Do You Have Any Unpopular Gaming Opinions?

[isiolia]

Well if you guys ever get bored I'd love to be convinced on why the FF13 characters are good, lol. I wonder if they're better in Japanese and maybe it was the English VO's that rubbed me wrong. Just seemed like they were all emo or super self righteous, barely even getting along (Gundam Wing anyone? I hate that series too!), and everyone had some annoying emotional breakdown at some point, even Sazh. Fang is the only character that never annoyed me and I liked Vanille a lot, though tend to see she gets tons of hate too. Also the villain was horrible... Bartsomething, some old guy that just randomly pops up. The story had so many made up words and pseudo science but unlike Xenogears just wasn't good to me. Cool world though, unlike FF15's Iowa.

Contrast to FF13-2 which had Serah, Noel, and Caius, that game was a homerun for me.

I haven't finished Lightning Returns because I couldn't stomach the Lightning and Hope combo.
(everytime she popped up in FF13-2 I just rolled my eyes)

I think a key thing to keep in mind for those is that character arcs for FFXIII take place across all three games (and additional media, etc), and in turn, over hundreds if not thousands of in-game years. If they're acting like children in XIII, to be fair, that's the stage of their story that game is set in. So, maybe it's intentional.

I do think those games have a tendency to be overwrought though, and XIII-2 is likely the best of them when considered individually. I haven't gotten too far into Lightning Returns either, but not due to the characters.

[Xeogred]

I think a key thing to keep in mind for those is that character arcs for FFXIII take place across all three games (and additional media, etc), and in turn, over hundreds if not thousands of in-game years. If they're acting like children in XIII, to be fair, that's the stage of their story that game is set in. So, maybe it's intentional.

I do think those games have a tendency to be overwrought though, and XIII-2 is likely the best of them when considered individually. I haven't gotten too far into Lightning Returns either, but not due to the characters.

That just sounds like a negative at full power, but I guess that's the state of a lot of modern media fully expecting you to consume more than a single product to get everything out of it. I shouldn't have to read in between the lines and get context outside of the games themselves to see the development of these characters. That's just awful (and further magnified with FF15). I beat FF13, 13-2, and got about 10 hours into LR, so it's not like I'm making my perceptions up here. I don't even know if Noel is mentioned in FF13 at all and Serah is basically in coma-like status throughout its entirety outside of maybe some flashbacks so she doesn't really get fleshed out in FF13, but again both these characters totally rocked in FF13-2 to me along with Caius who was an active villain popping up frequently and doing a lot to make me care and get invested. All these characters needed was a single game. FF13-2 has some ludicrious time traveling but when it comes to characters... it felt much simpler and personal than the other games and certainly benefited from that. I don't know if it had a change in writers or what, but if the other games story/character wise were as good as FF13-2 to me, dang I'd be obsessed with this trilogy. Or... if Fang was the main character.

Also case in point is Lost Odyssey mentioned above. This game also deals with immortal-like beings and does an awesome job showcasing how that's a curse rather than a blessing. All the main characters were fleshed out a lot in a single game and left a huge mark.

Who knows. Maybe I'll replay FF13 someday and get more out of it. I don't hate it and I still want to try and get back to LR someday. All my hate is reserved for FF15 and I don't see a redemption arc for that one...

[noiseredux]

I liked XIII a lot myself. And XIII-2 was even better. Never played LR for some reason.

[Xeogred]

I also think it's a bit of a downgrade with Lightning being the only playable character in LR. The combat system is pretty awesome from what I played... but still feels like a downgrade compared to the first two games. I like JRPG's for a nice big cast of characters and a fun group to venture with. LR definitely isn't really that though and probably another reason I fell off it. Unfinished business for another time!

[dunpeal2064]

I like JRPG's for a nice big cast of characters and a fun group to venture with.

But you prefer XIII-2 to XIII? That game has the cast size of Mystic Quest!

Jokes aside, I am a bit surprised to see people preferring XIII-2 to XIII. I've tried so many times to get into the game, but it just never stuck. Large Sora just falling from the sky to hang out with Sara, so they can go on a time-traveling adventure is just... weird. I'll give it that Sara at least seems like she may have an interesting arc, but as far as I got, Noel had done nothing to make me care about him. The combat is still good, but its also the same as XIII, so that makes sense.

Does the game not hit its stride early? Is it the Pokemon-esk thing that sells people? Its a game I want to like, and I'm not convinced its bad or anything, but compared to XIII's teen-y melodrama opener that immediately gave character to its cast, XIII-2 just seems shallow.

Maybe I'm just holding it to XIII too much. That game just felt special, in that it managed a decent cast while giving them all a genuine purpose to be there, and the interwoven ways in which each character had connections to another was great.

Lightning and Snow having drama from Snow being with Sara
Snow and Hope having drama from Hope blaming Snow for his mom's death
Hope and Vanille having a connection with her playing a mother figure to him
Vanille and Fang having history with each other that is hugely important to the story,
Sazh learning of Vanille and Fang's past, and it being relevant to his entire arc

Not that I'm claiming this is high quality writing or anything, I know this is cheesy soap-opera stuff, but it just felt so much stronger than the traditional FF approach of "Go to each character's hometown once to learn about them, they go with you to save the world, end of arc". And it may have impacted my feelings towards XIII-2, since that game both heavily cuts down the cast size to two, and one of them, so far, seems to just be a random dude.

[Dikdikvandik]

I'm not sure if this is an unpopular opinion or not, it's not in my circles but
I feel like Xbox as a stand alone brand has no reason to exist anymore. There is nothing that gives xbox a distinct identity, Backwards compatibility is just a band aid to hide the fact Microsoft has no interest in making games anymore and while the original Xbox is awesome and 360 is Shmup heaven the writing for Xbox has been on the wall since late 2012.

[Tanooki]

Unhacked xbox, looking back to the day it was kicking I'd throw your opinion at it at that time the system had NO value outside of Halo and little else, and MS watered that down further taking Halo, Forza, etc to the PC too. Xbox was a strongarm tactic to force the windows maker into a new market to try like others to come in like a wrecking ball and take over which thankfully didn't work out, even in more recent times when that xbox1 DRM thing imploded.

[isiolia]

Jokes aside, I am a bit surprised to see people preferring XIII-2 to XIII. I've tried so many times to get into the game, but it just never stuck. Large Sora just falling from the sky to hang out with Sara, so they can go on a time-traveling adventure is just... weird. I'll give it that Sara at least seems like she may have an interesting arc, but as far as I got, Noel had done nothing to make me care about him. The combat is still good, but its also the same as XIII, so that makes sense.

Does the game not hit its stride early? Is it the Pokemon-esk thing that sells people? Its a game I want to like, and I'm not convinced its bad or anything, but compared to XIII's teen-y melodrama opener that immediately gave character to its cast, XIII-2 just seems shallow.

I think XIII-2 just addresses a lot of the issues that people had with XIII. Where that game is tangibly linear for a while (really not much different from many other games, just not disguised well), and takes for-ev-er to open up all the game systems. XIII-2 wastes little time in handing you the reigns. The structure is also a bit more of a puzzle - the tutorial gives you a flash-forward, and more pieces are shown over time, instead of the XIII method of infodumping and hoping you remember enough to care by the next plot beat. While XIII-2 does have a canon ending, the nature of the "correct the timeline" sort of story does let them have other possibilities (it has like 9 endings). So you have more of a feeling of control, and more that ties into personal motivations of the smaller cast, but still with enough linearity that it's not hard to figure out the path forward.

I'm not sure if this is an unpopular opinion or not, it's not in my circles but
I feel like Xbox as a stand alone brand has no reason to exist anymore. There is nothing that gives xbox a distinct identity, Backwards compatibility is just a band aid to hide the fact Microsoft has no interest in making games anymore and while the original Xbox is awesome and 360 is Shmup heaven the writing for Xbox has been on the wall since late 2012.

Eh, I don't think lack of first-party titles is necessarily a killer. The 360 kinda lacked that later in its product cycle too. MS has otherwise been doing very well in improving their platform, where Sony has largely not. The way XBox has been rolling in backwards compatibility (and performance scaling) is a lot more the way it should work, nevermind that the other two basically aren't even trying to incorporate it.
So, sure, the library on Xbox One is a little thin relative to the PS4, but as a game-playing appliance, a One X beats the crap out of a PS4 Pro, outside of no real VR support yet. I think the full benefits of the Xbox platform improvements may take another round of hardware to appreciate though. If/when Sony drops their current library (again) and (presumably) MS just lets you keep your stuff, but better (as they're working towards)...consumers may swing back to Xbox, and with them, more development effort.

[noiseredux]

Agree w/ isiolia. I vastly prefer the way that MS has been handling Xbox as a platform. And for some, the backwards compatibility stuff is huge. I mean when you think about a weekly roll-out of (possibly) classic games that you may not even need to pay for? Like Red Dead Revolver is added to the list - so if you have the 360 disc already, then go ahead and pop it in. And if you have the game digitally on 360, then guess what? Now it's "ready to install" on Xbox One. But if you had owned the game on PS3 then your best case is that it gets a PS4 that you get to pay for again. There's also the crossplay stuff between Xbox One and Switch which is lacking on PS4. Though I admit that's not really a selling point for EVERYONE. But it's cool. I guess I just feel like MS has done a great job of focusing on quality of life improvements for the console, which I appreciate.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Agree w/ isiolia. I vastly prefer the way that MS has been handling Xbox as a platform. And for some, the backwards compatibility stuff is huge. I mean when you think about a weekly roll-out of (possibly) classic games that you may not even need to pay for? Like Red Dead Revolver is added to the list - so if you have the 360 disc already, then go ahead and pop it in. And if you have the game digitally on 360, then guess what? Now it's "ready to install" on Xbox One. But if you had owned the game on PS3 then your best case is that it gets a PS4 that you get to pay for again. There's also the crossplay stuff between Xbox One and Switch which is lacking on PS4. Though I admit that's not really a selling point for EVERYONE. But it's cool. I guess I just feel like MS has done a great job of focusing on quality of life improvements for the console, which I appreciate.

I agree. As someone with a vast collection of Xbox and Xbox 360 games, I really appreciate this approach. I might even end up getting an Xbox One at some point.