You know... I have a guilty suspicion I'd actually like this game quite a bit. I've been giving it some thought, and a story driven game on rials might be perfect for me, since I tend to get distracted, and loose motivation. Zeldas, Marios, and Metroids and the occasional Sonic and Castlevania are about the only games I play anymore. I did pick up Assassin's Creed 2, and I actually like it a lot, I just can't really get into some games even though they may be good games. I'm probably only about half way through it, and probably play it about once a week.
FF13
For me and many others, the biggest problem wasn't the linearity. It was the pacing. I've never seen a game paced so poorly before. For the first several hours of the game, all you can do in battle is attack - and occasionally throw a potion on your team. You can't even shift paradigms (the main battle strategy) until about 5 hours in. With this sort of slow learning curve, you'd expect that the game never gets hard. But it does by the end. Which makes me wonder who exactly it was targeted for. The sorts of players who would need the beginning to be as easy as it is could never make it all the way through.
Cloral wrote:For me and many others, the biggest problem wasn't the linearity. It was the pacing. I've never seen a game paced so poorly before. For the first several hours of the game, all you can do in battle is attack - and occasionally throw a potion on your team. You can't even shift paradigms (the main battle strategy) until about 5 hours in. With this sort of slow learning curve, you'd expect that the game never gets hard. But it does by the end. Which makes me wonder who exactly it was targeted for. The sorts of players who would need the beginning to be as easy as it is could never make it all the way through.
This. No matter what, I keep dying at the last boss of chapter 9. It's really frustrating. "Hey, let's have this guy pull an attack that, even if your stats are as high as they can possibly be right now and even if the party is fully buffed, it'll most likley wipe them out!! And it'll bring the stagger meter down to 0!! AND if they manage to survive it, fuck them, he'll cast DOOM on the party's leader!" Yeah, that's assholeish.
edit - finally beat it. Jeeze, this game's bosses are either underpowered or just ridiculous. Oh well, at least now I can advance my crystarium again.
What gets me is that this game is being credited with giving Square one of its best earnings quarters in awhile. THey've sold millions of copies of it. Obviously some people are buying it and enjoying it, which just sends the message to them to make more like it :-/.