Worth playing FFXIII?

[PlasmaHanDoku]

So I love JRPG games but is this a good start? I have been looking at some FF that are on sale but which should I get?

[Kodokuro]

i would say play the first 2 in ps3. The pc ports, from what i have read here in the reviews, had poor optimization.

LR: FF XIII is a direct sequel of the previous 2 games.

If you play for the story you will miss a lot of the plot because LR is basically a bundle of finals to all the main characters of previous games divideded in chapters.

[hightime1011]

Yes! The first game is a must play! All three game combine and you understand the stories greatly! Awesome series I do wish there was more and make a brand new adventure?

[Unseen]

The first one works fine on my pc, maybe your pc just sucks.

[Serafie1999AD]

Originally posted by Kodokuro:

i would say play the first 2 in ps3. The pc ports, from what i have read here in the reviews, had poor optimization.

It's not really the ports that have poor optimization, it's the game's engine, meaning the performance is weak even on a PS3. With FFXIII-2 on a PS3, you'll see the FPS drop to 15-20 during cutscenes and heavy effects, and on an Xbox 360, the drop is even worse. For an example, see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z8ne2uXTAw For both consoles, the FPS is capped at 30, the resolution is 720p upscaled, with 4x AA and 512x512 Shadows.

For PC, you may not get constant 60 FPS unless you have a monster rig, but if you have a decent CPU with a strong single-threaded performance (just like with the console versions, the game barely uses a GPU, and mostly a single thread), you're likely to have a frame rate that is somewhere between 30-60, possibly never falling below 30. In addition, you can get resolutions like 1080p, 1440p or 4k, with up to 16x AA and 8192x8192 Shadows (although I wouldn't recommend setting shadow resolution so high, 2048x2048 or 4096x4096 takes much less resources and looks good enough).

Drawbacks of the PC versions? You'll need tweaks that are explained online, but they take about 5 minutes to implement. These are: set your CPU's power profile to High Performance, set your Nvidia GPU's power profile to "Prefer maximum performance", and enable Vsync and Triple Buffering, disable Cloud saving (removes most of the crashes!) and plug in a game controller. Additionally for FFXIII-2, get a fan-made patch to remove the game's framerate pacer, and possibly use Nvidia Profile Inspector or RadeonPro to cap your FPS at 30. Sounds like a lot of tweaking, but all of this can be done in 5 minutes.

Advantages of the PC versions, in addition to better graphics? For FFXIII, you'll get both English and Japanese audio, as well as two difficulty levels to choose from: Easy and Normal. For FFXIII-2 and LR, you'll get all the DLC content included with the game, while you'll have to separately pay for them on the consoles. For FFXIII-2, the DLC includes all Coliseum bosses (the postgame superbosses not present in the original game), Sazh's quest as well as Lightning's quest to better explain the game's ending. For LR, the DLC includes lots of additional Garbs for Lightning, so you'll essentially have more "classes" available for her.

[Mikasa Ackerman]

Originally posted by Serafie1999AD:

Originally posted by Kodokuro:

i would say play the first 2 in ps3. The pc ports, from what i have read here in the reviews, had poor optimization.

It's not really the ports that have poor optimization, it's the game's engine, meaning the performance is weak even on a PS3. With FFXIII-2 on a PS3, you'll see the FPS drop to 15-20 during cutscenes and heavy effects, and on an Xbox 360, the drop is even worse. For an example, see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z8ne2uXTAw For both consoles, the FPS is capped at 30, the resolution is 720p upscaled, with 4x AA and 512x512 Shadows.

For PC, you may not get constant 60 FPS unless you have a monster rig, but if you have a decent CPU with a strong single-threaded performance (just like with the console versions, the game barely uses a GPU, and mostly a single thread), you're likely to have a frame rate that is somewhere between 30-60, possibly never falling below 30. In addition, you can get resolutions like 1080p, 1440p or 4k, with up to 16x AA and 8192x8192 Shadows (although I wouldn't recommend setting shadow resolution so high, 2048x2048 or 4096x4096 takes much less resources and looks good enough).

Drawbacks of the PC versions? You'll need tweaks that are explained online, but they take about 5 minutes to implement. These are: set your CPU's power profile to High Performance, set your Nvidia GPU's power profile to "Prefer maximum performance", and enable Vsync and Triple Buffering, disable Cloud saving (removes most of the crashes!) and plug in a game controller. Additionally for FFXIII-2, get a fan-made patch to remove the game's framerate pacer, and possibly use Nvidia Profile Inspector or RadeonPro to cap your FPS at 30. Sounds like a lot of tweaking, but all of this can be done in 5 minutes.

Advantages of the PC versions, in addition to better graphics? For FFXIII, you'll get both English and Japanese audio, as well as two difficulty levels to choose from: Easy and Normal. For FFXIII-2 and LR, you'll get all the DLC content included with the game, while you'll have to separately pay for them on the consoles. For FFXIII-2, the DLC includes all Coliseum bosses (the postgame superbosses not present in the original game), Sazh's quest as well as Lightning's quest to better explain the game's ending. For LR, the DLC includes lots of additional Garbs for Lightning, so you'll essentially have more "classes" available for her.

and in LR you even get a Boss instakill because of the Summoner of Spira Ability Elementa*

[Unseen]

It really dont take a monster rig my pc runs it smooth as silk, just got to wallmart and buy any current PC should play it fine.

[jclee4843]

The story can be confusing if you don't play the first 2. But you can still enjoy this game if you don't play the first 2.

[Sylphie Fioré]

Play all of the trilogy, each game has its own pros compared to each other. They all ran fine for me but people constantly say its a bad port, I don't even have a decent pc by todays standards.

[Unseen]

Originally posted by Faith Mable:

Play all of the trilogy, each game has its own pros compared to each other. They all ran fine for me but people constantly say its a bad port, I don't even have a decent pc by todays standards.

They wanna look for any reason to bash this beautiful game series and most are angry trolls.

[H8terFistinator]

I'm pretty late to this, but, if you want to play the FF13 trilogy, start with the second one. The first game is just such a grind and its story is poorly executed imo. Just find a youtube lore video about the first game to wrap your head around the game.They rely heavely on datalogs for the lore, instead of naturally telling you in the dialogue/characters and game world. The story is just convoluted and hard to follow. Not to mention that it's poorly pased.

[Sylphie Fioré]

I completely disagree with Ransom, part of what made the first game amazing was its pace and the growth of the characters. How they change, unite and challenge fate itself. It being really linear was good in my eyes, going through the game explained the story well and seeing how the characters change and grow throughout is what got me liking them so much.

It may of taken a long time to get to the point of being able to pick your party members but how the game focuses on showing and telling the story for the groups of characters is great. Shows the story in a better light.

[H8terFistinator]

Originally posted by Faith Mable:

I completely disagree with Ransom, part of what made the first game amazing was its pace and the growth of the characters. How they change, unite and challenge fate itself. It being really linear was good in my eyes, going through the game explained the story well and seeing how the characters change and grow throughout is what got me liking them so much.

It may of taken a long time to get to the point of being able to pick your party members but how the game focuses on showing and telling the story for the groups of characters is great. Shows the story in a better light.

I wish I saw the game in such high regards as you. 13 was my first PS3 game, and the reason for me to pick it up, and really wanted to love it. Thing I did forget to mention, as you said, is that the character development and it really does feel like a long perilous adventure. But for me? It was split up by the long, bland padding of the fighting, running, fighting. It was like the Mi'ihen highroad from FFX for the entire 50 hours it took for me to complete it. Just way too linear for me. Different strokes for different folks.

[Sylphie Fioré]

Originally posted by Ransom:

Originally posted by Faith Mable:

I completely disagree with Ransom, part of what made the first game amazing was its pace and the growth of the characters. How they change, unite and challenge fate itself. It being really linear was good in my eyes, going through the game explained the story well and seeing how the characters change and grow throughout is what got me liking them so much.

It may of taken a long time to get to the point of being able to pick your party members but how the game focuses on showing and telling the story for the groups of characters is great. Shows the story in a better light.

I wish I saw the game in such high regards as you. 13 was my first PS3 game, and the reason for me to pick it up, and really wanted to love it. Thing I did forget to mention, as you said, is that the character development and it really does feel like a long perilous adventure. But for me? It was split up by the long, bland padding of the fighting, running, fighting. It was like the Mi'ihen highroad from FFX for the entire 50 hours it took for me to complete it. Just way too linear for me. Different strokes for different folks.

Just a bit confused with what you said though, you said to start with the second which by story standards isn't that great, and going back and forth the timeline is a bigger nuisance than anything. The third game with its time limits and travelling back and forth is tedious as well, not to mention you most likely won't do as great on lightning returns without a guide.

[H8terFistinator]

Well like it said, "different strokes for different folks". I value gameplay over story. The two games after had greater urgency and better pacing imo, as a game. Combat I found to be a lot more engaging and had better replay value.
I was personally more engaged with the time travel mechanic. Nuisance to some, but, I found it to portray cool thought experiments, giving it's own take in paradoxes and time travel in general. Not to say that they are perfect games, but, the later games just resonated better with my tastes.