Final Fantasy XIII-2 Announced 152
An anonymous reader writes "Square-Enix has announced Final Fantasy XIII-2 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. According to Gamespot, 'The newly christened Final Fantasy XIII-2 continues the adventures of Lightning and her team of RPG vagabonds in a brand new adventure, utilizing the long-in-development engine (and, probably, some of the art assets) that powered the original game. And because Square doesn't have to spend all of that extra time developing the engine, players won’t have to wait nearly as long to get their hands on this newest iteration of the game. According to Square Enix, Final Fantasy XIII-2 (which, in case you haven't guessed, is a game title that is just as terrible to type out as it is to say with your mouth) is on track for release in Japan this year. [The game] should be available in English-speaking territories by "next winter."'"
I'll wait for the Turbo Edition (Score:2)
...sounds like they're trying to challenge Street Fighter for absurd numbering
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Re:I'll wait for the Turbo Edition (Score:5, Insightful)
In general I'm a fan of FF, but XIII really disappointed me. Perhaps even more than VIII, and that's a pretty amazing feat.
I think the number one thing about XIII that is really awful is it's absurdly linear gameplay; unlike any other FF, there is no "freedom" to do anything other than follow a single path through the zones - you can't even take two routes to the same place.
It's kind of sad, really. I actually haven't even finished the game; the gameplay and really typical storyline don't hold my interest. (FF has often oscillated between good stories and characterization to poor, but XIII is a combination of poor gameplay system (weapon mods are not even really customizable - you just max them all out), poor characterization, and linear play.)
I wonder what happened there - was it a change in artistic team? A side effect of the Enix merger? A side effect of trying to cater to both the PS and 360 crowds?
Re:I'll wait for the Turbo Edition (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the number one thing about XIII that is really awful is it's absurdly linear gameplay; unlike any other FF, there is no "freedom" to do anything other than follow a single path through the zones - you can't even take two routes to the same place.
At one point, the tutorial mentions that since you only have two party members, you should avoid tougher fights and come back when you're back up to three party members. Of course, being FFXIII, you can't ever backtrack to that point, and you have to fight the tougher monsters to progress anyway.
I'm not really sure what my point is, I guess that I think at one point it was going to be less linear, but they ran out of time or something.
I did actually complete the game, so I'm not really expecting anything amazing out of a sequel to it. If anything it more calls for a prequel to explain what actually happened between Cocoon and Pulse. Throughout the game you get this sense that there's this really amazing world here - that you're completely forbidden from seeing.
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This game, and ffxiv have made up my mind to never purchase anything from square-enix based in the FF universe ever again. Its all pretentious(sp) crap, signature of a yes-man company model w
Re:I'll wait for the Turbo Edition (Score:4, Insightful)
I got about 40 hours in. Set it aside for a month and then tried again to see if it would fare any better (took me a second try to get the hang of, and start enjoying, FF12).
The fact that they are making a sequel to the world's crappiest corridor simulator is just stupid. Someone needs to fly over to Japan, smack Sqeenix's executives upside the head and shout "STOP MAKING CRAP" in their ears.
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It could be damage control - some of the characters did have potential, and Square has shown that sequel gameplay can be VASTLY different from the original game. See X-2.
(Note: X-2 was a massive step down from X, but XIII-2 could be a major step up - it would be hard to go down.)
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It could be damage control - some of the characters did have potential, and Square has shown that sequel gameplay can be VASTLY different from the original game. See X-2.
(Note: X-2 was a massive step down from X, but XIII-2 could be a major step up - it would be hard to go down.)
...and yet X-2 was still better than XIII.
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For me, the key was getting far enough into the story where I was actually exploring the game without having to "level grind." In my first playthrough, I made some (in retrospect poor) decisions about how to set up my characters when I had only a tiny number of gambits to work with that made it so I was constantly "managing" the characters even in levels that hardly gave any experience.
On my second playthrough, I tried an alternate way of arranging the gambits, held my way most of the time on one character
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So much for three games per console/generation (Score:1)
NES - Final Fantasies 1/2/3
Super Nintendo - FF 4/5/6
Playstation - FF 7/8/9
PS2 - FF10/11/12 (10 was a two parter)
PS3 - FF13/14. Maybe they'll have time for a FF15 but it's doubtful.
>>>the number one thingabout XIII that is really awful is it's absurdly linear gameplay
FF10 was very linear too. It had to be because it was basically a movie that you played, and they steered you along that specific plotline. Anyway that linearity didn't bother me because the story more than made-up for it. (And the
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Whether or not that's a good thing is up for debate. Personally, I think FF peaked around VI and VII - every game before was a general improvement on its predecessor, every game after was a general letdown, with VI and
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I'll wait for the Linux Edition (Score:2, Offtopic)
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I wonder what happened there - was it a change in artistic team? A side effect of the Enix merger?
Yes. [wikipedia.org]
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The linear gameplay in XIII was AWFUL. I hope XIII-2 is significantly different. (Good news: the last -2 version of an FF game was vastly different from the game it was a sequel to. Bad news: X-2 was a major step down from X. On the other hand, it'll be hard to go downwards from XIII.)
As to change in team - This is definately a factor. The Final Fantasy team is still capable of putting out some great games (like XII), however the percentage of duds is increasing. It's a combination of "milking the fr
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The linear gameplay in XIII was AWFUL.
Well. Now everybody agrees about that. But at release time last year the player community seemed to be split with most commentators giving Squeenix a pass (Famitsu: 39 out of 40) and only a small minority flatly blow raspberries.
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VIII wasn't all that bad, it just had a different pace. I'm actually in the minority that like it better than VII (which was a huge disappointment to me, coming off of VI). To me, XIII and X share the crown for the worst of the series. X-2 is just in its own little special category...that should have never been born.
I'd really love to see Square do another throwback game like they did with IX. IX captured the essence of what make Square's 16 bit games so special. As long as square didn't screw around m
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The thing is, current-generation graphics take an absurd amount of work to make. I suspect that this is the real reason behind non-linearity: if you have two routes through a forest, you can't just draw tree-sprites according to a simple bitmap, as you could with 2D games. And voice acting does this for dialogue, too.
If a book writer
OMG I hope it's as good as X-2! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:OMG I hope it's as good as X-2! (Score:4, Interesting)
You joke, but X-2 was actually pretty good.
It's one of the greatest games of all time according to the Japanese rankings. Now however, it wasn't so popular in the western world.
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It was certainly more of an FF game than XIII was.
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You're referring to Famitsu's "all-time top 100" reader poll, presumably. Such polls tend to exaggerate the popularity of recent titles. Both the PS2 and GameCube versions of Resident Evil 4 got into the top 100 as seperate entries, for example, and it ranked FFX as the greatest game ever made. Not that those aren't good titles, but I suspect they wouldn't rank as well if the poll were repeated today.
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If it helps, I found XII the most refreshing episode of the franchise, because it has what I still consider today to be one of the best fighting systems ever.
yawn (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm waiting for my life to get really, really boring so that finishing XIII is actually the most interesting thing I have to do.
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sigh (Score:1)
seems to me like after FFX final fantasy has just become a complete sellout....i use to get excited when a new final fantasy was coming out....not in a long time...
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So, roughly right after they merged with Enix, who stopped caring about creating good games after the SNES? I agree, sir.
What's annoying is that we still can't get the remake that everyone, fanboy or not, wants. Bastards.
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Same here, but Final Fantasy VIII is where they jumped the shark in my opinion. I do like the spin-offs like Tactics, Crisis Core & Dissidia, but I don't think I can be bothered to play a FF RPG ever again.
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I didn't even get that far with it.
Let's wait and see (Score:5, Interesting)
There are two possible interpretations for this. The first, and kindest explanation, is that they have realised that they created some interesting fiction for FF13, but that they badly mishandled the game in general. They now want another stab at telling a story in the game-world they created, but with the game done better this time and with a proper ending to the story.
I could live with that. FF13 actually has a very decent plot for most of its duration (certainly the darkest of the FF-series plots, darker even than 6). The problem is that the gameplay is terrible and that they write themselves into a corner with the story at the end, such that they can only resolve it through a massive deus ex machina which doesn't fit with any of the narrative they'd built to that point. If they want to take another stab at the game world and do it right this time, then I'm ok with that.
If, on the other hand, they're just panicking about Square-Enix's currently precarious financial position and looking for a quick and easy cash-cow that they can pull together with unused assets from the original game (remember, they apparently created enough artwork to make a game twice as long as what they eventually released), then I'm a bit more skeptical. I am not playing another game which amounts to running down a corridor for 25 hours doing identical trash fights, breaking out into a small square room for a couple of hours, and then going back to the corridor for a final 5 hour slog.
Square-Enix have lost the plot badly during this console generation. They were masterful with the PS2 (I still think Kingdom Hearts 2 was the best game ever released for that platform), but these days, they seem to make a bunch of shovelware low-budget titles and to completely mishandle their big-budget ones. They said for FF13 that it just wasn't practical to do towns and sidequests on the current hardware generation, due to development costs. I hate to break it to them, but Mistwalker had already done it with Blue Dragon and (in particular) Lost Odyssey, the latter of which leaves FF13 in the dust.
Somebody really needs to go around S-E's offices with a hammer and smash all of their DS, PSP and Wii devkits. The company was at its best in previous cycles when its focus was on developing games for the upper-end hardware. They need to rebuild their focus on the 360, PS3 (and PC) and actually show us that they're still capable of that.
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No mod points, so just saying I agree with parent.
I've been a fan of FF, but FFXIII killed it for me. X-2 I could forgive and forget quickly, but not FFXIII.
I'll give em a chance with FFXIII-2, but I won't have high hopes.
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Ever since FF7, I have bought new FF games as soon as they are released, without even bothering to look at review scores. I'm including at least one of the re-releases or remakes of 1-6 in that assessment. There are very few franchises or developers I accord that treatment to. The Gran Turismo games and Bioware titles are probably the only other examples.
Following 2010, which saw both FF13 and FF14 released, the series will not get this treatment from me in future. The games get to go through normal pre-pur
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For me, the FF series has actually driven console purchases for me. I didn't buy a PS2 until FFXII came out (Worth it IMO! I did not buy many other PS2 games but still don't regret the PS2 purchase), I didn't buy a PS3 until FFXIII came out - NOT worth it! (At least not for FFXIII alone - I still have a great Blu-Ray player/UPnP frontend, and I have picked up a few other PS3 games.)
I'm going to be a lot more careful with future FF releases though.
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I didn't buy a PS2 until FFXII came out
Do you mean Final Fantasy X? That was the first one on the PS2. That and GTA3 sold me on the platform. Pretty amazing stuff for 2001.
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I went out and bought a PS2 the day Metal Gear Solid 2 was released :)
Metal Gear Solid 4 was the first game I bought when I got my PS3 :D
and Final Fantasy X is good, X-2 annoyed me too much.
Re:Let's wait and see (Score:4, Insightful)
Or maybe they realised creating a new engine and a whole new set of art assets wasn't strictly necessary to create a new game, which is exactly right.
Redoing everything everytime is just a waste of money, time and resources.
It's better, both for them and for the players, if they can make a new game reusing that technology.
Not quite. Nothing beats the evilness of Kefka.
The funny thing is that The Last Remnant was a better Final Fantasy than Final Fantasy XIII was.
Maybe if players weren't always asking for new graphics engines and better graphics -- even though those things are of little relevance to the quality of a game --, they could.
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My concern about building something quick on the unused assets from FF13 was that we would, once again, end up with a game designed by artists rather than by games developers. If you read the post-release interviews with Square-Enix about FF13, it's clear that they had guys in a room creating artwork for years, with no idea of how it was going to come together as a game. The storyline, battle system and character development was all a last minute thing. If Square-Enix are sat there now saying "wow, we have
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A game designed by artists rather than by games developers
And that, right there, is the reason Square Enix is having problems. For years, they've been putting a "character designer" in the role of game designer. Which is about analogous to having a graphic designer code your database - you end up with a giant mess.
Nobody in Square Enix, at least in the FF departments, seems to treat "game design" as a proper science, which means that, at best, you'll get gameplay that's decent but unoriginal. At worst, you'll get a mess of dozens of needless mechanics and clutt
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Or maybe they realised creating a new engine and a whole new set of art assets wasn't strictly necessary to create a new game, which is exactly right.
Redoing everything everytime is just a waste of money, time and resources.
I understand your point of view here, but there are exceptions. If you were a follower of Oblivion/Fallout games you would have noticed how dated the engine is in New Vegas. The bugs and issues in the engine keep getting compounded every time they release a new one. Hell, I consider myself lucky if New Vegas doesnt crash my PS3 every 30 min.
I agree, if its not broke dont fix it, but for the love of gamers everywhere, please please please do fix it if it is broken.
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I have played all three, and didn't see what the fuss was all about.
Well, maybe it's the console version that's crappy; it's originally a PC engine.
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I'm a PC player, by the way.
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I wish it was just a console problem...but the console versions of Oblivion and Fallout 3 are actually less buggy than the PC versions. Bethesda just isn't very good about bug killing.
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If you were a follower of Oblivion/Fallout games you would have noticed how dated the engine is in New Vegas. The bugs and issues in the engine keep getting compounded every time they release a new one.
Gamebryo paid the death penalty [wordpress.com] for that. Though they were reportedly making money off the engine, it wasn't enough to offset wastage on their other adventures.
Gamebryo looks to me like a project that started strong but lacked regular housecleaning so eventually the code base became a fragile, unmaintainable mess and they lost the ability to rapidly incorporate new developments in engine technology. It worked well for Oblivion with its effective terrain geometry hacks, and the shadow mapping and parallax
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Probably this was planned long before Squeenix's finances became a cause for concern. Frankly given the cost of blockbuster game development these days, any company that's not looking to reuse the assets and the engine in DLC or a sequel is making a bad decision.
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If you truly believe that developing for low end hardware is what's killing the FF series I can't help you. FF has deviated from its original intent into a cashcow. It's no wonder the quality has been lacking.
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The high end titles have suffered (13 and 14) because there has clearly been a lack of development focus on them. It's clear that Squenix's emphasis has been on bad-to-middling handheld titles, like the (entirely pointless) Dissidia games, the Kingdom Hearts handheld titles and rubbish like Crystal Chronicles on the Wii. The company was doing just fine right through to FF12 (which was difficult to get into, but pretty awesome when you did). It really only is with the advent of the current hardware generatio
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I think Japanese console games now lag behind their Western counterparts to roughly the same extent that they led them by in the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube generation.
The problem started showing up in the PSone days. Normally PC centric US/UK developers began making inroads in the console market PSone days, by the PS2, they were good and ready to show what they coud do, and they did.
Think about the games that defined the PS2, aside from MGS and Gran Turismo were they japanese developed games? No. Bout the only area where the Japanese developers were able to dominate was RPG's! And even then most of the best action RPG's were by non-Japanese developers.
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I think that's right to some extent. Thinking back, there were certainly Western developers who took an interest in the PS1 in a way that we hadn't seen on the SNES or Genesis. I know there was a sort of intervening console generation between those two, but my memory is highly hazy - certainly neither I nor any of my friends owned anything from then. The words "Sega Saturn" do stir up some inexplicable feelings of disappointment and regret, however.
I think you've correctly identified two of the three big fr
Re:Let's wait and see (Score:5, Insightful)
You're misreading what I said.
Like it or not, FF13 was starved of resource by Square-Enix. But as any project manager will tell you, there is more than one kind of resource. FF13 had plenty of budget. It had no shortage of artistic talent. But it was deprived of the company's core games development talent and of any sensible kind of project management. Go read the interviews that followed FF13's launch, when Square-Enix realised it had a turkey on its hands and began the blame game (which we've seen even more pronounced on FF14). The game had a huge number of artists working for many years to produce assets for the game - artists who just aren't needed for the low-budget graphically primative handheld and Wii games. What it didn't have was anybody putting work into developing game mechanics or even a storyline to hold the game together. This is why we got a game that was graphically beautiful (on the PS3, at least), but which just did not work as a game.
Meanwhile, the people who knew how to design games were off doing stuff like 356/2 Days on the DS. Now sure, those games have some pretty neat gameplay elements, but they are always going to be constrained by the limitations of the hardware. It's not just graphics; a lack of RAM in these systems constrains the size of the play areas you can use and so on (hence the mission-based structure that a lot of these games tend to take).
The results of Square-Enix's strategy have been plain in the performance of their games lately and their financial results for the last year or so (for which see google). The handheld and Wii games get ok-ish reviews and do not exactly set the charts on fire in terms of sales (they tend to do ok-ish in Japan and underwhelmingly in the West); they don't cost much to develop, but they're not exactly setting the world on fire. At the same time, the big-budget main-series FF games take forever to develop (remember, no effective project management) and get panned on release. If I remember, FF13 had pretty decent initial sales, but these fell off a cliff as word of mouth basically torpedoed the game below the waterline.
In short, Square-Enix does need to put its resource focus back onto its big-budget AAA titles; but by resource, I mean development talent, not money.
As for Japanese gaming falling behind the West; wake up and smell the coffee. It's clear you're a Nintendo fanboy - and one of the minority who hasn't been through the disillusionment process yet. Don't worry, it's not necessarily a permanent condition; I was a Square-Enix fanboy until the last couple of years cured me.
As a games developer, Nintendo have fallen comprehensively behind the West (and have now realised this and are trying to catch up; witness Metroid: Other M, though I wouldn't categorise that game as a success). They've fallen into another common Japanese gaming trap; failing to identify which elements of their old titles to preserve and which to discard. Hence we still get the antiquated lives system in Mario Galaxy 2, and hence we still get the same damned plot over and over in Zelda. You may like it, but the rest of the world is moving on. Nintendo's market these days are nostalgic 40 year old neckbeards who don't really like games, and new-entrants to gaming. I suspect they're not getting much in the way of repeat custom. Still, as I say, Other M (which does try to adapt elements from Western gaming in a fairly major way) is a first sign that they have, belatedly recognised this and are trying to adapt. Sure, Other M isn't great in itself, but it's a sign that there's hope for them.
Still, it's unfair to harp on Nintendo. Other Japanese studios have been just as guilty of failing to adapt to the current generation; even those who had some early successes. Look at Sega; they put out the sublimely good Valkyria Chronicles, which was one of the absolute stand-out games of the current console hardware generation, which married artistry and technical prowess perfectly and which managed (almost uniquely for this console generation)
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Meanwhile, the people who knew how to design games were off doing stuff like 356/2 Days on the DS.
358/2 Days was only published by Square-Enix, the actual development was fobbed off to some third party developer. Same with DragonQuest IX, I think. (Wikipedia says it was developed by Level 5.)
While I'm looking that up, I might as well pull up the developers for 0.00207175926 hertz. Uh, thanks, Google. 358/2 Days was developed by h.a.n.d and, again, only published by Square-Enix.
Pretty much if you try and name a good Square-Enix game in the last year, you'll find that it was only published by Square-Enix
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Yeah, that's right, and it highlights what is possibly Square-Enix's biggest problem (and I say this as a former fanboy) - they suck at retaining talent. Those external shops who are doing the development on the better games that Square-Enix publishes - half of them are Square-Enix (or often Squaresoft) veterans, who worked for the company back when it was still making good games (and I count FF12 as the last really good game that they put out).
Look at Mistwalker, who put out the best Final Fantasy game of
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You're misreading what I said.
Like it or not, FF13 was starved of resource by Square-Enix. But as any project manager will tell you, there is more than one kind of resource. FF13 had plenty of budget. It had no shortage of artistic talent. But it was deprived of the company's core games development talent and of any sensible kind of project management. Go read the interviews that followed FF13's launch, when Square-Enix realised it had a turkey on its hands and began the blame game (which we've seen even more pronounced on FF14). The game had a huge number of artists working for many years to produce assets for the game - artists who just aren't needed for the low-budget graphically primative handheld and Wii games. What it didn't have was anybody putting work into developing game mechanics or even a storyline to hold the game together. This is why we got a game that was graphically beautiful (on the PS3, at least), but which just did not work as a game.
I agree with that, but still it has nothing to do with DS games depriving HD games of resources.
This is nonsense and just plain false, as the HD engine for FFXIII and other SE games was being developed at the same time. DS game developers at Square-Enix didn't deprive HD game developers, this doesn't make sense, and sure didn't deprive DQ IX of resources.
Meanwhile, the people who knew how to design games were off doing stuff like 356/2 Days on the DS. Now sure, those games have some pretty neat gameplay elements, but they are always going to be constrained by the limitations of the hardware. It's not just graphics; a lack of RAM in these systems constrains the size of the play areas you can use and so on (hence the mission-based structure that a lot of these games tend to take).
So this can't be games that deprived FFXIII of game developers.
The results of Square-Enix's strategy have been plain in the performance of their games lately and their financial results for the last year or so (for which see google). The handheld and Wii games get ok-ish reviews and do not exactly set the charts on fire in terms of sales (they tend to do ok-ish in Japan and underwhelmingly in the West); they don't cost much to develop, but they're not exactly setting the world on fire.
I agree with that, except for DQ IX, they are crap games. This is the same for PSP games. Ac
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I feel the need to defend Mario Galaxy here. I really enjoyed the game, and not (just) because of nostalgia. The game was a showcase of level design and creativity. I've got a PS3 and a ton of games, but haven't found any that were quite as fun as Mario Galaxy.
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The handheld market is huge in Japan. Rather less so in wider Asia, I think, particularly in Korea which remains very PC-centric. To be honest, I partly suspect that the handheld market is so big in Japan because Japanese gamers tend, going off sales statistics, to be a little... shall we say... insular in their tastes, meaning they tend to stick to games from their domestic developers. And what their own developers give them are handheld games. I think the reaction to the announcement that Valkyria Chronic
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FF's original intent was to be a cashcow. It's called Final Fantasy because, had it not sold, the company would had gone belly-up.
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I'd love to see them reuse the assets -- it would be great to actually get to wander freely in all those amazing places in Cocoon that you were froced to sprint through without ever smelling the roses.
It shouldn't be hard to create something interesting between groups of people: Cocoonians (Cocooners?) who go down to Pulse to explore what they once thought of as hell, Cocoonians who resolve to stay behind and make their home a paradise by human hands, and of course (this should have been in the original) hu
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I think many Japanese developers lost their way with this generation, and to a certain extent with the generation before. So focused on making games for the conformist-wants-to-play-the-exact-game-in-the-exact-same-way-everyone-else-does fanbase, that they ignored changes in their fanbase outside of Japan. It may be why the Japanese RPG developers are doing PSP games, it's pretty much like doing a game for the PS1 or PS2, the expectations are different and they don't have to learn how to do more open-ende
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I think they learned their lesson from the reactions to FF13. Instead of taking place in a long hallway, FF13-2 will take place entirely within one single room.
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Really funny. Wish I hadn't already commented.
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I still think Kingdom Hearts 2 was the best game ever released for that platform
Close to it, but Shadow of the Collossus was better, with a far smaller team too.
The most amazing aspect of Kingdom Hearts 2 in my opinion was the rather full featured 3D constructive geometry editor for the gummi ships. Imagine a 3 year old doing constructive geometry. I saw this with my own eyes.
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Parasite Eve wasn't so much an RPG as it was an interactive movie.
I don't get it (Score:3)
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Or for that matter, anything at all to do with Chrono Trigger.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
Or for that matter, anything at all to do with Chrono Trigger.
They have done something with it. They used it as a legal weapon to kick their fans in the balls [opcoder.com] when the fans tried to make their own high-def rerelease.
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so what if it wasn't as good as one of the if not the greatest RPGs ever made.
That's exactly the problem....well, ok - the problem is that it didn't even hit the top 20. It ended up being like Godfather 3. It's got its warts, and in places it shines. But it's so far below its predecessor that I just can't take it seriously.
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Yeah, I have (all the way through) and I do have to agree with you there. They just don't seem interested in the same sort of quality as their SNES-era productions. Sad.
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Why do they keep putting time and effort into making sequels of shit games, yet they refuse to do the minimal-effort massive-profit thing of re-releasing FF7 with high-def graphics? :-|
That is such an awesome idea I might actually consider buying a game console just so I could play that game.
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I see where you are comming from but you are wrong about minimal effort.
This game will reuse art and all the code from the previous game.
A remake of FF7 would require to rewrite the entire engine for the PS3 or XBox (or both) and then to redo all the art. From a development standpoint, a FF7 remake is as hard to pull off as making a brand new game from scratch, with the only difference being you have the design documents already done (and that's the easy part.)
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A remake of FF7 would require to rewrite the entire engine for the PS3 or XBox (or both)
A non-high-def release is out on the playstation network already, I presume that means the code still works. Although because that's already sold well (fastest seller on the PSN, and still near the top), that's probably filled half the market, so demand for an updated version is less :-(
and then to redo all the art.
IIRC the backgrounds were a mix of 3D renders and hand-drawn scenes (This is why I particularly want FF7-9 and not FF6 or chrono trigger -- for pixelly games, big pixels still work; for hand-drawn backgrounds, they look bea
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A remake of FF7 would require to rewrite the entire engine for the PS3 or XBox (or both)
A non-high-def release is out on the playstation network already, I presume that means the code still works. Although because that's already sold well (fastest seller on the PSN, and still near the top), that's probably filled half the market, so demand for an updated version is less :-(
Most classic games released this way are wrapped around emulators.
and then to redo all the art.
IIRC the backgrounds were a mix of 3D renders and hand-drawn scenes (This is why I particularly want FF7-9 and not FF6 or chrono trigger -- for pixelly games, big pixels still work; for hand-drawn backgrounds, they look beautiful (better than 3D) at their native res, but scale up horribly) -- I would hope they still have the originals somewhere that could be re-rendered / re-scanned at a higher res.
The 3D character models would need redoing, but the characters have appeared in enough other modern squeenix games that they should have most of them updated already...
When FF7 got released for PC back in the day, they were not able to update the pre-rendered backgrounds. This lead to weaker reviews. Apparently, Square never had the foresight of rendering at high res and then scaling down the results while retaining the original renders.
I think thats irrelevant, though, because a proper remake would no longer use pre-rendered background and be entirely real time.
Where can I sign the petition (Score:1)
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that forbids Square Enix from continuing to use the word 'Final'?
Somehow it sounds like
"don't say you're mortal, you don't know if it's your final lifetime."
I believe that debate has been going on for a while...
Final Fight VII? Final Fight XIII-2? (Score:2)
that forbids Square Enix from continuing to use the word 'Final'?
It's probably next to the petition that forbids Capcom from using "Final" in future Mike Haggar games [wikipedia.org].
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Back when Square released the original Final Fantasy on the NES the tile was appropriate because it was their last chance to release a good game before bankruptcy. I think once you hit the fifth or sixth incarnation the "Final" part of the title loses its impact but I can see why they aren't rushing to change the name after having established such a big brand.
You can start a petition if you want, maybe even try boycotting the series, that seems to work... right?
Oh, goodie (Score:2)
A sequel to 2010's #1 Corridor Simulator? Can't wait!
What's next from Square? FF XIV-2, now with 97% more lag and still featuring the worst UI in modern MMO gaming?
This is one company I was glad to see suffer financial issues last year. They lost their way a long time ago and have just been putting out garbage and re-releases. It's long past time something wakes them up and reminds them that gameplay actually matters.
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I'm not worried about originality, I'm worried about how much stuff they do that just isn't very good. Like Nier. That was alright, but aside from the excellent music it was pretty forgettable. Still beats FF XIV by a country mile, but that's not saying a lot.
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That's a ridiculous name! Obviously the next title will be: Final Fantasy XIII-2 3D.
Is it a game this time? (Score:2)
Final Fantasy VII-2 please (Score:3, Interesting)
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Does Crisis Core or Dirge of Cerberus count? I doubt you will see anything else out of the FF7 franchise anytime soon.
FF XIII related injury (Score:3)
Kingdom Hearts? (Score:2)
Final Fantasy XIII-2 (which, in case you haven't guessed, is a game title that is just as terrible to type out as it is to say with your mouth)
Not nearly as terrible as Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance [youtube.com], which was announced the same day. The title just reeks of "quick, we need to come up with something '3D' can stand for!" I do admit that the game looks pretty neat, as does XIII-2... I just hope that they don't screw it up.
No thanks (Score:2)
I got the message with FF XIII. Squeenix thinks that painful linear grinding is something gamers must subjugate themselves to in order to earn a steady drip feed of treacly cutscenes. No thanks. If I want to watch prerenders I will watch a movie. If I ever hear the term "battle system" again I will just say no. I put FF XIII on the shelf to gather dust forever about 12 boring hours in. I couldn't stand it any more.
FFXIV Negative reaction and Squares response (Score:2)
donotwant? (Score:2)
Come on, the worst part of FFXIII was the extraordinarily messy final battle and ending (or in fact anything from when they left Pulse) where it seemed like the developers just gave up and decided to wrap up the game. And it was pretty abrupt too really. If any FF game is ripe for a sequel, this one is.
Besides, I'm waiting to see Sazh use the Lady Luck dress sphere.
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Wouldn't be the first time: they've already released FFX 2.
Apparently it was better than FFX, but I never got around to playing it. Somehow learning that they focused the game on the two most annoying characters killed it for me. The idea of having to listen to more Yuna is just... not appealing.
They shoulda just called it "Final Fantasy 14: We did better."
FFXIV already exists. Actually, never mind that. Given that I played it on launch, I'd rather forget that it exists. In fact, let's all just pretend there is no FFXIV, and that they've already done their "giant UI o
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Wouldn't be the first time: they've already released FFX 2.
Apparently it was better than FFX
Please tell me your trolling...
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Not trolling, but I may have been trolled: I've never actually played it past the opening.
You dodged a bullet there.
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But Rikku... in a bikini.
Lulu was the one I wanted to see in a bikini... but she's not even in that game. ;_;
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Well it is very awkward for English speakers considering we just don't string numbers together like that. Many people said 'X 2' instead of '10 2' because it was awkward. They don't have that choice this time.
The original Japanese has it written out as 'ten two' and 'thirteen two', borrowed from English, so there's no doubt how they expect people to say it.
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Many people said 'X 2' instead of '10 2' because it was awkward.
That, and the last time there was an "X2" it was a Capcom game starring a rebuilt Mega Man, pronounced ekkusu two.
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The word is "intersexed" damn it.