13 replies to this topic

[Smacktalks]

I didn't realise it's out this Tuesday, i'd forgot all about it.

The last one I spent time playing through properly was FF8, so i'm looking forward to getting back into the series.

Anyone else getting it on Tues? Any good deals?

[CrossFan]

Yeah I preordered it months ago but I'm a little tight on money this week. I might asked them to hold it for me until Friday but regardless I'm getting the game.

[Strum la Frantique]

No Paul, no one will be buying the most anticipated RPG release of the current generation.

[CrossFan]

You know if you lie you go to hell right?

[Aero]

is that a chick i see with a gun sword on the front cover? that puts me off it right there!

[Strum la Frantique]

It's just a sword.

It's good, strangely no reviews I've seen have mentioned that it's identical to Final Fantasy X-2. Like eerily identical. The paradigm system is the dress sphere system under a different name and made more managable by changing the whole group at once and kinda using the gambit system from FFXII. The battles move at the same brisk ATB pace as X-2, the levels are extremely linear consisting of running from A - B, essentially from cutscene to cutscene...like X-2. It even stars a female in the lead, and actually puts numerous female characters as key characters. The males all tend to play secondary roles. You just don't get to pick missions from a menu, that's the only difference. Although the plot is as hard to understand as X-2's, I'd read that you need to keep checking the in-game encyclopedia early on to make sense of what the fuck everyone was talking about, especially if you have subtitles off (I hate subtitles). They start spouting made up words like fal'Cie, l'Cie and Cie'th (true story), and you don't pick up made up words in your brain. Game makers need to learn that if you are going to make up a word, you need to introduce by saying it slowly, and giving it a meaning to begin with.

If you didn't like X-2 (which most people didn't, hence the average reviews XIII has been getting) don't get XIII.

[Strum la Frantique]

Argh, the weapon upgrade system is another one of those hidden math systems where you never know if you're doing it 'right'. Geeks would fill twenty pages of paper with formulas and graphs to chart the best ways to use each component and on what weapon. What's a normal man to do? There should have been an in game wau of identifying materials to reveal their multiplier increase/decrease stats. All I worked out was organic components increase the multiplier, machinery decreases it. But how much of the item you need to use before you waste a few is unknown to me...stupid system.

[CrossFan]

Do the machinery really decrease the multiplier? Damn I never paid attention I thought you just had to upgrade it until you reach the limit where you level it up.

[Smacktalks]

I started playing it last night, so not having played any FF since FF9, it's all completley new to me.

I read a bit about the story before I started the game in the manual, although it's the shortest prologue you'll ever read. Apart from that i've kept checking the in-game menu to read up on the new entries and find out a bit more which has helped well.

So far it seems pretty good, although I've just been hammering the auto-battle button for the time being.

[Strum la Frantique]

You will continue to hammer "auto-battle", but about 8 hours in it stops being "auto-battle" and becomes "best-way-to-attack attack" as you gain other ways of attacking and really start flexing your paradigms. In fact your paradigms kind of become your magic controls, so you still make choices to select it, it just executes it's finally in the "auto-battle" manner. There's still strategy to the system, but that remains hidden until your party splits up for the first time, then you have to survive with two party members against decent opponents.

And yes CrossFan machinery decreases the multiplier. So when you raise it with organic components, your best bet is to pump as much EXP using whatever machinery you have the most of, or gives the most EXP, so as to not waste your multiplier. As your weapons gain levels, they build in a multiplier (your first one being around level 6-8), making life a little easier for you. The catch 22 is that to get five star battles to get the best component rewards, you have to have upgraded weapons, so you're constantly spending components to gain components. And early on (about the 8-10 hour mark) these good components are hard to come by, and money to buy components is even harder to come by. So deciding what weapon, and for who (because you never know when the game will split up the party, and who it will put you in a party with) to upgrade for is a real guess.

[Smacktalks]

How far are you into it now Chris?

[Strum la Frantique]

Just stepped onto Gran Pulse. I haven't played a lot of games in the past week, and when I did, it was God of War 3.

The weapon upgrade system still infuriates me though. In waited for some guides to come up to really finalise my opinion of it, and well the guides are so confusing that the system has to be non sensical and frustrating. Seems there is a "right" way to upgrade, by buying two certain ingredients. And it's best to only upgrade one weapon per character because upgrading weapons is expensive (a notion I was beginnning to understand well into the game, and before I read the guide). The trouble is, you don't get the best weapon to upgrade sometimes till over half way through the game.

And there certainly are best weapons for characters, because despite the 'freedom' Square Enix thinks they've given you when opening up all job to all characters half way through the game; so much CP has already been spent that playing catch up to characters that were dedicated to that role for half the game is a pointless grind. So you use the weapons that increases the stats they use in their jobs, and that's where it breaks down. Because there's an awkward transition around the twenty five hour mark (for me anyway, and I've been taking my time) where you are using one or two low level weapons that simply aren't getting the job done anymore. It's pointless wasting components on those weapons, so you struggle through with low star battles for a while till you get the weapon you were waiting for. Upgrade it there on the spot with the components you've been saving up for the past ten hours, and then go back to kicking arse and blitzing in 5 star battles.

[CrossFan]

After I started upgrading I really screwed up my weapons, so I started the game over and decided to not upgrade my weapons to see how far it would take me. I just completed the 4th Cie'th mission on Gran Pulse and still not having any troubles. Some of the beasts there are fucking hardcore.

Although I'm getting a PS3 in the near future and I'm thinking of returning my 360 version for the PS3 one.

[Strum la Frantique]

Finished it today.

It's good, but doesn't hit the emotional strides that X and it's preceeders hit. It ends nice enough for what they had made with the story, but the bad guy's motives are questionable at best. The whole plot point regarding "The Maker" creating fal'Cie and humans and exactly the intent of how the two work together and all that stuff, simply goes unanswered. Instead you're treated to long rambling monologues by a fal'Cie about how your fate is to destroy Orphan. Pity that that plot point was explained 35 hours ago at the start of the game, tell me something new. And he just keeps on repeating it, and repeating it, and the grand plan about how he's going to get you to do it gets more convoluted and more convoluted with every sentence he says.

At the end of the day, I'm not giving it a two thumbs up. It gets a one thumb up, and a one thumb down. It started to trick me there for a bit that it was going somewhere, and I thought the reviews got it wrong. Then you hit Pulse, the world opens up, and you think they've definitely got it wrong. Then you get past that small (but large) open area and it's back to one way corridors, and where before there was big story exposition at the end of that corridor; well there's just more corridors, the story thins right out. The "journalists" have called this one right, it's a 7/10 game. It's passable, but there's big flaws that hold this back from being remembered as something great. So in my book, Lost Odyssey is still the best RPG of this generation, despite one of the worst endings in RPG history.