Side Post!

I figured it was time for a new Side Post to pop up here. Sure I've posted all sorts of other stuff, but it seems like my Side Posts are the most popular items on here. Thus...I'm going to keep doing them here and there. For this round of Side Post, I'm going to review yet another RPG! (I know... So original!) Instead of something newer though, I'm going to pick out an older RPG and play through a couple hours on it. Then I get to harshly review it although I probably won't be harsh!

I've given it careful consideration, and after quite a bit of though, I have decided to review...

Recurring Fantasy Side Post Theater Proudly Presents...
Classic RPG Review - Secret of Evermore

The first thing you might be wondering is "Why aren't you reviewing 'Secret of Mana' instead?" Because I wanted to do the less heard of game, and I figured that it'd give me a chance to get into this cool yet fairly unknown series without immediately jumping on the most known. SO YEAH!

The Secret of Evermore was released in 1995 as an action RPG for the Super Nintendo. A "fun" fact here would be that this was the ONLY game developed by the Square designers in America (at the time of course). If you feel like you recognize the "Secret of" bit, I'd say you are somewhat right already. Yes, it reminds you of "Secret of Mana", but I'm sad to say that the games are unrelated here. They do both use the ring menu system, real-time battles, and the ability to switch between two characters, but that's where the similarity ends here. Evermore isn't an entry in the Mana series. (You can read more on the Wiki here.)

A due note on my part, I don't own an actual copy of this game. Trust me, I'd love to, but a physical copy would easily set me back $100. I'm just not up for paying that much for a physical copy right now, so I'll be using an emulator to play Secret of Evermore. For those who are curious, I'm playing it with snes9x. There might be better emulators out there, but this is the one I've almost always used. I'm not going to tell you how to use emulators nor where I got the games though. You can figure that out on your own right here. On the plus side of this, I'm able to take screenshots to make the review less wordy. Yay!

As per my general review format, I'm going to be a three-tiered setup here. I'll look over graphics/sound, gameplay, and story/characters. I've combined the last two because I'm not (currently) planning to play through the entire game. That'd distract me too much from my main goal right now (FFXIII), and I'd like to get that done. There's a chance I shall return later, but I'm not going to promise to return either. That's enough for details and extras though, so let's jump into the actual review.

Since the first thing you see and hear in the game are the graphics and sound, I figure that's as good a place as any to start. Now, you have to remember, this is the Super Nintendo days, so you can throw out most ideas of full 3D with fancy polygons or anything like that. Honestly though, I sometimes miss the simple days of what may seem like plain-er but generally well done and looking 2D games. Of course, pictures are going to say quite a bit more than words, so I'll start with that.

(I couldn't get blogger to let me arrange them how I liked, so that's why it's one big collage of images instead of separate ones. If you want separate versions, you can find them here. It's just an imgur album.)

As you can see from above, the graphics are pretty nice. For the time and era of the game's release, it's pretty much spot on. Animations feel right, enemies are varied in looks, and the game flows quite well. The sounds are pretty good, but the music never truly blew me away. Nothing really stood out to me, but the environments sounded like they should. And honestly, the environment is probably one of the better parts. As you can see from above, I ventured through a couple of stone age-ish eras, and they look spot on to me. I liked the varying look of each area, and so the graphics and sound get a definite pass.

There is one unfortunate part though... I didn't play long enough to reach some of the other areas in the game. From my understanding, there are three other big areas that resemble different points in history. I'd say that overall, the game's environment gets a passing grade. It looks and sounds pretty good, but I wouldn't call it the best on the SNES either. That's all I have for the graphics/sound department. (I'll probably refer to it as "environment" in later posts, but I'm still undecided.) Onwards to gameplay!

Gameplay! For me, Gameplay is the king in a game. You can forego graphics a bit. I'm even willing to overlook a mediocre story or characters. The gameplay is where a game has to shine always. If it doesn't play well or even play fun, then why should I waste my time on it? Secret of Evermore manages to deliver with gameplay though! And this is how.

Secret of Evermore is an action RPG, and it plays as such. You have health and a stamina meter. Running or swinging your weapons uses your meter. You earn levels and gain better stats. It's fairly straightforward in that capacity, but the games does offer some fairly unique elements. Your character isn't alone in his quest through Evermore. You also get his dog (and get to name it), and it helps out as an AI partner. It's able to run about and attack enemies as well. For an older game AI, it works out pretty well, and it even tends to do more damage than you do. Still isn't perfect though and will sometimes get itself into trouble. On top of helping you fight, the dog will also search out items you need for magic. (This is covered more further down.)

The game makes use of the ring menu system, which is common throughout the "Secret of" series. Basically, it pauses the game and a ring appears above your head with different options. Going up and down changes the ring selection to different things like spells, weapons, and items. For what the game is, the ring menu is pretty much perfect. It pauses up the action and allows you to select things as needed. I'll cover weapons and how they work first, and then I'll swing back around to spells.

Weapons are the straightforward element in this. You select your weapon and attack enemies with them. The amount of damage you do is based on the weapon and how full your stamina meter is. Unfortunately, this was one of the first annoying faults for me. The stamina meter is based on percent and trying to attack when the meter isn't completely 100% full results in a lackluster attack. Weapons aren't the only thing that uses your stamina either. You gain an accessory that allows you to dash, but that drains your meter as you do so. It's not the worst system by far, but it definitely adds to the difficulty at times.

As far as weapons go, you start the game off with a bone to smack people with, but you quickly obtain new weapons like a Spider's Claw (Axe) and a Horn Spear (self-explanatory). I only played enough to obtain one of each of the weapon types: Sword, Axe, and Spear. So each weapon I got was really only more powerful than the previous ones. Using the weapons to kill enemies gains experience for them and will eventually level them up.  All weapons can be charged once leveled and gain new attacks. The Horn Spear (only example I have) can be charged and thrown once you level it up.

The only complaint I'd have here is that a weapon's reach sometimes felt super short. Like the enemy has to be crashing into you for you to be able to hit it. Of course, the ability to throw the spear makes it the most useful weapon for me since timing isn't easy on a keyboard. (I ended up hooking up a controller for the last portion of play, and that greatly improved my ability.) Now I just need to give a quick glance over how spells work, and then it's time to wrap up the review with story/characters!

Spells are probably one of the more interesting parts of Secret of Evermore. You trade in the usual MP (Mana/Magic Points) for a Alchemy system. As you play through the game, you earn Alchemical Recipes that allow you to cast spells with the use of various items. Items for recipes are found by defeating enemies, finding them in chests, finds them while roaming the map (with help from your dog), and buy many of them in stores. Alchemical Recipes are obtained from all over the game. You get them from characters as you progress, NPCs that you randomly talk to, or a couple other ways. In the end, there's quite a few spells to obtain, and they even level up as you use them! Pretty much everything has levels in this game.

Now, that takes care of most of the gameplay. I'm sad that I didn't fully complete the game at this point, but based on what I've seen in guides, I could probably finish it if I gave another ten hours or so. It is fairly short, so that's kinda a bummer. If I had any more "complaints" about gameplay, it'd probably be this... The game is very challenging. (Not much of a complaint really, I just suck.) Thankfully, the game is the good kind of challenge that makes you feel like you can do better. Once you get used to the weapons and spells, things become quite a bit easier. (Also a real controller helps.) Regardless, this game is not for a casual gamer or someone looking for an easy RPG. Next up, we look at the character's and their story.

*BEWARE! POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD!*

The game starts off in the 1990s in a town called Podunk. However, you aren't there very long when suddenly things take a turn. The boy discovers a strange machine and gets zapped into another world along with his dog. You find yourself in a strange lab, but then you get launched down onto a planet. And that planet... is Evermore! You crash land in a prehistoric area and have to fight your way out. You quickly meet a young girl, who goes by Fire Eyes, and she runs this realm, Prehistoria, as the chief. And everything sorta escalates from there.

After Prehistoria comes three other areas to explore, and each one is representative of the character who resides over the realm. I've already ruined the story for myself by looking into guides and Wikipedia, but I'll try not to ruin it too much here. Honestly, for this short of a game, it's actually a very interesting story. It isn't overly complex, but for me, that's part of where it shines. Stories don't need to have overly complex plots with twists and turns all about. From what I know is to come, I believe I'd really like this story. I was enjoying what I saw of it anyways.

*NO LONGER BEWARE! THE SPOILERS ARE BEHIND YOU!*

Now we need to look over the characters. For this older game, the characters really don't stand out as much. They don't really have much going for them as far as emotions go. The boy got here by accident, so he's just trying to escape. He does say a few lines talking about movies he saw, but those are meant to be more funny than meaningful. I could just blame it on being a bit older, but there were older games around the same period that produced great stories with real characters. So... This is probably one of the few failings in the game. The characters do exist, but they're not what I'd call "deep characters". Yeah, I know I complained about deep and complex stories, but it's nice to have deep characters without them being characters trying to be deep by talking all sullen and such. (Looking at you most new games and FFXIII!) I've said enough here though, and it's time to wrap this review up.

Before the final wrap-up, I'd like to list some Pros and Cons to bring it around before my final verdict.

Pros - Challenging gameplay, A nice and different style/look, graphics and sound fit the game well, an interesting magic system, and simple yet intriguing story.
Cons - Challenging sometimes becomes ridiculously hard, the graphics and sound didn't really blow me away, combat is heavy on timing and stamina, and the characters are kinda boring.

So if I had to rate this on a 1 to 10 scale... I'd probably give it a 6 out of 10

Why a 6 you might wonder? It's a pretty good game, but I wouldn't dish out $100 to buy it on eBay. It reaches out there with a good and straightforward story, but the characters leave something to be desired. The graphics and sound are good, but there are better games to play in this capacity. The gameplay shines through in most places though, and that's why you play games. Unfortunately, RPGs have to bring more to the table than just the gameplay, so I had to be harsh on it. If you have the time and want an interesting SNES action RPG, I'd totally recommend it. (Scroll back to the top if you want details on emulating it.)

Overall, I had a fun time while playing Secret of Evermore. I really enjoyed the challenge, and even when frustrated, it pushed me to try again and again. The controls are much better done with a controller of some sort though. (If you have to emulate it, I'd suggest getting a real controller.) Do I plan to finish it? I'd really love to, but I've got several things I'm either working on or have on the backburner of "things to do". So it just comes down to time and effort. I would like to finish the game so I can experience the story firsthand. And here is where I end the review. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the review!

Side Note - I've gone far too long with the "Side Post" label. As far as my blog ratings are concerned (view counts), they are the most popular posts I have. However, I feel I need to evolve some posts beyond the Side Post label. I'm thinking of expanding (much like I'm doing with the VGBA posts) to a new kind of post with the label "Recurring RPG Review" or something along that name. Just.... Look forward to more RPG reviews! This is another future planning though because I need to finish Final Fantasy XIII.... I really do.

~May the Crystals Guide Me~

VGBA 3 - NESteryears

NESteryears

The Ultimate NES Chiptunes Dance Party!

Artist - bLiNd
Sites - bLiNd's site. Bandcamp. loudr.fm.
Type of Album - NES chiptunes remixed to sound like dance/dubstep/trance music!
Genres - Oh boy, this will be fun... Chiptune, Dance, Electronic, Techno, Dubstep, Trance, and a couple more if you want to be thorough.
Favorite Song - Moonstyle (Ducktales)

Review - Today, I bring you the first in a very long lineup of what one might call "weird" mashups. However, for the chiptune community, this sort of combination seems to be about the normal. Despite what might seem a strange combination, I can tell you right now that NESteryears by bLiNd is quality music! Time to go into detail.
     There are two major parts to this album. The first part is the selection of NES music that's been remixed. It's a pretty nice assortment from some of the better/best NES games to have been made. I won't list out everything, but it has your classics like Super Mario Bros, Castlevania, Metroid, Final Fantasy, and much more. For the second part, you add in the dancing techno electronica dubsteping trance-ary spice. With those two parts combined, you get this strange yet alluring album!
     I can assume right now that a lot of people will be immediately turned off by one or two of those words. (Most likely the dubstep more than anything...) However, despite all the words I just threw at you, I'd say you should still give the album a listen. You might be surprised by how much you like what you hear. The two parts of this album have been very well fused together to produce this tasty NES dancing selection that might make you rethink your taste in music. Even with the mixture taking place, you can still clearly hear the original songs that each track has been remixed from.
     All of the songs have a nice rhythm and flow going on and makes you feel like you should just get up and dance. If you aren't dancing, it's probably because you are not the dancing type or because you are sitting down while you read this. I'm not an expert of dance or electronic music, but I'd say the beats are dope or delicious or whatever it is people say.
     If I had any negative criticism towards NESteryears... Honestly, I don't have directly anything negative to say about it that's not the obvious one. This album is not for everybody. You're aiming at a crowd that either loves chiptunes, loves dance-style music, or just has a craving for the weird mixture of the two. A couple of the songs go a little out there with the added bits of voice or outside sounds, but I'd say they match fairly well with the tone. Overall, I can't really think of any huge negatives without just making something up.
     At it's core, NESteryears delivers exactly what it promises. You've got great NES chiptunes dipped into electronic dance trance step techno music, and when you pull it up and out, you have yourself an original and fun sound for the dancing off of your pants. Personally, I think it's a great listen for anytime, but I'm weird like that. Overall, NESteryears is a winner in my book. If you have a craving for this exact type of music, then jump on it. For those who are still unsure, just give the album a listen.


Pros - It's fun, very creative, totally dance worthy, great remixes of NES classics, and just a fantastically done album.
Cons - It's not for everybody, but what music isn't? The only con I can really say here is that it's a weird mixture of music that not everybody could get into. Is this worth docking a point? Not really, but a small part of me can't call this the perfect album. Regardless of my rating, go give it a listen and enjoy jamming out with it.
Rating - 4 out of 5.


Side Note - I'm getting a bit better! However I still need to improve somehow, so I'm going to try and look at other music reviews before I release a lot more. I need to either be meaner in my reviews, or at least get a look at how other people go about it. It's not fair to the albums I'm reviewing if I under or over review it based only on my own concepts here. I realize that's what reviewing is about, but I want to be fair to both the album and my own view of it. Also doesn't help that I'm mostly reviewing things that I know I like. XD
It's hard to review things you don't like though! That and willingness to pay for and then review it is even worse. That's enough for the side note. Regardless of anything, thanks for giving the album a shot!

~May the Crystals Guide Me~

Day 90

Game - Final Fantasy XIII, Day 90
Hours Played/Hours Total - 10 hrs / 38-1/2 hrs
Starting Point - Vallis Media - Base Camp.
Current Goal - Go rescue Hope from going cie'th.

What Happened - Current goal is to beat this before the end of the month. As far as number of posts go... I'm figuring at least two or three more before I get to finally wrap it up. Now, let's go rescue Hope!
     Hope is a small ways down a path, so I've gotta fight through a couple of enemies to reach him. Nothing too big blocks my way through, and we quickly find unconscious Hope. Now we fast forward to nighttime! The group is sitting around a fire and waiting for Hope to wake up. They all talk about what they should do next. It seems they've been here a while now, and they just aren't finding anything. I assume they're looking for whatever people are around here. Vanille brings up that there is one place that they haven't tried yet though. Fang asks her if she is sure about it, and then Hope actually wakes up and says the answer. The place they have in mind is Fang and Vanille's home of Oerba. There was some added on bit about it being the place where Pulse fal'Cie sleep or whatever. Anyways, it seems that we should head that way next and as soon as possible. The group's l'Cie brands are getting closer to hitting Cie'th mode, and they've really only got enough time to head to Oerba.
     As they are about to agree on this destination, Hope tells everybody that they should just leave him behind now. He feels like he's going to just slow them down, but they all claim that they aren't going to leave him behind. They'll push against whatever lies ahead together. This makes Hope sad though because he doesn't want anybody else to get hurt because of him. This activates his l'Cie brand, and it starts to glow. Then it explodes with magickness, and damn it another Eidolon is summoned up. The group prepares to fight the thing and tell Hope that this is a sign of the power inside him. It's trying to push him to keep going and not give up. Either way, it's unfortunately another BOSS BATTLE TIME! EIDOLON EDITION! (The unfortunately is for the last part.)
     Yet again, this Eidolon battle turned out to be really annoying and super lame. My first attempt ended in failure when his Gestalt gauge just refused to fill up very fast, and thus I timed out. The second attempt I managed to get the gauge filling faster, but then I was killed. Yeah, I'd like to go ahead and break into a rant here.
     Whoever thought up the Eidolon challenge battles did not think things through. In almost every case, the battle was ridiculously harder than it should have been, and I'm pretty sure I was maxed out every time (as far as stats go). However, your stats don't seem to matter because they're just overly powered to be challenging. This leads to them being TOO powerful and every single second of your time counts since you either die from their attacks or die from the death timer above your head. (I believe you get about three minutes to do it.)
     Now, I realize that the point of the battle isn't defeating its health but fighting it how it wants you to fight it. Since each one is from a character, this leaves you to using that character's primary roles effectively. Effectively is an understatement I feel when you are having to switch Paradigms between attacks to "effectively" beat each one.  I could go on and on here, but the basic point I'm trying to get across is they are annoying as hell yet accomplish nothing in the form of fun or challenge. They are story battles that should be less of battles and more of fancy cutscenes. This game loves cutscenes so much, so why can't these be cutscenes rather than annoying battles? Thankfully, there aren't a lot of them, and I figure there's only one more (Vanille) to go. I'm done ranting for now, so let's get back to the battles.
     I'm not going to describe a strategy here because it was just incredibly annoying and a lot of luck here. It is Hope's Eidolon, so you kinda just have to strategically Paradigm shift to make use of his three main roles. (Ravager, Synergist, Medic) I went through EIGHT attempts to beat this, and my problem was either running out of time or getting my face handed to me. The Eidolon at hand is Alexander, and with his defeat, we go into the usual showoff and see his Gestalt mode. As it turns out, his Gestalt turns him into a wall with cannons on top. I looked up a name for it, and it defined him as a "fortress with cannons." It looks kinda silly though because it's only a portion of wall. Regardless, this battle is now over! Time to throw in a scene for good measure.
     The group congratulates Hope on taking down the massive Eidolon monster. (Screw you guys.) Their talking then leads into a discussion about what they believe the Eidolons really are. Maybe they aren't about finishing off a failed l'Cie... Lightning believes they come out to give the l'Cie a final life-or-death test that either kills them or forces them to rethink their actions. I'd just say they're annoying story battles that are generally harder than most regular battles. Whatever! Biggest bummer is I still have one more coming up. Going to just forget about that for now and move on though.
     Our current destination is Oerba, and that's where we heading. To get there, I have to move into an OPEN WORLD AREA! GASP! That's right. The hallways of Final Fantasy XIII are (mostly) over now. I'm finally able to do a bit of exploring. We head out into the ARCHLYTE STEPPE, and the first thing we find is a strange stone statue floating with a ring around it. Vanille walks up to us and explains what it is. When people turn into Cie'th, they wander around the plains here and eventually turn into a Cie'th Stone. The Cie'th Stones basically just sit in place and project an aura of "PLEASE COMPLETE MY FOCUS FOR ME!" Snow wants to help it out, but the group reminds him that we're in a bit of a bind right now. Can't really just help others and ignore what we need to do. Either way, I can no take Side Quest missions.
     Basically, you find one of the Cie'th Stones around, take over it's Focus, and then go complete it. From what I could tell, the only kind of Focus they have are defeating various super monsters. I only use super here to represent that they're above average monsters, but I don't necessarily mean they're really hard or anything. You beat the monsters and get ranked, like a normal battle, and rewarded for your efforts. As you complete missions, more Cie'th Stones become available with more missions. I went ahead and looked up how many missions there are as well. The number of missions is 64. I doubt I do all of them, and I'm even more doubtful that I do half of them. We shall see though.
     With that scene over, I decide to check the Datalog for yet another round of "Important information about the game's story not said during said story." According to the datalogs, Vanille is the one who previously became Ragnarok and tore through Cocoon's shell. Despite the battle being lost at the time, Vanille and Fang were both turned into crystals for their century long sleep. I don't see why this wasn't brought up. I've ranted enough for this post though, so I'm just going to gloss past that for now.
     We're now out into a much bigger world that we can explore. I'm no longer limited to just the single path! Unfortunately, the enemies around here are quite a jump in difficulty. Although I say "enemies", I really only had trouble with one...the King Behemoths. They're quite hard, and I died several times just running into the random battles in the field. Beyond those guys, the rest of the monsters just felt like slightly upgraded versions at best. Anyways, I figure with side quests now available (called missions but whatever) that I might as well take the game up on one. I hit up the first Cie'th Stone and get after it.
     Of course, the first mission was super easy and incredibly close. It was just a big blob monster (flan), and I beat it with basically no problems. For my time and effort, I got an accessory! Yaaaay... As it seems, you open up new missions by completing old ones, so now I had Mission 2 unlocked. Seeing as there was zero Side Quests before this, I figured I might as well give a few more missions a shot. Now, this is only the second Mission, so I was met with another fairly easy battle. I had to kill an alpha dog monster and his crony dogs. Seeing as I haven't used the summons very much (at all really...), I summoned up Odin to fight! Odin slaughtered the cronies with ease, and that just left me to fight the alpha. The alpha went down shortly after, and that's Mission 2.
     These first two missions were only D rating, so I figure none of the first ones would be hard. I went ahead and looked up the number of Missions in the game, and unfortunately, there are 64 of them. Seeing as the game only has THREE more chapters, including the current, I feel like it's just too late for any side quests. I'll either get frustrated by a hard one and say screw it, or I'll run out of time to complete the game in July. (I'm almost there now, so I'll probably aim to beat the game and just catch up on posts later.) Let's get back to the game at hand.
     It's time for Mission 3! And... it is a long walk. It's a very long walk into a different area that branches off from the first one. It took me a bit to make it to him, and he was beaten with very little trouble. The next Cie'th Stone was nearby, so I went right into the fourth mission. The walks across the map are getting old fast though, but at least the enemies feel a bit more challenging. I'd like to add that challenging works well to make a game more fun, but many of these enemies just seem ANNOYINGLY challenging. Instead of making them directly harder to fight (better stats), I feel like designers find it more fun to make you jump through hoops to fight some enemies. Generally, it is something like "You have to fight them in this order" or "You have to use this exact spell/element" In FFXIII, this generally translates to "You have to Stagger them or your attacks generally do nothing." So... It's not that fun of a challenge in the end. Apologies for all the ranting this post!
     Back to the main goal, I quickly rounded up and defeated the fourth mission monster. Yes, I didn't take any details of the last two or three, but that's because they weren't really note worthy. With the fourth mission done, I figure it's about time to head back to the story. The next checkpoint brings me into a scene with Hope and Vanille.
     Hope is looking out at all the nature around him, and he talks about how he wouldn't have been here had the circumstances been different. He'd have never seen Gran Pulse for himself. Vanille thinks he'd have come here anyways. He "promised" her that he'd come, and Hope asks when that happened. She tells him in another lifetime, and that just confuses Hope. (She's lying.) Vanille says that she's told a lot of lies at this point and sometimes forgets what ones are real. Hope tries to cheer her up by saying that sometimes you have to lie. It keeps you going when you're afraid, helps you protect loved ones, and the big truths sometimes turn out to be lies anyways. In the end, the important part isn't the lie but whatever actions you take after the lie. If you work hard enough, maybe you can make the lie come true. The scene goes a bit further, but it's mostly just non-important if you ask me.
     Now, as you might be wondering, I have ten hours worth of playtime for this post, yet it's almost halfway over now. The explanation for that? I did a lot of walking back and forth plus all the battles. Basically, the biggest portion of that ten hours was walking from one place to another for a scene or mission monsters. It was a lot of walking about... Anyways, the next scene that comes up is Vanille and Fang talking about the past. They comment on how they were apart of the war against Cocoon all those years ago. Vanille said she became Ragnarok (says it AFTER showing up in the datalogs...) and cracked Cocoon's shell. She claims that the memories of that time are a bit fuzzy though and can't remember all of it.
     Hope figures that what they just described was the "War of Transgression", and the events that transpired must have been those two attacking Cocoon. Fang says she can't remember anything about that time though. Then Vanille breaks down and claims that it's all her fault. Everybody got hurt back then because of her. Lightning tells her that it's over now and that their souls can rest... Not the best way to try and comfort someone, but I guess it'll have to do!
     I ended up doing all the way through Mission 9 before deciding I was tired of it. Like previously stated, all I have been doing is just running across this "open world" fighting mission monsters or hitting up the random spots for small, almost-pointless scenes. It's pretty annoying if you ask me, but it's time to continue forward into (SURPRISE) another scene! The group is wandering along when a massive snake-like creature flies right by them. Fang and Vanille identify it as a Gran Pulse fal'Cie. They claim that it lives nearby their village, so the group figures they can follow it and find Oerba. While following it, I was lead into possibly the worst average encounter I've been in.
     This is how it goes. The battle starts, and it's a three-way fight between me, Behemoth King, and a Megastotherian (giant wolf monster). Now, I say three-way fight because those two will actually just sit there and fight one another while I bash them repeatedly. Considering the Megawhosewhatsit is just a powered up wolf, I figured to aim for the Behemoth King first. Despite what should be an easy battle, I kept getting killed by the Behemoth. Sure, he focuses most of his attacks on the Mega Wolf, but then he sometimes throws out random attacks on my group. Among these random attacks is one called Sunder. If I have no protection buffs going, this attack is basically a one-hit kill for anybody who gets hit by it.
     The battle even starts with both monsters at half health, but the Behemoth fully heals when he transforms from four legged to two legged. This makes the battle last longer, and just gives the jerk more chances to screw me over with Sunder. I got frustrated enough that I ended up quitting the game for a bit. After a brief break, I went back and finally managed to beat it. Of course, all this took place after at least six tries, if not more. I don't know if I'm doing the battle wrong or what, but I wasn't very happy by the time it was done. Sure hope I don't have to do it again. With those two finally out of the way, I was able to continue forward with the game and story.
     The next area I went into was a large cave place with piles of robot enemies. Not too much excitement happened in here though. There's just a lot of robot enemies. While travelling through, I made the mistake of taking an off path straight towards HOLY CRAP BASICALLY A BOSS! Since it was that, I'm going to go ahead and label it as BOSS BATTLE TIME! SIDE EDITION.
     If you remember from waaay back there, I had to fight a giant Pulse warbot. That's the kind of boss I'm dealing with here. It's called a Juggernaut, and it was immediately apparent that it wasn't going to be any kind of a pushover. Maybe it's just me, but I had a pretty hard time with it. Sure, I only died twice, but I had to use a very concise strategy against it to not just immediately die. I stuck with my usual team for the fight (Lightning, Fang, and Hope). The problem with this fight was that the Juggernaut did this large sweeping attack that would hit my entire team for like a third of their HP, and even worse, it hits twice. Before I could heal from this, it would strike again and kill my party. Thus, I had to act quickly to beat it.
     First and foremost, I made use of one of those fancy aerosols, called Shrouds, that I've had since the beginning but have rarely used. For this battle, I went ahead and made use of the Aegisol (Casts Protect, Shell, Veil, Vigilance). With the buffs in place, I bought myself a little time to arrange a battle plan of sorts. It's just your basic "Switch between three Paradigms" strategy though. I used Relentless Assault for damage (two Ravagers and a Commando), Solidarity for healing (Commando, Medic, and Sentinel), and finally Bully for distraction (Commando, Synergist, and Saboteur).
     The first two are self-explanatory, but you might be wondering what I meant by "distraction." The Juggernaut only has three attacks (from what I can tell), and only two of those are actually a problem. The sweeping attack that does a lot of damage and a ranged bomb attack that's also pretty powerful. However, it's third attack/ability is where its weakness is. It's an Esuna healing of sorts called Steam Clean. It takes quite some time to go off and distracts it from beating us up. And this is where Bully comes in hand. Bully allows me to causes status effects to it, and in turn, it uses Steam Clean to clear those off and wastes its own time. The negative statuses don't affect the boss so much, but once again, they do force it to waste time. Thus, I'm all up for it.
     On top of this, Bully also allows me to buff my group with Protect, Shell, and Barfire as needed. The entire battle ended up just being a giant swap between the three Paradigms as I needed them. With the battles end, I found out it took me over 12 minutes to finish the warbot off. The game claimed I could/should be able to do it in 7 minutes, but I say screw that. I already had a hard enough time with the battle without worrying about time. That and at best I could probably only eliminated a minute or two. The crappiest part of this whole ordeal was finding out afterwards that this is just a large side path and nothing more. So... Time to backtrack a bit!
     With that side path out of the way, it's time to head down the actual path and get some game done. I don't get too far along when the group decides to stop and chat. The group start talking about the tunnels they're running through right now. There's a large fal'Cie running amok and creating all of these tunnels. Our Cocoon citizens are starting to feel like Gran Pulse fal'Cie tend to do whatever they want. Fang agrees that it's true, but she points out that the fal'Cie were also responsible for cultivating the ground where Oerba is built. They (humans and fal'Cie) live together and help one another out. The fal'Cie's actions might seem random here, but the people of Gran Pulse live about the same as Cocoon people. They just depend on the fal'Cie a lot less here. That's interesting I guess.
     We move a bit further, and then we get a glimpse at the fal'Cie causing all this tunnel. Currently, it just looked like a giant spinning, spiky ball. Snow thinks we should try to jump on it and ride it to our destination. The group has mixed feelings about it, but nobody truly rejects his idea. Thus, we're going to try and board a giant rolling monster ball and ride it to where we need to go. Because that's a GREAT idea, and nothing could possibly go wrong! /end sarcasm
     I go a bit further through the tunnels, fight some more enemies, and then come out of the cave briefly to see outside! Also there's a scene with Fang and Vanille. Vanille said earlier that she became Ragnarok, so we're coming back to that. Fang says out loud that she's the true one to blame for how Gran Pulse is right now. She knows that she is the one who became Ragnarok and broke Cocoon's shell. Vanille tells her no and that she's lying! As she says this though, Vanille's brand begins to glow and out pops the Eidolon. Fang admits to lying, but she says it was to force the truth out of Vanille. Fang knows now that Vanille remembers everything about what happened, and they're going to have a chat about that after we deal with our new Eidolon friend. BOSS BATTLE TIME! EIDOLON EDITION!
     The Eidolon at hand is a new one called Hecatoncheir. He kinda makes me think of a spider, but the big detail here is that he has a lot of arms. (He's based on this.) Thankfully, this should be the last Eidolon battle for the whole game. (One per character and all) However, this battle cemented in the fact that I HATE EIDOLON BATTLES.... SO VERY, VERY MUCH. (I'll stop the all-caps now.) If I were to be honest, the Eidolon battles alone have made me want to quit this game. They're beyond frustrating, and the difficulty shouldn't be even remotely an issues like it is. These are STORY battles, and yet they are the most difficult battles in the entire game. Seriously Square Enix, what is wrong with you?! Much like my last Eidolon battle, I went through several attempts to beat this guy. (I counted at least ten...)
     The first fun fact about this battle is that you only get Vanille and Fang to fight it. I guess that means everybody else just stood back and watched while we got our butts handed to us. The problems were exactly the same as the last one. I either died because of the insane amount of damage it can deal, or I ran out of time because of the death timer. This battle had me pushing the Paradigm system to the limit. I was almost constantly switch between Paradigms, and there was a few points where I'd only do one attack before switching to the next setup.
     When I did finally beat it, it was still a really close match. I don't know how well my suggestions will hold up for this battle, but here goes nothing. The first and foremost thing is to always keep the Eidolon focused on Fang. You can switch Fang out here and there to attack, but overall, Fang needs to stay in Sentinel mode and draw its fire off of Vanille. With Vanille on the other hand, you need to constantly switch from Saboteur to Ravager to Medic, and then back to either Ravager and Saboteur as needed. The Eidolon's "weakness" is to break down its defenses (Saboteur. Do this first always.), beat it senseless with magic (Ravager), and then to "heal friends" (Medic of course).
     You only have three minutes to fill up the Gestalt gauge, and every single second counts. If Fang dies, you've lost. There's no way to lose Fang and still win as far as I can tell. When I said constantly switching Paradigms, I most definitely meant it. You only have a limited time to get in whatever attacks you can while it waits around. Once it starts throwing out damage, you need to keep on the defensive and heal up Fang. The moment the attacks stop, you need to start right on the offensive. Keep the negative statuses up, but don't overdo them either. Just keep switching, and you'll be fine. I had less than a minute left when I won, so like I said, every single second counts.
     Upon its defeat, the weirdly over-armed (Pun intended.) robot transforms into a horse... but instead of a head or butt, it has a pair of turrets facing front and back. I was seriously confused here, and it's easily the stupidest looking Gestalt mode. OH WELL! The battle is done now, so I'm not looking back. The battle is quickly followed by a scene. Fang and Vanille have a moment, and Fang says she is mad at Vanille for lying to her. Vanille responds by saying she couldn't bear having Fang do all of the horribleness while she (Vanille) stood back and did nothing. It ends with a nice heartwarming hug moment. Fang tells Vanille that they have a family now, and that family is going to stick together.
     I went ahead and checked the datalogs here to confirm what was being said. Basically, yes, it was Fang who became Ragnarok all those years ago and NOT Vanille. Vanille lied to Fang about what happened because she didn't want Fang to bear the guilt of becoming that horrible monster. Funny thing though, Fang's datalog changed, but Vanille's stayed the same. So currently, it claims they BOTH became Ragnarok. It's possible that is part of some big twist, but I'm going to just call it a fluke for now. Anyways, I only travelled a short distance further from that point. I fought a group of monsters here and there and then found a save point. Figured it was time to wrap it up, so this is where the post ends.
     Yaaay! I'm getting closer and closer to the end now. I figure two more posts, and then I'll finally have it! If I'm really lucky (and hate you guys), I might make it in one super huge mega post that's massive. I'd like to avoid that though, so I'm currently figuring around two more posts to finish this game up. The goal is within my grasp... I just have to reach out and take it. Apologies for the massive delay in posting this time, but I promise that this post is just the first of at least two more posts coming down the line. Just stay tuned for more excitement within the next two days! Thanks for reading as always!

Ending Point - Mah'habara - Dusktide Grotto.
Current Party -

• Lightning - Commando Lvl 4, Ravager Lvl 3, Medic Lvl 3
• Hope - Ravager Lvl 3, Synergist Lvl 4, Medic Lvl 3
• Fang - Commando Lvl 4, Sentinel Lvl 3, Saboteur Lvl 3 

Goals Accomplished - Found and rescued Hope. Defeated Alexander and obtained Hope's Eidolon. Explored Gran Pulse areas. Defeated a group of Monster Missions. Learned a bit about the truth of what happened during the "War of Transgression." Had to fight ANOTHER Eidolon battle but managed to win. Obtained Vanille's Eidolon, Hecatoncheir.
Next Goals - Find Oerba. Save Cocoon. Beat the game.

~May the Crystals Guide Me~

Call of the Night - Extras 2

Well, this is going to be a quick one.
I commissioned a friend of mine to draw me a portrait of Noldor Spellfury.
Now, the commission came with three different pictures, but I can't post all three of them because they involve spoilers not yet included in the story. I won't drag this out so here it is...
My commissioned picture of Noldor Spellfury!

Noldor Spellfury

Yup, that's our main hero right there. I realize I've never truly gone into descriptions of what he looks like, but let's be honest... Many people have a thought of what the character looks like before you truly ever describe who or what they are. This is her vision according to what I told her. I like it, and if you don't, I don't care.

Once certain story details are disclosed, I'll post up the other two pictures. I've also considered commissioning more pictures of the other main stars in the story, but I'll get around to those once I've had a little time to get their exact picture in my head. (Noldor was the first and most important. Everybody else is sorta plain right now because they're not my main focus.)

And that's all I've got for extras this time. Stay tuned for more Recurring Fantasy coming soon-ish!

~May the Crystals Guide Me~

Day 89

Game - Final Fantasy XIII, Day 89
Hours Played/Hours Total - 4 hrs / 28-1/2 hrs
Starting Point - The Fifth Ark - Upper Traverse.
Current Goal - Figure out what's really going on here. Destroy Cocoon maybe?

What Happened - I'm just getting through so slowly that it's not funny. However, I am determined to finish the game before July ends, and I might even take an extra day off later this month to give me a couple days in a row to wrap it up. We shall see how it goes, but I can't really promise anything. I'm really ready to start up Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest though. Enough talk, let's get to it!
     Where we left off, the group had been transported to a random underground tunnel. The area looks kinda like a fairly modern subway station. I explore the area a little bit and talk with the other party members. They're all pretty much just discussing what has recently happened to us. I might as well go over what all we've just learned recently...

1. The group's Focus is that one of them must become the monster Ragnarok and destroy Orphan, Eden's power source.
2. Serah's Focus was to gather up the l'Cie to perform previously stated Focus above.
3. Dysley was actually the fal'Cie, Barthandelus, and pretended to be the human and Primarch.
4. He handed us our Focus on a platter, and then he gave us a means to escape... SUSPICIOUSNESS!

And that has been a quick review of "What just happened!?!" Since the group isn't saying anything new at this point, I figure it's time to pick up and move right along. 

     As I head to leave, there's a small scene in my way. Snow apologizes to Lightning about Serah's Focus and how he was wrong about everything. Lightning tells him that there's more issues at hand than that, and despite being partially wrong, his faith in Serah is what has driven the party to going this far. He also managed to save Lightning as well, so... think about THOSE positives! He sees her point, and we get to head right along into another scene. 

     The group comes into a big open area, and they're suddenly struck by a bright flash of light. Everybody's brands start burning like crazy, and then robots appear out of these weird totems that are all around. TIME TO FIGHT! The battle consists of two of the weird robots, but they're not super hard really. The only detail I'd include here is that they're one of those lovely enemies you can only damage while staggered. Beyond that, they're pretty easy. We quickly defeat them, and the group heads further into the FIFTH ARK! Thankfully, that's explained soon enough. 

     The battle included an extra message upon ending though. I can now teach all of my characters any of the roles available. However, before they can access said roles, they have to learn an ability in that role. My first thought of this was... How can I learn an ability from a role if I can't access the role until I gain an ability from it? Thankfully, thee only problem there is I confused myself somehow. Basically, you just have to put enough Crystal Points in until you learn the first ability on each role. Unfortunately, buying into a new role is crazy expensive, and even the very first ability costs like 3000 CP! I can't see myself wanting any extra roles for most of the characters since they're built to fit the roles they already know. Either way... I'm still not very impressed by this terrible rip-off of the Grid Sphere. (Which also wasn't that great... BACK TO THE STORY!)

     After the battle, I'm led into a scene that explains what the heck this "Ark" place is. Vanille makes a comment that "This place must be an Ark!" Lightning asks what, and then Fang and Vanille go into a whole explanation from here. (Storytime!) Long ago, the Gran Pulse fal'Cie feared an invasion from outside and made preparations for this. As part of those preparations, they created a massive army of living weapons. These living weapons were then stored in the Arks, and those were hidden all around the world. It's a fairly common legend known on Gran Pulse. Fang adds on that most didn't believe that these places were real, but there were some people who tried to find them.
     The bigger problem here would be that there's a huge hunk of Pulse weapons cache that is hidden on Cocoon. Sazh is about to comment on how the people would freak out if this place were known to them, but Vanille interrupts and tells him that there is more to the story! Fang continues on to say that the Ark's had a secondary yet simpler purpose alongside being a massive armory. It was a place that would force l'Cie to master their new powers.
     And so the pieces come together... The group believes that Dysley sent them here in order to strengthen them into stronger weapons. The group doesn't know what to think about this, but Hope says they should simply consider it good training for the fight ahead. As he says that, more robots appear to fight us! The group is all like "ruuuuuun!", but then I turn around and fight them immediately. They weren't hard, and I need the Crystal Points anyways. The next hour or more is just me adventuring through this wacky place.
     The enemies here are fairly standard I guess, and I only ran into trouble a few times. The worst random game over I had was when I looked away to type something and then my team was dead. There are some weird blob monsters that can fuse together to create a bigger one with like ten times more health! (Seriously, that's way too big of a jump for just two combining.) Final Fantasy XIII has the "retry" feature though, so death is basically meaningless as far as I know. I went up against the super blob monster again and had no trouble because I knew what to expect.
      After fighting through several monsters, I come to a very large room that makes itself known with a small scene. The group looks at these four giant robot centaurs standing in place. They wonder if these are also alive and what Sanctum could possibly be up to. Ah well, not like we can change anything here. I move forward to head through the room, and one of the robot centaurs jump in my way. Time to fight the big guys! OH YEAH!.... Turns out they're not that hard. I did get initiative on them, but I found out later that even without that, they're really not that hard.
     As with most things in this game, it's more about time than difficulty. There are a few enemies that have surprised me with sudden "OH CRAP!" moves, but in the end, once you learn that, it's pretty much just a downhill fight from there. The next robot centaur I fought showed what was so special about him. As it turns out, their first move in battle is to summon up a sword ally. I didn't notice this while trying to fight it, and I just thought that it was kicking my butt somehow! Then I suddenly noticed the sword on the reset and realized what happened. On the positive side, as you try to stagger the sword, it reflects back onto the centaur as well. In a way, that makes the robot centaur easier!
     I fought through a pretty good lot of enemies here. The area is kinda weird looking with its sewer-subway combination environment. I mean, it switches back and forth kind of at random. I don't think I've ever seen a real subway, so maybe that's how they really work? Anyways, we're heading through this crazy Ark and run right into Cid Raines for a little scene time. Snow seems okay that he's down here, but then Fang asks why he is down here, like Snow should have been wondering. Lightning rushes forward and starts attacking him. She calls him a traitor because... (Okay, maybe I'm slow, but I never really felt that it implied the following. APPARENTLY, Cid Raines gave us right to the big man himself. Maybe I missed that during the cutscene?) Either way, Lightning isn't happy about the situation.
     Cid stops her attacks and reveals to the group that he's a l'Cie as well. (This game's answer to everything.) His Focus was to hand us over to the right place at the right time. He asks if they understand why he wanted to do it now. The fal'Cie have been watching them all this time and guiding them towards exactly what they wanted them to do. Basically, all those times that seemed like "luck" were actually just carefully orchestrated actions by these larger beings. Cid tells us that Barthandelus has been crafting them into weapons in order to destroy Cocoon. The group is all "Everything makes so much sense now! But... WHY?" Cid answers that question quite quickly. All of this is to restore THE MAKER!
     So of course, someone asks who the Maker is. The Maker is the entity responsible for creating both humans and fal'Cie (their god if you will). Then everything goes into fancy history cutscene where Cid goes into more detail. Long ago, the Maker departed this world after leaving behind his two creations: humans and fal'Cie. Thus, in a way, humans and fal'Cie are much like brothers who have been left behind by the same parent. Humans, being of short life and all, quickly forgot the order imposed by the Maker and began to fight amongst themselves. Since this time, the fal'Cie have focused everything on trying to bring back the Maker and restore order and balance to the world. /end the history lesson for now
     This very goal has guided all of their ways and actions up to this point. Calling the Maker back isn't easy though, and it requires a fitting sacrifice. The destruction of Cocoon and its entire populace has been created for this very sacrifice. Hope chimes in to ask the current good question for this situation. "Why don't the fal'Cie just kill everybody and end it all themselves?" Cid has the answer for this and is thankfully straightforward about it. The fal'Cie's existence is bound to the creation and maintenance of the Cocoon. Their nature sorta holds them in check and keeps them from (more or less) killing themselves. Since they can't destroy Cocoon, they've created tools to do so instead... the l'Cie.
     Snow is quite angry to hear all of this, and he's mad at Cid for lying to them all this time. Didn't Cid want to restore Cocoon to the people as well!? Cid admits that it was a shadow of a dream from when he was just human. He craved change to make things happen, and when he finally had the influence to make those changes, it all fell apart. Even with all the power he needed at hand, he became a puppet who didn't have the will to wield that power. It wasn't the fal'Cie who changed...He did. (They talk all dramatically that I started losing the idea of what's going on here...) He might be a l'Cie, but he can't do anything because he's tied to Cocoon as a l'Cie. He just wanted his dreams of freedom to come true though, and Sazh inquired to what he meant here.
     Cid reveals that he actually came down here by his own will and NOT by order of the fal'Cie. His plan is to defeat us all right here and stop the fal'Cie's plan. He plans to use all of his power to stop us! BOSS BATTLE TIME! For this fun engagement, I used Lightning, Snow, and Vanille. Cid transforms into some strange monstrous form that's all silvered and such. I dunno how to describe it, but he looks almost partially Cie'th now. Regardless, he is NOT here to hand the fight to me. That is for sure.
     Cid is a l'Cie, so he seems to have the roles that we do. It names them differently, but he's using the same thing. His battle strategy is to switch his roles based on the ones we are currently using against them. Basically, he's doing his best to defend or offend against our Paradigm. The only ones I saw him do (and probably the only ones he has) are an Offensive mode where he starts beating on someone, defensive where he takes little damage and just sits there, and then there is a third mode where he just straight up heals himself. Thankfully, the healing was fairly weak, so it's just barely delaying the inevitable defeat. His defense simply means he takes less damage but isn't attacking, so again, this isn't really the problem with him. His offensive role is what made him difficult for me.
     While going offensive, he deals out fairly strong attacks and does so in combos. I failed this battle two or three times before I figured out my ultimate strategy here. First and foremost, I kept one character (Snow in this case) in Sentinel mode as often as possible. Sentinels intimidate opponents and draw off their attacks while also defending and reducing the damage. Overall, I'd go ahead and say that it is the most useful role. Cid only has a couple area attacks, so he'll just stay busy striking the Sentinel for little damage. While he's busy there, I had my other two members (Lightning and Vanille) attacking to build his Stagger.
     The three most useful Paradigms for me here was Diversity (Commando, Ravager, Medic), Solidarity (Commando, Sentinel, Medic), and Mystic Tower (two Ravagers and a Sentinel). However, if he ever fully defended, I switched to Relentless Assault (Commando and two Ravagers) to deal extra damage. Biggest thing is to always return to a Sentinel-included mode though. Otherwise, he gets off a few powerful attacks and things go bad fairly fast. At some point (damage or time...couldn't tell), he changes from his Cie'th-ish form into the same thing but with a set of 6 wings. When he does this, he gains a screen-wide blast everybody attack which deals decent damage.
     After a couple of attempts at this battle, this attack was really the only problem here. Just kept switching between the four Paradigms I listed, and things went pretty well. If I had a final suggestion for this battle... be sure to have five or more of the items that cure Daze (makes it where you can't do any actions). When I finally managed to beat him, it took me around 12 minutes to do so. The game claimed I should have done it in 8 minutes, but I tried to look past that. I felt I did pretty well under the conditions. Of course, this big battle is followed by MORE SCENE!
     Cid tells us that we should do what we think is right and not what we've been ordered to do. Then he turns into a crystal, but that doesn't really make any sense considering the conditions here. Snow is focused on his last words of "doing it our way", and the group heads out as crystal-ized Cid is beamed out of here. As we leave the arena, we run into an elevator and more enemies! There's quite a path to go after fighting Cid. So this next bit is a big pile of FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT! I had to take down Greater Behemoths and a couple more of those robot centaurs. When the group finally finds a door, it leads to the "outside".
     They come out of a building and find themselves at just a small point of a very large area. The area is littered with ruined buildings, and Vanille comments that the legends claim it to be a labyrinth of sorts. After all that, the group is kinda fed up with the place (as am I), and Sazh demands a way out of here. Thankfully, Snow comes around to give the group a speech to shut them up. He says that he's ready to face this challenge of theirs. He also admits that he didn't want to acknowledge Serah's Tear as a goodbye. Regardless of this, he's going to make Serah proud, even if he becomes a Cie'th! He believes they shouldn't blindly follow what their Focus is and instead do whatever it takes to defy the Focus and save Cocoon. Everybody's all "YEAH!" except for Fang...
     Fang doesn't understand why they're all so willing to defend these people that hate them. She plans to do whatever it takes to get stronger and destroy Cocoon! Then her brand glows, and prettyness shoots out. We've got another Eidolon on our hands. It's a giant robot dragon thing, so I'll just assume it's Bahamut. Fang isn't very happy to see it though and says that the Eidolons are supposedly their "salvation". Basically, if they can't decide what to do, the Eidolons show up to eliminate them for good! Bahamut charges at Fang to attack her, but the group stands before her and defends her. She asks why they did it, and Lighting says that they protect their own and can do without this thing's kind of mercy. They aren't going to follow the fal'Cie and will fight their Focus until the very end! She asks Fang to join them, and it's BOSS BATTLE TIME! EIDOLON EDITION!
     Fang is forced into the party, so I'm switched around to Vanille, Lightning, and Fang for my party. On the very first try, Bahamut kills me off in two hits. Yeah... That's not cool guys. Thankfully, my next attempt went a lot better because I figured out the strategy to use here. Just have Fang constantly defend as a Sentinel. This keeps him focused on her, and it builds up the Gestalt gauge as well. The only reason Fang (current main character) survived is because I defended! His attacks tended to have an area of effect, so he ended up killing Vanille twice during this small encounter. Lightning has the revive ability though, so it worked out overall. With Bahamut's "defeat", it changes into it's Gestalt form which is mostly just a regular dragon but with seats. For ease, I'm going to say it changed from standing human-ized dragon into dragon plane.
     This Eidolon battle has renewed everybody's initiative. Snow tells them to keep focused on the path ahead and try to think of a way out of all this. They can do it! They'll get around their Focus and save Cocoon. Also, now a path has magically appeared and leading them towards the ground level of this place. (I think the Eidolon had something to do with it.) Before continuing too far, I looked into the datalogs to make sure I hadn't missed anything. (AKA the game decided I didn't need the details directly there.)
     As it turns out, Cid Raines turning into a crystal wasn't a weird event although it was. He turned into a crystal because he fulfilled his wish as a human rather than his l'Cie Focus. Which is weird because I'm pretty sure that the rules clearly state Focus or Cie'th. Thus he worked his way around that by pure human will I guess. Honestly, I don't see how you could get that was what happened. It's really not remotely implied during the scene, but I assume they figure you can guess why things did what they did. Either way, I didn't catch it until I looked over the datalogs.
     Back to the path at hand, it leads us down and straight to a Gran Pulse airship. Not far from that is a gateway that will take us straight to Gran Pulse. Sazh isn't happy with our current choices. We either stay here and do nothing or go down to Pulse. He does make one thing clear here though... Sazh is flying the ship! No automated nonsense this time. It's his job, and he will choose where it goes. There's really not any other good choice here, so the group agrees to head for Gran Pulse
     Before they leave, the group talks about a few things. Since they're going to leave and not get back easily, Lightning asks Hope about his father. Hope says he's doing exactly what his dad wanted him to do. He's following through with the promise to do what he believes is right. This goes off into a speech of what Hope believes. He tells everyone that he won't believe the lies of the fal'Cie or their Focus. He's going to think and act with his own eyes now! Maybe he won't make all the right choices, but if he's the one making them, he can't really regret that. Now that we're all in, it's time to lift off and head through the gateway!
     Yay! It's super pretty and fancy cutscene time! The airship is flying through the gateway and currently through a large colorful warp tunnel. As soon as it comes out the other end, we can see the beautiful world of Gran Pulse below. They don't get too long to relax though because suddenly, a dragon monster attacks our ship. This rips up part of the ship, and then Hope and Vanille fall out. Lightning and Fang go after them almost immediately. They realize partway down that they might need an actual flying craft to complete this rescue though. Fang brings out Bahamut to fly after them, and then the rest of the group jumps off their recently acquired airship because it's gone now. From here, it's just a big eyeful of Gran Pulse with Vanille narrating everything.
     Vanille talks about how Gran Pulse is a place ruled through strength and trials. You gotta win to live and all that good stuff. The fal'Cie want to bring back a god because this world is in a mess, but will such a massive sacrifice really bring back the old glory? (Personally, I feel like no is the answer here.) I also get a glimpse at some of the massive monsters of Pulse. These monsters are so huge that they are getting eaten by monsters a hundred times bigger than them! (It makes sense in a way...) The Vanille narration lasted way longer than I'd have liked it to. She just kept going on and on... I stopped carrying about the details of the narration about 1/3rd of the way through. When she finally finishes up, we come back around to the group.
     Apparently, some time has passed during that cutscene that went down. The group has been searching around for signs of other people. So far, they haven't found anybody, and they're running out of time. The only thing around here is ruins and lots of monster wildlife. The group is sorta relaxing for the night when Sazh's baby Chocobo comes around. It had went off with Hope to collect food, but now it's here without Hope. It's doing a whole "Lassie" bit here, and apparently only Vanille gets what it is saying. Hope's in trouble! We gotta go rescue him! Also, it's Chapter 11 now. However, his rescue is going to be delayed a little bit because I'm cutting the post off right here.
     Sha-blam! I'm getting quite close to wrapping up Final Fantasy XIII. I'm finally down to Gran Pulse, and there's only three chapters left, including the current one). I'm getting so close to completing it that I can taste that unsatisfactory ending! I kid. I'll probably enjoy the ending, but this won't be the Final Fantasy I'm most attached to. I just gotta keep pushing, and I'll soon reach the end of this very long journey. A journey I've made last like 3-4 months longer than I should have. Either way, look forward to the climatic ending in probably two to three more posts. I've said enough for now though. /end post

Ending Point - Vallis Media - Base Camp.
Current Party -

• Lightning - Commando Lvl 3, Ravager Lvl 3, Medic Lvl 3.
• Snow - Commando Lvl 3, Ravager Lvl 3, Sentinel Lvl 3.
• Sazh - Commando Lvl 3, Ravager Lvl 3, Synergist Lvl 3.

Goals Accomplished - Learned about what the Fifth Ark is. Made it through the Fifth Ark. Fought a bunch of monsters. Defeated Cid Raines and learned that maybe destiny can change. Obtained the Bahamut Eidolon. Completed Chapter 10. Finally made it to Gran Pulse!
Next Goals - Go rescue Hope. Figure out where to go next on Pulse.

~May the Crystals Guide Me~

VGBA 2 - The Fall of Bahamut

The Fall of Bahamut

A Final Fantasy Rock Opera

Band - Those Who Fight
Links - Band's Site. Facebook. Bandcamp.
Type of Album - Final Fantasy remix album for a Final Fantasy rock opera!
Genre - Rock, Rock Opera.
Favorite Song - The Madness of Science.

Review - I'm back today, and I'm here to say... That I like this album. I really, really do. /end review


. . .I kid!  The Fall of Bahamut is one of the more interesting video game albums out there. The group behind this album, Those Who Fight, is made up of a cadre of members from various other bands. They come together along with code names, (Leviathan, Doomtrain, Phoenix, Diablos, and you get the idea here...) and that's pretty cool if you ask me. I haven't ever seen them live yet, but I bet they'd put on a heck of a show! ...Back to the album at hand.

The idea behind "Those Who Fight" is basically "What if Final Fantasy.... were a Rock Opera!?" For their first album (EP might be more appropriate term here), they have brought along four classic Final Fantasy songs from FFVI and FFVII. It's not a very long album, but it makes up for the lack of songs with a big pile of quality. I can understand the dislike towards a price of four songs for $5, but I'd say it is definitely worth it. Personally, I went ahead and spent a bit extra on shipping to get a physical CD. (Pictured below.)

My copy of The Fall of Bahamut

Each song has been carefully rock-ified, and three of the four songs feature lyrics even! Their covering/remixing of the songs is very well done here. I clearly hear the old song, but at the same time, I feel like they've taken the song and made it their own. The lyrics are very well done as far as timing and sound go. The vocals sound nice, and it has a nice mixture of voices from the multiple members of the band. I'm shorthanding it here, due to my lack of musical descriptiveness, but the basic thought here is that it's a good album. Good listen for many moons!

Before I forget though, there's a third point to this CD... It's supposed to be a Final Fantasy Rock Opera! That I know of, the band is currently working on the overall story of what's going on, but the basic idea is that there are two factions taking place in their story: The Empire of Malacia and The Resistance. What's the deal with the two factions? They're fighting. (Come on, you can figure that out. It's an Empire and a Resistance.)

They reflect the idea of this story in a few of their current songs, but I don't think you can really tell much until it's fully constructed. There's not a whole lot more to go on beyond what's told in the songs on the CD. In "The Madness of Science" they seem to talk about a Professor character, but there aren't enough details to form anything beyond that. I definitely feel a story among the songs, but you'd definitely need more to have the complete story. (I looked around their Facebook a little bit, and I believe they have more songs available. Unfortunately, these aren't available for download or purchase that I can tell... Bummer.)

 Anyways, I loved the album at first listen, but I could easily see where someone might not like it. The biggest turn off here is if you didn't like having vocals in your video game music. I don't know who exist in this group, but I could see where this prejudice exists. I'd like to assure you that these are above average vocals though! They've done a great job at keeping the vocals both pleasing to the ear and relevant to their song and story. Don't give up on the album because of the lyrics! Now, it's about time that I wrap this review up.

In my heart, I can't give this album a perfect score, but it's so close! There's a lot to love in these four short songs, but at the same time, I certainly wish there was more to it. That's not necessarily a flaw of the album though... So maybe I'm just being mean? It's really good stuff at hand, but if you put a gun to my head and asked me to choose, I'd probably pick Gaia's Bane over this. (I'm sorry Those Who Fight! I still love you very much!)

No point drawing this on, so let's get to the Pros and Cons plus my rating.

Pros - Final Fantasy Rock Opera! Woo!, good music, great vocals, fun and interesting listen, more to it than there seems (aka the Rock Opera part)
Cons - It's an EP and thus it is kinda short, the cost seems a bit, vocals added to video game music without vocals normally, and I want more! (Not a true con to the album, but yeah!)
Rating - 4 out of 5.


~May the Crystals Guide Me~

Day 88

Game - Final Fantasy XIII, Day 88
Hours Played/Hours Total - 6-1/2 hrs / 24-1/2 hrs
Starting Point - Nautilus - Nautilus Station.
Current Goal - Explore Nautilus with Sazh and Vanille. Hopefully get them involved in the actual story rather than they just constantly run away. Make it back around to the rest of the crew. Complete their Focus I guess.

What Happened -Oh boy my pace is just slowing to a crawl anymore. No excuses can be made though, but I really need to kick in more time to beating this. Worst case scenario, I'm going to force myself to finish by the end of July. You might wonder how...I figure I'll just take off a few days in a row and force XIII out the door! Until then, we're going to nickel and dime it in my own time. Onwards...to Final Fantasy Fun!
     Where I left off, I had just made it to the giant theme park town called Nautilus. Being responsible adults, both Sazh and Vanille ran away from their troubles and straight into a big theme park to "hide". We don't get too far into the park when a large news announcement takes place. It's talking about the recent l'Cie attack in Palumpolum, and we even see images of the other group fighting with PSICOM soldiers. Vanille spots Fang in the video and is all like "le gasp!". After the news report ends, the two overhear all the people nearby commenting on the report. Basically, it's something like "blah blah just kill those people" or "they're all infected by Pulse now". Overall, it's pretty negative.
     Vanille seems to get pretty worked up about all of this, so Sazh distracts her from it and suggests they go see some big parade in town. We head over to this "parade" and turns out it's more of a play than a parade. Anyways, it's another very pretty cutscene. It's all these fancy holograms of both red and blue people that are re-enacting/commemorating a battle between Pulse and Cocoon. The hologram people are dancing around and then an "Evil l'Cie" appears! It's an evil Pulse l'Cie, and he starts attacking people. While doing so, he yells out "MWAHAHA! I AM FROM PULSE! I AM GOING TO KILL PEOPLE AND FULFILL MY FOCUS!" Unfortunately for him, a "Good l'Cie" from Cocoon shows up and exclaims his own battle cry. "I shall protect Cocoon and defeat you!" Then they have a big scene of the two l'Cie fighting, and then they randomly change into monsters somehow. They charge at each other and explode in a big flash of pretty. This display seems to bother Vanille though...and then the cutscene is over.
     After that big show, they figure it's time to explore the park a bit more. They're worried about the other group...Then they decide to look around and enjoy themselves instead. Yay for irresponsibility! We walk, walk, walk right into another scene. Suddenly, Vanille decides to ask about Nautilus. Sazh explains that the place is one giant amusement park created by Sanctum for the people. (The whole "pet idea" from waay back there is starting to fit in place...) Sazh also mentions that he had planned to bring Dajh here someday and now just hopes he can tell his son about it. Vanille assures him that he'll get a chance. He does know where his son is...and so we head off from here.
     The next area we enter is filled with Chocobos. Vanille seems a bit happier here because she feels more at home in this natural place. There are piles of chocobos and also some kinda sheep. We enter the farm area, and Sazh's baby chocobo starts flying around. I get to play a game of "chase the baby Chocobo", and it's not fun at all. I'm rewarded with a random accessory after running about, but it still felt like a stupid pointlessness.We follow the baby chocobo around a bit more, and it's getting all friendly and such with its full-sized brothers. Then we go into another scene with Sazh and Vanille talking.
     Biggest reveal here is that Sazh says he's going to turn himself in. He knows that execution is inevitable, but he figures he will at least get a last request to talk with Dajh. He wants to tell him about the chocobos and other stuff in the park. Vanille pleads with him to not do it. She almost convinces him when she reveals she knows who caused the Euride Gorge incident. (The place where she and Fang tried to attack.) The person from Pulse is....INTERRUPTED! Chocobos start running about, and we are being fired upon from above. Soldiers stop dropping down on us, and it's time for us to run and fight our way out. Of course, it's less about running at this point and more about fighting. (Sazh mentioned earlier that he was tired of running.) We fought through a number of troops as we make our way to...somewhere. No idea where we're trying to get.
     Of course, I can't get through this area without a bigger challenge of BOSS BATTLE TIME! It's a large 4-legged cannon robot! This was yet another long and annoying battle to go through. I must have done something wrong here and/or not fought it the right way. The battle was just a large string of changing from buffing and debuffing, attacking, and offensive with healing. It's pretty boring with just two people because you don't have a lot of tactical options here. Honestly, I felt like the boss bot had too much health for just two of us. If it had less HP, the battle would have been shorter and way more interesting. Nothing really special to say beyond that...and we win of course.
     With the battle done, it's time to continue on into a big ol' scene! The robot is destroyed and then Dajh appears out of nowhere! He's quite happy to see his father, and likewise with Sazh. Then...he turns into a crystal. (Oh noes!) Then the lady who helped Sazh with all of this shows up along with PSICOM soldiers. (She was briefly shown earlier but not named then. It's Nabaat.) She's starts talking and tells us how Dajh was of great help to them, and it turns out that his Focus was to find Pulse stuff.
     On top of this, she shows off something a bit more interesting...footage from the Euride Gorge attack! LE GASP! It reveals information to Dajh that I have known for quite some time already! Vanille and Fang were responsible for the attack, and thus Dajh was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Thus, he was branded a l'Cie by the Cocoon fal'Cie that felt threatened at the time. If you do the usual "who to blame" scenario, it quite clearly falls upon Vanille and Fang. Mostly Vanille because she's actually present right now. Sazh takes this new information pretty hard, and Vanille is feeling even worse of course. She runs off, and Sazh chases after her. Nabaat and her group follow them to watch and see what Sazh decides to do.
     I get to walk a short distance and right into another scene. Vanille is distraught with guilt and just feels awful. She figures that the best course of action now is for her to die for what she has done. She sees a weird vision of Sazh shooting her right there, but that passes...and then the real Sazh shows up! He pulls his guns out and is ready to shoot Vanille on the spot, but he ends up not doing it though. Sazh realizes that no matter if she lives or dies, nothing will change what has happened. Of course, now neither one of them know what they should do. Sazh is all emotion-ed up now, and his l'Cie brand starts to glow. A giant ball of fire shoots up and changes into a giant fire robot, so we've got another Eidolon on our hands.
     BOSS BATTLE TIME! EIDOLON EDITION! We're fighting a giant fire robot called Brynhildr, and this battle is basically like all of those before it. He casts Doom on my party member (Sazh), and I'm forced to beat him under a set time limit while following specific conditions. How do you impress a giant fire robot? With chain bonuses of course! Unfortunately, just like Odin, this one is a huge jerk. He does a huge amount of hits and damage in a small period of time. I ended up healing more than focusing on attacks, and this was a recipe for failure. I couldn't get anywhere, was almost out of time, and then I died. This game is all about letting you reset every battle though, so I did just that. I might have failed the first time, but I shot through him on the second time. How? A simple solution really. I equipped Ember Rings (reduces fire damage) to both character, and that solved my only real problem with the battle. On top of that, I used a dual-Ravagers Paradigm to chain like crazy. The second attempt was basically wam, bam, and done.
     WIth its defeat, the giant fire robot changes into a...race car. These Eidolon's Gestalt forms are stupid. Sazh boards it and drive sit a bit to show it off. Now that the battle is done, it looks like Sazh is going to turn on Vanille regardless. Then he doesn't shoot her because she's just a kid, so he turns the gun on himself and...blank screen with shot sound! OH NOES! (I'm skeptical, but we shall see.) This is followed up by a cutscene of Nabaat and her crew carrying Sazh in a coffin-like container and Vanille being escorted as a prisoner. Aaand Nabaat is going to be a bitch about it too. Time to switch back over to our other group!
     Another cutscene! There's a massive airship (and I do mean MASSIVE, bigger than the rest so far I'd say) that is identified as the Palamecia. It's the ship where Sazh and Vanille are currently being held. Then the view switches over to the Lindblum. The group is hearing on the news about the l'Cie being captured and are going to be executed. Snow is all "what the hell damn guy!?", and Cid begins to explain. There's a big of a lengthy and boring explanation that follows, so I pretty much just skipped past it.
     Basically, it's going to be a public execution to quell the common folk about the whole "Pulse l'Cie" problem. Of course, before the execution, the Primarch, leader of Sanctum, is going to judge them guilty and execute them...rather than just immediately execute them. Cid points out that the Primarch is coming in person though, so this will be a great opportunity to get the man directly. Fang thinks it's most likely just bait to lure them out though. Regardless of this, the group all agrees that they're going to do it anyways. They want to rescue their friends/fellow l'Cie. Time to prepare! Preparing is what I'd do if I had money or anything which would allow me to upgrade or whatnot, but I've got nothing. So it's straight on to the Palamecia! Also, it's Chapter 9 now.
     We jump aboard a Cavalry vessel and are transported to the Palamecia. CUTSCENE! It's pretty, pretty airships and pretty sky. They're flying about, and that's really all there is to say for the short cutscene. It's followed by a regular scene. We get a glimpse at the Primarch who is on the Palamecia, and he's talking with Nabaat. Nothing super important though, so I skip past that and back to our group outside. They get clearance and dock on the giant airship, Palamecia. Now that we're inside...It's a Code Red alert! So despite us just now getting on the ship, they already know we are here. (Or so it seems that way...) No time to talk so we're just going to FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!
     The next couple hours of the game was just fighting enemies on the ship. Honestly, it's probably only an hour-ish or so long part, but I kept pausing to take notes and do other things. So...this part was expanded by quite a bit. There's really not much to say for all this bit, but I'll go ahead and detail it as I have taken notes for. Without further ado, this is basically what happened on the ship...
     FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT. We somehow start running along the outer part of the ship with magical-somehow walkways to walk on the outside of a flying ship. There's quite a few enemies out here as well. It's just an assortment of robots and PSICOM soldiers with jetpacks. We work our way around the ship and back inside. GROUP JUMP! It's Sazh and Vanille here. Just like I thought he isn't dead, and the game shows us why. He pulled the trigger but moved the gun right before it shot. He couldn't kill himself, and he couldn't kill her. He's struggling with what he should do, but Nabaat comes up to inform him of what shall happen next. She informs him that his son is technically a hero, and his crystal will be put on display as a memorial for all to see. She then knocks Sazh out, and the game comes back to the now.
     The two of them start talking briefly, and Sazh realizes that Vanille had awaken form a crystal stasis. Thus...Dajh can too! He asks Vanille about what the experience was like, but she doesn't directly say. Just talks about being made into a l'Cie to fight Cocoon, and we flash back to Day One. It's at the Bodhum fal'Cie spot. Vanille is currently a crystal, but then she changes from crystal to alive again. Fang awakens right next to her, and it seems that Fang can't remember her Focus. Vanille admits that although Fang had forgotten, she had not. She lied to Fang about not knowing and simply played dumb. /end flashback
     Also, it switches back over to the other group. They're all running about, and the alarm just keeps going on the ship. Another announcement goes out, and the Code Red has changed into a Code Green. These colors mean nothing to me, so I'm going to ignore them and continue onwards. For this next bit, it's a big ol' pile of FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT! (Once again) That's followed up by FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT! On the side of all this fight is a simple fight fight fight. I'm being slightly critical, but that's honestly all that happens. It's a long pathway full of a lot of fighting. We do finally hit a stopping point, but that's just so it can change back over to Sazh and Vanille for break out time!
     The Code Green is still going here. A couple of PSICOM soldiers along with a robot come to escort the two to a different cell. However, it seems that a plan has been prepared. Sazh lets loose with his secret attack, "Baby Chocobo Strike". This distracts one guard long enough for Sazh to tackle him into the other guard and knock them both out. Vanille grabs one of their dropped guns and destroys the robot that came in with them. So...they just magically escaped with very little trouble.
     Now that they're free, they set out to escape this place. However, Vanille is questioning if she deserves to live after all she has done. Sazh tells her he can't figure a reason out for himself either, but that's why he has to push harder to live now. Apparently, her story of changing from crystal status has given him hope that Sazh will change back someday. So yeah! Off to fight fight fight some random monster robots! We fight off quite a few and come to a scene of CODE PURPLE! OH DEAR LORD, NOT CODE PURPLE! Sazh figures that there are other l'Cie onboard who are making trouble. Vanille is determined that it is Fang. Sazh says they should go get rescued now, but Vanille is all "NO! We are doing the rescuing this time!" All righty then...CHANGE PLACES!
     The other group is suddenly wondering what is up with all the codes and colors. Fang believes that it just means they are succeeding. Nothing more to add there though, we move right along then. We fight some enemies. (Okay, we fought a lot of enemies.) As I make it through one area and into the next, I get a little scene of "elsewhere..." Nabaat is on the bridge with the Primarch, and she's pretty much freaking out over this scenario. She's also proving that their color-coded alert system is stupid because she can't even remember which color means what. Then there is an announcement about how the engines are losing power. The Primarch comments about needing to get things done himself and announces a CODE WHITE.
     The game jumps over to the engine room, and Vanille and Sazh seem to have made their way over here. I get to fight my way through a single but very large room. There's even a group of enemies that I couldn't handle here. It's hard to explain without going into full detail, but the bottom line goes something like this. Two people can NOT handle a group of four enemies with three super fast ones and one big guy who takes little damage and does big blast attacks. I fight every monster that I can and continue towards the exit in this room. Unfortunately, the door is locked and the two get cornered by some monsters. However, they're a small group and easily defeated. Then we get the ol' switcheroo back to Team Lightning.
     Team Lightning is currently on the outside of the ship (AGAIN). They suddenly notice that the wind isn't blowing nearly as hard now, and the ship seems to be decelerating. Snow thinks it's just good luck for them, but then there are robot monsters here. Fight fight fight! There's an awful lot of monsters on the top of this airship...FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT! We're running along the top of the airship that's currently falling, and we don't seem to be affected at all whatsoever. Anyways, things are going well enough, but then suddenly, RAWR! Giant lightning dragon monster! BOSS BATTLE TIME!
     ...Or so I thought. It was more of a tough enemy than anything resembling a boss. I quickly stagger the big beast and kill it during the first instance of stagger. It's dead body falls to the ground and then falls off the ship. A second dragon swoops down at the team, but it's just teasing us at this time. Then there's an explosion on the side of the ship! But it's just Sazh and Vanille. The group almost gets to have a touching reunion, but then that second dragon flies back around for BOSS BATTLE TIME!...possibly. The second lightning dragon wasn't really any harder than the first one. Admittedly, it did put up a bit more of a fight, but I would argue that there wasn't really anything noteworthy to bring up here. It's just a big lightning dragon with big lightning attacks. That's about it. Boss fight is over and off into another scene!
     The group has a quick tearful reunion, mostly Vanille and Fang. Fang looks at Vanille's l'Cie brand and sees that Vanille still has time. With that out of the way, Sazh asks the group what their next plan of action is.
They announce that our next target is to take down Sanctum. This surprises Sazh, who is all like "REALLY!?!" They want to take down Sanctum to return Cocoon to the people. Also "Screw the fal'Cie and their ruling!" Just as they are discussing this, more dragons appear to fight us, but it seems Vanille and Fang have other plans for them! Vanille uses her weird multi-whip horn thing and captures one of them. Fang pins it down with her spear, and I guess we're going to ride it out of here. The group runs towards it, and then the game zooms out to show an ominous white robot owl watching us. Now it's cutscene time!
     The group is flying away on a magical lightning dragon flight! They fly around the large ship and straight at the front of it. We're going STRAIGHT for the Primarch! Somehow, Fang gets the dragon to shoot off lighting and blast a hole into the ship. The group then leaps off their captured dragon and into the ship. Time to go and take out the big guy! This is all followed up by the most AMAZING thing unlocked!
     I CAN ACTUALLY SELECT MY TEAM NOW! Amazing! New! Astounding! Yaaaaaaay... /end sarcasm to the max. Despite this new ability at hand, I keep with my current team of Lightning, Hope, and Fang. It's working for me, and there's really not much of an advantage to switching around right now. The area we jumped down into is annoying as crap to traverse. It's just random platforms that are separated, and you have to go from one to another by activating bridges here and there. That doesn't sound bad, but it's just a lot of long distance running from one spot to another. That...and I wanted to get all of the treasure around. Most of the platforms had enemies as well, so this entire area was just a big long walk of annoying.
     The enemies here weren't very hard, but they weren't complete pushovers either. I took waaay too long here because I wanted all of the items though. With all of the items collected, I head for the bridge of the ship and CUTSCENE! Nabaat (whose first name is Jihl apparently) confronts us and asks the Primarch to run while she holds us off. He simply goes "nope" and says she's going to leave instead...but not in a good way. He blasts her with magic and then proceeds to kill everybody else. The group and I are thinking that he's a l'Cie! He tells us that Cocoon is a factory built by the fal'Cie to create their thralls...HUMANS! He talks down about all of the people who are afraid of just a few l'Cie running around. Lightning tells him that they might be curious to know that a l'Cie runs everything! He laughs at that though and reveals he isn't just a plain l'Cie...He's actually a fal'Cie!!! (DUN DUN DUUUUUUUN!)
     The Primarch is the ruler over all of Cocoon and the Sanctum fal'Cie, Barthandelus! He changes into his true form and it looks...kinda stupid if you ask me. It's hard to describe it, but I'll do my best here. It's like the upper half of the body of a giant. However, the head is much larger than the rest of the body, and it's adorned with a fancy headdress of sorts. That headdress is filled with four upside-down heads that stare at you. So...that's about what he looks like, and did I mention BOSS BATTLE TIME?
     Barthandelus is another lovely multi-step boss to defeat. You can't just directly attack him because that's slow, ineffective, and you will die. Instead, you have to focus on the outer headdress heads before you can get to the large main head. Each head is capable of casting a specific element of spells, and that head is also resistant to that element. Basically, this battle goes a lot like that airship from before. You have to destroy the four smaller heads before you can tackle the main head. Otherwise, he's got a sort of armor that negates a large portion of the damage aimed at him. It took quite some time to defeat each head, and I didn't realize the element thing until I was down the last two heads.
     For those curious, this wasn't that exciting of a battle for me. I mostly just kept switching between three of the Paradigms for this whole battle. It was either all-out attack (Relentless Assault = two Ravagers and a Commando), all-out heal+defend (Solidarity = Commando, Sentinel, and Medic), or some sort of mixture of the two (Diversity = Commando, Ravager, and Medic). If I haven't been clear about some of the Paradigm roles, Commando is straight up attacking, Ravagers use magic to attack and combo up for Stagger, Sentinels are full-on defense, and Medics should be self-explanatory. Anyways, I mostly shifted a lot between those three and spent more time than I'd like healing. Either I was behind or he was super ahead in the damage factor. I did have everybody fairly maxed out at this point, so yeah...
     Once you get down to just fighting his main head, it's still a long battle ahead because unlike the airship, destroying all of the headdress doesn't take HP from the main part. It simply allows me to actually damage him now. He has some fairly powerful attacks at his disposal, so I spent a lot of time healing up between those. It's not too bad if you keep up with healing though, as to prevent dying and wasting time on that. The worst attack in the bunch seemed to be one called "Destrudo". He will sit there and begin to charge up. Attacking him causes him to twitch a bit and eventually flench. It doesn't stop him from charging, but it causes some sorta flash (persay). I just assume that weakens the overall attack. In the end, I took like eighteen minutes to do this battle, and the ranking screen claimed I could have done it in NINE! I don't know how I could have done it that quickly, but I was apparently doing something quite wrong here.
     Anyways, the fal'Cie is defeated now, and it's time to follow up with a nice scene. Of course, by "defeated", I should have just said that we temporarily disabled him somewhat but not really. He's not going to go down that easily, and he reveals that we aren't the ones to destroy the fal'Cie here. Only Ragnarok is capable of doing that. Fang inquires as to what that is, and he gives us all the answers here. (Suspiciously I might add.) Ragnarok is something that one of us will have to become if we want to defeat Orphan and destroy Cocoon. That just brings up the next question of "Who is Orphan?" And Barthandelus just gives us the answer again. Orphan is the source of Eden's power, and in turn, Eden uses that power to sustain all the other fal'Cie and the people. If we destroy Orphan, Cocoon is pretty much done for as well.
     Snow doesn't like the sound of that though, and he throws out that he promised Serah that he'd save Cocoon. It was her Focus and all that! Barthandelus laughs at this and clarifies what her Focus actually was. Unfortunately for Snow, her Focus was simply to bring them all together so that they could destroy Cocoon instead. Events proceed pretty fast from here, and things just jump to it. The fal'Cie blows the roof off of the bridge and then... Remember that white robot owl from like...6ish paragraphs ago? Yeah, it flies into the room and turns into an airship now. Since the Palamecia is crashing now, this is our only way out of here. The group jumps on board and flies off into a cutscene!
     I don't know why we are trusting that guy we just tried to kill, but they all seem okay with it. Also, it's just a big pile of suspiciousness that he gave us ALL of the answers. The group does go over this here in a bit, but I'll get to it when I do. Just...felt like saying it out loud now I guess. Sazh, being a pilot, is trying to control the ship but isn't having any luck. Then everything gets a bit worse when an enemy airship appears in front of us. It's Rosch! He's still alive somehow and is trying to shoot us down. However, our ship starts magically flying and dodging by itself. On top of that, it has super magical shields to block all of his shots that DO hit. It's a big fancy ship flying cutscene with fighting. Yay for fun and pretty!
     Hard to say if things are going well or not, but then we found ourselves in front of a large flying city. It doesn't directly identify it, but I believe this is Eden (also the name of the big fal'Cie). The group somehow manages to gain access and fly right through the city's shield. Rosch on the other hand isn't allowed in... Going to assume it's a little more help from our airship friend here. They almost run into a building while flying around, but then they are teleported into a random large tunnel.
     As the group disembarks, Vanille identifies the area as a piece of Pulse. So...why is a big hunk of Pulse this close to Eden? Everybody's discussing all these new things, but Snow is sulking off to the side. He's all heartbroken now that he's learned what Serah's Focus was and how fulfilling their own Focus kinda screws up his promise to her. Finally, they're bringing up that something isn't right about this scenario. The Cocoon fal'Cie, whose "human" name is Dysley, told them basically everything they needed to know and even gave them a free ride. Something is up here, and they discuss ideas of what could be going down.
     Why would a Cocoon fal'Cie be so determined to destroy Cocoon? Hope goes with the easy answer here. It's some bigger, grand design between the fal'Cie that they, being humans, couldn't possibly understand. Nobody else really has anything to input right here though, so that's really all we got to go on right now. The group tries to get Snow involved here, but he's still all sulky business, like I stated before. The conversation ends, I get to explore this tunnel, and it's now Chapter 10! However, I've decided I've got more than enough post here for Day 88, so time to wrap it on up.
     Dear lord, I'm certainly stretching this game's length out. I should be a LOT further by now, but I'm really not. I'm only a small ways into July, and yet I've really made very little progress. I've got to push harder, or my goal of finishing by this month's end is going to be shot. Worst case scenario, I'm going to plan for an extra day off and just shoot through the game. I'll probably end up cutting off some of the extra side quests, but I can't see myself being very interested in those anyways. So! That's more than enough rambling for the end. Thanks for reading as usual, and be sure to tune in for Day 89 coming soon I hope.

Side Note - For those who care to know, I've got another album review coming up in the mix, a side post random RPG review, gotta start working on Chapter 3 of my story, and Day 89 somewhere in there. Before Chapter 3 but probably after one of the other two.

Ending Point - The Fifth Ark - Upper Traverse.
Current Party -

• Lightning - Commando Lvl 3, Ravager Lvl 3, Medic Lvl 2

Goals Accomplished - Made it to Nautilus and learned the truth about Vanille...for Sazh. I already knew it for a while. Obtained the Eidolon, Brynhildr. Got captured by Nabaat and PSICOM people. Boarded the Palamecia to save our friends and kill the Primarch...I think. Fought an awful lot of people and monsters to make it to the Primarch. Learned the TRUTH behind everything.
Next Goals - Figure out what's really going on here. Destroy Cocoon maybe?

~May the Crystals Guide Me~