Which chapter did you find boring?

[C2HGaming]

Now I haven't finished the game yet however if you must, just to help make you're point in this topic. I don't mind if you say some spoilers...just try to be very vague please? (lol) I'm really enjoying the story more then I thought I would.

Now so far what's taking the cake in terms of (boring) chapter. I really couldn't have been more happier once I finished Chapter 5, it was so long and dragged out and the final boss in that chapter (who I was told very tough) was a cake walk! It's just during this chapter I have to listen to (even though I like her I will say this) Lightning acting very b*tchy and Hope (he has the right to I guess) acting very whiny towards Snow.

[The Faceless Man]

(assumes you're referring to story, not gameplay - which this uh.. 'game'.. seems devoid of so far)

"nothing about the story so far appeals to me. it's very badly written. doing a story in medias res with way too much unexplained material is how you essentially write garbage. not kidding. it's like describing a mess in someone's room, and you're there to learn where everything comes from as you go through it. (verses proper medias res, where you find one or a few things out of place in the room and it all suddenly starts making sense).

the story is bad right out of the gates, so i don't have a lot of motivation, and i'm already bored, but we'll see how far i get."

[Syad]

I heard Hope's voice in English is pretty bad, wouldnt know because i play with Japanese voices and his voice is fitting, wouldnt say its whiny.

[Larry]

Chapter 10, the Ark. It's just five or six floors of copy and paste then you fight Cid who either requires you to go back and grind to beat on normal(♥♥♥♥ that) considering he can use his combo in phase 2 to nuke a character down from 100% health(Good luck if it happens to be your leader) or switch to easy and just take 5minutes to kill him anyway because all he does is guard and AoEs your entire party plus debuffs and dispells.

Chapter 11 doesn't seem too bad but I don't think it'll take as long as everyone says it does. I'm near Oeber and that should bring me to chapter 12. I'm not grinding for this ♥♥♥♥ so i'm sticking to easy. The game clearly wants you to grind in Chapter 11 normally.

Also, the side missions in Chapter 11 are just so, so bad... One unlocks at a time and you can't abandon one and pick up another. You literally have to do one, then another and then the next one(The unlock numerically) and some missions have you backtracking a significant distance... You learn that some of the side missions you HAVE to do to get certain features such as travel points and chocobos. Yeah, that's EXTREMELY lame and to get some of these mission travel points you have to have done the previous missions. It's just very, very poorly done.

[The Faceless Man]

"probably newer unpracticed voice actors? no... this seems more like bad editing, to be honest. but that's just my opinion. (i could be biased, i would like to hear some new voice actors in the industry and hope they get better)"

"why do characters in all japanese game make so many grunts and moans? it's as if every character is emotionally fragile and about to break down crying."

"♥♥♥♥ it... chocobos. that's the only reason i play these games now... kweeeeeh."

[Larry]

You need to learn what quotation marks are used for.

[The Faceless Man]

"i need to learn what quotation marks are used for."

[Puro™]

If you are a leveling junkie like myself you will find all parts where you can't fight and improve your stats boring, but in general there aren't very many boring moments in XIII.
My opinion only of course, it should also be said that I found the story very lacking(not directly bad) and a little confusing, however.. FF in a open world environment is always freaking awesome! Enjoy and wait for FFVII :D

[tiornys]

Chapters 5 and 7 were my least favorite chapters (gameplay-wise) for a long time. Chapter 5 got a lot more fun when I figured out how good Quake and AoE tactics were, and chapter 7 got more fun when I learned to love the Shiva. These days I don't really find any chapter to be boring.

Originally posted by Dr.Larry:

Chapter 10, the Ark.... requires you to go back and grind to beat on normal(♥♥♥♥ that) considering he can use his combo in phase 2 to nuke a character down from 100% health(Good luck if it happens to be your leader)

Or use a Sentinel to absorb his attacks, and/or equip damage reduction (Black Belts) and use defensive spells like Protect to make his combo non-lethal, or just use the strategy that about half of players stumble across and that experts exploit intentionally, and stagger Cid before he transforms and juggle the fool until he dies. He regularly clocks in on lists of the easiest bosses AND lists of the hardest bosses, all dependent on whether or not you skip the second phase.

Chapter 11 doesn't seem too bad but I don't think it'll take as long as everyone says it does. I'm near Oeber and that should bring me to chapter 12. I'm not grinding for this ♥♥♥♥ so i'm sticking to easy. The game clearly wants you to grind in Chapter 11 normally.

No, what the game wants is for you to have gotten good at strategy, and to do a decent amount of the side missions before continuing the story. Regardless--even if you skip the missions--grinding is never required in this game. There are always strategic solutions to every battle.

[Hom-Sha-Bom]

Every single one of them. Watch a cut scene. Watch another cut scene. Watch another cut scene. Run down a short narrow hallway. Fight 1 enemy. Watch a cut scene. Save game. Walk across the room. FIght 2 enemies. Watch a cut scene. Save game. Walk down short narrow hallway. Fight an enemy. Save game. FIght an enemy. Watch a cut scene. Save game. Watch a cut scene. This is garbage.

[GravityLoL]

Originally posted by Hom-Sha-Bom:

Every single one of them. Watch a cut scene. Watch another cut scene. Watch another cut scene. Run down a short narrow hallway. Fight 1 enemy. Watch a cut scene. Save game. Walk across the room. FIght 2 enemies. Watch a cut scene. Save game. Walk down short narrow hallway. Fight an enemy. Save game. FIght an enemy. Watch a cut scene. Save game. Watch a cut scene. This is garbage.

yeah, we know, u have thread on your own.

personally?
only the one with Sazh and Vanille and Sunleth Waterscape, rest is pretty cool for me,

[ChloeLovesDemons]

The whole game is pretty boring, really. It's a perfect storm of unfortunate decision-making and poor execution.

What I do enjoy about the game is how quickly you can level in chapters 10&11 and how effective leveling feels. It's always annoying when a jrpg has a good combat system but buries it under a dozen hours of tutorializing and gimping the player - FFXIII does this and it basically kills the game. When you DO get to fight, with a full party and worthwhile enemies, it's a lot of fun. Breaking the system by overlevelling is fun too, and the equipment and upgrade system would have been neat to mess around with if you could have done it earlier in the game instead of rushing to the "best" gear when the resources finally become available to you.

But the story side of the game.... eh.

[tiornys]

Originally posted by KillemDafoe:

The whole game is pretty boring, really. It's a perfect storm of unfortunate decision-making and poor execution.

What I do enjoy about the game is how quickly you can level in chapters 10&11 and how effective leveling feels. It's always annoying when a jrpg has a good combat system but buries it under a dozen hours of tutorializing and gimping the player - FFXIII does this and it basically kills the game. When you DO get to fight, with a full party and worthwhile enemies, it's a lot of fun. Breaking the system by overlevelling is fun too, and the equipment and upgrade system would have been neat to mess around with if you could have done it earlier in the game instead of rushing to the "best" gear when the resources finally become available to you.

But the story side of the game.... eh.

If you were to go ahead and try intelligently utilizing the upgrade system as soon as it became available, you would find that there are multiple worthwhile early investments that significantly alter the play experience through the next several chapters. Past chapter 4 or so, the game is not handing you tutorials; it's putting you on an obstacle course, and daring you to experiment and learn to excel. That the power level and usefulness of various options in combat remain obscure past the actual initial tutorials is absolutely a fault of those tutorials, but the idea that the game is nothing but tutorials until it completely unbinds your hands arises from nothing but blindness or laziness on the part of the player.

[ChloeLovesDemons]

Originally posted by tiornys:

Past chapter 4 or so, the game is not handing you tutorials; it's putting you on an obstacle course, and daring you to experiment and learn to excel. That the power level and usefulness of various options in combat remain obscure past the actual initial tutorials is absolutely a fault of those tutorials, but the idea that the game is nothing but tutorials until it completely unbinds your hands arises from nothing but blindness or laziness on the part of the player.

The enemies they feed you for the first half of the game tend to be so flimsy that if you do any leveling early on, which you almost certainly will, you tend to brush every encounter aside in a few rounds. You learn a lot about the paradigm system very quickly but you don't get to really test it against serious opposition for a long, long time. I found that pretty frustrating.

Using the upgrade system early on gives you a huge power boost up front but then leaves you hanging for several chapters before shops, materials and credits become available for the next upgrade stages. Sure it's influenced by your choice of weapons and accessories but I don't like the idea of upgrading anything that has a limited lifespan so I tended to stick to my preferred end-game weapons and baubles once I found them or figured out how to make them. If the combat challenge and full access to the systems were available earlier and spread more evenly across the game I would have enjoyed it a lot more, I think.

[tiornys]

Originally posted by KillemDafoe:

The enemies they feed you for the first half of the game tend to be so flimsy that if you do any leveling early on, which you almost certainly will, you tend to brush every encounter aside in a few rounds. You learn a lot about the paradigm system very quickly but you don't get to really test it against serious opposition for a long, long time. I found that pretty frustrating.

Certainly the game is pretty easy. That said, there are plenty of encounters early on that give you the opportunity to exercise some serious strategic chops. Some examples from chapter 4 include Uhlan + multiple soldiers, 3x Bomb + Pulsework Soldier, and 2x Pulsework Soldier plus 3x Gremlins. Chapter 5 has the various Behemoth + company fights, the 3x Barbed Specter fight, and some of the late soldier fights. Chapter 6 has Wyverns and Scalebeasts. Chapter 7 has Orions and Velocycles. Etc.

Using the upgrade system early on gives you a huge power boost up front but then leaves you hanging for several chapters before shops, materials and credits become available for the next upgrade stages.

The game is constantly handing you upgrading materials through treasure spheres and enemy drops. The only things you really have to wait on are catalysts, and there are plenty of ways to keep investing that don't involve transforming items.

Sure it's influenced by your choice of weapons and accessories but I don't like the idea of upgrading anything that has a limited lifespan so I tended to stick to my preferred end-game weapons and baubles once I found them or figured out how to make them.

I understand this attitude, but it's not very rational. You can boil everything in the game down to time. Yes, you do save a certain amount of time by keeping all of those early materials/gil until you can buy the most efficient materials, and then investing only in your final items. However, the amount of time you're saving that way--the combined value of all those early game components and gil drops--is negligible on the scale of endgame gil making. You can recoup the lost value with less than 10 minutes of high-efficiency farming.

So, the real question is whether you can save more than 10 minutes over the course of the game by investing those resources early on (when the boosts they can give you operate on a relevant scale). The answer? Yes, easily. It doesn't make sense to let resources languish in this game (or to grind and hoard CP, for that matter), because what you have at any given point is negligible compared to what you'll have access to a couple of chapters down the line.

And frankly, a lot of investments need not even be sunk costs; Power Wristbands and Magician's Marks may become obsolete, but Black Belts and Rune Bracelets stay relevant throughout the game (the power of percentage-based damage reduction) and anything you put into your weapons is going to be useful towards Treasure Hunter.