Lightning Returns preorder SOLDIER 1st Class costume has a new trailer

Preorder costume already?

http://www.gamekyo.com/videofr26548_lightning-returns-un-dlc-special-ffvii.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppvcqxfmPOE


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMYxIKkdPmI


Kitase and Toriyama sure are desperate.
I'm still just going to watch a Japanese version
playthrough, they can't even seem to get their
final boss designs right.
(XIII-1 was just a goofy clock.
XIII-2 was just dragonz, and the real final battle was DLC, which was just Caius doing generic things and the whole dark Bahamut gimmick vs. Lightning. )

And then there's talk about there being only 7 days left and have to earn the rest of the 13 days through some method, it might be the shortest in the series (though probably not as
short and shallow as Dirge of Cerberus was.)

The demo combat looked to be the best in the trilogy, but the whole timed based thing is too
restrictive for an rpg, even with New Game+

replay value is okay but forced replays to
experience all the content is rather tedious
since you end up revisiting content you done
on previous playthroughs, and for an rpg that
can be very grindy and monotonous (despite
skills, equipment and 80 or so costumes carrying over.)

I didn't like the results from the first FFXIII , so maybe LR has a better conclusion
and develop Lightning's humanity more.

Though I dunno how they are going to deliver
a epic and rewarding story within just a couple of hours. That may work for a shooter, but
rpg standards demand something more epic in gameplay length.

Maybe the big fish will finally get involvement
in the story and battles instead of just being
part of the background history. So maybe
Lindzie, Pulse, and Bunivelze will be fought,
as well as perhaps Chaos who is theorized
to be Miun after death in the other world.

So there could be some pretty cosmic fights
in the last parts.

Overall, I'm somewhat skeptical about this,
but from the E3 gameplay and details, this
is at least looking to be the best of the trilogy,
which isn't saying much,

but who knows,
Crisis Core won a lot of fans despite playing
nothing like a FF rpg. Considering how they fleshed out Zack's character, Lightning could develop her character more since she's the sole focus in the story and gameplay. But you don't know with Kitase and Toriyama, their ideas can produce lopsided and inconsistent results.

Though if at least the last 1/3 of Lightning Returns is epic enough, fans might pick up and
play this more often than XIII-1 and 2.

The gameplay is already looking to rival FFX-2,
the best version of ATB combat (well there's
also FF12, but that is somewhat lacking
despite having different weapons, spells, enemies fought in the field and free movement)

The Garb/skillset switching is very interesting
and could produce countless style possibilities.

Not exactly a Job/class change system like FFX-2's dress spheres, but something that could be even more customizable and fluid.

Using Final Fantasy VII to sell their new game is both lame and desperate.

Well FF9 was known as the fanservice whore of the series, even copy/pasted FF7 Rufus Shinra's theme.
Also ripped off some elements from Dragonball, and a line from Star Wars Episode 1

If this is going to take away from my time with the dark maturity of Diablo III then fuck this game

ViolentStorm said:

Using Final Fantasy VII to sell their new game is both lame and desperate.

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Eh, it's just a bonus costume. It's not like they're building an entire game around it. Konami did the same thing with Metal Gear Rising and the Gray Fox skin and it was awesome.

is FF13 crazy popular in Japan or something?

i personally didn't care much for it so i have a hard time understanding why there's been two other games made in the same universe

I really did enjoy XIII, but I've had enough of the XIII characters.

I skipped XIII-2 and see no reason to try XIII-3.

Wake me up when XV is released.

I really love the XIII series so far, except for the shaky start to the first game, and XIII-2 ended on a really bad cliffhanger.

This is why they're doing a third game.

I am ready for this.

I didn't bother finishing XIII, and haven't thought about trying XIII-2. I liked the Paradigm Shift system all in all, but that's about it. I'll take a pass on the next one in favour of XV, although it would be nice to see some other non-FF IP get attention from SE.
I wonder what ever happened to the fabled Chrono Break? A new Ogre Battle would be nice...

I've probably spent more time synthesizing stuff in that PSP Tactics Ogre remake than doing actual battle.

People that are expecting XV to be something better should expect that it's probably going to be more of the same at this point.

If people don't like the combat, they want to bitch about the characters. If it's not the characters, they want to bitch about the graphics. If it's not the graphics, they want to bitch about how it's not fantasy anymore.

Spoon's post in that one thread about how the plots are all homogenous J-Pop/J-Rock Opera is spot on. That is what this series now. The days of pining for Final Fantasy to 'return to its roots' are over. It's never going back, except in the form of remakes. Not while the current regime is in place.

So if you don't like J-Pop/J-Rock Opera, FF is not going to be for you.

Ironically enough, XIV is pertty close to the roots of the series' themes. XI was as well. XI, especially, had all the common themes people love about Final Fantasy:

Moogles
Chocobos
Crystals
Summons/Eidolons
Airships
Iconic character classes/jobs
Emotional themes of balance, exploitation of natural resources and a myopic desire by the heroes for harmony and peace

And for people who don't like the main Final Fantasy console games...there are always the portable ones like 4 Heroes of Light and the upcoming Bravely Default.

neo_moe said:

And for people who don't like the main Final Fantasy console games...there are always the portable ones like 4 Heroes of Light and the upcoming Bravely Default.

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Another great suggestion.

I don't want to sound too aggressive about it, but complaining about Final Fantasy's aesthetic direction this far after the fact is really a waste of 'finger energy', as cdamm puts it. It's not like everything since 1997, except for IX, is some abberation they're trying to correct. This is the direction they want to go in and this is the direction they're going in.

Final Fantasy has this galvanizing effect on the internet gaming community. A new one gets announced and people forget to be moderate about a product that isn't even released yet.

This isn't to say the FF series is perfect. It is not, and only a fool would say that. But far too often, people hate on the wrong things about it, and blindly so.

I wish Square never bought up Quest or poached its developers. But hey, I guess the developers got paid, and now no one will ever see a good Ogre game, ever.

New story trailer reveals some new things as well as some of the background story to this sequel.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByWWtBxzl-M

Lightning Miqo'te costume:

The gameplay and customization looks really improved. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip9H2nGm-lw

If they remake FF7....

Spoon said:

If they remake FF7....

Spoiler:

Cloud will look like a blonder version of this.

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They'll probably just look closer to their Advent Children versions, to be truthful.

So dark and mature, loving it already.

It's all Blantheus Algarths (c) Spoon from down here.

Did anyone enjoy the story in XIII or XIII-2? Serious question.

I enjoyed the battles in XIII quite a bit. Some of the characters were fine. But I couldn't stand the grey-haired kid. I quit when I got to the large field-like zone (vacation for a couple of weeks), and by the time I was back, I wasn't really motivated to see the end. Fast forward a few years and...

I think I'd enjoy playing through the end of XIII and XIII-2, but I'm not sure I want to spend the time on it if the plot isn't worthwhile.

I wish Square never bought up Quest or poached its developers. But hey, I guess the developers got paid, and now no one will ever see a good Ogre game, ever.

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I think most of the key members of that staff have moved on, but are probably just making portable stuff right now. But yeah, things went downhill pretty quickly after Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story... Square-Enix really chewed up a lot of great talent (not just Quest), and once they leave, they never really develop anything close to their peak titles (counter-examples welcome, I'd take something new to play...).

I liked the two games leading to this and played the hell out of both. I'll be grabbing this. I have to support this, because RPG's are getting less and less frequent in our future of games.

Nick Goracke said:

Did anyone enjoy the story in XIII or XIII-2? Serious question.

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Not I. I enjoyed the combat system and the soundtrack. XIII's soundtrack doesn't crack my top ten favorites in the genre, but it was the driving force behind my finishing the game. And I thought the combat system set a new standard for the genre. Reducing the number of times the player has to flip through menus and hit the A button is a good thing.

LWK said:

I liked the two games leading to this and played the hell out of both. I'll be grabbing this. I have to support this, because RPG's are getting less and less frequent in our future of games.

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Console RPGs sure, but the RPG genre is large and in charge on handhelds.

Just look at the 3DS. Now there're too many to play and not enough time to play them.

Yeah, and I don't want it to be some side thing that people only care about on handhelds. I cry myself to sleep at night picturing the Suikoden VI I'll never play =(

Nick Goracke said:

Did anyone enjoy the story in XIII or XIII-2? Serious question.

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/raises hand.

I've said it before, but the problem with XIII's story isn't necessarily bad, but that it's badly delivered.

None of the characters are immediately compelling except for Snow, and the first twenty hours does little to flip the script or to show you why you should care. By the time the characters start having anything resembling interesting interaction, even I was sort of mentally 'checked out', and I had to keep playing to eventually see how it all came together and decide that yes, in retrospect, this was a good story.

The game makes the cardinal error in storytelling far too often: it doesn't show often enough, and it tells far too often. Massive world building infodumps come in the form of datalogs with far too much frequency, they should have been constructed so they weren't all that important for the audience to know. Because the narrative is written in such a way that, more often than not, you are required to read these infodumps to get any context for them. If you don't understand the worldbuilding, the dialogue doesn't make as much sense at times. Only problem is...I don't care enough about the worldbuilding to read it.

Also, characters have bizarre conversations that normal people would not have, which is a little offputting when they are CGI renditions of almost unnerving human photorealism. It's the type of dialogue that is better read, not spoken. I have the sense that in Japanese, these are conversations where real Japanese people would say 'they only talk like that in anime and video games.' That being the case, why sink all that effort into so much graphic character detail?

In the end, I really liked the plotline about Cocoon, the L'cie, the Falcie and Gran Pulse. That stuff is really cool and its interesting to see how that stuff affects the characters' path. But there were really better ways to deal with it.

Also, Sera was a character I couldn't stand in FF XIII. More to the point, the fact that she was a focus for the two best characters in the game-Lightning and Snow-didn't help her cause. We are supposed to care about her because S-E tells us to care about her. She's Lightning's sister and Snow's fiancee, and she will help them bridge the gap in their grievances with one another. Only...I don't know anything about Sera beyond 'girl that needs to be rescued by the two characters I like.' The storytelling is awful, here. Why should I care about this character? That 'save the damsel' stuff may work in more plainly told and quaint stories, but the more complicated you want this world to seem, the more context a major plot point like this needs.

They really turned me around on Sera in FF XIII-2, however. Noel and Sera are two great characters in that game. Sera wants to save Lightning now, and since you know who Lightning is, the mission feels like something that matters. And the game spends a good amount of time focusing on Noel's storyline so that you get plenty of context for his quest so that it all matters. Noel is really an underrated character in video games, in my opinion. I platinumed XIII-2, and I didn't do it just for the trophy. One of the trophies is for storyline completion and unlocking alternate endings. There were so many possibilities with all the time jumping, and it's a rare instance of a time travel based story that I actually enjoyed.

Play through XIII. Finish the story and then move on to XIII-2. It's the superior game, and not just by a little.