More important than the score, though, Famitsu’s critics unanimously agreed that everything that people complained about in FFXIII was resolved. This one is not a linear game that pulls you down one path to another, it’s a full-fledged Final Fantasy game with towns, minigames, and all the other trappings we know and love from the series of old.
There’s even conversation options this time, a real rarity for the series (well, conversation options that go beyond “yeah, ok” and “….”; that’s Squall). Throw in the same brilliant graphical engine as FFXIII, and retain the amazing combat of XIII, and you have a recipe for real success.
Which is why it got 40/40. It’s the third game in short order that has that honour, but when you consider the other two games: Skyward Sword and Skyrim, you can see that FFXIII-2 is in elite company indeed.
Problem is, while the western gaming community (gauged through various forums and fellow websites), seemed to use Skyward Sword and Skyrim’s scores as validations for their own (rightfully) high opinions of the games, the scepticism that FFXIII-2 continues to receive is truly amazing.
Square Enix seem to have found themselves stuck between a rock and a crazy place: if they make the game people want, they get criticised. If they go out on a limb and try something creative, people latch on to it like it’s the death of the company. Yes, Final Fantasy XIV was bad, and yes XIII was controversial (I personally loved it), but when a company goes out of its way to apologise and completely remake the former, and release a “all-improved” sequel for the latter, throwing rotten vegetables when you haven’t even played the game is just embarrassing.
In the mean time, enjoy some new screenshots from the newest 40/40 club member:
15 comments:
Yeah...and Skyrim is bugged ad infinitum...makes you wonder what a perfect score means these days.
They improved on everything but they decided to ditch characters with interesting personalities and background stories for copy/paste monsters you fight.. and have only two playable characters. Recurring characters from XIII only guests with the exception of Lightning who has a little playable moment at the opening...
I hope Serah and Noel will be worth it...
"amazing combat of XIII" ? o.O what r u smoking dude FFXIII was a piece of sh1t, and the sequel it's just a sequel no matter what they did to improve it it's just a sequel and no1 want to play a sequel of XIII is it so hard to figure out that by your self? ofc it will sell worst than the first if SE want to redeem their selves they must make a new game or release fcking Versus already ppl w8 to play it for more than 5 years now and that's ridiculous...
Anonymous #2: I think it's a little premature to criticize the plot and characters of a game no one has played in English, and one the Japanese critics love, don't you? That was the point of this whole article. We don't know how good the game is personally, and yet there are a bunch of people that decide to ignore the rave reviews to stubbornly remain negative about the game.
I am not being negative about the game, I like the story from what I know so far, battle system, music, new gameplay elements. I'm also getting the collector's edition.
The only thing I said that I didnt like its that they replaced human characters for monsters, that is my personal preference, it has nothing to do with being a good game or not. I just dont relate to monsters and I like to relate to the characters I choose to be a part of my party.
The XIII universe has plenty of characters that could have been integrated to the recruiting system, I just dont get why they chose not to. Again, it's not that that will decide if it's a good game or not, it will just affect a small part of it. With 150 monsters, I probably will find something better than a Flan or a Alraune or a Bomb or a Scandroid/Metroid to be a part of my team.
By the way, Japanese market and American market are into totally different things, while Japanese love things like Pokemon, Digimon, Monster Rancher, etc, most americans don't, but yeah some do. The same way that americans tends to favor photo-realistic graphics while japanese likes more anime/cartoon, but some japanese like photo-realistic and some americans like anime/cartoon.
With a international release like FF13-2, you gotta pay attention to both market. Which is why, I would have integrated human characters to the recruiting system. You want monsters, you got them, you want human instead, you got them !
The same way monsters has a specific role, humans could have too, except Noel and Serah who are the permanent leaders of the team.
examples: Snow a SEN, Fang a COM, Sazh a SYN, Hope a MED, Vanille a SAB, Lightning a RAV.
The team would then be Noel/Serah + 1 pick from your 3 members deck
(notice I say members deck and not monsters deck)
Does anybody know if you have to use monsters?
I heard you can either just use Noel and Serah, or use the monster recruiting system to get a third member to your party.
I cant confirmed this as I'm waiting for the english release.
But I think not using a monster would make the game much harder.
^A challenge is always good.
Its pretty simple.
Unlike what famitsu might say, the combat was not amazing. I have played the game and i know this by myself to not believe what famitsu is saying.
And its this combat that is the critical point. Its the main gameplay element of an RPG. Despite all its flaws, FFXIII would've been forgiven if it had a fun and deep combat system. It didnt. And with FFXIII they decided to keep that combat.
So, at this point its clear. Even if they fixed everything else, the core of the game is still the same snore fest.
I completely pass on that.
If square had changed the combat system i would be excited to give this a go, but as it stands i know exactly what this game is aiming to offer, and i know its not something good. Famitsu cant convince me otherwise.
Um, for one thing, your opinion is not a universal fact, just so you know. Famitsu just thinks it's amazing to them, there's nothing to "believe", only agree or disagree. Second of all, the combat is supposed to be far and away improved upon in XIII-2, so why exactly are you blowing off the combat already when you haven't played it yet, or even have any kind of understanding of it?
A demo is coming at least to the US PSN on the 10th of this month.
I was not moved by the characters in FF13, the story felt tacked out. they had stupid names and characters. Battle system was junk. they never brought back the world map (which was why i still love older FF games to this day for that reason) I am gonna give the FF13-2 Demo a Shot and See if it does anything for me but I'm not expecting much. Even if the core of the game changes, the characters I assume are the same maybe adding in a few ones but if they are anything like the main characters of FF13 I'm sure they will be just as lame and useless. To think back when I played final fantasy 10 thinking it was the worst final fantasy ever, than 10-2 came out and I'm like, "wow, I'm wrong..10 isn't the worst FF ever" I didn't even mind 11 because even though it was an MMORPG It was Still lots of fun to play and a big map to explore, plus riding an Airship in real time was pretty cool. I can't say I enjoyed 12 because the characters once again, didn't mind the battle system if they didn't make it so easy to just use your left analog to play the entire game (if you set up the proper stuff). 13 was just plain..bad.. Everything about it sucked, the only thing that didn't suck were the graphics, and for games the importance of that is far down on my list it's just a nice bonus when a great game has good graphics. The story wasn't interesting at all, I had a had time believing that anyone could smile while bullets are being shot at you. My point being nothing seemed believable. Yes. I know it's a video game and it doesn't have to be real or really make any sense and imagination and blah blah blah, but all forms of imagination should come with at least some sort of believably. Or at the very least voice actors that don't come across as Justin Timberlake fans. that being said I will still give the new edition to try and hold my prejudiced opinions at the door until I've actually had a crack at it. Though Like I said, not expecting much, Square-Enix is just full of disappointments.
I liked pretty much every early,ps1/2 predecessor (except nintendo ones like ADVANCED/Crystal chronicles/etc)
I even have the patience for blander titles like wild arms series,xenogears,etc.. because while not perfect they have aspects which make the experience worthwhile.
FF13 only grace was pretty. I'm a pc gamer mostly. I'm not shocked or impressed with "pretty" being the staple. I wanted exploration,adventure,etc.. Instead I got the most linear pos I ever played. I believed some contra titles had more choice/diversion than this.
So the reviewers who gave it high scores mean nothing to me cause they pretty much proved with 13..1 that reviews are for sale.
And no the rpg fanbase isn't hating - they are just upset that they expected an rpg and got some lousy action game (not that action games are lousy but FF games sure make bad ones)
Its not ooooh give me ff7. Know what we wanted in 13? Look at lost odyssey. Thats pretty much head on.
@Anon7
As someone who was incredibly underwhelmed by Lost Odyssey and found it to be a step back for RPGs in general, I can't help but be disappointed that [i]that[/i] is what fans what from their Final Fantasy games. You are certainly not the first person I've seen say that, but it still gets me every time. LO had hardly any original bone in its body - sure, it was meant to be a modern interpretation of the RPGs of old, but it did so by bringing all the negative aspects of RPGs with it, from hackneyed, slow-paced story telling (with the best bits being in texts you find throughout the game, which is something I prefer to be reserved for faster-paced, less story-driven games), derivative combat, and frequent random battles (aka THE BANE OF MY EXISTANCE). Ultimately, I found it to be a game best left in the past, and certainly not something worth emulating.
Now this is not to say Final Fantasy XIII is a shining example of where RPGs or even Final Fantasy should go, heavens no. It has it's fair share of problems on its own. But at least it strived to innovate, rather than emulate, and had a vision that it was built around and adhered to throughout the game. That I can greatly respect.
From what the demo is showing me, FF13-2 is a much more enjoyable game than its predecessor. Lots of new features that the hardcore ff fans will love + the voice acting is a hundred times better.
Gameplay is much slower, which will make for an easier time of planning your attacks (its not like it actually needed to be slow, but the casuals whined and bitched about how ff13 was too hard at endgame, so the developers dumbed it down for them).
While I'm a bit disappointed by the lack of playable characters, the new customized monster component more than made up for it (putting pimp hats on my bat/penguin/whatever-those-things-are is flipping hilarious).
Random battles are kind of annoying... I don't want to have to run away whenever I don't want to fight... but it's tolerable as they're not constant. Also, after you become familiar with an area you begin to see patterns in where the battles spawn.
Chocolina was a terrible idea. I hope to God crazy chocobo lady is not the only vendor in the game. Also, despite my avid ff fandom for the past 15 years, I've never liked moogles... and Mog the moogle is as moogle as they come. His high pitched, grating voice is going to drive me insane, kupo.
Cinematic action is reminiscent of God of War boss kill sequences, which in my opinion is a nice little touch. If you execute them perfectly, you get special rewards.
Choice in actions when facing Atlas, while nice, seems not to matter in the demo. He will one-shot your characters if you don't weaken him first / grind cp until your health is well over 1000.
All in all, an interesting demo. I WILL be buying the game.
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