Recent Content by Soushirei

Durr, hello Mish. What's up

I'm chalking this up as a Borderlands title with a coat of fundamental sci-fi paint. I never really considered Bungie to be phenomenal writers--great lore, but pretty remedial execution on the storytelling front--but chances are I'll bite if they can live up to the ambitious vision they've talked our ears off about.

I'm very interested now to see what Sony's price point will be for the PS4 considering it's packing GDDR5. There are graphics cards packing less power than this that are priced easily over $1000.

I remembered this from E3 last year and was thoroughly impressed. Leave it to Ubisoft to continue plugging in new IPs during a period of of sequel-fever over the past few years.

It's hard to gauge at this point though just how functional this "hack anything" idea is during actual play. I commend them for offering two live demonstrations for the game thus far (that's twice more than what other developers can say about their upcoming titles) to spout a bit of integrity on the developer front, but I cannot help but be slightly skeptical of the delivery when you have the ability to rehearse well in advance. Will everything really be that intuitive, all of the time? Probably not. AC1 (if I recall correctly) was their first foray into open-world gameplay and we all know how that went. Ambitious ideas that couldn't quite be realized until its sequel arrived when they gained a better understanding of current generation hardware.

Regardless, this is quickly turning out to be a Day 1 buy for me, and I'm glad to see it's coming to PS4. Would've been awkward if it didn't.

Sounds like something I would have done.
We'll see how things go. I actually forgot the reason that spurned me to post today, but I imagine if there are interesting things going on, it'd be easy enough to drop a post here and there.

LOL isn't that the truth.

@Oerba: Is Mish not around anymore?

@libregkd: Good to see ya, gerbil.

@Misty: Been hanging in there. I see you've continued to climb the ranks, haha.

@P&W: Good times. We'll see if I can start showing my face a little more these days.

@Hayabusa: Yeah.. Drawing a blank but I probably do know you.

@Llave: Relic indeed. Barely recognize this place.

@Amaury: I was all sorts of trouble.

@keyblade knight: Does pink mean something else these days?

@keyblade spirit: Feels like eternity.

@Forsaken: Likewise. How've you been?

@Jiku: Probably why my fanfic remains unfinished.

@strfruit: Thank you. Kudos for the Sword Art ava/sig.

Thanks for your kind words.

I haven't posted all of the chapters on this forum, so in case you haven't seen the link it's on
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4080093/1/Kingdom_Hearts_III_The_Revival

where you'll find the most updated chapters. Thanks!

Yeah, I know what you mean. It takes a very long time before they give you the freedom to experiment with your party setups, paradigms, etc. I mentioned it before as well, but it may be due to the fact that they wanted to really limit our involvement with the battle system and focus primarily on the characters and the plot. By constantly switching our party leaders (without the ability to switch), and constantly shifting back and forth between the cast in sets of two (Vanille & Sazh, Lightning & Hope, Snow... and Fang), and without a sure way to customize these sections in a way we want, it pushes us to simply 'go with the flow' and spend less time in menus and more time watching the story unfold.

My take on why FFXIII has been one of the harder FFs as of late is because of the drastic changes in enemy difficulty as you go on. I found that if I just plow through enemy maps (even if I take on every single enemy on the way), there will still reach a point where I would be completely outmatched by a boss by the end and would have to try literally 2-3 times as hard to even stand a chance. What this tells me is that only veterans who really grasp the battle system will be able to smoothly go through the game's story without having to stop for some grinding, while those who are less skilled with it seems to be required to grind for a bit before each battle. For a game that is aimed for expanded audience, this actually makes a whole lot of sense. Grinding and boosting your party's stats via Crystarium is always a sure way to make sure you can defeat the boss up ahead, and as if to once again help direct players in the right direction, you're capped constantly at how far you can level up the Crystarium. So once you hit that cap, it's pretty much a signal to players saying "You're ready to take on the boss now."

@DA: I chuckled when I read the Dtoid quote: "fixes all the problems you have with J-RPG's but at the same time doesn't" (or whatever it really was). I think Square-Enix believed that prioritizing structure over agency for FFXIII was the only way to cater to Western trends while still maintaining a linear storyline. It's just unfortunate that they failed to realize that there were already elements of agency within their linear structures that might have been better off untouched. Like I said before, I'm fortunate that the designs choices made for XIII were on my side of the fence, but splitting the fanbase is really a cause for concern.

@Nouveau Nova: That's no surprise. Individualism isn't definitive of a WRPG preference, and I'm on the same boat--for my own reasons. I agree that I do enjoy watching the game's plot unfold itself and I simply take it in as it comes. It really is much like watching a long movie, but I'd rather avoid the term ever since the 'movie' and what defines interactive media exploded when Metal Gear Solid 4 came out. That was a horrible discussion.

As for playing exactly like FFX. It is true that I haven't enjoyed playing a FF title this much since FFX, but I wouldn't say it plays exactly like FFX. The event scenario choices made in FFXIII are certainly more action-oriented, and overall the progression of each section felt meaningful and memorable. FFX had many sections of mundanity and far less assistance with navigation. There is also an underlying sense of polish as you go through FFXIII, and party customization has substantially been reduced to how it was in FFX. The pacing was also radically different--improved if anything--but discussions for why this is so have already been done.