Gaming The Final Fantasy Thread

What's your favourite single-player FF?

  • Total voters
    214
Just played FFXII for the first time on Wednesday, doesn't have the same appeal that 7, 8, and 9 did. I'll give it a chance however.

Am I alone in thinking XIII is going to be shit?
 
narnar said:
Just played FFXII for the first time on Wednesday, doesn't have the same appeal that 7, 8, and 9 did. I'll give it a chance however.

Am I alone in thinking XIII is going to be shit?
Click to expand...

You do realise that different teams make different FFs? It's not one team that goes from one to the next. There is no way to know.

XIII is produced by the director of VII and VIII, and producer of X. XIII and Versus XIII are basically done by the VII and VIII teams.
 
Finished VIII for the first time in almost 10 years earlier! It was pretty much as I remembered it, got its flaws but a good game. I cheated on the final boss by turning my Laguna and Bahamut cards into heroes and mega elixers and just spammed them through-out the last fight, but I've already finished it the hard way before so I'm allowed to do that!
 
Ixion you cheat! How can you take satisfaction from that? :wenger: Did you beat the Omega Weapon?

I'm just about to go to Timber, just beat Diablos at the first time of trying. He's really not that difficult to beat actually, if you have some Blind magic stocked just cast that on him and then it's impossible to die as all he casts are gravity-based attacks.
 
No not beaten Omega, I don't usually go after the optional bosses except in VII. I might try and beat Ultima Weapon though at the bottom of that research facility, each time I've finished VIII I've drawn Eden from Tiamat just before Ultimacia, so I've never seen that GF at its most powerful so might draw it from Ultima and level it up.
 
Ixion said:
No not beaten Omega, I don't usually go after the optional bosses except in VII. I might try and beat Ultima Weapon though at the bottom of that research facility, each time I've finished VIII I've drawn Eden from Tiamat just before Ultimacia, so I've never seen that GF at its most powerful so might draw it from Ultima and level it up.
Click to expand...

It's a good fight, very difficult if you don't set yourself up right. If you do though, it's pretty easy to be honest.

I never use GF's at that stage in the game, Eden can take more than 9,999 of damage though so that's pretty cool. But yeah I usually just use physical attacks at that point in the game, much easier and quicker.
 
I don't usually use GF's by the end either but I made a special save right at the end of Disc 3 and I'm going to go back and get the remaining GFs so I can complete the set! Need to get Doomtrain, Eden and Tonberry.
 
Gotten all GF's, beat Ultima Weapon and got Squall's Lionheart sword! Think I might be done with VIII for now, don't want to do the more obscure quests and Omega is probably to much effort. Might have to replay another one until XIII is out.
 
There's a monkey in a forest just outside of Dollet, you can throw a rock at him. Then something about a reflection in a lake outside Timber, i don't remember fully it's been years since i did that sidequest, don't even know what you get.
 
esmufc10 said:
It comes on 3 discs so they must have compromised it a hell of a lot. No surprise, really.
Click to expand...

The whole decision to port this to XB360 and even bork the PS3 version in the process to make them both content equivalent has been a bit of a disaster. Hopefully Nomura stands his ground and refuses to let Versus to be released on the XB360, although this isn't looking too good either.

"We were hoping to debut it at E3, but we're not sure now."

The slippage appears to be due to some changes that are being made to the world map system. "For displaying characters on the world map, we were originally planning on using the method used by FF#, with a small Noctus running about on the screen. But that didn't look too great, so we ended up switching to the method used by FF#."

Those "#" signs are presumably meant to be the roman numerals of certain games in the main Final Fantasy series, but Famitsu had to block them out. Both Famitsu and Nomura agreed that the change is a major one.
Click to expand...

They're changing it from the XB360, I'm sure of it. Any clue as to what the #s are?
 
WeasteDevil said:
The whole decision to port this to XB360 and even bork the PS3 version in the process to make them both content equivalent has been a bit of a disaster. Hopefully Nomura stands his ground and refuses to let Versus to be released on the XB360, although this isn't looking too good either.



They're changing it from the XB360, I'm sure of it. Any clue as to what the #s are?
Click to expand...

Sounds like the system they had in VIII with characters on the World Map.
 
Probably meant to be like 7, 8, and 9 world map wise and they went with 12's approach instead.
 
WeasteDevil said:
They're changing it from the XB360, I'm sure of it. Any clue as to what the #s are?
Click to expand...

Has to be they wanted it to look like 7,8,9 but it didn't look so good (which in a realistic HD world it would look a bit odd having a guy running around the size of a city) so they went like 12.

EDIT: woops missed your post Ixion, what he said.
 
Saying a world map like those games didn't work is bollocks, after replaying VII and VIII recently I reckon a world map system like that would be fine, its fun exploring those kind of maps on foot and vechicles, who cares if the character proportions are odd. I want to be able to fly around the world in an airship damn it!
 
Something is a bit fishy.

Square Enix has been very adamant that the Xbox 360 version of Final Fantasy XIII is pretty much the same quality-wise as the PS3 version. The company’s motivation came under a bit of fire recently when Square Enix released a batch of doctored photos of the Xbox 360 version of the game.

Kotaku recently put up a gallery of the photos sent over by Square Enix. The site pointed out that the PS3 and Xbox 360 photos were virtually identical in every aspect. The pictures were clearly the same photo but with the photoshopped 360 and PS3 shoulder buttons.
Click to expand...

Square Enix releases doctored Xbox 360 vs PS3 pictures for Final Fantasy XIII - GAMER.BLORGE
 
Also, the two versions are not running on the same engine.

Didn't the simultaneous development on both the PS3 and the XBOX360 cause difficulties?

KITASE: We have made it our top priority to deliver the same quality on both consoles. It was self-evident that it brought some difficulties with it. Both consoles require a different approach. Especially on the graphics section. We had to build a different engine for both versions. We needed a year of tinkering on each engine in order to get the same level of graphics.
Click to expand...

Dutch OPM Final Fantasy XIII Feature and Interview Scans - Final Fantasy XIII: News, Trailers & Screens ~ Final Fantasy-XIII.net
 
Ixion said:
Saying a world map like those games didn't work is bollocks, after replaying VII and VIII recently I reckon a world map system like that would be fine, its fun exploring those kind of maps on foot and vechicles, who cares if the character proportions are odd. I want to be able to fly around the world in an airship damn it!
Click to expand...

I'd love to have a world map back again, i loved it and if they could do one in the style of Dragon Quest 8 that would be superb. That was entirely in proportion unless you were flying, i thought that was so well done.
 
Oh dear. 1024x576.

FF13_360_res.jpg
 
Xander45 said:
You know graphics aren't the be all and end all, but when they've had this long on this powerful a console you do expect better.
Click to expand...

If this is true, I really have not the foggiest idea as to why this is happening, but I could hazard two guesses. The first would be that the HDR, AA, and alpha buffers simply do not fit into the 10MB of eDRAM that the XB360 GPU has and they have avoided tiling, the second would be that because this started development as a PS2 game, and was then moved to PS3 4 years ago, it uses the Cell/SPUs very heavily and that they can't do some things in another way without spending a lot more time on the port. The decision to make an XB360 port was probably a late one, and in having to develop a new engine they simply didn't have the time. On PS3, the game runs on Crystal Tools, what was known as the White Engine, and it's only getting used for the FF games. Square have licensed the Unreal Engine for other games, so maybe they are using a modified version of that on the XB360? All up in the air at the moment.

FF13_lighting_PS3.jpg


FF13_lighting_360.jpg
 
Here's some tech analysis on the PS3 version. I'll selectively quote.

Tech Analysis: Final Fantasy XIII | DigitalFoundry

Some nice video sequences in here also. The game is absolutely stunning to look at.

Both PS3 and Xbox 360 have bandwidth issues while handling transparent textures, but the Microsoft hardware contains on-die memory with ultra-fast throughput designed to mitigate the issue. The PS3 doesn't, requiring more ingenious solutions. This raises the possibility that, storage aside, the 360 version could potentially exceed the performance of the PS3 version in alpha-heavy situations.
Click to expand...

Perhaps surprisingly, FFXIII in retail form still retains the full-resolution alpha buffers, and it is interesting to note that these still cause the game some issues - but the impact is definitely lower than it was before.
Click to expand...

That's one of the reasons that leads me to think that the XB360 doesn't have enough space in the eDRAM on the GPU to do 720p.

One of the most noticeable compromises seen in the original demo has made it through to the retail version: an effect known as Alpha to Coverage. Rather than render a complete, seethrough texture, A2C utilises an interlacing style effect instead. Exactly why Square has utilised it here remains unknown, but it is safe to say that it is performance-related, and that it all comes back to the notion of those performance-sapping alpha buffers.

Essentially, transparent elements in characters' hair are rendered using A2C, and it's used for all types of facial hair (eyebrows aside) right down to the eye-lashes. It can be a fairly ugly effect, but the implementation in FFXIII allows for the layering of hair, all of which is animated, adding a lot more "life" to the characters.
Click to expand...

Have they used full alpha buffers on the XB360?

Facial animation is also exemplary: eyes and mouths are beautifully animated: it would be great to see them in wire-frame as the amount of control points must be quite extraordinary.
Click to expand...

One of the most noteworthy elements concerns the overall lighting scheme. In many games there is a jarring inconsistency between the overall scene and the way the characters are lit within it. It leads to a sense that the cast are almost cut-out and overlaid on top of the scene. Not so in Final Fantasy XIII: the lighting scheme combines all elements believably and is gorgeous to boot.
Click to expand...

One of the game's strongest elements is the way in which the player feels compelled to see the next level: the overall quality of the artwork is simply sensational and is consistently superb throughout the game. It's also self-evident that the proper HDR lighting really makes a difference. Overall presentation is improved not just through the use of the 2x MSAA, but also from glow and bloom lighting.
Click to expand...

Proper HDR lighting - again, raises questions about the eDRAM size on the XB360.

However, porting the game across to the 360 must have been a daunting proposition. Taking a look at the structure of the Blu-ray disc, we see an absolutely colossal 32.6GB of what looks to be pre-rendered movies, while the actual gameplay content itself is a more reasonable 6.8GB. Co-incidentally, 6.8GB is also the maximum usable space developers have on the dual-layer DVD (yes, Xbox 360 games theoretically have less storage available than PS2 and Wii titles).
Click to expand...
 
This is what you get with a rushed port. Really, they should have either delayed both versions, or released the XB360 version later.

192.168.84.45-image128.jpg


Shame that Vanille has no nips showing through her top, and did we ever find out if Lightning wears knickers or not?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.