Offizieller Final Fantasy XIII Thread #14 (Spoilergefahr!)

[thickstone]

Mh. Kann es eigentlich sein, dass das Spiel etwas kurz ist? Ich bin gerade mit 13 Stunden vermutlich am ende von Kapitel 7: Palmpolm. Und es sind ja insgesamt nur 13. Bei Lost Odyssey war ich letztendlich bei ~37h afair. Wobei da allerdings viel Leveln dabei war, was FF13 einem (gottseidank) erspart.

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Anscheinend nicht, ab Kapitel 11 soll das Spiel wohl massiv an Umfang zunehmen. Kommte ich jedenfalls einem Post im Gamefaqs-Forum entnehmen, den ich recht aufschlussreich fand. Der ist auch Spoilerfree, aber ziemlich lang. Packe ihn deswegen mal in einen Spoilerkasten.

relaxing weekend and a holiday gave me enough time to blitz through FF XIII all the way to the final dungeon on my first (experimental) run. Now knowing what to expect and having experimented with all the gameplay elements, I’m in my second (real) play-through and thought that I would give a personal impression and review.

One of the first things I should mention is that FF XIII is a game that has two very distinctive halves, and that people who only play the first few hours into the game will not be able to get an accurate impression of all the things (or perhaps the lack thereof to some people, like towns, lol) that the game has to offer.

The first half of FF XIII is extremely story-driven, and is where the linearity discussions abroad are coming from. This first half covers roughly three-quarters of the plot (first 10 out of a total of 13 chapters), and gameplay-wise, can be thought of as a long tutorial on how to battle, customize, etc. and actually “play” the game in full (in preparation for the gameplay-intensive second half).

In terms of difficulty for this half, the game is smooth and balanced. Due to the one-way nature of dungeons for this first half, grinding is impractical and inefficient. With this in mind, the game was designed such that characters should be statistically powerful enough to take on boss battles at the end of each chapter as long as 1) players don’t purposely avoid enemies like the plague, and 2) players are using strategy and actually thinking instead of button-mashing.

In my opinion, the fun of FF XIII in this first half comes from learning about the characters, plot, and world; with the superb presentation that this game gives, it’s quite a shame to be worrying/complaining about the lack of optional areas or grinding at this point.

As a side note, in defense of the growth caps that some people complain about: the caps were probably made so that battles don’t lose their strategic and planning elements/requirements in face of sheer superior statistics, AND to serve as good indicators for players to see whether they are strategizing and/or if they need to come up with new tactics.

Once the player hits Chapter 11, the game shift gears and now will allow the players to use all that they’ve learned in the long gameplay tutorial into good use. Whereas before players are forced to go from one story-dungeon to the next, if a player takes the same approach in this second half and decide to go straight to the next story-area without any optional exploration, the player will be slaughtered by regular enemies there… or might not even make it there.

Suffice it to say, the last three chapters of the game will have enemies and challenges that will require players to do optional grinding/questing/exploring for statistical growth in addition to retaining the strategic experiences and tactics that the first half of the game has trained the players in. With the plot in the backseat, this is where the fun of FF XIII develops into gameplay-fun… and it is fantastically so.

(Part 1/2) - Continued
HDthscyth
Posted 12/21/2009 9:03:34 PM
message detail Having said that, there are a two things about XIII that is driving me a little nuts.

First, money. Money in this game is… incredibly difficult to obtain… and extremely easy to burn through. Equipment upgrade is straight-forward in that you use loot/items to level the equipment’s statistics up; therefore, to be fair, you can go through the game without having to spend a single gil and utilize nothing except drops. The reality is, however, it is a lot more efficient to use gil (a lot of gil) to buy these materials in bulk and apply them at the same time than to use them as they come. Only problem is, there is no way to efficiently make money before you reach the final dungeon.

Second, enemy database. In XIII, what was one of the most useless ability/technique in past FFs becomes extremely important: Libra. Given that you only control one character during battle, the other two characters are AI controlled. The action of these AI characters will change to exploit enemy weaknesses once you find them out through casting Libra or fight the same enemy enough times. The information unravels slowly, so first you learn the enemy’s HP, then elemental weakness, status abnormality resistances, drop items, etc. gameplay-wise, this is not a problem. However, when you open up the enemy database in your menu, the game put checkmarks next to the name of enemies whose information have been completely discovered. Thus, if you’re a perfectionist and wants a checkmark next to every enemy entry, you need to be extremely wary of the fact that most enemies in the first half whose data you forget to obtain will be lost forever due to the one-way progression of the game (this is one of the reasons that prompted me to start my current run-through).

Same thing with treasure chests and certain monster-specific drops, but surprisingly they’re not that big of a deal because, 1) all regular equipments are, to the best of my knowledge, purchasable, and all non-purchasable exclusives are in places that you can revisit in the second half of the game, 2) exclusive miss-able monster loot used for equipment upgrade don’t give any exclusive bonuses, so you can always use different loot for upgrading, and 3) there’s no item/equipment database, whew.

All in all, I think FF XIII is an incredible experience. As a part of a series that have been reinventing itself, trying to compare XIII to other titles is like comparing apples to oranges. Some people like to focus on plot, some on graphics, and some on gameplay; I personally take the game as a packaged whole with an open-mind. Looking at XIII in this way, it succeeds in maintaining the one single consistent element that has been passed down from each title in the series: fun.

Part (2/2)

Thanks for reading~

Habs nur grob überflogen, aber ich bleibe dabei: Das Spiel scheint einfach nur toll zu sein. Heute wurde auch mein Exemplar verschickt, dauert aber wohl bestimmt noch lange, bis es hier ist.