I just need to have a rant about the combat

[invi]

There seem to be some really glaring problems with the combat in this game, and I need to get it off my chest.

1) No combat pause. For combat that's completely menu-based, it seems bizarre to me that there's no option to pause while you look at your options and find the right one. Having to speed-navigate menus and try not to press the right thing really isn't fun, especially when choosing the wrong thing and having to go back and choose something else can result in a game over because you didn't quite heal in time. FFXII had a combat pause, and it turned the game into one of tactics rather than a question of how fast you can find the potion option in your item menu. The relentless pace of combat in FFXIII robs it of any of the thoughtful depth it could have had.

UI problems compound this. At least at the stage of the game I'm at, I'm constantly flitting between different parties with different paradigm loadouts. Instead of being able to pause and look at my options and consider one that might be good for the situation, I have to go on panicky, knee-jerk reflexes and hope I don't choose badly and get killed because of it. It'd help if there was one consistent paradigm menu for all characters to make it easier to learn and remember.

2) Your party leader getting KOed means game over. Because you have all your eggs in one basket like this, it forces a really boring and conservative playstyle. Look at sections where you're forced to take Vanille as your party leader and arbitrarily are not allowed to switch leaders. She's a fragile healer/caster, and there are plenty of times when one or two strong attacks can knock her out. Since a KO means starting all over again, you have to play super defensively all the time. The moment that character loses a bit of health, it's straight over to your healing paradigms lest you risk another wipe. Not only does it make no narrative sense that your other party members can't just use a phoenix down (like in every other FF game ever) but it heavily penalises any high-risk strategies that might otherwise present the opportunity to deal really big damage.

This also seems to cause some big problems with RNG. E.g. the Enki and Enlil fight. Those two can hit pretty hard, and sometimes you just seem to get unlucky and they both target Vanille in rapid succession. That can easily take her from full health to zero almost immediately before you have a chance to heal.

3) The difficulty curve is a bit of a mess. 95% of the game so far has been completely doable by just pressing auto battle over and over again. The game doesn't do a very good job of introducing different combat challenges that require you to learn the slightly more obscure mechanics. By the time you reach an actually challenging fight, you're almost completely unprepared. It's really frustrating to suddenly hit a fight that kicks your ass after cruising through unchallenged, instead of getting a steady build up in intensity.

Anyway, that's all I have to say. I actually appreciate the attempt the game has made to try something different for the series (at least in terms of the combat) but it feels like a huge step back from what FFXII did. It's a shame because there could be some depth here, but the insistence of speed really ruins it for me.

[Kargor]

I think I played more than 99% by just smashing the auto-button. I know had to look up the final boss to discover its weakness to actually kill it, and I had to take more control of one of the characters to do it, but I don't even remember whether there were other cases like that.

I did do some grinding in between, like always, to be better prepared for the bosses. As a general JRPG rule, normal fights are always pushovers, bosses are always unfair.

I was actually more concerned about not doing a whole lot of upgrading -- because the system felt extremely tedious and very unpredictable. I did it up to some extent, but even then it was overwhelming and unclear what the best approach would be, so i pretty much ignored it.

I do remember NOT going back to chapter 11 after the end as I intended -- I left some unfinished business there and assumed I might be able to do these monsters after leveling up some more -- but finishing the last boss opened up another tier to level, and the only good leveling place was inaccessible...

Maybe those guys could have been killed before with the correct handling, like the final boss, but back then the idea to level up and come back seemed the right thing to do, contrary to a final boss you can't kill even though you're at max level.

[tiornys]

re: 1) you can Pause or you can enter the enemy status screen if you need to think. That doesn't directly help you navigate the menus, but it can indirectly help in several ways. With that said, it certainly helps to get more familiar with the menus so you can navigate them more quickly. Another thing that can help is trying to think proactively instead of reactively. It's much easier to get to the proper paradigm in time if you have a good idea of what paradigm(s) you plan to shift to well before you need to execute the shift.

re: 2) there's no need to adopt a highly defensive playstyle. All you need is enough defense to give you enough time to react to emergencies. One of the best ways to add defense is by equipping defensive accessories. You should have at least one Black Belt and enough random upgrading materials from enemy drops to easily max it. 20% damage reduction is a lot of extra resilience to help you mitigate the influence of RNG. I'd also advise giving some attention to when and whether your attacks are disrupting and/or interrupting enemy actions since manipulating enemy disruption to suppress enemy actions is one of the best ways to enable more aggressive strategies.

re: 3) you're right that the game doesn't require you to learn its mechanics, but it is constantly giving you different opportunities that enable and encourage learning different mechanics. I'd recommend trying to dominate the easier fights instead of settling for just getting by, as this will better prepare you for the more difficult fights.

As a general rule, player strategy and skill are extremely important in FFXIII. If you're feeling like you get randomly killed and there's nothing you could have done, then you're overlooking some things you could have done. If you're feeling like there's only one way to win any given fight, you're missing options that allow other ways to win.

[invi]

I feel you on the weapon upgrading, I've been doing it but there's always the worry that you're going to spend all your upgrade materials on upgrading your current weapon, only to find a different one five minutes later and it was all for nothing.

I've also definitely skipped a fair few of the optional harder enemies. Those tougher enemies just feel like such a grind, gradually building up the stagger metre and chipping away at their health.

Once more, if I had time to stop, think and carefully plan an effective combo that would get better results it might be more compelling, but instead it's just a grind.

It's a pretty bad sign when I've found myself picking up my phone to browse Reddit during fights because all I have to do is mash the A button to auto queue attacks.

[Razor<<Clawson>>]

"No combat pause" I think this is the part where Square always said they wanted the battles to be "reminiscent" of FFVII Advent Children so yeah no pause, everything's active as for "Auto battle" you can turn that off in the options menu.