Board 8 > FFXIII playthrough topic

(+) Yeah! (+)

As promised, since Vanille won this year! If I like this enough, I'm buying the other two. I've only played the first five or so hours of this, and that was a long time ago, on Xbox 360. Since I no longer own one of those, this time I'm doing it on PS3. I only played 45 minutes so far but thought that was the perfect amount to get an opening post that would get people interested. And the more engaged people are with this topic, the more effort I'll put into these write-ups.

So, starting things off, you're dropped right into it. Lightning and Sazh are on a train, all cloak-and-dagger like it's some kind of Middle Ages convent. The strange hooded guys who chant and shit, you know? But it's not that. Lightning is here to kill. The guard briefly turns his back to her and BAM, dead. Her act of courage against this one thug inspires everyone else on the train to rise up and right some wrong being done to them. At this point, none of the details matter - it's just an epic introductory sequence that shows that Lightning is this strong female protagonist. While I like characters like that, a lot depends on the nuances. She's tough and no-nonsense, but I can't really pick up on the nuances of her character just yet because she seems to want to hide them. After the tutorial against a big machine-like boss thing (I got four stars btw), she tells Sazh that she was a former SOLDIER... hmmm, sounds familiar.

Though in this case, I presume that means she was one of those guards from the train, as opposed to being fused with mako. She got to wear that cool armor and everything. I wonder.... does this game have costumes? Can we pick up her old gear and have the option of having her wear it? Or is that too Tales for this?

Anyway we learn that she and Sazh aren't familiar with one another, and he's tagging along because he has nowhere to be and all night to get there. Sazh has a chocobo chick in his hair, whom he just refers to as "Chocobo" - I presume this cutie is SMFFFC eligible, since he/she/it is one specific Chocobo, like Mog is a specific Moogle. We ...blah blah blah... fight against thugs ...blah blah blah... and we're just being told basics of battle. It's like the cracking of Bozoblin skulls that you expect for a tutorial, but this makes me glad it opened with a bang. Certainly beats a generic opening like that. I do take note that if the party leader is KOed, it's Game Over, so when I find an Iron Bangle that gives +50 HP, I give it to Lightning.

After we take care of a few more here and there, we come across this guy in boss-looking armor, but sadly he's just as weak as the thugs around him, nothing more than tutorial fodder regarding the combo gauge. The more you beat up on one enemy, the more damage gets dealt, and once it's staggered, the damage maximizes. After beating up on them, Sazh wants to familiarize himself with Lightning, and that's when he learns she's looking for the Fallacy... er, Fal'Cie, whatever that is. He doesn't seem to have processed it yet.

We then start Snow's story, showing that he's fighting with rebels against the extermination... we're low on details as to why people would volunteer for exile, or why anyone would "cooperate" toward a peaceful future for others by volunteering for execution. I mean, I'd just kill the person coming to abduct me. Problem solved! I loved how ironic the President or whoever was rambling was talking about this "keeping the peace" while guns were being fired in all kinds of directions. He's certainly failed his job, and I suggest we impeach him. People aren't just going to accept death. I ain't willing to die to "better society" because that means society failed to find a place for me, or ostracized me. No, that would get me to fight the status quo. And that's what Lightning is doing and I presume Troy Baker is too. Just a matter of why, which we'll find out later.

Needless to say, I didn't remember much of anything save for the character designs and part of the setting here. So this pretty much counts as a fresh playthrough. I'll do another hour or two tonight but thought I'd get the topic out there now.

Tag

Assuming you aren't against the concept if reading data-logs, I remember them being interesting and informative. I would've been totally lost in the plot without them! Many would call that bad writing, but I enjoyed reading them whenever a new one popped up.

Underrated FF, tbh.

I really want to replay this! Only mainline FF (besides 16) I only played through once

Mobilezoid posted...

Assuming you aren't against the concept if reading data-logs, I remember them being interesting and informative. I would've been totally lost in the plot without them! Many would call that bad writing, but I enjoyed reading them whenever a new one popped up.

Read through most of that. It helped me on a few accounts, namely refreshing what "the Purge" is and why it's being done. Denizens of Cocoon seem to think any contact with Pulse - their "underworld" - is toxic and want to rid any potential influence of it from their "utopia." But Sanctum, the governing body of Cocoon, is painting Pulse as this toxic wasteland, an undesirable hell. In all honesty, that sounds like North Korea. Everything they say is a lie, and Pulse is actually a place of freedom, away from the oligarchic tyranny that everyone knows. They just don't want anyone to find out. To me, this is the obvious conclusion. Ask yourself these questions:

1. Why hasn't anyone exiled to Pulse come back? There's gotta be at least one person who could get out, so why didn't they return?
2. Why does PSICOM (the high-level military, private to Sanctum) have to kill people en route if they disobey if they're gonna be left for dead anyway? It doesn't make any sense.
3. Why does all the evidence point to Pulse being a living hell if nobody has seen it with their own eyes in 300+ years? Is that because it's actually propaganda?

It's quite obvious to me that, when you combine these three things, that it's because things are being hidden by the powers that be. If it was just #1, it could be because there's no way to return. If it was just #3, it's hard to know. Because #2 connects the others, there's only one way it makes sense.

Anyway, we pick off where I left off. Snow joins his lieutenants Gadot and Lebreau and they start kicking ass:
"Real heroes don't need plans!"

Lebreau's quote there is quite accurate, honestly. The real heroes are the ones who don't hesitate to save somebody without even thinking, or ones who only have a couple minutes to formulate a plan to do something awesome.

They pass out guns - along side an inept newbie whose name I forget - to civilians who want to join the resistance (NORA), ones who feel they've been unfairly stripped of their free will by being marked for execution for unjust reasons. One of these civilians is a woman of unknown age whose name is simply "Mother" and I immediately realize she's gonna die, since her son is Hopeless. And die she does, in the process saving Snow's life, but he tries to return the favor and she lets go. Hopeless sees this and is naturally - and justifiably devastated, but boy is he awful.

Our champion Vanille, who's with him, needs to remind him that if he stands there and wallows, he's gonna die too, so he needs to worry about that later. He refuses to talk to Snow right after saying he needs to tell him off, which leads her to physically push him forward. He combats her when he starts making excuses as to why he can't fly the thing there right after he said he could. He's nothing but a barrel of whining and excuses, and it doesn't take very long for Vanille to ask him "What's your problem?" This is awesome. She's mature beyond her years, recognizing that while Hopeless absolutely has a right to be grief-stricken, he shouldn't be making so many excuses and immediately backing out of anything he gets himself into. Granted, I don't know how old she actually is, but she's old enough to broadcast that she likes watermelon by wearing a bra for her top. IIRC, she's a relative of Lightning's. May be wrong there. But yeah, I'm enjoying her, because she's actually pissed off at how weak Hopeless is. He's a brat who doesn't seem to recognize that Snow was trying to save his mother since she'd saved him. I get that he's a kid, and I can cut him a little slack, but this is why I don't typically like kid characters. They aren't mature enough to properly process their emotions when thrust into adult situations.

Eventually, everyone ends up inside the Fallacy (NEW IN-JOKE ALERT), though it's unclear how Lightning managed to plead her way in there. She says she's also looking for Serah, her younger sister and Snow's fiancee, and wants to save her just the same. Snow, while prioritizing Serah, recuses Hope and Vanille from a ZOMBIE BOZOBLIN UPRISING... or, no wait, sorry, can't resist any of my longstanding in-jokes. No, these are Cieth, l'Cie who failed their contractual obligations, called a Focus, and were stuck to roam inside the Fallacy as zombies. They ain't human. Snow realizes he can't let Hopeless wallow with only Vanille to protect him so he escorts them out... or at least to Serah, where Lightning's already waiting. Everyone finally gets to converge! At least for now.

Serah is a l'Cie already, and completes her Focus just by talking to Lightning and Snow about saving everyone in Cocoon. She turns into a crystal being, which Sazh says that, according to legend, means she's granted eternal life. I don't know if I buy that, and Lightning doesn't either. She wants to keep the promise and so does Snow, but Snow wants his girl back even if it means it costs him his own life. As the bad guys start attacking this thing, leading it to become unstable, emotions are running high and Hopeless isn't the one responsible, how amusing. Lightning realizes that the Fallacy needs to die to complete that promise, but that sets off a security alarm and leads us to fight it. We beat it up and then all goes black. We see Snow's arm suddenly get something etched upon it, presumably a l'Cie tattoo like Serah's, meaning he now has a Focus to fulfill. Last thing I saw was Vanille saying during times like that, she likes to reminisce... and I save when given the opportunity.

All I know is that if a Focus is to help save Cocoon, the l'Cie aren't the enemy. Sanctum is. They're the ones trying to keep this fake utopia - and I'm familiar with enough dystopian fiction to know that this is along the same lines.

Now, one side note I wanted to mention. Something that I think contributed to me quitting last time is how dumbed-down this battle system is. I like how it combines turn-based with real-time, with the ATB gauge generating how often you can act and it being different for each character. That part is awesome. But I noted how there's no EXP, only three stats (HP, P. ATK, M. ATK), minimal available skills at an early juncture, very little to buy in the shops, and almost no way to have character growth. I do hope there's something introduced soon that helps rectify that, like FFX's Sphere Grid, because without something like that there's no real way to feel like you're doing anything other than playing the exact same battles on repeat. I've noted just how redundant these battles are so far - very much so by JRPG standards, and I attribute that to the lack of skills available, no growth system, and the missing enemy diversity. I hope this doesn't stay a problem, because this battle system will be a lot of fun if you get to input all kinds of different combos early enough in the game.

The battle system does open up. I'll refrain from saying when though.

One of the biggest criticisms of this particular entry is how linear it is. My neurodivergence actually enjoys it. Sometimes I can get overwhelmed when a game, especially an RPG, is too open, so to have just one entry in the series that's so rigidly linear was actually a very welcomed change for me.

I have always hated XIII's battle system and the stagger mechanic that has since become a mainstay to Final Fantasy

last year square ruined DFFOO with what's effectively a stagger system, although it at least finally saw an improvement this week

Buy the other two regardless of how much you like this one, they are enormously superior in every way

musically, gameplaywise, storywise, whatever, all of it is better

Gonna hard disagree on XIII-2 story being better. I've never been so mad/disappointed in a game in my entire life after that ending.

What is bozoblin?

I cut Hope a lot if slack, especially early on, because his mom just died. That's rough!

BlueCrystalTear posted...

Granted, I don't know how old she actually is

FIVE HUNDRED and Sixteen(Five Hundred Years of Crystal Stasis, plot will explain it)(Although the Ultamania apparently says she was crystalized at age 19, so....Five Hundred and something still fits.)

tag

Mobilezoid posted...

I cut Hope a lot if slack, especially early on, because his mom just died. That's rough!

I'm cutting him some slack due to that - note my explanation here:

BlueCrystalTear posted...

while Hopeless absolutely has a right to be grief-stricken, he shouldn't be making so many excuses and immediately backing out of anything he gets himself into

If Hopeless wants to grieve, he should be allowed to grieve. He shouldn't be doing things like trying to pilot a hovercraft and then suddenly second-guessing himself. My point stands that he's too immature to be thrust into a situation like this and be likable or relatable. If he was at the point of just having reached pubescence, different story, and probably optimal tbh. But the fact that he's a kid is why I'm knocking his character. It wasn't the right creative decision to make him be that young imho.

One small knock on Vanille is that she urged him to pilot that thing instead of asking him if he needed time/space. But she also figured that berating Snow would let all those feelings of frustration out and feel therapeutic for him, so that's why it's a small knock, and nothing largely problematic with her character. One of those "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situations.

But for Hopeless, he lacks any spine, and I attribute that to his age.

Waluigi1 posted...

What is bozoblin?

The often common, generic enemies from certain Zelda games, who aren't very smart. I changed it from "Bokoblin" as a joke once and it kinda stuck!

Probably won't get to play tonight. Tomorrow I might play a little during the day.

Wait how old is Hope supposed to be? I thought he was 15 or so.

Hope is 14 in FFXIII. Still young enough to lack full emotional maturity, yes.

EDIT: to correct my previous post on Vanille's age(this is based on FF13's Ultimania): 19 physically. 619 chronologically in FF13.

Waluigi1 posted...

Gonna hard disagree on XIII-2 story being better. I've never been so mad/disappointed in a game in my entire life after that ending.

What is bozoblin?

It's 100% sequelbait, but if taken as part of a trilogy it works out fine. Absolutely unconscionable in the moment for sure tho

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?

Man I do not remember most of this game. Appreciate the refresher through your write-ups though. It's really odd they haven't ported this game forward huh?

Waluigi1 posted...

Man I do not remember most of this game. Appreciate the refresher through your write-ups though. It's really odd they haven't ported this game forward huh?

Very much so. I'd have thought they'd have bundled it with the other two parts of the trilogy and packaged them together for a PS4 or PS5 release by now. But that'll probably happen in a year or two since FF12 already got a remaster, and 13 is next.

I still gotta acquire the other two parts. May wanna buy FF12 as well.

Just so we're clear...
Own and beated: FFVII, FFX, FFVIIR
Own and played a bit: FFVI, FFXIII
Own and haven't played: FFV, FFIX, FFX2
Don't own and played a bit: FFIV, FFXV

The ones I know I gotta play that I haven't include 8, 9, X2, and eventually 16, and I know I gotta get back to 6 and 4 as well. (I gotta acquire a few of these...)

Tag. I platinum'd all three games and I still somehow forgot the majority of the series.

Waluigi1 posted...

Man I do not remember most of this game.

Same here. I kinda remember some of the characters and motivations but dont remember a lot of the main plot. I dont have much of a desire to replay it either.

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!

I agree that it wouldve been nice to switch around the party at those spots or at least switch out the leader. I have vague memories of looking through the menu trying to find this option since it seemed like it wouldve made sense to have. At least you do get to try a bunch of different leaders, though.

Another couple hours down, so here we go!

We start off at this heavy artillery thing - the kind that could probably go KEWL KEWL BANG BANG if you wanted it to - and Light (as she wants to be called now) starts talking about how she wants to blow up Eden, the Fallacy in which Sanctum is housed, the capital of Cocoon. Sazh asks and she's 100% serious. She has a goal now, a target like she was always taught to have as a soldier. She doesn't care who it is, just so she has a mission in life. Sazh and Vanille think she's crazy, and that she might have to fight Snow. Hearing this, Hope offers his aid, and then struggles catching up to Miss No Patience. Sazh questions her Focus, and Light doesn't care - she's either gonna die a Cieth or get turned to crystal, and it makes no difference which flavor of DOOM she gets to suffer. Light just leaves without anyone knowing how emotionally conflicted she is. She's going through a lot of reflection right about now but is good at disguising it. I appreciate this characterization of her a lot, honestly, but it would be nice if we got to see her internal thoughts a bit more. She IS the protagonist even if Vanille's the one narrating things. It would be nice to show her losing it a bit more, given her archetype.

She barges ahead with Hope hobbling along and KABOOM, some PSICOM goons cause a smoldering separation from Sazh and Vanille. The goons are weak despite this, and only serve as a plot device to get the party to split AGAIN. Seriously starting to get a bit tired of that. For some reason, the party can never be together as a whole for very long and 4/13 chapters into the game feels like the time you should start having some choice. Literally everything here is linear in ways that I don't particularly like. Hope asks Lightning to help him get stronger and she's not exactly enthused about this. Him going home doesn't help his resolve either, since he won't be welcomed there as a l'Cie. He shows his worth by hotwiring a Pulse Armament like the Dreadnaught from before and barging through a bunch of security robots. Man that was fun! Kicking one toward the stars and watching it blow up in the distance was gorgeous. Whacking the robo-arms to wipe them out was just great. I hope we get more sequences like that, since Hope crashed this one and didn't land gracefully enough for Light. After he trips and falls, she abruptly goes off on him for being a liability and
<img src="https://media.tenor.com/uKxZgrT0xb4AAAAC/persona-persona4.gif">

Yup, of all times for Light to awaken to her Persona, it was NOW!

First things first, I gotta fight Odin in order to claim him, and this does not go well. Since I kept picking up Spark Rings I at least had the foresight to give one to Light immediately before since I smelled a boss fight ahead, figuring it would be an electric-type, and that didn't help much. Hope didn't have one so he kept getting owned, so I decided to use an extra (I have three) for Hope, level up Light's (three extra levels only got 6% more, ouch) then spend some of these extra Phoenix down the PSICOM thugs dropped. I can see why they drop them commonly now - this fight probably had a lot of people struggling in beta so they added that. I conquer the Norse God-king and he turns into a Horse, becoming Light's Persona to command at will. I get a tutorial where he gets to whoop some robot asses (wait, do they have asses?) and it's awesome. I'm trying to recall everything they went over in there about the gestalt gauge and the summon gauge. I gotta let the gestalt gauge fill up before pressing Square to ride the Persona, but also gotta do it before the summon meter expires. This way deals a lot of damage, and it's great.

After the fight, Light apologizes (!!!) to Hope for being cruel and then makes him a promise:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVcLIfSC4OE

Okay, that aside, Sazh and Vanille trek through some sort of factory. Vanille is just fun and carefree - Sazh has a lot of trouble keeping up with her youthful energy. With all this attention to her being a kid, plus that spoiler-tagged thing above, I'm starting to think she's not an actual kid, or maybe she is and was already crystalized as a l'Cie once, already having had that tattoo under her skirt. Sazh doesn't mind being "Dad" for right now, he's used to it, though I do wish we got more story about him. I encounter something that looks like a D20, but it's actually just a bomb that blows itself up. One pair killed me for reasons unknown. Don't know why the target changed on me. Also don't know why I can't stagger the Pulsework Soldiers half the time even though Vanille has used her Saboteur spells (and Sazh his Synergy ones) to ensure that it's possible. Don't know why that doesn't always work because it makes fights needlessly tough even when I do things correctly.

We then get to some busywork with pushing four buttons at four power terminals to activate glyphs to open the path. This is stupid. I swear, I miss actual PUZZLES in JRPGs, things that actually made me think a little, instead of this Skyward Sword "you can't go into the dungeon" crap. After clearing another rough battle, Sazh and Vanille opt to make camp for the night. Vanille finds a mat rolled up in a pile of rubbish and uses it as a bed, then draws a line telling Sazh not to cross it. He is woken up in the middle of the night by Vanille's warm body pushing against him... so she crossed it, LOL!

Next, we finally get to check in on Snow, and the woman he's with. She now has a name btw: Fang, which I've heard 'round here before but I was never properly introduced. Don't know why that was. You'd think we'd have been shown her introducing herself since she seems to be a pretty major character. Hell, after we get through the cool sci-fi city shit to something called Landblum, we get this bad guy-seeming dude introducing himself as Raines, this game's Cid. Yes, he seems like a bad guy, but I can't tell if he is or not just yet. He says things like "the Sanctum" and makes these implications that despite Snow's accusations, he's not fully their stool pigeon. He talks about executions placating the public so they can sleep at night, about how negative press covfefe keeps the fear alive, and about all this dystopian stuff that amounts to a futuristic version of "ppl r dum" so the powers that be exploit them. But I can't tell if this is his agenda or if he's simply reporting what Sanctum intends to do. He may not be fully on board with that - Fang sure doesn't seem to be that way. She's trying to get Snow to not say or do anything that will get him shot on the spot, even as Serah gets taken ahead. This is why I don't know if Cid isn't actually a villain or just somebody I'll get to kill later.

We then get yet another flashback to before the Purge. These are honestly starting to grate on me a little, because most of these don't really add much meat to the forward story - pretty much everything is being told backwards. The forward plot is just too light and while this backstory helps me care more, it feels like we should've been shown some of this at the start of the game instead of just being dropped face-first into it. In this one, Serah breaks up with Snow, revealing that it's because she's a l'Cie, and thus his enemy. After talking to Lebreau at the bar, he finds Serah watching the sunset on the pier and tells her they'll face it together. He's certainly a keeper! Not gonna let anything dissuade his feelings for her. While they certainly behave like a couple here, I gotta wonder how many times Troy Baker and Laura Bailey have recorded a romantic scene like this by now - this was probably the first of several. (Also: How many times did Troy Baker have to record "SERAH!" in various forms?)

That's enough for now.

I'll say this(which can be said WITHOUT spoiling things):

-Every Eidolon acts as a "reality check" for the given character. WHY it awakens at that particular moment is relevant to the character's personal development. The game will explain the "checks" so I won't go deeper, though if you pay attention to the character personalities, you'll likely pick up the reasons before the game tells you.
-The party makeup is also "plot-based intentional." Everyone is paired with each other for particular reasons. Again, plot will explain this thoroughly. Because the characters are meant to be more grounded, they're intended to gain things from each other.

Can't comment on anything else without spoilers so it is left there.

I mean, obviously Odin awakened because Lightning was lashing out at Hope. I don't think she really believed what she was saying deep down, but didn't have the courage to tell a kid that he'd get killed at the rate he was going. Odin needed to come out for her to accept that she can help him.

For Snow, he awakened because he felt a need to protect Serah, which was genuine... but more for himself than he realized or was willing to accept.

As for the second point, I'm intrigued to know more about Fang and Snow and why they're together. Hope and Light is obvious. Hope needs to become a man and Light needs to learn patience. Vanille and Sazh are definitely interesting and I expect that to blossom more when we find out who Vanille really is.

Still, my issue with the storytelling being too backwards stands. There's not enough moving forward at the same time. That kind of approach only really works with thriller movies (or, say, Eternal Sunshine, a romantic movie told as a thriller). I wouldn't mind the flashbacks if the current story was just as fascinating, but it feels like the meat of the story is all in the past. Makes me wonder why the game wasn't just set then and built around it.

The one thing I'll say about Vanille/Sazh that avoids spoilers is that Vanille needs to mature like Hope does. The definition of HOW and WHY she needs it is why Sazh is the one her journey occurs with compared to Lightning/Hope. Sazh couldn't give Hope the growth he needs(you'll understand why after a certain part); Lightning couldn't give Vanille the growth she needs(you'll understand after yet another specific section).

Again, avoiding spoilers, that's the most effective way to describe the situation. Fang/Snow is a bit more subtle. Won't touch on that though until presumably you've gotten further into the game.

Okay, back to work on this now that my busy few days is over.

Chapter 5 is pretty much entirely focused on the "Hope and Light" duo. We're stuck in some bioweapons lab with maps designed like organic biochem cell structure maps - that was not lost on me.

The sucky thing is that I start off controlling Hope, and that sucks because he's vastly inferior in combat to Light. Light kicks ass and the accessories - yes, that's plural now - of a beefed-up Silver Bangle and a Power Wristband really augment that. Hope... well I need something for him, so I buy a Tungsten Bangle (hereforth W-Bangle) to give him. It helps. A lot. Also helpful: Lightning gets Launch to send staggered enemies soaring. The damage output for the staggering is, well, staggering. THe only problem I have here is that the tutorial is clunkily-worded - it doesn't explicitly say killing the enemies will lower the electric fence, which leads me to believe that it could be trained to detect intruders like us as well. This part confuses me.

What's weird is that both of them seem to be acting very differently now. Light all of a sudden has a lot of patience for training Hope to be a man, as if she doesn't hate herself for having to do this at all anymore. She got over that very swiftly. Hope also has balls now, though not any stamina - but still, you'd think he'd still show some fear, which he doesn't. He's supposed to be mid-adjustment so it's weird that he's suddenly this much of a tryhard, even if it's understandable that he WOULD try hard to be manly. It's not like he made a huge mistake or anything if you know what I'm talking about. But still, it seems like this is months after the last part, not just a couple hours.

There's really not much substance here - so little in three-ish hours that I don't need to read the datalog - but what little we get is pretty solid. Light doesn't expect much resistance from thugs in here because PSICOM is too proud to let the other branches know about their ineptitude, so the Guardian Corps doesn't know about any l'Cie fugitives. Neither would the public, so if Hope wanted to go home, he could without much of an issue.

But that's the least interesting thing. Light calls Snow the "leader of a gang of kids" and that NORA stands for No Obligations, Rules, or Authority. In other words, it's an anarchist cult. She says the one redeeming quality about her brother-in-law is that he is stubborn, and thus he won't die. Despite all this, Light doesn't think Snow is responsible for the death of Hope's mother - also named Nora, for a nice touch of irony. She blames Sanctum for that, but Hope isn't listening. Light is correct. Nora volunteered to fight to protect Hope, and Snow tried to protect her but she ended up giving her life for him. But since the game can't let us forget about Hope's personal vendetta, we're building up for a huge heated argument between him and Snow. I'm already prepared for the disappointment!

The other thing is we get a flashback to Day 12 - yay more flashbacks, because all the important story shit happened before the game! Light had the worst birthday ever when Snow and Serah announced their engagement to her, and that immediately makes me think that Serah's eventual AITA post would get a YTA judgment. It's Light's birthday, it's her special occasion, don't make it yours too and take that from her. Especially if it's becoming engaged to someone she's never liked. Light gets a gift - a pocket knife - from them, but she sees that as extra baggage and gives it to Hope. I don't know why she'd re-gift that just yet since that seemed to be the only memento of her sister she had on hand (unless that IS the reason). After this, Snow and Serah flee and are pursued by Sanctum. Snow drops Serah off on a platform of the Fallacy and it swallows her before he can re-grab her, which is why he knew he had to storm the place later. Loverboy wasn't gonna let his girl float away.

We find some bodies of PSICOM thugs and Hope suddenly has sympathy for them... Light scolds him, saying that sympathy is a distraction and he needs to focus on his goals. That's a sad reality - feeling for others, including your enemies, should help you get farther in the world, but instead it shows weakness. One of these goons seems to have a beeper of some kind... and thus we fight some very much alive goons, most of whom are weak. Seriously, everything I fight here is weak. By the time I get to the boss, I have both Crystaria available maxed out.... and then that thing gives me problems. I die once but the second time I figure out how to cheese this monkey-turtle-flower thing's stagger gauge - Light as Commando to prevent it from going down, Hope as Ravager to boost it - and I frankly don't understand why it works that way. It's like the world's most boring puzzle. I much prefer fights that require thinking on your feet to ones that punish you for even doing it the right way. The worst part is that I can't control where Light - who I'm thankfully controlling by this point - ends up so the attacks sometimes hit both characters, other times they don't. I stagger it once and that's that - it drops another W-Bangle, which will certainly come in handy, though the upgrades for this thing are trash. The Silver Bangle upgrades a lot better tbh.

For the most part, this chapter was pretty straightforward, and I'm sorry I don't have much of anything witty to say about it. It ends with Snow's part of the Day 12 flashback and Fang insisting he come hunt l'Cie with her, though I don't think he seems interested in fighting Lightning. He's gonna let her get away if he can. Fang and Snow seem to have quite a rapport where they push each other's buttons - and she hits him when he's in full Loverboy mode to snap him out of it - without totally despising each other. Yet, anyway.

Sorry this update wasn't as fun as expected. I was expecting to have more cool things to talk about. The scenery here is still beautiful, though - amazing that it's only on PS3!

I always liked the Hope/Lightning dynamic. She mostly seemed like an impatient hardass early on, but she's also a big sister who can protect and guide. Hope initially seems useless and whiny, but he can be a lot more capable than he seems. Once their emotions have settled a bit, they do a good job in bringing those aspects of each other out.

BlueCrystalTear posted...

Light had the worst birthday ever when Snow and Serah announced their engagement to her, and that immediately makes me think that Serah's eventual AITA post would get a YTA judgment. It's Light's birthday, it's her special occasion, don't make it yours too and take that from her.

As someone who often browses AITA to kill time at work, this made me lol

Mobilezoid posted...

As someone who often browses AITA to kill time at work, this made me lol

I mean, it WOULD be something posted there, and Serah WOULD be the AH, yes? I've written satirical AITAs many a time and actually considered making one about FFXIII here, sans the l'Cie thing.

I always liked the Hope/Lightning dynamic. She mostly seemed like an impatient hardass early on, but she's also a big sister who can protect and guide. Hope initially seems useless and whiny, but he can be a lot more capable than he seems. Once their emotions have settled a bit, they do a good job in bringing those aspects of each other out.

I'm surprised by how much I'm enjoying Hope at this point. Note how I'm not calling him "Hopeless" anymore - because the annoying aspect of him getting himself into things and immediately making excuses has dissipated. Light's U-turn into that big sister archetype is much welcome, and the dynamic between the two of them evolved quickly to really push each other to be the best they can be. It's good that they're paired up.

Anyway I cleared Chapter 6 last night. There's really not much of anything here - the only thing of relevance is Sazh's backstory. Yes, it's good that we got this, but it felt like it was shoehorned into a fluff chapter that offered virtually nothing for Vanille. She did suggest that they head the other direction to ditch the PSICOM goons, since trying to help Hope and Light out will only result in all of them being in trouble. PSICOM won't expect a thing. But really, this was all Sazh here, and while it's great, I wish there had been more forward story to go along with his backstory.

So on Day 5, Sazh's little boy, Dajh, wandered off wanting to check out a Fallacy, which ended up being a Sanctum one. The kid, who's like 3 y/o, got branded. This is unheard of - Sanctum Fallacies never really brand people because they want to stay out of politics or something rather. A PSICOM officer, Colonel Jihi Nabaat, comes to requisition the boy, only allowing Sazh to see him on Day 12 during the fireworks. Sazh has no clue what his son's Focus is, nor does Sanctum, just that he's become Force-sensitive, so he can detect beings from Pulse - this would include his father now, making them enemies. Since Dajh's mother is dead - which is why Sazh wasn't like his old self (I had to read this in the Datalog, and you'd think that would be important enough to show in a scene, such as Sazh talking to Colonel Nabaat about that) - Sazh takes responsibility to help the boy complete his Focus, whatever is may be, and that's why he sent himself to Purgeville.

What he doesn't know is that Vanille was there that day, right when Dajh got branded. I was pretty mystified as to what she was doing at that Fallacy, but she doesn't have it in her to tell Sazh. That and we need to keep the mystery going. There's some dialogue here that makes me think Vanille might be from Pulse, what with her asking what Sazh thinks of the propaganda. He's old enough to know to question shit that has no evidence, after all. Sazh thinks for Sazh, and thus is smart. Vanille, as evidenced here and earlier by talking to the chocobo (who's yet unnamed since Sazh was buying it for Dajh when he wandered off), is mature far beyond her years. It makes me wonder if she was already a l'Cie when this whole thing started.

Really, that's all the meat this chapter had. There was a lame gimmick of having to keep switching rain off and on to control what enemies spawned since you can't feasibly take on some of these tough things at this point, something that would've worked better had it been like a puzzle. This is just a dumb gimmick instead of it taking a simple layout and making it so you needed to trigger "on" orbs and "off" orbs in the right order to avoid the wrong battles. Or force your way through if you're overpowered. One of these things destroyed me quickly, even with buffs and debuffs.

The boss fight here, two things which look like the product if some sort of bearded monkey fucked a Blastoise, is also tough, and I need to switch Vanille's accessory from a Magician's Mark to a W-Bangle, which is enough to overcome their attacks and win me the fight on my third try (the second I tried attacking the other one first, but that made no difference). It's pretty boring still aside from Vanille's fearful "Come and get it!" (perfectly acted) and the rather interesting music, but that's about it.

The honest question I have is why people are so against others for being a Pulse l'Cie. Like... they got branded, not by choice. What's the reason for this xenophobia? Did a Pulse l'Cie EVER commit any kind of terrorism during their lifetime? It's quite obvious that they're condemning xenophobia and other forms of bigotry here - don't judge a book by its cover, and don't condemn someone for things that they can't control. More people need to understand this.

Next time, Sazh and Vanille head to Nautilus, City of Dreams; Light and Hope head to Palumpolum, Hope's hometown; and Fang and Snow finally get to do shit together. About time we get some forward story with them instead of the stagnant loop they've been in for several chapters.

BlueCrystalTear posted...

Sazh and Vanille head to Nautilus

It's about to go down!

BlueCrystalTear posted...

Light and Hope head to Palumpolum

It's about to GO DOWN!

BlueCrystalTear posted...

Fang and Snow finally get to do s*** together

ITS! ABOUT! TO! GO! DOWN!

Don't think you're ready for the whirlwind of plot incoming. Gird those loins.

BlueCrystalTear posted...

Light had the worst birthday ever when Snow and Serah announced their engagement to her, and that immediately makes me think that Serah's eventual AITA post would get a YTA judgment.

This got a laugh out of me lol

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!

You're approaching one of the biggest moments of the story.

Lots happened tonight.

We pick off with Snow and Hope, when Snow makes a comment about grownups being "dummies" who fight and needing to protect the kid. He's not happy that PSICOM are terrorizing the populace - and that's really all they do. They're nothing but a bunch of well-equipped terrorists who put fear into the hearts of civilians and aren't afraid of innocent people becoming collateral damage - and this is something even the Guardian Corps is noticing. More on that in a bit, because Snow gets an angry call from his wife asking where the hell he is. OKAY, OKAY, Fang isn't his wife, but that's my immediate take from it. It's hilarious, but it's interrupted by cellular static because we are led to believe for no good reason that Hope drove the knife into Snow's back. He was hiding it behind his, after all.

Then Fang FINALLY gets to fight alongside Light, and these two are great together. They honestly talk like old friends and it's a lot of fun to have them hanging out. Once they're clear of the goon squad, it's very apparent that they're not even acquaintances, because Light asks "Who are you?" Fang admits she's from Pulse - Gran Pulse, specifically - and that she had just awakened from a crystal stasis not too long ago alongside her "partner" who is none other than Vanille. Yes, I kind of figured that given how their names are listed in SMFFFC. Didn't know the whole story. What's interesting is that Fang doesn't have much of any spellcasting, which is a surprise for her given her character design, and I like surprises like this.

Back to Snow, he says he wants to save everyone and Hope doesn't buy this. Snow knows that the terrorists won't hesitate to open fire in the middle of a bunch of civilians if it means that he'd be "brought to justice" - whose justice? Terrorist justice, that's it. He recognizes that the only way to save 'em is to scare 'em, so that's exactly what he does. He fires a bunch of bullets into the air with a discarded goon's rifle, and says he's gonna kill them all. After clearing the thugs who swoop in, we move forward and are suddenly cornered by those very civilians who have formed a mob with torches, pitchforks, and the like, who are asking the guys to "leave alone" this little girl and her well-loved stuffed animal that the game keeps focusing on. She runs back to her mother, who is glad she's safe, and Snow decides to cut the mob off by blowing up an aerial beam with a sign on it. It falls on none of them, and Hope props up the stuffed animal onto the rubble so the girl can get it back. The townspeople, afraid of l'Cie magic, are all left wondering why none of them are dead. Maybe the government isn't telling them the truth? Or are they such lemmings that they were never taught critical thinking skills? They really need to think for a minute. If Snow wanted to kill them all, why didn't he kill any with the rifle? And why would he only use magic to separate himself from them?

After rigging up a discarded jetpack, we take a ride away from the incoming goons who don't hesitate to fire through the crowd. This takes us to the rafters, and up here I actually can grind a little by going back and forth. I do that, mainly to get a little extra gil from incentive chips, but also to get a little bit ahead on the Crystarium since I've had a few close calls of fights, including with that hoverbike. Another such device blows up an advertising balloon for no reason other than to show power... yeah, and people think these are the good guys? At the end of this there's a blatant boss arena, and Hope finally has the cojones to confront Snow... but it's neither good nor down because a weak DARGON - weaker than the hoverbikes - interrupts it. We send the thing scurrying away and then Hope returns to confrontation. Snow quickly figures it out and exhibits huge amounts of regret and responsibility. But he can't dwell on the past. He can't change it. He has to go forward. This is admirable. Hope doesn't fully buy it and awakens to his Persona... which then blows us off the building. Snow actually saves Hope's life here letting go of the handhold - the one that Hope was about to stab him from - and grabbing the kid, shielding him from harm. He remembered the promise he made to Hope's mother, even if Hope is being a complete tool thinking that murdering Snow is the right thing to do. Hope, you do realize that's going to get a lot of people to hate you just the same, yes? Including people playing this game?

After the boys crash land, we're back with the girls. Fang confirms that Vanille was already a l'Cie when everyone else got branded, and her tattoo is evolving rapidly - you can tell how close you are to DOOM by how the branding looks. The moment the "eye" at the center opens, you're fucked. Fang explains that she and Vanille had been in crystal statis for a couple hundred years and only just woken up, which alerted the Sanctum Fallacy into creating a l'Cie of its own, Dajh, and opened the doors of the Pulse Fallacy, which branded Serah. She hid Vanille in a container and fought some PSICOM goons but by the time they were all dead, Vanille had already left. She was then met by more Sanctum troops, but these guys worked for Cid Raines, who doesn't like how Sanctum is puppeted by the Fallacies. He wants people and l'Cie to coexist, to have Fallacies augment their lives but not control them. And this is why he protects the l'Cie - that and they can help him. This had happened on Day 5, and Fang quickly proved herself useful to him. And her brand is washed away so it's not like she's in any imminent danger of turning into a Cieth.

Fang also brings up that Light is just like Snow, and that's probably why they don't get along. Both are stubborn alpha personalities who want to be in charge of a situation, and they clash because neither wants to back down. There's also that Light is annoyed by Snow insisting on calling her "Sis" and how he's considered an enemy of Cocoon, just like Pulse. Fang says that Pulse isn't too different in that regard, what with people being afraid of "the vipers from up above." The two countries are the same and nobody's ever thought to try to make peace. They'd rather fearmonger up some covfefe and control people that way. But I'm much more fond of the Huxley approach vs. the Orwellian, seeing as trying to control people through fear will always result in someone rising up against the status quo and turning the tables, but controlling them by placating them through pleasure will work wonders since they won't question a life they enjoy living. Yes, this means a lot of drinking and fucking, but hey, it works.

It's unclear to me what Fang and Vanille's relationship is like. Are they sisters? Lovers? Just friends? The datalog just says friends but since Fang says she'd "tear down the sky" for Vanille, I think there's more to it than that. Fang says it's her purpose to prevent Vanille from turning into a monster, and asks Light what hers is. Light doesn't know anymore. She lacks something to look forward to, something to survive for. Fang poses an idea of being there when her sister wakes up. Hey, that's something. Even if it's just looking forward to next week's Survivor since yesterday's was awesome, that will keep you trucking through. Light needs that. So maybe the plan to blow up Eden was the right call. Watching Sanctum fall is something to look forward to. They deserve it.

I end with a little more grinding - this courtyard area is quite beautiful but enemies respawn, and I manage to get like three incentive chips and three credit chips here. I bought another W-Bangle for Fang and found another in the corner. Leveled up a few things. Should be good... well, Sazh and Vanille will need some more upgrades, but I'll get there when I get back to them, which is probably next time. See ya then.

I always liked the Hope/Snow confrontation. The subplot itself isn't the greatest, and those two are easily my least favorite from the main cast, but it's a good moment for both of them once they finally get there.

I actually kinda liked this part of the game where characters were split up in pairs a lot. Each of the characters in the pair get to develop, and you get to see the interactions between them, and also the pairs change several times. It's probably why I remember several of the characters fondly even though I don't really remember the overall story very well. It's much different from FF12's approach of basically just having one party for most or all of the game once you get all the characters.

Fiop posted...

I actually kinda liked this part of the game where characters were split up in pairs a lot. Each of the characters in the pair get to develop, and you get to see the interactions between them, and also the pairs change several times. It's probably why I remember several of the characters fondly even though I don't really remember the overall story very well. It's much different from FF12's approach of basically just having one party for most or all of the game once you get all the characters.

Now that shit is getting real, I'm enjoying the pairs more. When there's more forward-moving plot, the pairs become a lot more interesting. This kind of thing could work really, really well in a game with a more memorable story, or in one where more things are happening to the characters and they're interacting in response to those things.

It feels like the first six chapters were a whole lot of nothing, save for around the l'Cie branding, and that's why the pairings became tiresome. Two-person parties talking about their pasts is boring. A lot of people talk about plot vs. character but I believe they have to carry each other. If you have no plot, your characters become forgettable, but if your characters are forgettable, so is your plot. The characters didn't have enough to do with the plot until Chapter 7 - halfway through the game.

Note how great I thought it was to see Fang divulge her story. Why, you ask? Because it was being used to move her story and relationship with Lightning forward, and will give us more about Vanille when we get back to her. That was the best way to use a flashback so far. It was well-timed and fed off of events that had already happened to move forward. The previous flashbacks had mostly dwelt on what had already happened. This felt like it was being used to go somewhere.

And all of that is why I'm fine with the pairs now. Shit is happening, and we get to showcase different, rotating relationships. Light has been with Sazh, Hope, and Fang. Snow has been with Fang and Hope. Vanille has been with Hope and Sazh. That's 10 pairs for 6 characters. Not bad. Would love to see Fang/Vanille, Light/Snow, Snow/Sazh, and Vanille/Hope 2.0, if we're gonna stick with pairs.

Anyway I should play more later today after FOOTBALL.

That's fair. I do agree that it was likely weaker in the beginning since the game is also trying to introduce you to the characters and world and everything. Once all that is established, it gets better. I do think mixing up the pairs is effective, at least.

I've never seen someone use covfefe much

Waluigi1 posted...

I've never seen someone use covfefe much

"Negative press covfefe" is just too fun to say, so I use it to describe... negative press covfefe. That's what it means, yes?

So I finally got around to playing a bit tonight, though a lot of it was trial and error fighting the boss. Starting out, Snow admits that Nora's death was his fault and he wants to make up for it however possible - including by protecting Hope and getting the boy home, as he promised. He hands Hope the knife and trusts that he won't be quite literally stabbed in the back. Hope doesn't bother, but Snow is certainly in a lot of pain from carrying him everywhere. Hope actually admits some guilt for wanting to blame someone for his mother's death, and the two... actually seem to be bonding?

Unfortunately some thing swoops in and initiates a fight. Snow can hardly move from his injuries from the fall - something far more realistic than in most JRPGs I've encountered a similar situation in - so Hope fights it by himself. I try to last as long as I can because I quickly know this fight is impossible to win, but I don't know if it's a "survive for X seconds" or a "let it take all your HP out" kind of boss. Ends up as the latter - Light and Fang come in to bail Hope out. We stagger the thing three times, the last of which was one blow before the killing one. This thing was weaksauce.

After this we end up at Hope's place, where his father Bartholomew anxiously answers the door. Unfortunately, all Hope says is "Mom's gone." and we cut to Bart crying on the sofa five minutes later. We don't get to see a full reaction. We don't get to hear Hope describe what happened. We do get to hear Snow taking responsibility, at least, but that's about it.

There are a multitude of scenes here, some with Fang smirking in the background. We get Snow and Light opening up to each other more - she's watching over him, as much as she hates his guts, she knows he means a lot to someone she cares deeply about. He asks her for her real name while she's at it and she tells him to ask Serah when she gets up from the crystal stasis. Snow continues to need rest, however, but he's too stubborn to lay down.

The next scene is the party being talked out of blowing up Eden and assassinating the Primarch. Bartholomew makes a completely fair point that such a thing would affirm the people's fears of Pulse and cause riots everywhere, causing great loss of life and all kinds of bad things. We're about to start figuring out a plan when a terrorist attack occurs on this very residence. The PSICOM thugs are everywhere and break in senselessly, not caring who they kill. It's abhorrent that they treat people like lemmings and use their fear to heroize themselves, when they're nothing but a bunch of thugs.

Snow recognizes all this, of course, and does the ballsiest thing I've seen from him yet. He whips out his jacket, which gets pumped full of lead, and then tells the goon squad to stop firing and let him show himself so they can see what a l'Cie really looks like: No different than them. He puts doubt into their minds about their own actions, telling them that he's lived in Cocoon all his life and wants to protect it, and he's human just the same. Some of them think he's lying, while others actually take this to heart upon seeing him. Amid the confusion, however, Colonel Rosch steps in, introduces himself, and says Snow must be executed to allay the people's fears because his life isn't worth as much as the millions of others in Cocoon. I do not follow his logic. What exactly has Snow done that's dangerous? What exactly has any Pulse l'Cie done that's dangerous? The ONLY thing keeping people afraid is the covfefe, which doesn't even tell the whole story. It's media fearmongering at its finest and this idiot should be ashamed of himself for-

HOLY SHIT WHAT JUST HAPPENED

Rosch is, all of a sudden, deceased, and smoke is everywhere. PSICOM goons are firing at each other and chaos is ensuing. Like WHAT. That is not how I expected this scene to unfold, so it's awesome. Inside, Light tells Hope to tie up Dad, who'll say he was coerced against his will into helping out - the perfect excuse to get him off scot-free. Maybe he'll be Purged, however, because unlike what Rosch thinks the government certainly wants to unload people onto Pulse for no reason. Hope shares one more moment with his father, who tells him that it's his choice what to do in life. He can complete his Focus if he wants to, or live another way if he'd rather. It's great.

And then we have this motherfucker outside. An airship, one that's just a brutal boss with one design flaw. After all that cutscene time, which was necessary, you have this fight, and you're automatically targeting the core when there are four auxiliary parts you need to destroy first. I'd presume most people have to retry this their first time because they're dead before they realize what they need to do, because this thing packs a wallop. It would've been nice to have an auxiliary part as the default target for this reason. It takes until my third try to realize how exactly it's structured, since the first two ended way too quickly for me to be able to adjust. Lots of data to collect. My third - and winning - attempt took out the two turrets first, then breached each side of the hull to reveal the core, which suddenly made this thing susceptible to staggering. I staggered it and finished it off, then it blew up and another one took its place. Then that one blew up all of a sudden...

...another ship kinda like it lands and a bunch of PSICOM goons come out in formation with their guns, but they don't aim them at us. The officer in charge removes his helmet... it's Fang's friend from earlier! The guy who'd been with her when she first met Snow. These are Cid Raines's men, and are thus on our side... for now. Let's be real here: I don't trust Raines, either. I can align with him right now, sure, since that will help us against the Sanctum. But I'm thinking this guy wants to install himself as Primarch and needs the l'Cie to do it, then once he's in charge he can order a bunch of l'Cie executions anyway. That's currently my theory. He'd certainly be better than the current Primarch since he wouldn't Purge people like the plague was happening... when, uh, there's virtually nothing concerning going on.

Hope says goodbye to his dad and Vanille's narration says you don't know "the last time" when it happens. Meaning I don't think Bartholomew is in the clear just yet. But the good news is that this lengthy chapter is finally over, and boy what a ride it was.

Next up: Vanille and Sazh in Nautilus. We finally get to see what those two are up to!

BlueCrystalTear posted...

Vanille and Sazh in Nautilus

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let's just say Chapter 8 was short, but really heavy.

In Nautilus, which is a futuristic Las Vegas type of place, Sazh and Vanille witness a horribly skewed news report heroizing the terrorist PSICOM faction and vilifying the good guys fighting to stop their reckless behavior from harming civilians. A brief glimpse gets Vanille to say "it's her" - obviously referring to Fang - and recognizes that she'll have to say goodbye to Sazh soon. Why, I don't know.

The two attend a parade that's quite beautiful to watch even if its portrayal of history is incorrect. It makes Cocoon l'Cie infallible heroes and Pulse l'Cie nothing more than Satan - the real enemy here isn't the civilians, it's the negative press covfefe and the government that encourages it. The goal is to control people through fear, and it's abhorrent and yet kind of funny. Vanille grabs a CD from the air that produces a miniature version of l'Cie Carbuncle, and she also recognizes the "bad guy" as Ragnarok, the Viking apocalypse. Even though, quite obviously, Cocoon was the aggressor in this war trying to do its usual fearmongering. I question literally everything here like I do in real life, because at least I'm not an idiot who needs to be told what to think.

There is a prompt on whether to enter the next area, to which I go "uh-oh" thinking something crazy is going to happen. Which... it doesn't at first. The baby chocobo nesting in Sazh's hair flies all over the place because there are chocobos everywhere. Sazh notes that it smells like shit, because of course it does, it's like a farm. Vanille enjoys the smell because it reminds her of the beautiful countryside of Pulse. The little one keeps fleeing every time I find him, and this is not fun to play. It's not an overly clever version of hide-and-seek, that's for sure. Eventually the little guy directs a bunch of them down the path, and Sazh and Vanille bond here. Sazh says he'll be turning himself in, which sounds insane, but it's the only way he can see Dajh one last time - Sanctum would certainly allow a last request, right? (Probably not, they're terrorists.) Vanille is about to confess to him what really happened with Dajh becoming a l'Cie - her friend Fang was trying to protect her (Vanille) from becoming a Cieth, for which Vanille has an incredible amount of guilt. She did not want a little guy dragged into her mess. Sadly, this is interrupted by a terrorist strike. Some PSICOM goons pay the chocobo and the other patrons of the park no heed as they start sniping at Sazh and Vanille. Thugs.

We fight our way through a bunch of thugs and other monsters and... WAIT WHAT IS THAT REALLY DAJH? It certainly looks like him but I get a sense that it's not him, but... it is? And he becomes a crystal all of a sudden, with a very different effect on his face when compared to Serah. The vile witch Nabaat comes out and starts bragging about how much better she is than a lowly Pulse l'Cie, even going as far to call Vanille a terrorist, then ask "Ironic, isn't it?" - which yes, it is. Jihi Nabaat is vile terrorist scum and even the most painful death would not satisfy me. She is an asshole through and through, bragging that Dajh's Focus "must have been to clean up the scum from the streets" which, uh, would be PSICOM. The ones who pay human life no regard. What on earth has any Pulse l'Cie done to warrant the people's fears? It's just the covfefe that's fearmongering, and ppl r 2 dum and buy into it.

It sucks that Sazh doesn't think to shoot Nabaat in the face, then fight off all the goons, because she starts playing a surveillance clip of this "terrorist attack" which is anything but. The goal is to pin Sazh and Vanille against each other, and it works. Vanille runs off and Sazh pursues, with some goons monitoring him from behind. Nabaat wants to see how her evil scheme plays out, after all. Seriously, I hate her already and want to see her head roll. Such a cocky bitch. And the fact that she sees people as nothing more than tools is just plain bad.

Sazh catches up to Vanille, who's having weird hallucinations of Sazh sitting on this throne that's there for whatever reason and twirling his guns around, with this sadistic mobster attitude to him. The real Sazh points his gun from behind her and is very disappointed in her. The two argue for a bit but neither knows what's really happening nor what to do next. Shooting Vanille won't get Dajh out of crystal stasis. Shooting Vanille won't resolve Sazh's anger. Shooting Vanille........ certainly won't help him win his PERSONA, which suddenly appears! This fight isn't hard, but it is pretty close when I tap Square to claim my bounty, which turns into a stock car.

After this is done, Sazh turns his gun back on Vanille, still unsure of what to do. He knows it's not going to make anything right. Then he says that some things can't be excused.... shooting kids is one of them. Then he trains the gun on himself, says "Enough is enough," and BLAM!

It ends with some thugs in cloaks - and a terrified prisoner Vanille in a similar cloak - carrying Sazh's open casket onto an aircraft. GEEZ. This is... yeah...

I am pretty sure that Sazh isn't dead, else what was the point of the Eidolon fight? I was half-expecting Vanille to be the one to awaken to hers earlier in the chapter but it ended up being Sazh. And he shot himself. How could he fool PSICOM into thinking he's dead? I don't think he can. I mean, I get why he chose to do that. His son had turned to crystal, he was sure to be arrested soon, and the one person he thought he could trust was involved in causing all this in the first place. He had nobody left in his life with his wife and son gone. Man do I know that feeling. I myself feel like a l'Cie, ostracized by society for no discernible reason. So I get how he's feeling. But it would have gotten better. And it still might. I don't think he's a goner. Vanille did learn Renew, after all, yes?

That's what I played this afternoon. Might get a little more in later, but IDK yet. Got a movie to watch tonight for that project.

Played more today. Don't have much to talk about.

We started leaving the Lindblum to infiltrate the Palamecia - PSICOM's flagship. No talk of explosive charges or anything that would make for an ideal diversion, however. There's not really much interaction going on here which is unfortunate. But for whatever reason - probably their l'Cie sensors - we go from landing via Raines having forged a valid code to being attacked in a CODE RED situation. This escalates to a CODE GREEN later once we've breached the interior, and to a CODE PURPLE when...

So Sazh is alive. He didn't have the strength to fire a bullet into his skull, only out into the great unknown. He doesn't have a reason to live or fight anymore, so why can't he do it? Fear, perhaps? After this, Nabaat and its troops apprehend Sazh and Vanille, with Nabaat making some cold, hypocritical statements - there's no explanation for Vanille's robe or Sazh's casket seen at the end of Chapter 8, though. Sazh certainly didn't feel alive, but he still was. Back in the cell, he starts processing that since Vanille woke up from crystal stasis, Dajh can one day, too. Vanille comes fully clean: On Day 1 of the precursor 13 days, she and Fang woke up from their slumber... completely naked until their clothes just magically generated, mind you. Fang's l'Cie brand was faded and she had no memory of anything to do with it, including her Focus... so Vanille just played along. She actually remembered the Focus, but wanted to be free from it. She felt guilt for all the damage she'd caused people and just wanted to live instead of worrying about the perils of becoming a l'Cie. And because of that, we're all in this mess. Great, just great. She doesn't divulge what her Focus is - at least, not yet. We'll get there when we get there.

While the others are causing chaos, the CODE GREEN blares even in the cell, and some thugs and a monster come in to say "You're being moved." Sazh doesn't agree to this. In fact, he commands CHOCOBO to use PECK! The goon is caught off-guard and it's a critical hit. Sazh takes him down, then knocks over the other guy, while Vanille picks up the first thug's assault rifle and unloads the clip into the monster. It's AWESOME. They take their rifles and infiltrate the hallway, locating where PSICOM was keeping their gear, because they probably think for some asinine reason if anyone picks it up they'll just become a Pulse l'Cie. They seem to believe gobbledygook like that.

On the way forward, Vanille says about Fang: "For once in my life, I am going to save her." Whatever that means. Fang has been holding her own pretty well - in fact, her and Light are communicating really well and I've gotten them to be good at taking turns beating up some staggered enemy midair, whether that's terrorist scum or their robots. At any rate, the CODE PURPLE was for the escaped prisoners, which Fang immediately realizes means Vanille.

I stopped in this big circular room that looks like some giant monster was kept in the center of it, though I cleared out a bunch of monsters before returning to the save point. I played like three hours tonight and there wasn't much in the way of plot advancement. This Palamecia place is humongous! Sooner or later the party will finally reunite in its entirety, and I'll actually get to choose who to use. Still not sure yet. May have to try various combinations to see what works for me.

Kweh!

Also a few other things:

• An observation I've made about Final Fantasy is that it doesn't rely on "mascot" characters much - Chocobos and Moogles are species, not individual characters with their own designs, and these transcend across all the FF games instead of being confined to just one. They usually aren't overused, either, and thus are always welcome. I like it like that.
• I still don't trust Cid Raines. In fact, I'm kind of expecting the Primarch to die here and Raines to declare himself the new one, with his policy being to attack the Fallacies to end their involvement in humanity. He will pin this on the l'Cie, who are mere tools to him. The party will not like this and seek to stop him, with the thought being that if they save Cocoon from this rampage, people will start thinking for themselves instead of letting the politicians do that for them. Which leads me to...
• It's weird to me how there's virtually no lore about decades-long struggles between PSICOM and the populace. You'd think people like Snow, who realize that they shouldn't be told what to do or what to think, would have existed long before. It's like the entirety of Cocoon is made of sheep, with few being of the mind I would be: Thankful for the Fallacies for all they provide, but not willing to be their pet. I want to live for myself. Most people should too. Something just feels weird about the extent of mindlessness this world goes to, and I think that's the point.

Yeah those are some thoughts. Gonna play a little more in a bit...