@archermac great work tell me plz is the game still turn-based or hack & slash combat? thanks!
Neither. Previous games weren't turn based either, it's still ATB. You and your enemies still wait between actions and act when possible but the gap is a lot smaller now. You still queue commands which get executed instantly (switching schema, attacks, debuffs, guard) but there is no turn order. It's realtime enough that there is a mechanic of perfect guards if you react right before the enemy strikes which can insta-stagger some enemies. So it's not hack and slash, it's still a chess game but without waiting, a hybrid of realtime feedback action games and press-button-watch-action of jrpgs.
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Finished the dead dunes main quest. Time-managed labyrinth...interesting.
Playtime looks like this now. Again, roughly a third of the time is idling until I could memorize the characters and figure out some things. All locations are open after day 1.
00:00:00 tutorial & day 1 start (not a full day, just the night). 6 days left.
02:29:51 day 1 end - Luxerion half-done. Day 2 start with 5 left.
10:35:06 day 2 end - Luxerion main quest done. Day 3 start with 6 left (increased by + 2 instead of 1-for-1?!).
19:34:57 day 3 end - Yusnaan main quest done . Day 4 start with 6 left.
26:45:22 day 4 end - Wildlands main quest done . Day 5 start with 6 left.
33:21:48 day 5 end - Dead Dunes done. Day 6 start with 6 left.
39:17:54 day 6 end - Wildlands main #2 done. 37 sidequests & 49 miniquests done in total so far. Day 7 start with 6 days left.
So now the days are extended to the maximum 13 and I don't even know what to use them for, there's not a lot left it seems.
It's safe to say that, at least on easy, time is very manageable and the battles get a lot easier. I saw normal difficulty gameplay and that should offer a bigger challenge, there's also a hard mode.
Some Dead Dunes screens. I'm bringing it up again but this is very funny. The last few pictures are a conversation with a vendor NPC who is also a quest giver, I did not move the camera, this is how the conversation goes down, not just for me, also saw it during livestreams. As a bonus, a screen when I did move the camera to see what's the deal with the damned table.
Last edited by archermac on Tue, 26th Nov 2013 05:56; edited 2 times in total
There's a demo available now in japanese so an english one is sure to happen.
JP PSN or JP XBL.
1.75GB, it's the same as the E3 demo so it'll be a few corridors with 2 enemy types, a boss and a basic feel of the battle system. Not really a good way to show off how the game really works. It's actually the worst part since it's 100% guided. Also it's not 1:1 final retail, the demo has some extras and a fake time counter which is not in retail at the start of the game.
13-2 had one before release, that too was a copy of their E3 demo, and for this one they said they'll look into it a few weeks ago. They didn't even bother to create a new one and have it in English already anyway. Doesn't matter really because anyone can try it out one way or the other and even right now.
Up to the 24th sales of the game in Japan.
http://www.4gamer.net/games/117/G011794/20131127061/
Lightning Returns Final Fantasy XIII (PS3) - 277,082 (that's apparently 70% of what they shipped gone in less than a week).
That was 3 days actually, but whatever. First week sales of previous games
2009: Final Fantasy XIII (PS3) - 1,501,964
2011: Final Fantasy XIII-2 (PS3) - 524,217
Considering how inconsistent it looks and how many odd technical issues it has, I'm willing to bet that they already recouped all the costs with those sales alone.
So far, a 3.7/5 from me, it's alright but I still didn't finish it. I did beat both previous games to absolute completion and while there are better and worse points in each, they're all around the same with the first one obviously having a better lasting impression since it was fresh even if it was a corridor.
Still for this generation I like Nier, Resonance of Fate and Lost Odyssey a lot more. I did try Xenoblade but couldn't find the time to really dedicate myself to a playthrough. Tried but never finished Tales of Vesperia and The Last Story.
Last edited by archermac on Sat, 30th Nov 2013 14:48; edited 1 time in total
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It's a mistake to play on easy, I could have slept from day 7 until the end, by 10 I extincted everything and did all doable quests. Problem is other games let you finish at say 43% and then you go back to do sidequest, even 13-2 did it right but here in order to reach the last two hours of story you must reach the complete end either by doing everything or skipping days which feels stupid. It's needless to say that optional stuff is not as interesting as the main "campaign" so the experienece goes downhill. Pacing is not done right. Finished at 80h but it's realistically 30-50h depending on the completion rate.
All in all it's still an average game with some good elements and several scenes/tricks near the end which will remind the player about the "good times" from the past games. It really feels like a spin-off title. If I had to recommend one game out of the three it would still be the first one.
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It's a mistake to play on easy, I could have slept from day 7 until the end, by 10 I extincted everything and did all doable quests. Problem is other games let you finish at say 43% and then you go back to do sidequest, even 13-2 did it right but here in order to reach the last two hours of story you must reach the complete end either by doing everything or skipping days which feels stupid. It's needless to say that optional stuff is not as interesting as the main "campaign" so the experienece goes downhill. Pacing is not done right. Finished at 80h but it's realistically 30-50h depending on the completion rate.
All in all it's still an average game with some good elements and several scenes/tricks near the end which will remind the player about the "good times" from the past games. It really feels like a spin-off title. If I had to recommend one game out of the three it would still be the first one.
xenoblade chronicles is by leaps and bounds the single best jrpg since the ps2 era, you really need to go and invest the time in it.
and by time, i mean a shitload of time, the main story alone is worth 60-70 hours, if you are going for 100% completion, you are looking at 150 atleast, maybe even 200.
still, its fucking worth it, the game is a masterpiece in many ways.
xenoblade is the reason why i have a hard time enjoying games like ff13, they are not even in the same ballpark.
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It's a mistake to play on easy, I could have slept from day 7 until the end, by 10 I extincted everything and did all doable quests. Problem is other games let you finish at say 43% and then you go back to do sidequest, even 13-2 did it right but here in order to reach the last two hours of story you must reach the complete end either by doing everything or skipping days which feels stupid. It's needless to say that optional stuff is not as interesting as the main "campaign" so the experienece goes downhill. Pacing is not done right. Finished at 80h but it's realistically 30-50h depending on the completion rate.
All in all it's still an average game with some good elements and several scenes/tricks near the end which will remind the player about the "good times" from the past games. It really feels like a spin-off title. If I had to recommend one game out of the three it would still be the first one.
xenoblade chronicles is by leaps and bounds the single best jrpg since the ps2 era, you really need to go and invest the time in it.
and by time, i mean a shitload of time, the main story alone is worth 60-70 hours, if you are going for 100% completion, you are looking at 150 atleast, maybe even 200.
still, its fucking worth it, the game is a masterpiece in many ways.
xenoblade is the reason why i have a hard time enjoying games like ff13, they are not even in the same ballpark.
xenoblade chronicles is by leaps and bounds the single best jrpg since the ps2 era, you really need to go and invest the time in it.
and by time, i mean a shitload of time, the main story alone is worth 60-70 hours, if you are going for 100% completion, you are looking at 150 atleast, maybe even 200.
still, its fucking worth it, the game is a masterpiece in many ways.
xenoblade is the reason why i have a hard time enjoying games like ff13, they are not even in the same ballpark.
Well shit, that's a strong combo you guys pulled. I guess it's time to start Xenoblade for real.
I'll just say one last thing about this until the english release (or...ever? xD). This should be played on normal without focusing on doing everything in the first playthrough since NG+ Hard mode is the real deal, the GP/EP points gained are like 10 times smaller so there's no room to abuse abilities, money gain is bigger, weapon/shield/accesssories can be upgraded too and it feels tighter. Those are probably the remnants of the original difficulty they had in mind.
Now, Xenoblade. Luckily I don't have any other game I want to play now for quite some time.
To be honest, I'm not interested in the challenge - I want this trilogy done and forgotten, so when it comes out I'll blitz through it on Easy and then it's over, finished with. I'm still pissed about my PS3 dying which means I can never *really* finish FFXIII-2 thanks to FuckFuckix deciding that you can only finish XIII-2 if you buy the three DLC packs >_> No PS3, no free DLC and I'm sure as hell not PAYING for a game ending on the Xbox which is the only platform I have left on which to play XIII-2
The Sazh one has some minigames and an "important" fact about Chocolina
The arena one has nothing of value
Actual ending DLC is just two cutscenes with a battle executed poorly. Fail but gain points to increase stats, then fail again and again until you win. That's really youtube worthy material...no...it should have been ingame all along. The nodes used by the DLCs are already in the main menu's map lol
LRFF has a definitive ending, it's bad anime level faggotry but it's the end. No to be continued bullshit...actually it can't continue.
Guided tour in English, it's a really nice demonstration.
And some other ...thing...released a bit earlier. It's purely done for entertainment purposes, 98% of those things/conditions depicted don't exist in the game.
Spoiler:
.
Dev Diary pt. 2
Spoiler:
.
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In the meantime I'm 6 hours in Xenoblade, not feeling that decade worthy awesomeness yet but I guess it's coming. The world/story seems interesting and I guess it will live up to it's potential since everyone likes the game, I'm certainly intrigued to see how it unfolds.
The huge amount of sidequests so far are the worst type though, the auto-complete grind variant I referred to in LRFF as the third section, the microquests completed from the notice board....and there are 400 in Xenoblade? Fuck. That. I found one so far which actually required work and gives some backstory. :\ ...um..yeah...wrong thread.
Last edited by archermac on Tue, 17th Dec 2013 19:04; edited 2 times in total
just activate all the quests even if you dont wanna do them, many of them you ll finish along the way automatically by beating x beasts, finding x items etc. and gain a nice amount of bonus exp that way.
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It's a mistake to play on easy, I could have slept from day 7 until the end, by 10 I extincted everything and did all doable quests. Problem is other games let you finish at say 43% and then you go back to do sidequest, even 13-2 did it right but here in order to reach the last two hours of story you must reach the complete end either by doing everything or skipping days which feels stupid. It's needless to say that optional stuff is not as interesting as the main "campaign" so the experienece goes downhill. Pacing is not done right. Finished at 80h but it's realistically 30-50h depending on the completion rate.
All in all it's still an average game with some good elements and several scenes/tricks near the end which will remind the player about the "good times" from the past games. It really feels like a spin-off title. If I had to recommend one game out of the three it would still be the first one.
xenoblade chronicles is by leaps and bounds the single best jrpg since the ps2 era, you really need to go and invest the time in it.
and by time, i mean a shitload of time, the main story alone is worth 60-70 hours, if you are going for 100% completion, you are looking at 150 atleast, maybe even 200.
still, its fucking worth it, the game is a masterpiece in many ways.
xenoblade is the reason why i have a hard time enjoying games like ff13, they are not even in the same ballpark.
I always wanted to try this game due to all the raving reviews but never had the chance, Can i just download Dolphin , a rom-ISO of the game and bingo or is there some shaenagians like needing a SCHPxxx bios file like PCSX2 ?
Now sorry for going OT and hopefully asking this is not against the rules
I hereby use my self-given topic starter right to one fully off-topic post!
Yes you can do just that. Xenoblade doesn't need any special treatment, especially not any of the features which slow down emulation for accuracy, unless you really need the little screenshots of saves in the load menu.
Setup
You might want to turn on the vbeam speed hack from the game's properties menu when you add it to Dolphin and if you have an Nvidia card and use OpenGL for the graphics backend then the Vertex Streaming Hack (free speedup!). Those two options are the ones you should be aware of and try them on/off, other settings are either good at default, irrelevant or will most likely slow the game down. Resolution and AA is of course your own flavor with per-pixel lighting as an option too. I could have played it on a Wii but damn it looks so fine in high resolution!
Technical observations
There could be some issues with new revisions if you don't really have uber hardware to bruteforce through it but it's pretty much error-free and unlike old 3.5 revisions, I didn't have a single random crash with the 4.0 series in about 9 hours of playtime so far. Crackling sound from old revisions is also irrelevant now. Also remember that the game supports classic controllers, so that extension can be configured for the wiimote in Dolphin. It basically works like any other gamepad game then. The PAL version requires 25fps for fullspeed but it can be patched to 30 like the NTSC version which is obviously better if you can maintain that speed. I'll not go into performance here but it's not that bad since it doesn't require special treatment.
Dolphin notes about the stable 4.0.2 release and up to whatever dev rev is now the latest
New dolphin revisions have some inherit 200ms sound lag for OpenAL and DSound while XAudio2 has normal latency but the way it handles audio if framerate is not maintained is a bit more chaotic than OAL with proper latency...for my liking. Playing around with those audio options is probably the only thing you'll need to tweak or maintain full framerate at all times like a boss.
OpenGL is faster than D3D11 in general. D3D9 is obsolete, not even available anymore in new revisions.
That time limit is really off putting. It was that game mechanic that killed the Dead Rising games for me.
redacted for spoilers:
Quote:
Once every day at 6 a.m., Lightning must return to The Ark and submit a report
Quote:
I'm meant to track down numbers making up the access code that will allow me to infiltrate the cult, but I accidentally miss my chance to enter the slums, a section of the city that's only unlocked for a handful of hours each day. Thankfully, the game offers up a number of sidequests and alternate paths that I can take on at any time.
ugh.
Quote:
Each person you help pushes back the end of the world just a bit.
There are 5 main quests and each can be done in one day. The game could be easily finished in 6 days (of 13) but you must wait out or sleep until the last day...or do sidequests and hunt monsters because there's nothing to do for the main story....or stretch out the main story quests for whatever reason?
On easy you can abuse chronostasis constantly to stop time and do everything in one playthrough (1 quest impossible, 2 very hard). On normal you probably can't manage good enough to do everything in one go. Hard mode and gear upgrading is unlocked on the second playthrough. By everything I mean everything, the unnecessary completionist stuff.
Ishkur123 wrote:
Quote:
Each person you help pushes back the end of the world just a bit.
Timegrinding?
Poorly worded.
Each of the 5 mandatory main story quests extend the world by a day, and about 5 sidequests are enough to trigger another extension (attainable even during day 1!).
There is a "secret ending", a minute long CGI epilogue and that apparently requires ~50 sidequests to be cleared and some amount of microquests too. I'm not sure of the requirements, it's mentioned in the official Ultimania as a secret so I guess it's a thing. I simply got it since I did everything but with the english release coming soon we'll know more.
Too bad the preview guy said he doesn't get the combat. Whoever gets his ass kicked by Zomok is simply bad. That's the first fight that actually requires blocking and movement. If it's not press A to win-auto-battle like the last two games it's suddenly called extremely challenging...
also the english 360 demo was pulled, they released it early by accident.
I saw the video open with FFVIII and readied my neurons for a rage-induced blackout... but thankfully they were just talking about series highlights Pretty much agree with the entire list, though Dirge is definitely a fun action-RPG spinoff it is a very, very poor entry into the series. FFMQ is also one of my few guilty pleasure games, hehe, dat music!
For those who tried the english demo, it's the beginning of the game from the intro to the last point except for the existence of the timer and additional schema, abilities, accessories and gil.
They did include evade, mediguard and counterattack in the demo as other defensive options. Evasion works in any direction the stick is held. Slotting evade and a suitable guard ability gives you rolling/guarding options to effectively counter any attack type and look for openings to fulfill stagger conditions (listed in the libra screen). It's not necessary to use anything other than guard though, it's accessible enough to allow for a lot of playstyles and the difference will mostly be in speed and effectiveness...and in fun had I guess...
Too bad the enemies in that starting area are too weak and passive to even get a real taste of the system.
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tell me plz is the game still turn-based or hack & slash combat? thanks!
