I beat an RPG for a change!

[freezingrayne]

Finished Final Fantasy 13 last night!




I was mostly totally down with the ending--Fang and Vanille saving the world=awesome, and I cried. A couple plot points confused me, thought. Like, why were they attacking Orphan in the first place? Isn't that the opposite of what they came to do? And I didn't get why Fang started to try to kill Vanille--possibly I missed something.

I am also 100% with the people who say wtf why save Cocoon? It's a world full of racist ass-hats who just seem to be partying all the time (from the amount of parades/public spectacles your party interupts) I say let it go to hell, much the way I felt about Inaba in Persona 4. Get the, like, five decent people out of it and then burn it the fuck down.

I personally didn't mind not having towns or extensive sidequesting/chocobo riding, which seemed to be the main point of contention people had with the game. That, and every single reviewer seemed to hate Vanille. Alright, she is fairly bubbly and her voice is a little high, but I found her incredibly strong and likeable. Perhaps some reviewers simply can't handle there being that many awesome ladies getting shit done all over the place.

There pretty much wasn't any point after the first two hours or so when I didn't want to hug Hope to death and ruffle his hair.

I also thought it was cool that the hero's journey didn't revolve around a love story. Enix has been pretty good at mixing that up. Final Fantasy X was about love, XII was about duty and king and country, and XIII was about family. Still, I am awaiting the day when the female protagonist has a love-interest. They never seem to.

They are apparently making an ff13-2, which, okay, more Lighting=definitely cool with me, but Enix has made sequels before, and we all remember how well that went. *Cough*Yuna*cough*. I guess as long as they don't make Lightning a popstar, I'll be okay with it.

Comments

[cypher]

hah, yeah, that last battle was sort of :x inducing. Like, there's Barthandelus for half the game going "you must kill Orphan! I will force you to kill Orphan!"

and the party goes, "screw you! we won't go along with your plan! We'll kill Orphan, that'll show you!"

And a double "hell yes" on screwing Cocoon. If we'd seen anybody in the entire place who acted like a decent human being without having personal ties to our heroes, I could have swallowed it, maybe. But every single person we ran into outside of our existing friend-group was a spoiled douche! Motivation to save the world, rapidly falling. (I sort of hope the party and their friends just go off and settle somewhere on Pulse, far away from Cocoon, after the ending.)

[freezingrayne]

Yes! And they open a Chocobo ranch! And Dodge is thrilled!

Have you seen the teaser-trailer for the sequel? Lightning's outfit is fairly impractical.

[green_animation]

I've given up on bitching about the practicality of all of the female outfits, and most of the males in FF. It saves time *twitches*

Ashe and FFX-II Girls being my main sources of contempt.

[freezingrayne]

I was fairly okay with everyone's clothes in FF12, if only because most of them were from a desert kingdom, where it would make sense not to wear so much.
Though it always irritates me when no one puts on a fucking jacket in the snowy mountains, but I guess that's a pain to render.

[green_animation]

I was just stuck on PINK. MINISKIRT. That would trap your legs if you wanted to run or kick or *gah* - at least Fran and Penelo could fight, y'know?

[freezingrayne]

Heh, yeah. And I loved Balthier's outfit, but a molded leather vest over a silk shirt? Hella sweaty.

[green_animation]

Oh yes, but a pirate - sorry, gentleman pirate - has to keep up appearances. And all the judges wearing all that heavy armour - necessary for warfare I think but so heavy and sweltering.

[cypher]

I haven't watched the trailer, but I've seen one or two stills. I'm sort of trying not to get my hopes up for the sequel, because the FF track record on sequels is pretty bad. (most of the FF7 compilation, X-2, Revenant Wings....)

...I mean, X-2 was sort of a cute, fun game, even, but it did such bad job of being a follow up to X. I really think they should have taken this concept they wanted to play with -- treasure-hunting magical girls have adventures -- and made it a standalone game instead of trying to put it in the FF series.

OPINIONS~

[freezingrayne]

Yeah--I'm totally with you on the sequel thing. I felt like there was no continuity with Yuna's character at all, and I actually really liked Yuna in FFX. I definitely don't think she deserves all the hate she got, which was mostly the same sort all females in video games get if they can't kill a man with their bare hands.

Though I kind of would like to see what would happen if someone suggested to Lightning that she take her newfound fame and become a singing sensation.

[lassarina]

I have to wonder if the killing-Orphan thing is because they figured, better them than the next poor set of dupes, and they'd figure out something to save the people of Cocoon later? That's basically the only explanation I can come up with. (The killing-Vanille thing I think is meant to be a side-effect of the torture/turning into Ragnarok, but I might be confused. I was only about 75% paying attention on my replay of the final boss battle.)

Most recent tidbit on XIII-2 is that you might be able to import stuff from your XIII save, in which case I am super glad I farmed all the fucking achievements.

I don't get the hate-on for Vanille, either. Even though usually she's the character I want to strangle (see also: Rikku etc.) I really liked her! And the multiple badass ladies in this game did not hurt my impressions of it one tiny bit.

The female protagonist had a love-interest in VI (Celes, and to a lesser extent Terra, had a love-interest in-game although it wasn't super explicit.) I sort of count Yuna as the real protagonist of FFX, but I can see the argument for why fucknut McGee Tidus is.

[freezingrayne]

I'm actually alright with Tidus--he is sort of an idiot, but at least he wasn't just another Squall or Cloud. Not that I didn't like them, there's just only so much self-hating I can take in a row.

I did find it sort of hilarious that he was going on about how "This is MY story!" when it's like, um, no. It's Yuna's story and you barged into it. Sort of like Snow shouting about what a hero he is, and at the end he's not even on the list of top heroes in the game--it's who you least expect.