Final Fantasy XIII - Goddammit When Are You Gonna Explain the Plot?

[The Rose Dragon]

I am about 24 hours into the game and I still have no idea what is going on, three characters haven't even gotten Eidolons of their own yet and I haven't gotten to control Sazh Szah the black dude since he got his. And the game is already setting up a false ending.

Am I way too slow in playing this game, or is the game way too slow in explaining itself?

[Blayze]

The game's just that terrible, I'm afraid.

[The Rose Dragon]

The game isn't terrible. I have never played a Final Fantasy game before (I have played Chrono Trigger, though, so I don't know if that counts), and I don't know how it compares to those. On its own, it's a great game. It's just that the pacing is unbearable. At 24 hours, I still can't change my battle team, I haven't even fought half the enemies the game has, and I have spent more time following Vanille act like a 5-year old than I have learning about the plot.

It's sort of like Lost, but with an amusement park instead of an island.

[littlebottom]

my advise is, just keep playing it, enjoy the ride, it will all be alright by the end of it, if it doesnt make sense, it doesnt matter, just enjoy it :smallwink:

[sol-decentguy]

my advise is, just keep playing it, enjoy the ride, it will all be alright by the end of it, if it doesnt make sense, it doesnt matter, just enjoy it :smallwink:

Yeah that sounds about right

[doliest]

Honestly, between the poor pacing, my own inability to understand what was going on..and of course the group opinion that we didn't need to be here, I felt playing this game was pointless, but back on topic, yes the pacing is horrible and the characters are aloud to take for granted knowledge the player is not told for hours.

[Kiren]

I rather liked the pacing, different then other games I had played.

Final Fantasy XIII is my favorite fantasy RPG.

Oh, have you been reading the journal entry things? They are incredibly helpful and will update if a past fact changes.

[The Rose Dragon]

Final Fantasy XIII is my favorite fantasy RPG.

Oh, have you been reading the journal entry things? They are incredibly helpful and will update if a past fact changes.

Final Fantasy XIII is not an RPG. There isn't any roleplaying to be done, since every character's every action is completely linear. It's a turn-based action game. A good one so far, but it's definitely not an RPG.

Also, yes, I have been reading the datalog, which allowed me to understand jack all, and in fact confused me even more. Maybe I should do it again after another 24 hours and see if I understand things any better.

[Tome]

The game takes about 50 hours or so to play through, not counting the ridiculous grinding necessary for the sidequest.

So yeah, it's going to take a while before you get everyone together. It shouldn't be too much longer though.

[Rawhide]

The plot can be explained quite easily. Yes, that's literally a spoiler under the spoiler. Open at your own risk.

fal'Cie = Fallacy

[Anteros]

Honestly there is a lot of stuff that they never explain at all outside of the help/information files in the menu screen. I'd recommend reading through those instead of ignoring it like you can do with most games.

It should make things much clearer.

[Zevox]

They aren't. Seriously, if you think the plot makes no sense now, just wait until you get to the ending. There is no explaining that mess.

Just enjoy the gameplay. For a Final Fantasy game, the only better gameplay I've seen is in 10. The way they worked things in 13 almost justifies actually using that awful "active time battle" system.

Zevox

[Calemyr]

Heheh. I remember my brother's reaction to the ending of the game. I believe it was a little something like this: "WHAT?! But didn't they... didn't he... what side are they... they just... but... Are they really that retarded?"

But, yeah, don't expect this one to make much sense. It is Final Fantasy VII^2, all pretty pictures and action and no real substance. The fights are fun, the CG is nice, and the overall setup is really pretty cool, but don't expect a great story. If you want the cliff notes, it can be summed up as follows: Big bad wants to die, our "heroes" decide to stop him by... er... killing him. With no plan on how to deal with the fallout they knew would follow his death. None at all. Yeah. They really ARE that dumb.

It's so sad it's almost funny.

Oh, and for those FFVII fans out there who are probably looking to beat me up right now... Yeah, I said it. FFVI all the way, baby! Kefka forever!

[doliest]

Really, I don't get how people enjoy the fighting. This is actually my least favorite game for combat. It's just so...simplistic. Mystic Quest had more complex combat.

[warty goblin]

The game isn't terrible. I have never played a Final Fantasy game before (I have played Chrono Trigger, though, so I don't know if that counts), and I don't know how it compares to those. On its own, it's a great game. It's just that the pacing is unbearable. At 24 hours, I still can't change my battle team, I haven't even fought half the enemies the game has, and I have spent more time following Vanille act like a 5-year old than I have learning about the plot.

It's sort of like Lost, but with an amusement park instead of an island.

This post confuses me. The story is making no sense and progressing at a snail's pace, and the mechanics, while enjoyable, are not exactly opening up either. The first strikes me as actively terrible, either because the writers have no idea what they're doing, or are being woefully self-indulgent. The second, while perhaps not terrible, hardly strikes me as the hallmark of a well designed game; which IMHO should either just throw the player into the deep end, or at least keep throwing enough new stuff and opportunities for making somewhat major gameplay choices at you to keep things interesting. Certainly after a literal day I feel I should have seen all (or at least the vast majority) of the game's mechanics, and can then get to the interesting and enjoyable work of mastering them.

[Dairun Cates]

You know, I didn't read all the logs (I read a COUPLE), but I never really had any problem.

The Fal'cie are essentially gods that basically choose mortals to become L'cie, or chosen prophets, to go do their will in the form of a focus. Not doing the focus turns you into a zombie, or a cieth. The Fal'cie also act as guardians and providers. There's two planets, Pulse and Cocoon. They're at war and so are the Fal'cie.

Due to Pulse Fal'cie showing up and supposedly telling citizens to destroy the world, they've literally started exporting anyone from the planet that they suspect is working with pulse in the slightest.

Because of this, people are in a state of fear and confusion. Numerous groups even WITHIN the government don't agree with how the situation is being handled and are attempting to remedy it.

That's all you really need to know in terms of terminology, if the rest is confusing you at that point, you're just confused by the plot in general and not the words. But honestly, for as much as people get upset over breaking the "taboos of RPGs", it's pretty straightforward for a JRPG plot, there's way worse and more confusing, especially in the Final Fantasy series.

Let the bad guy win and pray REALLY REALLY hard that love and friendship can triumph over a time loop, much?

[Mr. Scaly]

So overall, is the game worth playing?

[Zevox]

But honestly, for as much as people get upset over breaking the "taboos of RPGs", it's pretty straightforward for a JRPG plot, there's way worse and more confusing, especially in the Final Fantasy series.
I don't know what "taboos of RPGs" you're thinking of, but FF13's plot was not straightforward in any possible use of the term. I figured out the world's basic premise and terminology pretty quickly with the index they provide, and was even intrigued by the possibilities it allowed, but by the end they had done nothing with the Cocoon/Pulse fal'Clie conflict that had some real story potential and succeeded only making the most confusing ending I have ever seen in a video game. Just so that I don't have to say it all over again, my full thoughts on the game can be found here, a thread I made just after beating FF13.


Let the bad guy win and pray REALLY REALLY hard that love and friendship can triumph over a time loop, much?
At least that was stupidity that you could understand - the characters were morons, so they came up with a really terrible plan to win. I honestly don't know what happened or why with most of 13's ending.

Zevox

[Ranis]

You have this nice little menu under your pause button that explains everything with a small amount of reading. Try that.

[The Rose Dragon]

You have this nice little menu under your pause button that explains everything with a small amount of reading. Try that.

You mean the datalog, which makes things even more confusing. Before reading that, I had at least some idea what the Cocoon and Pulse were. After reading it, I was just completely lost, until the game had the decency to explain again in a cutscene.

[ZeroNumerous]

The plot: Some semi-divine beings want to commit mass genocide of humanity to call back their mother/father figure. They use human proxies to attempt to do so. Humanity does what humanity does best and shoots them. Lots of times. With bullets.

[The Rose Dragon]

The plot: Some semi-divine beings want to commit mass genocide of humanity to call back their mother/father figure. They use human proxies to attempt to do so. Humanity does what humanity does best and shoots them. Lots of times. With bullets.

To be fair, they also use sling staffs, boomerangs, fists and double-headed spears.

[Tome]

Let the bad guy win and pray REALLY REALLY hard that love and friendship can triumph over a time loop, much?

FF8's wasn't the worst FF ending. In my opinion, that title goes to FFCC: EoT. I'll not mention anything about to avoid ranting. :smallfurious:

[doliest]

I think Dairun meant out of the main series; 1-13. After all, I call XIII a contender for the worst even though I know of several spin offs I detest much more. Dirge of Cereberus, for example.

[Bad Situation]

Don't even bother trying to figure out the game. Your attempts will only be in vain.

It's a 'fun' game but it didn't quite appeal to my literary palate. However, I've found that if you just play it as a mindless action game you can save yourself from a world of headaches.

Alternatively you wait for someone to explain it with post-it notes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HWECQa23Cs).

[Terry576]

It's one of the few JRPGs where I agree with ZP's opinion:

"It was like the corridors I was running through represented the story: Incredibly bloody Linear."

My analogy to a friend was:

"It was like I was running through a corridor of plot, and the plot kept making less and less sense, and I could feel the corridor closing in on me..."

Incidently, the hardest parts in the game?

The parts without Lightning or Snow. Seriously. It's nearly IMPOSSIBLE to kill anything without either of the two.

[Zevox]

Incidently, the hardest parts in the game?

The parts without Lightning or Snow. Seriously. It's nearly IMPOSSIBLE to kill anything without either of the two.
:smallconfused: Er, no, I did not have any such problems. Were you just not using a Commando and a Ravager in your attack paradigms or something? Because as long as you're doing that, it shouldn't be too hard to deal with things, at least not until late in the game. And really, the only times when you don't have Lightning or Snow are during the Sazh/Vanille portions of the game, and since Sazh gets Commando and Vanille gets Ravager, well...

Zevox

[Terry576]

:smallconfused: Er, no, I did not have any such problems. Were you just not using a Commando and a Ravager in your attack paradigms or something? Because as long as you're doing that, it shouldn't be too hard to deal with things, at least not until late in the game. And really, the only times when you don't have Lightning or Snow are during the Sazh/Vanille portions of the game, and since Sazh gets Commando and Vanille gets Ravager, well...

Zevox

Well the dilemma was that neither Sazh or Vanille could ever compare to how overpowered Lightning was for me. And then I got to the part where you fight the two ridiculous bosses at once, Grass/Water or something.

Then I quit, and played Fallout 3 and Headshotted Raiders for an hour.

[Falgorn]

Then I quit, and played Fallout 3 and Headshotted Raiders for an hour.

Time well spent, I assure you.

Also, I feel your pain. I liked the gameplay, it seemed new and intuitive, but the story...it zipped right past me.

[Zevox]

Well the dilemma was that neither Sazh or Vanille could ever compare to how overpowered Lightning was for me. And then I got to the part where you fight the two ridiculous bosses at once, Grass/Water or something.

Then I quit, and played Fallout 3 and Headshotted Raiders for an hour.
Huh. I don't remember the boss fight you're referring to, but to my memory, I never had any real problems with the game's difficulty until reaching the boss of chapter 9, and after then not again until chapter 11. Heck, once Sazh learned Haste, that spell alone was enough to make up for his general mediocrity. I even considered using him in my party for that spell on a few occasions after getting the ability to choose my characters.

Zevox