anyone get it yet? what are your thoughts?

Yes people, please chime in.

I got it last night. Just haven't had very much time to play it. My brother says it is pretty awesome.

Bought it, sitting with my other games.
Too busy working on car, then playing BC2 still with friends.

got it last night, played it for about an hour. the battle system is a little different, much faster paced

But do you LIKE it?

Does it still have the whole "you have selected 'punch'. You have missed your opponent" fighting thing?

I remember I rented a final fantast game one time, was captivated by the openinig cutscene, and then after the first "battle" I threw the game across the room.

Did you pay any rent fees for damage to the game?

yeah i like it a lot, the acting is a little weak in this one, but the story and gameplay is pretty damn good

im trying to hurry and beat ff12 so i can go pick this 1 up. hope the story was better than 12s was.

I got it opening day and have played it solid for about 2 days and here are my thoughts.

First off, the game is VERY linear. Its not like FF7 where you get dumped onto a world map to explore. This game is linear in how you start at one end of a straight line essentially and work your way through the level to the end and a cutscene. That might be good or bad, personally I dont mind it a bit.

One thing I have to give props to though is the way the game doesnt dump everything on you at one time like previous games. It has tutorials and the AI takes most of the control (like picking parties and leaders, etc) till you progress further then gives you more control little by little. Some may not like that but I think its genius. I get overwhelmed with these games from the start and this cures that.

The fighting is still turn based like RPG's usually are but you wont sit there and click "fight" over and over mindlessly like some older games. This one you have to switch formations that in turn change each characters role. In one formation, or paradigms as they are called, a character may be a fighter but in another paradigm the same character may be a healer. And you have to switch around through out the fight for many reasons. In other words its not near as mindless and there is a tecnique to it. Very cool.

Farming/grinding isnt as needed as it is in previous FF's. You get to spots (and the strategy guide, which is a must btw, tells you) where you can farm/grind and collect points to progress your character early but the game has "caps" so you cant spend days or weeks at the beginning and max out your characters to make the rest of the game easier. It works out pretty well.

The story is well very final fantasyish. Its alot to take in and I have a lot of questions about the story line but Im almost halfway through the story, but not the game. Not sure what that means but the stragety guide emphasizes that so Im assuming once your done with the story then you can further progress your characters somehow. Im not sure how that will play out. The story is good though, just complicated like I said.

The summons are still in the game but dont seem to be as big of a part as before.

Some of the things Im not crazy about are the speed of the fights. You have the option to "auto-fight" or something like that. In other words the AI will pick your actions and this works out very well for the most part. But part of the reason it works so well is you dont have time to manually do it everytime. Its just too fast paced. You have too much to look at and concentrate on. It will be a button masher at first but quickly becomes more. You can go to setting to set fight pace to slow but then it takes forever to do battles.

The summons are all of the creatures you see them riding in the still pics.

In the beginning I didn't know WTF was going on with all the L'cie, and Fal'cie, and Cocoon. I went back to the data log and read all of the crap there to get me caught up. The game is very boring, gameplay wise, until you get to the crystal lake (which is where I am at now). I did like the walkthroughs because FF loves to change everything up, fighting and enhancing your characters, with every new game.

I don't like the fact you don't explore an entire world. The games graphics are top notch! If you like RPGs you will not be upset with purchasing this game!

Yeah I know what the summons are, what I meant though was that they didnt seem to be used as much as in previous games. Maybe its because Im not far enough into the game and only have a couple unlocked but even when I have the chance I dont use them because the fast paced battles.

I think its pretty fun so far, I'm about 5 hours in. It really does give you the feeling that the battle is spinning out of control and you'd better choose something in the next two seconds though.

Hope it has something unique to it later...the Final Fantasy stories sure do seem to be starting to run together...empire...rebellion...bogus religions...repressed citizens...etc.

I could never get into FF12, but they series went really linear in FFX. I think the last Final Fantasy game that I enjoyed a whole lot was FF8. A lot of people didn't like it, but I thought it had the perfect blend of modern elements mixed with older final fantasy themes.

Funny thing is I've played all the FF's thru FF X, haven't played any since...and 8 was the ONLY one I didn't like or even end up getting thru to beat.

Just picked up FF II on SNES last week to reply and finished it last night haha.

Is that the one with the "gardens" and gunblade? I hated that game! I think I made it about 5 hours into it and gave up. They just went from cartoony to TOO realistic and the story seemed very dry to me. Then FFIX came out and they went back to cartoony, lol.

Oh I was going to add, on FF XIII, I mentioned the game held your hand through the beginning and it does but weapons upgrades? Seriously? They throw this crap all at you and I have been messing with it for a couple days and am just now getting it. They could have simplified that a bit or even introduced it in waves like they did the new battle system.

Yep that's the one...I made it about 10 hours in.

It wasn't the gardens shit that killed it for me in FF8, it was the magic system, and the bouncing between main characters the way they did.

Once you get past the storming of that satellite or whatever it gets good. After the parade for the Sorceress it gets even better.

I even enjoyed the magic sytem. There a place at the first of the game you can steal curaga's from enemies and get your guys like 3000hp by attaching them to your HP. I enjoyed looking for parts to upgrade my weapons, and the interaction with the summons. In a lot of aspects I enjoyed FF8 more than FF7.

You should be hung by your testicles and showered in Chocobo feces for that statement sir.


Back to FFXIII, I just got to chapter 12 and got Lightnings Lionheart weapon. I immediatley upgraded it to Ultima Weapon lvl * and now just need that one rare, expensive compnent to get it to Omega weapon. I must say the quick stagger on the weapon is nice. I still say weapon upgrading is a joke on this game. I know true RPG'rs love overly complicated shit but dayum!

how far into chapter 12 is it? I've been running around doing missions because I didn't want to progress just yet.

The lionheart is one of the first spheres you find in chapter 12.

FFIII-US Version and FFVII, nuff said.