Final Fantasy XIII and Vs XIII CG wank trailers.

[demi]

I hear there's an auto fight option too

[y2kev]

Is that a comment on RPGs or a comment on the small number of RPGs you play? It's no more or less seamless than every other FF with a screen crash and a battle screen, it's about as fast as most of the other games given you can swap in any character you want at any time (and slower than X-2...), and strategy...yeah, it would be (I really like uneven turns for uneven actions) provided the game wasn't an extended fest of 3-4 monster rock-paper-scissors.

I think the fastest battles are something like DQ4, where an average battle lasts less than 10 seconds if you're quick.

[demi]

Good idea. You should set it to Auto Fight then!

Is autofight as complex as the gambit system? no.

Oh heh, sorry, I guess there is room for evolution to the if then else structure of things. Maybe FFXIII will allow arrays LOL

[cool breeze]

the only real problem I had with the FF12 combat is that you could either have the command menu paused or real time instead of one button letting you pause the game and select while another is all real time.  For quick enemies or times when you level up, it would have been nicer to have flights happen as I selected the next action.

[y2kev]

Yeah, I switched back and forth. I generally went to wait for bosses. But I also kept gambits off the main character.

[Oblivion]

Well I dunno what FFXII did that was new, but you hear people complaining about it all the time.


Also, enough with the lame Wii jokes demi. I don't even LIKE Nintendo. 

[demi]

I guess that's what makes them so underrated

[Oblivion]

[demi]

best pic ever... dude

[Himu]

Well I dunno what FFXII did that was new, but you hear people complaining about it all the time.

Tell me this doesn't look like the most boring rpg ever.

They heal you, revive you, do everything for you and the game is DESIGNED to play like that. Now do you see why FFXII sucks?

[Positive Touch]

Well I dunno what FFXII did that was new, but you hear people complaining about it all the time.

Tell me this doesn't look like the most boring rpg ever.

They heal you, revive you, do everything for you and the game is DESIGNED to play like that. Now do you see why FFXII sucks?

wow if only they would have given all of the monsters and bosses in an area a bunch of different special attacks so that you couldn't possibly enter in enough gambits to cover all your bases

oh wait coming up with your own gambit lists isn't actually playing the game; it only counts if you manually tell each party member to do the same attack over and over and over

and too bad there isn't some sort of middle ground, so that your party will only carry out a limited number of actions while you are free to manually do all the other shit yourself

[CurseoftheGods]

FFXII is a good B level RPG, but it's the worst 3D Final Fantasy in my opinion.

[Mr. Gundam]

Well I dunno what FFXII did that was new, but you hear people complaining about it all the time.

Tell me this doesn't look like the most boring rpg ever.

They heal you, revive you, do everything for you and the game is DESIGNED to play like that. Now do you see why FFXII sucks?

Hey loser, turn off the gambits when you're playing.

STOP IGNORING ME.

[TakingBackSunday]

Thats why it's broken.

[tiesto]

There were some XII bosses I beat without ever once touching the controller. Stuff like this made the game feel very disconnected to me. Like, I was just moving across all these boring, repetitive maps and collecting really mediocre loot (going all that way for a measely 56gil?), while my guys handled everything.

The only real areas in XII that are the slightest bit of fun, and exploit the game system interestingly, are the summon monsters and a few of the hunts. But they are all optional.

[y2kev]

The summon monsters are the worst parts  They're basically rebalanced in FFXIIi to be worthwhile.
 
The hunts are great, but the last few are crazy.

[Himu]

DISTANT I AM NOT IGNORING YOU. I said explicitly that I turn off gambits when playing on wait mode. The game is much more pleasant that way but it's still not fun to me mostly because of the controls I listed on the last page. Press x, look through command menu, confirm. Press x, press right, go through menu, confirm. Press x, press left, look through menu, confirm. ARGH. The only gambits I use are when leader attacks, rest of party attacks.

I want to beat FFXII before 2010. I at the imperial capital and fought Cid. He owned me for some reason. I'll boot it back up after xmas break.

Anyways IMPRESSIONS:

As for the new characters..

I would not call the big new male character's hairstyle an afro, but his hair does look like somebody put a tube over his head and then his scalp exploded, permanently frying his hair up in fine DBZ fashion. It's not long and ridiculously spiky, though. Just... exploded. His hair is VERY orange, and he either has it shaved into thin zig zag shave patterns on the sides of his head or he has a lot of tiny zig zagging braids there. He appears to be wearing a frayed or fur trimmed blue vest and is pretty clearly black. He is wearing off-white to khaki colored long shorts with simple gold patterns on them. He also has a silver necklace with a rectangular, flat silver pendant, wide sides horizontal. He's present mostly in the prison break scenes, helping Snow and the other new male and female characters, although he is the only character I was able to identify for sure on the train with Lightning before she broke out.

As for the younger new male, the first thing that came to my mind upon seeing him was Gippal, probably because of his blond hair and main colors pink and black outfit. He wears goggle-like headgear on his forehead. He does not look 'shota' to me, but he does look young compared to Lightning, Snow and big black new dude. He is blond. He looks to be older than pigtails girl by a couple years. He does talk with an affect. For people who know some Japanese, he tacks 'sska' onto the end of 'ja nai ka' questions to make 'ja nai sska' and 'ja nai ssu'. I don't know exactly the real life implications of the affect, whether its regional, age or culture, but it does exist in real Japanese speech. He seems to often have complaints about situations and courses of action, but help out regardless.

New female character reminds me of Yuffie a little, but her hair is at least shoulder length and appears to be tied back. She does not appear to be very patient. She has a purplish butterfly tattoo visible on her shoulder from the back. I think it's her right shoulder. Her outfit's colors are yellow, white and purple. She is wearing a very short, ruffled layered yellow skirt. She shows considerable amounts of skin compared to Lightning and Vanille. She's also wearing something like knee high fishnet socks. I believe she is shown using a gun.

As for what's happening in the actual trailer, there seems to be two separate parts being told at the same time.

First, there is Lightning rescuing Oerba Dia Vanille on a train with the three new characters and Snow. This scene takes place in the very green colored area with all the train tracks suspended in the air, visible in this image.

I'm not sure about the trailers' order of shown events, as both covered similar events while including different scenes, but the story follows this way..

Lightning and the new black character are on the prisoners' train, dressed in the same white outfits we have seen Oerba Dia Vanille wear when she is captured. They are sitting with several other prisoners. All of them are restrained by some kind of force from the wrist areas of the clothes they are wearing. They talk quietly and briefly to each other, and suddenly the train hits what appears to be some kind of force field barricade set up on its tracks, and begins to run out of control. Lightning jumps out to attack and crushes a remote control-like device with her foot, releasing all the prisoners from their hand bindings. Lightning waves her hand past her hip and begins to generate what looks like an electrical field around herself but appears to be connected to her gravity based abilities.

The large dragon-like flying beasts we have seen before attack the out of control train, seemingly in an attempt to stop Lightning from hijacking it. She shoots at them from the train with a large bazooka-like gun. Eventually they knock the train off its tracks.

The fighting ends up outside, where all the other new characters plus Snow join in. They have a lot of help in the form of what appears to be a small rebel force, armed with what appear to be standard, bullet-firing guns of fair power. Some of the train rails have been destroyed by the fighting, and the rebels assisting Lightning and company are entrenched in the rubble.

The people who escaped the train when Lightning broke out want to help them fight, and eventually Snow consents to letting them figh to. Among the escapees is Oerba Dia Vanille, who Snow gives a gun to. She takes it, pretends to aim it at an enemy, and says "Bang!"

The fighting seems to get worse, and a heavily armored enemy airship arrives. It blows away a good portion of the resisting fighters with one cannon blast, and Snow is knocked off the train rail while attempting to rescue another fighter and falls from view.

The scene changes to Lightning on a platform with a character who does not appear to be a main playable character by lack of remarkable clothing (His name is possibly Sazzu by the menus). The other character is a male in very plain clothing, although he appears to follow her around for some time as she moves and fights, possibly a guide character.

Lots of fight scenes are strung together, seemingly more for the purpose of showing off the battle menues than carrying the story forward, as eventually it breaks off to the second main storyline focus area: Lightning, Snow and Vanille in the frozen-looking lake area.

There are scenes of them fighting both monsters and soldiers there, and at one point Snow summons Shiva and uses her in battle to attack. Among his menus when using Shiva are attacks called "Diamond Dust" and "Engine". The attack he performs causes damage in many separate increments. In a scene we've seen in magazine scans, Vanille mentions she has seen "that" before, she thinks, although what "it" is is unclear.

Depending on which trailer you're watching, a dialogue about someone named Sera plays either over a scene near the battle at the train tracks area or in lip synch between Lightning and Snow in the frozen lake area, where Snow mentions Sera and Lightning becomes angry at him for not saving Sera, claiming it was his fault that whatever happened to her happened. Snow seems to believe that he can still save her, but Lightning thinks nothing can be done about it anymore. She hits him twice, and both appear to be near tears. He stops her with something he says about what he thinks he can do. (I believe she asks "What is it you think you can do, huh?" in regards to how to save Sera and he replies "Anything!")The blue golem-like creatures are present during some of the voice over conversation. It seems they are somehow connected to what happened to Sera. (Sorry, I'm fairly unsure about the goings on outside the train fighting scenes).

Throughout the train section of the trailers, many, many charactes are shown, most of whom appear to be rebel fighters and escapees from the train, but I've only described in detail the ones who have been seen in gameplay combat or who have unique clothing.

At some point in time (it's shown at the beginning of a trailer, but I can't pin it down chronologically), Vanille is shown standing outside in her white hooded outfit in the green-lit train area, and she mentions the "beginning of the end of the world."

The large green creature/statue like object in the first linked image also features quite prominently in the trailer, but I'm not sure what it is or what it means. In the version where talk of Sera is dubbed over the train scenes, it appears quite often while the conversation plays.

[Purple Filth]

sounds very interesting.

now... which system to get it for....

[Himu]

- Like XII, you view the enemies on the field of battle and have the ability to get out of the way

- Pics are from inside Cocoon

- If you have contact with the PSICOM (name of the soldier enemy) they whip out their guns and weapons and the battle begins

- The transition from exploring to transitioning is a simple camera and character lock and the menu pops up. Essentially the same thing as Chrono Trigger

- Also like the SNES game, you fight whatever enemies that are in the vicinity of your screen

- Before you enter into battle, you can take out your sword to ensure you get first attack, but at a cost (not mentioned what tho)

- During battles you can freely execute your attacks with whatever choice of combos and abilities you choose (?)

- During a battle, you can't just keep choosing attack or the enemy will gang bang Lightning (or Vanille... or Snow...) so try chaining attack followed by a Fire spell and see what happens! (their words not mine.. gang bang seems like an H-game lol)

- Chaining abilities like that will change the nature of the attack (?)

[Vizzys]

none of those pics work for me

rehost em or something

[Himu]

doing now

[Himu]

[Vizzys]

mecha shiva!

[Himu]

omg that art

THE ART!!!!

[MCD]

mecha shiva is my new fetish.

[Vizzys]

mecha shiva is my new fetish.

[Himu]

when can i pre order the ff13 demo

i am willing to pay 60 dollars

[MCD]

scratch that, this is my new fetish.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

[Himu]

[Purple Filth]

scratch that, this is my new fetish.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

 

[Rman]

These games must have crazy budgets.  No wonder Square went multi with XIII.

[Jansen]

mecha shiva looks SO FUCKING DUMB. as does carbuncle to a much lesser extent

[TakingBackSunday]

Is that Amano art?

[y2kev]

It doesn't really look like Amano to me. I doubt it.

[TakingBackSunday]

Yeah you're right, it's not.  But Ifrit looks vuuuuurry similar to an Amano design.

This game looks tight.

[dammitmattt]

So it only took Square 13 years to realize that Chrono Trigger's battle system was really fucking good?

[Himu]

rofl

Yeah I guess.

[recursivelyenumerable]

It doesn't really look like Amano to me. I doubt it.

Uh, it's not that hard to see who did them since they have SIGNATURES and all.  The world art is by Isamu Kamikokuryo (who also did the promotional artwork for FF12, like this piece: ), the summon art is by Chikako Nakano.

[y2kev]

I wasn't sure if Chikako was a first name or last name so I wasn't sure if it was a signature or just someone writing funny werds

[recursivelyenumerable]

So it only took Square 13 years to realize that Chrono Trigger's battle system was really fucking good?

how is it like Chrono Trigger?

[recursivelyenumerable]

also

  Hamauzu 2.0 : Bland Edition  :'(

[Don Flamenco]

fuck this shit, where's vagrant story 2

spoiler (click to show/hide)

home

[close]

[Himu]

also

  Hamauzu 2.0 : Bland Edition  :'(

Yeah

Sounds like something off of FFXII.

[Purple Filth]

famitsu scans are out, basically like the v-jump stuff (Red Hair girl's name, battle screens, etc)

[Himu]

gosh the graphics

[Himu]

Kitase apparently says in this interview that the development is coming to an end. At least, that's what some guy on gaf says. Need clarification.

[BlueTsunami]

Battle System sounds like Chrono Chross and yay, no more Random Battles!

[y2kev]

It looks like they came very close to the target video from two years ago in terms of conceptualizing battles. Looks sweet.

[Purple Filth]

got some info (stolen from gaf)

Information Acquired from the scans:

- Apparently the MP system is gone and is replaced with a "cost" system.

- In one turn, you can stock up a series of commands and activate them all at once, instead of choosing one. Also, depending on the pattern of the commands you choose, Lightning's actions will change. For example, choosing "attack-attack-fire" and "attack-fire-attack" will activate different movements of Lightning. At the beginning of the game the maximum number of stocks per turn is 3, but it is very likely that the number will increase as you progress through the game.

- ATB is updated in the game, where you can to control the amount of the ATB gauge to use. For example, if you choose the maximum amount of commands in a turn, the gauge will become empty, but if you choose only one command in a turn, the loss of the gauge will be minimal.

- A yellow bar is displayed on the top right corner of the screen, which displays a "bonus" percentage on the bottom and the chain attack number on the top. "BREAK" replaces the chain number when the chain attack is broken. The use of the bar and the meaning of the bonus percentage is still unknown.

- The field system is very similar to FFXII's where the enemies are visible, and you have the choice to engage in combat or ignore. On the field you can check the enemies' names and HPs before you go into combat.

- The main enemies from the Holy Government are the Gewalt hounds, and the PSICOM soldiers. When Lightning was still in the Holy Government, she had some kind of association with PSICOM.

- The giant mechanical enemy that Lightning has been seen with on the train belongs to the Holy Government, and is called Manasvin. It mainly attacks with lasers and with circular blades that are attached to its wings.

- During gameplay, Lightning's weapon's form can freely be changed by a command in the menu. From a blade, to a gun, and vice versa.

- Lightning uses her weapon with her right hand, while she uses magic with her left hand. She does not summon gravity with her own powers, instead, she uses a special mechanic that's attached to her left hand.

- Not much of the new character on the bottom left corner of page 3 is revealed, except the fact that he knows Lightning since she was with the government.

[Himu]

OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG



This battle system sounds like VP2 almost. zomg.

[Himu]

Oh man, this battle system sounds awesome. Very VP2-ish.

Here's hoping that in order to do all actions, you have to have an ATB charge. So that if you use say...Attack -> Attack -> Defend, in order to do another action, you have to have stocks. Whether it's defend, attack, use magic, or even use an item you have to have a stock. This will make your actions actually count in battle, make the game more tactical.

Make the enemies more tough like what is seen in the remake for Final Fantasy IV, give players the ability to move while in battle for tactical advantage -- not just for novelty like in FFXII, evolve upon the environment interaction in battle that FFX started and I think this battle system has potential.

So long as it doesn't have too much of an easy difficulty it'll all be good I think. One problem I have with games like FFX is that...they have a lot of great ideas, but the games aren't challenging enough to make use of them. Up the difficulty, S-E!

[tiesto]

Battle system sounds fun, a bit reminiscent of Panzer Dragoon Saga, with the multiple ATB levels.

[Himu]

Yes!!

[Don Flamenco]

that sounds like Crisis Core without the distinguished mentally-challenged roulette shit. 

[Himu]

or shitty pre-fixed battles

[Don Flamenco]

LAYTERRR

Yeah, so like CC, but with you can queue actions...or FFXII, but with gambits on-the-fly.  And I'm glad they're keeping the FFXII fields!  I just wonder how delegating moves to all your party members works. 

man, that demo is going to be tempting.  Might have to temporarily own a PS3 for it!

[Himu]

Yeah, I really enjoyed Crisis Core's battle system despite the simplicity. My main issue with was the shitty roulette. Seems I'm gonna love FFXIII.

[Himu]

Merry Christmas.

Big pics of FFXIII battle footage in here:

[Positive Touch]

FFXIII rules

[recursivelyenumerable]

Kitase apparently says in this interview that the development is coming to an end. At least, that's what some guy on gaf says. Need clarification.

he says the "base" of FF13 is finished, whatever that means.

he also says they currently have no plans for DLC.  they might end up doing it but if so they'll have to write up a new plan and it will be treated as a new project to create a new game that just happens to be sold as DLC, not as part of the current project.