Well that snuck up on me; it comes out on Tuesday (3/8)!

Been waiting for this game since the ps3 was released; gonna be great!

Its also on xbox 360 :P

I'll wait a bit for it... just got MLB the Show 10... so i've got plenty to keep me distracted til it hits the bargain bin :)

Baseball is lame.

Picking up my copy after the gym tonight. I hope they didn't fuck it up with the new combat system.

I find the new combat system to be pretty fun so far. I hated FF XII's combat; FF XIII is much closer to the traditional combat than XII was.

I picked up the game at midnight last night and played about the first 1/2 hour. It truly is breathtakingly beautiful.

Good, I haven't played a FF since FF X on the ps2, which I hear is kinda similar to this one with the "leveling" grid thing.

I may try to pick it up this weekend. Although I have plenty to keep me busy right now with DAoC, STO, and Bad Company 2. I haven't played any of the FF games in awhile either.

Not trying to steal the thread but how is bad company 2 i thought 1 was just ok

I like it. The game types make it so that you have to move around to be a part of the combat. In COD you can just sit back and camp on most game types.

After a couple hours of playing and getting to the point where everyone is now cursed by the fal'cie and can use magic, I am still unsure if the combat system. I think I'll need some tougher fights to see how it will fare.

Graphically and audio wise the game is fucking top notch. With DTS audio and not much difference between the CGI cuts(mostly hair being the big difference) to playable game it's one of the best if not the best I've seen so far on the ps3.

Hell I remember first playing FFIIV and seeing the blocky CGI, I was like holy shit this rocks.

I'm about 11 hours in and I've been a fal'cie for a while. The combat system improves the more roles that each character can take on and you'll find yourself constantly switching paradigms. I find that even though I technically only control 1 character in this game rather than 3 in most FF games, I have to do a lot more to keep up with the battle. I like that--the battles are more engaging.

The advancement is VERY similar to FF X which I appreciate because I really enjoyed the "Sphere Grid." They did away with the concept of needing a specific sphere to activate an ability which was the main complaint with the grid. I also like that each character can take on multiple roles so you don't really have to think in terms of "the best" characters you can play who you like. I also like that (at least so far) I've been forced into my party decisions and played all of the characters equally. It really sets me up for when I do get a choice in my party, not always sticking with whatever my 1st choice is.

I also like that even though some characters can take on the same roles, they get different abilities (Hope's Synergist and Sazh's Synergist are opposite--Hope buffs defense while Sazh buffs offense) making it even more interesting.

Really enjoying it so far--but the story is still quite confusing.

One of my favorite "little touches" features: when you load the game after not having played, it recounts the most recent events of the story to you going back probably an hour or two of gameplay--it's really nice to get some context when you get back into the game rather than just getting "dumped in."

Yes, I love the "Hey btw this happened last time you played summary" when starting back up.

The weapon upgrading is a bit confusing. I upgraded Lightings weapon to 2 and that was it. I'm going to just save up all the components I have and go from there. Maybe peak at an item guide to see what is up.

So far so good. I'm enjoying it.

I haven't done much upgrading either; I think Lightning's weapon is lvl 5 and everyone else is around 2 or so.

Picked up the game yesterday at Target. They had it on sale so I went ahead and got it. I haven't made it very far because Caycee won't get off of it long for me to play. I think she is on chapter 4 or 5 already. Wonder if she can beat it before Brian does????

But from what I have played so far it is pretty good.

You playing it on 360? If so have your even played them from ps2 ? Is it really close or what?

Played with weapon upgrading a little. From what I've seen it takes 36 vibrant ooze( I think it's called) to give a weapon the 200% xp bonus. You can use other items but I found this to be the one I used. you can buy them from the shop. Then I was using Turbo Jets to level up with. I've got some weapons up to level 15 so far but I ran outta Gil.

Sell credit and incentive credits they give a lot of Gil. Also sell any materials that only give 1 xp cause thats what they're for.

Save the materials that catalyst. You'll use those to upgrade a weapon to it's next tier once it becomes max level for it's current tier which I think I read was 26.

So I'm nearing the end of the game now and I have more observations:

1. The story is TOO linear. This has been a pretty common complaint with this game and I agree with the statement completely. By "too linear," I mean that the game plays like one continuous dungeon. There are no towns to stop and explore (there's no exploration at all). You just press forward and it makes the world feel incredibly small for an FF game.

2. Closely related to the story being too linear is there's no real character involvement. You feel very separated from the world around you and characters who are not your party get maybe 1-2 minutes of screen time (converse that with Sephiroth from 7 or Seymour from 10 who have huge presence throughout the game). There almost no development around the characters in your party; and as such, I sit near the end of the game thinking to myself, "I only sort of know why they're doing what they're doing; but what's worse is that I just don't care."

3. Epic Trash mobs; this is just something that starts mid-game and gets worse as the game goes on. You'll be cruising along cutting mobs down and suddenly you'll come across a series of trash mobs with incredible insta-kill potential. And because there's no real way to backtrack, you're kinda stuck doing the fight over and over...and just when you thought maybe you needed to level up; the next series of mobs are cake.

4. The fights are too long. In general, boss fights can take 15 minutes and even trash mobs can take just as long (the "epic trash" listed above).

5. You don't open the last level of character advancement until you "complete" the game; say whu?!

6. There's no "free reign" period. That is: a time-honored tradition of all Final Fantasy games is that near the end of the game, the linear story comes to the crossroads of "go face the last guy or go explore the full extent of the world." You get nearly instantaneous travel to all parts of the world (usually via an airship) and you can explore all the world has to offer.

7. Fuck the datalog. It does expand the story slightly, but not nearly enough. And even if it did it enough, I really prefer the style of the other FF games where these details are woven into the story rather than read in a log that says, "oh, and in the past this happened to this guy."

Overall, the fights seem to be geared to play like an MMORPG raid dungeon where the fights are long, require lots of strategy and coordination, and come at regular intervals as you pass through the dungeon. The world is treated more like a sandbox game--you don't get to do the "free reign" period until after the completion of the story which makes the story seem like a complete afterthought. As to how expansive the world will feel at that point, I don't know. Final Fantasy, to me, should be an epic story--not a single, 45 hour MC run.

100% agree, which is why I found myself actually not having a feeling of needing to play.

when you finally get to cocoon it's like woot the world is opened up...but not it's just one BIG "room" again with tunnels(doors) to yet again smaller linear areas. I can go back and play secret of mana or chrono trigger and have more fun exploring than fighting epic trash mobs in this game.