LogFAQs > #976403716

So virtually nothing forward-moving happened in the two hours I played today, but we did get a good chunk of flashbacks here in Chapter 4.

We start out at the wreckage of the plane, where all four have of course survived because the writers can't kill them off. No other reason. Lightning is the first to get up and starts fighting some of those robo-dogs, which rousts Vanille, who rousts Sazh, who... who cares about Hopeless? We fight the weaklings and then start to get into it. Lightning shows that she has absolutely zero patience, and this is exactly why she's not my type. I've had people say that since I like Tear so much that I'll like Lightning, but Lightning doesn't have any patience, while Tear has the patience of a saint. That's kind of a big difference!

Hopeless is the only one who follows Lightning because Sazh has to take his time getting up, which is perfectly okay. Lightning's rushrushrush style isn't everyone's flavor, and that's probably why she seems to have so few friends. We get a flashback of her commanding officer giving her time off for her birthday, which she didn't seem to care to ask for if it weren't for Serah's insistence, and he tells her she's in line for a promotion. A terrible shame they were all deported before that could happen. Hopeless doesn't seem to jive with this - he can never be as strong as Lightning, but that's just fine. I think he's getting better as a character now that Snow isn't in the picture. It's the fact that he's taking too long to let all his frustrations out that make me think his storyline is clunking along.

Lightning, again having no patience, goes ahead and Sazh and Vanille catch up to Hope. This is after some three-way battles, and I note that the tutorial omits a critical detail: You don't have to pick a side and stick to it. Oh, there's five things taking on the one? Okay, lower the five weaker things to two, then get rid of the already-weakened strong one, then take out the last two weaklings. That way you don't have to deal with the strong one's attacks at all but also don't have to fight two-on-five. Vanille perks Hope up and Sazh says that he'll bring him home to his father. Hope isn't enthused by this, as apparently his father is a useless asshole who never gave a shit about him. It was just him and his mom in Bodhum when they got deported, simply by vacationing in the wrong place at the wrong time. (We still don't know why Vanille was there, so far she just was.) Hope's mom had wanted to fight to get home but Hopeless is still blaming Snow for "coercing her" into that. Uh, no. She volunteered on her own. He doesn't seem to get that part and doesn't seem to get that his mom gave her life to protect Snow. I have a bad feeling that the airing of frustrations around the Festivus Pole isn't gonna be what it was built up to be.

Anyway, Sazh triggers another device to let them climb up the cliff, and the trio presses on. All the while, I'm keeping the Crystarium up-to-date - and no, Vanille hasn't learned Death yet. I keep expecting Lightning to be waiting ahead, needing our help with something, complete with the "Hurry up or I'll leave you behind" attitude. And sure enough, she jumps down to us and, without saying it, rushes ahead, knowing that we know what that means: Exactly what I just said. Would it hurt to take things a bit more cautiously? This attitude gets her killed quick in one battle I fight, but I still manage to win because I'm abusing Paradigm Shifts. We also get another flashback of Lightning quitting her soldier job so she could be deported, solely to save Serah. For whatever reason, and I'm sure we'll find out later, Sazh wants to tag along because he's curious what she's up to. Could he be a spy? And if so, for whom?

Other notes here are that there are too many times where Vanille can't decide if she has a British accent or not - and she says she slept through History (and also that sure, she's a kid). There's definitely more than meets the eye with this one. I saw nothing more about her in this chapter; this was all Lightning and Hope, with a hint of Sazh. But this shows that Pulse HAS tried to invade Cocoon - so it disproves part of my prior theory, but my logic keeps evolving. It could be that Pulse is trying to destroy Cocoon before Cocoon destroys Pulse. Cocoon's xenophobia and 300 y/o grudge aren't exactly things Pulse should take lightly, and all the negative press covfefe about them needs to go away. Invasions aren't out of the question, but most of this junk was from the war three centuries prior. So it doesn't seem like they still keep doing much, just enough to keep themselves protected and keep the fighting away from their land.

After killing some succubi (pretending one is my ex, who was a succubus, was nice), I find myself in a fight with a Pulse Dreadnaught. The first phase of the fight is super easy, but it pushes us into a hole. We take care of it though, and after this we finally get to unlock weapon upgrades. This takes me some time, because I need to figure out how to grow the weapons I want to. I am also curious about how some of these weaker weapons I picked up will grow. I don't want to bother with them just yet but probably will soon. I also finally sell that Credit Chip that had been sitting there since it only gives 1 EXP to weapons and sells for 500 gil - I was waiting to see if it had any use for upgrades but it doesn't, so it allows me to get more useful parts. That said, gil is really slim pickings in this game, so it's not exactly something I can invest in much right now. I presume that's deliberate but I'll figure it out.

I also am curious as to why I can't choose my party yet. I mean, yeah, I'd rather not have Hope in there right now, but it's just a curiosity. I like to be able to have the choice if the plot provides it. FF7R doesn't give you a choice, but it's super rare that all four main characters are active at the same time, so that's understandable. Here, it would be nice to be able to experiment. That said, Sazh casting Bravery on Lightning is pretty OP right now, and I'm using it a lot by changing tactics all the time. Also keeping an eye on HP so Vanille can heal us up if she has to.

And for the record, I don't care about achievements. I just care about having as fulfilling an experiment as possible. Without overdoing it, of course. I only stopped because I had an update to write and I realized I was starting to forget some details when I read the Datalog. I do hope I've remembered everything here - may have forgotten a minor detail or two, but I think I hit all the points I wanted to here. Definitely enjoying this so far and haven't figured out why I stopped last time, which was somewhere around the start of today's playing I think. I remember Vanille being in Bodhum but that's about it. My memory could be spotty since it was so long ago. But I'm treating it as all new to me, even if it doesn't seem to be particularly memorable for a lot of you. Glad I can help!