Sheng Fui (and new icon post)

[auronlu]

I just wanted cumuluscastle to see where her painting is now. It's under UV-shielded glass, just to make sure, although the room only gets indirect and tree-filtered sunlight.  

There is a distinct lack of cat on the perch, simply because I broke out the camera. Imagine a cat.
Aha. Behold a cat. Within scritch range when mousing. (If image is broken, it's here. What gives,DW?)




P.S. Why is FFXIII so painfully flawed yet excellent in parts? It reminds me of X-2; a curate's egg. Which is unsurprising, as they came up with XIII while working on X-2. 

I finally finished. Without spoilers, I will say that (a) Fang/Vanille pretty much makes up for any of the game's shortcomings for me (CANON! PLOT-ESSENTIAL F/F CANON!), and (b) it's a shame Vanille's voice was the one "miss" on the English dub. Her seiyu is better. But Fang's ...wow. 

Note: Please no late-FFXIII spoilers in replies; at least one person reading this hasn't finished.

Comments

[sarasa_cat]

I bitched a good deal a year ago about my unhappiness with FFXIII's painfully flawed game mechanics combined good story/characters and with beautiful but painfully empty world.

Fang/Vanille is the only part of FFXIII that makes me want to go back and finish it. :)

BTW: Please do not spoil me - I stopped in chapter 8 or so due to life but will replay/finish this summer.

(ignore my anon posting on LJ... moment of dumb) - never mind - LJ didn't accept my anon comment.

[auronlu]

(LJ kept it screened, but for simplicity's sake I deleted it).

Painfully empty world: yep. It's like MYST, but MYST at least made the lack of people a pivotal atmospheric and plot element, turning a problem (interaction with npcs was nigh impossible back then) into poetry.

Do finish. FFXIII has grown on me enough that I'm replaying it to catch all the foreshadowing and hints I missed the first time around. It has flaws at every turn, but I think you will find enough good portions to make it worth the level-grinding.

[dagas_isa]

A lot of what didn't work for me in FFXIII came down to a flaw that really had no fix. I loved all the main characters, but there was nothing to the world itself that seemed alive. But so much of the sympathy for the main characters and their dilemma depends somewhat on not caring about the world, meaning that better world building would have ruined the story in another way.

But on the other hand, canon f/f, so much more wonderful non-canon f/f potential to play around with, and I actually found all the male characters appealing too, but just too much blank world.

[owlmoose]

I agree with Dagas -- I just found the world to be too flat. Not enough places to explore or people to get to know. One of the things I love about a good RPG is the sense that I'm discovering a world, its people, its history. (This is something that FFX, for example, really got right. Also Dragon Age, my brand new obsession.) On the other hand, the lack of outside distractions meant that we got to know the team really, really well, and we saw strong bonds develop between them. So I guess it depends on what we're looking for in a game.

Also, Fang. Yay, Fang!

[heavenscalyx]

I do wish that FF12 hadn't pretty much wrecked the franchise for us. But we also like a rich world, which is typical of Japanese RPGs, and it sounds like FF13 has gone all-American with its empty world. American RPGs mostly really annoy me because they're so empty -- just you and the monsters and a couple of people in a town, here and there.

[auronlu]

It's funny. I feel about XII the way you do about IX. I am surprised you don't like it more, and you are surprised I don't like IX more!

Strong evidence of the fact that our tastes run on slightly different tracks.

[heavenscalyx]

Well, our favorites are IX and VII, couldn't finish VIII, and felt really let down by the end of X. Which, I think, easily proves the vast difference in our tastes. :)

I think I would have been all right wandering through XII, despite its lack of compelling plot, except for that one complete loser of a cutscene, which convinced me that Squeenix had jumped the shark horribly. We won't even spend money on other Squeenix games now.

[lassarina]

I am oddly fond of XIII, perhaps because the women are overwhelmingly more interesting to me than the men (Snow I treat like a rather dumb puppy, Hope I want to punt off a cliff, and Sazh is awesome but not as awesome as the ladies.)

I agree with some of the other commenters that the world isn't as lush as, say, Ivalice or Ferelden (Dragon Age), but really I was just so happy to get an FF game with SO MANY BADASS WOMEN that I will forgive a large number of flaws, not even going to lie about it.

For all of that, though, I *loved* the battle system more than I have loved any other FF battle system ever, and I don't really mind the plot-on-rails thing. But I'm odd that way.

[auronlu]

I loved XIII's battle system and don't mind huge piles of plot a bit. I just want the world to be lovable and worth fighting for, I want to be able to chat up random NPCs in the street and see an evolving storyline reflected in their gossip, I want to be able to return to that street and find out what the streetears and soldiers and barflies and ordinary folks are saying, and I need me some complex secondary characters.

The secondary characters in XIII were always on the cusp of being interesting but never quite got there, because there wasn't time and space for them. I am spoiled after coming from XII, with Larsa and Gabranth and Old Dalan and Vossler and Fran's sisters and Jules and all the blinking Judge Magisters and Ondore and al-Cid and Dr. Cid and Zecht and Momo and Montblanc and all the Archadians and Reks and Migelo and Venat and the Occuria and Ba'Ganen and good GODS there were even more secondaries in XII than X, which also made me fall in love with the world because I liked so many people in it. You could populate ten other Final Fantasy games with all the secondary, named characters with actual dialog and personalities in XII.

I mean, the bloody COCKATRICES from XII with their random Scottish accents and equally random escapades had more personality and plot than the secondary characters in XIII. Or for that matter than the antagonists.

Hmm. I hadn't realized quite how much secondary characters influence my fondness for a game. Although of course there were lots of them in previous games (I'm not sure if Laguna and Elle count?) but I think XII really took the cast of thousands award more than most.

[auronlu]

But yeah *meekly*

FFXIII finally had enough badass women to satisfy me. The male characters were supporting cast, the women led the show, but it wasn't silly or artificial like in X-2. They just happened to be the natural leaders of the group, the ones with the most experience, skill, charisma and badassitude. That was nice.

[lassarina]

I read in an interview somewhere that Fang had originally been designed as male and they genderflipped her without changing much about her style, and oh my God how much do I love that forever and always *_*;;;;

[lassarina]

XII's massive cast really makes that game for me; Tactics has a massive party but not quite as many secondary characters, but I still love it.

Then again, I learned to FF when only the party got development (and some of them not even that!) so while I love to dive into a world like Ivalice, it's the main party who's going to steal my heart most of the time.

I agree, though, that the evolving game-world is something that's really amazing to have.