Final Fantasy XIII Catch-All

I'm gearing myself to take another run at FFXIII. I'd really like to experience the open areas.

So I am stuck at the end of Chapter 11, that final boss for the this area is a freaking PAIN! Anyone out there that beat the game have any pointers and chopping him down. I have been trying with Vanille, Fang and Lighting. However, I have a feeling that a different blend might do better.

Thoughts?

SodaGremlin wrote:

So I am stuck at the end of Chapter 11, that final boss for the this area is a freaking PAIN! Anyone out there that beat the game have any pointers and chopping him down. I have been trying with Vanille, Fang and Lighting. However, I have a feeling that a different blend might do better.

Thoughts?

I went with Lightening, Vanille and Hope and kept switching between Relentless Assault (Com, Rav, Rav) and Ruthless (Com, Sab, Rav)

I delayed healing as much as I could and went Tri-Medic if I felt someone was going to die. I take it your using your Aerosols before battle? Boy was I annoyed the first time I faced big 'B' and had to look up the internets about how to beat him

I'm not the biggest fan of having Fang for a boss fight since a) all she can really cast in the Sab class is Slow whereas Vanille can cast DeProtect, DeShell, Imperil and Poison, as well as the fact that most boss main attacks seem to attack all party members so Sentinels seem to not add much to the fight but if you've leveled up her main weapon then your probably better off sticking with her

PlainGreyT wrote:
SodaGremlin wrote:

So I am stuck at the end of Chapter 11, that final boss for the this area is a freaking PAIN! Anyone out there that beat the game have any pointers and chopping him down. I have been trying with Vanille, Fang and Lighting. However, I have a feeling that a different blend might do better.

Thoughts?

I went with Lightening, Vanille and Hope and kept switching between Relentless Assault (Com, Rav, Rav) and Ruthless (Com, Sab, Rav)

I delayed healing as much as I could and went Tri-Medic if I felt someone was going to die. I take it your using your Aerosols before battle? Boy was I annoyed the first time I faced big 'B' and had to look up the internets about how to beat him

I'm not the biggest fan of having Fang for a boss fight since a) all she can really cast in the Sab class is Slow whereas Vanille can cast DeProtect, DeShell, Imperil and Poison, as well as the fact that most boss main attacks seem to attack all party members so Sentinels seem to not add much to the fight but if you've leveled up her main weapon then your probably better off sticking with her

Yeah, I actually just switched up to putting in hope instead of vanille. I also haven't done any of the crafting, so I am taking a step back and doing the weapon leveling now and getting my characters weapons leveled. I just sold my three platinum ingots so I will be able finance this adventure.

SodaGremlin wrote:

Yeah, I actually just switched up to putting in hope instead of vanille. I also haven't done any of the crafting, so I am taking a step back and doing the weapon leveling now and getting my characters weapons leveled. I just sold my three platinum ingots so I will be able finance this adventure.

Yeah, ramping up the difficulty for a tough boss fight is the game's oh-so-subtle way of telling you to upgrade your stuff and spend your money

Upgrading weapons is KING in this game. If you haven't done it to that point...yeah, get going!

PlainGreyT wrote:
SodaGremlin wrote:

Yeah, I actually just switched up to putting in hope instead of vanille. I also haven't done any of the crafting, so I am taking a step back and doing the weapon leveling now and getting my characters weapons leveled. I just sold my three platinum ingots so I will be able finance this adventure.

Yeah, ramping up the difficulty for a tough boss fight is the game's oh-so-subtle way of telling you to upgrade your stuff and spend your money :)

Minarchist wrote:

Upgrading weapons is KING in this game. If you haven't done it to that point...yeah, get going!

Thanks, just bought a sh*t ton of components and am about to go to work. I did one weapon and one accessory with random stuff I had, next up full blown upgrade gaming session.

Minarchist wrote:

Upgrading weapons is KING in this game. If you haven't done it to that point...yeah, get going!

That got me most of the way there.

PlainGreyT wrote:
SodaGremlin wrote:

So I am stuck at the end of Chapter 11, that final boss for the this area is a freaking PAIN! Anyone out there that beat the game have any pointers and chopping him down. I have been trying with Vanille, Fang and Lighting. However, I have a feeling that a different blend might do better.

Thoughts?

I went with Lightening, Vanille and Hope and kept switching between Relentless Assault (Com, Rav, Rav) and Ruthless (Com, Sab, Rav)

I delayed healing as much as I could and went Tri-Medic if I felt someone was going to die. I take it your using your Aerosols before battle? Boy was I annoyed the first time I faced big 'B' and had to look up the internets about how to beat him

I'm not the biggest fan of having Fang for a boss fight since a) all she can really cast in the Sab class is Slow whereas Vanille can cast DeProtect, DeShell, Imperil and Poison, as well as the fact that most boss main attacks seem to attack all party members so Sentinels seem to not add much to the fight but if you've leveled up her main weapon then your probably better off sticking with her

This isn't exactly what I did, but I did change up my strategy based on your thoughts.

Killed him before doom even hit me. WOOT!

Dropped about 14 hours in and quit, got too boring. I'll probably hop back in at some point, I would really like to know what happens as far as story.

SodaGremlin wrote:

This isn't exactly what I did, but I did change up my strategy based on your thoughts.

Killed him before doom even hit me. WOOT!

Well done

This game really does seem to encourage all out attack much moreso than previous iterations

PlainGreyT wrote:
SodaGremlin wrote:

This isn't exactly what I did, but I did change up my strategy based on your thoughts.

Killed him before doom even hit me. WOOT!

Well done

This game really does seem to encourage all out attack much moreso than previous iterations

At least, until you get to post-game stuff...that gets far more tactical (and was one of my favorite parts of the game, TBH)

Minarchist wrote:

Upgrading weapons is KING in this game. If you haven't done it to that point...yeah, get going!

Although the higher level your weapons are the shorter time you are graded on in battles; so the very highest weapon level can make getting 5 stars really hard for some battles.

DanB wrote:
Minarchist wrote:

Upgrading weapons is KING in this game. If you haven't done it to that point...yeah, get going!

Although the higher level your weapons are the shorter time you are graded on in battles; so the very highest weapon level can make getting 5 stars really hard for some battles.

I think the only time I had to worry about that was the very last mission (64?). I wound up trading out Fang's 3-* weapon for a 2-* one, since it was more about landing poison than it was DPS. But it is a good point to note.

Minarchist wrote:
DanB wrote:
Minarchist wrote:

Upgrading weapons is KING in this game. If you haven't done it to that point...yeah, get going!

Although the higher level your weapons are the shorter time you are graded on in battles; so the very highest weapon level can make getting 5 stars really hard for some battles.

I think the only time I had to worry about that was the very last mission (64?). I wound up trading out Fang's 3-* weapon for a 2-* one, since it was more about landing poison than it was DPS. But it is a good point to note.

yeah, I read something about that. I am just working on the story mode right now, but I will probably go try and pick off some extra's afterwards.

I am not really a completionist when it comes to FF. If I finish the story, I am usually doing good. I mean this one has been on the pile since the day it came out. But I do have to admit the fights are game are much more interesting post chapter 9.

You know what a 45 page long thread really needs? First impressions of the game in question.

I started this up last night and played the first hour or so. I played through the first sections with Lightning and Snow but quit before you take control of Vanille for the first time.

I haven't played a Final Fantasy game of any kind since Final Fantasy IX was new, so I'm not sure what aspects of the game are particular to XIII and what are more general shifts that have happened since the PS1 era.

The most noticeable thing about XIII for me is how the game's structure and mechanics are all primarily concerned with speed. Or maybe not speed but urgency. This is a major departure from the previous games which were primarily concerned with exploration and collection.

This shift in XIII is most obvious in the combat system but is prevalent everywhere. The ATB gauges in XIII fill up really fast compared to past games like VII, VIII, and, especially, IX. I found that if I tried to pick individual actions in combat, I was often behind the curve of the ATB; it would finish filling up as I was selecting a target. It made the battles feel hectic and a little chaotic, because my teammates and enemies were all acting while I was fiddling with menus. It was better for me to use the auto-battle option or to create a custom chain of actions once and then use the repeat option so that I could pick my targets more carefully.

The system is clearly less about managing the individual actions of high-speed combat and more about controlling the overall flow of events. The demo of XIII-2 leads me to believe that as the combat system develops it'll be more about picking paradigms than past game's emphasis on picking individual attacks.

The reward system for combat makes it clear that your goal is to get through combat as quickly and efficiently as possible. The scoring system makes it clear that the only thing that matters is how long it takes you to win: not variety, not damage prevented, not method of attack. It's all about time. I assume that things like drop rates for items and whatever the experience system is will depend heavily on getting higher ratings in battle.

This is a stark contrast to the older Final Fantasy games where you were often encouraged to prolong combat. In VIII you usually wanted to draw out combat so that you could get more draws off your opponent. In VII and IX you dragged out combat so that you could have more chances to steal items and learn enemy skills. Because so many of those games' side systems were built on chance per occurrence, you'd drag things out to maximize the number of tries you got, because the game rewarded you for fleshing out those side systems. I know that in IX, at least, stealing powerful items early in the game made the going a lot easier on the player, and in VII some of the best early skills are enemy skills you have to collect from rare combat encounters.

XIII isn't like that. The way the system looks right now, your one and only goal in combat is to get it over with as quickly as possible.

The attack animations in XIII are also faster with fewer flourishes and big, flashy effects (like minutes-long summons), and the transitions in and out of combat are fast, with fanfare music and animations cut entirely in favor of a quick drop back into the world and narrative.

All of these things combine to create a sense of combat as a brief obstacle in a headlong rush toward an objective. The overworld design also contributes to this by axing distractions like side routes in the level design, characters to have a chat with, and the usual Final Fantasy collection of mini-games and distractions (like Vivi jumping rope at the beginning of IX).

All of this seems to have been done for the sake of supporting the narrative and preventing the usual dissonance of role-playing games: the storyline is all "ZOMG! World ending right now!" and the gameplay is all "go collect some trading cards and level up and stuff." The opening of XIII is all about saving people who are in immediate danger of being deported to a place where they will surely die, and the designers have done their best to support the urgency of that situation with gameplay that feels urgent.

Based on just my first hour of play, I'd say they were most successful with this in the combat design, which is incredibly satisfying, and cutting out side conversations and distraction, and they were least successful with the level design. The single-path design makes sense for the narrative, but there are better ways of building single-path levels than literally sticking the player character on a catwalk. I've recently been replaying Half-Life 2, and it's levels are all single-path, too, but they generally did a better job of hiding that from the player.

Still, one hour down, and I'm pretty interested in what happens next.

I feel like this game really should have included a Japanese language track. Maybe I would have enjoyed the story without that bad voice acting (to be fair, I'm sure Daniel Day Lewis would struggle with some of the writing).

Yet I'm still feeling drawn to XIII-2...

Warriorpoet897 wrote:

I feel like this game really should have included a Japanese language track. Maybe I would have enjoyed the story without that bad voice acting (to be fair, I'm sure Daniel Day Lewis would struggle with some of the writing).

Yet I'm still feeling drawn to XIII-2...

I've felt this way about all the voice acted FF's - the only really great English voice performance in recent memory was Balthier in FF12.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Initial Impressions

Yup. Spot on.

Yeah, you're not supposed to pick individual actions except for a handful of specific fights where it's needed. The combat is mostly a tactical game about managing paradigms. It's like a mix between XII's programmable battle system and VII/VIII's turn based. When you get to the Open(ish) world portion of the game I think the battle system opens up to be quite engaging and deep if you care to drill down into it. That said that game does a uniquely bad job of explaining the subtleties and nuance of what's going on.

I thought the voices were pretty well done in XIII. Snow probably bothered me more than any other. A lot of people hated on Hope and Vanille, but they each had their part to play...

13-2 was still pretty good, but a step down in the VA department. Caius killed me (not in a good way).

Tanglebones wrote:

I've felt this way about all the voice acted FF's - the only really great English voice performance in recent memory was Balthier in FF12.

No love for John DiMaggio in FF X? You gotta give daddy Bender some lovin'.

Spoiler:

(He did both Wakka and Kimari)

Spoiler:

Personally, I thought Auron's VA was pretty good.

@Minarchist - John Dimaggio wasn't bad; but note that I said "great"

Also, the Tidus/Yuna VAs were so bad that they dragged everyone else down by proximity.

Tanglebones wrote:

Also, the Tidus/Yuna VAs were so bad that they dragged everyone else down by proximity.

Yeah, I can't argue with that.

Minarchist wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:

Also, the Tidus/Yuna VAs were so bad that they dragged everyone else down by proximity.

Yeah, I can't argue with that.

Tidus & Yuna: "HA HA HA! HA HA HA!"

...worst voice-acted scene in gaming history. Ow. But yeah, Auron's voicework was pretty solid, so was Lulu's. I actually rather liked Wakka overall, both personality and voicework. In particular I thought he and Lulu played off each other reasonably well.

[edit]For that matter, in the FFXIII voicecast I thought Fang's voice was damn sexy. If I could make sweet, sweet love to that voice, I would. Rowr.

Yeah, and then in X-2...[boom chicka bow wow]

Um, awkward question about XIII. Am I the only one who got sort of a lesbian vibe from Fang and Vanille?

Grenn wrote:

Um, awkward question about XIII. Am I the only one who got sort of a lesbian vibe from Fang and Vanille?

Actually, no. I got that sense from them as well.

[edit]And in fact, if that was intentional on their part, then they did a really good job of making it reasonably subtle and not going gung-ho with the stereotyping.

I could see how you would think that...but I thought it was a natural expression of how close they would be if they grew up together and were literally the last two people on earth (at least until they found Cocoon). I got more of a big sister/little sister vibe from it.

Minarchist wrote:

... I got more of a big sister/little sister vibe from it.

That's me, too. I'm not saying it's not possible, but there's nothing all that definitive.

The vibe they had going for a while between Vanille and Sazh was kind of worrisome to me, but I feel better about it now that I looked up their ages for this post and found that Vanille is actually supposed to be a grown woman.

momgamer wrote:
Minarchist wrote:

... I got more of a big sister/little sister vibe from it.

That's me, too. I'm not saying it's not possible, but there's nothing all that definitive.

The vibe they had going for a while between Vanille and Sazh was kind of worrisome to me, but I feel better about it now that I looked up their ages for this post and found that Vanille is actually supposed to be a grown woman.

That could be it, too. I'm not advocating one way or another. I did just read that Fang was originally written as a guy, but they changed it mid-production so maybe its just some residual content in there.

garion333 wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

Initial Impressions

Yup. Spot on.

Holy hivemind moment. I played the first hour on Monday night since my PC was AWOL due to malware scans and I couldn't play my current pile target. I don't think I got as far as Clocky but my last proper FF game was IX too which makes this a weird coincidence. But completely in agreement with everything he said. There's a very big amount of urgency without the devs needing to throw down a timer like they've done in past games like the back half of the VIII bombing mission opener. Which reminds me: the opening sequence is very much a classic FF opening in the sense that it's a cold opening with the action starting right from the get-go. A very stark difference than say Chrono Trigger which is currently slotted into my 3DS.

From what I've gathered you really need to trust in the auto-battle command unless you want to turn the combat speed to "slow" in the option menu. Once you get to paradigms my understanding is that you'll generally be paying more attention to the macro strategy and just switching job configurations (really the paradigm system is just Job System 3.0) while running auto-battle instead of micromanaging everything. I think the Penny Arcade guys refer to this as "calling plays" and it makes sense to me.

The only real complaint I have right now is the datalog entries for the events are woefully redundant between entries. It's also weird having plot beats spoiled in the datalog before the character narrative talks about them. Prime example was the Purge being spelled out in the datalog before Lightning and Sazh talk about the true purpose.

Anyways, definitely looking forward to hitting this game full time after Saint's Row 3.

Minarchist wrote:

Snow probably bothered me more than any other.

Snow doesn't bother me that much so far. A little flat I guess but I genuinely don't have high expectations for game VA. However, I did have a nice fit of "hey I've heard that guy" and turns out he's DeWitt in Bioshock Infinite which I think is going to make my head spin later this year if I'm still playing this at that time.