Final Fantasy XIIIFollow

I would suggest doing this after you have made it to SpoilerOrphan's Cradle but before you fight the last boss. The extra CP can help you cap out your characters pretty quickly for the last boss and afterwards is the fastest way to finish off the last level of sphere grid crystarium he unlocks.

Just to be clear: SpoilerI just got to Eden(beginning of chapter 12) so I haven't past it yet right?

Did I miss the review period? Because I hate this game but I can't stop playing :( For the record, I am at the big ship just after SpoilerSazh and Vanille get out of their cell.

It's 7, x-2 and 12 with traces of 6. The storyline is decent enough (ignoring its heritage of course, those days are gone), but I hate completely linear games. Also, why in hell do you need 10 minute cutscenes for every 30 seconds of travel? Prior to playing this game I had thought more cutscenes were always better. Apparantly so did SE.

I hate Sazh and Vanille. No. I wish to see them pummeled into a literal pulp. I wish Hope would just die. I thought the whining was bad. The bravado is worse. The only person I remotely care about is Snow, but he's pretty one-dimensional.

The exposition rate is pretty decent. You do have the feeling that you're on the verge of revealing what's really going on throughout the game (so far). I like the graphics, but I'm not particularly discerning in that regard.

The battle system is boring. I hate having to change back and forth between roles. It doesn't even make sense within the story.

All things considered, I really need a good Final Fantasy soon. Hopefully XIV will resolve the problems XI had.

No. SpoilerOrphan's Cradle is the final level (Chapter 13). There's some enemies there right before the final fight that give 36k cp each kill, and are very farmable.

So, I reached chapter 12, and got quite a ways in.

SpoilerDamn this **** got hard. I honestly think I need to revert back to an older save and level up a bit. Behemoth Kings, Tyrants, Juggernauts, Adamantoise things, and that stupid elemental Plant boss, all over the place. I am near the end of Chapter 12, I believe. A cutscene happened after I entered Sanctum and a Tyrant and Juggernaut appeared, "Saving" me from a Behemoth King and an army of soldiers. I can barely stay alive during the Juggernaut fight, Wrecking Ball can oneshot my characters.

There is no where to grind out here either. I'm going to have to revert back to a save where it's mostly Pulse garbage and the soldiers. Grind some CP and chips to sell to upgrade my accessories and weapons some more.

Chapter 11/12 spoilers:
SpoilerIt went from super easy during Chapter 11, fighting in Oerba, maxing out my Crystarium (at least, the three main of each character) and owning Barthandelus. I enter Eden again, everything is pretty easy. I reach the big elephant-tortoise thing, game over, reset my paradigms with a good skill set... barely win. Go further, fight a Proto Behemoth, beat it no problem... Fight the Proud Clod boss, tough, but no problem.

From that point on, everything is insane. Behemoth Kings everywhere, elephant-tortoise things everywhere... Tyrants, Plant-boss creatures, Juggernauts, Tyrants. I weave around, dodge fights, thinking it will clear up and go back to being just Sanctum soldiers. At only about 3000 CP a fight, these big fights are not worth the trouble. I pick on the sanctum soldiers I see, they are easy. I keep hoping the giant Pulse creatures will go away. No, I reach a dead end with a Tyrant on one side, and a Juggernaut on the other.

Definitely wasn't prepared for this chapter. Good thing I keep multiple saves at different points.

Yes. I played most of the game depending on two damage dealers and one medic to keep them alive. I neglected the Synergist. But it seems this is a powerful ally, very important. I will need to adjust my play style a bit it seems.

I also don't think I've been keeping up to date on my equipment as well as I should. I've completely ignored accessories (Other than equiping everyone with a level 1).

Thanks for the leveling tips, guys. I got to Spoilerthe second fight with Barthandelous and finally decided I should go back and max everything out, because I just can't to any damage on this guy.

My main team is usually some combination of Hope, Vanille, and Snow/Lightning/Fang depending on the situation. If worst comes to worst, I switch out Vanille for Sazh to get some haste up in hur.

Also: Holy sh*t Vanille came to life.

Edited, Apr 1st 2010 3:30pm by Codyy

Edited, Apr 1st 2010 3:30pm by Codyy

There is a better way to farm trapezohedrons.

Step 1) Death farm Adamantortoises (the really giant things) expect to take a while killing them and it's a really rare drop. Their other drop is platinum ingots worth 150K so totally worth farming anyways/
Step 2) Upgrade Vanilles healing staff to max level third tier with that trapezohedron
Step 3)Dismantle that nirvana into three trapezohedrons and repeat again. Congrats you just saved 12 million gil on buying one ultimate weapon for each character.

Not bad, I'll have to give that a go.

So I have a question about weapons in this game. So far I am into Chapter 5 and still using the weapons I started out with. All except Snows has been upgraded to lvl 4 or 5. I have found some other weapons but they are a lot lower in stats (probably because they are lvl 1). Is there any reason I should even bother with upgrading or using the new weapons? I mean will they become significantly more powerful at some point? From what I can see looks like I might as well just keep upgrading the ones I have now since I have so many mats invested in them anyways. Apparently you don't get anything worthwhile back from a dismantled weapon or item after being leveled up? After saving I tried to dismantled Lightnings lvl 5 sword and it gave me some junky item worth 60ish exp.

After getting into the game a bit more I think I can actually say its good and I like it. I think I still like the turn based battle system of the older games better but I definitely don't miss the random battles.

So I got a chance to try this game over the weekend; I played maybe 10 hours or so, and got to Chapter 8 (well, ok, I got to the first Barty fight and it took so damn long I finally went "Ok, not happening now, whatever"). I ended up running by 90% of the fights in chapters 5-8, because I wanted more of the story.

I feel like FFXIII doesn't know what it wants to be. Did it want to be a game, or a movie? It was 2 fights and a cutscene for the first 5 chapters, and (since I dodged 90% of the fights from then on) it remained 2 fights and a cutscene all the way through. Completely linear, except for going off to find some treasures. The Chrystalum (sp?) wanna-be sphere grid was nice, but FFX did it much better; even here it's completely linear, you just get to choose where you want to dump most of your CP first.

I hated paradigms at first, but once I got used to them they were like second nature to me. I'll admit I never got very good with them; I hardly ever used my abilities manually, but always did the auto option. But if you set up your paradigms right there are no issues (except that Hope always seemed to do the wrong buffs first. I want Protect, not Shell! DAMN IT HOPE!).

I really enjoyed the story, but it got to the point where I'd rather watch it as a movie than play it. The fights in between frustrated me because I wanted to know what happens next. Since there was nothing to explore, no towns, and no chatting with characters or NPCs, I just wanted to get to the next revelation. While I enjoyed the story, I did not like the game itself, primarily because it didn't feel like a game. All you do is two fights, then watch a cutscene.

Although the cutscenes were VERY good. The graphics were amazing; I played on a PS3 on a top-notch TV, and I was blown away. You can even say the frayed threads of Snow's coat. Holy moley! As for the characters I loved some and hated others. Lightning and Snow were my favorites. Vanille was my least favorite (OH GOD HER VOICE WHY WHY WHY!?!?!), but even she started to grow on me. I hated Hope as a whiny little prick at the beginning, but I think out of all the characters he grows the most and really is some of the best character development out of most of the recent Squeenix games. Sazh... huh. I couldn't tell if I liked him or not. I think he was a good character, but I just kept wanting him to be Barret. I think I might have some closeted prejudices of what black men should be in FF games. Stupid racist company. I didn't have Fang for long enough to learn much about her.

My one issue with the characters at the start was what I called "the Vaan/Penelo problem." Why the heck should Snow and Hope be involved? Luckily Squeenix dealt with this early on by making them all Spoilerl'Cie, thus making them HAVE to be on the journey together. Still, if I could have killed Vanille early on, I would have done so... gladly.

Anyway, it was good. I of course spoiled it for myself by then loading a maxed out file and killed the end boss (go go Army of One!). The end was really good, although obviously confusing for me. Glad I played it!