LogFAQs > #976386194

Sounds like I can't get XIII-2 without getting Lightning Returns, gotcha.

Okay, three hours down tonight. Lots to take in.

The first scene I see is a flashback to a resort town - the one the Datalog says Lightning and Serah are from - called Bodhum. This is where Snow proposes to Serah using some fancy pendant, and she says yes. She makes a wish on the fireworks but hasn't fully processed how to tell her sister that she's a l'Cie now.

Fast forward to now, when the party has fallen down to Lake Bresha, a frozen wasteland at present that's probably from Sanctum weapons or some shit. Everyone shares that they have a l'Cie tattoo - except for Lightning, who doesn't want to talk about it - and that they all had the same dream about a beast called Ragnarok (literally the Viking Apocalypse) destroying Cocoon. Snow connects the dots and figures that Serah's message plus this means to stop the beast from doing this deed, but Lightning doesn't agree. Pulse and the l'Cie are enemies of Cocoon, so why would a Pulse Fallacy want some l'Cie slaves to save it? I'm with Lightning at this point, but I don't think any of them have thought that Serah's Focus could have just been to bring Lightning and Snow before the Fallacy so it could give them a task that Serah was nowhere near capable of accomplishing.

We find Serah's crystalline body wedged in some ice, and Snow desperately tries to pry her loose with some debris he finds. Lightning just says goodbye, knowing it's the end, and is frustrated that Snow is wanting to stick around there and get everybody killed - so frustrated that she punches him in the face! XD, that was awesome. Loverboy here is just hopeless - he's thinking Serah this, Serah that, never about how if there was no Snow that Serah may never get saved. He's too focused on saving her NOW and not about thinking thoroughly. That said, Lightning and Snow's relationship here shows what happens when two people have very different styles of grieving. Both are miserable right now, but Snow is hopeful he can find a way, while Lightning is all about self-preservation.

Then *IT* shows up. This monkey-fighting robot on this Monday-to-Friday lake just cleans my clock for whatever reason. I seriously have to try FOUR times to kill this father-mucker, because every time it still manages to one-shot Lightning despite her having nearly full HP. And yes, I'm using the Crystalarium or w/e it's called to grow that stat. Yes, I'm happy we have magic and some stat growth now. I just wish that I could have grinded another couple nodes out before fighting this thing, since there's not much opportunity to do that. It honestly feels like a late-game boss where you get pwned if you haven't been growing your characters properly. I eventually beat it, almost never having a Relentless Assault and instead focusing on the Delta Attack and Solidarity options. I can't change characters out - not that I'd want to, since Lightning/Snow/Vanille is a well-balanced trio - but I just go with the three options it originally has. I think the Sentinel skills helped some.

After *IT* is defeated, Snow opts to stay behind and dig Serah out of there. Hopeless wants to take a minute to chastise him for letting his mother die but Snow says "Move along or they'll leave you behind" and "We'll see each other again" - so once again, Hopeless doesn't get his chance, and though this would have been a bad time, I often find that the best moments are when somebody picks a stupid time to do something. Especially if that's a 13 y/o idiot like Hopeless. He's older than I thought.

I fight my way through without much of a problem, eventually seeing a slew of goons leaving a fort to try to sweep the area, since another train seems to have derailed with a bunch of Purge survivors got out. Lightning says we press on, so we do. There are a couple close calls after this but the thugs in particular are weak - it's the bigger things that cause more issues. I find myself slowly learning more things as the game goes on, which is certainly preferable to an info-dump.

I get to the Gate of Antiquity and the scenery here is great. So is the Spark Ring I find in an item sphere, that'll come in handy later. I take the long way around to ensure my stats grow more and max out Sazh and Vanille's crystaria in time to fight the DARGON at the end. The first form of this thing is exceptionally weak, even weaker than some of the generic enemies I've fought, but the second not so much since I have to stagger it in order to deal any actual damage. But once that happens, it's game over, and we can take down the "Beware of the DARGON" sign. Also worth noting: Sazh and Vanille get new roles, presumably just them because they have their existing crystals fully grown, while Hopeless and Lightning needed just one more battle to accomplish that.

Back to Snow. He's still hopelessly digging and some PSICOM goons approach and are somehow immediately able to identify him as a l'Cie - you'd think we'd have learned if they have scanners or some cool shit like that, but we just find out from dialogue that they know. Snow asks for help but they send out a cleanup crew, so Snow offers to help them by cleaning their clocks. These guys are incredibly weak... but what isn't is what appears next. The Shiva sisters, a summon called an Eidolon (why they didn't just call them summons again is beyond me), show up and I find myself having to defend most of this battle because of what the tutorial says. I lose the first time because I thought the purple gauge still had some ways to go, but I realize my error and push the Square button the second time. They transform into a motorbike for no reason and then the summoner, a woman in blue-and-black, comes down congratulating Snow on conquering them. But he has to come with her, because he doesn't have a choice. He mistakes her crew for Sanctum goons - which I don't believe they are, because the Shiva sisters killed a good number of the real deal first - and she tells him to shut it and worry about himself. They take Serah with them, so Snow of course has to go because he's thinking with his penis.

Meanwhile, Lightning's team has discovered a jet - Sazh was wrong that one of the engines was dead - and is being pursued by the Sanctum Air Force. Sazh, being the only licensed pilot here, is flying the thing but Lightning keeps trying to take over because she's getting trigger-happy to smash some thugs' skulls. She blows up one enemy aircraft but it takes wondrous movements to destroy the others. During a break in the action, they livestream the Primarch (Murderer-in-Chief) saying that the Purge has concluded, that it was a necessary measure, and he may have to do more later since it seems that most sheeple support it. That's the thing about lying politicians, negative press covfefe, and one-sided stories - ppl r dum so they don't question what they're told. If most of them knew the truth, they'd oppose the Purge, and they'd probably want to visit Pulse to see what it's really like. I still think that Pulse is a paradise that Sanctum doesn't want anyone to find out the truth about, hence the covfefe, and hence the draconian measures. Eventually Lightning has Sazh fly into a Cocoon Fallacy and this throws the enemy pilots off enough and destroys a few of their aircrafts, but Sazh's plane also takes damage and begins to plummet toward the ground. And that's where I stopped for the night.

One more thought: Methniks that Gadot, Lebreau, and Macqui might be fought eventually... perhaps being bribed with pardons for bringing Snow in?