[quote name='Josh1billion']I was doing way more in FFIX's first 15 hours than pressing the Auto button.
- buying weapons/armor, healing items
- learning skills, deciding between trade-offs of upgrading to stronger equipment versus holding onto older equipment for another hour to learn new spells, etc.
- taking on sidequests
- playing minigames (most notably, the trading card game: Tetra Master)
- exploring the world map and dungeons
FFIX is one of the more involving games in the series (i.e., very customizable character progression [compared to most RPG's], minigames, and lots of side content), so I'm really not sure why you chose that as your example of a 15 hour X-mash-fest. Any other game in the series (except FFVIII) would have been a better example for trying to make your argument...
In contrast, for the entirety of FFXIII that I played (8 hours), I did absolutely nothing other than:
- watch cutscenes
- walk down one-path (and occasionally briefly-two-path-before-becoming-one-path-again) corridors
- press Auto to win battles
- try to fight manually, and realize that the actions I choose are always the same as the Auto actions (given that I have how many actions to choose from? I forget, one or two?), realize that manual battling requires just as little strategy/skill and only serves to waste time, and return to Auto battling from now on
No shops/armor/equipment, no sidequests, no minigames, no character customization, no strategy in battles, no exploration, no dungeons (just one long corridor per area), ...
To anyone who hasn't played the game, that's going to sound like an incredibly gross exaggeration, but I can assure you that I mean all of that 100% literally. That was my *exact* experience playing the game. Right at the end, I vaguely recall receiving a summon which seemed to add a little spice to the battle system, but it wasn't enough to keep me playing for another hour at that point.[/QUOTE]
You definitely bring up a lot of valid points but at the same time you have to realize that it will take quite a while for an RPG to open up. Especially one like XIII where you can easily sink 100 hours into it. If they just dump everything on you at once you would simply be overwhelmed and have absolutely no idea how to proceed.
For me, I was relying on spamming Potions with the Doctor's Code accessory instead of using a Medic class until around the half way point if not later. Same thing goes with all the other roles. I'm assuming you're referring to the Commando role which only has 1~2 manual actions.
If you were to get to the Saboteur role (a role focused on debuffing) The Synergist role (a role focused on buffing) and the Medic (focused on healing/curing status ailments.) Then all of a sudden you have a ton of options and it's better to use manual commands (Well, this is probably most true for the Saboteur role)
As far as it being really linear, I won't argue with you there. The game does have a ton of cutscenes and you're basically going from point A to point B the majority of the time. That was greatly changed in the second game. Honestly though, I didn't have that much of a gripe with it to begin with.
Anywho, we're getting off track but I figure people could benefit from both sides of the spectrum. Some people are going to dislike it for certain reasons, which could prevent someone from even giving it a chance. While others may wonder what happens if you stick it out.
