tbh I haven't finished this because I feel like i'm being forced to jump through hoops now that the game is open. having to forcibly level my characters since level 4 is so god damned expensive and I really really dislike the fact that a normal batle will take 5 minutes or more just to get a handful of CP to spend.

I know while some people look at it like "ohhh it's only 6000cp to level to the next dot"

I look at it like "fucking hell, it's 18k to bump my 3 paradigms up one dot each"

6k is NOTHING compared to what you'll be paying in a few levels. :)

I think it a better idea not to level all of the paradigms to their max level, maybe have two that you use and use it well that way throughout the entire game so far I've had plenty to level both of my chosen paradigms up to the next maximum each time it expands. I don't know its been working well for me so far.

So far I've leveled all my characters up to Level 3 with all the ones that are given and from there I chose two of the three to level up making sure that each Character is somewhat useful down the road.

You can easily max out all three of a characters classes up until chapter 11.

After that, I went straight for my role level in my first class by skipping +stats that were off the main path. I did get abilities that were off the main path though. Then I did the same with my second class. Once I had the role level in the 2 classes I just saved the CP until the game started getting hard. All my characters ended up being leveled differently. I went with 2 classes on some and 3 classes on others and both worked pretty well. The most important thing I think is not picking up undesirable stats. Vanille and Hope just don't need +STR and if you're spending 30-60k for a STR bubble that's not on the path to a role level you're gimping yourself more than you would by picking up a 3rd class, imo.

I gave up on Sony, sorry, but I did. They are going to have to start getting more games that I really want to play to get me to even consider coming back.

I bought a new one, the brand-new, shiny one. For the initial extortion price, the blu-ray went out after TWO months. I phoned, thinking it would be under warranty...silly me. They REFUSED to fix it, they wanted me to PAY to fix it. No, no, no. I took it, sold it for a HUGE loss, and left the Sony fold.

I was so upset over their lack of customer care, I took everything I owned which was Sony, my laptop, stereo, DVD player, LCD TV and SOLD them all.

I have an xbox 360, and when it got the RRoD, I found myself upset and thinking all consoles are complete @#$#@%! and I wouldn't buy another. I decided to call to get it fixed, I was on the phone for 30 minutes total and the next day I had a box at my door, postage paid to send it back. While I generally HATE Microsoft as a software company - they did (in my eyes) get the xbox 360 right (aside from the overheating issue), and shockingly their customer care that I received was top notch.

Now, if for some reason, Sony gets over themselves and starts getting more shooters I wanna play and makes nice with the Developers it chased off during it's new "the customers will by dog crap with our logo on it" attitude - I won't be coming back anytime soon.

Both platforms have their pros and cons. I won't try to tell you my "girlfriend" is the prettiest on the planet, I'd expect others would be sane enough not to try to convince us that their "girlfriend" is either.

These are just my experiences and reasons of why I switched.

And that has what to do with Final Fantasy 13?

Seriosly. By the way, the ps3 has way better and way more exclusives than the xbox. Halo and gears of war?? Fucking yawn. If those are the shooters you are talking about then you are insane. Those games are awful.

---------- Post added at 01:07 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:04 PM ----------

Yes but by not maxing the third one out that leaves extra unused points when you hit the higher levels. I guess I shouldn't be talking since I'm still in chapter 9 I believe haha

Playstation 3s are under warranty for 1 year after purchase. The blu-ray IS under warranty. They ship you a box to send it in and they pay for shipping also.

So essentially you sold all of your Sony products in your house because of a bad phone representative that told you wrong info.

Sony actually has the most reputable customer service out of the 3 console manufacturers, and the lowest fail rate out of all 3 current-gen consoles, AND the shortest repair and return times for warranty claims.

CP earned grows practically exponentially. The CP you earn in an hour now is earned in 30 minutes in the next chapter and 5 minutes in the one after that. I think you're better off spending the points and making the game easier now by giving you more stats and versatility. Unless, of course, you're near the end of the chapter and planning on a crystarium upgrade and still handling everything with ease.

not to mention Killzone, Killzone 2, the upcoming Killzone 3 and MAG are all PS3 exclusive shooters. seriously, do some research before coming across like you can't pull your nose out of halo.

Also Resistance FOM and Resistance 2 were both well received PS3 exclusives.

ah, yeah I missed out on that series.

Resistance was awesome, I didn't know killzone 3 was coming out. Thats exciting.

And Reese, thanks for that info. I didn't know CP goes up that exponentially. I havent played in a few days because I got up to a big boss fight that I couldn't beat after a few tries and I haven't gone back to it to try any different strategies haha.

I basically farmed enemies when I was on the Palamecia and when I was in the Fifth Ark. I had about 80000 going into Chapter 11, which didn't do much good because I could only level up halfway on one class. For some odd reason, I can turn off my brain and farm for hours on end, and thats what I'm sort of doing now. With the L'Cie missions, I just try to fight as many enemies inbetween running around and finding the mark. Plus, I'm a whore for boosting my inventory of items.

p.s. I was addicted to Resistance 2 for so long, it actually started fights between my fiance and I. The only title XBox has that I like is Left for Dead, only because I really suck as shooters and I was somewhat good at that with very little experience in the game.

Gears 1 and Halo 1,2,3 have both won multiple GotY awards, and all have sold in excess of 5 million copies. Then again, those gamers don't know better, do they? :p

Uncharted 2 has won awards this year and has equalled sales of its 360 counterparts, but neither killzone or Resistance has done either sofar.

As for Killzone not living up to the hype, It stands to reason since Killzone 2's lack of co-op campaign was a serious deficiency, and it offered nothing more than COD + a cover&shoot system. It was fun to play, and has beautifully rendered flat planes, but it is no Gears.

I could care less about GotY awards. What's popular isn't always good. Halo has a terrible story line and the gameplay is extremely generic. Just because Xbros love it doesn't mean shit. Halo and CoD MW2 are the reasons why FPS's have been going straight down the tubes.

Well back to the game itself... The more I play it, the less I enjoy it. There is just way, way, way too much fighting between story elements. Seriously walking miles across the world, making my way up to the top of some tower after figuring out some pretty straight forward elevator puzzles, finding the town we'd been looking for since hours and hours ago, battle after grueling 6+ minute battle, fighting those stupid motherfuckers who keep putting up anti physical damage immunity shields or whatever who take like 4-5 staggers to take down and just spam multicast of DD and debuff spells on my party, getting in to that town and finding a stupid busted robot only to have to crawl all over god knows where to find each part and I STILL HAVEN'T BEEN GIVEN A REASON to play this game aside from "omg we're gonna turn in to cie'th"
What
The
FUCK

I am not enjoying this part of the game at all.

I got most of my guys up to lvl 4 on their roles but it's still taking way too long to get through combat.

It doesn't help that the upgrade system in this game is convoluted as shit when it comes to weapons. The special materials you get don't tell you what they will work on upgrading to it's next tier. The base materials you can use to upgrade things feel ineffective and almost just make me want to not upgrade anything, especially when I'm faced with 2 outcomes

1. I find a better weapon, thus meaning I just wasted the crap out of a ton of resources over the last 30+ hours of gameply
2. I find a shit weapon, making me wonder if it would have been equiv or better had I used the materials on it instead.


To anyone who is further than me in this, does there, at any point, come a point where you WANT to find out what happens next? because I'm about ready to send this shit back to gamefly since, as much as I think i'd be "ok" with finding out the next part of the story, I'm really not finding it to be within my patience to fight these long drawn out unrewarding trash fights on the way there. Even the bosses feel unrewarding to me. Killing 2 fal'cie felt more like self defense than dealing out story driven justice. Hell, the 2nd one didn't even TALK or anything, it was just like "sup"

and he was easier to kill than some of the trash before him, like the big blue guardian thing "Tyrant" I skipped after he raped me anally 5 times. Or the pack of 3 vampires who after a certain point would just pretty much synch up and hit me with aeroga which took 70% of my life just from one, so 3 was obviously overkill, and they weren't even in the way or protecting anything, they were just kinda sitting there chilling.


Frustrating, my head wants to asplode.

Well I mean the game did get very sub par reviews compared to the other primary FF games.

Ah, this statement can be applied subjectively to anything, really. Shauk's experience with FFXIII being a case in point. Yet FFXIII still sells.

thank god for gamefly.

Shauk, You make some really valid points. Weapon upgrades are HORRIBLE. The game rewards you for spending XP in bulk but you don't know how much XP is required to reach max level. Some Weapons max out at 26, others max at 61 and some at 100. Accessories are worse, Some max out at level 2 and some at level 21. You just DON'T know.

Did you actually fix the robot? I totally skipped him and went back in chapter 13 because I couldn't find the 5th piece. Turns out it was on a fucking mob that I always skipped...

The game really doesn't get any better or worse than it is during chapter 11, in my opinion. I liked the last 3 chapters more than the rest of the game though.
If I were you, I'd invest the gil you got from the robot into deceptisol and the other buff stuff. Seriously, skip everything possible. If you get caught in a fight you know you can skip just retry immediately and try to run past it again.

You could also cheat a little and use Sazh to spam Blitz with Random: Instant Chain.

(this reply took me over 4 hours to type... it was probably 10x longer until I just said fuck it and deleted everything and added the just use Sazh + blitz exploit...)

Shauk...

You have some really good points, I farmed the shit out of my players and still didn't find it any easier to play. The 3 Vampires, I challenged once and then just skipped by them whenever I could. I'm back in Cocoon right now and so far its been constant battles toward the little yellow arrow on my map. Honestly, I think their thinking is "fuck doing our focus, lets just become Cei'ths." The weapon upgrades are driving me nuts too, and I don't even try to upgrade the accessories as better ones might come along later in the game. Or I'm cheap with my inventory to the point that I'm thinking something unique might be needed to be done with them. I just want to finish this game so I can move onto God of War 3.

What 3 vampires are you guys talking about!? I don't remember 3 vampires... There is 1 group in the building that LOOK like vampires but are actually a much weaker version of the mob and are extremely easy if I remember correctly. I really can't remember fighting multiple vampires, Even after finishing the game I don' t know that I'd want to run across a 3 pack...

they were by the last elevator to the roof of that tower IIRC

---------- Post added at 04:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:50 PM ----------

Watch

The Escapist : Video Galleries : Zero Punctuation : Final Fantasy XIII

replace 5 with 35, and you'll have my final review.

I tried to be openminded about this game, I really did. I like the FF franchise, I've played ever since the 1st one on nintendo, the imports, I have the anthology remakes, even the ones on my DS.

then we get to this one and... well... fail.

Reading this thread makes me sad.

The 360 version is just as good. Yes... the hair. WTF ever, it's hair. Also, I don't pause every frame to scrutinize it, and video in motion prevents it from ever being an issue.

I just beat it, and it leaves more to be desired. I'm a little disappointed that the cut scenes such as the one where Hero comes in riding Shiva and owns all was better than the final one... IMO. I don't know if I should be disappointed and just not play it anymore or get all the trophies and get a more "complete" game.

I have the PS3 version and the graphics are absolutely great.


However, at about 15 hours in, I am still frustrated with the lack of freedom. The game keeps growing, which I like, but I have lost enough interest to not make an effort to play it daily.

I can't wait for FF15 to come out in what I would imagine to be another 9 years.

I still haven't touched it since my last post, I really should just send it back to gamefly but I hate feeling like the game defeated me out of my frustration for the constant grind.

This makes me sad. :(

http://www.vgcats.com/comics/images/100506.jpg

Square needs to put something of FF7/FFX quality out again. It's all about the combat system and emotion in the game.