LogFAQs > #976609490

Okay, finally got to play a little more tonight. Didn't make it too much farther, but MAN is this part loaded.

WARNING: SOME HEAVY PERSONAL STUFF IN HERE. DISCRETION ADVISED.

At Palumpolum, Light and Hope sneak in through some drainpipes that kids know about, but apparently adults don't, as if they were never children. The duo sneak in to this food factory powered by the local Fallacy, Carbuncle, an enemy of our Pulse L'Cie. Also an enemy: This snide commander who insists L'Cie aren't human (wrong) and need to be eliminated swiftly. He talks about citizens paying some sort of price that doesn't really make any sense to me. What price are they paying? What price have they paid so far? It doesn't seem like the Pulse L'Cie do anything but make people feel scared - without anything to corroborate those fears. In fact, the people should be more scared of PSICOM thugs shooting at them.

The enemies here are weak. Hell, I even sneak by a Lucidon and then turn around and surprise it, because its rock-brain doesn't seem to recognize that I could be doing that. Funny. The gameplay is really starting to get boring at this point. Just redundant fights where you're auto-battling or getting taken advantage of because you're not.

All of a sudden, Light has an epiphany! All because she says people are leeches on the Fallacies, but Hope says they protect them, like they're pets. And Light suddenly realizes that's all she's been: She needed a master to serve because that's how she was taught, and she never realized she depended on them for everything in her life until she was branded with Pulse. She was confused and chose to fight her way through instead of hoping and dreaming. This seems like a complete 180 and it comes from almost nowhere. It's certainly something I need to relearn how to do - my mom did everything she could to dash my hopes and dreams and replace them with nightmares, and only served to distance myself from her permanently - so it strikes a chord with me. That said, Light remembers when her parents died and how she needed to be strong for Serah, so she thought she could rebrand herself to "Lightning" to make herself into a badass she actually wasn't. Kids will be kids.

Like I do with my mother's vicious attacks on me, Hope is replaying his mother's death - and seeing Snow's smile despite it. I don't think he realizes that Snow was smiling to cope, just like my mother never realized I was fantasizing to cope, and now my coping mechanism is thinking about death, knowing that I won't be part of this world for all that much longer. Thanks, Mom.... NOT. So I get why Hope hates Snow for taking seeming delight in someone else's misery. Just like my mom did to me. I don't get why she would want something I'd literally told her I didn't, and completely ignore me when I said the topic made me uncomfortable. She's lucky we're both still alive, and this happened over a year ago now. It was by all means traumatic.

We exit into the plaza and it's an ambush. The media announces the execution of some l'Cie and a hundred PSICOM goons show up with their rifles at the ready, all while being televised. This is to allay the people's concerns, but Light pays these no regard... nor does Hope... nor does Snow, for that matter. Loverboy shows up on his Shiva-bike and starts making loops to dodge bullets and beating the crap out of everyone. Light joins in with some slicing and dicing, and Snow lands to say hi, Fang in tow. He explains that the Cavalry are there to help and aren't exactly fond of what the Sanctum is doing, but doesn't elaborate why. I'm sure Cid R and/or Fang will be telling us later. But we certainly managed to quash the negative press covfefe, and people now know that 1) there are deadly Pulse l'Cie on the loose and 2) PSICOM is pretty inept despite their numbers. They don't know that our crew won't harm any civilians unless they choose to intrude.

Light throws Hope to Snow and goes off to do whatever on her own, which I'm sure we'll explain later. More motorbike stunts ensue. Fang disappears into thin air. Hope falls off the bike, and this ends up leading to a Snow vs. some goons battle... and this killer robot. Because Snow hasn't been accessible to be leveled up for some time, he gets owned. Hard. So I use some of this 12,477 CP to get him more HP and a second accessory, which I put a Spark Ring into. Boom. Fight suddenly becomes easy, and no less awesome because, y'know, it's one of those times you get to call forth a Persona. Those aren't exactly common.

Snow and Hope fight their way through, just the two of them, with no explanation to where either of the ladies went off to. There are some goons here and some thugs there, but most of them are weak, and the big commander ones are the only ones that give me trouble. I do get a couple of credit chips and an incentive chip worth 2500 gil - that's a lot of money for this game since for whatever reason monsters don't drop like 10 gil apiece. I use that 2500 on three Turbojets to upgrade Snow's equipment, and that ends up coming in handy. Most of the shop stuff here is either lame or something I already have. I really don't know why even the equipment and such are as linear as they are here. This game's replay value is practically nonexistent.

That's all I played tonight. I'm getting toward the end of the ice-loop plaza and I presume have a fight coming up. No idea where Light and Fang are. Nor do either of the guys seem to care.

Next few days should be good for me to play more!