I'd love for guys to tell me how Final Fantasy XIII was westernized. In fact, in almost all aspects, it was one of the most 'Japanese' games I've ever played. From people with Pink and white hair, to the world design, Over top type action in many moments, quite a few anime cliches, and a very anime-type story.
The 3rd most preordered game only behind heavy hitters like Diablo and Mass Effect. Its hard to argue with that.
No, Actually, Japanese gamers did. That's why Final Fantasy XIII JPN version for PS3 was patched a few weeks back to have an easy mode. I'm an importer myself of the original game and I've downloaded the patch.
http://www.novacrystallis.c...
But this isn't the first time Square's done this. In Crisis Core, they added an increased difficulty to the western version of the game ...
Woah dude. How is Western Testers bad? Isn't it important to get the opinions of Final Fantasy fans around the entire world? Its important to the fans and Square's business that they still relevant as a global franchise.
I think you should note that with your second point, with most Final Fantasy's excluding XII, the only "free roam" type area was the overworld map--and you should also note X also only had 1 open area; the calm lands.
As for the second point, the Omega Weapon battle is a free DLC, although a time exclusive for Amazon pre-orders.
Also out of 1-10, 4-9 were not turn based, they were ATB.
Tales Series is awesome and one of the best JRPG's series. If there is one critique I have to make is that it hasn't evolved very much in comparison to Final Fantasy--which always tries new things. Some of those evolutions are successful (VII, VIII X), some meet with much polarization (XII, XIII), but they do try new things more often.
Its a shame that it doesn't do better in West (Tales, that is).
The Omega DLC right now is free in Japan, so presumably Amazon has it a timed exclusive, then it will be free for everyone.
^
XIII had flaws, but people misinterpreted those flaws.
The inspiration they getting from western titles is the aspect of "Non-linearity". Linearity was the wrong criticism to make of FFXIII--Lack of Variety was the problem with FFXIII.
Even if XIII wasn't linear, it would still be a giant empty field of Monsters.
XIII lacked variety, there was nothing to do outside of combat, and even the combat lacked variety. Final Fantasy X was also ...
Kitase is part of what made FF so great. The person you mean to be blame is Toriyama, but not Kitase.
@Vortis
I am developer myself. In fact, Here's a video of some gameplay of my game:
http://www.youtube.com/watc...
Development tools are getting cheaper, yes, in fact I've developed that game with UDK myself. But I don't think you understand that those pretty graphics aren't free or cheap to produce.
I'm too lazy and studying for a test I have to take soon to ...
I know this is a controversial view point but Games actually are too cheap what they're worth. During the PS2 era, You made a pretty good profit selling 500k units of a game. Now, In order to make a decent profit, you have to sell around 2 million units.
Development costs are skyrocketing, and the demand for even bigger and expensive games keeps climbing. $60 is actually a pretty cheap.
^3DS XL would be pretty cool actually. A Giant 3d Screen sounds pretty interesting. I'd actually love it if they could make the top screen bigger without gaining in over all size.
Indeed it's going to happen--you can predict almost all modern hardware will get a redesign and be cheaper and sleeker. When is a better question. If anything, Nintendo is probably beginning on this project and it will debut later sometime.
This is also a good decision for companies to redesign their consoles/hardware like this regularly because they can find cheaper ways to develop the same hardware, which means a cheaper product for us, and a more profitable product fo...
dude. Have you ever seen Metacritic user scores? The only scores that people who hate this game are pulling out are some illegitimate "Japanese fan reviews"
^ Don't get me wrong. I'm not really praising Versus XIII, and I actually have played the full version of Type-0 in Japanese. At times, Type-0 strongly feels like a PSX final fantasy, but with a real time fast paced battle system and cinematic nature. What I said in regards to Versus XIII is that it both changes the Final Fantasy formula while keeping traditional values of final Fantasy like Overworld maps, Vehicles, Summons,etc.
@PsychoNinja, Haven't you been Championing Versus XIII all this time? In fact, you wrote an entire article about why this game is going to suck (even though haven't played it) and why Versus XIII (another game you haven't played) is going to be better.
You also go to every XIII-2 article and say how it's going to suck and its not Versus XIII.
Actually, I don't know about everyone else, but I don't want them to simply "Go backwards". I don't want them to just create a traditional FF in HD--I want them to innovate and surprise me while keeping what makes Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy.
Actually, Final Fantasy Type-0 and Final Fantasy Versus XIII are perfect examples of keeping the Final Fantasy experience and evolving at the same time.
Impressions from someone 102 hours in:
http://gamrconnect.vgchartz...
They must be quite confident in this game in order to release a demo. The last time Square did something like this overseas it was the FF14 beta, and that actually killed Pre-orders.
X-2 was a very mixed bag. X-2 had incredibly gameplay--You get an airship from the start of the game, many jobs that you could switch mid-battle, possibly one of the best battle systems, but its overly girly theme was a huge turn off for a lot off people