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A Strategy for Change
-We swap back to Lightning and Hope.
-I love these pairings. Vanille and Sazh, Hope and Lightning. (Not enough time yet with Snow and Fang.)
She’s really taking him under her wing. Her murder wing.
She even trusts him enough now to let him take the party lead.
-The next area is the Gapra Whitewood, a breathtakingly beautiful crystalline forest.
It’s early, but this game is already tied with FFXIV for my favorite environments in the series.
-I unlocked a new synergist role level for Hope. I don’t know what that means, what it does for me. The description isn’t super helpful: “Increase role level by one.” Thanks.
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Datalog Review
-The Wide-area Response Brigade, or “Cavalry,” uses the Lindblum as its floating headquarters.
More Bad Predictions: that’ll be our main airship eventually.
-The Cavalry patrols the uninhabited expanses between cities as an emergency response team.
-The Gapra Whitewood serves as an experimental bioweapon research facility. Ruh-oh.
-Cid “seems to be seeking out the fugitive l’Cie and taking them captive to some end that remains to be seen.” Whatever that is, I’m betting he doesn’t just plan to hand them over for public execution.
-I have major regrets about some of the weapons I chose to upgrade. I didn’t think about it much. The two main regrets are upgrading strength-based weapons for Hope and Vanille. Now that I’ve played with them a bunch, I see how frequently they use magic over strength.
What to do? I’ve put resources into their weapons up to level 3-4 already… but god, I’m gonna be grumpy if I leave it as is and continue to see their weak-ass blasts, knowing I could’ve done something about it.
Screw it. I’m changing things. Hopefully it’s not too late to change things. Going to restart their weapon leveling.
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Weapon of Choice?
-We start moving through the treetop platforms here.
-I’ll never be over this relationship. She even lends him her survival knife.
-Lucky break. PSICOM kept our escape under wraps; other soldiers won’t all know we’re fugitives.
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No Rules
-We arrive at a red and blue bulkhead. Hope takes a breather.
-He’s worried about the others. Sazh, Vanille.
-Lightning has no faith in them. She’s sure they’ll get caught, and eventually either resist or surrender.
HOPE: “Do you think he’s still alive?”
LIGHTNING: “Snow? He’s too stubborn to die. And that’s his best quality.”
Lol - she rattles off a litany of reasons why he pisses her off. His arrogance, his laziness, his irresponsibility.
-She even tells why Snow calls the group NORA: “No Obligations, Rules, or Authority.” I can see why she hates him.
Hearing this about NORA enrages Hope. I can understand why. He embraces abdicating responsibility; Hope probably sees it as another sign that he’s laughing off Hope’s mother’s death.
-Reached a new section. Pens of wildlife being trained for combat, for weaponization.
-Hope is going all out. Lightning senses something’s wrong.
He’s obsessing on Snow.
LIGHTNING: “What happened with him?”
HOPE: “You wouldn’t understand.”
Literally nobody in the world would understand better than Lightning. She blames him (partly, at least) for what happened with Serah, however misplaced. Just like Hope harbors some misplaced hatred for Snow.
-He shares his story with Lightning. This is why he’s following her – he wants to become tough enough to take revenge on Snow.
-This clearly bothers her, but she stays quiet for now.
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Of Revenge and Regret
-lolol – the datalog on Day Two (when Lightning met Snow) uses a picture of Lightning being DONE with Snow.
Even from the back, she looks about two seconds away from face-palming.
-She sees Hope fingering her knife. Something about this makes her flash back, remembering Day 11.
-We see her absolutely RIPPING INTO Serah and Snow. She thinks her l’Cie confession is just a trick, an excuse to marry this goofus with her approval.
”This is ridiculous. Worst birthday ever.
LIGHTNING: “Don’t forget. If you really are a l’Cie, it’s my job to deal with you.”
NOOOOO THAT’S THE WORST THING TO SAY! Now she thinks she doesn’t have her sister’s support. Serah runs away and Snow follows.
-Lightrning sees a gift on the table. This is her birthday party. It’s the survival knife.
-A TV report comes on that confirms the discovery of a fal’Cie. And it hits Lightning that Serah wasn’t screwing around. Immediate regret.
-Back to the present, I notice two awesome visual elements:
1) When Lightning does four attacks, her fourth attack is a backflip with a gunblade shot.
2) I love the “Launch” ability! Her first attack against a staggered enemy launches them up in the air where continues attacking, like a mini-Omnislash. I don’t know if Launch actually makes the enemy take extra damage afterwards, but it seems to at least stun the enemy and stop them from attacking.
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Operation Nora
-We keep getting these mini-asides where Lightning passes nuggets of combat wisdom to Hope. Including one where she warns him against sympathy. See detachment as a strategy.
”Focus on your ultimate goal and shut out everything else.”
HOPE: “I’ll call it Operation Nora. My mother’s name.” HDJKLSFHFHL THAT’S WHY HEARING ABOUT SNOW’S “NORA” UPSET HIM SO MUCH!
Lord. Everything in this game is conspiring to make Hope hate Snow.
-He even knows that revenge on Snow won’t bring his mom back. “But ‘sorry’ won’t cut it.”
LIGHTNING: “Snow didn’t kill your mother. The Sanctum did.” THANK YOU.
-Hope takes this well. He’ll join us to fight the Sanctum. (Though I’ll bet he’s still got some form of reckoning coming with Snow.)
FUTURE VANILLE: “How can you judge someone else when you know you’re the same? Even I have dark secrets. Secrets I’d rather forget.”
-Boss time: Mecha Bulbasaur. (a.k.a. Astro Protoflorian)
-It takes me a loooong time to kill. Almost 10 minutes. It changes its resistances a lot and hits hard, forcing me to heal. Getting better at Paradigm Switching.
-OH HELLLLL YES! I now can access the “Creature Comforts” shop. This gives me relatively cheap access to Thickened Hides, which I found are great at boosting my modifiers. I feel better about the weapon swap decision from earlier.
-Huh. The biggest exp-granting components also seem to decrease the modifier.
-Gil is hard to come by so far.
-With that, we leave the woods. Palumpolum is just ahead.
-Hope only knows his dad who lives there. He’s nervous (of course) about telling his dad he’s l’Cie.
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Next time: Not sure, but this is something I like about the divided feel of XIII. There are so many possible story threads and paths we could follow next. (My guess is we’ll return to Sazh and Vanille.)
