant aura of pure emo.

Far too much bandying about of the 'e' word. I thought 'emo's' spend their time moping and moaning about inconsequential and imagined problems? How does this description fit any Final Fantasy character??

I apologize for my misuse of the word then - let's just go with overly emotional and melodramatic then. Plus the young and androgynous parts of course, maybe it's my age - but at merely 32 I certainly don't think of myself as quite on the brink of my grave yet :) - but having 16-18 year old effeminate boys as army generals or world saviours just doesn't sit too well with me.

Do note that I'm speaking of my general impression of JRPGs here though, not particularly the Final Fantasy series, as I've only played FFX, FFXII and whatever that PSP game was called - and none of them for more than perhaps 6-8 hours.

I would like to see the evidence that JRPG's need saving, Microsoft are scrambling to get as many JRPGs as they can, nearly every new release for the PSP and DS is a JRPG and with SquareEnix having bought Eidos there are going to be a lot more JRPG releases on the PC over the likes of Steam, even the most obscure JRPG can get a western release with digital downloads. As an rpg fan the only way I can keep getting my fix is from JRPG's because western rpgs releases are few and far between because we in the west are obsessed with trashy FPSs(except Call of Duty 4 which is poetry in motion). Where is all the hate for XII coming from, something that tries to shake up the stale conventions everyone loves to moan about and it gets ripped to pieces, XII was simply a victim of fan boy rage, who want every FF to be a carbon copy of VII.

The more I read about this the more I worry tbh. I'm far from resilient to change -- even in my most beloved game series --but I just got a bad feeling about this one ;[

I suppose it's cus so much is resting on it. The first proper FF in years, and the first on the current gen of consoles etc.

I always consider jrpg's, the Benny Hill of rpg's.

You know what to expect due to it's heavy formulaic ideas, it's easy to get into and it has a significant amount of nigh identical ideas. It has always the same themes and looks, and finally: it's easy to understand, for anyone, and any age.

Don't get me wrong, I really tried to like them, mostly due to hyperventilating friends. The only jrpg I ever liked was GrandiaII, then again: that was my first, so I guess this wouldn't be the case if it was my 5th Jrpg, since they are always the same.

FF IV on the snes is the only one I have fully played through and it was genius.

@butler: this is why I keep my ear to the ground about versus. Rumblings of world map, airships, dungeons and summons. Sounds like FFXIII is the ground for all things new where Versus may be one for the traditionalists.

I just wish I could find out something of how it plays. Party mechanic? ATB? or is it real time Kingdom Hearts style? Lots of good people on board from across the PSone FF series and Kingdom Hearts.

Such a terrible shame as FFX was a true masterpiece.

I cringe every time I hear anyone say this. How on earth is it a masterpiece when it's only half a game? Compare that game's dull, narrow single pathway with its scarce number of simplistic single-screen towns they tried to pass of as a "game world" to, say, FF9's vast overworld and its varied, detailed and eventful locales, and it's inconceivable how anyone could praise FFX. Was it the pretty 3D rendering of its various jpop idol like characters that got the fanboys going?


If we are going back to XII's 'botting' then I hope theres an option to turn it off, FF has never been that fast pased to justify it being required

Actually, people keep saying how if you disliked the automated battle system you should just turn it off and select commands manually, but they don't seem to realise this is pretty much impossible in FFXII considering the extremely high volume and frequency of enemies in its long-winded uneventful dungeons, not to mention the required grinding. Just getting through it with your characters on auto and every battle lasting about 3-5 seconds is a chore, let alone if you tried to manage every action by hand. It's like the developers were like "hey, with this smooth new system we made, battles aren't nearly as annoying anymore. Gotta do something about that!"

If there's an option to turn it off in 13, I think it will be highly impractical as well.



Have you played Lost Odyssey or Star Ocean? Both give you a ship and allow you to explore.

Wow, really? I haven't played those, and from what I heard about them I didn't expect that. Do they actually let you fly it across the world, as opposed to it just being a barely disguised warp point where you select the next level from a menu, like in FFX and XII?

I lament the lack of airships in recent FF's and other games. I know people want their pretty detailed hd grphx on whatever passes for an overworld, which makes that kind of thing difficult, but still.

@Nik - I'll agree with you on the difficulty it was drastically harder without the gambit system however it DID feel like a game again, with XII most of the time the gambit system did most of the major jobs by the end and I felt ditached from the game - it felt like i was just watching it play out itself.. I think that was the key reason why XII got slammed by players so much like a lot of games these days, your not buying a game to play - your buying a expensive movie to 'interact with'.

Thats kinda where XIII needs to sort itself out, yes we do all love those movie quality sequences but then again I think many of us would like a bit more control over how it plays out, plus TBH if SE wanted to make those type of 'movies' why don't they just go into the film business - Sure Spirits wasn't good but Advent Children proves they can do just as good in that indrustry without removing the 'game' from actal games to do it

I personally found it like setting up tactical plays and I found it satisfying when my crew was set up to auto-do things as I planned... leaving me to intervene when I wanted something a bit personal to kick off. Also a great boon when I just felt like going on an explorathon of the various areas.

What I didn't like was getting into battles with enemies with large HP stores and pretty much relying on a huge quickening fest to do the work. Also the big driving factor of all FF games, an involving story, was missing completely. I don't like games where I end up thinking "so why do I care about helping this/these characters through the game?".

I've been playing both FFIV and VI lately. Despite the limitations of the hardware at the time, they managed to transcend those technical issues and really deliver where it counts: plot, characterisation and gameplay. The music, too, is stunning.

It makes me wonder if worrying about the myriad issues introduced by more complex hardware is in anyway negatively affecting all those other qualities.

"Well, there's Lightning, the series' first ever female lead"

are we absolutely sure Lightning is a Girl...its just,well...you know,i don't trust these JRPGs sometimes,LOL...i remember the lead 'Guy' in FF3..Luneth or something like that

@ Kremlik
"I felt ditached from the game - it felt like i was just watching it play out itself.. "

I played the 2nd half of the game with my foot, while reading. Putting the book down every 3 / 4 hours for 3 / 4 lines of dialogue. The storyline really didn't justify the length of the dungeons.