Caltrops - Final Fantasy XIII





	[quote name="Noi Dau Don"]Love the characters, love the scenery porn, love the battle system, everything else is a mess and we can only hope that Versus redeems this tunnel-vision entry into the FF ranks. I mean, FFX was hell of on rails, but at least once you hit Luca by hour 5 or 6 you could go back and forth on the rails. FF13 is on one-way rails. Character development: on rails, with a strict stop timetable. Plot: rails. World: rails. Equipment: rails. Upgrades: so strictly limited they might as well be on rails. I can't recommend this as a game at all. It's an anime where you can't see the next episode until you personally direct the boss battle. As an anime it's gorgeous and the characters are interesting, but it's no Darker Than Black - which I mean sincerely, there is no fuckin Titanic Badass whose dominance on the battlefield makes his exploits the more satisfying. You are really stuck watching your characters be Just Good Enough for the whole game, and that's fucking annoying. On my last FFX playthrough I was doing Challenge Mode Auron for a while (i.e. Auron is the only character in your party), and while it takes some grindan, it's certainly possible to finish the entire game that way. You don't have a prayer of finishing FF13 in any way other than the one scripted by the game (3 characters in party, dps/tank/support, etc.) Also there is just NO REASON for the entire crystarium not to be available for each character right off the bat. It's just inconceivable why this isn't the case. It's not like it would be at all practical to grindan through to the 8k cp necessary to ding a single final-stage-of-role-development upgrade when you're getting 30cp a battle in the early stages, BUT AT LEAST PEOPLE WOULD HAVE THE OPTION. Even Cid Raines: International Hottie irritates me because he has so little backstory. Really, all of these characters have next to no backstory, so while they're cool, we never get a sense of them coming from anywhere or going to anywhere except for possibly Lightning and Hope. Just ugh what a wasted opportunity, what an unsatisfying experience overall. X2 with better graphics and fewer (WAY fewer, like 0) minigames. I kind of want to do a replay just so I can see if better-managed weapons upgrades make a difference and also to finish all the marks - so it's not as bad as X2 on that front, because I never finished X2 at all. But it's still hell of lame on every non-graphical level. Fuck it, I'll just play 12 again.[/quote]