Game - Final Fantasy XIII, Day 85
Hours Played/Hours Total - 5-1/2 hrs / 5-1/2 hrs
Starting Point - Beginning of the game.
Current Goal - Beat Final Fantasy XIII! Complete my overall mission! (More or less)
What Happened - So it's finally come! The finally to my massive adventure through the Final Fantasy series. I've had good times and bad times, and now...I have FFXIII to tackle. This will probably be my biggest challenge yet, but I believe in myself. I WILL COMPLETE XIII! LET'S GET IT GOING!
I start up the game, click new game, and the game...BEGINS! (Obviously) As usual, we start off with a big fancy cutscene. It is just starting off, but I'd like to say...Daaamn this game is pretty! It's panning over a very large landscape that's all HD and shiny. Then I hear people talking, so this game is definitely voiced. I'm pretty sure it's fully voiced even with random NPC voices! So there is that. Now the video is at a train full of people....then FINAL FANTASY XIII comes on the screen. Let's do this!
An evil looking soldier comes into the train car with all the people, and he starts pointing his gun at them. Then suddenly, IT IS AN ACTION CUTSCENE! One of the people leaps up, starts flying around the room, and attacks all the guards. It's a lady, and she starts fighting with people and shooting things. It's quite exciting. Oh look! Robots and explosions and fighter airships! This is like a scene from an action movie. The train keeps riding on as chaos goes on around us. The train is being attacked by all these fighter airships though, and things aren't looking too good. The lady manages to shoot one down kinda randomly, but then we have another problem...Incoming giant bat-robot thing! It jumps onto the train and manages to bring it to a halt. After all that attacking nonsense, the lady who started all of this is thrust into battle along with a random guy. BOSS BATTLE TIME! TUTORIAL EDITION!
First and foremost, it refers to the system as the Active Time Battle system. So..we might be seeing a return from the past! Or maybe not. The general idea is Active Time Battle since it has a bar that fills up with time. However, instead of the bar filling up for a single action, the bar is allotted to your actions. Basically, the bar is long enough for me to do two basic actions (IE two attacks) or a specialty action (like Blitz...which is the only one I have that requires two bars). Anyways, back to the BOSS BATTLE at hand, I'm fighting off a large flying robot-bat thing with saw claws and a large tail. This is my very first battle, so I'm not too worried about it. Much like old ATB systems, you have to keep moving and attacking because the enemy will do so regardless. All I can do is attack, so the battle is over quite quickly. The giant robot falls off of the train and downwards to its doom. For my effort, I got a nice little screen where it describes my battle starts and RATES ME! I got...four out of five stars. Go me?
Anyways, as it fell off, it took the train right off the rails with it. After its defeat, we aren't going to be riding the train anymore. The lady gets off, and she is quickly followed by the random guy. He says something to her about her being a soldier, but she claims to not be. We gloss right past that though, and now I'm free to move. It's only a little ways in, but the game doesn't feel too bad so far. Despite the over-the-top action part back there, it's still kinda turn-based gameplay. You have an action meter much like half the series does, but the combat looks and plays in real time. It's a very pretty game, and it most certainly won't lose as far as graphics are concerned. Our main leading lady here is called Lightning.
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| Lightning |
That's a name all right...LIGHTNING. The guy with her (but not really a teammate, just a survivor) is called Sazh. He's a black guy with an afro with a baby Chocobo that lives in his hair.
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| Sazh Kitzroy |
Yeah...that is a thing. We're running along this impossibly long bridge and having to deal with more of those soldiers (labelled as PSICOM). Things are going well, but then they blow the bridge out. This random twosome manages to find a side path, but we have to fight an enemy commander to obtain it. Oh noes!...Is what I would say if it was remotely difficult. In this battle, it explains chain attacks and introduces the Stagger concept of the game. Basically, you constantly wail on an enemy, and this fills up a gauge they have above them. Once the gauge hits the max, they are considered Staggered, and this leaves them weak and open to more damage. The gauge slowly empties out, but you can attack them during this time for (essentially) double damage! This makes the enemy commander pretty darn easy. (Just a note, different enemies require more or less attacks to become staggered. They're not all the same.)
With their defeat, Sazh asks Lightning what she is even after. After a bit of prodding, she finally gives in and mentions the word "fal'Cie". That seems to spook the guy, and he stays quiet for the remainder of the scene. They then use their newly acquired transport (a flying bridge) to fly off...and I get a large dose of sudden group changeup!
Now I'm in control of a guy named Snow (Seriously, WTF are these names?) along with his band of merry men. |
| Snow Villiers |
I charge straight through the bridge and beat all of the PSICOM that get in my way. Once I clear the intial group out, we find some civilians that were captured. The group tells them to prepare to leave, but many of the people want to fight back. They take up guns and help NORA push forward. The people are angry because PSICOM initiated a PURGE of the people because of society things. To explain, I delve into the datalogs and read up. This...will take quite a bit of explaining, but I'll try to shorthand it as I can.
The people in this society live in a giant floating home/base/whatever known as Cocoon. Cocoon floats above the land below that they call Pulse. As far as the people are concerned, Pulse is something akin to hell and only horrible things come from it. Anybody who is considered to have some taint from Pulse is immediately shipped there. Something happened some time ago, and this entire section/city is considered to be infected by Pulse badness, so they are purging the entire city. That's not all the details, but you get the general idea. People are being killed simply because of something they didn't even know about. (I'll explain more when I come to it later.) Time to move along!
Of all the people to join NORA in fighting, they make sure to single out a single mother and son. As soon as I saw this, all I could think was...SHE'S GOING TO DIE. Regardless, the group pushes forward and fights off more and more PSICOM soldiers. Things are going well, but then a giant robotic behemoth leaps out of nowhere and attacks the group for BOSS BATTLE TIME!...or maybe not. It's still the opening portion of the game, and all I can do is just plainly attack. So this battle went quite quickly and without much trouble or fun. Also, the behemoth robot was called Beta Behemoth, so it was meant to be what it was. With its defeat, I'm thrust into a cutscene!
A giant airship flies in now and starts killing pretty much all of the civilians. Lucky for Snow, he spots a bazooka ahead and runs up to try and grab it. He gets to the bazooka but completely fumbles grabbing it. Thankfully for him, mom from earlier manages to nab the bazooka and shoot the airship. With her successful hit, the airship starts to fall apart and then blows up part of the large bridge. This ends up killing several people as they fall off of the collapsing bridge right to their doom. This includes mom person who Snow feels bad about not being able to save her. Then Snow falls...Enough of that though, now I get to go back to Lightning and Sazh.
Back with these two, they're talking about things and stuff. Lightning was part of some group known as the Guardian Corps. From what it seems like, Guardian Corps are more like the police force of Cocoon while PSICOM is their military unit. Sazh doesn't get the difference, but Lightning disagrees with him and says they are quite different. As they fly along, a huge gate in the top of this....giant-city-cave place opens up. From the gate flies out several airships along with a massive statue they're moving. As they are coming down, Sanctum (the ruling government of Cocoon...more or less) makes an announcement to the people there. They say that they are willing to kill all of those in the city to protect the rest of Cocoon.
As it turns out, this is all because of the large statue they are bringing into the area. It contains what is known as a fal'Cie. There are apparently fal'Cie all throughout Cocoon, but this one maters because it's from...PULSE! (Dun dun duuuuun) The people that lived in this city and all of Cocoon were completely unaware of the fal'Cie's existence in the statue, but regardless of that, they're all being killed to keep Pulse influence from taking control somehow. I unlocked the data entry for fal'Cie at this point and read up. There are all kinds of fal'Cie it seems, and Cocoon was actually created by them to protect and serve the people. The fal'Cie are magical beings of incredible power. However, they are able to curse people and turn them into l'Cie. Unfortunately, it doesn't explain what an l'Cie is, so I'll bring this back up when I do learn. Lightning heads off towards the statue, and Sazh follows after her. Back to Snow!
Despite all those other people dying, Snow has survived. He is feeling guilty at all of the people who died though, and most especially, he feels guilty about the mom dying. She died saving him, but before she fell, she asked him to protect her son...and didn't give his name. Of course, she technically died while trying to protect her son. Anyways, Snow wasn't the only survivor of this giant fall. One of his friends from NORA also survived despite everybody else dying! They fight off a group of soldiers and secure themselves a pair of weird airbikes to fly back up. The head on up and find that the entire NORA group seems to have survived. Snow doesn't stop there for long though. He's heading off to the fal'Cie statue to save someone. Then I'm introduced to mom's kid, and his name is Hope. (Seriously...the names.)
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| Hope Estheim |
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| Vanille |
As with most of the previous fights, these go really fast, but I do have a special mention for these two fighting. Hope is armed with a boomerang, but Vanille (the more she talks, the more I don't like her) is armed with a weird...horn-whip thing. I don't know how to describe it even, but she like whips them with it somehow. Imagine a set of deer antlers where the tips fly off into wires, and then you flail it around like a fishing pole-whip to attack enemies. I do not understand how it could possibly be effective. As I'm looking around here, I find out that I just hit Chapter Two. Chapter One went by pretty darn fast...I almost don't want to call it a chapter.
Ah well! All three groups of characters are currently located on this statue-place and are heading for the Pulse fal'Cie. They have to be very careful around the fal'Cie though, because it can turn them into l'Cie. And that is bad...Why? Because when it curses them, they're forced to follow its commands or something like that. Once again, I'm kinda left without any form of explanation, and the datalogs don't really have anything right now. I don't get far with these two when suddenly they hear Snow yelling from somewhere else. Time to CHANGE PLACES!
Now I'm in Snow's shoes again. He's looking for his fiancee Serah. I run over, activate a switch, and then the game changes places again...pretty much in no time. Now I'm with the dynamic duo of Lightning and Sazh again. Lightning is trying to open the door with no luck, but then she realizes something and randomly apologizes to the door. Then it magically opens up because of that. Going to gloss past this because I don't really care. As we enter this big temple place, I get to learn about a specialty item set called Shrouds. They're like weird aerosols that you can spray for different effects involving battles. One type of aerosol (Deciptosol) allows me to avoid enemies OR ambush them easily. (Kinda randomly late to mention it, but enemies are physically there on the map when you walk around. They have a line of sight and will charge at you and all those good things.) Another aerosol I have (forgot its name) has an in-battle effect of giving my party Haste, Bravery, and Faith. I will be looking forward to future aerosols for sure!
I go ahead and try out one of the Deciptosols. It works pretty well, and I look forward to using it more later. Unfortunately, I don't have very many right now, so I'll probably hold back until I get more. The enemies around here aren't too hard, and they're easy to fight with two people. I fight off a couple groups of monster-robots (I said monsters earlier, but these are more of monster-robot hybirds.), and then I enter a little scene with Lightning and Sazh. Lightning mentions something about soldiers being inside of this place, but she believes they'd be l'Cie by now. Sazh adds in "ENEMIES OF COCOON!" And then we switch back over to Snow.
I hope you are prepared for an exciting Snow moment. I run over, fight a battle, and then I hit a switch. Now it's time to change places again! I'm back to Hope and Vanille, and they're redescribing the situation to me. Hope wants to confront Snow about the whole "my mom is dead because of you!" issue, but he doesn't know how to go about it. Vanille encourages him to do it though, so we go ahead and move right along. Then we get surrounded by freaky zombie monster people! Vanille identifies them as Cie'th. (l'Cie that don't and/or refuse to complete the task given to them by the fal'Cie.) They're quickly surrounded, but then Snow comes out of nowhere to help save the day! Battle time! We beat the Cie'th almost immediately and then leap right into a scene.
Snow doesn't know HOW we got up here, but he tells us to go hide and wait while he saves Serah. Then he goes off to explain what's up with her. Turns out, she's a...an l'Cie of the Pulse fal'Cie, but he's here to rescue her! Hope asks why he's going to rescue an l'Cie, and then he says Snow is crazy. (He's still angry about the mom thing.) Snow starts to run off, but then he realizes he shouldn't just leave us her. He turns around and takes us with him. Hope isn't too happy about this, but Vanille encourages him to come along so that he can have his moment with Snow. That's enough of this group (as far as the game is concerned), and we get swapped back to Lightning and Sazh.
I really hope this back and forth nonsense decides to end here soon. I am very much tired of the nearly constant amount of it. Lighting reveals to Sazh why she's even here. She says that her sister is here and is an l'Cie. (Also pretty sure it's Serah because coincidences are fun!) Sazh doesn't take it too well, but then he asks what her Focus was. He also somewhat explains it by following that up with "What did the fal'Cie order her to do?" Lightning says she doesn't know because she didn't ask, but then doors open and things go down. Now this group gets to meet some Cie'th, and Sazh reiterates what I just learned about them. He points out that she's going to turn into one of those if she doesn't complete her Focus. (On top of having to do it or else, you're also on a time limit it seems.) He suggests to Lightning that they do away with her because she's an l'Cie and there's no way to turn her back into a regular human. Lighting takes offense to this and claims that people like him are to blame for the Purge. They all think that fal'Cie aren't worth being left alive. That's all she has to say though, so they move right along.
I have to fight off several groups of Cie'th as I move through the area. After I wipe them all out, I head for the elevator and up to the next floor. Up there, we find Serah, and she seems to be both alive and well right now. Then Snow and company show up soon enough. Yay for the happy reunion! OR MAYBE NOT. Serah asks that they save Cocoon, and when Snow agrees to, a big pile of weirdness happens. Serah suddenly floats up into the air and turns into a crystal version of herself. This is followed up with an explanation of what just happened. Basically, if a l'Cie completes their focus, they're given eternal life as a crystal. So...to fully lay it out, you can either become a horrible undying monster or a large undying crystal. Yay for crappy choices!
Lightning is very angry now, and Snow plans to go speak with the fal'Cie to change this. Lightning doesn't think she can be changed back though, so she plans to kill the fal'Cie. The group runs straight ahead and into a large room. All that appears to be here is a large computer that the group refers to as the fal'Cie. At first, I don't get it, but that's quickly cleared up as the giant metallic dome turns out to be a shell. Lightning attacks it, and the thing reveals its true form, a robot thing with a crystal in its chest. She tells everybody that we have to kill it to save Cocoon. Hope runs away, and Vanille chases after him. This leaves me with Lightning, Snow, and Sazh to fight the thing. BOSS BATTLE TIME!
I'm facing off against this fal'cie who goes by the name Anima. This boss requires a one-two punch to fight it. It's made up of two drill arms and a main core. You can attack the core directly, but it puts you right in the range to be smacked around by the drills. I destroy the drill arms and then focus on the core. The drills eventually regenerate though, so this battle turns into a rinse and repeat scenario. I had to do it three times in order to beat the fal'Cie, but then it is dead...CUTSCENE!
The group is all swallowed up in darkness, and then they're all floating in a strange space. They're greeted by a massive magical machine giant. More likely than not, this is the actual fal'Cie. The giant being lights up, grabs the group, and then brands all of them. With the brand left on each one, they're all left to fall into the darkness below. Outside of all of this, the giant statues is being destroyed by a collection of airships. After it's all blown up, they drop the large hunk of fallen apart into the water below. However, as it hits the water, it freezes all of it up. Then, after all that strangeness, the game decides it is time to go into a different scene. On top of this, it's actually a flashback.
The scene is from a couple days ago, and it is Snow meeting up with Serah. They discuss her current status as a l'Cie, but at this point, she hasn't told Lightning about it yet. She's going to tell Lightning about it soon when they meet with her for her birthday. Then Snow proposes to Serah, and she agrees to marry him. Yaay happy moment. Now we go back to the present, and Snow is waking up. It seems what we saw was the past, but it was also his dream of said past. The group is all alive somehow, and they're on top of the water that magicked itself into ice. I thought it was an ocean, but it turns out to be just a really large lake. It is Lake Breasha, Cocoon Lowlands. As the group is looking around, they realize that the surrounding area has all turned to crystal (not ice). They don't know why it did it, but the datalog said something about the dying fal'Cie turned it all into crystal.
As they are admiring the scenery, suddenly some Cie'th jump out and attack them. Snow fights them off quite easily though and realizes that he used magic to beat them. They notice that they all have l'Cie brands now, and in turn, this has given them the ability to use magic. They're not exactly too happy about this though. No time to sit and be angry about it though, so we start to move. I don't get too far before the group starts to wonder what their Focus could be. Apparently, the fal'Cie don't tell or give you the Focus. You're only given a dream of a vision that hints at what you are supposed to do. They all had the dream during the cutscene from before, and when they talk about what they saw, it appears that all of them have the same Focus. It seems to involve Ragnarok and some sort of giant beast attacking Eden, the capital of Cocoon. Despite being unsure about their Focus, Snow sets out to find crystallized Serah. He believes she would have survived the fall in her Crystal form, and the group sets out to search. Lightning is all "grrr" about this though, but she goes along anyways.
After that, I get to learn all about the Paradigm System and the Crystarium. During battle, you are able to change your character's job (fighting style is probably more appropriate) mid-battle. Each character has access to a specific group right now, but there is a pretty wide range to choose from. There is Medic (healing), Ravager (combo time), Commando (damage dealing), and more!...that I don't have. I'll list more later as I get them, but basically, you can shift and change mid-battle to assume the style you need. Each job/role gives you specific abilities and boosts while they are selected.
The Crystarium is this game's level-up system. Unfortunately, it greatly resembles the Sphere Grid, but it seems to be a bit better. Battles reward you CP (Crystal Points) that you can spend in the Crystarium to learn new abilities and increase your stats. Each job/role (probably just go with role from here on) has their own area where you can spend points, and they each level independently. You can choose to stick with one to fully level it up, or you can spread it out to suit your needs. Any stat and health boosts you gain through each role all go towards the character and carry over regardless of role. This also includes spells and techniques The only things that don't carry over are special abilities that are directly related to the role. It's interesting enough, but I do hope it goes over better than the Sphere Grid. It was always kinda hard to directly tell what your growth was...
Either way! We're now in Chapter Three although Chapter Two just began like an hour or two ago at most. I move along and fight the Cie'th and other monsters here and there. The group stops a couple different times to talk about their situation. Snow believes that their Focus involves Serah's Focus, and he believes her Focus was to protect Cocoon. So he thinks they are supposed to save Cocoon from Ragnarok. Nobody else seems very sure about that, and only Sazh finally speaks up. He tells him that if he truly thinks that, he'll give at least ONE reason behind it all. Snow claims that it's Serah...She is the reason. Lightning isn't happy to hear this, and as far as she is concerned, Serah is dead. Of course, Lightning appears to be coming off as a fairly angry person. They don't get much time to argue beyond that though because PSICOM soldiers!
Of course, they weren't much trouble before, and now we all have super powers and magic. So...that wasn't any form of an ordeal. I don't get too far when we (crazily enough) do come upon Crystal Serah. Snow rushes over to her, but she seems to be stuck in the crystallized surroundings. Snow grabs some random hunk of metal and attempts to dig her out. Everybody joins him except for Lightning. Sure, she is still being her angry self, but she comes up with a decent point here. She tells the group that they can't stop now because the army is after them. Snow tells her that he wants to rescue Serah and save Cocoon because he is determined. Lightning tells him that he's all talk, and that Serah didn't sacrifice herself just so he could go down now. Then suddenly...A GIANT ROBOT! It's the same one from the beginning, but it's all messed up now. Regardless, it is up for a fight and BOSS BATTLE TIME!
This boss battle isn't too hard really, and the game is still sort of on "tutorial mode". It explains to me that I should make use of the Paradigm Shift to change my fighting style during a boss fight. I need to shift between combos and damage to healing when necessary, but I also have to shift back to not lose the Stagger percentage. I beat up the big robot with all my might while constantly switching from damage mode to healing mode. Once I Stagger the big bot, the battle is basically downhill from there. With its defeat, the robot is gone, and the group goes back to their discussion.
Snow tells Lightning that he can do both things. He will prove to her that he can save Serah AND protect Cocoon. He goes back to digging, and the group decides to leave him behind. The majority doesn't feel right about leaving him behind, but we don't have any time to think on that. After only a short distance away, they spot a big airship in the distance that's dropping off a whole pile of PSICOM people. On top of that, they spot a couple of airships flying over. Lightning says something about them dropping a net to keep the Pulse "infected" people from escaping. Vanille asks why they all hate Pulse so much, but Sazh points out to her that it's less about hatred and more along the line of fear. Also the name Eden is brought up, but they don't say much beyond the name itself, so I have to investigate in the datalogs.
Datalogs say: Eden is the Cocoon fal'Cie that manages control over ALL of the fal'Cie in Cocoon. As it turns out, there are literally millions of Cocoon fal'Cie throughout the place. They're the reason the people are able to survive in this giant floating shell of a home. The fal'Cie provide everything for the people from food to basic living stuffs. Beyond the providing, the fal'Cie don't really talk or interfere with the humans. Eden is the only one who interacts with them much, and it only steps in to help them judge things at times.
Back to the group, they need to hurry up and run. They gotta get out before the net goes down, so they go go go! Next big battle teaches me about special techniques that the leader can use. In this case, I learn about Libra. Only the lead character can use this special technique, and they cost a special point (TP, Technical Point) that is earned through successfully fought battles. Libra just shows information on the enemy, but it also causes your AI partners to choose their attacks wisely, like using Fire on enemies with a weakness to it. It's cool that you can do this, but I kinda wish I could just directly control people...or had cooler powers that cost points.
I'm not far into the game, but I'm kinda split on battles. They're fairly fun and interesting (although I usually just pick the auto command to automatically choose my actions.), but battles just don't last very long. This is a good and bad thing all in one. It's good because you aren't wasting time on lesser enemies because you just wipe them out crazy fast. It's a bad thing because there really isn't any time to actually ENJOY the battle. On top of that, you are rated by how fast you complete battles, so you are kinda forced to speed through them on top of it all. I don't have access to any buffs or debuffs yet, but I doubt I'd have the time with the short time limits. That's enough opinion for now though, so let's move right along.
There are a few small scenes here and there as we try to escape. The group discusses all sorts of things, but I'm honestly not that interested in any of it. It's either uninteresting or just repeating things that have already been said. If I actually want any details, I have to go look into the datalogs for that. If the battles were a bit longer, I could probably forgive them. At least...at least the game is still really pretty? Is that a completely redeemable trait? Let's find out.
The next part was all kinds of robot enemies and robotic monster enemies. They weren't anything to go on about though, and I quickly find myself in a random ruins area. It's all full of PSICOM soldiers, but none of them are any real problem for me. An interesting thing that this area shows is that a lot of stuff was actually changed to crystal. The fire in the ruins is all crystallized as well. It looks cool, but there's not much to say beyond that. As we explore, we come upon a large open area, and Vanille splits off to look around. As she does, I get an ominous other camera that's quite obviously a flying monster. It eventually works around and chases after Vanille. Turns out, it's a giant robot dragon! BOSS BATTLE TIME!
For the recent battles, I've been making use of Lightning, Sazh, and Vanille. No change there. This giant robot dragon monster isn't about to let me kick its butt, but I manage to do so anyways. However, it isn't going down after just ONE round. As I beat it, a cutscene jumps up, and the large beast flies to the back of the area. We chase after it to start up round two. The second round is a bit different than the first round though. The dragon robot now has a barrier up. With the barrier up, I'm unable to do any real kind of damage to it. I have to stagger it before I can put the beast in its place. It takes a little time, but once it's staggered, the battle is straight down from there. With the monster's defeat, the group suddenly spots their escape. There is an airship conveniently placed behind where the battle took place. That's how we are getting out of here! However, as they board it, I'm taken back to where Snow is.
Snow is still trying to dig Serah out, but he's not really getting anywhere. Unfortunately for him, he's not alone either. As he's digging, a PSICOM ship shows up and starts dropping soldiers down. As Snow, I get to fight off a group of them, but he's already tired after just a couple of them. Looks like Snow is going to die here...then magicalness happens! A random pair of magical ladies are summoned out of nowhere, and they beat up the remaining soldiers. Yay for surviving! But then the magical ladies turn on Snow for...Eidolon Battle Time?
Yeah, as it turns out, these two lovely ladies are the Eidolon, Shiva. However, despite their helping him, he has to prove his worth before they'll directly give their power to him. I have to beat them/prove myself in battle before I truly gain their power. Of course, this is just the first Eidolon battle, so I get a little information before I begin. The battle isn't about beating them, it's about fighting them effectively and "impressing" them. On top of that, they cast Doom on me at the very beginning. Thus, I have a time limit to impress them. Luckily, despite there being two of them (Shiva Sisters!), I only have to directly fight one. The second one just sits there and heals me as I lay the beatdown on Shiva Sister 1. I mess up the first try on this battle though, and I have to retry. (Kinda wonky fact, you can pause in any battle and reset the battle to the very beginning. You restart with everything used, so you really only lose time.) Even on the second try, I really cut it close, but I still pull through.
Upon their defeat, the two sisters combine together to make...a motorcycle? Snow leaps atop the Shiva-cycle and rides around a bit. Then he passes out. As this happens, a random lady walks onto the scene. Despite being an l'Cie, she seems to be working with PSICOM. Snow is powerless to do anything, and he's taken captive along with crystal Serah. Enough about that though, let's scene jump back to the other group! They're all onboard the airship, and it takes off. Yay for escaping! But then we are chased by other airships. The remainder of this is just a really long cutscene of airships flying and shooting and dodging. It's all action-y again! As they're flying around, they fly by the large Cocoon fal'Cie (which looks like a weird machine-afied sun) that goes by the name Phoenix. Several enemy airships blow up in there.
There's also a part of the cutscene where we see the leader of Cocoon talk to the people. He talks about how he handled the Purge and kept them all safe or something like that. Honestly, I didn't make any notes because I didn't really care. The only important part is the group wonders why the fal'Cie Eden didn't step in. Apparently, it steps in during parts where large decisions are to be made. Anyways, the group crash lands in a wasteland area, and we have to figure out what to do from here.
Lightning is eager to push on, but Sazh is all old and tired. She tells them we should keep moving, but Sazh isn't about to budge. Lightning ends up moving on, and Hope follows after her. Vanille stays behind with Sazh, and the party has officially been split. (My original note went something like this: THEY'RE SPLITTING THE PARTY DAMNIT!) Vanille eventually convinces Sazh to move along, but now they're pretty far behind the other two. Also the path gets destroyed randomly....Apparently that's enough of those two for now, time to change places to the other two.
Hope catches up to Lightning, and they talk about moving on because being chased or something. They figure the others will catch up, so they'll just move along. Again, I've got such little interest in what they say because they generally don't say much. As of that last boss battle, I've gained some new spots on the Crystarium. I used the boatload of points I gained at some random point and level on up! Woo! Of course, it doesn't actually give me new levels...just more spots to earn. Ah well, Hope joins up and has a few new roles to mess around with. He comes with Ravager, Medic, and Synergist. Synergist is just buffing magic like Protect and Shell. Ah well, it will hopefully prove useful. Also, it turns out I'm Chapter Four now! However, I've had enough of the game at this point, so I hit a save point and close it up for now. It's also where I'll close this post.
Dear lord, this post is suuuper behind where I wanted it. I figured to have it at the end of last week, but that most certainly didn't happen. I've only gotten like five hours on FFXIII so far, and I would really like to beat it before July...I'm not feeling confident about that. That's how bad this game feels so far. The gameplay isn't really that bad honestly, but I just can't like any of the characters. Lightning is a b*tch, Sazh is just afro with a chocobo, Hope is all WAAAAH, Vanille is TOO cheery, and Snow looks like a damn hobo. I can't get past how much he looks like a hobo. Who the heck designs the Final Fantasy outfits? Whoever it is, they need to stop it, or at least try to do something less creative and flashy and more actually makes sense. I could ramble on forever though, so I'll just stop now and finish up already.
I won't lie to you. This game is going to be a hard fight to make it through, and I'm not looking forward to it. I believe in myself though! I will succeed in beating FFXIII, and then I'll never look back. You should look forward to more fun Final Fantasy XIII stuff...because that'll be happening all over the place. That's enough for now. Look forward to another post coming eventually, but it won't be soon because this game just sucks the life outta me. Thanks for reading!
Ending Point - Wrack and Ruin - The Vile Peaks.
Current Party -
- Lightning - Commando Lvl 1 , Ravager Lvl 1
- Hope - Ravager Lvl 1, Synergist Lvl 1, Medic Lvl 1
Next Goals - Escape the wastelands. Complete the Focus. Finish Final Fantasy XIII.
~May the Crystals Guide Me~
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