13 September 2020

Love/Hate #26 Part 2: Final Fantasy XIII Redeux Electric Boogaloo (or how I learned to love the reset button)

Good gods. 10 years or so after I first played the game, apparently on a disc I borrowed. Then I went and bought the game myself. Then I got stuck at Chapter 10 - at Cid or Bahamut - either way I stopped and enjoyed life for a while. I returned once in maybe 2016 or 2017 for a little bit but dropped it again, too painful. Then I bought it on PC and vowed to sit down and complete it in March 2020. I played until Chapter 10 and then got distracted but RETURNED in August 2020 and finally killed it off, 5:00AM, 13th September 2020.




So one of the first things I did when I reloaded the start of Chapter 10 in August was check my guide I had printed out and it said shortly there would be grinding for a few hours shortly into the chapter. Fine. This is a JRPG after all. I sucked that up and moved on. Sense of progress.



I encounter Cid Raines. Did I beat this guy in 2010 and get stuck on Bahamut shortly after? I have a feeling I killed this guy. I HATED how little I knew about this guy, if anything, and all my party are crying about him fighting them.


I beat his ass eventually and then Bahamut. Also very tough, but not as much as Cid. I always remember all the Behemoths running around here from my 2010 playthrough, so I feel this is where I got stuck. As with all these shitty Eidolon battles, there is a certain command they like you using - his was saboteur stuff I think - before they heel to your command. Stupid.





FINALLY. I knew if I persevered I would get to the open bit at the end of this tube, this tunnel. That's all this game is, a long tunnel with an open bit in Chapter 11 and then another little tunnel at the end of the game. BUT the open bit was great. Really pretty and finally, a sense of being able to do side quests and branch out a bit. Christ.

So yeah Hope got pissy again, for the last time, and got his Eidolon easy enough.


The Archelyte Steppe. Cieth Stones, The Titan Trials. Giant Turtles. Finishing this fucking game. It was all ahead of me...


Chocobos are great in any game but they are nice in this one. Not especially useful or even much faster than walking, but a nice addition.


I didn't take any screenshots of me powering through Taijin's Tower but I did get a few of me in Oerba, the last stop on Gran Pulse before going back to Cocoon. Why we went down only to go back up again? Beats me. I also did a pile of the missions, there are 64 and I did the bulk of them here. Most were forgettable repeats of common enemies anyway, a far cry from FF12 hunts.


Fixed this stupid Roomba robot and got my 10,000 steps award. Little did I know he would be how I ended the game, desperately trying to figure out what item I missed later...


I got to go another round with the (newly-resigned) Space Pope. Kicked him around the mytre.


NO NOT CID the guy who tried to kill us then got installed as Space Pope 2 only to get shot by one of his own men... yeah I don't know either.

I do not remember this guy. At all. OH he helped Fang out at the start. Whatever.


Back on Cocoon. Some cool music and fights but more tunnel action.


No fucking clue who this guy is. I really should have switched to Japanese audio like I planned. The English main character voices are PAINFUL.



I really liked the spooky final chapter.





Ah, Space Pope again. They wasted so much in this game. One thing was not effectively building good villains. Like, plural.







Fang has another freakout out at the end. Not since FF7 when Cloud was being messed around by Sephiroth have I seen as dysfunctional a party. Zidane going nuts very briefly in FF9 and staggering through 3 rooms before calming down comes close.






Managed to 5 star Orphan et al the first time around, so no need to return for this achievement anyway.








OK the final sequence was pretty cool. But it all felt a bit flat, like I do not care one bit about the coddled people of Cocoon but I guess them being saved is good. But at that cost? And they just empty out anyway onto Pulse, presumably setting up XIII-2. Fuck it. I will play the sub series games one day, after clearing the main series.



Anyway, after all that you can save and return to right before the final boss. So naturally I spun around and found the portal back to Gran Pulse.



Tonberries return, I was glad. Not many truly FF elements in this game. FF13.


The Titan's Trials. I was expecting a lot more, was just a boring grind that takes about 7 attempts to clear. The last one was the only mission I didn't 5 star, so I returned much later.



ANYWAY I was disgusted that I couldn't fight the giant at the end of all this, and I looked it up and you never fight the giant. Why even bother. I immediately deducted marks for that. What kind of game teases a gigantic super boss and doesn't deliver? And the actual super bosses sucked?


So began the long, long, LONG grind for the Crystarium. My gods. I've grinded for all the mastered materia in FF7. I've completed the entire Sphere Grid in FF10 for all characters. I've done other mindless things in FF games for hours but this took the cake. I had finished the game in about 40 hours with minimal grinding, the other 70+ hours were easily mostly turtle fighting. Christ.







Vanille. Summon. Imperil x 5. Repeat until it sticks. Death. Repeat until it dies or you die (or I click reset). Hope for a 1% or 1.1% chance of Trapezohedron. I needed like 6, 1 for each of the main characters' weapons to become their ultimate form. Horrible. Thankfully the first time around I just killed like 15 of them (maybe 20) and went back to the missions. Then I had to go back and kill, according to my calculations, 39 of them to get the full Crystarium. I did that. So maybe 60-70 killed, maybe, and maybe almost twice that failed attempts. At this stage it was mainly death. Also I would have to kill one, then fight other enemies to get Technical Points back, then fight them again - each summon takes up 3 TP, you can have a max of 5 TP... The first 15 I blew all my Ethersols on, which recharge your TP. I had maybe 7 at that stage of the game and no more again.



Maxed out Crystarium. Little did I know, it would not be the end... back to the Missions.


Got to fight a giant Cactaur. Was actually really easy. So much for that.












I killed the Adamantoise mission and thus unlocked the tougher Shalong Gui and Long Gui. I fought precisely 20 Long Gui and at 25% odds got the 5 Dark Matters I needed from them (fights number 12,13,14,19 and 20 to be precise). They were satisfying to fight, tough but I was at a point of progression and familiarity with the combat system it could almost be enjoyed. Took maybe 2 hours, then never fought them again.

Long Gui, I fought maybe 3 times and won once. There were complicated strategies out there involving killed the legs, whaling on him and then doing it all again when he got up, but I got up one day and just abused Summons and my 1 elixir to keep him grounded and just beat him to death with buffs while he was debuffed.







Long Gui drop Traps but I was not fighting another one after I got the achievo so I saved near a weaker Adamantortoise and fought 39 of them without getting a single Trap. 1.1% chance. I broke that up by finishing off the last missions, which were anticlimatic to say the least.


I sat down and fought another 19 and finally got one. The relief when it finally dropped. It had reached the point where I was just resetting every time rather than bother trying to get my TP back from other battles. Been there done that. I used it on my faithful Malboro Wand which had killed so many turtles.


I thought I had all the items so I went back and got the 5 star rating off Attacus. So easy with maxed stats, weapons and accessories.






Went to the tiny robot in Oerba and... nope, no achievement. I was perplexed. I spent maybe an hour or two randomly buying and selling old items thinking it might be one of the old cheap accessories. I even considered upgrading all the weapons again but thankfully I kept good notes on my walkthrough I was using and had indeed made them all and all the accessories. I was about to give up when I spotted I hadn't ticked one the rings. Sure enough I upgraded it and unlocked the achievement. Saved and vowed to never play this game again, or at least, not in a 100% fashion.

---

So that ends that. 117 hours played on Steam, which is purely this playthrough in 2020. Maybe half of that was trying to kill turtles for Traps, no lie. Horrible.

So overall, this game lost potential marks just for not giving me Titan as a boss fight.

For a game all about freedom and agency, there is almost none. You CAN pick abilities to use in fights but 99% of the main game is auto battle by and large. In a tunnel where you must go forward. Even the open area, much touted and considered a saving grace of an ailing game, is limited enough. No real mini games. Paper thin mechanics. No stats. No real NPCs. Weak dialogue, lack of side characters and villains. Not much to do in the post game but tedious grinding. But at least nothing was inaccessibly difficult, no 1000 skipping ropes.

Good music though, and obviously the best graphics of the FFs I've played so far. Only 15 will top that most likely.

My ranking of FF is like: 7,8,10,9,12,13. I'm going to play 6 next, having started it once or twice on Playstation. I'll probably play them in reverse order too, so 6 followed by 5,4,3,2,1. Then 15. Then back to X-2 and all the extra XIII stuff, then maybe the 7 stuff and maybe, one day, the 7 Remake.

I got all 35 achievements and don't plan on ever playing this again. Hate.

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