I mean come on ... WTF!

Believe it or not, there are fans of Final Fantasy XIII and its sequel. There are people out there that wanted this game and clamored for it. Also, it's way easier to make on Square Enix's part because they've already got a fully-realized engine and battle system.

I can't wait.

pumped.

They're revamping the battle system, which is what worries me most. I've already given up on it having a good story from the trailers I've seen, though. Shame, since I really enjoyed FFXIII and FFXIII-2. I'm definitely holding out on the reviews first. (which, btw, were mostly positive for the prior games).

You just said in the PS3 thread that you didn't like FFXIII :-/

I enjoyed FFXIII's story. I enjoyed watching my brother play it. I was, however, deeply disappointed by its gameplay, which prevented me from enjoying it as a game.

XIII-2 may have had the third worst game story I've ever encountered in an RPG, but at least its gameplay was good enough so I enjoyed it as a game.

My problem here is that they seem to be changing the elements that worked in prior games yet again. S-E really needs to know when to leave something alone, like the Tales series does, for instance. Instead of changing what works, just fix whats broken. They fixed the gameplay in XIII-2, so why are they changing it again? The story was what needed work, yet they don't seem to be fixing that. Whicxh is strange, since they felt the need to "fix" it in XIII-2. Ugh...if this doesn't turn out to be a trainwreck, I'll eat my hat...

Looks like it'll be great. I'm one of the few people who couldn't get the hang of FFXIII's battle system, so I didn't really enjoy it, but I'll keep an eye on this one, and if you don't need to have played FFXIII-2 to understand the story, then i'll definitely pick it up at some point.

XIII's battle system was too automatic for me to enjoy it. I find a lot of appeal from JRPGs comes from the ability to control multiple characters at once. In this game, you have two supporting characters working automatically depending on what you set them to do before battle, and a main character that you just hit autobattle over and over again to make her do the same thing as them. I didn't feel like I was an active participant, but rather watching someone else level grind for me. The combo system helped keep it engaging a little, but the only strategy involved was what paradigms to use, and all of that had to be set up before battle or you screwed yourself over with nothing you could do about it. The story was painful as well. We've got manly-man, mother-issues, the black guy, emo-but-now-gender-bent, happy-go-orgasm, and the most normal one was Fang... I miss the older Final Fantasy characters, but at the same time I can see them running into the same issues if given voices. I didn't play XIII-2, and I probably won't unless XIII-3 gets good reviews.

That said, have you seen Lightning's new costume? Ridiculous! Everyone around her looks somewhat normal an she steps off that train looking like she just came back from an anime convention. Not a good sign...

She has multiple outfits, and they're switching to a more action-y combat system in this game.

I have a feeling it'd be harder to understand the story if you did play FFXIII-2.

You didn't get far with FFXIII. I don't say this as a guess, it's fact.

You basically will get slaughtered by the 30 hour mark if you're using Lightening ('her') or Auto Battle

The only time I used Auto battle was when my leader was a RAV. I found it much easier to keep the Stagger gauge up when the game would quickly select the best options for attack, (that and I never really understood the efficiency behind the combination of RAV attacks).

Everything else I picked, from COM through to SEN.

This is one of the criticisms I don't get about FFXIII and the battle system.

You are deciding what to do. iirc, (aside from COM and RAV), the SAB/SYN/SEN/MED roles for each character all had different loadouts. If you compared Sazh as a lvl 6 SYN to Hope as a lvl 6 SYN, Sazh was more focused on buffs to assist in the attacks, while Hopes buffs were more to assist with defence.

Same with Vanielle and Fang, different SABs.

The option is there to not hit it. Blaming the battle system because you "didn't feel like an active participant" because you were too lazy to individually select attacks. Come on.

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As opposed to all other games where you can perform your set up during a fight. Once you understood how the paradigm system worked, and how your team works with one another, it was quite easy to establish six paradigms that would mean you would rarely lose a fight. Much like how in FF1-12, you would find a loadout that would mean you would rarely lose a fight.

I only see one manly men, Snow. Although I hated his guts, his backstory suggests he is far less than a manly man, rather he is a man that lost the woman that he loves and wants her back.

Mother issues: Claire being overprotective of her sister, who also got taken away from her. I wonder how you would feel if your sister, or anyone else in your family got taken away from you, and you were able to get them back. Would you sit down on the couch not giving an eff, no.

Mother issues + emo-but-now-gender-bent: Don't see how the gender bent means anything. Hopes mother died right before his eyes. His (and Sazh's) characterisation throughout the game are the best. Hope's struggle through his loss is much like Claire's and Snow's, but rather than being cold/fighting, he bears his emotions for everyone and anyone to see. I have no idea why the gender bent thing is relevant. Oh, and he isn't able to get his mother back, like they are.

I shouldn't have to say anything more than Chapter 8. That chapter is solely why he is my fave character in the game. Then after the events, his relationship with Vanielle (and her growing frustration/sadness with her relationship with Fang and the whole you're the reason this happened (which is beautifully shown in the final few cutscenes)), as well as his journey now aligning with the rest.

HEY GUYS!! Look what she is wearing!! Must be a crap game.

I should also point out regarding Final Fantasy XIII's story that this is a Japanese game made for a Japanese audience.

Sounds obvious, right? Well, the way certain people go on about the game it's quite clear that they've forgotten that.

FFXIII is metaphoric for so much of Japanese society right now. The tension between a largely rebellious youth and the established order is very real in Japan, and games like this try and address that tension and find meaning in it.

Thematically FFXIII is incredibly strong. It's just that it's a little abstracted and foreign for western audiences.

Then again, perhaps that's enough to say it sucks these days. After all, we'd hate for gamers to actually have to use their brains and do a bit of investigative analysis to appreciate a plot. What is this, Shakespeare or something?

Sure the plotting is a little clunky at times, but I blame the western voice actors more than the characterisation. Perhaps because I've had the benefit of seeing a good deal of the game in Japanese.

But there is nothing wrong with western audiences taking away other aspects of the game rather than the rebellion.

@Neoprutus - Yeah, I think Aviator nailed it there, and no offense, but you don't come off as being very understanding or sympathetic with your rash generalizations of the character's very understandable issues. Honestly, part of the reason I enjoyed FFXIII's story so much was because I could easily understand and relate to the characters.

That said, I also agree with Aviator that you could be forgiven for not understanding the rest of the story. Bankai (or maybe someone on another forum?) actually had to explain a lot of the major elements of story for me to really grasp what they were getting at.

I'm worried about its "limited time" in 13 days for this game feature. It might ruin the gameplay for me.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Hoping it's more Devil Survivor than Pikmin 1.