Gaming The Final Fantasy Thread

What's your favourite single-player FF?

  • Total voters
    214
Frans said:
I have played WKCh , and i loved it . I'm thinking about getting it ( i played it on my mate's PS3). Combat system is good , this in FF may be a bit better from what i've seen from gameplay videos , and i have seen a lot of them (i havent played FF myself, its still to be released).

What i like in WKCh is the freedom you have , something what in my opinion any (j)RPG game should have.You can build your own town , you create your own Avatar, Online is fantastic as well , you have a lot of quests which you can play through with your mates ( co-op) , really fantastic experience. As for story , its decent , quests are getting harder and sometimes you may feel like youve done this before , but it still keeps you playing. Very addictive game.

Ive made my mind. WKCh for me. This FF will be much different from previous ones.
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You see i loved the older games from level-5. Dark Cloud, Dark Chronicles, Rogue Galaxy were all fantastic RPG's (and ones you should really try if you haven't played them before). I've heard they've kept the georama from the Dark Cloud games in this one but turned that into the multiplayer aspect, sounds very interesting.

You know the more i talk about it the more i want it! I hope they still have a similar weapon upgrading system to the older games as well.
 
RPGs are funny things, in fact anything that is role based is a funny thing, even down to Heavy Rain. you get people that love them, then people that hate them. This Final Fantasy is going to suffer the same fate. You've got moaning about linearity, lack of towns, etc. etc. etc. because people expect it to be a copy of a previous FF that they loved, but in HD. The Final Fantasy XIII designers designed it as it is because that's what they wanted it to be. You shouldn't review games on what features they could have put in them, but what features they did put in them, and judge it on its own merits. White Knight has a poor Metacritic score by the way - 64. Lowest single review of 4/10, but Frans obviously loved it.
 
I don't really read reviews anymore, or at least pay attention to them. I usually play any RPG's that come out, even Enchanted Arms and that was horrible! I'll make my mind up on it after playing it myself, as i find that i can play through nearly any RPG regardless of how little sense it makes to me (i'm looking at you Xenosaga: Episode 2, episodes 1 and 3 were never released in Europe so you can imagine how confusing that made it).
 
That's how it works Weastey. Buy it , play it , love it or hate it. If you have opportunity to test a game before buying it its even better, you dont risk money. I use reviews ( videos ones) only to check the gameplay , if it suits me i go for it. Of course it is possible that a game can be better than you think and you can miss a decent title. I have my own priorities - i love sandboxes and free roaming games , they give me a lot of joy so basically i play them all . I bought Saboteur , a game which has awful reviews, but still i loved it.sometimes it becomes ridiculous that people try hard to find flaws anywhere - example Modern Warfare - personally i hate fps and i cant be arsed to play them because i find them pointless , shooting and killing , same old repetitiveness, and if i was to review this game you know how it would look like- i could make up many cons.
 
Ah feck, you know when you suddenly start to get excited for a game? I'm suddenly excited for this, it's just hit me that it is out on Tuesday, one more weekend!. E3 2006 it was announced, wasn't it? Seems like a fecking age. The last great FF game I played and loved was ffX, which was released 9 years go :eek:

Anyway, some screenshots

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It's confirmed then.

Face-Off: Final Fantasy XIII | DigitalFoundry

The rumours are true. Final Fantasy XIII on Xbox 360 isn't anywhere near as impressive as it is on PlayStation 3. The real kicker is that it's a lot worse than it should have been.

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it seems that the Xbox 360 version of Final Fantasy XIII is a quick port where the existing PS3 material has been very roughly manhandled and bludgeoned into shape in order to work on the Microsoft console.

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So sub-HD and 1024x576 it is then..... Unfortunately, the resolution reduction here seems to be all about converting across the PS3 engine as quickly and easily as possible, and that means accessing as much of the console's power with the lowest amount of aggravation. That being the case, it looks as though Square Enix was keen to maintain the entire framebuffer within the Xbox 360's 10MB eDRAM for optimum processing speed without the need to "tile" multiples of that 10MB into main RAM.

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"Adequate but a touch disappointing" best sums up the Xbox 360 version. Fine edges lose precision, and while the effect is mitigated thanks to the MSAA along with the multitude of post processing effects the engine has at its disposal, the fact is that the lack of resolution can make the 360 build look sub-par. The clean CG look of the PS3 game in motion is unduly compromised, and while it's still a handsome enough title on Xbox 360, it lacks the pristine presentation of its sibling.

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We previously speculated that this [general performance] would be less of an issue on the Xbox 360 and it turns out we were right. But of course, bearing in mind the big resolution reduction, if there wasn't some kind of performance benefit, we'd be pretty shocked.

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You'll see that while both versions can drop frames, it is the Xbox 360 version that is undoubtedly smoother on average. Minimum frame-rate is 26FPS on 360, and 20FPS on PS3. It's interesting to note that the character close-ups are seemingly no problem for the 360: 30FPS is maintained while PS3 struggles.

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So, occasionally fine, sometimes grim: a statement that effectively sums up how much of Final Fantasy XIII looks on Xbox 360 when compared to the PlayStation 3 game, meaning that if you own both consoles, there really is only one choice when it comes to the purchasing decision.

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Despite the cutbacks, the in-game graphics are still attractive, the gameplay is fundamentally the same as the PS3 version and it's clearly a cut-above much of the other JPRG fare available on the console. That being the case, despite falling short in direct comparison with its PS3 sibling it's still a decent game.
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I'll wait for Ryan Clement's review on IGN to see if I'll be buying this game first hand or pre-owned. His understanding and views on Japanese games are very attuned to mine
 
For some reason on Metacritc, FFXIII has a higher rating on the 360 (87) than it does on the PS3 (84).

However, this is based upon 5 reviews and 12 reviews respectively and I would fully expect that to change over the coming weeks.
 
esmufc10 said:
The last great FF game I played and loved was ffX, which was released 9 years go :eek:
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Hard to believe that it's 9 years! and I agree that it is the most recent edition that I loved.

I decided that I'm not going to buy on release date, mainly becuase I don't get paid for another 3 weeks but also to hear some feedback from gamers and not just reviews.

So staying in last night, I thought now would be a good time to start playing Final Fantasy X again as it's been a good few years now and it would get me in the mood for the new one. However, I lent my copy to a mate who had borrowed a PS2 off someone else. Turns out that he gave the PS2 back with the disc inside and the daft bint sold it!


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You know what, the closest game i could compare this one to would be Final Fantasy X-2. Lots of very narrow paths, fluid version of ATB, being able to change class in battle at will, main character a female with guns.
 
Xander45 said:
Well that piece Weaste posted makes it sound like it runs smoother on the 360, but looks much better on the PS3.
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From the article they did just about the PS3 version:

It's interesting to note that frame-rate is more sustained in the troublesome areas where multiple alpha transparencies are in play, making gameplay in the all-important battle sections smoother than in the demo. The retail version is closer to sustaining 30 frames-per-second for the most part, but you'll note that close-ups on maximum LOD renditions of the FFXIII characters still invoke something of a hit on the frame-rate.

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.
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Tech Analysis: Final Fantasy XIII | DigitalFoundry

Frame rate seems to take a hit when in the highly detailed close-ups of the in-game cutscenes and where there is a lot of full on alpha sampling (to deal with transparencies). The alpha issue would not cause such a problem for the XB360 due to the bandwidth available to the eDRAM in its GPU that allows multiple overdraws. The PS2 graphics renderer chip also had no problem with lots of overdrawing and alpha because it also used eDRAM, so that part I think was to be expected as an advantage to the XB360, especially when rendering 33% pixels less.
 
This game is getting scores all over the show. EDGE gives it a 5, 1UP gives it an A-!

Final Fantasy XIII Review for the PS3,Xbox 360 from 1UP.com

On paper, these cuts make FFXIII sound awful: The total abandonment of everything that fans enjoy about the series. And in some ways, it does turn its back on fans, or at least the ones who see Final Fantasy as the standard-bearer for console role-playing games. If the quality of a sequel is defined by how effectively it iterates on its predecessor, this surely stands as one of the worst sequels ever. Outside of a few areas late in the game, FFXIII is the complete opposite of Final Fantasy XII. It does display traces of Final Fantasy X and X-2 -- the former in its corridor-like world design, the latter in its fast-paced, hyperactive combat system -- but even there it cuts loose most of the familiar elements present in the older games in favor of something much trimmer.

In practice, however, FFXIII is far from awful. It's unquestionably a huge departure for the series, but taken on its own merits, it works. If the quality of a game is defined by how well it lays down a series of objectives and proceeds to fulfill them (traditions be damned), FFXIII is an unqualified success. Yes, it abandons a great many RPG traditions, but it does so in the name of creating a highly focused experience. The elements it abandons are features Final Fantasy has rarely done as well as the competition, while the components it retains are the ones Final Fantasy does best.

Despite its deviations from tradition, FFXIII really does play to the series' core strengths. In many ways, it improves on them. Think of FFXIII as the essence of modern Final Fantasy: The series stripped down to little more than story and combat. As such, the quality of the game is entirely contingent on the quality of those two elements. To its credit, they're among the best the series has ever seen.

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Like Mass Effect 2, FFXIII seems to be an attempt to answer the question of how to create an RPG for the modern, console-owning masses. Square Enix's solution is certainly different than BioWare's, but it's arguably just as effective in its own way. I can't say that this is the direction I want the genre as a whole to go -- or even the Final Fantasy series, for that matter -- but Square should be commended for embarking on an interesting journey down a daring road when so many of their competitors are content to stand, directionless, back at the crossroads.
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I don't know what to think!
 
Interesting, a comparison to ME2 is hardly a bad thing, I loved that game.

Still, I'm going to find it very hard to get used to an FF game without shops and towns and such, they were always nice stop gaps in between the combat and dungeons.
 
I saw this in the shops today! Are they even allowed to be selling it? I didn't have enough cash on me though :(
 
The old midnight run aye? I did that for FF12 but they wouldn't let me buy it till 7 in the Hatfield store, bastards. I'm still hoping mine arrives this morning.
 
Got mine preordered but going to be too busy to play it till thursday :( Bloody interviews!
 
anyone know if the supermarkets will be slashing the price on this tomorrow?
i'm actually considering not bothering with this for a few weeks as GOW will only push it aside once that arrives

the beta testing of XIV starts this week doesn't it - anyone manage to get in on that?
-am looking forward to see if they've made a worthy challanger to WOW
 
I know what you mean, WOW is a monster but its starting to date a little imo, cataclysm was a dissapointing annoucement for me as other than a few fancy cosmetic changes they've added next to nothing to the actual game

FF has the brand, the fanbase and the console angle* too so theres no reason why it shouldn't make a mark - unless its shit of course which i fear it will be

*whether console gamers will ever take to MMO is another question i guess
 
To be fair that guy said that White Knight Chronicles was one of the worst games he's ever played. And i would have to completely disagree with him on that point, yes it's not that original and the combat is quite easy but it's a fun, good looking game that is also very addictive (especially online with the georama).

I'd see why it wouldn't be one of the best, but to call it one of the worst of all time is ridiculous. If you like other games that level 5 have made then you'll love it, heck if you like older JRPG's then you'll like it.
 
Got 3 people on my friend's list playing the game right now. Bastards.
 
The official Final Fantasy XIV website has been updated with new information regarding a PlayStation 3 beta today. Looks like those who purchase Final Fantasy XIII tomorrow are going to be rewarded.

Over at the site, these new lines of information have been added to the beta application.

- If you have received a FINAL FANTASY XIV promotional code for registering FINAL FANTASY XIII on the Square Enix Members site, please use it to apply for the beta test.
- The promotional code will also be required to obtain the FINAL FANTASY XIV secret in-game item, so please hold on to your code until the game’s official release.
- If you have already applied for the FINAL FANTASY XIV beta test but would like to apply for the PlayStation 3 beta with a FINAL FANTASY XIV promotional code, please be aware that all previous applications will be invalidated.
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Dunno if this applies to just the US or whether it is worldwide.
 
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