Board 8 > FFXIII playthrough topic

(+) Yeah! (+)

Also, top of page news: I ordered Lightning Returns from Amazon (used, for like $16) and will buy XIII-2 on PSN next week once I get a little more in the way of funds. Yes, I know XIII-2 comes first. I just went for the one that was for $4 cheaper than on PSN for an Amazon certified used.

Played some more. The gang's all here! I can finally choose my own party, and I'll be giving Light, Sazh, and Fang a try first. Hope got himself killed a little too often for my liking. So I think this balances things well - especially given how Light and Fang are in sync.

Other scenes included the villains debating what color of alert they were going to do next (I think some of the humor was lost on me) in their frustration and some DARGON slaying during the reunion. The first two were weak bosses. Vanille and Fang strangled and stabbed the third pretty awesomely. And then another one became our ride into the villain's lair.

Tomorrow, the Primarch dies. Or at least gets purged to Pulse, where he'll be executed swiftly. He'll get to see that it's not a hellscape at all, but that the people think of him as the monster he really is. Also hoping Nabaat has a satisfying comeuppance.

Not sure who that mechanical owl belonged to, but I'm leaning towards Raines. He wants the power for himself. He doesn't care about the tools he needs to use to get it.

"What is happening?" was the theme today.

After struggling to clear the bridge a bit - I found subbing Fang for Vanille made things even worse - I finally got to the Primarch's chamber. And there, the twist revealed itself: The Primarch is, in fact, the Fallacy Barthandelus (this did NOT occur to me), and he sees humans as discardable tools. He immediately proves this by... seemingly killing everyone in the room, including Nabaat, and laughs maniacally. It's all a game of give-and-take for his Fallacy brethren. Or at least for him. Monster.

We beat the shit out of him and this fight, though it goes for a while, isn't very challenging. It's just annoying since Light INSISTS on standing right next to Sazh when casting Cure, thus meaning they both take damage whenever the monster casts Watera.

After this, the bad guy reveals several things, including the obvious that Serah's Focus was to assemble Snow, Light, and Vanille in front of a Pulse Fallacy, in order to bring about the tools for the destruction of Cocoon. Loverboy refuses to believe this but he's an idiot, so I can't blame him. This was obvious to me the entire time. The gang's Focus is to cut off Orphan from Eden or some shit that isn't very comprehensible, thus cutting off Cocoon's supplier and bringing about its destruction. In order to do this, one of them must become Ragnarok. I have a feeling I won't be getting to choose who that is. I'm willing to bet it's Light, but of course the party will find some way out of it.

The plot dump was a bit much since there were terms that were thrown out of nowhere, which serves as a distraction. I also don't know if Nabaat is dead. Rosch sure isn't, since he attacks us after we escape in that mechanical owl, which abruptly transformed into an airship. An aerial chase ensued and he seems to have survived again but I really don't know how he's alive in the first place. The game wasn't particularly good at explaining that. And Nabaat may show up again even though she was supposed to have just died (barring that monster using Portal magics), which would certainly make her a more memorable antagonist. As cool as discarding a monster like that can be, this wasn't done particularly well; it simply makes Nabaat a forgettable opponent.

So yeah, I have a lot of questions, some on account of the game not having very good writing. I also gotta say now that the whole gang's together we're not getting the interactions we had before, which is unfortunate. It makes what should have me buzzing just feel "meh."

Jihil is so forgettable.

IIRC, you're nearing something soon that you may consider "more engaging" and I'll leave it at that.

Instead I'll bring up something I don't think people talk much about and that's Vanille's weapon. Vanille has this cool unique weapon, but unless you spend a ton of points to take her down the Commando job, she never really gets to use it, apart from early in the game before Crystarium unlocked. IIRC, she just swings it around when attacking with Ravager or Saboteur without really using it (or at least I couldn't tell that she was using it).

I never ended up taking anyone very far down their extra paths. Since you're limited to just 6 job combinations, I figured I'd try to have everyone make the most of their 3 default jobs. I'm not saying that it's optimal to do it that way, just it's what I did. I think some characters may get some decent utility from it.

I've already forgotten her tbh. She should've been a recurring boss, someone built up as a threat, who's then discarded like a broken puppet. All of a sudden, boom, IMPACT! But nope. She talked about how people are tools only to be discarded as one herself. What a waste.

Anyway, finally played a little more tonight. A few notes:

• Snow went from moping around to being over it way too quickly. He admits he's wrong but he just seemed to move on, and none of his later dialogue sounded like a troubled, conflicted soul. This needs to feel like it's tugging at him.
• Vanille, meanwhile, thinks the Primarch might be lying and that he really wants to use as as tools. This is further corroborated by Sazh, who says that he wasn't really flying the aircraft at all - it was on some kind of insane auto-pilot that guaranteed us safe transit.
• We traverse a subway station to find a Pulse arms depot, built right under Sanctum for whatever reason. Sanctum seemed none the wiser sans the Primarch, but there's explosives and mutant monsters in here gearing up for a war.
• It's unclear why the Primarch wants us to fulfill our Focus. I'm willing to bet summoning Ragnarok has something to do with it. The Primarch is very clearly the Big Bad.
• I went from thinking the Crystarium had a small update to being surprised that I can now put everyone down whatever paths I want. I start Light on Sentinel, Hope and Snow on Saboteur, Sazh on Medic, and Fang and Vanille on Synergist. Don't get very far - takes a lot of points to even unlock one node.
• I'm bored. These auto-battles are lame and there's not much fun plot going on.

More engagement, please, else the write-ups will be technical and brief like this.

Apologies for the lack of playing. I'll get to this very soon now that I'm done taking care of my sister's cats. That consumed most of my evenings. Sorry for the wait!

I need to bump this again. It just hasn't happened. There have been a few nights where I've just.... checked out, then I had an anime con, and now's the holiday.

I will try to play Friday evening. I will need to unwind. Maybe an hour tomorrow night if I'm lucky.

Promise it'll be Sunday or Monday. I PROMISE!

This Raines fight is some shit

That's twice now I've gone from like 90% HP to 0% and losing in a matter of seconds.

Time to grind, ugh.

(Yes, Raines being an enemy does not surprise me. Note how I was saying he was clearly trying to further his own ends... and I was right. That said, he's bucking the Fallacies... how? Why? What does fighting us have to do with stopping their puppeting everyone when we don't wanna be puppets either? It was all a bunch of blah blah blah, but at least this refreshed my memory on some previous events.)

I think you're almost as far as I got now.

I started a XIII trilogy replay to keep pace w/ BCT's topic and then I never did and tonight I finished Lightning Returns. Timer on final save was 109 hours 54 minutes so definitely 110+ considering restarts. All three game replays probably topping 250 hours, geez. Now gotta start putting this time to the backlog of never-played games before the inevitable February 7R replay leading up to February 29...

LR > XIII > XIII-2 hierarchy remains intact though XIII level design was a lot worse than I remember. Maybe an extra ">" in each of those two equivalencies, tbh.

Read through the topic and yeah, everything basically lines up with what I was thinking/feeling. Not sure I agree with the game not having very good writing, I think it could be a mix of some info still not being relayed yet (for plot purposes), but also maybe some more helpful info being dumped in the datalogs. Neither of the next two games have that issue, at least.

re: Raines boss fight, it messed me up bad in my replay too, I forget if I gave in and just threw a Sentinel in there, or if I figured it out some other way (or got lucky). But if you can get past him (and a little more) you get to what is my favourite part of the whole trilogy so hang in there!!!

Feeling discouraged about the grinding.

That and I've been keeping busy with things I've mentioned in other places.

MartinFF7 posted...

Not sure I agree with the game not having very good writing, I think it could be a mix of some info still not being relayed yet (for plot purposes), but also maybe some more helpful info being dumped in the datalogs. Neither of the next two games have that issue, at least.

I think the problem I have is just how much is in the datalog - it makes it hard to care about Cocoon. I like the characters enough, sure, but the setting does nothing for me, and I don't care whether the Focus succeeds or not.

FYI, I'm at my parents for over a week and won't be able to play until New Year's Eve. Maybe the day before. Sorry about that.

Let's not let this purge

Thanks!

I will get back to this. I promise. Will try to force myself to grind tomorrow. Welp. Not looking forward to that tbh, but I hope the payoff is worth it.

Yeah it's hard to not to call out the writing and general amount of information thrown at you without any...elegance.

It's night and day after coming off ff12. Which is not to say the story isn't working for me, but I just got to chapter 7 myself. I would also like to have a 3 party team again.

BlueCrystalTear posted...

but I hope the payoff is worth it.

narrator: it was not

Just got done with the Cid fight myself.

Yeah the tendency of bosses to seem like you're basically throttling them into deciding to just kill your lead character in one combo is...kinda annoying!

I generally don't use Sentinels though unless you just reallllly need to stay alive.

I'll give this a whack tomorrow, hopefully.

If I don't get it done, I'm really sorry. I have another vacation coming up so I want to close this first game out while I'm home.

Yippie ki-yay, motherfucker!

Yeah, that's pretty much how this felt. I had thought I was just testing the waters on this, but then I saw it, and the answer dawned on me. Somehow, Raines was both buffing himself and debuffing me! So THAT'S why his attacks packed so much punch all of a sudden. It wasn't just one - it was both!

I solved this by changing to two Saboteurs to get rid of his buffs, then had Esuna-casting from Vanille and Lightning take care of the debuffs.

Anyway, before the fight, Raines went and explained everything that had happened. We're tools, the Fallacies couldn't destroy Cocoon because it would break their oath and defy their nature, and all that. They wanted to restore the Maker so they set up a party of capable people to do this. They needed Serah to lure both Snow and Lightning into their trap, as those were two of their chosen ones, even though Loverboy is an idiot who naively thinks it's okay that Raines is there even though Fang realizes it makes no sense unless he'd betrayed them.

Raines himself is a l'Cie and his Focus was to set us on the right path, but seeing us fight the Sanctum revived an old dream of his, to reimagine a better Cocoon for the people... and for some reason fighting us, despite our unwillingness to actually complete our Focus, will make that happen? It makes no sense, at least not until I kill him and he says he just wanted to sing "Still Alive" just this one time! "This was a triumph..."

But yeah, I kill him, and he crystallizes swiftly despite apparently not have completed his Focus in its entirety. I don't know what to make of this since it HAS been a while, but at least this was the first scene I rewatched because it was a nice refresher on a lot of things.

Should be able to play more tomorrow.

I've been through some empty, boring, redundant labyrinthine hallways before, but that had to be the emptiest, boringest, redundantest, labyrinthinest I've ever experienced.

I had more fun trying to come up with a fun way to say that than I did fighting anything in this dull, linear complex. At least give us some character interaction!

yay for beating Cid. The juxtaposition between the hallway labyrinth tedium and the greatness to come is considerable!!!

MartinFF7 posted...

yay for beating Cid. The juxtaposition between the hallway labyrinth tedium and the greatness to come is considerable!!!

The good news is that at least it's not a maze for the game, even if the place is built like one. It would have taken several play sessions if it was like that. The place is so redundant of itself that it would be easy to get lost if it wasn't so linear. It simply never ends.

The bad news is that there's nothing to break up the monotony. I wish there was something like skits from Tales. If you're going to have a game like this one where character interaction carries the day, the more of it you have, the better. I only heard a couple lines of dialogue during that entire hour-plus. I also died in battle a few times.

Will play more today or tomorrow. I want to beat this one before I leave, then play the next one when I return.

The endgame could have used a lot more small character interactions. It's missing the modern touch of constant party banter.

FYI I did play more. Didn't have much to say. Fang and Hope both awakened to their Personae and those scenes have become pretty predictable (Vanille is the only one who hasn't yet). Got to Pulse - we're gambling that we can find a way out of the l'Cie curse, since Oerba is apparently the last place we could find an answer. Because it is.

I then get to this huge open area that's unlike anything I've seen in the game before and I get slaughtered by the behemoth enemies, even after I grind on the weaker ones.

Was too preoccupied with getting packed to play more so that'll have to wait another two-plus weeks. Sorry about that!

yeah I was going to recommend waiting until after you're back from vacation to do Chapter 11

so much fun stuff there!!!!! just yeah, you need to watch out on the Archylte Steppe since it's a mix of enemies at, above, and far above your level, lol.

A good rule of thumb for the Steppe is, if it's bigger than you, it's probably a challenge at best and suicidal at worst (until you can start handling the challenges.)

I loved Oerba quite a bit when you actually get there, but I don't remember whether it is a straight line or not.

Will get it done. I get home a week from tonight and will probably play in the couple days after.

For now, keeping this alive!

I hope I can make this happen.... wish me luck.

I really wanna get Rebirth so I don't get spoiled on what's changed.

If you can push through you don't have that much left to go. Though some of it is a little difficult.

birthday bump, will figure out if I wanna get back to this sooner or later

Happy Birthday!

Dancedreamer posted...

Happy Birthday!

Thanks

Bump for now. My body has been feeling too weird tbqh and IDK why...