Sell Me on These Awful Games

[Saber]

Here are some things to keep in mind.

1. Big nodes on crystarium increase stats in a certain way.

Commando - Increases str the most.
Ravenger - increases mag the most.
Sentinel - increases HP the most.
Sabatuar - increases str even mag on odd like 1, 3, 5, 7 str and 2, 4, 6, 8 mag.
Syn - increases hp and mag like sabatuar.
Medic - increases HP

Try to max out str for noel and mag for sereh.

2. Certain monsters are worth farming right away.

Green Chocobo - HP +35%
Tonberry - str and mag up 35%

You might want to look at a guide for important monsters.

3. Know almost everything is re-doable after the final boss.

You don't have to worry if you miss stuff cause most the game is repeatable.

[Saber]

Once you infuse the abilities from one monster, their crystal is gone forever, so don't infuse unless you're fine with losing them. There's a handful of monsters that are rare, so you can't capture them again. No bueno:
-Gigantuar, Twilight Odin, Golden Chocobo, Cactuarama, Chichu, Leyak, Nanochu, Rangda, and the Silver Chocobo.

He got snow so he can fight Valfor. That is way he can acquire some of those.

My opinion on monster training.

Commandos - Use Power Monster material
Rav - Use Magical Monster Material
sentinel - Use vitality Monster material
Sab and Syn - Use potent
Med - Use Vitality or Potent

This works best. Some monsters can be commado but feral link is magic related.

[Forsaken Lover]

Is it possible - or should I say practical - to beat the game with just Serah and Noel and not give a crap about monsters?

I dunno,I'm just missing FFXIII when I had three human protagonists that I cared about.... I almost want to replay FFXIII. Have me some Snow and Hope and Vanille. Although of course I wouldn't be able to assemble my dream team for a long, long, long time.

They should have just made this game a two-person party game. Who thought of this monster BS.

[Mirage]

what, the monster stuff was really fun. it made for some cool gameplay and development

[Forsaken Lover]

But they're just generic monsters. There's nothing to them. This game is even more automated "get your hands off" than XIII because at least in XIII you could control everyone's role. Here, these monsters just do what monsters do and you have no control over it.

It's not even like Pokemon. At least in Pokemon your team is entirely composed of the monsters so you're invested in them. Here, the monster is just an unwanted, unnecessary third element next to your two human protagonists. It's like having a really generic personality-less third party member.

Just introduce Steve or Bob Smith to fill out your team. Who is he? What does he do? Who knows, he's just the third wheel.

[Mirage]

You don't really control the monster, but you control the monster slot's behavior, and you still control them with wide/narrow paradigm settings.

[Forsaken Lover]

I was promised I could put a funny hat on a Tonberry and if that's true, and after I've done it, I will forgive this game's lack of a third human party member.

[Saber]

Best way to get Saze is to save, play a hand of texas holdem and go all in. If you win save if you lose reset the console

[krissy]

i was literally so addicted to xiii-2 for a month that i almost lost my job
but i was kind of self-employed at the time
anyway have fun

xiii-3 is actually better in terms of thematics and wrap-up

and it IS melodramatic. that's the whole point. it's a space/fantasy opera. you'll see in xiii-3... it (the series) is very aware of what it is.

[Forsaken Lover]

I think the self-awareness varies wildly. Toriyama clearly intended you to take this seriously and to love his waifu.

Don't try and pull a DMC here and make excuses. The people who made DMC thought Dante was legitimately cool and they were oh so very wrong and stupid. Toriyama is also stupid for thinking Lightning is cool. You can tell during the Prologue we're supposed to think what's happening is AWESOME SUPER BADASS AMAZING.

And it's not. Not even close.



So unexpected little surprise here when I loaded up the game. Tutorial about "Close Gates." So would this be how I can defeat Atlus later on when I'm strong enough and thus get the Paradox Ending? I'm not exactly sure what other ways this rewinding time thing can be useful. It says you can do it to "fix mistakes." What kind of mistakes are we talking here? Gameplay ones or are there actual like, important decisions you can smurf up in the plot?

Ugh...the game is TAUNTING me! I just got the Artifacts for Bresha Ruins and was leveling up Serah and Noel. I've been thinking this whole time "next Crystarium Expansion, I'm gonna give Serah an extra ATB guage." But when I finally got that option, I also had Medic unlocked. I've already been told she is a great Medic and that's fairly obvious from her amazing Magic stat. But if I remember FFXIII correctly, the AI is better at healing than I was. The fact is, as I have noted before, I can't see very good. I can only focus on parts on specific parts of the screen. Keeping track of enemy HP, Stagger guage and so-on, while simultaneously trying to keep track of party HP, just isn't feasible. I tried it and I failed at it miserably. The AI was much better at keeping me alive and knowing when we were in need of health.

So I went with the ATB gauge. I suppose I could have had Serah learn Medic and then just have my party leader be Noel but I like Serah more. It was a tough decision deciding who I wanted to control iN XIII but here? It's always gonna be Serah.

Not that I'm down on Noel or anything, don't get me wrong. He's nothing like what my vague memories of XIII-2 said he was. He's actually very friendly and supportive for a guy with his level of angst. You'd think, being the last survivor of the human race in a post-apocalyptic wasteland he'd be more broody or something. Yet he's remarkably chill and nice and willing to both talk and listen. Stuff like him chipping in there to help Alyssa feel better during her freakout was a pleasant surprise.

In short, he's a total bud. Although you would think he'd be a bit more disturbed about the fact his memories are being smurfed with. It's a huge source of worry for Serah, for obvious reasons, but Noel just kinda mentions it off-handedly. "I remember stuff that didn't actually happen to me. Kinda annoying but oh well" sums up his attitude. Most people would not be so blase about it.

Anyway! Back to gameplay. For Noel's Crystarium Expansion I taught him Synergist. I've dumped all their points up to now into their primary Paradigm (Commando for Noel, Ravager for Serah) but for this latest upgrade I decided to diversify a lot. Boosted both Sentinel and Commando for Serah to give her some much needed health and physical power. Noel meanwhile got a ton of levels in Ravager and Synergist. So now I can have like a total Support Paradigm. Start of boss fights, switch to that, have Serah nail them with Saboteur and Noel protect everyone with Synergist, and then concentrate on the attack.

Oh and as for monsters,I leveled up my Nekton to 15 'cuz it's the best Ravager I have right now. Well, I assumed it was because it had the highest magic stat to start off with.

I tried doing the sidequest in Bresha Ruins to find the guy who said there's another communicator out there. There's probably another of him walking around due to TIME PARADOX. But I couldn't find the other guy. Mog usually freaks out and flies over to things to indicate you can do that...whatever the smurf it is to reveal objects. The tutorial said you can do it to reveal people as well. If that's what I have to do to find the other him or whatever, it's not gonna happen. I don't see the reality warping or Mog's pom-pom glowing more brightly or any of that. If the game wants me to find something, it should have Mog draw attention to it just like it does at other times.

I really want that goddam Fragment though....

smurf it, I just looked it up. I need Moogle Throw to do this. I honestly thought of that earlier on. It's good to know it wasn't just something I was missing.

I had no idea Chocobos could be used to get to places though. I thought they were just ways of getting around random battles. This Wiki guide though says I can use a Chocobo to hop up to this one area that was bugging me because I couldn't get to it. Thanks game for not telling me this rather important information. Although it does look like Mog will vocally call attention to stuff like Fragments and the whole space time unraveling thing he does. I was afraid this would be a worse version of Fable II and III's system with the dog but no, they were smart and realized just having Mog low wouldn't be enough. Thank you, Square.

I assume the other quest, the one with the guy who wants me to find a flower that only blooms in winter,is something else I have to wait and do later. Find a timeline that is all wintery. Up to this points, things have been remarkably sunny and cheerful considering.

Now I got the DLC weapons that came with the DLC Bundle - the Genji Bow and the Muramassa - but I'm not sure if they are "better" than the ones I can buy in the game. The Genji Bow has higher stats than the Amazon Bow I just made/bought but it lacks the Chain Bonus. Chain Bonus seems like the actual best attribute to have.

You know what? For boss fights, I'm just not going to give a smurf about rank. I got 3 stars against this big dude in this next timeline - Aloeidai is its name apparently - and I am perfectly satisfied with my performance. For my monster in this fight I brought along the crazy wing dudes you find who are Synergists. I figured some buffing be good. Right now, Noel's only Synergist abilities are Protect so I figured Bravery and Faith would be great here. Sure my monster died about 1/2 or 3/4 through the fight but we did perfect as far as I'm concerned.

A lot of people online back when I played XIII said the rank didn't actually matter here. For here though, it seems to be the best way to gain drops from enemies. If I want to be able to collect Monster Materials in a timely matter, I need that 5 star 200% Drop thing I think. Or maybe not. Maybe score doesn't matter here either. Please inform me people of the Internet, does the star rating really effect anything substantial?

Anyway!

Hope, what the hell happened to you. You're all tall and your voice is deep. It's weird.

Urgh, I can't decide on what to do with my Bonuses! Another ATB Gauge??? More Bonuses to my Paradigms? Extra accessories is particularly tempting... I could get 24% more Health or deal 20% more Physical or Magical damage.... Dammit I just don't know how good the bonuses are. I just figure that permanent increases via Crystarium are the superior option. The COM/RAV/whatever Bonuses mean that the stat increases you get in that Paradigm's Crystarium are better, correct? So instead of getting plai old +10 health, with the bonus I'll get +20 health from the same "slot." That's how I think it works anyway....

Fine, I'll just go with COM Bonus for Serah.

You know N Oel, earlier on I said you were cool and forthright, but now you are hiding stuff. No one is calling him out on it either. "Oh I only read about the Oracle Drive in books. BTW this is how you use it." Also while I have heard of Yeul online in discussions - discussions that typically involved mocking Caius - I had no idea this was like an honorary name/title. Kinda like the Pope. Also i never knew she had anything to do with Noel.

So after the boss and talk with Hope I went back to challenge those Behemoths which could destroy me earlier. They're no joke - you need three Ravagers to build up the Stagger Gauge in a timely manner. Even then it's not easy. I have my little Nekton buddy to help me out. I don't think he does much in the way of damage on his own but he's a Ravager and he helps build up Stagger quick. Plus his Overwhelm ability sounds pretty neat. Anyway, I doubt I'm the only person in the world who spent a lot of time grinding here. I kinda expected it but I won't deny it was a pleasant surprise when, after the sixth or seven battle, I got the Behemoth crystal. Already leveled him up as much as I can. 212 strength - amazing.

I gotta say though, this game must take Preemptive Strikes into account for your scoring. I tried fighting the Behemoth "fairly" and it's so much harder. The Stagger gauge takes way, way, WAY longer to fill unless you have that bonus going into the battle. And if the fight dragons on he will destroy you.

Anyway, after all that, I got another whole Crystarium Expansion. I decided to finally get an extra Accessory slot for Serah while giving Noel another ATB gauge. He's my healer so it seems like a smart move to give him as many turns as possible. Another lovely reward from all that was Cura. Cure hasn't been doing it for me but Cura should be very useful.

Did I mention I decided to swap everything around? Subvert those tropes? Serah is now taking after her darling fiance. She will STEELGUARD our way to Lightning. Noel meanwhile I'm investing a lot of time into Synergist, Ravager and Medic. Protectga and Shellga should be a great help.

This is my Paradigm setup at the moment: Cerberus X (COM/COM/COM with Behemoth) then Relentless Assault X (RAV/RAV/COM) then Bully (SAB/SYN/COM) and finally Solidarity (SEN/MED/COM) This seems good to me. I got my two offensive paradigms, my one full support paradigm and my one full defense paradigm. I know you can have a ton of paradigms set up but this isn't FFXII. You need to be able to switch through those things at lightning pace. The more paradigms, the longer it takes to switch. Also the more chances I'd have to select the wrong thing if I'm panicking.

Hm...well at least Noel let on a little bit about there being something amiss here. He still hasn't said a word about Caius and I assume they know each other to some extent. He also seemed to know too much about the Oracle Drive for the fact this ancient Seeress and the girl he know sharing the same name just being a coincidence.

The Oerba description doesn'tmakesense. Nobody knows Fang and Vanille saved everyone, they all think it was Lightning. Why are they protecting Fang's and Vanille's home? Actually no one has been very clear about that. Whenever someone says Lightning saved Cocoon by becoming the pillar, they don't mention Fang or Vanille at all. I mean, Lightning supposedly joining them to hold up Cocoon is all fine and good. But ifit's more "contentious" - that Lightning alone saved Cocoon - that's a whole otehr problem in itself.

But I think I'm gonna stop there for tonight. It's been a very productive session, I feel like I'm getting the hang of this game and have become reasonably powerful. Now to just sleep and try to ignore how I'll probably get my ass handed to me next time. It always happens when I get too confident in my abilities.

[Ayen]

I think the self-awareness varies wildly. Toriyama clearly intended you to take this seriously and to love his waifu.

Don't try and pull a DMC here and make excuses. The people who made DMC thought Dante was legitimately cool and they were oh so very wrong and stupid.

THANK YOU! DMC1 Dante was particularly awful in this respect because you could tell this isn't a character. This is a cool guy cliche sprouting off cool guy lines to try to convince you he's cool instead of just giving him a smurfing personality.

I think the self-awareness varies too because to my knowledge drama in Japan can easily turn melodramatic when it comes over here. Even Metal Gear Solid is guilty of this. They take it seriously, and I guess... good for them if they enjoy it.

[Mirage]

"You know what? For boss fights, I'm just not going to give a smurf about rank. I got 3 stars against this big dude in this next timeline - Aloeidai is its name apparently - and I am perfectly satisfied with my performance. For my monster in this fight I brought along the crazy wing dudes you find who are Synergists. I figured some buffing be good. Right now, Noel's only Synergist abilities are Protect so I figured Bravery and Faith would be great here. Sure my monster died about 1/2 or 3/4 through the fight but we did perfect as far as I'm concerned."
Spoiler: A decent performance is actually what gives you a 3 our of 5.

[Forsaken Lover]

You know what I miss? XIII's weapon upgrade system. I thought it was awesome. You could conceivably stick to one weapon for the whole game, be it their starter or the first one you bought or anything else. Just keep upgrading for the whole thing. Like, if you got a weapon that Boosted Chain, you upgraded that until the Chain Bonus was a lot more. If you wanted stats, you bought the weapon that boosted those stat and just kept upgrading it until its stat boosts were maxed out. And so-on.

I thought I could do that here when I read "Chain Lv. 1" as a trait for our new weapons but nope. I thought I could maybe upgrade that into Chain Lv. 2 and 3 and etc.. I'm disappointed now.

I was about to say "smurf puzzles" but I actually liked the puzzle on Oerba. I found it actually intriguing and a real challenge and not just BS. For me it was like playing Memory. Maybe for smarter people you could do it one turn but I found the challenge to be remembering what crystals match up with what other crystal and then repeating it until you had them all down and could blitz through the puzzle super fast. It helps the crystals only have two forms.

Hooray I got 5 stars out of Caius! I had to use one Phoenix Down because Serah died towards the end but I beat him in 2:47 with a Target Time of 4:36. I feel so special.

Of course, I didn't beat him. He just kinda left. Also Noel you can't say "I won't fight you" after you just stabbed the guy a bunch.

But hey, I don't get his deal. Doesn't destroying time count as changing it? Stop being a hypocrite, dude. It's not cool. Also I had no idea his little girlfriend was the real mastermind. She seemed to be the one calling the shots.

Cool music for his boss theme. I haven't talked much about the music. In spite of what I've heard, I have yet to be "wowed." I think my favorite songs were the Bresha Ruins battle theme and the theme I just heard during the Caius fight.

So I returned to Massif - the new, altered one - and was grinding a bit because I had just used up a ton of my CP. I think there are rare encounters in every area and I just ran into one. One of those bastards from XIII who can spawn a sword. At least I think it was one of them. It wasn't an easy fight and I only got 3 Stars but I did manage to beat it for a whopping 2000 CP. I love it.

I was kind of rolling my eyes at the "oh Lightning IS alive!!" reaction when Serah saw the Prophecy in the new Massif. We know she's alive, dammit. We've established our goal was to travel to the time and place where she is. However, something more productive and interesting is happening. Somebody finally realized "holy trout, Cocoon crashing onto Pulse? Wasn't stopping that the whole point of the last game? Maybe we shouldn't allow the future where it fell to happen. Maybe we should try to save the human race" Real bunch of geniuses, this group.

I dunno guys, what's more important, the fate of billions of lives, or finding Lightning? It's a tough decision, I can't deny.

But at least now this is Chrono Trigger proper. Well, as shameful as it is to say, it's more like Chrono Cross. Not as good as CC mind you but the parallel realities and all that is totally a CC thing. CT had a very linear conception of time travel.

Getting really annoyed here. Mog is drawing my attention to something here in this new place but I can't figure out what to do. There's nothing there I can grab as far as I can see and the little "reveal things"move doesn't do anything... Maybe I need Moogle Throw? When the hell do i learn that?

Noel: We Hunter have a legend of a goddess. "It gave us strength when times were tough."

You know, like when the bills are due, your girlfriend dumps you and THE WORLD ENDED. What do you mean "when times were tough." Times are always tough when you're the last humans alive. I mean, come on.

ANYWAY....Interesting stuff with Caius and Yeul. What Yeul? Which Yeul? I have no idea. But she done died. Was it the same one who we talked to on her own and said she was like Serah? Or the creepy one with him in Oerba? Does it matter? Did we kill her by traveling through the Gate? That's kinda what the scene implied.

Okay I'm gonna stop here and post this because I have no idea where to go. I got the Artefact in Massif 01X AF but all it did was take me to the Void Beyond and some other place. I can't do anything in either location and the game hasn't given me any clues on what my next move should be. I have learned the hard way that trying to use a FAQ just spoils things. I thought I had to do something in the Void Beyond and all I got from Googling that was spoilers about meeting Yeul in Episode 5 or something.

So what the heck do i do now?

EDIT:

Nevermind, I got it.

[Forsaken Lover]

Well I just lost my update... smurf.

Um.... what the hell did I say or do?

I guess I should start by saying I am at the casino. 20,000 Gil and about a half hour later, I got the Lucky Coin Fragment. The game seems nice to be very nice to you, provided you can get the ball rolling. And it took a smurf ton of time to get the ball rolling.

Okay, Fragments. I know I made a comment on that in my poor, lost update. I have 20/160. You have any idea how depressing that is? If there were only 100, I'd feel a bit better. But 160? Ugh. smurf you and your "True Endings."

Finally, I actually read the Fragments for the first time in forever. The Tablet of Memory one was intriguing. All about how Yeul can send her visions through time to certain people. That would explain what hapened with Serah earlier where she collapsed. Of course, the Fragment also says it can only be sent to people with "chaos in their hearts." And here I thought Evil Serah was in the next game.

Now let's rewind to what I said way back at the update that was lost. smurf YEAH IT'S SNOW! Out of frickin' nowhere too. Between him and Serah I think the 80s are definitely "in" in FFXIII and thus FFXIII is better than I used to give it credit for.

But that whole thing with the big ass fla is so weird. It's like this game can't decide if it's serious or not. I know some people lament the 90s are gone because JRPGs were very schizo back then. You'd have this super serious commentary about environmentalism and then Cloud would seduce a pimp. But I think XIII-2 is at least a product of the 90s in spirit. It has that strange quirkiness to it amidst all the drama.

Just so weird to go from the horrific image of Cocoon falling and wiping out the human race to learning that it was partly caused by "His Royal Ripeness"....

I guess that fatass flan is another cause of Paradox Ending? If I beat it on my own?

But Snow is a l'Cie again? How did that happen? I thought the fal'Cie were all gone except for that big one that caused the eclipse but didn't appear to do much else. XIII was terrible about establishing the fal'Cie's level of intelligence. Some were clearly human-like, others were just things. So who's to say if Fenrir or whatever it was has a mind like ours? He's the only fal'Cie I have seen in this game who could have re-branded Snow.

What else... Oh at the Steppe I spent a good while grinding. Unlike XIII, this game is actually fun to explore and stuff. Pulse was easily the worst part of XIII because XIII was not made to be an open world game. As soon as it opened up, the whole thing went to hell. But here, I am having a great time looking around and stuff.

I even got myself a way the smurf better monster than Behemoth. Cancanagh is a Saboteur yet it has about twice as much physical strength as my Behemoth. It's at 478 at present. It also has better Sab spells than Serah at the moment so overall it's the best party member by a lot.

Although this reminds me of a question I am dying to know. How far does the Crystarium go? Serah is Level 68 Commando right now and, with an Accessory, has Str of a little over 200. But if Commando only goes up to 99, there's no way her strength will ever match that of the monsters. I figured there would come a point when Serah and Noel will actually be a lot stronger than any of the monsters with better stats but I dunno.

Also while on the Steppe I ran into what looked to be the Jumbo Cactuar from FFVIII. smurfing time paradoxes. It killed me in one hit.


Anyway I got the Chaos Crystal. Had no idea this was a Fragment. Immediately set out to try and get the Just 1 Gil and Setzer's Dice, thinking they were Fragments too. But I guess it was all beginner's luck with me earlier on because, after sinking over 1,000 Coins into the machine, no Jackpot. Maybe I should try Sazh's DLC at least for the card game?

Anyway, stopping there. That slot machine got me all tired from staring at it for a half hour and getting nowhere. Tomorrow I will be visiting the infamous Academy 400 AF. I have heard of this place. Interested to see what all the fuss is about.

Also I know I can give Hope the Chaos Crystal and get a Paradox Ending? I think? I dunno if I'll do that.

[Loony BoB]

Get all the endings! Especially a certain one featuring flan.