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~