With special guest, The Stupendium!
An Evening with Commander Sterling: https://www.skiddle.com/whats-on/Manchester/HEAD/An-Evening-with-Commander-Stephanie-Sterling/36355242/
Is a game worth playing if it doesn’t get good until you’ve played thirty hours of it? Inspired by Final Fantasy discourse, I tackle this thorny issue with the grace and balance you’ve come to expect!
#FinalFantasy #NierAutomata #SpecOps #FinalFantasyXVI #FinalFantasyXIII #TheStupendium #TheJimquisition #JimSterling #JamesStephanieSterling #Games #Gaming #videogames
N U T N U T
Glad to see you collab, been a fan of you both for years.
Jim’s acting is more wooden than anything in Final Fantasy…
I first heard the “good after 30 hours” defense for Xenoblade Chronicles, a game that bored me to painful tears for 2 hours before I gave up. Most overrated RPG of the last ten years. No clue why it has such a fanbase declaring it the greatest of all time.
Automata had a lot going for it, before the subversion. I think a better example would be Nier: Replicant/Gestalt. Before the remake with its improved graphics and redone combat, that game was clunky as hell and had that dirty, pissy look that was all too common in that era.
It gets good after 30 hours wasn’t true for 13 and it’s not true for any game ever made
Have we done this topic before? I feel like we’ve done this topic before.
I’ve said it so many times. If a game isn’t good in the first six hours, then *why the hell would I keep playing it* ? It doesn’t matter how good it gets later, if it’s shit before I get there, then I stop playing before I get there. Fuckin’ twits.
Thank God for James Stephanie Sterling.
Okay… hot take here: Final Fantasy XIII wasn’t that BAD of a game. I actually enjoyed the combat system, and the effects.
…. THAT BEING SAID: the first 30hrs felt like a tutorial. Let that sink in, I”m near the end of the game and it felt like I was still playing the tutorial.
Story was terrible, can’t fix that one (see XIII -2 and Lightning returns for attempts to, and failing to fix it)
There is a good game in there, but it just needed: Better story, better level design, better pacing…. okay maybe it wasn’t that great now that I’m looking at it.
I regret playing it all the way to get to the end…. in short: No, it did not get better after 30hrs….
“Get your hand off my train!”
Dragon Age did ‘magic user hate’ better, years ago.
I like Final Fantasy XIII. But I don’t think it gets better. If you don’t like the gameplay, you won’t enjoy it even after they stopped handicapping it with that long ass tutorial.
Linearity is an non issue for me, but if it is for you, no amount of time will justify that last open map section that unlocks so late into the game that by the time you have it, you can literally ignore it and the final dungeon is just a few hours after that.
Knut Dixgard…Marquis Knut Dixgard. This is the name of a character in a work that wants you to take it seriously…well not completely it is an Isakai anime, but still, with names like that, who needs slapstick?
I’ll sometimes make a ‘it gets good ‘ argument at times, but always with the caveat of ‘but I get not wanting to slog to that’.
I have this problem with anime and manga. Naruto and my hero academia have shitty character- wait they get better seasons later.
“It gets good after 30 hours” means “After 30 hours the sunk cost fallacy and Stockholm Syndrom really start to kick in”.
“Slaves have always contributed to their own liberation at nearly 100%”? ROFL. Uh, no. Slave states are almost always liberated by outside forces or changes in the society that enslaved them. There have been very few successful slave rebellions in history. Some in the Caribbean and that’s about it. Almost all slave rebellions have been brutally put down going back to times and places like ancient Rome and Egypt.
How long is FFXVI that the first 30 hours not being good is worth it. Is the game 100 hours long? If so, 30% not being good is a tough ask. It’s also tough as what if I don’t like what it becomes after 30 hours. I’ve been bored for so long hoping to not be bored later.
For a modern JRPG the story was really good. However I wish there were more side quests like the Sanbreque slave abuse ones but that’s probably on me for being used to play hundreds of hours in MMOs like FF14. I really liked the game and the money invested was very much worth it. I do not agree on the critique of the story. But rarely do I since I find it somewhat pointless to question the morality of a fictional story to such a degree of who technically owned slaves.. that BS.. I just want good story nice guy and maybe a boob or two. And I really liked this one, especially on the portrayal of sibling love and empathy I was really sold.
The first time I was told “it gets good X hours in” where X was more than maybe 1-2 hours was also FF13. The person didn’t seem to understand why I didn’t consider that praise. But there’s a difference between “it get’s good after X hours” and “it gets *great* after X hours”
Also, FF13 was trash. The story is shit, the characters suck, and the gameplay never looked any fun.
The fact that it got direct sequels is *embarassing.*
FF10 had a bad story and half the main cast were shitty, but they had some genuinely good ones and the combat was some of the best Final Fantasy ever had, so I *got* why that one had a sequel.
Also also, watching Steph and Stupendium basically fuck about was *very* entertaining. Abigail Thorn from Philosophy Tube next? She *did* crimp Steph’s style for that one video where she also shouted them out.