Search the Community

I finished playing Final Fantasy XIII a couple days ago. I put in just under 100 hours on it and honestly had a lot of fun with it. The plot was a bit overly complex and it played out the first part of the story in a series of flashbacks that was very popular 10 years ago like Lost and other shows and movies. It was done ok and the datalog had all the reference material in it to keep the story moving along without getting confusing. The game was very linear until you get to Pulse, but then the game slows to a crawl if you do all the Pulse side missions. Pulse is where the game gets more "open world exploration" and to me open world games are becoming more tedious and time consuming. I want a story not endless exploration that doesn't further a plot. I remember when this game came out alot of people hated it but I didn't know why. Lady played through it twice and loved it. Now 10 years later I finally played through it myself and had a good time. I really liked the characters, except for Hope. That guy annoyed me and once I could customize my own party I never used him again. The character models looked great, everyone was beautiful and I loved having strong female characters. All the scenery looked amazing too. I need to set up a command chord on my xbox controller so I can take screenshots on my PC. I would have loved some screenshots at a couple different locations. It was also nice that once you could customize your party you weren't limited to having a specific team leader on at all times, you could play as any character. The combat is extremely simple at the beginning of the game. You basically "auto command" and the game basically AI controls everything, attacks, spells, etc. This seems extremely boring and simple at first, but as I progressed through the game you get paradigm shifts that change the complexity significantly. The Auto command basically helps you input the commands fast because the ATB moves so quick, especially with haste, you're much better off using the auto command to get attacks off faster and focus entirely on the paradigm shifting to change the combat roles on the fly for all the clutch moments of healing, inflicting and removing status ailments and buffs, defense, offense, etc. After a good 20 hours into the game the real combat is basically shifting paradigms all the time. What I also found interesting was the AI would auto adjust itself to the most effective means of killing an enemy based on the intel gathered from the enemy and what status effects everyone has. Using the Libra technique to get more info on enemies was vital. Overall combat was actually pretty damn fun once it got to this point. Aside from the party leader death issue.. if the party leader dies its an instant loss even if you have another character with the raise ability. I thought that was dumb, but the game does have a "retry" option for every battle that compensates for that. There was some aggravating moments though, the mini map and main map not being locked to north was beyond annoying and enemies not dropping gil was the dumbest thing. The only way to make money in the game was to either find it in chests or sell specific premium drops from enemies, but after a while, gil was pointless as I never had to buy a single weapon since they could all be found in chests. Upgrading weapons needed a massive tutorial that was completely absent from the game and I had to find guides online. Upgrading accessories was completely pointless when better quality ones could eventually be found in chests. I really don't understand why they did the money thing in the game at all. Every other FF game lets you kill monsters, get gil... makes no sense. And there were some enemies that I came across that straight up kicked my ass out of no where. I could be owning all kinds of monsters, leveling up stronger and stronger.. hey look at that monster, I'll go kill him. *monster instant wrecks me like I'm a level 1* wtf. Moments like that were extremely aggravating and the game doesn't go out of its way to tell you some of these monsters were meant for later in the game and doubling back to kill when you are stronger. Some other bosses were strong as hell to compared to the monsters leading up to them. And near the end of the game, I pretty much had to grind up to get a bunch of leveling done.. which meant alot of pulse open world missions. Those were fun for a while especially once I got teleportation stones unlocked, that took care of an ass load of back tracking. Thankfully I did a good chunk of all those pulse missions before the last couple chapters of the game.. because once I got to the end of the game the monsters became straight up powerful as hell. I realized if I didn't do those extra 20 hours of missions and leveled up, I'd have probably rage quit at the end because of these monsters. lol. Like every monster fight of regular enemies in the last area of the game was the equivalent of mini bosses. The ending could have been a bit better, but overall I highly enjoyed it. I started the sequel yesterday.. and it is already a very very different game. lol.

That battle system is straight out of Chrono Trigger. An old school style RPG game on current gen consoles and not a handheld exclusive. Finally. Square Enix, please continue doing this.

Take a look at this open world RPG set in a bleak near future where modern society has collapsed.. Click here to view the article

I initially started this off as a status update: http://www.ancientclan.com/statuses/user/1-sledgstone/?status_id=552 I didn't realize this game was going to be as big as it is. I got the hang of the game play and I'm now 17 hours into the game. I think I accomplished everything I could do on Taris.. I rescued Bastila after doing a swoop race for the Hidden Bek team, I killed 2 bounties and saved the rest, I got the rakghoul serum, gave it to the doctor, got a new version of it, saved 2 people in the lower city and saved a republic solder with the serum also, just to have the guy run off and get killed by rakghouls anyway. I found all the journals and helped the lower city residents on their quest to the promised land.. Did anyone pay that ridiculous $2000 credits for the droid? I was able to persuade her to give it to me for free.. I escaped off Taris after killing Davik and we stole the Ebon Hawk. Thats a nice looking ship.. but now the surface of Taris has been destroyed! wth.. Its as if everything I accomplished there was wiped out. With the only benefit of my exploits being the few team members I brought with me, my light points and hopefully the attack didn't pierce thru to the lower city and those poor bastards finally made it to the promise land. I killed Bendark Starkiller on my first try. That guy was leaps and bounds over the other duelists. I lobbed half my grenades at the guy, used all my medpacks and then bum rushed him with my dual swords. Right now I'm at the Jedi council on Dantooine and I'm about to have a meeting with them about training me to be a jedi. This game is huge. Anyone know how long the jedi training stuff will take? Is Dantooine as big as Taris? Will I be on this planet for another 17 hours?

Square Enix is trying to remind everyone about Final Fantasy VII again, this time with a Pre-Order Bonus for their new game "Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII" I loved Final Fantasy VII and I have to admit that Buster Sword looks good in an HD game. Maybe this is Square Enix's way of teasing that a FFVII HD remake could still happen? Or maybe they want to rub it in everyone's face that it will never happen and the best we'll get is a DLC for a new FF game? Its possibly a bit of both, but more likely they're doing this simply to increase their pre-orders. For a better look at this game, check out the official E3 trailer: Click here to view the article

Obsidian Entertainment, makers of KOTOR II, has pitched an idea to Lucasarts to make a new Star Wars RPG focusing on Obi-Wan Kenobi. The story would take place between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. When asked about it, Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart had this to say: Disney has previously stated that it will focus more on mobile and social media games, but Urquhart thinks he can convince them otherwise. However, he does acknowledge that the lack of KOTOR II's success will make this idea a hard sell. For a full report, check out the link below: New Republic: Obsidian Actively Pitching More Star Wars After reading: http://kotaku.com/5968952/the-knights-of-new-vegas-how-obsidian-survived-countless-catastrophes-and-made-some-of-the-coolest-role+playing-games-ever I fully understand how KOTOR II got screwed over by time constraints. I'd like to see Obsidian get another shot at this. Click here to view the article

Click the link to read the article, or just watch the video because they both explain system in detail. The last couple minutes of the video shows the iron curtain system defending against live rpgs, its pretty impressive. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/11/new-bomb-resistant-trucks-will-blast-rpgs-before-they-hit/ [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPYlINh8Q_Y]YouTube- iron_curtain.mp4[/ame]