Has anyone seen the new trailer? Japan release a few weeks away.

May 1,2010 release for here.

The graphics are beautiful. I will hate the game. I don't like what they have done to Final Fantasy.

The fact that it's taken this long to release on a current gen console while they release 500 games for shitty mobile devices irritates me.

Gotta make those duckets.

New battle system looks like shit. Do they want us to focus on the super awesome ultra flippy action happening, or the fucking menus that you are required to read to pull off all the super awesome ultra flippy action bullshit? It works for Bayonetta, which is an amazing game by the way. I don't need this in Final Fantasy.

All this future tech garbage makes me ill. Fuck Final Fantasy.

Battle system in FF12 really ticked me off because it felt exactly like an MMORPG, and you could just set up your AI and afk through half of the fights. Still, the storyline was good and the environment was very fleshed out. I'm really hoping this one is more turn-based like traditional FFs. If I wanted an action title I'd buy an action title, ugh =/ Friend of mine got his hands on an alpha version and says it's looking pretty good though, so I'm holding out hope.

Turn on CC to see English subtitles.

The lighting on all those cinematics was just amazing. Those artists need major raises.

The combat looked really annoying to me though, like too busy..."Oooh flying numbers on the whole screen with a gigantic spell effect blocking the entire monster...now I know what is going on for sure". Seems like that keeps getting worse with each new iteration.

If I had a console I'd pick it up anyways, I'm a sucker for that j-pop, futuristic, is-it-a-boy-or-a-girl, rpg.

Looks like Famitsu gave it a 39/40.

http://kotaku.com/5422026/famitsu-final ... spoiler%5D

Sounds like the battle system(and storyline) gets a little more interesting about halfway through.

Only problem I have so far is that every female character is fucking terrible.

So every Final Fantasy Game since they went 3D?

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Yep. Why the Japanese think that characters like Riku are interesting is beyond me. I hope Vanelle gets hit by a fucking bus. Lightning is just She-Cloud but everyone knew this so it doesn't bother me as much as the others.

The battle system works. It's a bit fast paced but doable. I just hope they fucking stop changing shit around now that they have found something halfway decent over the shit that was 12.

/shrug, they're meant to be childish characters(at least Vanille, Rikku, Vaan, Penelo and the like). I guess I've just gotten used to it; If you can manage to suspend disbelief and not let it dissuade you that the story is still serious, it's not much of an annoyance. If you just can't stand kids, that's another problem altogether. I don't think they're meant to be interesting, but rather as comic relief and to inspire the feeling that the story encompasses more than blockface-"I'm a badass"-serious characters. Probably more than one way to go about that, granted.

The battle system is definitely a breath of fresh air after 12's "Set your if/then conditions and afk for 90 percent of the fights". It was a little annoying the first 1-2 hours in because most of the fights consisted of mashing the X button... but after the first boss fight and landing in the ice area, things got a lot more interesting.

I wish they had just made the Crystarium a copy/paste of the sphere grid instead of the 3D nonsense. Don't get me wrong - I like the job system, but that could've been done without making it out to be more than it is. Half the time my D-pad and Analog stick decides to go in random directions. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Still beats the hell out of the License Board, though.

Good music/sound selection so far as well. No complaints there other than the sometimes-bland area music.

Wish the areas contained more than a select few branching paths, but I kind of expected that =/ So far this definitely has the overall feel of FFX. It won't be one for the history books, but it will be fun for at least one playthrough.

I am enjoying it quite a bit. It's not free-form but there are games for that. I like the characters except vanille (sp). The graphics are great, the music and voice acting are solid, and so far the game world is intriguing. Thumbs up!

Though, it must be said that veille is FAR better acted than that fucking doll girl character from star ocean. It's not THAT bad.

I've never played a FF game besides the computer online MMO, but I'm going to give this one a shot. I've never had a sony system before (nothing against them, just always picked the competitors for some reason), so this coming out for the 360 is a nice change.

I've heard bad things about the 360 version compared to the PS3. Dragon age was pretty shitty in comparison.

I have it on 360 and have no complaints thus far (about 5 hours into it). The graphics are just fine, no graphical stuttering/slowdowns, etc.

Yea it is a fairly clean version on the XB360 from what I've heard. Two issues really: 1) Cutscenes will be in 720p instead of 1080p as on the PS3. 2) 3 discs instead of just one Blu-ray... I'm not sure if that affects anything if you want to travel back at some point to previous zones. Would definitely suck if it was like Star Ocean and you had to switch discs every time.

Not sure if the PS3's superior hardware plays into this much.

I thought I read there was disc swapping involved. Graphically most people won't really care honestly. 90% of every bullshit comparison I saw was done with FMV sequences which of course will have a difference. It won't take away from the enjoyment at all.

Truthfully I am surprised at how decent it is, then again it doesn't have much competition.

I don't mind it being linear. The story progresses just fine. Getting all my characters near the beginning also lets me give two fucks about them and they don't get relegated to Yuffie/Vincent/Riku/Relm status.

I don't give two shits about towns. Fuck talking to random bullshit NPCs. If that was a hangup for people then there are about 20ish previous Final Fantasy titles they can choke themselves on NPC text with.

Already mentioned the battle system, but I really hope they stay with this style for 14 or stay very close to it as possible. It is a bit of "Press X to not Die" repetitiveness at first but there's just enough meat to keep me from damning it for being that way. I think it's more to do with that fast paced flippy shit I criticized it for initially. Once you can let that action into your heart, all will be forgiven.

Vanelle is a stupid cunt and should die. She needs to decide if she is British or Australian, pick an accent, then shut the fuck up forever.

PS3 here. Pure eye candy. Enjoying the game so far.

Can't imagine playing through it again with so much scene skipping.

I'm waiting until I get my bedroom PS3 to play this. Between BC2, MW2 and The Show, I'm not going to have time to throw away on a single player game, so I'm going to try to hammer through this before I go to bed and/or weekends.

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Lost Odyssey is probably a superior game, but unfortunately I'd agree that there isn't much competition just out of the fact that Sakaguchi is taking for-freaking-ever to release any information on his upcoming project(s). As far as I'm concerned he's the only guy I can count on for pure gaming goodness when it comes to JRPGs, plus he's got Uematsu on his side for the most part.

I *really* liked Lost Odyssey. If LO had the production values of FF13, it would blow it away. Some of the voice acting in Lost Odyssey is terrible.

I need to find that game for some sort of super sale, because I rented it at the time and never quite beat it.

Yea I'll agree with that. I know Kaim got some criticism for the voice acting, but I felt like Keith Ferguson was trying to portray him as the guy who had really been dealt the raw deal, and as sort of an "emo" immortal which was sort of understandable given the background.

For me Lost Odyssey and DQ8 are the JRPGs to beat at this point.

FF13 satiates the thirst for the time being - its motto should be "At least it ain't FF12!".

Ugh, only got an hour into the game yesterday, and today my PS3 stopped working. Perfect.

My PS3 problem turned out to be not having the power cord plugged in right side up, even tho it's not labeled as such.

I'm enjoying this game so far, but it jumps between the characters more than I expected. Im only up to chapter 4 though, so maybe everyone stays together more later in the game.

I have a question for those that know about item upgrading. I went to a site that had this info, and even the thread titles had spoilers. (as a side note, SPOILER tag on a thread title that has a plot twist in the actual question isn't very helpful...I'm spoiled for a more courteous internet crowd I guess). Back to the question though, should I upgrade my weapons/items now, or wait until later in the game when I get better base weapons to upgrade. I don't need to completely min/max the game, but I don't want to be overly wasteful if it makes more sense to wait either. If I should wait, at what point are the weapons of a good enough base quality to warrant spending materials on?

Thanks.

There are 8 weapons in the game for each character.

Each of those 8 weapons can be upgraded to the "ultimate weapon" for that character, based on the stats of the original one.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

The constant character/party switching is my biggest beef with this game right now. I think I've FINALLY gotten to the point where I won't be doing much switching anymore(I'm at the part where it allows me to choose my own party now), but I would much prefer they had grouped up and stayed together earlier in the game. Far prefer choosing my own party near the getgo than having the game handhold me to show me that each character has their own fortes.

once you get that far you don't split up anymore.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

Beat it 40 hours in, 1 week after release. To "beat" the game you don't need to do anything but keep the standard party and no upgrading of weapons is required. Linear till chapter 11, after that all the side shit is available. However, and it's a pretty big caveat, the side missions are a literal bitch after a certain point and require you to get the last level of Crystarium unlocked when you beat the game.

All in all, big "meh" from me. Once you know how to manipulate the Paradigm system you can beat just about anything.

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"I'm the best there is at what i do, bub, and what i do isn't very pretty"

I'm having a *real* hard time beating this game. Staying interested is a huge problem. Sola is right, once you figure out how to use the paradigms it's not hard, and somewhat monotonous, frankly.

I'm playing it pretty casually because frankly I just don't have enough time =/ I'm around the village of Oerba. Still enjoying it, but kinda wish the battles were shorter and admittedly they are getting a bit monotonous at this point. I still enjoy the battle system as a whole compared to previous iterations, however. I suppose I could see the game getting very boring/annoying if you just did a straight playthrough and nothing else. Personally, I like to savor my JRPGs a bit =) Though frankly I think the same could be said for most games these days.

Plenty of room for improvement for sure, but with a select few truly "good" games to choose from these days, this isn't half bad.

i think the replayability for this game is about as low as any game I've ever played. I wanted to replay Mass Effect 2 as soon as I beat it, as a different class and as an evil character instead of good.

I know there's still a niche for JRPGs, but, for me, the more open-world games like Fallout 3 and Oblivion are what I want to see more of. Bring on Fallout Vegas. The plot for Mass Effect 2 simply slays this game.

Outside of the linearality (is that a word?) and mechanics, the story for this game is borderline unwatchable. So many cliches. But, I was recently forced to sit through New Moon with my wife (think Clockwork Orange chair) and maybe the godawful, epic nature of how bad that movie was has made this more tolerable.

I lost steam on ffxiii when I got to chapter 11.

I haven't touched it since

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

Which is funny because that is when it actually turns into a game but the damage has already been done. This one will be near impossible to pick back up and start where you left off because out of any RPG I have ever played, this is easily the most uninteresting of them all. I like it and all, but yeah, it's just boring as fuck. Which sucks because I liked the battle system after all but Jesus God this shit gets so tedious.

Won another copy of it and traded in my first for Heavy Rain, which is much much better. I probably wont even break the seal on this one to bother finishing it.

Got started a bit late, since I was travelling when it came out. Got up to the fight w/ Cid. Having fun w/ it even though it does feel a bit repetitive.

Yeah, I'm only about half a dozen hours in this thing, but I'll be damned if it isn't the best looking game I've ever seen, and Uncharted 2 (last year!) was the previous best looking game I'd ever seen.

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It is gorgeous, I'll give it that. Doesn't change the amusement I get as my partner plays it and every time I walk by I ask "so, is it fun yet?" and his answer is always "not yet but maybe soon. I think I'm close to the fun parts."

This has been multiple days. :p

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The graphics are great, but the game isn't all that immersive. I'll take a game like Gears of War or something that also has amazing graphics (though a notch below this) but is extremely immersive.

Well I finally beat this and man was the last battle a pita. I read people complaining about how easy the last boss was but that wasn't my experience at all. Took me 10+ tries to win, was actually starting to get frustrating. Overall a decent game, but I'm glad to be done and get back to Mass Effect 2 for another play through.

I think it kinda depends on what your party makeup was. I went with Lightning/Fang/Snow and I'd imagine stuff like Haste and a heal spell better than Cura would have made it easier. Interesting game in the end, but I can't bring myself to do the sidequests at the moment so I've moved on to different stuff as well.