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ATTENTION:
This thread will probably contain spoilers about FFXIII. I've whited out the majority of this first post so if you are reading this your eyes are not already tainted. But, the conversation going on below this first post probably contains light spoilers. I don't think anyone will drop any "Abraham Lincoln gets shot at the theatre at the end of disc 2"-type bomb outside of spoiler text, but I'm just letting you know that we could talk about how the battle system works and stuff like that in the replies and people who are really self-conscious about being able to enjoy a fresh playthrough of a new game may not want to read what is below this text!

I took my sweet time finishing Final Fantasy XIII over winter break. The game was a far cry from what I was expecting out of the newest Final Fantasy title; Square has taken the RPG in a direction very different from what it hinted at with 12.

I decided I'd like to share some of my afterthoughts about the game. I've used spoiler tags and roughly categorized things so that people who want to keep the game fresh can avoid whatever they need to avoid. There are no major story spoilers in this post, but I mention a lot of details of the battle mechanics and character development as far as I understand them.

Story

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

Square has *almost* learned how to make a big-screen quality story to keep players entertained and enthralled throughout the game. The story flows smoothly, without the unbelievable twists of games like FF8. The ending--and the events leading up to the ending--made sense.

But, at the end of the day, what occurs throughout the game didn't feel as epic to me as what happened in FF6, FF7, or even FF10. It feels like the characters went through a couple-week-long ordeal, and I, as a player, followed that ordeal in real time. The game took me about 50 hours to complete, but it doesn't feel like I went all around the world, or even saw much of the vast world at all. So much of the world of Cocoon is simply inaccessible to the player, and that frustrated me. I wanted to explore so much more of FF13's world. (The game does have free exploration areas, but I'll touch upon that in the section called "Gameplay--Linear or Not?" below.)

Characters

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

This is where the game shines. All those fifty hours of play time where there was no story development going on, there was a lot of character development. Well over half of the cutscenes in the game deal with characters' feelings towards each other, and by the end of the game you know who everyone is, why they're part of the group, and where they stand. There aren't any cliche characters or people that just happen to be traveling with you because that's how the developers decided it was going to be. Everyone fits, and everyone has real emotions and real personality.

However, you get very little information about characters outside of your party. Big, important people outside your group are often treated to only sudden and brief appearances. While this enhanced the feeling that I was in my characters' shoes, it left me wanting to know more about those other guys and exactly how they played into this whole story.

Gameplay--Linear or Not?

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

This part sucks: FF13 is more cut-and-dry linear than any other game in the series. I know a lot of hopes will be dashed on reading this, but there is simply no room to explore in FF13 until you enter the late-game. Almost every damn map is a straight shot to the finish-line, with really predictable locations for treasure chests. By halfway through the game, I was sorely missing sidequests, minigames, and a general freedom to explore. There was an opportunity to naturally fit a Gold Saucer-like area into the game; if Square had taken that opportunity, we would have all complained and said, "Well that's just a rip off of FF7." But, we would have all loved playing around in it anyway. Because, believe me, rip-off-Gold-Saucer is better than no Gold Saucer at all.

Anyway, the late game offers you a series of really big maps to explore on. The game provides these maps suddenly, and I was a little confused about what I should do (or what I could do) on these big maps. When you first arrive on the big maps, 80% of the enemies on the map are too powerful for your characters to handle. That was also very frustrating. The maps from this point onward are the only maps you will have repeated access to throughout the game, but once you have been to them, you will basically always have access to them. Even in the final dungeon, a portal is available to backtrack to any of these maps.

The big maps offer a mission system similar to FF12 (where you are told to go hunt a certain monster and get a reward for doing so). The missions have special monsters you can't fight anywhere else, and you can repeat the missions as many times as you want. Some of the missions unlock special new areas to explore, and it's by filling missions and exploring new areas that you get to fight super-hard bosses and unlock special powers. There is also a chocobo digging minigame on these maps, but I have not unlocked it yet.

Battle System

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

This is another point where the game shines. The battle system has been completely overhauled into a real-time system. It overwhelmed me when I first picked up the game, but now I consider it my favorite RPG battle system of all time.

Enemies appear on each map, and if you walk into them, you initiate a battle. Battles occur in separate screens. In the battle screen, you will see all the characters in your party and all the enemies participating in the battle. (The enemies that appeared on the map are always representative of the number and type(s) of enemies you will be battling.)

You only control the lead character of your party. This is because battles are real time. Everything happens so quickly that you really only have time to issue direct commands to one character. Common abilities, like attacking or casting a cure or lightning spell, cost you time on the ATB gauge. Simple abilities only cost you a little time, and powerful abilities like area of effect spells cost more time. The ATB gauge is constantly filling up (for all of your characters and all of your enemies), and you perform any action as soon as you have enough time on the gauge.

A little ways into the game you are given access to the Optima system. The Optima system is kind of like a job system, and it allows you to effectively control what your non-leader characters are doing in battle. The system is really tight, and I am rarely disappointed with the AI performance of my teammates. There are six jobs: Attacker, Blaster, Defender, Enhancer, Jammer, and Healer. (The names are a different in the English version, according to the PSN trophies list.) In-battle abilities are restricted to the job that your character holds: Only attackers can fight, only blasters can use offensive magic, only healers can cast cure spells, etc. BUT, every character's job can be changed on the fly within the battle screen.

This means that when your HP is low, you open up a quick menu and choose a healing Optima to take care of your wounded characters. When you enter battle with a boss, you might open up the quick menu and choose an enhancer Optima so that your characters are casting protective spells like Shell and Haste on themselves.

Ultimately, the Optima system means that you spend more time looking at the whole battlefield and choosing an appropriate strategy to react to it. Square obviously spent a lot of time tuning this system, because it plays as smoothly as this simple explanation sounds. When you need some healing done, you tell one of your characters to start healing with the Optima menu, and the healing gets done. You don't freak out because your AI characters aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing. As long as you've picked the right job for them, you can be just as effective as you were when you chose every character's exact action from a menu in FF1 through 12.

A battle is lost whenever the leader character (the one you're directly inputting actions for) dies. Even if the other two characters are alive and one of them is a healer with a Raise spell, if your lead character's HP falls to zero, you lose the battle. The lead character does get a couple tricks up their sleeve to prevent this from happening: There are abilities called "TP abilities" that use a special gauge that doesn't recharge after battle. Some of the TP abilities specifically revive and restore HP to your party members, so you can use these in a pinch to prevent losing a battle, The TP gauge replenishes a little bit after every battle you win. (Summons are also part of the TP gauge, and every time you summon a monster, your party's HP will be restored as a side-effect.)

In the early and mid game, you will have to use whatever lead character the game tells you to use. Some characters make very poor leaders, but in scenarios where you have to use these leaders, the enemies are often a little softer than usual. In the late game, you can freely choose any 3-member party featuring any leader. If you hate the main character, you don't have to use her. Not even in the final battle. (But I thought she was awesome and used her the whole game anyway.)

Leveling System

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

Instead of receiving EXP and leveling up, characters now receive CP after every battle. CP is used to fill in an attribute and ability grid similar to what was used in FF10. But, every character has his or her own grid. The grid is divided according to the jobs in the Optima system; there's an Attacker area, a Blaster area, a Defender area, a Healer area, etc. The areas are separate from each other, and abilities learned in each area can only be used by that specific job. However, attributes gained in any given area (something like HP+10 or Physical Attack +10) applies regardless of what job the character is using. TP abilities gained from a job tree are always to available to that character when he or she is the party leader.

In the beginning, certain characters are limited to certain jobs. These starter jobs are the character's "preferred jobs," and he or she will always be better at those jobs than others. And, although most abilities are available to every character, some of the most powerful stuff in each of these trees is only available to certain characters. (And, it takes less CP to make a character progress in a preferred job than one of the other jobs.) In this way, the characters feel distinct from each other in battle, and it matters who is in your party. For example, with a lot of grinding, the main character could make a useful Enhancer with access to spells like Haste and Protect. But, she may never have access to the ability Shell, which one of the other characters might get as their first ability on their Enhancer tree.

Equipment

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

Around 90% of the items you receive after battle are Refining items. In FF13, every piece of equipment (every weapon and every accessory) has an EXP meter. You can raise the EXP meter by Refining the equipment using those items you win after battle. When equipment levels up, it becomes stronger or it gains new abilities. So, when a Lv.1 Grandius sword becomes a Lv.2 Grandius sword, it provides more of an attack boost to its holder. Or when a Lv.1 Bronze Bangle becomes a Lv.2 Bronze Bangle, it provides a bigger HP boost to the wearer.

At some point, every piece of equipment will cap out, and it's level will become Lv.STAR. Most Lv.STAR equipment can be refined using a special, rarer item which will transform it into a different piece of equipment. Most of the transformations are straightforward; you'll get a similar item of the next tier: Like, instead of a Grandius sword you'll have some other stronger sword at Lv.1 which you can in turn refine. Stronger items of course require more EXP, and thus more refining items.

Equipment can also give you abilities, like "start every battle with Protect" or "10% resistance to fire-type damage." Weapons are character-specific, but accessories can be worn by anyone, and eventually characters can wear more than one accessory at once. Certain combinations of weapons and accessories unlock Link Abilities, where in addition to the stat boosts and abilities each item would have provided alone, other stronger properties are given to the character, like "ATB gauge charges 10% faster."

I hope that satisfies some curiosity on these boards. If you have any questions, feel free to reply. I'll edit this post or make supplementary posts as I think of other things to mention.

This post has been edited by Phoenix on 7th January 2010 08:40

Thanks for the great post. It's nice to have a gamer's actual opinion of the gameplay instead of hearing about what people think it might be like.

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Sabin: Kefka! Wait!
Kefka: Wait he says! Do I look like a waiter?

Now, I'm probably not going to read this just yet to avoid too much spoiler, but you see, this is why I always wanted to keep you around. Japan correspondent.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Okay, encouraging and worrying at the same time. True,with story and characters, 80% of the time it's your mileage may vary every time, but it's good to hear that since the game has apparently dropped a lot of the good in favour of things I already saw as bad and for things I fear could be bad. The battle system though, it still sounds like arse even from a positive outlook. But hearing the AI apparently isn't prone to jumping off a sodding cliff in a brave but stupid rescue effort is a welcome piece of news.

Levelling sounds like it's nothing new in that they're playing with it again, but possibly interesting in that it's, er, new. Equipment sounds... well, acceptable at least.

The notion that the leader going down is the end of the battle does not sit well with me though. I presume this means the opponents have now lost all instant death or counts-as attacks because then either the leader needs to be immune to them by default or the game becomes Russian Roulette.

This changes very little, I remain hopeful, but wary. I'm hoping it's a decent game but it just doesn't seem like a good Final Fantasy to me. I really don't see myself liking that battle system very to be honest. That story and the characters had better be good, they're basically all I see that can drive the game. There's no way it's going to be the bloody end theme in the version I'll play that's for sure



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"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

I think, from this information, that I will probably enjoy this game once and only once. If the battle system is as fun and challenging as I've been hearing, and the narrative is as cinematic as I've been hearing, then it will be fun. But the strict linearity of the game and the grid-based growth system (which I'm lukewarm on) probably won't merit a second playthrough. Unless I get ridiculously attached to some story or character elements and want to experience it again.

My plan will be probably to gank the game off of one of my fool friends that gets it day one, and borrow it after I beat the game in two weeks. I'm just glad that my shiny new PS3 allows me to even have that option.

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this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
END SPOILER

Are you sure you weren't playing Rogue Galaxy? A lot of what you've written sounds exactly like it: battles, world, equipment, even positives and negatives. On that basis I'm more optimistic; some people didn't like RG and others liked it a lot more than I did, but I did enjoy playing through it the one time.

This post has been edited by sweetdude on 7th January 2010 00:08

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Scepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind.

Me on the Starcraft.

Quote (laszlow @ 7th January 2010 07:36)

I think, from this information, that I will probably enjoy this game once and only once... the strict linearity of the game and the grid-based growth system (which I'm lukewarm on) probably won't merit a second playthrough.

I think I will play the game again. Yes, the linearity thing sucks, but the thing is, I think that now I am familiar with what is going to happen when, I can just blow through the first half of the game in a few hours, picking up all the treasure I want and leveling characters how I want, then leisurely enjoy the open-world end-game.

I think I can get that far in the game in such a short time because:
1. Square is providing us with the blessing that is the scene-skip button. You can skip almost any cutscene in the game.
2. You can in fact avoid enemy encounters on the map. Details:

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

I know in the other FFXIII thread someone writes a 2ch-born complaint about how you can't avoid the "random" encounters, but let me stress this: Yes, you can. The enemy chase AI on the map screen is laughable, and I walked around enemies whenever I felt like it. Even if you are absolutely TERRIBLE at dodging enemies, there are items called "Smoke" items which allow you to run around on the map undetected for a certain number of seconds. The game gives you these Smoke items as battle spoils when you perform poorly in battle.

Quote (Del S @ 7th January 2010 05:58)

But hearing the AI apparently isn't prone to jumping off a sodding cliff in a brave but stupid rescue effort is a welcome piece of news.

I thought about some more I want to explain about this:

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

The battle AI works because of the game's built-in Bestiary. Every monster you fight has an information page about it, and you can access the monster's information at any time in the menu screen, or in battle, by pushing the right shoulder buttons. (Yeah, you can see the stats of any monster, including remaining HP count, by pushing a hotkey in battle. I really like that feature.)

When you fight a monster for the first time, your characters don't know anything about it. So, they may do some stupid stuff. Like, the first time you fight a bomb, your AI characters might cast a fire spell on it. BUT, as soon as they see that the fire spell healed the enemy, that information will be recorded in your Bestiary, and your AI characters will NEVER CAST FIRE ON THAT ENEMY EVER AGAIN. No matter how many times or where you encounter a Bomb, your spellcasters won't attempt to cast a fire spell on it, or enhance your weapons with fire property, or any similar stupidity.

The same applies for status effects. Jammer is the name of the debuffing class that casts stuff like De-protect (reduce physical defense), De-shell (reduce magical defense), Slow, etc. on the enemies. I really liked Jammers and used them very often. When you fight a new enemy, your Jammer will usually try to cast all of its known spells in rapid succession, just to see which spells the enemy is immune to. With one casting, you'll know whether that enemy is immune or not, and the information is added to your Bestiary. And from then on, your Jammers will never try to cast that junk on that monster ever again.

And the same applies for physical vs. magical damage. AI characters will automatically determine if they would do more damage against a particular enemy using physical or magical attacks, and they'll choose those kinds of attacks to use.

There are also short memo-style pieces of information stored in the Bestiary. Like, an enemy that deals a couple thousand damage to all party members will have a memo saying, "Uses strong area-of-effect physical attack." Once that information is added to your Bestiary, the Enhancers in your party (if you're using them) will put an automatic priority on casting Protect whenever you encounter that enemy. This is the only time that the AI kind of bugged me, because I just wanted my Enhancer to cast Haste first in every battle. From what I can see, you have a few options in this situation:
1. Use an Enhancer to whom which you intentionally never taught Protect, Shell, or Bar-Element (reduce damage from a specific element) spells. Those are the only spells that can ever have higher priority than Haste.
2. Use the Enhancer as your lead character, or teach your lead character Enhancer abilities.
3. Wait an extra turn for Haste at the beginning of battle, because after your Enhancer finishes casting Protect on everyone, he'll then cast Haste on everyone.

On the scale of potential problems with AI, it's pretty insignificant.

I have never had ANY problems with the Healer character. The Healer makes the leader's life the highest priority, and they always do a really good job. I absolutely hate changing my Lead character into a Healer, because I am way worse at healing than my computer-controlled party members. They heal right on the dot, right when you need it most: If you don't need healing they'll wait with a full ATB gauge until after the enemy does a strong attack, then unleash a wave of healing on everyone. On the other hand, when I am in charge of healing during a boss battle, I usually die.

In fact, all the job classes are so specified that as long as the character is in the right job, there's really nothing the AI can do wrong. I can't stress enough that battle AI is the LAST thing I was worrying about when I was actually playing the game.

Quote (Del S @ 7th January 2010 05:58)

Levelling sounds like it's nothing new in that they're playing with it again, but possibly interesting in that it's, er, new. Equipment sounds... well, acceptable at least.

Leveling was far from revolutionary. But, it wasn't terrible either.
Equipment was kind of exciting. I refrained from looking up databases online and just played around with different equipment and different refining items. After a while I learned generally how things worked and felt satisfied with the fun I'd had using that system in game.

Quote (Del S @ 7th January 2010 05:58)

The notion that the leader going down is the end of the battle does not sit well with me though. I presume this means the opponents have now lost all instant death or counts-as attacks

Here's what I have to say:

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

The leader is not immune to instant death attacks. But, there are very few enemies who use them, and only one of those enemies is not an optional boss. The one enemy that you will probably have to encounter that can cast Death appears in the final dungeon. They are slow and stupid and otherwise weak, but they are dangerous because they will cast Death over and freaking over again, and they have a lot of HP you need to whittle down.

Death is not a sure-shot, and the monsters cast it randomly on your party members without any preference for leader or follower. I estimate that the success rate is between 1-5%. (The success rate is the same for when you use the spell. It appears in the Jammer job tree, and I almost never use it, and my AI never tries to use it, because it's just so unreliable.) My main character probably had death cast on her probably about 30 or 40 times in the last dungeon, and only once did it actually kill her. The rest of the time Death just does a pretty good wallop of magic-type damage.

When you die in battle, it is not really a terrible, hair-pulling event. On the Game Over screen, you are given an option to return to the main title, or to "Restart." Restart means that you are returned to the map screen just outside of the range of the last monster you fought. There is no penalty for restarting. Restarting made the whole game bearable for me, because I felt that the bosses (and even a lot of the regular battles) were pretty difficult, and I died frequently.

As a side note, the difficulty level of the game was also really satisfying to me as I played.

And finally, I wanted to touch on some of the discussion in the Possible FFXIII Complaints thread:

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

A digest of criticism from 2ch:
-There are hardly any towns.

Yes, this bugged me so much. You are only in a handful of towns throughout the whole game, and that just felt weird to me. All the shops and the Refining system and stuff like that is compiled into the game's Save Points. On the upside, there are an excessive number of save points, so you can shop or refine whenever you get the urge. No need to trek back to the beginning of the map or anything.

-There are rather a lot of movies.

I never felt like the movies were taking away from my enjoyment of the game. But yeah, there are a lot of movies--kind of like FFX felt to me.

-Moving around is like a long marathon.

The game really stresses this "you are experiencing everything in real time" thing. Having your character run down a street takes as long as it would for you to run down that street. It's a bit boring when you retread a map you've already been down, but if you avoid the random encounters it doesn't take too much time. In the big late-game maps, you can use a Chocobo to travel a lot faster.

-The whole game system is just a clone of FF10.

The game system felt similar to FF10 to me. But, I felt like FF10's story was a pile of unsurprising rubbish and I often felt like the characters in FF10 didn't act how a real human being would act. I felt like FF13's story was good (but short), logical, and I really, REALLY liked FF13's cast of characters.

And more 2ch comments (just breaking this up so it's easier to read with all the blank text):

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

-You can't flee battles You can't avoid most battles either as there is no sneaking past enemies, including weak ones.

Whoever can't avoid the random battles has some kind of serious manal handicaps. The enemies on the map screen run around like bleeding idiots and half of the time I have trouble running into them because I WANT to battle.
Once you're in the battle, there's no traditional way to flee, but you can hit Pause and choose Restart at any time during the battle, which will put you back on the map screen just before you encountered that enemy.

-The best tactic is almost always endlessly attacking. There is next to no strategy or skill involved.

I didn't feel this way at all. I used a variety of Optima jobs and changed them frequently during battle. The late-game enemies have such high HP that if you just sit there with 3 attackers it will take you a god-awful amount of time to kill them. It's much faster to use an Enhancer to boost your damage, a Jammer to reduce their's, or a Blaster to "Break" the enemy so you can do more damage with each attack.

-The summons' transformation scenes are a joke [i.e. Odin turning into a horse].

I thought Odin and his transformation was pretty cool. Shiva and her transformation is also fantastic. Bahamut was also cool. The other summons and their transformations were nothing special, and two of them looked kind of dumb. You can skip any summon or transformation scene by pushing Select.

I usually only summoned a monster when my HP was low and I was about to die, or in regular battles where there were too many enemies for my main party to safely handle. The summon has a side-effect of restoring all of your party members' status and HP.

-You hardly ever get any money [and you can never buy anything more powerful than what you already looted].

Money is tight through the first half of the game. Once you get into the end-game, there are a lot of ways to horde money. Some of the early- and mid-game monsters drop items called Credit Chips which have no practical use except to be sold. I spent an extra half hour on one of the mid-game maps killing lots of those guys so I'd have some extra cash. The refining drops that most enemies give after battle can also be sold, but they are only worth a frustratingly small amount of Gil.

-The status screen displays no real information.

Your characters now only have HP, Physical Attack, and Magical Attack stats. You have to use equipment to provide other kinds of stats. I was getting frustrated at how powerful enemies were in the late game, so I saved a lot of my refining items to use on equipment that reduces physical, magical, or elemental damage by a certain percent. Behemoths are a lot less intimidating when your main character is equipped with stuff that reduces physical damage taken by 40%.

-There are only 8 items usable in combat [For that matter, there are hardly any weapons or accessories, and the "crafting" system mostly consists of spending drops to upgrade their 2 stats].

There are not a lot of "use in battle" items. This didn't really bug me because I rarely used items in Final Fantasy games anyway. On the plus side, Potions and Elixirs now always effect your whole party instead of just one party member.
I always had way more weapons and equipment than I knew what to do with. From treasure chests in the main story, you'll get about 7 weapons for each character. Each of those can be refined into something else. So, every character has at least a dozen weapons, and that's as many as games like FF7 featured for each character. The refining system also means that equipment you got early on in the game isn't useless like that stupid Buster Sword sitting in your inventory all game. If you are determined enough to refine the first weapons you got, you can make them into something usable even in the end-game. I used the second sword I got for the whole game.
There are WAY MORE accessories than I knew what to do with. I usually sold new accessories I picked up because I was uninterested in their functions and I was already using all my refining items elsewhere. A lot of accessories are really specific (reduce Fire damage by 25%, resist Death spells by 30% chance), and it's clear the developers meant for players to be changing their equipped accessories before they encountered bosses with certain attributes. Again, I found this at least as interesting as a traditional FF7-type system, where you just sold your Bronze Bangle as soon as you picked up the Silver Bangle, based your armor decision on whether you wanted to be getting double AP from battles or equip more materia, and changed to a Ribbon before you fought a bunch of Marlboros.

This post has been edited by Phoenix on 7th January 2010 10:10

This makes me a bit less skeptic about XIII, as I am very un-impressed by everything I saw so far about the game, with the exception of Phoenix's elaborations.

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"I fell off the mountain of words at around the 10,000ft mark. Tell my family...they owe me money." -Narratorway

"If you retort against this, so help me God I'll shove any part of your anatomy I can find into some other part. Figuratively, of course." - Josh

"We have more, can deliver tuesday." - Del S

Good old CoN

Quote (SilverMaduin @ 7th January 2010 14:24)

This makes me a bit less skeptic about XIII, as I am very un-impressed by everything I saw so far about the game, with the exception of Phoenix's elaborations.

Well, I wasn't, and now my confidence in Square has strengthened. I personally don't mind linearity. In fact, at this point, it's almost a lost art in games, with all the sandbox elements.

And as for his explanations, they're really the only thing I am trusting at this point, until the game comes out. Phoenix is the only person here I believe to play the game, and says that the characterization is great and it's the best RPG battle system he's ever played. I think that's a fairly great review.

This post has been edited by BlitzSage on 7th January 2010 21:18

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Praise Be To Helix!

I'm starting to get more and more excited. Thanks!

What's our countdown at? 2 1/2 months or so?

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Sabin: Kefka! Wait!
Kefka: Wait he says! Do I look like a waiter?

Quote (Bum Rush Blitzer @ 8th January 2010 01:10)

I'm starting to get more and more excited. Thanks!

What's our countdown at? 2 1/2 months or so?

60 days, a little over 8 weeks.

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Praise Be To Helix!

While there are a few details that I'm a bit sad to hear, I'm actually more excited about the game now. Thanks a lot Phoenix!

Quote

I really don't see myself liking that battle system very to be honest.

Personally, I think I'll like it up to a certain point. FFXII relied on AI a lot too, and, while I did like it as something new and refreshing, I don't think I want too many games to adapt this. If FF versus XIII uses large amounts of AI, for example, I'll be pretty sad.

I think the equipment system sounds great. I like when a game has a large selection when it comes to armor and weapons and their customization (though not necessarily at the loss of character stats).

I'm also a fan of a leveling up system like the sphere grid. Perhaps it's because FFX was my first FF, but I've always enjoyed the sphere grid and hoped I'd get to play a game with a similar system (not exactly sure how that'll work, seeing as most of the parameters listed on the sphere grid have been eliminated for FFX).

Linearity has its pros and cons. I, for one, like linearity. It allows me to concentrate on the story and development before opening everything up to me. Question for Phoenix: would you say that this is an aspect of FFXIII that is similar to FFX? FFX put the player on straightforward paths for a large part of the game before allowing airship use to revisit or explore.

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Currently Playing : Final Fantasy V
Most Recently Beat : Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
Favorite Game : Final Fantasy X

The newest CoNcast is up! Have a listen!

To Death Penalty:
Yes, there were a few times that I felt like it was a gaming experience eerily similar to FFX. As I said above, I like the story and characters a lot better than FFX. But, the maps have you running around in clear cut paths a lot like FFX, and the game doesn't open up until the latter half.

A spoiler-ish detail:

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

But, you cannot revisit a lot of the places you have been in the main story. The maps that allow you to explore are like a separate entity from the main game, and completely optional. You have the option to return to these maps from a portal in the final dungeon, and they feature monsters that are harder than those found in the main game. To accommodate all of the running around, Square implemented a teleportation system similar to that of FFXII.