|
I really like each character's unique Crystarium design, and the fact that it shows up when Eidolons get involved. 'spretty.
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 04:15
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 11:44 |
|
|
In the Final Fantasy VII LP thread, a link was posted Where Final Fantasy Went Wrong, and How Square Enix is Putting It Right. It discusses things like how the series has lost its way and there's some FFXIII stuff there, which makes it an interesting read. EDIT: It doesn't contain spoilers, just general background and discussion of the development. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 11:58 on May 8, 2014 |
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 04:16
|
|
|
Schwartzcough posted:People praise the balance in this game, but having gimmick fights where, even knowing exactly what you're supposed to do before even starting the fight, you can still easily lose seems poorly done. Woah woah woah, back up a second. No one defends the Eidolon fights. I mean, Azure Horizon might but I'd like to think that even he wasn't that far gone. When we talk about how the difficulty curve is really nice or the game is well balanced, we're talking solely about "real" fights, for lack of a better way to put it. Fights that you are expected to win in a normal way. Blaze Dragon posted:Man, Lightning talking about how the team might be enemies next time they meet just made me think of this game where she actually is your enemy and you can give her exactly what she deserves for being such an annoying rear end in a top hat. Alas, that will never happen because Square-Enix is madly in love with her. Good news! You'll get your wish in 2017 when we're doing late/post-game DLC for 13-2.  E: US Gamer article is fine, it doesn't talk about anything aside from some technical details and the development process behind the games. Artix fucked around with this message at 04:32 on May 8, 2014 |
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 04:23
|
|
|
I think I used summons in this game all of... maybe twice? when the plot didn't demand it. They just feel underwhelming and far too overpriced. I will admit I have a soft spot for Sazh's, but then I have a soft spot for Sazh in general.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 04:26
|
|
|
I LOVED the Odin tutorial fight cutscene Lighting: You got my back? Hope: Yeah Lighting: Nah just get the gently caress out of the way and let me and Thunderhorse deal with this okay?
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 04:26
|
|
|
Eidolons might not often be used because they're expensive to summon in game but for just 100-280$ you can summon your own figures of Odin or the Shiva Sisters! You can even transform them without filling up a gestalt gauge.    Only the two we've seen were made into figures that transform, though. There's a box set of all the robots but they are not more than meets the eye and just for display.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 04:46
|
|
|
Well, I can only see how one of the remaining four would transform all that well without tons of kibble, and even then it wouldn't be near as clean as Odin's figure.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 05:27
|
|
|
SourceElement posted:There's a gil reward for killing a certain number of enemies with the sweeping blow move, and there's an item reward for total number of kills. Why does this game hate giving out gil?
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 05:44
|
|
|
Cake Attack posted:the degree to which people despise an at worse, boring character, is pretty funny She's just flat-out unpleasant. That's why I don't like her and have never liked her. My favorite characters when i played XIII through once were Snow, Hope and Sazh. Say what you will about Snow but at least he's a nice guy while Lightning is just a bitch to everyone. I'm glad I heard about this LP in the FF Megathread though! I need to stop relying on the Master List. It's not updated frequently enough. Great job so far guys and I look forward to seeing the rest of this game. I haven't missed any of the good or good bad stuff yet either so I'm happy.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 06:03
|
|
|
Keep in mind this is a game where Odin's shield has important PLOT related text on it. No really. And yes, it's in that Pulsian script or whatever.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 06:54
|
|
|
NikkolasKing posted:She's just flat-out unpleasant. That's why I don't like her and have never liked her. My favorite characters when i played XIII through once were Snow, Hope and Sazh. Say what you will about Snow but at least he's a nice guy while Lightning is just a bitch to everyone. I don't have any strong feelings toward her either way, I just find it funny that people were complaining that the protagonist of FFXIII was in the game wherein the protagonists of FF games fight each other. They might not have been entirely serious, but a lot of people do get super annoyed by Lightning.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 07:06
|
|
|
Oh boy. Lightning is in full Teenage Rebellion Mode now, isn't she. "NO gently caress YOU anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 07:55 on May 8, 2014 |
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 07:48
|
|
|
Maybe it's just me, but I don't find Lightning all that bad. If anything, her main detriment up to this point is making really dumb decisions (choosing to fight Anima; deciding to destroy Eden). Given what happens to her sister and Snow's whole "Are you a bad enough dude to save Cocoon" shtick, I'd be pretty frustrated and fed up, too. It doesn't help that that the fal'Cie are pretty much expecting them to guess what their mission is. To be fair, Lightning has pointed out that where she's going is where the main fal'Cie, Eden, is centered. PSICOM getting destroyed in the process is sort of a thing that Lightning realizes will happen but doesn't really care about. And as far as Hope, she only calls him dead weight after he keeps trying to rest after all of the fights. Blueberry Pancakes fucked around with this message at 08:14 on May 8, 2014 |
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 08:02
|
|
|
Wouldn't go as far as hating, since that requires some level of emotional investment, but yeah. Lightning's kinda being an rear end in a top hat here. She and the rest of the cast are all fellow passengers on the S.S. Screwed. Considering the situation, even if you hate everyone around you (And, to be fair, most of the non-Sazh crowd here, hating's an understandable response) it's about time to pool resources, figure out a plan together, maybe let people vent a little before telling them to cram it. After all, the rest of the world wants them dead. Only thing to rely on is each other. Lightning immediately describes her plan to destroy the government. Now, I admit this is an odd choice of words to describe a group that could be generously termed "casually genocidal", but the big bosses, far as we can tell, are innocent on this one. They didn't tag Lightning and company with the marks. Their actions have been in the exact opposite direction. Yes, they've been dickish and outright evil plans in the opposite direction, but when a group is willing to wipe out a city to prevent someone from being marked by the gods, you can't go blaming them when your rulebreaking gets you lined up for crystalization. Kinda confirming some very negative stereotypes about L'cie, Lightning! Now, bad enough move already. But she's also telling everyone else in the same boat that she hates them, no matter if they go with her or not. Sazh stays behind? "By the way, I will totally murder you later if you disagree with me." Hope goes with? "You're only dead weight." Now, I hate Hope too, don't get me wrong. But when you only have one person in the world willing and able to watch your back, might want to treat things more careful.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 08:10
|
|
|
To be fair she does switch to "I'll make a man out of you" pretty quickly. But as far as FF protagonists go, she's so far one of the least likeable. Might have something to do with acting like goddamn Squall half the time.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 08:16
|
|
|
Her summon is a sparklehorse?  That fight, though... I think I get what they're going for, but it's just such a joyless execution. Lightning has to learn a lesson and demonstrate that she's learned it by defeating the Knight Boss by not being gung-ho Commando SOLDIER etc., but by being a healer and caster. "Be less of a bitch and stop being someone you're not" because she is literally Cloud. But the only way the game teaches this lesson is by having the player beat their head against a boss that can only be beaten by playing exactly the right way. And none of this is made evident to the player at all.  It's just so unintuitive and unaccessible, it jut opens up new depth in how hosed the dev process must have been."Unaccessible" is a pretty good term for the story so far, just kind of bashing up against things and then snapping to a cutscene/different party/flashback before you can even ground yourself in the gameplay.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 08:54
|
|
|
Ashsaber posted:I think I used summons in this game all of... maybe twice? when the plot didn't demand it. They just feel underwhelming and far too overpriced. I will admit I have a soft spot for Sazh's, but then I have a soft spot for Sazh in general. Summon immediately and you have no trouble. Summons wipe hordes with only combined high health quickly. Against a single high-health enemy, they are borderline useless, though. Nice to get in the last bit of damage against a boss sometimes, but you should never really count on it. My biggest problem with them is that I could very deliberately write "surprisingly" useful. They are probably the biggest example of sparkle over functionality this game has. Team up with your shitkicker friend! Get the Gestalt gauge up! Push the button at the right time to MAD TRANSFORM! Then fighting combo the poo poo out of them! But!
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 09:52
|
|
|
Precambrian posted:"Be less of a bitch and stop being someone you're not" because she is literally Cloud. I dunno what Cloud you remember, but I think at this point in FF7 the protagonist was stealing underwear from a brothel and doing squats in a "gym" so that he could dress up like a lady to break into a pimp's mansion and rescue his childhood crush. I must have missed that part of FFXIII.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 10:08
|
|
|
J. Alfred Prufrock posted:I dunno what Cloud you remember, but I think at this point in FF7 the protagonist was stealing underwear from a brothel and doing squats in a "gym" so that he could dress up like a lady to break into a pimp's mansion and rescue his childhood crush. I must have missed that part of FFXIII. It doesn't come until the end of the game, when Cloud has to confront that he's not a SOLDIER, he's got brain problems, but the real heroism was inside him, all along, etc. I am not even remotely putting that in spoiler tags. Lightning gets it before the end of the first act, because this game appears to follow a novel pacing structure of not having any.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 10:19
|
|
|
Precambrian posted:It doesn't come until the end of the game, when Cloud has to confront that he's not a SOLDIER, he's got brain problems, but the real heroism was inside him, all along, etc. I am not even remotely putting that in spoiler tags. Lightning gets it before the end of the first act, because this game appears to follow a novel pacing structure of not having any. That's however what makes Cloud likable - he has to overcome his mental issues and we had the entire game's worth of his reactions to different kind of absurd situations to gauge his on. You come to the conclusion that Cloud is a hero by yourself - because you see him break down both literally and mentally and get over it. Lightning doesn't seem to have any development past the developers pointing at her and saying she's cool. edit: I said it before and will keep saying it: what makes Cloud a good character is the realization that he's a massive screw-up. Overcoming his issues is what makes FF7 - but the devs of this game seem to think it's more about swords and cool posturing. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 10:36 on May 8, 2014 |
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 10:30
|
|
|
Does Lightning have any problems, though? At this point in FF7, we've also started to see clear signs that Cloud isn't everything he says he is, or is at least some kind of screwed up. He has a weird episode at the end of the very first Reactor. Where does this game show us that Lightning is anything other than "sugoi awesome badass waifu"? Sure, she says she's not a soldier anymore, but remember she was up for promotion before the 13 Days, because of course everyone realized how kick-rear end she is, despite not really doing anything notable. J. Alfred Prufrock fucked around with this message at 10:37 on May 8, 2014 |
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 10:34
|
|
|
I can't speak to the in-game universe, cause I'm only seeing what's in the LP, but Lightning's been supremely unlikable in this game so far. She's a terrible character in the exact same way Snow and Hope were: they're all heroic archetypes who are lovely at being their archetype. Snow's action-hero rhetoric covers up the fact that he's a huge, ludicrous oaf who got a lot of people killed and immediately shut it out with more action hero words. Hope has a unique weapon, watched his village get slaughtered, swore revenge, etc. but he's too much of a teenager to do anything about it but simmer in impotent, sputtering anger. And Lightning is lovely Cloud. She is absolutely 150% Cloud-Strife-but-a-woman, but she's also the most unlikeable character in the game so far. Then an Angel comes down and sets up a situation where the player is forced to make Lighting act as a team player White Mage instead of a solo Fighter.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 10:59
|
|
|
I can kind of see what's going on with Lightning's character arc here. She's as lost and scared as everyone else so she defaults to being the stoic fighter, abandoning everything to pursue a path of self-destruction. The Eidolon shows up just as she's trying to throw away the last thing she has to show her she actually has something to fight for - that underneath her cold facade she actually does want to take care of Hope. Still, I mostly get this reading from how I would have written the scene, rather than what is actually shown. It's probably at least partly informed by the upcoming chapters that I played through way back. This game has serious problems with subtlety and it's not in the least helped by the fact that they seem desperate to keep Lightning as a cold and stoic badass because those are popular personality traits, rather than show what she is actually thinking and, heaven forbid, actually developing. When people say they actually like Hope as a character it mostly comes down to the fact that he actually visibly grows and develops. We're already starting to see it with him choosing to follow Lightning rather than the easier option of Sazh. It'll be some time yet before we see any other characters making a decision informed by what has happened to them so far.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 11:07
|
|
|
Precambrian posted:And Lightning is lovely Cloud. She is absolutely 150% Cloud-Strife-but-a-woman, but she's also the most unlikeable character in the game so far. Then an Angel comes down and sets up a situation where the player is forced to make Lighting act as a team player White Mage instead of a solo Fighter. Except that this is total bullshit. Cloud puts on a tough-guy stand-off act for the first halfish-hour (tops!) of the game. After that we meet his childhood crush and learn that he was kinda a goober as kid. Like, you say that Lightning is 150% Cloud but then ignore all the poo poo that made Cloud likable (and that Lightning also lacks). In FF7 Cloud started out pretty dorky. Yeah, sometime he was kinda badass but do you even remember the Beginners Halls? "Light" gets nothing comparable. She's always the standoff-ish baddass, and across three loving games she's never anything else.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 12:04
|
|
|
^^^ J. Alfred Prufrock posted:Except that this is total bullshit. Cloud puts on a tough-guy stand-off act for the first halfish-hour (tops!) of the game. After that we meet his childhood crush and learn that he was kinda a goober as kid. anilEhilated posted:That's however what makes Cloud likable - he has to overcome his mental issues and we had the entire game's worth of his reactions to different kind of absurd situations to gauge his on. You come to the conclusion that Cloud is a hero by yourself - because you see him break down both literally and mentally and get over it. The parallels with Cloud are very close. Lightning is dealing with her own traumas and sense of self-loathing here, and dealing with it by buying into the role of the l'Cie she's been handed by her sister and spinning it her own way into some kind of quest for justice. And this bit where she's about to walk out on Hope helps to show her she's lost the plot. The problem is that the l'cie stuff hasn't really been well-elaborated on at this point in the conflict, whereas by the time Cloud has to deal with his traumas in the narrative we've already seen him travel the entire world map and seen Shinra and Sephiroth and their respective conflicts. We don't really understand Lightning's struggles because we have very little grasp of her world, in the sense which FF7 took great care to ensure we'd properly understood. Indeterminacy fucked around with this message at 12:08 on May 8, 2014 |
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 12:06
|
|
|
That would be true if it didnt exist in 2 sequels afterwards. what she is squall mixed in with EU/fanfic Cloud.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 12:24
|
|
|
Rigged Death Trap posted:That would be true if it didnt exist in 2 sequels afterwards.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 12:36
|
|
|
Even EU Cloud isn't really mean or aggressive like Lightning is though. Lightning is defined by being Perpetually Pissed Off while Cloud is just kinda meh. Start of FFVII Cloud though, the one who is like "gently caress your Planet, gimme my money" is a bit more like Lightning but even then, not really. I'm hard-pressed to think of any FF protagonist who was as....blunt and abrasive as her. Maybe Ashe in the first hour of her screentime. (Ashe is a much better protagonist though. Not even anything against Light - Ashe is probably my favorite protagonist in FF history) NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 13:29 on May 8, 2014 |
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 13:24
|
|
|
Around 25 minutes in the last video you ask why you only fill the Gestalt gauge 70% - you actually do fill it 100%. The gestalt gauge is 'full' when it reaches the G in Gestalt in the bar. The word is just a label to the right of the bar, not a part of the bar.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 13:39
|
|
|
NikkolasKing posted:I'm hard-pressed to think of any FF protagonist who was as....blunt and abrasive as her. Edit: huge blank image removed (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 16:45
|
|
|
J. Alfred Prufrock posted:Does Lightning have any problems, though? I would agree with Precambrian that Lightning is just as much of a gently caress-up as anyone else in the party right now. I mean, let's look at what we actually know of her, purely from what we've seen so far. We know that she's an authoritative type - she's admitted as much on a couple occasions, most notably at the beginning of Chapter 4 when telling Hope that as long as she has a goal, some kind of orders to follow, she can keep herself going. We know that she's fiercely protective of her sister, going so far as to purge herself just for a chance to get her back. She's got a quick temper, as evidenced by how little it takes to set her off (especially when it relates to Serah, which is the source of most of her conflict with Snow), and she's very impulsive. Look how long it takes her to go from "Finally I found Serah!" to "Well gently caress, guess I'm going to go murder Anima now" to "You know what? gently caress all this poo poo, I'm going to go kill Eden, and to hell with anyone or anything that gets in my way." Add it all up, and you've got a ticking time bomb. That's not the profile of a hero - that's the profile of someone who is about to do something really loving stupid because she's lost the most important person to her, and she has no idea what to do anymore. She is every bit Snow's equal in the gently caress-up department, and (right now, at least) her character has a lot of parallels with his. Where Snow covered it up with his heroism mantras, Lightning hides her fear behind anger and stoicism. At least, that's my two cents anyway. Maybe I'm totally off the mark, but I think there's a lot more to Lightning than "Stoic super amazing female Cloud".
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 21:27
|
|
|
So your saying that in any other game, Lightning would be a villain. The one who snaps the hardest in the face of despair and needs to have some sense beaten into her before she stops trying to end everything.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 23:02
|
|
|
The thing is all of the protagonists have snapped due to despair but in very different ways. Sazh and Vanille for very different reasons are trying to run from the reality of the situation they have been placed in. Hope and Lightning after losing what they viewed as most precious to them are just lashing out at whatever they believe to be at fault for harming what they valued. Snow is being forced to see that not everything turns out like a fairy tail and that life is way more harsh then he could have imagined.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 23:25
|
|
|
BioEnchanted posted:So your saying that in any other game, Lightning would be a villain. The one who snaps the hardest in the face of despair and needs to have some sense beaten into her before she stops trying to end everything. Let me phrase it this way: If the protagonist doesn't care about what happens to him/herself, should the player even care about what happens to the protagonist?
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2014 23:29
|
|
|
AradoBalanga posted:Let me phrase it this way: If the protagonist doesn't care about what happens to him/herself, should the player even care about what happens to the protagonist? Take the Bride from Kill Bill - she goes into the story basically hoping to face down a team of trained assassins whatever the cost, and although we enjoy the challenge and danger she faces in the process, we want her to win and survive even if she is really only doing it to Kill Bill regardless of the risk to her own life. Then later on something is revealed that gives her a will to survive, and this gives us some relief that after all of the tension has subsided, the Bride will get to live on purposefully afterwards.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2014 00:21
|
|
|
AradoBalanga posted:Let me phrase it this way: If the protagonist doesn't care about what happens to him/herself, should the player even care about what happens to the protagonist? Yes, if they're doing it to save someone else, or for the greater good. Honestly, I think one of the big reasons people dislike Light (and Snow for that matter) is they did an incredibly lovely job with Serah in the first place. Why should we care about her?
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2014 00:42
|
|
|
I'm a little confused with this discussion because I don't disagree with what anyone else has said so far about Cloud? Cloud is likeable, Lightning is not, for all the reasons people have posted. That's been their most meaningful difference so far. I summarized Lightning's entire character so far in two words, as "lovely Cloud". Whether the game acknowledges this and has her grow from it, I'll see (this last episode pointed in that direction!), or if it's completely ignored, or, most likely, the character beats get drowned in datalogs and needlessly overdeveloped levels. Whatever happens, I'll keep an eye open.BioEnchanted posted:So your saying that in any other game, Lightning would be a villain. The one who snaps the hardest in the face of despair and needs to have some sense beaten into her before she stops trying to end everything. At best, in a better game, Lightning would be yet another "flawed character behaving in a self-destructive, inconsistent manner on account of her immaturity towards death". She's not a villain, she's just trying to be a badass to keep herself together and is failing at that. Her personality so far has been a giant front as she engages on an openly ludicrous quest that makes no sense, being just an aggressive version of Snow's plan where you just throw yourself at a problem and "heroism" means you win, somehow, don't ask questions, shut up. She has been very, very generic (or "archetypal" if you're being generous) so far. AradoBalanga posted:The writing wants us to sympathize with Lightning and her plight, as she is the hero, and have the player support her revenge plan. Honestly, I haven't felt the need to cheer on anyone in this story yet, or even any pressure to from the narrative. They're all in a state of flailing panic and confusion, they don't work together well, and they've already gotten their teeth kicked in at least twice. The party keeps splitting up because they can't work together without stomping off in a huff or punching Snow in his stupid face. It's taking loving forever, but I feel like we're in the Act 1 "Nobody gets along" stage, where they're not quite heroes yet. Also, treating one's life as if it's but a trifle is Heroism 101. You fight for your cause and you die for your cause. Lightning's problem is that her cause is shooting God in the face for condemning her to die, i.e. she's an idiot.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2014 00:46
|
|
|
I think the characters could've benefited from us seeing them in "normal" life first. The game starts in media res with full conflict mode already in place, and the little flashbacks don't really present the characters differently enough, or fully enough, for us to go "Oh, they're behaving this way because of the l'Cie brand" instead of "oh, this is just how the characters always are." Also, Lightning would be a more relatable protagonist if she was shown to be a normal person that is reacting out of stress, instead of a born and bred battle badass. She was just a local peace officer for a sleepy little town- the datalogs have already established how being a "soldier" in Bodhum was boring and uneventful. And yet all we've seen of Lightning shows she was already Serious Military Person even when watching a fireworks display. Before even getting a l'Cie brand, she's already able to leap off tall buildings, fly through the air, and single-handedly take out a train full of soldiers. If Square really wanted us to think of her as a flawed human instead of an action movie superhero, they did a poor job of it.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2014 02:12
|
|
|
Bregor posted:Yes, if they're doing it to save someone else, or for the greater good. Yeah this is definitely a problem. They backload the plot information about Serah in the 13 days cutscenes. By the time we find a reason to care about Serah, Lightning and Snow have become (slightly) more tolerable.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2014 03:16
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 11:44 |
|
|
I have this game gathering dust on the shelf, but never got around to playing it after my brother gave up midway and then hearing all the criticisms and negativity about it. Watching the LP, so far I dislike Snow most for having every other word be HERO, Vanille and Hope aren't as bad as expected (I especially appreciate Vanille at least trying to get Hope to move on and talk about things), and Lightning so far just seems hit and miss. There's a feeling of having her pushed on the audience without any build up, or reasons why we should see her the way the creators wanted us to-at least, reasons beyond "has cool gravity powers", "is a total badass", etc. There's still potential for her to be fleshed out further in the story (though from the discussion here alone, it doesn't look like that's going to happen) but there really should have been more to her at this point already. That aside, I really like the soundtrack for this game. The FF13 tracks are among my favourite to play in Theatrhythm too
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2014 11:54
|
|
