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A Man’s Hope is his Castle
-We move to the Archylte Steppe.
-A strange stone floats before us. A weather stone?
-No, a Cie’th. One that wandered the wilds so long it lost the will to go on, doomed to eternal regret.
-It calls out, asking for help to complete its focus.
-AHA! Helping it is the game’s side quest mechanic, an evolution of XII’s marks. If there’s an XIII superboss like Yiazmat or Ozma, five bucks says this is the road that takes me there.
-Only one mission at a time. Good. I don’t want to have to manage a large quest log.
-HOLY SHIT – I walked up to the first enemy party I saw, a behemoth king and three little guys, and they just one-shot me.
This feels like the right time to break out Sentinel, but God I really don’t want to swap my party around. Constantly re-writing my battle paradigms is such a pain in the ass. XIII’s systems are often smooth and not being able to save paradigms for specific battle teams feels like a major flaw.
-omg, this is the zone of death. I ran into a walking mountain and it stomped on me to one shot me.
-There’s a treasure in the middle of a lake, and a yellow “jump” circle leading to it. But I can’t use it. Maybe I need a special item, like a jetpack or jump boots.
-First mark, Ectopudding, down. My party earned the Good Samaritan rank.
-Another thing that destroys me: these giant tusked brontosauruses.
-The next Cie’th stone is near the first mark. Nice. Hopefully this signals a good flow to the hunts.
-The datalog tells me I need a “creature with enough leg strength” to use the yellow jump points.
-Current theory: Sazh’s Chocobo will magically grow up.]
-This world derives its name from the god Pulse. I wonder what Pulse’s relation is to the Maker.
-Second hunt down. A pack of wolves and a big wolf. Slow and steady is my strat.
Zero stars, but they hit so frigging hard. I don’t know how to deal with that damage without turtling up.
-Next hunt is Massif Contamination, hunting an Ugallu in a new zone.
-Exploring the Steppe and found an inactive red Cie’th stone near a red barrier. That must come later.
-I’m dying a lot here, so going to skip a bit ahead. My next side mission is in the next area. Going to follow that path for now.
-Hm. It takes me to a new area, away from the next mark. Mahabara or something. I think I’m going in the wrong direction.
Backtracking… there! It was in the prior area all along.
[Non-rhetorical question: it’s disconcerting how the map constantly rotates around me. Is there a way to make it so that the map stays steady and my character’s direction changes? With the map constantly rotating, it’s hard for me to get my bearings, to make any kind of sense of Gran Pulse’s geography and how the zones connect.
It hasn’t been an issue up until now since the game was so linear. The newly opened world make this a problem.]
-Crossed Vallis Medi to Yaschas Massif, where I take out the Ugallu for mission three. We’re now rank of Mercifex. Yay us?
-I found what are among my favorite FFXIII enemies, these mech goblin things.
They just roller skate around and BOP BOP BOP me fast and easy.
-New datalog category, “Analects.” First is a poem about the “Vanished Gods.”
It’s about the world’s creation. Seems to be about different fal’Cie. The Stout, the Sage, the Fool, and the Maker. Or maybe they’re all above fal’Cie. Yeah, that seems more right. That the Stout, Sage, and Fool are on par with the Maker.
-Mission 04 nearby is “A Hero’s Charge.” And holy shit is it bleak.
“Did I really need to be made a l’Cie to go hunting? Did I not do that every day? Are l’Cie not meant to fight Cocoon? Is that not the reason I left, boasting of the feats of heroism I would accomplish? …Am I never to return home again?”
I can’t get over how callously l’Ciehood is foisted upon the unwilling, just destroying their lives.
-EEEEE!!!!! I CAN USE (some) CIE’TH STONES AS TELEPORTERS! I was getting nervous about having to make long runs constantly without an airship. This alleviates some concern.
-This is a brutal mission (at least to me). A flock of enemies summoning a boss ugallu.
-Mission 5, “Joyless Reunion,” is even bleaker. This l’Cie was charged with kill his Cie’th wife.
-I accidentally stumbled into progress. There seem to be a lot of different ways to get there. I reached Oerba, but not ready for it yet. Gonna backtrack to keep going with missions.
-Vanille has memories of… becoming Ragnarok?
Fang can’t even remember why she got turned to crystal.
[Non-rhetorical question: I looked away from the computer briefly at the start of this and must’ve missed something. What context about this Ragnarok did I miss? Was she saying it was just a dream that she was Ragnarok, or she remembers becoming that thing, or a vision that she would become that thing? Didn’t see a datalog update.]
VANILLE: “It’s all my fault! So many people died because of me.” I blame the L’cie.
-On the way back to the, keep getting. Moving away from Oerba I find even MORE progress by accident. A giant fal’Cie leading our way… apparently to Oerba.
Again, I’ve wandered so far back and forth and the map keeps changing to the point where I’m utterly confused geographically.
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Okay, taking a break for now. To be honest, the game has gotten waaaaay less fun since getting to Gran Pulse. I’m dying a ton, the battles take forever, and it’s just… I dunno, boring? The marks themselves are fun. Challenging but not super long (yet).
It’s the regular fights that really frustrate me. The King Behemoths and Svarogs. They take FOREVER.
<img src="https://i.imgur.com/EKWlUAS.jpg"
Rinse, repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
What makes them so frustrating is their ability to one-shot me. The Svarogs use Feeding Time (or something, I can’t remember now exactly) to one-shot me and the King Behemoths use Hurl. If they happen to target the party leader, and the party leader isn’t a Sentinel, I just die, even from full-health.
That need for sentinel really limits me, slows me down. I’ve tried searching for some kind of tell that the enemy is about to use the one-shot attack and just can’t seem to find it, so I just stay in Sentinel mode as often as possible.
To be clear, this is my subjective experience due likely to my growing pains in figuring out a good set of paradigms and party members. I’ll hopefully get the hang of it.
My main adjustment in my next session will be to pay closer attention to the tough enemies’ weaknesses and adjust my party much more frequently and fluidly in response.
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Next time: more mark hunting.
