While my opinion of Final Fantasy 13 overall is not entirely a favorable one, I also do not think it to be a bad game or bad by Final Fantasy standards in general. With that said, I do think it has the worst battle system of any Final Fantasy game in the main series (yes worse than 12).
For the uninitiated, Final Fantasy 13 utilizes what is called the Paradigm system. This means nothing without explanation of course. What it means though, is that each character has set actions under a specific title given to it, or easier explained they are temporary job classes that can be changed on the fly. Those jobs are, Commando, Medic, Ravenger, Sabatour, Synergist and Sentinel. The goal of the system is to continually keep your party in check using the appropriate skill-set needed at a specific time to either keep your party alive, or ensure the enemies stagger meter keeps going. The main goal of every fight is to raise the enemy's stagger meter to the max, break it, and then kill the enemy quickly.
While on the surface this system seems interesting, it falls apart in various ways. The first major issue I have with the system is what it actually stands for. In this game you can only control one character, that being your leader. The remainder of your team is controlled by the AI and does actions assigned to the paradigm they have set currently. So the paradigm system in the end has one and only one major function, and that is to give the AI only a very specific set of options to use and hope it does what you want. While the AI is limited, you are also unfortunately very limited to your own role and what you decide to do as the leader. To make this easier to understand why this system is not only horrible and tediously restrictive, but also to show how poorly it was implemented I will break up the issues I have found by class.
Commando: I'll start out with the game's least offender of problems. The commando class is essentially the Warrior class allowing the computer to use basically attack and blitz, blitz being an attack that affects many enemies. It is entirely straightforward and keeps the enemies stagger meter up, but does not increase it. How does the AI screw this up you ask? That answer is simple. If I want a team with two warriors, com/com/doesn't matter, the AI will attack whatever enemy I am not attacking, which is fine in some cases I may indeed want that. But I have NO choice in the matter. I can't further edit the Commando class to have the AI combo attack the same thing I am for some swift justice. Only if it is the ONLY enemy left on the field will the AI agree that it should also attack the same enemy I am.
This is just the first phase of the battle system telling me I am not allowed to decide how I want to play the game.
Ravenger: My issues with the Ravenger class stem less from the class itself and more from how the battle system is designed overall. But don't get me wrong the AI still manages to screw this up anyway. This class is the Mage essentially, and only casts offensive magic. Every enemy in the game has some weakness or immunity to one magic or another, however, the AI in all it's wisdom has no fucking clue what that weakness is unless you cast Libra. The game forces you to cast Libra JUST so the AI knows how not to be a retarded mess. Once Libra is cast the AI now knows the weakness, but it's a waste of a turn if you ask me. I KNOW the enemy's weakness 90% of the time without Libra, I've played RPG's since I was a wee lad so these games tend to make it obvious. The mere fact that because I cannot control my party means I have to play teacher for every new enemy just so the AI does what I want it to do pisses me off to no end.
So after Libra, how does the AI still manage to be a dumbass? Well it does manage this, oh yes it does. After an enemy becomes staggered you are given the ability to launch the enemy in the air preventing it from doing any damage at all. Now, I don't know about you but I want this to happen ALL the time. Here's the rub, Ravenger's only ability to launch an enemy is Aeroga (or however it's spelled) point is the AI will tend to not use this spell when I want him to, you know all the damn time after stagger. If I COULD control him that's what I would have him do. Even if the enemy is not weak to Wind, I don't care, I want that beast floating around till it's dead.
But I don't get what I want do I, no I'm playing Final Fantasy 13, the game on rails.
Sentinel: The Sentinel class is a defensive class that allows the user to literally just not die. It provokes surrounding enemies to attack only the sentinel in which next to no damage occurs. Oddly, this is the only class the AI does not manage to screw up, but I still hate it. I hate the idea that I need it (and yes you actually have to use this class). I've played countless RPG's and never was it my strategic prerogative to defend, ever. There was no need for it, even if my mage ran out of magic I'd still prefer it to attack for the measly 15 damage it could do or throw out some items. But again, I'm playing FF13 so I don't get to play the way I want to play.
The enemies in this game after a while literally force you to put up a Sentinel and either heal, or buff with the other two classes just to survive long enough to cast offensive spells. Now this is great for bosses, it actually makes you think you're outsmarting them, but when you have long 7 hour stretches of fighting enemies and waiting for the retarded AI to cast the CORRECT defensive buff (read Synergist section) on every fucking encounter, you start to want to kill yourself. Seriously, it annoyed me that much.
Sabatour: Sabatour is the class that casts debuff effects on enemies, ie slow, pain, etc. This one is funny to me. My annoyance with this class comes from my very own need to develop my own strategy in a game I've come to realize simply won't let me. The Sabatour class is the only class other than Commando that also keeps the stagger meter going without dropping briskly while having the added benefit of causing debuffs on the enemy. I love this, and hate this, here's why....the STUPID FUCKING AI.
So often I'll find myself in a tight bind in this game, nearly dead after some super attack the AI did. I want to heal, but I don't want to lose my stagger meter, and I wouldn't mind debuffing the enemy in the process. Simple solution, medic/medic/sabatour. This works great, fabulous even...until...until the enemy IS actually debuffed. I'm not fully healed yet, and the AI decides to stop doing ANYTHING because it figures the enemy is debuffed enough.
Actual conversation with the TV
"NO NO NO AI, I want you to keep casting slow before I lose my stagger meter! What are you fucking doing???"
So once an enemy is debuffed the sabatour class is actually completely useless and you may as well forget you have one paradigm setting. Oh yes, did I mention you only have 6 different settings to choose from? *sigh*
Synergist: I've saved my most hated two classes for last. Synergist is the opposite of Sabatour, it buffs your party. There are many problems with this class, I'm not sure where to begin. I'll discuss how the AI is programmed I guess. I've played this game for 40 hours now, and routinely see how the AI operates, and I just don't fucking understand its reasoning. My party is Lighting (leader), Hope, and Fang. Hope is the Synergist if you didn't know, and the rules of this game state that if your leader dies, you lose, got it? Good.
So the AI when it first casts buffs casts them on who first? Take a wild guess. NOPE not the Leader! Well what about the Synergist himself? Fuck NO! The order of buff, and this never changes, is to cast it on the third useless character FIRST for no god damn reason. I don't CARE if the third character dies, the game ends if I fucking die! I wouldn't even mind if the Synergist buffed himself so he survives and buffs my leader. But NO he buffs himself last, which makes even LESS sense considering he has the lowest HP and can die very quickly. Again, if I were in control this would never happen. You want to know the shittiest part? Say I have Com/Syn/Sent up, guess who he casts protect on first? The FUCKING SENTINEL!! What sense does this make?
There is more...
You literally get no control in this game, have I mentioned this before? The only control you get is to tell the AI what set of spells or attacks he is allowed to use at a given time. Keyword, SET of spells or attacks. Here we have the Synergist, whom has...how do I put this...an ASSFUCK set of spells that you do NOT get to decide the order in which they are cast.
Actual conversation to the TV
"Hope...Hope! Cast protect on Lighting Hope...Anytime would be great...No I didn't want shell on Fang...I don't want shell at all. Nope didn't want Veil either. What the fuck does that even do (I found out later, and really don't give a shit about Veil). Waste more time please..."
That was a normal encounter folks, one of many...This happened through all of Chapter 10 I'd say.
So here's the deal, instead of allowing the user to further customize the Synergist (or any) class telling it specifically what order you want what, or to exclude this or that, you get NO choices at all and are simply subject to the AI's whims at all times. They will literally go through the order of buffing you with every god damn spell they have. It is a waste of time!
Medic: This is my most hated class for the AI to control. It encompasses everything about how the AI and battle system functions that makes it completely atrocious and every time I see the AI use it I ask myself this, "Why can't I control what my party does?"
Oh boy here we go.
So the healing class, probably the most important class in any RPG in the hands of an AI I can't tell what to do. In Final Fantasy 12 you could tell it what to do. You could specifically set its program to revive, to heal at a certain % of health or whatever, it was your call. The Medic however, is designed thus, to heal whatever character has the lowest hit points at the time. This is a detrimental design flaw, and really the only one that actually breaks the game sometimes. Bosses and some powerful enemies have devastating attacks that will send the whole team to red. You have to HOPE and PRAY that the character in your party with the LEAST HP is your Leader. Yeah that's right, you want your leader to be on the verge of death so the AI will heal it and you'll survive. That's a perfect world though, as I've had countless battles where the AI will decide to heal another character with lower hit points all for the sake of who the fuck cares. So my leader sits there dying, and often does with the next blow while the AI thought it to be a wonderful idea to heal the THIRD character whom means NOTHING at this juncture.
Why is it programmed this way? Wouldn't you ALWAYS want the leader to be alive? Wouldn't you always want it to have top priority? Hell at LEAST heal the leader if it is blinking RED, but fuck that, the third character has less HP, heal that instead. Stupid....stupid....stupid!
Here's another fun flaw in the Medic. The raise spell. What does it do? Brings back a ko'ed character. Fucking useless in a game where if your leader dies you lose the game. So the raise spell doesn't work on one of three characters. OH WAIT! It doesn't work on TWO of three characters either. That's right, the Medic himself also has no fucking use for the raise spell....cause he'd be dead.
It gets better. The raise spell is further useless to the AI because it will never fucking cast it unless BOTH remaining characters have near full HP. I have seen it go through 4 turns making sure both he and I were literally at MAX HP until it used raise to bring the third character back. WHAT....THE.....FUCK?
Conclusion: The sad thing is all of this could have been easily avoided if you were allowed to further customize how the AI operated in their respective class. While my personal preference would be to never ever let the AI control my party anyway, I would have liked more options, more choices. The way FF13 plays now I feel like I have no control, and I'm just paradigm shifting simply to stay alive and allow the battle to play out all by itself. There is no sense of accomplishment, no sense of actual strategy either. The AI just comes out and spams all its debuffs and all its buffs because it was programmed that way. Instead of having strategic uses for any of these classes you are locked in to simply just watching shit happen, oh and casting Libra to make sure the AI doesn't fuck up more.
The intentions of this battle system are clear, it was built for noobs, 5 year olds, people who like games on auto-pilot. This was not built for gamers, not built for RPG players used to setting up sound strategic options against tough foes. There is no sense of accomplishment with this system. There is never a critical moment where you saved yourself or your party because of a decision you made. There are no decisions to make in this game, there's only what the AI chooses to do. Oh, and did I mention you also have an option called "auto battle." Prove to me this game wasn't made for noobs and I'll mail you a cookie.
*lamest battle system ever*
10 comments:
Even though i haven't played it yet i still think you had a really great and detailed analysis! Awesome read! But i guess i'll have to judge for myself when i eventually buy it for my PS3.
I've been playing RPGs since FFVII came out (i'm 29) and i've pretty much played all the turn-based JRPGS on the PS1 and PS2 and even the dragonquests and FF on the DS. So i LOVE turn-based battle systems!
First off, I absolutely LOVE the battle system, despite the fact that many of your complaints about each class are valid.
Re:COM. It's true I hate that 2 COMs attack different targets, I've been finding this more and more useful as I've learned to accurately paradigm switch AND shuffle my RAV leader's target. If done correctly, you can actually defeat two enemies quickly. Though again, I agree it should be an option.
Re: RAV - can't say I agree here, I actually think the AI does pretty well. You should have a COM launching the enemy, in fact, by that time you should probably switch to COM/COM/RAV and kill it.
Re:Libra. Makes sense. You're confusing you and your characters. Just because you know a beast is resistant to, say, fire, doesn't mean your characters should. Having to learn this about enemies is -perfect-. It makes total sense that your characters should be better at fighting an enemy they understand. Also note that you don't -need- to cast it, they will eventually learn things based on the effects of their attacks.
Re: Sentinel - again, i disagree. Your argument is that in other games you never find the need to adopt a truly defensive position... this is a -flaw- in those other games, not a flaw in this one. The fact that you truly need to consider multiple, different strats in the same fight is a blessing of the combat system and is what helps make it truly revolutionary.
Re: only 6 paradigms at a time. Yea, I hate this too. BUT... I understand why they did it. If you had access to all possibilities at all times, it would de-emphasize the importance of proper team building. Having to choose between RAV/SEN/MED and RAV/SEN/SYN is ultimately a good one - your forced to really think about what you want the capabilities of your team to be. If you had all options at all times, this would be lost, especially once you eventually have all 5 options available to all 6 characters.
RE: SAB. Yes, the Sab should not just stand there. Totally agreed, especially since the spells do damage.
RE: SYN. Yes, they tend to cast in a bizarre order. Adding some user control over priority would be a blessing.
RE: MED. You're correct that they don't always cast what you want, but they do cast quite efficiently in general if you properly manage paradigms. To explain - let's say you're fighting a really difficult monster. Now, let's say you start with
RAV/COM/RAV (to get the COM hit so stagger 'sticks')
then start switching between
RAV/SEN/MED (heal and keep stagger going up)
RAV/SEN/RAV (when you're totally healed, go for stagger) you'll find great results.
The SEN will take most of the damage, and you'll get results.
NOW... I understand being greedy. I know you want, say, RAV/COM/MED and to just attack attack attack! This is a more 'traditional' setup. But the problem is, the MED sometimes heals the 'wrong' person.
However, it's important to note that the player (you), chose a much riskier strategy of trying to quickly attack w/o thought to defense. That this gets you killed against certain monsters makes sense. In some situations, the AI rewards more balanced play with a SEN. If you properly juggle your paradigms (only switching to RAV/COM/MED when the boss is staggered) you'll find better results.
I understand you want to play the game the way 'you' want, but the issue here is that they specifically designed some monsters to -destroy- players that try to play too aggressively. This makes sense in a gameplay way - you really need to think about different monsters.
Do I agree that I wish MED cast in a different order sometimes? Sure. But I prefer to never put my self in that position in the first place, and that's my point - if you correct your strategy for a given boss, you can usually avoid that situation altogether. It might require a slightly more defensive approach, but that's a diversity in gameplay, and not a bad thing.
re: Raise spell. Yes, I think the AI casts this incorrectly (as in, not enough).
Now, I do think you make many valid points. I do wish I could prioritize some spells, and give the AI a little bit more guidance. But I still get an incredibly robust battle system that absolutely -rewards- a good battle plan while crushing those that try to take too many chances (which, ultimately, makes sense since it's the definition of taking a chance). I love not having to control each individual action. I love that usually, it gets it right (especially once I understand what it does wrong and take that into consideration). Can it be improved? Certainly. But it's also one of the most brilliant combat systems ever, and perhaps with some more distance from the game you'll eventually see some of its finer points.
It just upsets me that I want to see and explore this great looking world, but I'm shot down the straight and narrow with a group of people I have no interest in spending time with. I'm only about 20 hours in but I still miss the gambit system from XII that everyone else seemed to dislike except me. I loved the auto battling WITH control. I feel like I got downgraded from real time in world battles that I spent 120hrs enjoying in a huge semi-open world lush with quests and epic battles. Boo Squeenix, I am not pleased with your new direction or your blaming it on my Western tastes, I've loved me a few JRPGs but I think this FF has worn me down. Good thing I have God of War 3, where it lets me play a linear story without shoving me down a funnel.
"I love not having to control each individual action."
This is where we disagree most. I understand the battle system, and I know what the "strategy" consists of and here's my gripe.
The idea of me liking this battle system hinges on the fact that I have to believe that I make dumber choices than the AI. The battle system itself is designed to control 2/3rd's of every battle with the AI. For it to stand on its own at all the AI MUST make the same or better choices than I would.
That fact is just not true as I have outlined. The AI instead makes serviceable decisions and some that are just flat out stupid. I can't let the game make me believe that if I were given control that I would be dumber than the computer. The sad thing is this game takes all that control away from me, and not even giving me the option.
This is Kyle from the blog. I lost my username and password again, but no matter. I agree with Porter on this one, and that's more rare than you might think. This entire game has been designed to take as much control out of the player's hands as possible. I've beaten entire battles without looking at the screen in the case of certain enemies. The whole point of an RPG is to put choices in your hands, to let you explore and experience events and a world, and FFXIII simply does not do that. There's no choices, no sidequests (Playing WOW in chapter XI doesn't count), and NO exploration to be had, of strategy or of environment.
What bothers me the most is that they seem to have taken great pains to design the game so that screenshots of it will look like a classic full party control system. To me, that indicates that they knew they weren't delivering what they should, so they delivered it in disguise. The first 9 chapters were the best Final Fantasy I played in a decade simply due to story, but honestly? It fell apart the second we got to the FORCED grind of Chapter 10.
My heart breaks for Final Fantasy.
Hey thanks for this analysis.
I am maybe q bit late, but only found it just yet via google while searching for "ff 13 cure raise stupid ai" :)
I really enjoyed it especially the part with the medic, it drives me nuts :D
Glad you enjoyed it! I'm shocked we come up under any google search at all, lol.
final fantasy 12 battle system was awesome and actually did what they wanted to do in 13 make it more casual friendly. you could set up your characters and forget about telling them what to do and just enjoy the story but you also had the option to micro manage each and every action. the gambits also made grinding much less painful. i spent 250+ hrs in ff12 vs only about 75 hrs in ff13 and the linear part was terrible
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