I have played it and the mechanics were a pale imitation of a good chracter action game with some bullshit thrown in. If FF13 is less involved than Lightning then that says a lot about how shallow FF is combat wise.

If I wanted a shallow combat game that wasn't trying to be something else I would just play Dynasty Warriors 4 again.

......

I agree with you...

I have enough of a log combined with other hobbies that I can wait for a game to go on sale without going through withdrawal.

Gaming can be an expensive hobby, sometimes :(

You're not kidding. Football, baseball, even horses running in circles. It's all fun and games until Vinny the Nose comes to collect.

The sad part of all of this is that they sell you an incomplete game many times at that $60 price point, and turn around and sell the "complete package for another $30. THEN there's the DLC that aren't even included in the season pass. Who ever thought of that genius idea needs to be beaten. Borderlands II is probably one of the most famous, but the Season Pass doesn't even encompass all the mission packs. It is just whatever crap the dev felt like putting into it, you still need to shell out for the others, and the "GotY edition" is also sadly very very incomplete.

I agree with much of this. I have both Divine Divinity and Beyond Divinity, for example, and paid for both. What I don't appreciate is game developers or publishers deciding to carve up games in the attempt to ruin your game experience unless you pay them more money. They're selling you a full priced game. Either charge more for it out of the gate or stop breaking my game play to tell me a place or item is off limits because I didn't buy a weapon or mission pack for $4.99 (or more in some cases). I realize they're trying to make money, but I don't need to be harassed to keep giving it to them. If content is worth it I will gladly pay for it. I don't want to be berated by the developer "HERE'S A SIDE MISSION IT LOOKS LIKE YOU CAN DO BUT YOU CAN'T BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T PAY $9.99 TO COMPLETE IT! IT'S REALLY FUN, JUST PAY UP!"

It would by like CDPR putting the NPC to start the Heart's of Stone expansion in the main game with a patch, let you talk to them and reference the content you're missing, and then have a pop-up window that takes you to CDPR or GoG to shell out for the expansion to continue. Devs are even worse when they cut out parts of the story that are then later referenced by other missions so you're actually missing out on the story of the game with content that brushes the main story if it's not just a small chapter of it. Like buying a book to realize chapter 12 is sold separately.

I totally agree making a game engine for multiple games, or expansions that add a small game to the main game is cool. Charge for that. Just don't make the base game a shitty experience because you want to squeeze more money out of your customers. "PAY US EXTRA FOR THE GAME TO NOT SUCK" is not a valid marketing scheme.

If that's true, then I call "luxury".

In the late 80s and early 90s new games in Germany usually cost 120 DM (or $75, the equivalent of almost $130 by todays standard) and you had a choice of either buying them full price or gambling and hoping they would eventually show up in a bargain bin or a compilation. They were very likely to just disappear from the market if you waited to long, because pre digital distribution limited stocks were very much a thing...

And most of the time you didn't even have shops selling games. If you were lucky there was a shopping center with a small games section or a hardware store with an even smaller games section but most of the time you had to use mail order instead. Actual mail order, where you sent in an order form by snail mail or occasionally by calling a hotline (again "luxury").

Gaming really was a niche market and many mail order services were nothing more than industrious nerds selling games from their basement. Being a gamer in the 80s/90s could really suck at times...

You have a good point there. I agree, don't half-arse a game in the attempts to further profit off of filling it out later. However, you have to look at it on a case-by-case basis. It's probably not good to announce you're coming out with an expansion prior to releasing the game (you can already see the heat that come from the Witcher 3 announcements), because then people will assume they are not getting a full game and feel they are being short-changed.

I'm not saying that people don't do this, but what I'm saying is that I typically give people the benefit of the doubt and assume I'm getting a complete game with the ability to get even more games in the future.

With forward references and back-references between game and add-ons, it's difficult to tell whether there was a chapter missing or a new book to be read.
It was probably "luxury" at the time, however, I remember when a 500MB hard-drive was about $2000 US and only a few years later did it only become in the 3-digit range. Unfortunately, I think a 10MB hard-drive was all I could afford back in those days. :)

Being a gamer in the 80s/90s was better if you could get a group together and play them, especially the Infocom or Scott Adams' adventure games. Also same with the Sierra adventures as they came out too. Having many minds in the same room was almost as good as a hint book; but there wasn't a "walk through" you could Google.

just wait for sales, if ppl stop buying them...

...there won't be any sales.

Hooray for bargain bins! That's where most of my '90s games came from. I also got a lot of several-year old games through some (monthly? I forget) German mag that sold for 10 DM with which I got the likes of Rebel Assault, Sam & Max, Indiana Jones Atlantis, Knights of Xentar (censored of course), and quite a few others. Also special edition issues of PC Player that had full versions of games like Master of Orion and Dune 2. :)

I suppose I can consider myself lucky enough that I was able to do that with the allowance I got from my parents. Well, if it had been up to my Mom I probably wouldn't have been able to get much of anything. She was never keen on them vidya games.

As for full price games I got a few of them at Christmas over the years thanks to my Dad. Master of Orion 2 and Starcraft are some of the very select few I bought myself.

We agree in principle. I too handle it on a case by case basis. DLC aren't evil inherently, the premise has been around almost as long as computer games, with the actual distribution having gone digital. Technically every game you buy here or on Steam (and even some at brick and mortar retailers) is entirely DLC. It's just digital content to be consumed. The practice of expansions and the like has changed with the distribution getting far cheaper. You don't need to make a substantial add on and charge $40 for it any more because you don't have to cover getting discs printed and boxed for shipping, nor do you have to pay exorbitant middlemen like Wal-Mart or EB games to shelve them. You merely have to make whatever bite-sized content you like and slap a reasonable price tag on it and BAM. Put it up in the store(s) you're already in and pay their small fees. Some companies take this to the extreme and cordon off good content that shouldn't be restricted. You're right (and I've never actually stated otherwise), it should be judged on a case by case basis.