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Into the Gate – New Bodhum 003 AF
-We reach the time gate. I’m still missing a fragment; just gotta hope I’ll find it later.
-Oh,it was NORA behind the stuff we found! They sharpened and cleaned Lightning’s knife. Rechained Snow’s necklace. Yuj even brushed Snow the Cat for her.
-This is a nice goodbye. It’s probably just this new context, but I really like NORA here despite not caring much about them in XIII.
-Our artefact activates the time gate. Mog, Serah, and Noel rocket off to points unknown.
-Lightning provides voiceover. She’ll keep fighting, at the end of the world, waiting for us.
-The camera pans over a ??? woman and Kaius. She says Serah’s name.
I think the mystery woman is Yeul, the woman Kaius placed in the water at the start.
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Historia Crux
-We’re now floating in Historia Crux, a weird clockwork crossroads.
-Sorry for all the “Chrono Trigger” references, but… this is basically the End of Time. A hub.
-I can come back here at different story points. “Time will cease to flow for that location, and you can safely travel to another area without losing your story progress.”
I wonder how interconnected these segments will be. Will each time period will function as its own short story? Can I plant a tree in one time and go check on it later?
-The only other gate I can currently toggle is the Bresha Ruins 005 AF.
-Intro: A provisional government has taken over in place of the fal’Cie.
-The “Academy” is a tech-centered archaeological group. They recently dug up an ancient weapon on the shores of Lake Bresha.
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Episode 2 – Unseen Intruder, Bresha 005 AF
I LOVE THESE TITLE SCREENS! So cool how they’re built into the scenes.
-We’re now on Cocoon.
-WHAT THE FRESH HELL IS THAT ARM!? Not Gogmagog sized. Titan-sized.
-Fight time. The enemy is “Paradox Alpha.”
-Tutorial: the monster “wounds” us. We can’t heal wounds normally. Gotta end it fast.
-THIS MUSIC THOUGH
-A cinematic action in helps me stagger it as Noel scales the mostly-invisible giant for a strike.
-Airships fly above. “Paradox confirmed: target Atlas.”
-ARGH, I failed the next cinematic action. I thought it said to tap Y repeatedly, but that was wrong? I probably misread it. That’s REALLY frustrating. Hope I didn’t miss out on something awesome.
-The troops who hung back arrest us. Makes sense – sure, we helped fight the paradox, but they don’t know who tf we are. sees us and pulls guns. Makes sense. They don’t know who tf we are.
-So that monster is Atlas. Some relative of Titan probably.
-They imprison us, on the way to Academy HQ. So maybe the Academy calls the shots. Or at least has major pull.
-The guard asks if we came up via the Gran Elevator. This confuses Serah because she thinks it’s still under construction… oh right! We jumped forward two years.
-A young woman approaches the guard, happy and excited. She winks at us. An ally?
-Introduces herself as Alyssa Zaidelle. Smells like a new party member. She lies, saying we’re guests of the Academy.
-The guard immediately lets us go. Alyssa’s word has got some weight. Thanks!
-Hm. Serah doesn’t know this person.
-She really is Alyssa, an Academy trainee. But she doesn’t want to tell us what’s up yet. Hm…
-Some new datalog stuff. The Academy champions a philosophy of humanity’s self-reliance, without interference from the fal’Cie.
Probably Bad Prediction: we’ll eventually fight villainous Academy elements who want to kill friendly/neutral fal’Cie.
-Historia Crux is said to border Valhalla. “Only those with an affinity for the power of chaos are able to use it to ravel through time. Even the godlike fal’Cie are not free to enter the Historia Crux as they please.”
The power of chaos? That doesn’t sound great. Maybe that just refers to humans having free will and thus being sort of chaos. If not, it concerns me that both Serah and and Noel can traverse it.
-Only Atlas’ left hand is visible because the rest of its body exists elsewhere in spacetime. Researchers thinks Atlas is a man-made weapon pulled here from the future.
-Exploring this facility, I find a woman dressed like a chocobo. The vendor, Chocolina.
Primer: “Chocolina is a mysterious traveling merchant who appears all along the timeline.” A mighty chocobo woman.
-She’s a vendor, but it sounds like there’s also a components/crafting element.
OMG CHECK OUT HER SHOP INTERFACE
-In an IMMEDIATE improvement over XIII, there don’t seem to be weapon and accessory levels. I get to experience the joy of buying new weapons!
-The pre-made accessories are more powerful than their base versions in XIII. Like, the Star Pendant here grants 66% poison resist rather than the XIII base 30%.
-Mallet removes Fog, Wax removes imperil.
-More on Chocolina: “Some rumors say that she is a certain creature that took on human form…”
Like, a chocobo demi-goddess? The wording hints that I might know her when her identity is revealed.
CHOCOLINA: “You know I’m counting on you. Everyone is!” …how do you know about us?
-Alyssa is helping us because she saw us come through the gate. She both thinks we have answers and might be able to help stop Atlas (to free her up for more research) and this plague of paradoxes.
Side note: I really like Alyssa’s design. A lot of RPGs/anime seem to make teenagers either look way too young or like scaled down adults. She looks like a teenager.
-Tutorial tells me of another straight-up improvement from XIII: if my party leader dies, the remaining character becomes the new battle leader. When I have three characters, maybe the game chooses the leader randomly.
-There are three types of gates.
1) Shining gates that require special artefacts.
2) Crystal gates needing “Wild Artefacts” consumed on use.
3) Scorched gates, the ones ew used most recently to travel.
-There are two types of ruins here. “Normal” ruins where people lived over the past couple of hundred years, and ones from waaaay back when.
-Found a treasure chest with a “’Leaving’ Gate Seal: closes gates in New Bodhum -003 AF-.”
I don’t know what this means, but I want to find out.
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New Bodhum – 003 AF – Reset
-I took a break at this point. When I logged back in, a tutorial popped about the gate seal.
Gate seals let me “reset a part of their history” for specific segments of spacetime, without losing fragments or key items. A retry.
-Just for the heck of it, I’m gonna try that now with New Bodhum -003 AF.
-It’s a really hard reset. That’s… idk, disappointing tbh? Serah and Noel aren’t even like, “hey, we reset things!” It’s just replaying the chapter.
-WHJFKLDSHFDJKS I GOT A MONSTER? There’s no tutorial so maybe I sequence broke by getting it, but there’s clearly a system in place here.
It has stats, a lot of magic and a RAV role, it’s “delectable” – is Quina gonna stop by?
-Done for now here. This is basically replaying the chapter I just did. Moving on.
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Next time: into the Lake Bresha 005 AF ruins.
