Final Fantasy XIII

[Souj]

Ive found magic+ to be pretty useless. Endgame, magic is only used to Break opponents. COM/COM/COM is your damage.
and dont bother making any equipment with auto spells. they don't last long and bravera/faithra is way better. I only used auto items when I plan on killing a bunch of weak enemies and they die in 1-2 attack rounds.

[Ramor]

so what should i be focusing on as a general setup? i'm sure there will be fight specific uses for the debuff/elemental resist accessories later, but just in general is there any good setup that works for the majority of fights?

[Souj]

I don't remember. I just remember I had Fang equipped with all the STR+ I could put on her.
One character had a Gold Watch on(when doing missions). I'm sure there's more threads in this section with better answers.

[Jakson]

Whoa, no auto spells? For most of the time, you'll be grinding money and the auto bravery and haste accessories are pretty much the best things you can be wearing. Obviously you're gonna take them off for the fights that last longer than 30 seconds, but you have a ton of grinding which consists of primarily sub-20 second fights (the Cieth that drop perfume/scarletite, i don't remember).

[Nevex]

Ive found magic+ to be pretty useless. Endgame, magic is only used to Break opponents. COM/COM/COM is your damage.
and dont bother making any equipment with auto spells. they don't last long and bravera/faithra is way better. I only used auto items when I plan on killing a bunch of weak enemies and they die in 1-2 attack rounds.

If you mean RAV's magic yes, but its role has always been to break the enemies in the first place.

Fang and Sazh are pretty much inept at magic. Snow has a low MAG stat but he's the fastest spellcaster (and I think I've read that he's a pretty impressive spellcaster if you max out his MAG-specific weapon), Lightning is pretty decent but nothing spectacular.
Vanille can easily deal 999,999 damage with Death if you switch to COMx3 during the animation.
Hope's Last Resort can do up to something like 500,000 (since unlike Death, LR isn't affected by enspells and he doesn't get Adrenaline) but it skyrockets the chain gauge.
Both of them can do insane damage with Ruin spam.
Melee spam from Fang and Light is still going to win over-time but the gap isn't that large.

End game, Auto-Faith accessories and RAVx3 paradigm are good to use if you want to grind in Mah'Habara, Sullya Springs and Taejin's tower or if you want to kill Flower Cactuars before they run away, but turtles are generally a better option.

I find the -ra buffs to be useless. On weak stuff you can easily get a 5-star ranking without them and on strong enemies they tend to wear off at inappropriate times (i.e. in the middle of a stagger). Enspells are much more reliable for damage imo.

[Souj]

Whoa, no auto spells?

for endgame, yes. grinding/farming is not endgame. Missions and turtles are.

I find the -ra buffs to be useless.

I'm just going to have to outright call you on this. -ra's are vastly superior. protectra and shellra, sure you don't always need, but I would use faithra/bravera.
3x buffers and it only takes a few seconds to cast.

[Alexymage]

FF13 is pretty good, just it didn't feel the same like previous series for me, dunno why...I didn't even bother to finish all of the missions..only like till 55 i think..lol

[BarthelloSylph]

I wonder if there is anyone like me, that has enjoyed every edition in the series (I've played since 7, and am halfway through 6 now). There are some that are tougher to replay than others (VIII, I'm looking at you) but I never ever have said... this game just isn't fun.

[Nevex]

I wonder if there is anyone like me, that has enjoyed every edition in the series (I've played since 7, and am halfway through 6 now). There are some that are tougher to replay than others (VIII, I'm looking at you) but I never ever have said... this game just isn't fun.

I have.
Speaking about the main series I think there's no "bad" FF.
I prefer the recent titles since they have less tedious/frustrating parts compared to the early ones, especially FFXII and FFXIII since they got rid of random encounters.

Every main FF title has huge popularity anyway, people might be picky when it comes to gameplay/story details but they're always ready to buy the next one when it's out.

[Tyrath]

I wonder if there is anyone like me, that has enjoyed every edition in the series (I've played since 7, and am halfway through 6 now). There are some that are tougher to replay than others (VIII, I'm looking at you) but I never ever have said... this game just isn't fun.

Except for 2 I'm with you. 2 can go straight to hell.

[Ramor]

yeah dude 2 was dildos compared to 1, it was such a bad transition if you ask me cause 1 was so awesome.

[Arnel]

I was going to play past the last boss, but after I found the trick, it just lost all fun for me.

[evilpaul]

Blood Sword or something?

Aside from dumping tons of shit into your limited inventory (a fire breathing fucking dragon for fucksake!) and the retarded leveling system, that's been in every SaGa game since, I didn't think 2 was really that bad for the 8 bit RPG era. It was quirky and broken, but next to FF3 I'd replay 2 over it. FF3's "endgame" was just ridiculous. You didn't need to grind much up to that point, but the difficulty, length, and lack of any save points was retarded.

[Kylewhataru]

I wonder if there is anyone like me, that has enjoyed every edition in the series (I've played since 7, and am halfway through 6 now). There are some that are tougher to replay than others (VIII, I'm looking at you) but I never ever have said... this game just isn't fun.

Of all the ones I've played the only one I had to stop playing because I just couldn't stand it was 13, I loved 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 12... even stomached 11 for a while, but I just couldn't keep going in FF13, hated it.

It may be because since XII I've become more accustomed to western rpgs, I pretty much don't like JRPGs in general anymore, I used to love them when I was younger.

[Strawhat]

my love stops at 12, tried to play it twice and both times quit half way~
still replay previous titles now and then, they're fun

[Melchoir]

I didn't like 1 at all, never put much time into it and I never got very far... same for the Legends games if those count. I enjoyed the rest except 3/6, 8, and 13 (yes, I enjoyed 10-2). 3/6 cause I never played it, 8 because of the magic farming that I was compelled to do (I would spend like an hour or so in the grass before the FIRST dungeon farming magic. Playing the game blind and suddenly you are stuck in a boss fight with someone who doesn't even have a GF junction? sux2bu)

13... well... I can't even force myself to get past the beginning tutorial so I haven't even really begun to play it. I keep telling myself I should play it to justify spending like $80 on it (dude at gamestop 'conned' me into getting the hardcover guide for it... I was psyched for the game when I went to pre-order so why not right?)... but I just can't.

[Jake123]

FFXIII was enjoyable but it was still a disappointment to me...

[orson]

I just finished FFXIII and am now pondering whether I even want to bother spending the hours grinding to finish all the quests. What really is discouraging me about this game is that nothing they did that was new or tweaked really improved the game except the graphics, the expansive area and difficulty of combat. Sometimes combat could be frustrating but at least you couldn't sail through by PLing yourself to make the game retardedly easy (until the very end.) Granted I know it's silly to say they copied that from a prior FF or RPG but it really felt that way to me most of the good stuff was almost a straight rip off of other games. The best feature they added to FFXIII was the retry option apart from that I can't really think of anymajor improvement over previous FFs.

I'd have to rank this as the lowest on the list of numbered FFs. I'm not trying to start a flame war or anything but what did you find to be new additions that improved the gameplay?

All I can think of is:
- Retry option
- The option try repeat hunts
- One amazingly huge area that was absolutely breathtaking (could they have had more of these if it wastn't on 360?)

Stuff I would've liked to see:
- Gambit style system for NPCs in battle
- The ability to switch between control of characters in battle
- An upgrade system more like FFVIII's crafting system. It sucks you basically have to wait til the very end for upgrading weapons to make it worth while. The accessories were ok but the weapons were poorly thought out.
- Finally where are the minigames and side quests??? Linear storyline is fine by me (see FFX) but it shouldn't force the player to have nothing else to do. Where's the Triple Triad or underwater soccer?

[Ansems]

I just finished FFXIII and am now pondering whether I even want to bother spending the hours grinding to finish all the quests.

The end game in 13 is one of the best parts of the game imo.

[Raen Ryong]

I just finished FFXIII and am now pondering whether I even want to bother spending the hours grinding to finish all the quests.

The good thing is, you won't really have to specifically grind (for exp at least...) much if at all. You'll get the exp from doing hunts/farming money etc. The bad thing about the endgame is the farming money aspect ;x depending on your luck, you can expect it to be a living hell.

I'd have to rank this as the lowest on the list of numbered FFs. I'm not trying to start a flame war or anything but what did you find to be new additions that improved the gameplay?

Do you mean the gameplay as in only that which revolves around mechanics etc, or improved the experience of playing the game? I like the rating system and hope they expand on it in their future projects (eg specific challenges, defeat Barthandelus without using a MED once etc). They placed specific emphasis on individual characterisation and whether you liked the (main) characters or not, you did end up knowing them very well (previous FFs often develop them as a group, minus a few "most important" characters). The whole clash of motives was also a nice touch.

- An upgrade system more like FFVIII's crafting system. It sucks you basically have to wait til the very end for upgrading weapons to make it worth while. The accessories were ok but the weapons were poorly thought out.

Agreed. Way too top heavy; having to be in endgame to have the funds to experiment safely or to even see significant progression is kinda sucky. My ideal kind of weapon upgrade system would be similar to that found in Dark Cloud 2~