Zero Punctuation: Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII

[shrekfan246]

Didn't Thief come out this week? So why aren't you reviewing that?

Because he's on a one- or two-week buffer between new game releases and his reviews of them. Unless his schedule has changed massively over the past few years, he generally starts scripting for an episode during the week/weekend before the video actually goes up, and he has to actually have time to, you know, play the games. Thief literally came out yesterday (only in America, it's not out in Australia yet) and from what I understand Yahtzee doesn't generally receive review copies of games. Or at least not directly from the developers/publishers like The Escapist itself.

OT: Sounds about right. I saw the first three hours of the game twice, played by two different people, and they both had roughly the same reactions. And the random spike of damage-sponginess for the enemies seemed extremely odd and incredibly annoying. A boss fight seven hours into the game literally had something like 500x the amount of health the player had at that point.

 

[Tony2077]

hmm sound like it was a good thing i stopped watching these and caring about what people think of games

 

[Ryan Hughes]

Poor Yahtzee, why does he do this to himself? I mean, I realize it is his job to play games, but honestly, he can take things easy on himself once in awhile and not go out of his way to find bad games to review. . . Though if reviews for Thief are any indication, this trend may continue for some time to come.

To be honest, I'm rather curious to see if he likes Thief. Yes, it's getting bashed by reviews, but I really can't fathom why.

I've put 10 hours into it so far and think it's the best recent stealth game we've seen. My only conclusion thus far, is that it's a little too niche. It doesn't really support the other play-styles that games like Dishonored and Splinter Cell have. Combat is very stacked against you. If you don't stick to the shadows and pay attention to the environment enemies spot you pretty quick. And you'll be hard pressed to keep using the best items if you don't take the time to swipe everything you see. It also requires a LOT of patience.

Maybe that's the problem. It's like they changed too much for hardcore Thief fans, but didn't make it accessible enough for people used to more action oriented stealth games.

For me, though, it has climbed to the #2 spot on my list of favorite stealth games (Chaos Theory still holds #1). It's got great atmosphere, solid mechanics, good pacing, and a surprising number of great little touches.

The little touches have me especially pleased. They did a lot of little things to make the stealth more engaging. Enemies hear it if you fail picking a lock. Walking over broken glass or in water make your steps louder. If you knock over or step on a vase or glass it will shatter, not only causing noise but also leaving debris on the floor that will crack if you step on it. If you leave a door, safe or chest open it will cause guards who see it to become suspicious. Lots and lots of really nice touches.

Yeah, despite how mean Yahzee can be to some games, on a rare occasion he will give a fair shake to a game disliked by critics and come to its defense. Though, I think he may fall into your definition of the 'hardcore Thief fan.' I have not played the game personally, but I was someone who was disappointed by Tomb Raider 2013, so the whole of Eidos and of SquareEnix is something I am doubtful about, I hope you can understand.

 

[geldonyetich]

Wow, Square-Enix really dropped the ball on this one: they could have named the game, "Lightning Strikes Twice" and it would have been a way cooler way to title a sequel.

[Basically the combat system revolves around an excuse to dress your characters in more and more skimpy undergarments.]

SOLD! I'll go out and buy a Playstation 4 immediately just to play this ga- oh, what? The Playstation 4 isn't reverse compatible? Well, I don't feel comfortable buying a Playstation 3 knowing it's already obsolete. Nevermind, then.

 

[Naqel]

I like the idea of switching classes mid fight, FF13 is just doing it wrong.

I'm waiting for Final Fantasy X-2 HD to get my fix of "probably combat, mostly dress up".
Original X-2 is just aware enough that it's shit to make it mostly enjoyable, and I hope they keep that feeling in the remake.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Did Yahtzee just make a Bender reference? Funniest review in a long time.

 

[Yuuki]

Christ, is the FF series really that godawfully bad at this point? I mean the game sounds at least FUNCTIONAL and that's more than we can ask for these days, but those colossal plotholes make no sense and it sounds like an absolute torture (and/or bore) to play.

I feel Square Enix are specifically targeting this at a very...specific audience. An audience I will never understand. Oh well, carry on FF series.

 

[Trishbot]

On the side of Lightning characterization? The guy who made the games/Lightning character said that she's really popular in Japan. I want to know if that's even true. Is a character that has no character really that popular? Heck, those idiot main characters in harem mangas seem to have more character than Lightning.

No. No she is not as popular as some have claimed. Lightning Returns debuted to poor sales in Japan as the lowest-selling console installment of the entire series (yes, even Dirge of Cerberus), and was outsold the following week by the 13-year-old port of the PS2 game Final Fantasy X. When your BRAND NEW game that is the final installment in a trilogy of games fails to excite people more than a decade-old port most players had already played, that speaks very poorly of your franchise's direction. For more perspective, it sold less than 85% of what Final Fantasy 13 did (from 1.5 million at launch to a mere 200,000 at launch...)

The reason Lightning is often brought out and trumpeted as "amazingly popular" (especially by her creepy creator, Motomu Toriyama) is because she "won" a poll in Japan as their favorite Final Fantasy girl... a poll conducted by 500 people... on Final Fantasy's official forum... right when Final Fantasy XIII-2 came out. That poll made the rounds all over the place, with the results published on their facebook account. Not exactly a good barometer of tastes, even in Japan.

 

[Charli]

"The enemies were too hard so I gave up."

Good review.

This is the same man who put out a Dark Souls review barely a week prior yes?

So clearly that is not his main gripe with the game or it wouldn't have steered him off.

Unless he gets his evil twin Smartsee Smoshaw to do JRPG's specifically he was quite within his right to call that bullshit a deal breaker.

 

[Krantos]

snip

Yeah, despite how mean Yahzee can be to some games, on a rare occasion he will give a fair shake to a game disliked by critics and come to its defense. Though, I think he may fall into your definition of the 'hardcore Thief fan.' I have not played the game personally, but I was someone who was disappointed by Tomb Raider 2013, so the whole of Eidos and of SquareEnix is something I am doubtful about, I hope you can understand.

Understandable, to each their own. They way I look at it, there's no way we'd get an ardently faithful sequel to the thief franchise. It just can't happen in today's market. Rather, I'm just glad we actually have a modern game that favors the ghost playstlye over the more action heavy ones. Unfortunately, given the reception it's gotten, we're unlikely to get anything else like it anytime soon.

C'est la vie.

snip

"Combat is very stacked against you"

There's combat in a Thief game. There's your answer right there.

Give it two weeks max, and you shall then understand. In the meantime please stop subjecting to yourself to that abomination of a game with the misplayed delusion that it's anything but a waste of time. You'll one day look back and realize what a regretful decision it was to give it the time of day, so I plead you now to stop before it's too late.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

You know, I think it was Vanille that had "hooters" that dispensed soft serve ice cream.

I mean, With a name like Vanille.... XD

Also, I'm kinda shocked at Yatzee hitting a massive difficulty wall of one hit deaths with no obvious solution. I mean, if he was taking all kinds of quests, shouldn't he have been easily able to buy new class upgrades/underwear/whatever it is to deal with that?

 

[sky14kemea]

Wait, so Chocorodeo, the person literally threatening the lives of about a dozen people on this thread, only got a 3-day suspension? Escapist, ban that person permanently. I do not take kindly to that type of behavior, and it should not be remotely tolerated by the moderators.

I was going to say exactly this.

It's amazing how much people are allowed to get away with here, and still be allowed to come back again.

If you have issues with the Moderation, please contact a member of Staff. Airing your grievances in a thread will not get any attention.

 

[KingdomFantasyXIII]

"The enemies were too hard so I gave up."

Good review.

Something more akin to this: The difficulty in the monster fights are asininely game breaking, since the explicitly stated game mechanics of "You have X hours to beat the game/save the world" makes grinding for levels something you cannot do.

On the side of Lightning characterization? The guy who made the games/Lightning character said that she's really popular in Japan. I want to know if that's even true. Is a character that has no character really that popular? Heck, those idiot main characters in harem mangas seem to have more character than Lightning.

It actually is. I found polls that showed this:

http://www.novacrystallis.com/2013/01/japan-ranks-their-favorite-female-characters-from-the-final-fantasy-series/
http://www.siliconera.com/2014/01/06/final-fantasy-airborne-brigade-players-vote-yuna-popular-heroine/

She's always in some form of top 3 females in the Japan FInal Fantasy. It's surprising to some I know, but this is the same country that thinks Tidus is the 4th most popular and amazing male main character in the FF series (save for Zack, Cloud and Zidane).

Believe me, Japan thinks ind much different ways.

 

[Thanatos2k]

Christ, is the FF series really that godawfully bad at this point? I mean the game sounds at least FUNCTIONAL and that's more than we can ask for these days, but those colossal plotholes make no sense and it sounds like an absolute torture (and/or bore) to play.

I feel Square Enix are specifically targeting this at a very...specific audience. An audience I will never understand. Oh well, carry on FF series.

Play Bravely Default. It's the high quality Final Fantasy game we have been asking for, while Square wastes millions ruining the Final Fantasy series on console.

The reason Lightning is often brought out and trumpeted as "amazingly popular" (especially by her creepy creator, Motomu Toriyama) is because she "won" a poll in Japan as their favorite Final Fantasy girl... a poll conducted by 500 people... on Final Fantasy's official forum... right when Final Fantasy XIII-2 came out. That poll made the rounds all over the place, with the results published on their facebook account. Not exactly a good barometer of tastes, even in Japan.

As someone who is a Tales fan and is occasionally subjected to the latest Tales character polls, it's ALWAYS recency biased. Lightning is the most popular character because she was the main character of the most recent Final Fantasy game and thus more recognizable to survey participants. No other reason. Certainly not because people actually like her.

 

[Char-Nobyl]

"The enemies were too hard so I gave up."

Good review.

Compare the real-time doomsday clock to the one in Dead Rising: what was its purpose? In Dead Rising, it was to give the investigation a sense of urgency. You're trying to find out why there's a zombie apocalypse in smalltown Colorado, but there's also dozens of survivors to rescue. It forces the player to choose: sooner or later, you're not going to be able to respond to all the distress calls and uncover the truth. The golden ending is still uncovering the truth, but there's a reason the second-best ending is still basically saving everyone you could without getting to the bottom of the overall mystery.

What the game didn't do was wildly alter the difficulty of the standard enemies. The zombies get buffed at night, but that gives you an ebb-and-flow of game difficulty. You get somewhat better at fighting zombies, but you mostly gain your edge by discovering new combinations of weapons and gadgets.

Now, imagine if Dead Rising increased the power and toughness of the zombies based solely on how long you'd been playing the game, and if you played the wrong missions or rescued the wrong survivors, you'd be up the creek without a paddle.

Technically, you're right, in the same way that if I said, "Ooh, look: Yahtzee posted another caustic, snarky review of a game that we knew he wouldn't like. How original" while rolling my eyes like a possessed marionette, but it'd be an oversimplification. The enemies got tougher and stronger, but that's what TES4:Oblivion did, and while it was still a good game, people hated that bog-standard bandits would suddenly have hellforged platemail and soul-cleaving blades just because you were at a certain level and the game decided to make things harder for you. It's lazy game design and makes leveling up feel pointless. Why bother why all it means is that, best case scenario, you're dispatching enemies with same strategies and speed at level one as you will a dozen levels from now?

Also, holy crap, everyone look at Chocorodeo's comments on page one. They're hilarious. It's like his brain warped and cracked from his red-hot love of all things FFXIII colliding with Yahtzee's cold disdain.

 

[BX3]

"blocking didn't seem to do shit. So what am I supposed to do now, game? Grind? Buy beter underpants? I've only got 4 in-game hours to do this bloody quest!"

There are few times where Yahtzee sounds this genuinely frustrated with a game.

 

[Thanatos2k]

Lightning keeps coming back because she is Nomura's waifu and he wants to dress her up like that girl at the conventrion who is trying waaaay too hard to get noticed.

He even gave her breast implants. By the way, is there an in game explanation of that, or do they just hope no one will notice?

 

[Roofstone]

"clop"

I googled that you horrible person! Not only am I scared and sad, I still don't understand what it means!

OT: I've played this game, it is the first game I returned on the sole basis that it is bad. It is just unplayably boring.