The trick is to BANG THE ROCKS TOGETHER, guys.

[xyzzysqrl]

Okay so real talk, FF13-3 Lightning Returns. I played some of it. I really enjoy it. It's like Valkyrie Profile: Lightning Edition. (Hrist is gonna be PIIIIISSED.) But.

Professional reviewers. You may wonder why nobody takes you seriously. Let's review. A common theme among reviews I'm seeing is this: "This game is timed! I am always very very tight on time! Fights take forever, even though they stop time. There is an ability to stop time outside fights, but I don't really use it because the meter for it is very limited! Also, you can just skip all the boring random encounters because they don't GIVE you anything. Kinda bullshit that they expect you to run past so many of them."

The "very limited meter" to stop time is recharged by fighting the random encounters, guys.
You can basically keep time stopped and add an extra 8-12 hours onto a day if you just keep fighting things to build meter and then stopping time with said meter.
The difficult random encounters give you MORE meter. And new abilities, which you can combine and fuse and power-up to make fights not take long at all.

I'm having that feeling like I did when I got Romancing SaGa of "holy valkyrie jesus is EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD playing this game wrong but me?" (Warning: Asking this question inevitably leads to the answer "No, YOU'RE playing it wrong and that's the only reason you can pretend to have any fun.")

At some point, if y'all don't mind not having screenshots, I really SHOULD plow through the entire Final Fantasy 13 trilogy. After all, it's okay to admit that it a pretty decent game nowadays.

...That said, I am leaning REALLY HARD towards popping Final Fantasy 9 in an emulator and finally finishing that off. It was gonna be FF8, but look I'm gonna be honest, me blogging FF8 here would make it sound like fucking Yu-Gi-Oh.

"Squall, you've got to--"
"Shut up. Cards now."
"But Squall, there's a--"
"CARDS FOREVER."

(Also some of you have told me you've never played FF7 or FF6. Or any of these. ... Increasingly I feel like a squirrel Ambassador to Gaming for the nice people who associate with me for unfathomable reasons while I dribble out references to stuff you don't care about.)

Comments

[silveradept]

For some of us, it's getting to see a game played that we either don't have time or skill for, but people kept saying it was good or recommending it.

[kiruppert.livejournal.com]

See this?

This is why you should have kept being a professional game reviewer.

Just saying ;)

[glashund.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I thought 13 was perfectly fine, myself! I wouldn't rank it among my favorite FFs or anything, but at no time did it make me want to throw up directly on my shoes.

13-2, on the other hand, annoyed the piss out of me.

Oddly enough, 9, which just about everybody seems to adore, is one of my least favorite FFs...

[swordianmaster.livejournal.com]

Oddly, I was going to bring up the exact point you did! About 13-2, that is, not about 9. While I had problems with 9, I at least liked the AP system, given its similarities to FFTA.

FF13-2, on the other hand, is basically "HOW CAN YOU FUCK UP WHAT CHRONO TRIGGER DID RIGHT: A STUDY"

[xyzzysqrl]

I apologize because I'm likely to really enjoy FF13-2 -and- FF9 in public, at length.

[glashund.livejournal.com]

You get to!

[prezzey.livejournal.com]

I know that feeling all too well. I had it with FFXII - "is this SUPPOSED to be a programming game or am I completely getting it wrong?" Seeing it included in the Programming Games Wiki made me feel all justified. :D

At some point, if y'all don't mind not having screenshots, I really SHOULD plow through the entire Final Fantasy 13 trilogy.

That'd be really cool IMO!

[vulpisfoxfire.livejournal.com]

It's kind of amusing that FF12 is a decent game for everything but the way it's 'supposed' to be played. I *like* the Gambit aspect, and wish more games had some sort of user-controllable AI scripting rather than dealing with the stupidity most of them seem to have. I also like the more 'open world' aspect, which feels more like a MMO or Bethesda game as opposed to the traditional 'Take 5 steps and wait for the screen to swoosh' of the classic FFs and their bretheren. I like the characterizations...just not of the 'main' characters...Vaan, Panelo, and Ashe kind of annoy me, so I usually turn it into The Adventures of Fran the Bunnygirl and her Boytoy Entourage.

[swordianmaster.livejournal.com]

At least Ashe has a character, even if it's an abrasive, potentially unlikable one. That's more than Stripper Vest and his best friend Wrestling Singlet can say.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I liked FF XIII before it was cool.