Final Fantasy XIII Catch-All

ClockworkHouse wrote:
ahrezmendi wrote:

I recall beating him with Fang, Sazh, and Lightning. Haste was extremely helpful, but I'd also maxed out all available crystarium paths so Sazh was a good enough Med in addition to support.

This is the first fight against Barthandalus on the airship, so Sazh doesn't have the Medic role yet. He's Commando/Ravager/Synergist only.

I'm mis-remembering then. Whoever my Medic was they did a sufficient job, but I did spend some time ensuring I'd hit cap on each role.

You may need to figure how to make Sazh work, I remember at a certain point it was almost required to have a haste person in the group, I also remember not using Sen as much as I found it faster to just burn things and double heal when big attacks hit.

I finally got back to playing this and beat Barthandalus on my second try. It helped that I'd leveled a bit, but my main problem turned out to be that I just wasn't aggressive enough. I kept dying to a big charge-up attack, called Destro, that Barthandalus did in the second half of the fight. When he started charging up, I started healing and buffing my characters, but it wasn't enough. It turns out that if you get really aggressive when he's charging the attack, you'll stun him and drop his damage by half. It's also the only way to build up the stagger bar as otherwise there's not enough time before he resets it to 0%.

Unfortunately, that was all I had time for, so now I'm on to Chapter 10. Hopefully I get to Gran Pulse soon.

IMAGE(http://www.comicbookmovie.com/images/users/uploads/17215/movie-destro.jpg)

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I finally got back to playing this and beat Barthandalus on my second try. It helped that I'd leveled a bit, but my main problem turned out to be that I just wasn't aggressive enough. I kept dying to a big charge-up attack, called Destro, that Barthandalus did in the second half of the fight. When he started charging up, I started healing and buffing my characters, but it wasn't enough. It turns out that if you get really aggressive when he's charging the attack, you'll stun him and drop his damage by half. It's also the only way to build up the stagger bar as otherwise there's not enough time before he resets it to 0%.

Unfortunately, that was all I had time for, so now I'm on to Chapter 10. Hopefully I get to Gran Pulse soon.

I recall having exactly this same issue with the Barthandalus fight.

The gran pulse portion of the game is really great. If you're already enjoying the game you'll love it. If you've found the game a bit dull thus far then you should find it really opens up from there

Aggression always wins in this game. After all, the only thing you're graded on is speed.

Basically, heal when you're about to die, otherwise ATTAAAAAAAACK!

I think this is the first battle, at least the first battle that I can remember, where you're encouraged to attack while your opponent is charging in order to decrease their damage. The other battles to this point where an enemy has had a charged attack, you've been encouraged (both in terms of gameplay reinforcement and by the tutorial prompts) to switch to a defensive posture. It's an interesting change, but I'm not sure it's telegraphed well. I kinda discovered it by accident.

The same strategy works against those enemies, though - I don't think there's a charging enemy before that that doesn't stop when you stagger them, is there?

And, IIRC, turtling does work against Bart if you're leveled enough and have the right group (I seem to recall SEN-SEN-SYN being able to shrug it off).

The messaging does suck, but I'm pretty sure the behavior is consistent.

Ed Ropple wrote:

The same strategy works against those enemies, though - I don't think there's a charging enemy before that that doesn't stop when you stagger them, is there?

But you don't stagger Barthandalus to drop the amount of damage Destro does. I was trying to find a term for it that wasn't stagger and settled on stun, so I'm sorry if that wasn't clear. Basically, if you deal enough damage to him, he'll slump down, make a hurt noise, and deal less damage when he attacks, but he's not staggered.

And I'm sure you could turtle against him just fine if you keep up a low but consistent level of damage. I almost managed to defeat him on my first try but fell to his Doom attack when he had maybe 2% of his life left.

Huh, I must have misremembered. I thought you had to stagger him to get around that. (I think I pegged it as the worst-designed fight in the game my first playthrough, though.)

I hope that Gran Pulse has more diverse enemy designs than Cocoon has had. I'm getting really tired of fighting slugs and flans.

Well, about that...

Ahahahahahaha

...

I made it to Gran Pulse and what are literally the first two combat encounters? Some slugs and then some flans and then some slugs with flans.

Seriously, developers? Seriously?

And have I mentioned how much I hate the Eidolon battles?

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Seriously, developers? Seriously?

But what about all the side-quests you can do in Gran Pulse? There's like 64 of them or something! That's 64 different battles you can do!

Fun fact: I did not like FF XIII. Did not hate it either. And yet, a few weeks ago, I was considering replaying it. Something must be wrong with me, I think I need to see a doctor.

Those Gran Pulse missions are starting to grate on my nerves, and I'm only on #9 or #10. Actually, it's the map that annoys me; it changes based on your camera. I can understand that for the minimap, but the big map should stick with one direction (preferably North on top). I'm really hoping this doesn't get as annoying as SMTIV.

I haven't even gotten to the side quests. The party crashed-landed on Gran Pulse, got a breathtaking overview of the world, and then got shunted into a long-ass canyon filled with slimes and flans with Hope's Eidolon at the end. I gave up for the night when I got to the Eidolon. Have I mentioned how much I hate the Eidolon battles?

Hello, I'm the only person who felt that the Gran Pulse sections were the worst part of the game, even though the scenery was beautiful.

Spoiler:

The ruined village was okay because it felt like the story was back on track, but the tower section was tedious.

Demyx wrote:

Hello, I'm the only person who felt that the Gran Pulse sections were the worst part of the game, even though the scenery was beautiful.

Spoiler:

The ruined village was okay because it felt like the story was back on track, but the tower section was tedious.

IMAGE(http://fandomwanderers.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/yanacaption1.jpg)

That's terrifying.

Basically, I like linear gameplay just as much or more than open world, so the "open world" aspect didn't make the game more appealing to me. The section was overly long and repetitive, and trying to do all the sidequests didn't help since most of them were just fighting palette-swapped monsters. Exploration too often led to getting stomped into the dirt by monsters I wasn't meant to be able to beat yet. And at least one area was tedious and ugly.

EDIT: Okay, maybe not the worst part of the game, the final dungeon made me glad that I was nearly done with it.

You mean The Master shows up? Sweet!

Demyx wrote:

EDIT: Okay, maybe not the worst part of the game, the final dungeon made me glad that I was nearly done with it.

Interestingly, I find the final dungeon/location/whatever of most jrpg's to be my least favorite part of them, especially the FF games.

The FF games where I actually enjoyed the final dungeon roughly on par with the rest of the game were I, IV, and VII. Even VI and XII, my two favorites of the franchise, were more fun prior to the final dungeon than during the final dungeon.

So yeah, I don't really hold the final dungeon of XIII against it.

The Arclyte Steppe (is that the right name?), more than anything, just makes me miss Xenoblade Chronicles.

Lightning has to be able to get Thundaga at some point...right?

sometimesdee wrote:

Lightning has to be able to get Thundaga at some point...right?

How else will she fight all the various flan reskins in the final chapters?!

I'm in Chapter 11, maxed out ravager to as much as it can go, and I noticed that she doesn't have Thundaga while others do. It seemed odd...

sometimesdee wrote:

I'm in Chapter 11, maxed out ravager to as much as it can go, and I noticed that she doesn't have Thundaga while others do. It seemed odd...

Oh, she learns it.

Spoiler:

About the same time she learns "Army of One." IIRC, it's the last crystarium section that opens before the post-game crysterium unlock, and happens at the end of chapter 12. Or maybe 11. One of the two.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I'm about six and a half hours in now; I think I'm most of the way through the Vile Peaks. And you know what? I think this game is freaking brilliant, pretty much top to bottom. So far at least, it's managed to supplant Resonance of Fate and Xenoblade Chronicles as my favorite JRPG of this console generation.

Twenty or so hours later, and I can feel the disappointment setting in.

There's so much I love about this game. The combat system is rock solid. I like the characters. I like the structural emphasis on speed and urgency. I even like the story.

However, the shameless padding and lack of diversity in the combat encounters is killing me. In another thread, pyxistyx jokes that Square-Enix managed to make the JRPG equivalent of a corridor shooter, and you know what? She's right, and I'm okay with that. I don't mind that idea at all.

But I wish this game didn't feel like a twenty to thirty hour corridor shooter stretched out to fill an expected runtime that's twice as long as that or more. Every area, every space, has felt both too long and too lacking in content. It's a reflection, I think, of the relatively short development cycle that we now know Final Fantasy XIII got coupled with expectations that the game be epic.

This could've been a tight, super cohesive experience, but it isn't.

Spoiler:

It's still better than all the other Final Fantasy games I've played.

You're a very sick person, Clocky.

That said, I agree with this:

ClockworkHouse wrote:

However, the shameless padding and lack of diversity in the combat encounters is killing me. In another thread, pyxistyx jokes that Square-Enix managed to make the JRPG equivalent of a corridor shooter, and you know what? She's right, and I'm okay with that. I don't mind that idea at all.

But I wish this game didn't feel like a twenty to thirty hour corridor shooter stretched out to fill an expected runtime that's twice as long as that or more. Every area, every space, has felt both too long and too lacking in content.

...

This could've been a tight, super cohesive experience, but it isn't.

I think that, had it been the tight, cohesive game that it could have, I might have enjoyed FFXIII more than I did. It would then have been sort of a new take on FFIV, which I felt was the most on-rails of the FF games prior to XIII. The on-rails nature of IV is part of why I liked VI so much more, but the charm of IV was in the characters and the music.