As you can see, Artemisia can definitely be a good name for a powerful Witch - such as that of FFVIII (or for Pathfinder). Now, if that was the real intended name in the Japanese version... hard to say (but possible).
I don't know - naming yourself after tools of the trade? That's more for mediocre specimen. Be it Artemisia the Witch, a rogue named Larry the Lock Pick or a warrior called James Sword, you won't expect them to be more than mooks. Great ones will turn their name into a household name, giving it a meaning throughout their profession and beyond, like Rambo, or me (they named the state of absolute disorder after me).
Anyway, enough with the stalling - I'm scheduled for a showdown with the Doomherald (final Cie'th stone mission) and my party won't wipe out itself!
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So I did a little research on the Bart fight, and come to find out most of the 360 users have too much trouble with that fight and the PS3 users don't.
It's rumored it's because the PS3 is a faster system than the 360 and the 360 can't keep up with all the changes.
But I FINALLY beat him after a 1 1/2 hour battle. Longest Final Fantasy battle I've had EVER. Staggered him 3x!!!!!!!
I ended up using Lightning, Snow and Fang. Paradigms in order:
Rav/Rav/Com
then
Rav/Com/Com
and when I got low on health or Destructo was coming
Med/Sen/Sen.
Did I mention Longest....fight....EVER?
Did I mention Longest....fight....EVER?
Wait till you go up against a Long Gui, or the Doomherald (Vercigetorix). That latter fight can literally last forever if your tactics aren't sound (and no, I'm not bitter the bastard just handed me a super-sized portion of my party's asses with all the trimmings)
Just finished the game !!! Woo-hoo !!! Man, Barthandelus AND Orphan just cannot give up, don't they !?!
Anyway, the ending is pretty good - a mix of joy and sadness (for that which happen to the various characters); however, the two most impressive moments of the last CGIs were (for me) (WARNING: severe spoilers below !!!)
Hybrid Fang (half Ragnarok, half human) against Orphan - she was already my favourite gall of the game, after that scene she ROCKED !!! (although she was berserkering)
and
Fang-Vanille Ragnarock who supports THE ENTIRE COCOON on her shoulders (...with a little help from the lava from Gran Pulse beyond).
Oh.my.god.
Only thing I couldn't completely understand was
Fang who said 'I promised to keep safe of our family' and then... tries to struck down Vanille ??? Her lov... ehr, FRIEND Vanille ? Why, maybe because Vanille was at risk of becoming Ragnarock and Fang didn't want her to destroy Cocoon and the rest of the party ? If that was her idea... it was not really successful (since she was doing the very same thing only two minutes later).
Overall, this game was very good for me. I would give it a 8.5 on 10 (I would have given even more if the 'railroading' was not so demarked in the first 20 hours of game-play, anyway). A third place on my personal FF Top Ten (with VII at first, X at second, and IX at fourth).
Of course, being a FF-junkie, my vote is highly biased...
All right, now it's GRINDING TIME ! Still 24 l'Cie Missions on Gran Pulse to do, completing the Treasure Hunting, AND killing Orphan with a 5 star score. And filling all the Crystarium, of course :D
Overall, this game was very good for me. I would give it a 8.5 on 10 (I would have given even more if the 'railroading' was not so demarked in the first 20 hours of game-play, anyway). A third place on my personal FF Top Ten (with VII at first, X at second, and IX at fourth).
Of course, being a FF-junkie, my vote is highly biased...
I forgot to include FF Tactics among my personal Top Ten (and I was too late of just one minute for editing my previous post...).
Adding various spin-off and such, my FF Top Ten should be:1) VII, 2) X, 3) XIII, 4) FF Tactics, 5) IX, 6) Dirge of Cerberus ( - hides trying to avoid thrown rocks for the last entry -)
VIII, X-2 and XII are not even mentioned although I played them, as you can see...
I' beyond the 100 hour mark, and I can now strike down adamantoises before they can get up again - though I'm using Bahamut to get it down in the first place, which is faster than cutting its legs from underneath it but requires extra time to recharge my TP to 3.
It's a good way to get CP quickly (80.000 for a single fight, assuming you have a growth egg), and with a little bit of luck you get trapezohedrons (those crystals that would cost you 2 million gil if you bought them; you need them to create the strongest weapons) or just a platinum ingot (which you can sell for 150 k gil).
Some pointers if you want to speed up things:
Try to win mission 55 as early as possible (the stone for it is in Oerba on the school building), because you get the fabled growth egg. It doubles your CP gain.
And I found it nice to have someone in the party (usually 2 different someones) have a survivalist catalogue, a collector's catalogue and a connoisseur catalogue. Survivalist improves your chances to get shrouds after a battle and the other two increase your chances to get items and rare items, respectively, after the fight. Especially if you're hunting giant monster battle walker / turtle thingies for their platinum or gems (never found out where those critters got that stuff from), you want those chances to be as high as possible.
And to save you from a nasty surprise: Once you complete a certain mission (I think it's 51, but I'm not sure), the turtle monsters walking around on the lower plain are replaced by considerably more powerful and nasty versions - but they look the same, or close enough that you might just think of quickly cutting down an adamanchelid and finding a shaolong guy instead, who then pounds you into the ground.
The weaker, more easily harvestable type is still found on Leviathan Plaza in Eden.
I'm getting to the point where all the characters are fully maxed out. And the platinum harvest is not that bad, either. I think I'll take a stab at a long gui before long.
And then for the final two missions (one I only got 3 stars in and one I haven't been able to complete yet).
By the way: Getting a five-star rating in the final fight isn't that hard. I actually managed it on the first go. You just need the right tactic.
<-- Defeated a Long Guy.
You're next, Doomherald, you're next!
It's a good way to get CP quickly (80.000 for a single fight, assuming you have a growth egg), and with a little bit of luck you get trapezohedrons (those crystals that would cost you 2 million gil if you bought them; you need them to create the strongest weapons) or just a platinum ingot (which you can sell for 150 k gil).
If you are interested, I've found on GameFAQs.com an interesting 'recipe guide' for syntesising equipment and a legitimate trick for multiplying Trapezohedrons - the FFXIII equivalent of D&D 3.x 'buy a Ladder, sell two Poles'.
It involves crafting a lvl 100 Nirvana (Vanille's Ultimate Weapon) starting with a Mistleteinn and then dismantling it for receiving 3 Trapezohedrons (basically, with a gil cost of little more than 1.600.000 gil - if you optimize crafting - and a single 2.000.000 Trapz, you will obtain 3 Trapz).
Now, granted, I've yet to try it (not enough money at the moment), but you can always save your position, try the trick, and see if it works.
Regarding the 5-star result of Missions, I've read that one of the best ways to obtain the result is using low-level weapons. The fact is, the time-limit of each fight is strongly based on the sum of bonuses granted by the weapons the party is using while doing the fight itself - basically, using overpowered weapons requires you to beat the challenge in less time than using underpowered weapons; since most challenges can be easily beaten by high-leveled characters anyway (I obtained 40 5-stars ratings with only middle-leveled Tier 1 Weapons and a good Crystarium), sometimes squeezing a couple of minutes from the time-limit can mean the difference between a 4-star and a 5-star rating (main reason because the final Oracle battle gave me a 0-star result... the average time-limit was set at 2.10 minutes with my weapons, and my battle lasted around 3 minutes to kill it - I was not able to finish it during the first stagger... Army of One is your friend, since it rises the stagger to 999% if used twice, but it was not enough :( )
If you are interested, I've found on GameFAQs.com an interesting 'recipe guide' for syntesising equipment and a legitimate trick for multiplying Trapezohedrons - the FFXIII equivalent of D&D 3.x 'buy a Ladder, sell two Poles'.
Actually, I have more or less all the traps I need - I got them from adamantoises. What I'd need is more money to upgrade the weapons to the point when I can use the traps.
Regarding the 5-star result of Missions, I've read that one of the best ways to obtain the result is using low-level weapons.
Hm... I might try that out. I finished all the missions, but two of them (the two most powerful Undying) are only at 3 stars. I'll have to try that gold watch I got, though (you get it from the Doomherald and it increases the target time).
And then I'd like to find out whether you need to upgrade every type of weapon to 3 in order to get Treasure Hunter - all the ultimate weapons for each character are called the same, even if they come from different weapons. So on one hand, you could say that having one of them is enough, but on the other hand, it's different items.
Because repeatedly killing things until I get enough money and traps to upgrade about 50 weapons is not an appealing prospect (though I'm not sure I'll go for that trophy even if you need only one of each weapon.)
And then I'd like to find out whether you need to upgrade every type of weapon to 3 in order to get Treasure Hunter - all the ultimate weapons for each character are called the same, even if they come from different weapons. So on one hand, you could say that having one of them is enough, but on the other hand, it's different items.
From what I've read on different FAQs, you only need to forge one single Ultimate Weapon for each character, not all 8 for each character. Which is, only 1 Omega Weapon Gunblade, only 1 Nue Boomerang, and so on.
BTW, I strongly suggest you not to install the various Character Themes unlocked after meeting certain prerequisites (for example, Sazh theme obtained after gaining the Loremaster Trophy) until you have 100% game completion - or at least, after installing one, exit from the game immediately; it seems that there is a quite common glitch which happens after installing a Character Theme and NOT exiting from the game, which prevents FFXIII to gain more trophies until the game is reset. Basically, if you install a Theme, then continue playing without ending completely the FFXIII game session, and then succeed in a Trophy requirement, the game does not give you the trophy; if you then save the file, that game session is screwed and you cannot gain that trophy anymore. See here and here for better infos.
I'm so tired of trying for trapezohedrons. I've killed at least 100 adamantoises and I've gotten exactly ONE trapezohedron drop. And I already used it to upgrade a weapon so I can't do the multiplication trick (i.e. fully upgrading a certain weapon and then dismantling it for three traps). Sigh!
Other than my complete lack of drop luck I've enjoyed the game a lot.
As to Doomherald, he was actually pretty easy with the correct application of paradigm shifts and I was able to 5 star him after receiving the gold watch from him from my first battle with him. I haven't tried a long gui yet.
I'm so tired of trying for trapezohedrons. I've killed at least 100 adamantoises and I've gotten exactly ONE trapezohedron drop. And I already used it to upgrade a weapon so I can't do the multiplication trick (i.e. fully upgrading a certain weapon and then dismantling it for three traps). Sigh!
Well, in this case... I know that it seems a big waste of money, but you can always buy one for 2.000.000 gil at R&D Depot shop. Having fought 100+ Adamantoises, I imagine you can afford the price with all the Platinum Ingots you should have harvested from them.
From what I've read on different FAQs, you only need to forge one single Ultimate Weapon for each character, not all 8 for each character.
I read that, too. Still, it's a lot of cash/farming to get certain catalysts you need to get everything.
BTW, I strongly suggest you not to install the various Character Themes unlocked after meeting certain prerequisites (for example, Sazh theme obtained after gaining the Loremaster Trophy) until you have 100% game completion - or at least, after installing one, exit from the game immediately;
It seems I've done the right thing by accident - since I installed themes and got trophies afterwards.
I'm so tired of trying for trapezohedrons. I've killed at least 100 adamantoises and I've gotten exactly ONE trapezohedron drop.
Seems like the Lady piddled into your canteen. I have killed a dozen or two at the most and got all the traps I need.
Other than my complete lack of drop luck I've enjoyed the game a lot.As to Doomherald, he was actually pretty easy with the correct application of paradigm shifts and I was able to 5 star him after receiving the gold watch from him from my first battle with him. I haven't tried a long gui yet.
I have yet to try him again after getting the watch. I'll try attacus (sp? I mean the ultimate titan quest) first.
Well, in this case... I know that it seems a big waste of money, but you can always buy one for 2.000.000 gil at R&D Depot shop. Having fought 100+ Adamantoises, I imagine you can afford the price with all the Platinum Ingots you should have harvested from them.
If you get ingots...
But I bought my first trap, too. It was long before adamantoises were easy to kill for the group.
You should definitely get a connoisseur catalogue to increase the chances of getting rare drops.
Wait till you go up against a Long Gui, or the Doomherald (Vercigetorix). That latter fight can literally last forever if your tactics aren't sound (and no, I'm not bitter the bastard just handed me a super-sized portion of my party's asses with all the trimmings)
Did I mention Longest....fight....EVER?
I forgot: The Verci fight cannot last forever. Sooner or later he dooms you.
I'm so tired of trying for trapezohedrons. I've killed at least 100 adamantoises and I've gotten exactly ONE trapezohedron drop. And I already used it to upgrade a weapon so I can't do the multiplication trick (i.e. fully upgrading a certain weapon and then dismantling it for three traps). Sigh!
Well, in this case... I know that it seems a big waste of money, but you can always buy one for 2.000.000 gil at R&D Depot shop. Having fought 100+ Adamantoises, I imagine you can afford the price with all the Platinum Ingots you should have harvested from them.
I finally got another trap last night. Used it for another upgrade so I could try taking on shao long guis and long guis. Of course the shao long did me in with a bay (daze)-ultima attack and I went to bed.
My ingot luck hasn't been great either, but I have hit about the drop percentage chance on that one (25-30). I could buy a trap, yes, but then I'd still have to farm more ingots anyway to turn the one into three and I still need to upgrade all the weapons to tier 2 for the trophy (I've already upgraded all the accessories except those that require dark matters from shao long guis (yes I know I could buy those too).
I've come this far, I really want to get all the trophies. I only have four left...killing a long gui, finding all the weapons/accessories, 5 starring the final battle and the one for getting all the rest of the trophies. The final two are easy ( I 4-starred the boss on my first attempt when I had only half the Crystarium full), and the long gui I'll get eventually. It's the weapons that will take a bit of time.
Just finished my last four trophies. :D
The long gui proved to be relatively easy, if time consuming, if you have your tactics ready (kind of a combination of fighting an adamantortoise and a shao long gui).
I can also say unequivocally that it only takes one of each type of tier 3 weapon to get the treasure hunter trophy, and those weapons do not have to be fully upgraded, just the beginning of tier 3. I decided to sell all of my extra tier 2 weapons to scrape enough gil to buy a trapezohedron and upgrade Vanille's mistiletinn to full tier 3 weapon and disassemble it into three other traps. That got me my final four tier 3 weapons which I did not upgrade beyond getting them to tier 3. That got me the treasure hunter trophy.
Then I went back to 5-star the final boss (only 4-starred it the first time through) which took less than a minute. That also got the final trophy for getting all the other trophies.
And that's it. I'm at 100% trophies for the game and my wife can't mock me any more. ;)
I'm not sure I'll get to the final trophies. Hunting down all the money and materials for getting everything doesn't sound that great. We'll see. Maybe in a couple of weaks or so.
My roommate and friend in the army are both plugging their way through this game, so I'm sitting and having to wait. Heard good and bad things and despite the complaints I'll probably still enjoy the game regardless. Should be able to actually play in a few weeks, though if I get a job between now and then I can kiss my play time goodbye.
So now that it's been out for awhile and people have had a chance to beat it, what do you think?
Ranks somewhere in the range of FFX. It's a good game, great story as can be expected, but lacks the 'big open world' feel that makes some of the earlier games superb.
I know not everyone liked the Paradigm system, but I thought it was a great new approach to combat and wouldn't mind seeing it again.
Overall, it would most likely make my top 5 list of FF games, but maybe not the top 3.
I'd probably rank it just out of my top 5. My rankings in order: VII, VI, X, VIII, IX, XIII, XII, IV, and I from the ones I've played (never played II, III, V or the MMO).
I liked some of the concepts of the game, including the battle system being a hybrid of "classic" combat and the gambit system from XII. My main beef was that much of it was so linear. I understand it was a necessary part of the storyline, but it would have been great if you could still do other stuff while being chased around the world. I enjoyed some of the old minigames like chocobo racing in VII and Blitzball from X, and that you could often go back and forth and find other stuff while still going through the main quest.
Take VII for instance...several of the sidequests were done during the main game. Finding Yuffie and the whole of Wutai were sidequests that could be done in the middle of the main quest. There were various places to find and other things to do just by stepping off the beaten path a little bit. But in XIII you can't step off the beaten path until you get to a certain point in the game. And even then it's mostly battles not the special things like chocobo racing or the puzzles in the forest near Cosmo Canyon.
Thread necromancy!
I've been playing through this as I'm between games so to speak. Presently on chapter 10. The anime dialogue with the "hnh" and other pausing breaths still makes me laugh but overall feels like a solid jrpg. My 2 main gripes still stand but the Paradigm system has grown on me. The movie cut scenes are outstanding.
Overall, I'm happy I was bored enough to take a second attempt at a playthrough.
Late edit*. I'm happy about the lack of mini-games and grinds (chocobo racing, blitzball come to mind). Also my top five FF games would be VII, VI, X, IV, IX.
If the upcoming Sony NGP can play PS2 games, I might take a second attempt at XII.
Later edit*. Eidolons feel weak and don't do enough damage, especially to staggered bosses. Also not crazy about all characters eventually being able to unlock all roles. Homogenization of characters sucks. Ymmv.
The Eidolons are still better than in, say XII, though. Here, they at least won't mess with XP.
They are quite useful in turtle hunting, of course.
And the visuals concerning them are, of course, stunning. Bahamut rocks and Hecatonsybian is just weird.
And Homogenization isn't that bad. You might get all roles, but you're still not equally good at everything.
XIII was the first FF title I've actually much cared for in quite a while (since VIII or so), so much so that I'm a proud owner of the FFXIII edition 360. I think it came down to the characters, who are all quite cool, which brought me back into the line. Sahz is my favorite character, though I was a bit upset that the character which I felt had the greatest depth was turned into the comic relief, though Hope became a close 2nd once I got past him being a whining turd. The game looks gorgeous, even compared with new titles being pushed out. Great game. I may have to pull it back out and dust it off; its been several months since my last playthrough.
All the characters have grown on me as well. Im glad the Hope/Snow thing was resolved, Hope was beginning to get on my nerves. He's still my least favorite so far.
At this point, I will pick up the sequel to this one this coming winter.
And yes, Bathandelus was a long fight. I had to have my hand ready to press the potion button (with the upgraded Doctor accessory thingie) right after Destructo while in the Combat Clinic Paradigm (double medic, sentinel iirc). I used Fang, Lightning, and Hope originally before replacing Hope with Vanille. I lost Synergist but creating a dual Saboteur Paradigm (with Fang as Sentinel) helped debuff Barth alot faster giving me more time with Relentless Assault. I used alot of upgraded potions (Doctor accessory) for maximum Relentless Assault uptime.
And yes, Bathandelus was a long fight.
That's the fight that's a lot harder on the XBox because the poor little thing isn't up to the task, right?
Not that I want to slam that console. (Well, actually, I do, but that's beside the point). It's more about how they can't make sure a console game runs fluidly. How hard is that? You have exactly one configuration per console. So if you develop for X360/PS3, you have exactly 2 setups to develop for. Shouldn't be too hard to get that right.
And yes, Bathandelus was a long fight.That's the fight that's a lot harder on the XBox because the poor little thing isn't up to the task, right?
Not that I want to slam that console. (Well, actually, I do, but that's beside the point). It's more about how they can't make sure a console game runs fluidly. How hard is that? You have exactly one configuration per console. So if you develop for X360/PS3, you have exactly 2 setups to develop for. Shouldn't be too hard to get that right.
I had no problem running it on the 360, though I've never experienced it on a different medium to tell the difference. Have people really had trouble with it?
I play on a PS3 (flawless btw in all my games) :)
Not a fan of the XBox.
@Ringtail- I heard some games experience slowdowns with heavy action happening. I dont own an xbox so I couldnt tell you firsthand. Also there are storage limitations on the xbox as blu-ray discs can hold more data.
Also to my knowledge Bayonetta is the only game to play worse on a PS3 than an Xbox but Platinum Games is blaming Sega for the PS3 port here....
http://kotaku.com/#!5362530/platinumgames-on-ps3-bayonetta-sega-did-it
I had no slowdown problems with my 360 the entire way through the game, even into the optional stuff. Played flawlessly.
I had no problem running it on the 360, though I've never experienced it on a different medium to tell the difference. Have people really had trouble with it?
And yes, Bathandelus was a long fight.That's the fight that's a lot harder on the XBox because the poor little thing isn't up to the task, right?
Not that I want to slam that console. (Well, actually, I do, but that's beside the point). It's more about how they can't make sure a console game runs fluidly. How hard is that? You have exactly one configuration per console. So if you develop for X360/PS3, you have exactly 2 setups to develop for. Shouldn't be too hard to get that right.
Apparently. Someone further up the thread complained about one fight (I think it was the Bart one) that was so difficult (further up the thread means months and months ago in this case, thanks to dodgy thread necromancy ;-)). Then others got curious because they had no problems with the fight whatsoever, until someone said that this seemed to be a common problem, but only on xbox360, since it slows down too much in that particular fight, while for the PS3, it's a breeze.
Maybe they have fixed it in a patch in the meantime?
Also to my knowledge Bayonetta is the only game to play worse on a PS3 than an Xbox but Platinum Games is blaming Sega for the PS3 port here....
http://kotaku.com/#!5362530/platinumgames-on-ps3-bayonetta-sega-did-it
That was fixed long ago with a patch that also let you install the game on the console.
I got the game after that patch was released, installed it completely before playing, and had no speed issues.
I had no problem running it on the 360, though I've never experienced it on a different medium to tell the difference. Have people really had trouble with it?
And yes, Bathandelus was a long fight.That's the fight that's a lot harder on the XBox because the poor little thing isn't up to the task, right?
Not that I want to slam that console. (Well, actually, I do, but that's beside the point). It's more about how they can't make sure a console game runs fluidly. How hard is that? You have exactly one configuration per console. So if you develop for X360/PS3, you have exactly 2 setups to develop for. Shouldn't be too hard to get that right.
Apparently. Someone further up the thread complained about one fight (I think it was the Bart one) that was so difficult (further up the thread means months and months ago in this case, thanks to dodgy thread necromancy ;-)). Then others got curious because they had no problems with the fight whatsoever, until someone said that this seemed to be a common problem, but only on xbox360, since it slows down too much in that particular fight, while for the PS3, it's a breeze.
Maybe they have fixed it in a patch in the meantime?
While that is possible, I bought the game when it came out and never patched it; my 360 isn't connected to Xbox Live either, so no patches get to sneak in when I'm not looking. Interesting....
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I had no problem running it on the 360, though I've never experienced it on a different medium to tell the difference. Have people really had trouble with it?
And yes, Bathandelus was a long fight.That's the fight that's a lot harder on the XBox because the poor little thing isn't up to the task, right?
Not that I want to slam that console. (Well, actually, I do, but that's beside the point). It's more about how they can't make sure a console game runs fluidly. How hard is that? You have exactly one configuration per console. So if you develop for X360/PS3, you have exactly 2 setups to develop for. Shouldn't be too hard to get that right.
Apparently. Someone further up the thread complained about one fight (I think it was the Bart one) that was so difficult (further up the thread means months and months ago in this case, thanks to dodgy thread necromancy ;-)). Then others got curious because they had no problems with the fight whatsoever, until someone said that this seemed to be a common problem, but only on xbox360, since it slows down too much in that particular fight, while for the PS3, it's a breeze.
Maybe they have fixed it in a patch in the meantime?
That was me complaining about the Bart fight. It pissed me off so much I haven't played it since. I really think it was more me not being fast enough (i.e. too old) on the controller.