brainee

Pulse is the surface world - Cocoon is like a moon in the sky. When you're on Pulse you can see Cocoon up there. Cocoon is more than just a city or space station - it's big enough to be like a little world. But since it's not a natural structure, it needs upkeep by the Fal'cie to keep it up there. What might be a source of confusion is that apparently the Fal'cie built (and rebuild) Cocoon from materials on Pulse (since Pulse was there first). Which is why you might find some "Pulsian" things on Cocoon.

fujishig

I'm mainly confused because they visit some of the home cities of the main characters... are these cities on Pulse or Cocoon, and if they're in Cocoon how did they get back in ? Is the beach city on some kind of artificial beach in Cocoon?

brainee

Those are all cities on Cocoon (like the beach city). Well, with the exception of Cocoon is enormous. I don't think it's as big as our moon, but it's big enough to support multiple large cities and areas. At one point I think they talked about how some of the "natural" aspects of Cocoon (like weather and light) were controlled by the Cocoon Fal'sie. So the beach city was artificial.

I think what's confusing you are the events that take place in the "wild" areas of Cocoon. And about traveling to Pulse ...

nickdawgy

How do you unlock Chocobo riding?

fujishig

Thanks brainee! That makes sense, I guess I was confused about there being these wild fringes of Cocoon, and thinking that was Pulse.

brainee

JasonF

This should explain why there's Pulse stuff in Cocoon. Spoilers for Chapter 4:

fujishig

I also wanted to add that I really like the localization they did. I know there are some clunky lines, but it does seem like the mouths in the cutscenes match the words (not sure if they reanimated for that purpose) and the translations of the recaps and datafiles are really good.

fujishig

Yeah, I thought they just dumped everything back into Pulse, which is why I was confused...

actyper

He cast Doom on me when he had probably 2 rounds of attacks left, lol sucker.

Question

slop101

flashburn

Soon enough.

JasonF

It helps if you think of FF not as a game, but as a 40-60 hour anime story with quick time events.

nickdawgy

I still don't get why people say the first part is boring and/or the tutorial is 30+ hours. They show you new things often during the game, but it's not a tutorial.

Oh, I see what you did there.



Anyhow, I finished it. Just over 50 hours and I have a ton of marks and sidequests to do. I can't say that I was too sad that

Good ending, though

Also, is it like a requirement for Final Fantasy games that the bosses

Oh and the final boss was pretty easy. Nothing compared to what you faced previously, IMO.

ultimaton

Agreed on the final boss. Once you figured out the right battle team and paradigms to use, the last battle(s) were incredibly easy.

Anyway, I enjoyed the game. I don't get the talk of "30 hour tutorials" either... I never felt bored or if the game was holding my hand, but to each his own, I guess.

JasonF

My snarky reply to the Penny Arcade strip aside, I completely agree. I thought they did a great job of ramping up the gameplay and moving things along. Throughout the first 15 hours of the game, I was constantly thinking "Wait -- all the reviews say this game doesn't get good until after the first fifteen hours, but I already really like this game. If I'm enjoying it this much now, how much am I going to like it when I get to the 'good' part?"

rocketsauce

I almost feel like the reviews were written as an assumption as to how the game was going to be received by FF fans.

fujishig

I can understand the complaints about the "long tutorial," though I think I was expecting much worse because of all the reviews. For the first few hours, at least, you can't do much of anything... you can't level up, you can't use paradigms, and the levels are basically straight lines. And for a lot of the time, up until chapter 9, you can't switch out characters, so a lot of the time you're stuck with 2 man teams. And most people will tell you not to upgrade your weapons until far later into the game anyway. And because you have no idea what you're doing, or maybe because the computer can do it faster, you do spend most of your time just pressing x/a and autobattling. I know for the summons I can't even begin to comprehend at this point what combination of buttons to press on my own.

That's not to say it's not fun for the whole first 30 hours or anything, but I'm not sure any other game could get away with such a lengthy introduction to gameplay mechanics. Once you get to level your characters and change paradigms and stuff, it gets a bit more fun, even if there are still restrictions for a few dozen hours after that.

nickdawgy

My wife is the biggest FF fan around and she likes the changes.

rocketsauce

Which is why I think it was a mistake to kind of let what they people would think about the game dictate the tone of their review. I almost didn't buy the game because of the tone of the reviews and I'm really glad I read this thread first.

nickdawgy

Some of them were downright awesome. Such as having all your HP back after a fight, and of course not having to worry about MP.

Deftones

oddly i was thinking about this when i was playing another final fantasy game recently. running through FF IV on DS and it pissed me off that i had to get potions and use them after battles.

ultimaton

Being able to immediately retry a failed battle was absolutely genius -- I don't know if it's been done before (i'm sure it has), but it's going to ruin other JRPGs for me in the future.

JasonF

On a quasi-related note, it's less necessary given the change that atxbomber mentions above, but I love the fact that save locations are relatively plentiful. There's nothing I hate about JRPGs more than deciding I want to quit for the night and then having to play for another hour until I find a save location, or losing a fight and having to replay an hour's worth of the game.

fujishig

I'm not sure why they don't let you save at any point, unless it's a system limitation because of the data you have to store or something. You pretty much can't die anyway, so it's not like you can "cheat" by saving anywhere (though I guess because enemies respawn when you load, that could cause some issues).

I'm still torn about the actual battle system... it seems sometimes that the only real decision I make is which paradigm to use, the action is too fast to really manually cast different spells. Do you guys autobattle, or do things manually? It also seems like paradigm shifts can differ in terms of time when you're vulnerable: sometimes the animation just shows all of you shifting at once, and that seems shorter than when they show each individual shifting.