Been putting off this game until I was able to get done with *something* in my backlog of games. It does contain spoilers, which I’m warning you of even though we’re technically past the time limit for such bans.
I actually was really into looking into this game at the very beginning. Then when I only knew of two party members (Lightning and Snow) I kinda let it fall by the wayside so that I only saw the rest of the party members when I got the game. Was basically right about all of the first impressions of seeing those other characters, except for Fang, who I assumed was a caster and turned out to be a dragoon (or as close to it as she can without the class title).
Graphics are gorgeous, but then that’s to be expected. Graphics are always going to be amazing in games that have the budget.
Story so far is very angst ridden. I’m not sure they properly portrayed the fear of l’cie before you find out Serah is one. However, the pace at which you, the player, finds out what the heck fal’cie and l’cie and cei’th are is pretty good.
After picking up the manual, like above I though Fang was a caster and was wrong about that, but I knew Hope would be a little whiny brat, and he was but luckily he got over it and is now turning out to be pretty strong considering he can’t be more than 12 or 13. My first guess was that Cocoon was some sort of prison, but being ‘pets’ does make a lot more sense considering all three cities I’ve been to are a huge mall, a seaside resort, and an amusement park. I am looking forward to more clarification on the ‘factory’ as it were.
I do, however, understand the comments about the ‘tutorial’ of Cocoon which consists of having your party picked for you and almost entirely being limited to two people which is just a real pain. But then don’t most FF games pick your party for you a lot of the time? I think X and XII were more the exception.
My only complaint now is that the game has a lot of fun throwing mobs with ridiculous hit point counts at you. A lot of the fights, it seems, are meant to last 8 minutes. They don’t nearly give enough ‘experience’ for that.
However ‘auto-battle’ is pretty cool. While a lot of people complain that it’s playing the game for you, just think about how much slower the fights would be if you were 1) Controlling all three party members and 2) Inputting every attack all the time. The auto-battle allows the battles to move fast, look visually stunning, and actually allows for the game to be *harder* since the computer picks the correct spells and abilities such that it’s *expected* for you to play at very near optimally. The part you have to play is getting into the right roles at the right time and occasionally tell the game to use more aoe attacks…
Also, whoever said you can only control Lightning must have complained before getting to the point where making your own party is no longer grayed out. Logically, why would they bother to give everyone in the party a summon if you were only going to be playing as Lightning?
It also seems just annoying that Snow is the first sentinel AND gets the first summon and then you don’t get to play him for more than a fifth of the time. However, linked experience is teh bomb.
My party right now is Lightning (COM, RAV), Fang (SEN, SAB), and Hope (RAV, MED). I haven’t gotten into fully buffing my party very often just because it takes so long. Maybe when Hope gets his summon and can buff a little faster.
And for now I’ve hit what I assume to be the ‘final’ boss before heading down to Gran Pulse and he’s really rough so I have to level up a bit on mobs that take way too long to kill. Yay.