Players of Final Fantasy XIII are aghast at the dumbed down map design the game offers, with the entire game seemingly reduced to a single interminable path punctuated by cutscenes and unavoidable mob encounters.
The first 6 hours of the game in maps:
As Vanille remarks in game: “This path is easy to understand, isn’t it?”
There is one small branch (a shortcut) in all this towards the very end, though it involves missing choice treasure. After this the Vile Peaks beget another apparently unending RPG-on-rails experience, the polar opposite of Final Fantasy XII’s MMORPG-like open questing; indeed, there is not a town to be seen anywhere, and shopping is handled through the sterile interface of the save points.
Glimpses of later maps in the hint book seem to indicate this linearity persists to the very end – it is a wonder the game even bothers with a map.
Further fueling the suspicion that the game has been dumbed down to remedial level is the fact that several key gameplay elements remain locked even after 8 hours of playtime, and the game only sees fit to fully enable its leveling system after 4 hours.
Pre-release reviews of course failed to mention any of this…
if i remember correctly, it’s maybe not in the RPG gaming catagory, but resident evil 5 was probably the most linear game i have ever played, but i had endless ammounts of fun with it because the story was amazing, infact i still play it over and over today because the replay value was and still is pretty decent. i love almost every final fantasy game and to be honest, the world map or dungeons being linear never bothered me because of the great storylines. i for one cannot wait for this game.
Loads of stupid bitching here. But let’s get back to the facts, it really sucks that the maps are so linear. i liked exploring in previous FFs 🙁 I liked wasting time in towns with stupid sidequests in previous FFs 🙁
I don’t mind the story being linear, because as said previously a dozen times, FF has always been linear. That’s what you get for having a fixed starting character and a fixed ending. there always was some playing around of course but that never had an impact on the game-world at all. but it was fun! may it be optimizing Materia, Guardians or Espers, it always was fun. Killing the optional bosses always was fun and needed more skill then the normal story line. And that’s what made FF so great. Well, and the stories of course, all FFs I played (7,8,9,10 + 12) had a great athmosphere (12 obviously being the weakest) so here’s hoping they managed that in XIII as well..
I will still buy the game, always been a big fan of the franchise, and as long as the story is good, i will find that money well spent! Also the release date is so close to my birthday i will surprise myself with a present.. Oooh what might it be? It looks like a book but… Ooooh Final Fantasy! Thank you myself!! 😀
Picture saved, this is amazing. Megaman X levels had more complex maps.
I recall FFX being very linear why didn’t that get crap? Like it really was just a straight path from beginning to end that is what I remember most about it.
It should get crap, but fanboys are idiots.
FF10 and FF13 are exactly the same, in terms of linearity.
Hell, just enjoy the damn game. Who gives a f♥♥k if they tripped over a few things – everyone was bat s♥♥t crazy over this before it came out.