Just beat Cid, which fucking took forever because I didn't have my paradigms set up for Sentinel, took a total wipe for me to reset everything, after which he was just annoying.

Only now it appears every fucking animal had its hitpoints jacked up and the damage they do is retarded. Suddenly I'm having to pull out the sentinel and synergist roles, where as before I just used com/rav/rav and com/rav/med. mostly due to me farming and getting three weapons maxed out on the first tier.

I find myself avoiding enemies because they take too fucking long, and it's turning into cutscene -> cutscene, repeat. I can't see myself finishing this, but I'm fucking trying. I'm falling asleep when I try to play it though. Boring as hell.

 

On Chapter 11 now, on Pulse surface. The difficulty just ratched up way past retarded. And most of the stuff you can't avoid because they come in larger groups. Trying to grind though some of it, since I'm hopefully near the end of the game, but it's pissing me off.

Switched to Light/Fang/Vanille instead of Hope. Vanillie's debuffs make a world of difference, way more useful then protect and shell. Still nothing interesting going on story wise except, oh Vanille just pulled

Spoiler

I was Ragnarok

out of her ass in a casual conversation. So tired of that chick it's not funny.

I was excited to see Pulse. It wasn't a hallway. Only, the wide open space is an illusion, because it's one big fucking circle that's easy to get lost in, since it all looks the same, and the map rotates as you move, giving you no fucking reference points.

 

I gave up 15 hours in, when it got to the point that I was actively seeking a reason not to game to avoid this POS. I've really only got two lasting thoughts.

1-Every single "critic" that had the balls to rate this game higher than 1/10 should be fired immediately, then forced to play FFXIII for the full duration of the campaign, as he/she obviously didn't before.

2-The next time I hear someone scream "SARAH", I will violently remove their fingers. That shit will haunt me for the rest of my life.

 

I'm going to disagree with this on the principle that ratings between one and three out of ten should really be saved for games that are glitchy to the point where they either barely work or (in a perfect 1/10 case) don't work at all. For example, I would rate Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 3/10 at the highest simply because it's glitchy and virtually unplayable.

Rating a game that's just straight bad (though functional) 4/10 isn't doing it any favors.

 

Personally I don't like using a numbered rating system anyway, essentially the entire rating is arbitrary once you get to a certain point (what makes a game a 7.5 vs an 8 for example. Nothing but how the reviewer felt like scoring it at the time). I just use the number scale because unfortunately most critics do as well.

Beyond that, it's a matter of personal preference. I've played games that are buggy to the point of being unplayable. Empire: Total War comes to mind. It crashed constantly, load times were frustratingly long, and pre-patch(s) the AI was moronic. Even E:TW, with all these flaws, was more enjoyable to me.

I'm ranting a bit here, but truth be told I've never actually played a game that was just so bad. The story was completely inane, the gameplay was extremely boring, to the point that I would have FFXIII on my TV running, while watching a movie on netflix just to cope. The voice acting was just painful for everyone besides sahz, and to top it all off, the characters had all the appeal of a 98 year old transvestite.

The only thing that I appreciated about FFXIII were the graphics, and Sazh-the only interesting and semi likable character in the game.

What really frustrates me though is just how well this game sold. Something like 5.5 million units sold, with rave reviews from many video game reviews, and an average metacritic score of 80%. I don't know, maybe I just don't get it, but this game was positively painful for me to play. I can say with complete honesty that I would rather pick up a copy of ET for the atari, than play this again.

 

Isn't 80% really, really low for a high profile game like FFXIII? There is a lot of rating inflation in the review industry. Having a high profile game rate anything lower than 9 is actually pretty surprising, even if it doesn't deserve a high rating.

 

It's done. I sent it back. I refuse to grind with a mostly complete crystalarium, 2nd tier weapons halfway lvld up to 3rd tier, and still taking forever with certain enemies. Behemoth Kings are such fucking tools with the instaheal when they stand up.

I have avoided playing this game for god knows how long, maybe Gamefly will send me something good next.

And WHAT THE FUCK, with square only making like 10 monsters and fucking pallete shifting their colors, or throwing a piece of armor on them, and calling them something else. Shit all games like this do it to some extent or another, but fucking hell, they usually have more like 20-30 monsters.

Putting a bigger healthbar, and making it blue and silver, instead of black and red, does not a new exciting encounter fucking make.

This game is a 50% out of 100% at fucking best, and only then for the cinematics, well the disc ending type ones, not the ones that happen every 3 goddamned minutes if you were to remove the fighting. No replay, no side missions worth a shit, so linear you may as well had a railway track shoved up your ass and bolted in, and the characters were horrible.

Magna Carta 2 by comparison was way better. Maybe next FF.. oh wait it's a MMORPG you fucking whores, maybe by the next FF AFTER the MMORPG, they can give us some badasses who blow shit up, instead of a bunch of goddamned teenaged crybabys.


I watched the ending on youtube. I was waiting for Fang and Vanille to start kissing, seriously, gay overtones much? And that's some strong fucking crystal, holding a planet up like that..

 

Wow, so you finally broke and sent it back. For you to do that to a Final Fantasy... /sigh, a legend is in shambles.

I can't muster any resolve to get Platinum myself =x

 

I can't express in under 100 swear words just how mad this game made me. There was no fun to be had in it for me. Remember materia swapping in 7? or the junction system in 8? Annoying but once you got the hang of it you felt like you were a badass.

This game just left me feeling like I needed to grind more points, and components. Then on a few bosses I'd get wrecked. Barty, Cid, Bahamut (I wound up just sen/med/med my way through him somehow, it made no sense at all) and most of Pulse.

To not finish a FF game to me is near blasphemy. I loved this series that much. The people that coded this one should be drawn and quartered.

 

I wasnt bothered by the linearity of the game. Well not too much. And the cinematics every twelve seconds wasn't too bad unless you fucked up on a boss and had to restart. Gestalt catching was a cool idea too. And the scenery was gorgeous all the way through.

That said I didn't make it to chapter 11 before I returned it to gamefly. The battle were all either ridiculosly easy, or ridiculously long/hard. And while the characters were visually appealing, the voices were annoying.

I also disliked Sahz, which everyone tells me is fucking weird. He was just such a stereotypical japanese portrayal of a black man.

 

I didn't like him because I kept waiting on him to make some pervy move on Vanille. When she drew the line in the sand much lulz were had. She's worried about him touching her, when all her shit is hanging out.

 

I think the franchise's decay has to do with the departure of the founder, Hironobu Sakaguchi, from Square Enix. According to Wikipedia, he left in 2004. I won't pass judgment on XI, the MMORPG, but XII, which was finished in 2006, and whoa. I hadn't expected that kind of shit from Square.

I recall an interview statement from one of the executives of Square admitting they were lost without Mr. Sakaguchi. I do think it's partially his fault for failing to leave the company in capable hands.

So we go from Final Fantasy X to Final Fantasy XII, and then it somehow got even worse. It's very surprising considering how well Final Fantasy progressed from 7 onward, in tandem with the advancement of technology. However, Lost Odyssey somehow felt more epic and intrinsically FF-like in nature (and this is all before I bothered to find out about the founder leaving quietly).

Apparently Final Fantasy was 100% this one guy, and they can't do shit without him.

I consider this sufficient proof, so I'm jettisoning Final Fantasy.

Good night, sweet prince.

 

LO was pretty good, although those kids drove me fucking mad.

 

I'd kill for another Chrono game. I've taken to just popping in old PS1 games. So much better than 13.

 

I hate leaving the game unfinished but I just can't bring myself to play it, it's just too fucking shit.

 

Sahz was the only character who I found to at least be partially accessible. He had an interesting story (what with the kid and all), his voice acting was decent, and he didn't just seem to take everything in stride like a fucking sociopath. Normally in FF people see a giant monster and just shrug, Sahz saw one and was like "WTF IS THIS SHIT?"-my exact thoughts when playing the game.

Though

Spoiler

When he was about to shoot Vanille I was cheering him on. Then he decided not to...

It was at that point that I started having an issue with him. Just shoot the bitch!

 

Nah I'm glad he didn't I would have been pissed. I kinda liked her.

Though when he was about to

Spoiler

Shoot himself

I was like "wtf?!!"

Though I wish he had. Square would have gained all my lost respect back for having him actually do it.

 

I was all AWESOME when I thought he did that. Then he's alive and I was pissed they didn't have the balls to do it.

 

It really sucks that Final Fantasy has gone the way it has. FF7 was the game that really got me into gaming and addicted to the Final Fantasy universes. I would literally sit in front of my TV for 10-12 hours a day playing those games.

It's disappointing, but luckily, I've found my salvation with the Nintendo DS Final Fantasy games. Those games have a more traditional feel to them and don't try to blow you away with new (convoluted) game play mechanics.

Let's hoping that FFXV is any good >_>

 

FFX was amazing, though the story was kinda strange at first(actually, to be honest, all the way through), but it was fucking EPIC. Haven't played any others except FFX-2, which was good, but not as good as FFX.

Do they have any good RPG games for the 360? I got Fallout 3 and I really don't like it.
Any FF games for it?