(Chapters 9 & 10 thread) All was Fun and Games

[Dignified Pauper]

So, the game so far. I dunno, the story is pretty good, and I love how focused it is on it. But, I kinda miss towns and random NPCs? :( NOT ENOUGH TO NOT PLAY THOUGH!

[Sephiroth]

Do you have holidays or how can you play that long? I mean I shouldn't say that because I had holidays while playing the japanese version but I wonder how you could have come this far.

[Dignified Pauper]

I am just that damn good.


No, it's just a fortunate time with work and this game to come out when my schedule changes.

Edit:

Boss music of Chapter 9 IS EPIC!

[The Summoner of Leviathan]

Plot twist!

I sorta figured something was going on but not exactly that. Primarch a fal'Cie? Took me by surprised, I just figured the Sanctum Gov't was corrupted and the fal'Cie were trying to fix it, not summon their Maker.

I just beat Cid Raines. I think I am near the end of Chapter 10...or I hope so!

[Dignified Pauper]

You are.

Chapter 11 is RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME and the enemies are super hard.

[Rye]

Oh my god, you can make SO much gil on Palamecia... We're just grinding to get those credit chips everyone carries to really upgrade the weapons high. There's a corridor that you can just run back and forth on between save spots and it's golden. Make a little under 8,000 gil each time.

[Dignified Pauper]

I didn't optimize that spot :( Oh well. I'm sure I'll find somewhere else to farm gil.

[Serapy]

Erm, farm platinum ingots in CH11. Each one sells for 150k ...

[Rodney]

Really unhappy about the Dysley reveal. Jihl seemed like a better, colder, more compelling villain for this story, and we don't even get to fight her once before she's offed.

[Sephiroth]

You are.

Chapter 11 is RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME and the enemies are super hard.

And it is a super long chapter.

I am in Oerba now.

[Raistlin]

Oh my god, you can make SO much gil on Palamecia... We're just grinding to get those credit chips everyone carries to really upgrade the weapons high. There's a corridor that you can just run back and forth on between save spots and it's golden. Make a little under 8,000 gil each time.

I just found that spot and it's awesome - just repeating the same four battles. The battles take a little time, but they're easy and you make a bunch of gil and CP per battle.

[The Summoner of Leviathan]

So you are supposed to sell the Credit Chips? Oh fuck, no wonder I was so broke...I used them for Upgrading...:(

[Raistlin]

I think the Credit and Incentive Chips only gain 1 exp each if used for upgrading. On the other hand, they are worth 500 and 2500 gil respectively if sold.

[Serapy]

I think the Credit and Incentive Chips only gain 1 exp each if used for upgrading. On the other hand, they are worth 500 and 2500 gil respectively if sold.

Low XP value x 1 item = high gil value

It's the other way around if 1 item has high value of XP.

[Madame Adequate]

Really unhappy about the Dysley reveal. Jihl seemed like better, colder, more compelling villain for this story, and we don't even get to fight her once before she's offed.

Just reached that point and I'm fighting the ch9 boss and I wish I still had some aegisol and stuff :( I don't think Jihl is dead though?

[Dignified Pauper]

Um... Just listen to the boss music and take in how epic he is.

[Raistlin]

Re: chapter 9. So Vanille is apparently so much stronger than a massive bird monster that's 50+ ft long that she can easily pull it back from mid-flight? Ok.

And yay, I can pick my own party now!

[Madame Adequate]

Jesus :bou::bou::bou::bou:ting christ this guy is hard.

[Dignified Pauper]

buff's on your party and kill the far sides first and work inside. That's how I did it. But hey, the more you die, the more you can listen to that awesome music.

[Sephiroth]

Just reached that point and I'm fighting the ch9 boss and I wish I still had some aegisol and stuff :( I don't think Jihl is dead though?

Just read it if you are sure you want to know.

You will never see her again.

[Raistlin]

Just reached that point and I'm fighting the ch9 boss and I wish I still had some aegisol and stuff :( I don't think Jihl is dead though?

I wish the game would allow you to use those instead of just having a big cutscene before every boss. Though I didn't have too much trouble with the chapter 9 boss (just took a while).

[The Summoner of Leviathan]

The first time I went against him, he cast Doom on me, the SOB. :/

[Madame Adequate]

The first time I went against him, he cast Doom on me, the SOB. :/

Yeah he did that to Jess when she was doing pretty well against him. Could well have won if he hadn't. ;_;

[Shlup]

omg I am only a few points into chapter nine and I am so tired ~dead~

[Sephiroth]

I wish the game would allow you to use those instead of just having a big cutscene before every boss. Though I didn't have too much trouble with the chapter 9 boss (just took a while).

What's the problem? You can use your -sols for boss battles. Just use them before the cutscene. The only thing which doesn't work is the Deceptisol for the Preemptive Strike because you don't run into the boss. However the Deceptisol does not work for every single normal enemy as well. Like the Adamantoise for example. There are enemies which cannot be "preemptive striked".

But your items for protect, shell, haste, brave, et cetera work even in boss battles. And that's very important for the Titan Trials for example, because you have to get all missions rank 5 for the golden mission trophy and the last missions of the titan trials or mission 64 for example start with a cutscene which means you cannot sneak into them but you can still use your other -sol items.

[Loony BoB]

buff's on your party and kill the far sides first and work inside. That's how I did it. But hey, the more you die, the more you can listen to that awesome music.
That part was extremely easy for me once I figured out that 3x mages = quick destruction of side stuffs.

Of course, then he did that Destructo thing. And Lightning died instantly. Given she is the forced leader of the party for this battle, it's a little gay that he can kill her with one hit when she's at full health. =|

[Rye]

Yeah, that was our problem BoB. We found out the solution though: What we used to do was go into a medic-medic-synergist stance during his loading up of Destrudo. Unless Lightning is way over-leveled, this will almost always kill her. What you need to do is, when he loads Destrudo, go into all out attack mode, use potions to heal a bit over 3/4ths of your health and spam him with attacks until he makes a little grunt sound - that means you've attacked him enough for his Destrudo to be half effective, and he'll hurt you much less.

We didn't figure that out until I had done it accidentally when I spam attacked him when my DOOM was running out, and his destrudo only took out about a quarter to a half of my HP. I had almost killed him too, except DOOM took me out. :( I looked up online and a thread confirmed that that's the way to kill him - just go all out during destrudo.

[Loony BoB]

Finally got him by upgrading and swapping around some equipment and then using MED/MED/SYN as you suggested when low on health. Never got DOOM put on me, though! There were even times when he did Destudo/Smile and didn't put anyone in the yellow. Muuuuuch better. :D Just long. Although it's funny seeing how high Lightning can go up when she starts beating him up when he's all up in the air. Girl sure can jump!

[Raistlin]

What's the problem? You can use your -sols for boss battles. Just use them before the cutscene.

Yeah, I know that, and that's something I've done when I died; I meant that if you weren't using a guide of some sort to predict boss fights, you'd have to restart to use them, which I can never be bothered to do so I just fight it out.

[Rye]

Oh wow @ Ragnorak revelation. Reminds me of FFX!

[Loony BoB]

Now I'm up against Cid and urgh, it's just like the last one. Too many of the games bosses rely on you getting your party exactly right, there is too little room for experimentation. :( That's one thing I liked about previous FF's - you could do it in a few different ways.

And yes, totally agree with you Rye. :p Hopefully that won't actually end up being the case. Surely the creators of FF games have got more originality than that?

EDIT: Yay, finally found a system that worked. :D

[Psychotic]

Ch9
Vanille totally puts her hand on Fang's boob when they meet again for the first time. I knew they were lesbos!

[Loony BoB]

Man, did you see that FMV? Talk about nipple hiding. And before anyone says she's underage, she's over freaking 200 years old. That counts as "of age", right? Right?

[Psychotic]

I like how being turned into a crystal means you lose all your clothes if you're a chick, but Dajh got to keep his. Fal'Cie are clearly perverts.
Jesus :bou::bou::bou::bou:ting christ this guy is hard.Chumps. I beat him first time. :smug:

[Loony BoB]

I'm genuinely impressed. Did you guys look at guides or anything?

Re: chapter 9. So Vanille is apparently so much stronger than a massive bird monster that's 50+ ft long that she can easily pull it back from mid-flight? Ok.
Just noticed this. Well, if the likes of Yuffie can single-handedly take down massive monster in FFVII, it shouldn't have surprised you :p

[Shlup]

Yeah, what's up with Vanille, Fang, and Serah turning into [naked] crystal, but Dahj being encased in crystal? Tsk.

P.S. So finally deciding to bite the bullet and upgrade some weapons from level 1 to 8 in chapter 9 was a brilliant idea. OMG I was like "DO MORE DAMAGE WHORES." Still scary, committing to a weapon like that. ;______;

[Rodney]

The first time I went against him, he cast Doom on me, the SOB. :/

You're kidding. I thought only Eidolons do that.

[Siegurd]

I find the boss fights so far to be pretty flexible in terms of the strategy you can incorporate really. It's just a matter of being fast enough on the draw with hot-swapping between roles, and in a lot of cases, if you don't appropriately time your change, you are going to die (barring of course, being over-"leveled").

I do really like that the boss fights haven't been a walk in the park, which mostly applies to the Eidolons.

As for the boss of chapter 9, I found out after my first death that just switching to relentless assault and pummeling him while he was charging destructo would result in him getting interrupted, it's just a matter of hitting him hard and fast enough. I used Lightning/Fang/Vanille and used Ravager-Syn-Syn and Ravager-Commando-Medic and of course Ravager/commando/ravager for pummeling.

The first phase of the fight is purely about living through the constant attacks (rav/com/med I found was best for me) then using rav/syn/syn at phase 2 onset, and sitting in rav/com/med until destructo started and going all out with rav/com/rav.

Cid just has three distinct phases that you have to be on the ball to take on, (for me, I just used the same team) debuff and Lightning medic during guard phase, rav/com/med during attack and rav/com/rav during heal. I tend to use the summons as an emergency "Oh sh*t moment safety net," (like...when everyone is taking massive damage and the healer is silenced or stopped completely).

Pummeling with what hte mob is weak against after it's debuffed means a very, very quick stagger blitz, it's just a risk you take that does very well lead to random deaths from time to time when you choose to go all out with attacking...but geez that damage is beautiful. Ravager Lightning and Commando Fang are things of beauty.

[NeoCracker]

I just pummeled one head until it was almost dead, summoned Odin, finished of that head and a second one, leaving the others damaged.

Then I just pummeled them down and finished off the body. Wasnt' really too difficult after the first battle with him, which I lost. :p

Overall, this game provides a decent challange. It's certainly no P3 or P4, but the challenge is definitely fun.

[Shlup]

The chapter nine boss is a dick. I'm all "haha I'm kicking your ass" and he's all "NO U *BLAST*" Fuck that guy.

I beat him alright but that big attack gave me like PTSD. ;_;


Ch9
Vanille totally puts her hand on Fang's boob when they meet again for the first time. I knew they were lesbos!

Lawl, I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed that.

[Madame Adequate]

Once we changed from my turtly defensive mindset, Ch9 boss was pretty easy to do in.

[Loony BoB]

Once we changed from my turtly defensive mindset, Ch9 boss was pretty easy to do in.
Haha, yeah, I guess I'm the same as you in that regard. Big attack = Need lots of health at all times, in my head. I guess in this game you have to second-guess yourself on a few occasions.

On a sidenote, regarding chapter 10, did anyone else think "Man, I guess the level designers got pretty bored around here"? My least-enjoyed level so far, personally.

[Psychotic]

Well, regarding that level 10 design, it's pretty obvious they made a fucking subway station and then had no story reason to use it. So they were like, "Uh....PULSE TRAINING FACILITY! The Ark! Yes Yes!" I mean really, they're actually openly calling it a dungeon used to train heroes for the end of the world? God damn. :lol:

[Sephiroth]

And before anyone says she's underage, she's over freaking 200 years old. That counts as "of age", right? Right?

If you really count the crystal years. Anyway she is not underage. No matter what people think or just because Sazh says she is a kid. Sazh says she is a kid because of the age difference (of course you haven''t mentioned the thing about Sazh, I just want to mention it before someone says "but Sazh..."). Square-Enix and the Ultimania Omega themself say Vanille is 19 years old.

[Shlup]

Well, regarding that level 10 design, it's pretty obvious they made a smurfing subway station and then had no story reason to use it. So they were like, "Uh....PULSE TRAINING FACILITY! The Ark! Yes Yes!" I mean really, they're actually openly calling it a dungeon used to train heroes for the end of the world? God damn. :lol:

My thoughts exactly. I'm like, mm'kay guess no subtlety here. xD

[Madame Adequate]

Well, regarding that level 10 design, it's pretty obvious they made a smurfing subway station and then had no story reason to use it. So they were like, "Uh....PULSE TRAINING FACILITY! The Ark! Yes Yes!" I mean really, they're actually openly calling it a dungeon used to train heroes for the end of the world? God damn. :lol:

It was like meresti all over again :(

[Psychotic]

Meresti is way more fun if you just go in all guns blazing. Or grenades blazing rather. IAN WEST!!!

[Shlup]

OMFG.

ETA: I just gotta say, when you get to chapter eleven the monsters get hella hard so do yourself a favor and don't skip as many battles as I did in chapters nine and ten. Mm'kay? Fuck me.

[Raistlin]

I'm genuinely impressed. Did you guys look at guides or anything?

No, we just don't suck. :p

Anyway, back to it after a weekend of drinking non-playing!

[Raistlin]

Re: chapter 10. I really didn't like this chapter. Everything felt so haphazardly thrown together; Psy's point about this apparently being a last-minute whim seems spot-on. I also lost any hope for a mature, complex plot. Hell, even the graphics in this chapter were boring -- just a continual repeat of the same couple of main areas. Easily the most disappointing chapter so far.

First off, Cid's encounter was random and his motives for attacking you were undeveloped at best. Secondly, his little speech to you told you exactly what the plot would be: the Fal'Cie have an evil plot to destroy all human life and bring back the Maker. At first this game had the makings of an intriguing plot of overthrowing political tyranny, but nope, it looks like it's all good guys saving the world from the bad guys' evil plan yet again. And it's all JUST TOLD TO YOU. Oh well, I didn't really expect any more (the only FF that has such a mature plot is FFT, as far as I'm concerned), but the game actually was getting my hopes up.

I have yet to travel on anything that wasn't just a narrow path with occasional very small detours for treasures or baddies. I'm hoping that changes now that I'm on Pulse.

[Psychotic]

Agreed; Chapter 10 is probably the weakest in the game.

[Shlup]

Agreed for the same reasons. Though the transition from 10 to 11, I think, is pretty epic and totally made up for it.

Personally I like the fal'Cie are cultivating humans as a sacrifice to bring back their diety plot. I thought the "We're pets." revelation was interesting.

[Crowseye]

Shame that, in the end, it appears the dev team wasn't really willing to take any big risks by doing something "controversial" with the story. Instead, we get the same sappy hero vs. villain stuff we usually get.

I found myself way more engaged with the story when the Cocoon fal'Cie were seen as benevolent, if over-bearing, "owners" and humans their children/pets. The whole "Sure the fal'Cie take care of us, but they've completely compromised the free will of humanity, so we're going to take them out" storyline had at least some intellectual maturity, foiling the plans of the evil fal'Cie who want to kill all humans to bring back their God is the type of thing you find in fantasy fanfic.

Thank goodness the gameplay opens up a bit more after Chapter 10 because I, personally, have lost all interest in the party members. Their individual motivations, guided by their pasts and personalities have been entirely overridden by the "Mwahhahah..we've been tricking you all along!!" crap and the " Let's save the World!1" mission. If the story killed any of them off, I wouldn't care at this point. :mad:

I'm praying for an additional twist at this point that at least makes a liar of Cid and Barth.

Chapter 10 was unnecessarily long for what it contributed, and /agree that this looks like a subway network that got scrapped (at the end, that could arguably be the ruins of a city as well). I wonder if this was originally supposed to be a site on Gran Pulse for the party to explore.

[eestlinc]

thanks for all the tips, i blasted through the final battle of chapter 9. RELENTLESS ASSAULT!

[Moon Rabbits]

Plot went from 10 to 0 in like 5 seconds. Seriously, wtf @ RAGNAROK. Oh I didn't realize I was playing FFX all over again. Unimpressed. Which sucks, b/c I was really enjoying the :bou::bou::bou::bou: they were doing up until they throw in Barthandelus.

[Raistlin]

Yeah, I'm highly disappointed at the main "plot twists" in the game so far, which involve the big evil guy standing there telling them to you.

[Wolf Kanno]

Just finished the Chapter 9 and I'm deep into Chapter 10. The game has truly reached the stage where I feel like I'm playing Xenosaga Episode 2. Not only cause of the similarity in design but because dungeons are seriously un-fulfilling. Good god did the Palamecia dungeon drag on forever and it wasn't even cause I got lost, it just takes forever to walk from point A to point B.

Story wise, it was nice to get everyone back together though the reunion scene of the party is a little weird with the whole "catch the flying monstrosity Pulse style" it was more funny for its absurdness than anything. I'm completely disappointed that Jihl was taken out so quickly, she's barely introduced and then gets killed a chapter later. Once again I feel the Datalog gives her more justice as a villain than her screen time.

The big revelation at the end of the chapter was sadly, very disappointing and completely predictable to a certain extent. I didn't think Dysley was fal'Cie but I pretty much assumed he was l'Cie. I don't want it spoiled for me but I wouldn't be surprised if the Cocoon fal'Cie were basically rebel fal'Cie that the Gran Pulse fal'Cie are trying to stop from taking over the world or some other equally absurd RPG stereotype goal, hence the reason why Pulse l'Cie always seemed tasked with destroying Cocoon.

The last boss of Chapter 9 was a bitch though... Two times I came close to beating the SOB but got stopped both times thanks to his stupid Doom spell. Whoever came up with the idea of stealing MegaTen's idea of auto-game over when the main controlled character is dead should be shot. We should also shoot the guy who decided that restarting should happen at select auto-save locations instead of just letting the player choose to start at the last save or just restart from the battle when its a boss battle. Having to watch (or manually skip) the same damn cutscene before a boss fight is annoying. :mad2:

Anyway... I finally got past the guy by finally seriously taking part of one of the system's I've been ignoring up to this point, the Weapon Upgrade system. Making all their weapons level 10 pretty much allowed me to kill him faster so I didn't have to worry about Doom.

I'm hoping we'll finally get to explore the fal'Cie cause up until this point they are like the games McGuffin and its amusing that your party figures out they are evil before they even reveal they are evil...

I'm in the bizarre Chapter 10 which already fells like a filler arc meant to reconcile the poor pacing of the gameplay and story. I also still want to punch Vanille in the face for causing all the games problems.

:EDITGA:
Finished Chapter 10 and I'm pretty disappointed. Getting rid of Cid felt more like a cop out and them trying to figure out what to do with him than a serious effort. I'm still kinda waiting for a real plot to start and frankly, the fal'Cie are not exactly a great antagonist considering you only ever talk to one of them. Really, this chapter felt tacked on and was kind of a boring drudge after the more exciting Chapter 7-9. I feel like the writers really went out of their way to poorly utilize all their antagonist and write a strong plot. The individual character pieces are nice but I've clocked in nearly 30 hours and feel like I've accomplished nothing. Hell, I feel like my party has returned to their situation at the start of Chapter 3 tbh, with them figuring out what to do about their Focus and Cocoon.

Moving onto Chapter 11 and hoping for something a little more exciting and substantial in terms of plot. Also, LOL to Hope and Snow for making silly melodramatic speeches that seriously don't fit the scenes.

[finaloblivion]

Now I'm up against Cid and urgh, it's just like the last one. Too many of the games bosses rely on you getting your party exactly right, there is too little room for experimentation. :( That's one thing I liked about previous FF's - you could do it in a few different ways.


but thats one of the things i love about XIII, there was never this much tactical and strategic emphasis on even some random battles before this game. although yunalesca comes to mind when i think of strategic boss battles.

HA! beat him first time as well. destrudo almost ended it real quick the first time he cast it though. good thing there's like a 20 second charge up time when he prepares to hit you with it, so there's somewhat of a hint as to what's coming. and as the fight goes on and you've appropriated your buffing, the attack causes less and less damage.

[Karifean]

When I first fought the Ch9-Boss, I got completely wiped out by Destrudo. So I thought the only way to survive is to summon an Eidolon and go into Metamorph Mode due to the invulnerability you gain. Of course, I was shocked to see him cast Destrudo a second time so I got pissed off and attacked him and prepared myself to be wiped out. Fortunately, Lightning had enough HP to survive the weakened Destrudo. And that's how I discovered that you could weaken Destrudo.
Well, I beat him on my second try, so now I'm off to Ch10, just started and went through the Arc three times to collect some CP. Wtf is up with the extra-high CP cost for the new classes !?

[Future Esthar]

Chapter 9 boss was the first time I feel the need to upgrade a weapon.
I used Sazh to cast haste on the party and manage to weaken Destrudo fast enough.

I also thoughts the Ark is a good reference to the Garden?

[eestlinc]

The Ark in Chapter 10 makes more sense story-wise when you get to chapter 12 and Barthandelus releases the Pulse monsters from the Ark under Eden to make it look like the l'cie are leading an invasion from Pulse.

[Del Murder]

These chapters had a lot of development in the story, and the story is pretty cool. Also it's awesome to finally get my characters together and choose my own party.

Chapter 9 was pretty cool but I didn't like how Jihl was randomly killed. The Ark was the most boring dungeon yet and got pretty repetitive. I also don't like the poor development of the side characters in this game. As I mentioned Jihl is randomly killed and Raines gets like 2 scenes before you fight him. There's not equivalent of Ultros, Gilgamesh, or the Turks.

[Loony BoB]

I agree, the side characters really needed to feature more. For how many there were, they didn't really do much with them.

[VeloZer0]

If Hope killed Snow in Ch7 and then Shaz killed himself in Ch8, OMFG that would be freaking epic. If you find a way to kill someone else you could pull an FFIV and have all the characters killed off so that there are only a full party left by the end. That would make the game something to remember. (That means midway through Ch9, not medium spoiler. Huge spoiler)

[theundeadhero]

Chapter 9.

Finally get to choose my party! Kinda.
With Lightning being the forced leader I went with putting in Snow for the rare occasion I need a Sentinel instead of Fang. I prefer to take on enemies one by one so I usually go with COM-RAV-RAV and destroy them fast. It works far better for me than if I had put in Fang because she has COM instead of RAV and I don' tlike how the second COM is programmed to attack a different enemy. For a medic I put in Hope instead of Vanille. I prefer to Syn my party rather than SAB the enemies.

It was pretty lame how the prisoners broke themselves out instead of needing to really be rescued. It would have made more sense to break into their cell and save them. I liked the little robot owl thing until he merged with Emperor Palpatine and made Robofal'cie. Still totally expected Fang X Vanille Luv Luv since Fangsaid she would tear down the sky if that's what it took to save her. Jihl, well she was just a cold-hearted bitch. I don't care that she died. I had no attachment to her.

The enemies here get harder to fight but I still find boss fights easy. For Chapter 9:

It was totally obvious this was coming so I itemed up before going through the door. While killing the four side things I kept up COM-RAV-RAV and they died fast. The rare times I needed to heal I went COM-RAV-MED. With the main boss, it was COM-RAV-RAV until I felt I built up his chain gauge fast enough and then switched over to RAV-RAV-RAV until the gauge was full, then back to COM-RAV-RAV. For healing again it was COM-RAV-MED. There really wasn't a need for a SEN in this fight. While he's charging if you do enough damage he'll break before using MEGADAMAGEVIOLENCE. 5 stars.

Everything in chapter 10 seemed lame but man was that boss fight hard! Died a few times, but finally made it. 5 stars.