FFXIII-2

[vadre]

Liking the freaky look of that boss, as well as what appears to be a potentially very interesting storyline. All of the music so far has been great imo, even the slightly odd rap that came with Atlas.

However, as others have said, Noel's kinda lame and whilst the antagonist guy looks kinda cool I'm not a fan of the advent children sephiroth-style little smirk he did. Here's hoping he's not going to be too similar to him despite the obvious similarities theyre drawing between these two and Cloud and Sephiroth.

[Lucavi]

The more I see it, the less I like it. I think I've finally just grown out of the "modern" FF. If they made another 1-7, I'd play it in a heartbeat. If they made a new FF in the style of X or XII, I'd play it (so long as they radically changed the character designs). After seeing enough of XIII-2, it finally smacked me in the face that JRPGs are seriously always about teenagers saving the world and looking cute while doing so, and I just can't get excited for this one. XIII seemed pretty nice because it was at least an older woman (IE: not a tween) trying to save her sister, and had Sazh, but I can't do it anymore. I've been replaying FFVII and, for all its faults, I've realized that it wasn't some blind nostalgia; I just liked the series better back in that era, and even farther back.

No disrespect to anyone that plans on making this a day one purchase, of course. I just feel old now when I look at it; I feel bored of the same designs for lead protagonists and I feel embarassed at thinking of someone walking in and seeing (or hearing) me play it, just like I did whenever I had Vanille in my party, orgasming with each and every swing of her magic... string thing?

[Jaxzer]

The world just needs Versus and its darker more mature-looking theme...in total agreement though with the current gen jrpg bullshit

[Ayn]

While I read Lucavi's post and strongly agreed with it, I can't help but think this is a fitting picture:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...trollface.jpg/

..Sorry if it's old. I had to share it somewhere.

[Gokulo]

Ha, actually it's the first time I see this.

[vadre]

I was thinking the other day about how nice it would be if a final fantasy was made with a more mature target audience, where you weren't a bunch of god-kids slaying armies left and right. Making the characters actually seem mortal and like there's something at stake would be a good change.

Oh wells, maybe one day. For now I'm happy to play this and look away when the angst bubbles to the surface every so often.

[Elcura]

The more I see it, the less I like it. I think I've finally just grown out of the "modern" FF. If they made another 1-7, I'd play it in a heartbeat. If they made a new FF in the style of X or XII, I'd play it (so long as they radically changed the character designs). After seeing enough of XIII-2, it finally smacked me in the face that JRPGs are seriously always about teenagers saving the world and looking cute while doing so, and I just can't get excited for this one. XIII seemed pretty nice because it was at least an older woman (IE: not a tween) trying to save her sister, and had Sazh, but I can't do it anymore. I've been replaying FFVII and, for all its faults, I've realized that it wasn't some blind nostalgia; I just liked the series better back in that era, and even farther back.

No disrespect to anyone that plans on making this a day one purchase, of course. I just feel old now when I look at it; I feel bored of the same designs for lead protagonists and I feel embarassed at thinking of someone walking in and seeing (or hearing) me play it, just like I did whenever I had Vanille in my party, orgasming with each and every swing of her magic... string thing?

You make it sound like this is something new. This has been the case with 90% of JRPGs, even the ones you listed.

Hell, most, if not all of my favourite JRPGs are based around teenage characters saving the world/princess/country/universe/known reality and so on. Lost Odyssey is the most recent JRPG I remember playing with a mostly all mature cast.

[Lucavi]

I don't remember Barret looking like a 5-year-old. Actually, I don't remember a lot of kids, period, in older FF's. You had one or two token kids from 8 back. Hell, IV was the only one that had more than one kid, pre-9. Graphics also come into play here; older FF's had "worse" graphics, or rather, graphics that couldn't accurately portray the "style" that SE has obviously wanted to emphasize (Basically Kingdom Hearts. Forever.). If they did, I'm sure we'd all be a lot more sick of what we're seeing by now. In keeping within the FF genre, I can't really agree what your statement, Elcura.

For whatever reason (and we don't need to go into them - all that matters is that for whatever reason) the older FF's didn't have stiff voicecting, didn't have an overabundance of crazed belts and "Nomura-isms", didn't have the same cutesy teenage protagonist face modeled again and again and again (take this new XIII-2 male lead and you could swap him out of for any Kingdom Heart character and nobody would know the difference) and didn't have this much extreme... "cuteness". There's always been cute points in FF history, and there's always been humor, but Jpop didn't exist back then and it didn't seem to burrow its way into every JRPG like an infestation. Barrett shooting at the sky was hilarious, but not cute. Cyan's entire nation being poisoned wasn't very Nomura-ish. I could go on and on.

Things are certainly different now. Having Lightning as the protagonist helped to mask some of it a bit, but having her little sister with an equally-young male lead just brought it all back to the surface. There's more than enough genres that capture that market better, like the Tales and Star Ocean series.

[Ayn]

You know, this makes me think about Persona 2; both Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment. One of the cooler things about Eternal Punishment was that you had an older cast of characters (mid 20's or older in some cases). Innocent Sin was cool too, and had the group of mostly high schoolers.

I dunno, I just thought it was a cool contrast.

[Nevex]

I'm shocked to read that people are liking it less and less because it's the complete opposite for me. I'm just hyped this game as much as I was for every other offline FF before it.

Noel looks like a very decent male protagonist, we haven't had one since Zidane.
Serah and Hope, for the little we've seen, both seem to have tremendously improved since FFXIII, and that's saying a lot considering we all know how SE usually fails at improving bad characters after their debut in sequels and spin-offs (except maybe Vaan).
People are genuinelly looking forward to see the entire old cast return -including Snow and Hope, both supposedly disliked characters- which is another good sign.

The gameplay is top notch as it was in FFXIII (not to mention the introduction of combo attacks) and so are graphics and the music (loving the new battle theme).
To me FFXIII-2 has the potential of becoming the best RPG of the latest 10 years and embarass the older FFs.

I think you people who are unimpressed by FFXIII-2 have just became too used to WRPGs and their less idealized worlds filled with flawed characters (flawed=/=realistic imo), making FF and JRPGs in general look lighter and childish in comparison.
Different strokes for different folks I guess, I'll just stick to my FF since I'm not sick of it yet.

[Kuya]

I think you people who are unimpressed by FFXIII-2 have just became too used to WRPGs and their less idealized worlds filled with flawed characters (flawed=/=realistic imo),

lol

[Gokulo]

Wow, are you getting on the hype there a little bit too much?
How can you for example say that Hope improved tremendously, when we saw a couple second footage of him throwing his boomerang (but if you mean improvement because he pwned the monster, then yeah ).
Also what combo attacks? The only new thing they showed until now are QTEs, which a lot of people simply detest. And even more would agree with the "top notch XIII gameplay" (though I didn't have problems with it personally).

[vadre]

Considering we've only seen the first couple of areas (I think) in trailers so far, I imagine there's a lot left to reveal and I'd hope some combat mechanics are still under wraps (We still don't know what that wheel with the sword icon in the middle does, I'm certain it'll have a purpose rather than just something for show), but I really enjoyed XIII's combat and didn't get the major "You just press X" criticism being as the whole thing was based around selecting paradigms rather than the individual commands really. QTEs aren't something I've played in a lot of games so for me they don't really ruin anything, the main improvement for me that they've done is ditch the stupid length of time it took to switch paradigms the first time you entered battle in XIII (really bugged me).

[Nevex]

lol

As I said, different strokes for different folks. I guess Dragon Age may suit your tastes better.

[Alkar]

Serah is not exactly a teen anymore. Light was 21 in FFXIII and Serah is now 21 or older. She looks younger sure but that doesn't make her a teen.
And do we even know Noel's age? I can't remember right now but he can't be much younger than Serah.

[Elcura]

I don't remember Barret looking like a 5-year-old. Actually, I don't remember a lot of kids, period, in older FF's. You had one or two token kids from 8 back. Hell, IV was the only one that had more than one kid, pre-9. Graphics also come into play here; older FF's had "worse" graphics, or rather, graphics that couldn't accurately portray the "style" that SE has obviously wanted to emphasize (Basically Kingdom Hearts. Forever.). If they did, I'm sure we'd all be a lot more sick of what we're seeing by now. In keeping within the FF genre, I can't really agree what your statement, Elcura.

FF1 - Unknown, you can assume whatever you want about the character's age but most likely in their early 20s.
FF2 - Same, never really played it much, but you can assume that Firion and such are teenagers or turning young adults.
FF3 - Kids all over this motherfucker. Never played it much though.
FF4 - Cecil is 20, young adult, basically just out of his teens. Kain is basically the same. Then you have the likes of Rydia, Palom, Porom etc. Kids up in this bitch too.
FF5 - Kids up in this bitch! I kid, but there's basically only 1 old guy in the main party, everyone else is 20 or under. And Bartz acts like he's 5 for most of the time.
FF6 - I'll give you this, Terra as a lead is young all the same though. Most varied cast I can think of before 7.
FF7 - Cloud is a young adult too, Tifa and Aerith as well (Yuffie is easy), rest of the cast is older.

SE's character demographic is obviously teenagers and young adults, their characters for the most part support that. Old FF's are still about young people saving the world.

Even in XIII, Lightning was the same age as most FF protagonists. And in XIII-2 Serah is around the same age as Lightning (if not older than Lightning was in XIII). Noel looks to be the same age.

Sub-characters like Barret don't matter much to SE when it comes to appeal. Extra characters like that are fine, because they still have their young people to carry the demographic through the game.

For whatever reason (and we don't need to go into them - all that matters is that for whatever reason) the older FF's didn't have stiff voicecting, didn't have an overabundance of crazed belts and "Nomura-isms", didn't have the same cutesy teenage protagonist face modeled again and again and again (take this new XIII-2 male lead and you could swap him out of for any Kingdom Heart character and nobody would know the difference)

By stiff voice acting do you mean, no voice acting? By overabundance of crazed belts and Nomura-isms, did you ever stop to look at Amano's designs for the characters? They're equally crazy, yet people don't seem to give a shit. Half of Amano's original designs are so fucking crazy they have to be toned down to even be implemented. I love the guy (I respect both Nomura and Amano as artists a lot), but shit is mad.

Also, look at FF: Dissidia, proving that SE would make the old characters look exactly like the new characters if they remade them with current tech.

and didn't have this much extreme... "cuteness". There's always been cute points in FF history, and there's always been humor, but Jpop didn't exist back then and it didn't seem to burrow its way into every JRPG like an infestation. Barrett shooting at the sky was hilarious, but not cute. Cyan's entire nation being poisoned wasn't very Nomura-ish. I could go on and on.

Apart from X-2, I see more or less the same shit I've seen in past FF's with better graphics and different delivery. I'm not sure what you mean by cute, in terms of criticisms it's hard to pin down. Maybe you just don't like the music, idk.

Things are certainly different now. Having Lightning as the protagonist helped to mask some of it a bit, but having her little sister with an equally-young male lead just brought it all back to the surface. There's more than enough genres that capture that market better, like the Tales and Star Ocean series.

Again, Lightning is around 20, Serah in XIII-2 is around 20, Noel is likely around 20 as well.

tl;dr YOUNG PEOPLE RUININ' OUR GAMES

[miokomioko]

Final Fantasies would be 100x as gorgeous if they somehow managed to somehow stay true to Amano's concepts.

I wish Vivi looked like this. Epic crazy as balls Vivi.

[Elcura]

Final Fantasies would 100x as gorgeous if they somehow managed to somehow stay true to Amano's concepts.

I wish Vivi looked like this. Epic crazy as balls Vivi.

It's more possible with current tech, but I bet it would still get toned down for various reasons. But for PS1-era graphics, shit was so off-limits it isn't even funny.

[Hyan]

Either way the gameplay should be entertaining and seems to have a much larger role in this game, so story can take the backseat if it doesn't end up being good (that said it should be already better than the weak story-driven XIII).

The art direction is still superb regardless of Nomura (Amano has the same problem with his characters honestly- they all look the same...) And much more appealing than anything else I've played, maybe some games aside.

To have an actually mature story would be icing on the cake imo. Game is looking excellent and I'll have fun playing it through. As long as there's no missables like in X-2.

[Weltall]

Hype for this game each time I see more of it!