In which I go on and on and on....
17 1/2 hours into FF13 and I finally have to grind. I think I missed grinding. Dragon Age was far too easy on me.
But... I liked that, too.
And say nothing of the fact that my first Dragon Age play-through was on "casual" .... shh.
I'm only, as I said, 17 1/2 hours into the game.. so I don't know if the game ~magically~ changes midway through (I hear some things do change).
But I do know - this is just not Final Fantasy. :| I'm not going to call it a bad game, so far I am actually enjoying it - but it's an imposter. And I know why they did it - try something new and slap a name on it that people already love, it's bound to sell more than putting a brand new name on it. I just really, really hope they're done now, and that they go back to TRA-DISH-UN in the next coming FF's .. which they won't, obviously, as FF13 Versus is in the same world (or something) and FF14 is an mmo ...
Still, a fan can hope~
Anyway.
Not Final Fantasy-
The maps are hallways. There are absolutely (so far) no open, explorable areas. You get thrown into a hallway and told to move forward. Sometimes the game lies to you and lets you think you have a choice - there will be small off-shoots that you'll think lead somewhere. They don't. They're all dead ends, with a mob and/or a box with an item you probably don't need at all. Sometimes you will get thrown into a somewhat-open map.. not a hallway, but still tiny and you still can't do anything on them, except go exactly where the game wants you to go.
You have no say in which character you're controlling at any given time, and you can only control one character in battle. I don't actually mind being limited to controlling one in battle, I just really wish you could pick which one.
No towns, no shops. You shop from the save crystals. Items to buy & new shops unlock throughout the game.
There is also absolutely (apparently) no need to ever buy new weapons -or even equip new weapons you've found- every single sword upgrades to the same ultimate sword. Every rod upgrades to the same ultimate rod, etc., etc. Upgrading takes time, you use mob drops - but you can also buy them. You can dismantle found equips to get more upgrading items.
You will come across a save crystal every. five. minutes. The game will pop up and ask you if you want to save every. half. hour.
If there is a monster in the next room that is just a tiny bit stronger than the normal mobs in the area, there's a save crystal. End of every cutscene, game asks you to save and then dumps you in a room right next to a save crystal.
Also every half hour (if not more often) there is a cutscene. Not that I mind pretty pretties, but this is a video game, not a movie. I would like to play it, not watch it.
Another thing I find odd is that your party members will leave your ass behind. It's funny, but also annoying.. if there are multiple possible paths, they will run down the path you need to go down (effectively killing any "I CAN GO SOMEWHERE ELSE?" hopes). If there is some way to avoid a monster on a particular path, they will go that route - and then yell at you if you go to fight the monster anyway, because OH MY GOD DON'T GO LOOKING FOR TROUBLE (Seriously, one of them yelled that at me when I opted to fight). The game won't let you make mistakes or find your own path, it lays everything out very plainly.
This is like.. Fantasy RPG Lite for Dummies.
There is also no leveling.. at least, not actual "YOU GAINED A LEVEL" leveling.. you level combat styles - Commando, Ravager, Medic, etc., etc. You gain Crystarium Points in every battle, abbreviated as CP which my mind automatically reads as Child Porn, so... you gain Child Porn and put the points towards your style of play (you can max out everyone on every single style, really, but some characters have different options in their crystals.. some are more suited to certain styles) and one thing I do really like is that EVERYONE gains the CP. Even when the party is split up and you're playing as a lonely Party of One, while everyone else is scattered across the globe - when you are switched to another character, they've gained the same amount of CP you earned while playing the previous character.
Which I guess they kind of had to do, considering how damn often the party splits up and the game throws you from person to person (as far in as I am, I think I've had the whole party together... once). So.. there isn't a ton of grinding to be done.
I am having to grind right now because I up'd the wrong style for a character and I need him to be able to cast haste so I can beat this goddamn eidolon. Also I kept avoiding fights earlier in the game because it told me to.
I am not even joking. A little box popped up and was like "Ahead there is a monster that is REALLY tough for a party of 2, you should just avoid it since it moves really slow." The whole goddamn map was F-I-L-L-E-D with that particular monster and I had no choice in having only 2 characters... so I ran through the map avoiding everything. And then when they game switched me to a group of 2 other characters.. the maps they were on were also covered with that damn monster. I actually did try to fight it once, and it wasn't an impossible fight - but it was a very long fight and ate up almost all of my potions.
OH. SPEAKING OF POTIONS. A single potion heals the entire party (for ~150 I think), and you are auto-healed/revived outside of fights.
Eidolon (summons) fights kind of suck a little bit because you have no real choice in when to fight them. Y'know. Previous games you level up, then go hunt one down when you're ready to grab it. Here, getting them is part of the story. And fighting them kind of really sucks.
Tthe point is to win them over by showing them you can do what they want you to do.. or something. And in order to find out what they want you to do, you have to cast Libra twice, which wastes 2 rounds and really sucks, because oh yeah - the eidolon casts Doom on you at the beginning of the fight.
So basically you get a pretty pretty cutscene of an eidolon being summoned and then it totally fucks your shit up. You cast Libra twice and get two clues as to what impresses the eidolon. One of the things they always (so far) like are getting good chain attack bonuses. The second thing differs from each one - some are impressed by healing your party members, or buffing them, or shielding yourself from attack.
So the eidolons have a backwards "health" bar, basically.. it starts out empty and you have to fill it up by impressing the eidolon and not dying while it wails on you and you have to do it before your doom counter runs out.
.. ah, another thing I don't really like is that you kind of start out with all the characters you will ever play. There is only one who is introduced later, and she's still introduced early enough in the game. It's just weird to me... I rather liked having to gather everyone, and having the option to hunt down & recruit optional characters.
But yeah .... good god, do I know how to ramble. @_@
SO FOR SOMETHING NOT-FF RELATED ......... uhh....
The Crafteh Kitteh is a heavy sleeper and it scares tf out of me every time she sleeps on my bed with me because I wake up and try to move her so I can get up and she doesn't move and every. single. time. I nearly start crying thinking she is dead.. and then she lifts up her head and "mrrr?"'s at me and I am like "DON'T SCARE ME LIKE THAT YOU RIDICULOUS CAT!" and then I go about my day but secretly I drop everything I am doing to go check on her every 5 minutes, just in case.
I have no idea how a cat can sleep that heavily. Ripper.. you so much as look at her when she's asleep, and she instantly wakes up and glares at you. Fatass wakes up if you make any sort of sound or get close to touching him.
Crafteh just sleeps and sleeps and sleeps. I can even start to pick her up and she won't wake up, she will just be hanging there limply..
At least twice a week I get to wake up thinking I've murdered a cat in my sleep, and sometimes I think she does it on purpose - she likes giving me heart attacks. T_T
AND~~ This is the catchiest song in all of Little Big Planet and it has been stuck in my head for DAYS
But... I liked that, too.
And say nothing of the fact that my first Dragon Age play-through was on "casual" .... shh.
I'm only, as I said, 17 1/2 hours into the game.. so I don't know if the game ~magically~ changes midway through (I hear some things do change).
But I do know - this is just not Final Fantasy. :| I'm not going to call it a bad game, so far I am actually enjoying it - but it's an imposter. And I know why they did it - try something new and slap a name on it that people already love, it's bound to sell more than putting a brand new name on it. I just really, really hope they're done now, and that they go back to TRA-DISH-UN in the next coming FF's .. which they won't, obviously, as FF13 Versus is in the same world (or something) and FF14 is an mmo ...
Still, a fan can hope~
Anyway.
Not Final Fantasy-
The maps are hallways. There are absolutely (so far) no open, explorable areas. You get thrown into a hallway and told to move forward. Sometimes the game lies to you and lets you think you have a choice - there will be small off-shoots that you'll think lead somewhere. They don't. They're all dead ends, with a mob and/or a box with an item you probably don't need at all. Sometimes you will get thrown into a somewhat-open map.. not a hallway, but still tiny and you still can't do anything on them, except go exactly where the game wants you to go.
You have no say in which character you're controlling at any given time, and you can only control one character in battle. I don't actually mind being limited to controlling one in battle, I just really wish you could pick which one.
No towns, no shops. You shop from the save crystals. Items to buy & new shops unlock throughout the game.
There is also absolutely (apparently) no need to ever buy new weapons -or even equip new weapons you've found- every single sword upgrades to the same ultimate sword. Every rod upgrades to the same ultimate rod, etc., etc. Upgrading takes time, you use mob drops - but you can also buy them. You can dismantle found equips to get more upgrading items.
You will come across a save crystal every. five. minutes. The game will pop up and ask you if you want to save every. half. hour.
If there is a monster in the next room that is just a tiny bit stronger than the normal mobs in the area, there's a save crystal. End of every cutscene, game asks you to save and then dumps you in a room right next to a save crystal.
Also every half hour (if not more often) there is a cutscene. Not that I mind pretty pretties, but this is a video game, not a movie. I would like to play it, not watch it.
Another thing I find odd is that your party members will leave your ass behind. It's funny, but also annoying.. if there are multiple possible paths, they will run down the path you need to go down (effectively killing any "I CAN GO SOMEWHERE ELSE?" hopes). If there is some way to avoid a monster on a particular path, they will go that route - and then yell at you if you go to fight the monster anyway, because OH MY GOD DON'T GO LOOKING FOR TROUBLE (Seriously, one of them yelled that at me when I opted to fight). The game won't let you make mistakes or find your own path, it lays everything out very plainly.
This is like.. Fantasy RPG Lite for Dummies.
There is also no leveling.. at least, not actual "YOU GAINED A LEVEL" leveling.. you level combat styles - Commando, Ravager, Medic, etc., etc. You gain Crystarium Points in every battle, abbreviated as CP which my mind automatically reads as Child Porn, so... you gain Child Porn and put the points towards your style of play (you can max out everyone on every single style, really, but some characters have different options in their crystals.. some are more suited to certain styles) and one thing I do really like is that EVERYONE gains the CP. Even when the party is split up and you're playing as a lonely Party of One, while everyone else is scattered across the globe - when you are switched to another character, they've gained the same amount of CP you earned while playing the previous character.
Which I guess they kind of had to do, considering how damn often the party splits up and the game throws you from person to person (as far in as I am, I think I've had the whole party together... once). So.. there isn't a ton of grinding to be done.
I am having to grind right now because I up'd the wrong style for a character and I need him to be able to cast haste so I can beat this goddamn eidolon. Also I kept avoiding fights earlier in the game because it told me to.
I am not even joking. A little box popped up and was like "Ahead there is a monster that is REALLY tough for a party of 2, you should just avoid it since it moves really slow." The whole goddamn map was F-I-L-L-E-D with that particular monster and I had no choice in having only 2 characters... so I ran through the map avoiding everything. And then when they game switched me to a group of 2 other characters.. the maps they were on were also covered with that damn monster. I actually did try to fight it once, and it wasn't an impossible fight - but it was a very long fight and ate up almost all of my potions.
OH. SPEAKING OF POTIONS. A single potion heals the entire party (for ~150 I think), and you are auto-healed/revived outside of fights.
Eidolon (summons) fights kind of suck a little bit because you have no real choice in when to fight them. Y'know. Previous games you level up, then go hunt one down when you're ready to grab it. Here, getting them is part of the story. And fighting them kind of really sucks.
Tthe point is to win them over by showing them you can do what they want you to do.. or something. And in order to find out what they want you to do, you have to cast Libra twice, which wastes 2 rounds and really sucks, because oh yeah - the eidolon casts Doom on you at the beginning of the fight.
So basically you get a pretty pretty cutscene of an eidolon being summoned and then it totally fucks your shit up. You cast Libra twice and get two clues as to what impresses the eidolon. One of the things they always (so far) like are getting good chain attack bonuses. The second thing differs from each one - some are impressed by healing your party members, or buffing them, or shielding yourself from attack.
So the eidolons have a backwards "health" bar, basically.. it starts out empty and you have to fill it up by impressing the eidolon and not dying while it wails on you and you have to do it before your doom counter runs out.
.. ah, another thing I don't really like is that you kind of start out with all the characters you will ever play. There is only one who is introduced later, and she's still introduced early enough in the game. It's just weird to me... I rather liked having to gather everyone, and having the option to hunt down & recruit optional characters.
But yeah .... good god, do I know how to ramble. @_@
SO FOR SOMETHING NOT-FF RELATED ......... uhh....
The Crafteh Kitteh is a heavy sleeper and it scares tf out of me every time she sleeps on my bed with me because I wake up and try to move her so I can get up and she doesn't move and every. single. time. I nearly start crying thinking she is dead.. and then she lifts up her head and "mrrr?"'s at me and I am like "DON'T SCARE ME LIKE THAT YOU RIDICULOUS CAT!" and then I go about my day but secretly I drop everything I am doing to go check on her every 5 minutes, just in case.
I have no idea how a cat can sleep that heavily. Ripper.. you so much as look at her when she's asleep, and she instantly wakes up and glares at you. Fatass wakes up if you make any sort of sound or get close to touching him.
Crafteh just sleeps and sleeps and sleeps. I can even start to pick her up and she won't wake up, she will just be hanging there limply..
At least twice a week I get to wake up thinking I've murdered a cat in my sleep, and sometimes I think she does it on purpose - she likes giving me heart attacks. T_T
AND~~ This is the catchiest song in all of Little Big Planet and it has been stuck in my head for DAYS
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