GameCritics.com Podcast Episode 32: Lost Planet 2, Final Fantasy XIII and how to keep old franchises fresh

I'd actually argue that FF12 was a much bigger departure from the traditional JRPG setup than FF13 is. FF12 had a lot of WRPG style combat and some of the similar kind of openness with the worlds.

Great podcast but i think that square enix were given too much credit for not having towns when it was simply a budget and time issue, and not an innovation. As quoted from Square:

"The game's linearity was just because depicting towns and so on like we did before was impossible to do on an "HD" console – it was too much work."

One point I didn't think of until after the show -- has any game handled towns better than Fallout 3? Don't want to deal with the town? BLOW IT UP, along with all the people and quests. So satisfying. All that stress just melts away in nuclear fire.

FF12 is a funny case for me--it's definitely something of a departure from the norm, but at the same time, it's very similar to FFXI in a lot of ways. I always think of 12 as the offline MMO first and regular Final Fantasy game second.

And even then, the changes in 12 from the normal formula still feel mostly cosmetic to me. The core mechanics of the RPG are still there. Interesting point though--and definitely a valid one.

Mike

I hadn't read that about the towns (I tried to read very little about the game before playing it so as to not have my experience influenced by any preconceived notions).

That being said, I'm filing this under the "happy accident" category then. Hopefully technology remains too daunting for the inclusion of towns in HD RPGs from this point forward. :-)

I've been wondering why Capcom hasn't tried to evolve Monster Hunter at all, going as far keeping the series on underpowered systems like the PSP and Wii.

After hearing your description of Lost Planet 2, along with my own experiences of the original, I'm wondering if Lost Planet IS the evolved Monster Hunter. By making it into it's own separate "unrelated" series allows them to keep milking the MH cashcow for all it's worth.

Am I the only one that liked Zelda II?

I liked Zelda II a great deal, but it's been 20 years. It has my favorite t-shirt quote ever: I AM ERROR.

@TimSpaeth

Existentialism ftw

How do we know we are not error? What is error? Does error even exist?

It's a secret to everybody.

FF12 was garbage, MMO mechanics = fail. I am so pissed off that MMO mechanics are copied so heavily, give me something like Champions of norath or diablo over these auto-robot fests.

Most final fantasies have been slowly deflating anything good in them catering to the retard crowd. I'd really like to see a complete reboot of FF1 with all the old FF1 isms. I am so ticked they've traveled so far from a cool combat system. Time to return to it's roots.

Yet other HD jrpgs like Lost Odyssey have incorporated towns. Yeah, I'm one of those people that like towns in JRPGs. I also thought FFXII was a massive achievement in battle system and game worlds for RPGs whereas FFXIII was boring in comparison. Paradigms have a very superficial depth. I mastered that system very early on, and by the time I reached ma'hambra or whatever I felt there was nothing new to discover about the game and I proceeded to destroy everything in my path. As for post story hunts (my fav part of the game, yet still not as good as XII's hunts) having already mastered the battle system there's nothing to do but grind out your crystarium and level up your gear. In XII I felt like I was consistently learning something new about the battle system in order to beat the next hunt. I also never had to grind in that game whereas XIII demands it of you.

I enjoyed XIII but it was a big step back from XII in my opinion. But many are so divided over whether XII is actually good I tend to be in the minority online. Critics seemed to agree with me though.