"As for those who claim Hope whines too much and ought to grow up - he's a teenager whose mother was killed in front of him mere hours ago. Give him a break, for God's sake."
He saw his mother valiantly sacrifice his life for him with a gun in her hands. He blames Snow for this. The kid is retarded.
Otherwise, I agree with you. The game is very enjoyable, especially for the combat.
"Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight, but Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right." - Hillaire Belloc, The Pacifist
- sigh* Sorry, I meant that his mother sacrifices *her* life for his.
"He saw his mother valiantly sacrifice his life for him with a gun in her hands. He blames Snow for this. The kid is retarded."
Actually, that kind of made sense to me. He's pissed off that his mom died for absolutely nothing, and since Snow was in charge of the ragtag resistance group, he can easily place the blame on him. Add in the fact that Snow, up until towards the end of Chapter 7, continues to act like nothing can go wrong, unintentionally insults Hope's mother (saying that war is for "stupid grown-ups" when the kid's mom just died is kind of a dick move), and refuses to even acknowledge that he might have really screwed up back there. He doesn't even remember Hope being there. Oh, and then he runs into Lightning, who also hates Snow for barely more valid reasons, which gives Hope even more reasons to want him dead.
I don't mean Hope was right in his unyielding hatred. I'm just saying, it's actually fairly realistic that he would feel that way, given everything that happened to him. He's not a grown, emotionally mature adult; he's a scared little kid, trying to blame someone for the bad hand fate dealt him. His growing out of it and actually acting like a man is one of the few good points I'll give the game's plot. And besides, Vanielle was far, far more retarded.
I've already posted a review, so I won't say why I disagree. Still, you present your points well, and don't fall back on the "It's Final Fantasy and I must support it!" fallacy I see on Game FA Qs. Even if I didn't enjoy it, I'm glad you did.
I actually kind of liked the premise for getting the characters together; they were all just in the wrong place at the wrong time and don't know too much about each other (except Snow/Lightning and Fang/Vanille), yet they're all thrust down the same path by a higher force. Worked a lot better than some of the other games, at least when it comes to having a good variety of archtypes (Zell wouldn't be found so annoying if he wasn't so damn out of place amongst the trained soldiers). I didn't mind Hope because I knew exactly what he was and what they were trying to do with it; he was a kid in a bad place who's life is all but ruined. I'd be frustrated as hell too.
Liked the battle system too; the best RP Gs are ones that force you to react to different circumstances in a fight, and it lets me do it with ease. Letting me figure out the combination of roles that I want with six familiar roles mid-battle(warrior/magician/tank/buffer/debuffer/healer) was a good move, and lets me do in seconds what has taken minutes in other RP Gs. Overall, I came in with low expectations, and I found that I genuinely liked it. It's not the best RPG I've ever played, but the set pieces are all there, are perfectly solid, and any game that tries out new things gets points in my book. Definately one you want to rent for a week first, but not the franchise killer so many people seem to be quick to paint it as.
I too find the game to have excessive hate. I picked it up rather recently, and I'm having a bloody good time so far. The combat system is pretty unique, and fun to manage and strategize.
As many others have pointed, the 'non-linearity' in most RP Gs is just an illusion, because you usually have only one path you can go anyway. Still, wouldn't have killed them to broaden the corridors a bit.
The game is drop dead gorgeous(I've only played the PS 3 version though), the combat is fun and the game is really interesting if you give it a chance.
Great review! More people should show what positive aspects this game has...
I agree with everything you've said, actually. I found the combat system entertaining and the characters and their interactions very interesting.
Sadly, the plot was full of holes and I despise {[Deus Ex Machina}} endings, so on the whole the game only came out as slightly above average for me. The characters and gameplay really weren't enough to make up for the abysmally bad writing.
Waiting on a TRS slot? Finishing off one of these cleaning efforts will usually open one up.
I disliked VIII, and found X nearly unplayable - both due to their underdeveloped characters and somewhat ludicrous stories. (Floating colleges doing battle with motorcycle squads, or extreme underwater soccer with Leonardo Dicaprio? I'll pass.)
So you couldn't play games with ludicrous, fantastical stories in a games series called Final FANTASY? Yeah, how dare the games be so unrealistic. They suck!
Yeah, seriously, give Hope a break; losing your mother is one thing. Having her die for no reason, while you're 14, irrationally emotional, suddenly cursed to be something you (initially) think is Hell-on-Earth and a doomed existence that literally tore apart your entire world in one stroke, plus being with the guy who was with your mother at her death smiling in the face of all this?
He's lucky he held up as well as he did.
Plus, the other characters are certainly interesting, and no amount of anything they did was annoying to me (yes that includes Vanille and Snow with Hope)
Also @ccoa, that was sorta the point. The entire story is the chess game of the fal'Cie luring in the cast to destroy them, getting stronger before that point. How they get to that point is irrelevent - things could have played out like FF 7 or FF 10 for all they cared. And the heroes have it no better, because they're fugitives desperately on the run from a society that hates them; they're literally making it up as they go, which is also the point. Not really bad writing so much as exploring how random events can realistically get imo.
And if anything, the Deus ex Machina was foreshadowed in the Datalog; Fang's original Ragnarok rampage was cut short by Etro herself. She could (and did) easily intervene again - in fact, the final confrontation is full of intentional divine interventions. However, as XIII-2 shows, this had serious Deconstruction consequences.
...also @dGalloway, Vanille was not retarded - just a scared little girl trying to run away from something horrible.
Why is this flagged
I don't know, but I doubt it was anything reasonable...
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Better than expected.
I honestly did not expect to like this game. I disliked VIII, and found X nearly unplayable - both due to their underdeveloped characters and somewhat ludicrous stories. (Floating colleges doing battle with motorcycle squads, or extreme underwater soccer with Leonardo Dicaprio? I'll pass.) I enjoyed XII a great deal, as it was just about the closest thing we're ever likely to see to a sequel to Vagrant Story. As XIII looked rather closer to VIII and X - at least from an aesthetic standpoint, more sci-fi than fantasy - I was poised to hate the thing.
In the end, and to my surprise, it's not a bad game. It's flawed. The pacing is severely off. You're stuck with several parties of two for far too long, and it's very slow to allow you to utilize its gameplay mechanics. As such, I can understand why many people grew impatient with it. On the other hand, the battle system is just plain fun. You certainly can't "press X to win," as seems to be the common complaint - at least, not after the first few simplistic hours. The first two-thirds of the game are quite linear before the world opens up, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking this is anything different. Every Final Fantasy has been linear; sometimes you have a world map that might fool you into thinking otherwise, or a few side-quests that open up later in the game, but all that's removed here is the illusion of linearity. You were always going from point A to point B.
The meat and potatoes of any RPG, to my mind, are the plot and characters. In this regard, XIII is a bit of a throwback to IV and VI, which were both more about the characters than about the story itself. Snow and Hope grated on my nerves a bit at first, but I liked them both by the halfway mark. As for those who claim Hope whines too much and ought to grow up - he's a teenager whose mother was killed in front of him mere hours ago. Give him a break, for God's sake. There are some intense and emotional scenes here, and the voice-acting is largely well executed (if a far cry from that of XII).
Give it a chance, and the game may yet surprise you. Sure as hell surprised me.