THE FINAL FANTASY XIII TOPIC

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Happy
Devil's in the details
5367





The Official Site

It's roughly 2 months until the worldwide release of FF XIII, anymore. While I have been skeptical of the direction of the series in the present day, I can't deny my impatience for getting a copy of this game in my hands, already.

Final Fantasy XIII brings some fresh innovation to the series with its new sort of battle system and fresh setting that features both futuristic and natural elements; it is set between a land of wilderness and the high-tech world above it.

Another thing I found out is that Yoshinori Kitase (part of lead design in Chrono Trigger, FF VI, VII, VIII and X) is making a return to the series. With this said, as well as after seeing several parts of playthrough video, I can say the game looks very much alike to Final Fantasy X in terms of screenplay. (I personally liked FF X very much, and it's one of my favorites, while directing in FF XII falls flat in comparison.)

What comes to the audiovisual presentation, Tetsuya Nomura is in charge of the art again, but this time the soundtrack has been done by Masashi Hamauzu (earlier work: SaGa Frontier 2, FF X, Unlimited Saga), a person that has all releases of Nobuo Uematsu to the date. From what I've heard the soundtrack is a pleasant new direction to the series, as well. It mixes futuristic and symphonic and while it might take some adapting to get into, in the end it does show excellent quality.

In conclusion from the looks of it, it seem as if the series is design-wise continuing from where it was left roughly 8 years ago with FF X, but without TIDUS.

I also like to imagine this to be some sort of counterpart to FF VII as the setting has some similar elements and Tetsuya Nomura was even asked to create a female version of Cloud Strife when designing the main character, Lightning.

With all of this said, to me it seems this will be another epic and memorable game added to the series.

Additional information:

Plot:
The plot of Final Fantasy XIII, taking place in a world known as Pulse, revolves around the fal'Cie, mechanical beings of godlike power created from crystals residing inside them. People who are marked by the fal'Cie for greater purposes are called l'Cie. Each l'Cie has a Focus, a goal the fal'Cie wants him or her to fulfill within a certain amount of time; however, the fal'Cie do not explicitly say what the goal is. L'Cie gain the ability to summon Eidolons, but this ability comes with a price: if a l'Cie dies before completing his or her Focus, fails to tame his or her Eidolon, or fails to complete his or her Focus within a set period of time, he or she becomes a monster known as a Cie Corpse. If a l'Cie does complete his or her Focus, the reward is not much better: permanent transformation into a crystal. For this reason, being chosen as a l'Cie is seen as a curse.

Some 1,300 years ago, a fal'Cie named Orphan constructed a paradise for humanity: the shell-like city of Cocoon, which floats high above the surface of Pulse. Then Orphan created life forms and machines for Cocoon's inhabitants to use, and humanity flourished. Over time, after disaster destroyed Oerba Village and wiped out its residents, the people of Cocoon began to fear for the safety of their world, worrying that it would be cast down from the sky into the hell that they saw Pulse to be.

Although most Cocoon citizens have never seen Pulse with their own eyes, they have been told that it is a dangerous place that has strange effects on those who venture down to its surface. Consequently, anyone who is discovered to have visited Pulse is immediately subjected to quarantine and exile by the theocratic government of Cocoon, known as the Sanctum. The Sanctum enforces this policy with its strongest military branch, which is called PSICOM.

As Snow leads the resistance group Team Nora in an attempt to stop the purging of civilians, the mysterious Lightning fights her way past PSICOM soldiers with the aid of Sazh to find a Pulse fal'Cie, Anima, who turned her sister, Serah (who is also Snow's fiancée), into a l'Cie. Through a chain of events, these three, along with two exiles, Vanille and Hope, are forced by the fal'Cie of Pulse to become l'Cie, and with that become enemies of humanity with the Focus of bringing about the downfall of Orphan and Cocoon.

Mechanics - battles:
The concept for Final Fantasy XIII's battle system is to maintain the strategic nature of command-based battles. The Active Time Battle system will return, but it will work differently from its predecessors. Users will be able to chain large numbers of commands together in order to achieve attack bonuses.

In battle, the player can only control one character at a time out of a party of up to three.
Multiple commands can be stacked into slots per turn and released at the same time to form a combo. The number of command slots increases as the characters grow in strength.
These commands include series staples such as Attack, Fire, Blizzard and Cure, as well as new ones such as Ruin, Ruinaga, and Radial Strike. The difference between XIII's battle system and the ATB gauge is that these commands can still be placed in the slots even though the bar has run out, and the actions will be executed once the required slots are filled up. This, however, affects the chain combo hits as the combo has been interrupted.

The game does not make use of MP but introduces "cost points" for each command, which determine how many times the commands can be used per turn. Because magic cannot be used outside of battle, the HP of the party is completely restored after each battle.

The player is able to view the HP and name of the enemy before engaging it in battle. When engaging an enemy, the camera moves to another position and the battle menu appears, making the battle transitions nearly seamless. The after-battle victory screen in XIII holds information such as the time it took to finish the battle, the highest number of combos executed, the number of break attacks and the quality of battle which is determined by a ranking of one to five stars.

A "break state" is one of the new features of the Final Fantasy XIII battle system. The breaks refer to the times an enemy enters a state of non-retaliation. This occurs when a chain combo has been maintained for a certain period of time on an enemy. When a high level combo has been achieved, the enemy will glow red and enter this state, during which the player will be able to inflict high amounts of damage. The chain bar will gradually deplete during this period; when it becomes empty, the break state ends.
The party will be able to purchase new weapons in the game and actually see them in battle.

Mechanics - leveling - THE SPHERE GRID IS MAKING RETURN:
The leveling system for the game is called the Crystarium System which resembles the Sphere Grid in Final Fantasy X. Instead of gaining experience points after winning a battle, characters gain CP (Crystarium Points) which can then be spent in order to unlock abilities and increase attributes such as maximum HP.

A few playthrough videos (May contain poilers (In japanese) )
The last one is just a song from the soundtrack.



Looking forward to it yet?
Woohoo! I know i am.
i hope the english voice actors pull it off(i know, out of all the things i could pick out...)
I get excited about any of the Final Fantasy's in the main franchise(apart from those poo mmorpg ones), regardless of whether it ends up good or not. I've generally been happy with all of them 6 onwards, barring 12. I guess i'm easy to please.
I'll probably wait for a while before i buy it though, i've a feeling it will cost more than i'll have.

and that little chickobo is just darling. a bit weird that it lives in his fro though, that must make for a wicked party trick.
I've been looking forward to it for months, then again I'm easily impressed.
Even though final fantasy isn't my favorite series, I think I enjoyed each game on some level, and I actually like 12 a lot(at least gameplay wise).

I love what I've heard of the sound track and everything seems solid aesthetically, but I'll see soon enough how it actually feels to play. I'm also really glad they added in what seems to be a per battle grading system too. Can't really say anything negative, so I'll leave that up to pretty much every other poster.

Edit: the fact that there's no caterpillar system and battles take place on separate maps irks me quite a bit and seems like a step backwards from it's predecessor though...
Happy
Devil's in the details
5367
post=118587
Woohoo! I know i am.
i hope the english voice actors pull it off(i know, out of all the things i could pick out...)
I just checked some of the trailers on the site ( http://na.square-enix.com/ff13/ ) and the english voice actors seemed generally pretty good. At least Snow's, Hope's, and the hawt dark haired woman in the later part of the video seemed very pleasing choices.


@StormriderAngel: I can't see how not having a caterpillar system would effect the game at all. In FF 12 it was more important mechanics-wise, considering the leader-system with the gambits. Also, you can see the enemies on maps I think, but when you encounter them it throws you in "another dimension." So basically, it's almost the same where it comes to how the battle encounters occur.

Edit: Shit! The trailer... The third one in the row on the site. It's pretty damn good.
It's mainly just an aesthetic thing that kinda annoys me a little. It's not hideous, and god knows it's not a deal breaker. It's imho a little dated is all.
I'm looking forward to it, have been for a while now.

The battle system looks MUCH more acceptable than FF12's.

So far, the only thing I don't like about FF13 that I've seen is it's boss music. I mean it doesn't sound like boss music at all to me. =/
I haven't really paid much attention to this...."this" being Final Fantasy VII or later. But as far as that goes the battle system seems interesting and the story kinda neat. Kinda sounds like KOTOR (in the sense that you can queue attacks and can only control 1 character at any given time and you have a party of 3)
I've read it's extremely linear without any towns or NPCs. Even dungeons mostly have a single path to follow. I've also heard there is a lack of puzzles and minigames (not that minigames are overly important but I am not looking forward to walking -> battle x 1000 without anything inbetween). These are some weird design choices for an RPG, but I suppose it is trying something new and battle system looks rather fast and frantic.

EDIT: Also, all of the characters do seem pretty cool apart from Vanilla, even Hope seems alright. Yes, even Hope! (All their names are still rubbish though).
Rei
I just checked some of the trailers on the site ( http://na.square-enix.com/ff13/ ) and the english voice actors seemed generally pretty good. At least Snow's, Hope's, and the hawt dark haired woman in the later part of the video seemed very pleasing choices.


Fang iirc


Also


Fuck the others, Sazh is going on the Dream Team irregardless of stats and gameplay capabilities
oopsy sent before I could even make my gosh darn point XD!
Yes, this is "IRREGARDLESSLY" going to be the one of the most successful and
popular of the series as it is with all of first games of the main series to hit the next
generation of systems.
Happy
Devil's in the details
5367
I added the E3 09 trailer to the first post. It shows some great premise. The characters just seem to have so much more depth than before.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15170
post=118588
Edit: the fact that there's no caterpillar system and battles take place on separate maps irks me quite a bit and seems like a step backwards from it's predecessor though...


They should plug in a caterpillar script and use Tankentai, but make the battleback transparent so you see the map.
Oh yeah, there's now way in hell this games not gonna one of the the most overrated FFs of all time. It just seems inevitable.
But I'd be lying If I said I wasn't reeeaally looking forward to this game. I just need to decide which system to get if for...

Edit:
post=118607
post=118588
Edit: the fact that there's no caterpillar system and battles take place on separate maps irks me quite a bit and seems like a step backwards from it's predecessor though...
They should plug in a caterpillar script and use Tankentai, but make the battleback transparent so you see the map.
You're a genius o_o! Why didn't I think of that?!
All flash, no substance. I'm glad I didn't preorder this.
Happy
Devil's in the details
5367
That's ridiculous thing to say. How could you possibly tell whether it has substance, or not, yet?
This looks like its straying away from the Final Fantasy formula a bit more, so thats a welcome change. However I might be apprehensive about buying it, cause I feel that it could just be something stupid and generic-ish after all.

Also is it just me or does this game use the voice cast of Gurren Lagann?
Happy
Devil's in the details
5367
Lennon: Haven't the jRPGs been that for the past 5 years, or far longer, anyway? And in quality I think this doesn't come too short handed in comparison to those.

Anyway, Snow sounded a bit like Kamina to me, too, but I checked it out and the voice actor wasn't the same - at least for him.
I cannot wait until the day this comes out and all the skeptics completely change their mind about the game and don't base what they've heard off of amazon.jp reviews (the same people who raided Dragon Quest 9, they are literally scum).

If anything you will check the game out because of what it does different. It does a lot different. And this is a good thing.
I'll pick it up, but I'm not sure if I'll enjoy it.

I'm also waiting for the English version of it.