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Augusta Tower – 300 AF
-Coming back to floor 13 for the advanced moogle sphere. It’s a blue pilot’s badge adornment.
[Non-rhetorical question: is this a Sazh reference or something else?]
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Yaschas Massif – 01X AF
-Let’s try that Cie’th again, Gorgyra. She’s plagued me this whole game.
-WHEW! Got her, finally. A close fight even now.
-The fragment describes her as a former female Paddran warrior, bound to the goddess. She was tricked into betraying the seeress. The seeress forgave her.... but she couldn’t forgive herself.
“As penance, she asked a fal’Cie to turn her into a Cie’th.” Jesus. That’s probably the first time I’ve heard of someone requesting to be a Cie’th. Hopefully she finds some peace now.
-That’s about it for now. I feel like moving on now rather than fragment hunting.
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Academia – 500 AF
-New chapter title card: “The Last Episode: Promised Eternity.”
-This place is filled with rotating Tetris blocks as Academia turns into Valhalla.
-The city is empty. Everyone must be aboard Hope’s new ark as it prepares to launch.
-This is the “Labyrinth of Chaos.” Sounds like this is gonna be maze with platforming components. Thank goodness I got the Anti-grav Jump last time.
-Cactuar statues are checkpoints. This definitely feels like a final dungeon.
-lol even chocolina knows that, saying she thinks I’m on my way to a “final showdown with [my] nemesis.”
-She even sells tier 4 monster materia! If I ever want to farm and level for the inevitable postgame superboss shenanigans, this Chocolina seems like a crucial resource.
-She also sells a strange accessory, the Bloody Medallion. “Inflicts significant wound damage on self at the start of battle.” …Why? Maybe there’s an enemy that does massive damage on players with more than a certain amount of max health, idk.
-And she sells Genji Gear. I don’t have the necessary components.
-A datalog entry about the Unseen Chaos has an interesting end note:
“At times, it seems to show an almost odd affection for those who share an affinity with chaos.”
This makes me at least wonder whether the Unseen Chaos has some timey-wimey stuff. Like, could it be the dark dream energy of Fang and Vanille made manifest?
The meta implications of using “Chaos” has me wondering this too. The first Final Fantasy’s big twist was that (rot13 for spoilers, just in case) gur ghgbevny obff, Tneynaq, geniryrq sbejneq va gvzr naq orpnzr gur svany obff, Punbf. Perhaps something similar.
-Just fought a brutally tough enemy that looked like a normal wolf. Managarmr. Was that a boss?
-No, not a boss. Just a tough normal enemy. I gotta adjust by using sentinel.
-The enemies here are generally nasty, but there’s one pack I simply can’t deal with. It’s those winged gremlins, and one of them summons a proto-behemoth.
Like, I’ve tried a bunch of strategies against it. Go aggressive, debuff it, play defensive with multiple sentinels, and it just obliterates me once it goes into its second phase.
-At a checkpoint, Yeul’s voice whispers to us: “You cannot go this way. The goddess cannot be killed.” Does she mean we shouldn’t kill the goddess or can’t kill her?
-Two giraffe enemies suddenly attack, a fire and ice one.
[Non-rhetorical question: Yeul speaks through the fight, but there are no subtitles and I can’t make it out. Something about gods. What’s she saying?]
-Damn! This is one of those twin bosses that you need to take out close to each other or else they respawn. I also brought a fire ravager, making paradigm usage against the fire giraffe awkward.
-Whew. Got em.
-A cube appears. I can use it to change the arrangement of the blocks and alter the zone’s paths.
-This is a really fun set of puzzles to navigate! I like this place a lot. The only negative is that the encounter rate feels high at times.
-GODDAMMIT, THERE’S A PROTO BEHMOTH FIGHT IN THE MAIN PROGRESS PATH. I can’t escape it. I can’t beat it. I can’t beat this enemy. Am I stuck? Is this the end of the LP?
I feel lost and discouraged, like I’m just flat out not smart enough or good enough to figure out the right strategy after all these attempts, and
-Whew. Finally got lucky and just ran past them. But I HATE doing that. Not least because if I can’t beat this regular enemy, I don’t know how I’ll ever beat the final boss. But I really don’t want to have to grind…
-Yeul’s voice continues to warns us against fighting Caius, that doing so leads to just an endless loop of despair and fighting. Hm. Is she trying to trick us? Protect us? Is she afraid but we’re gonna show her we’ll rise above it?
-Reached the main ark. The launch is starting.
-Caius is here, ready to do his thing. Turns into Bahamut.
-WE’RE NOT ALONE! Commander Hope is here, boomerang and all.
HOPE: “Get on board. He’s the best pilot we have.” I immediately know who it’ll be.
-Hi Sazh! Dajh is with him in the cockpit.
-The fight goes to the air, against Chaos Bahamut. Tough, but not hopeless like with the proto behemoth. At least, not yet. There’s definitely another phase.
-His wounds put a clock on me. First phase down.
[Later edit: the “Wound” mechanic has been an interesting addition to XIII-2. I like how it puts a clock on some fights and discourages turtling up.]
-Serah knows that our time alteration shorten her life. “I don’t care. I’m here to protect the future, and I will.” SO BRAVE I LOVE HER.
This has to be strange for Caius to hear. I know he’s pretty far gone at this point, but does he wonder if Yeul feels the same way?
-Got the second phase, yiiiikes. Barely. Took me a while to realize he kept healing and I needed that chain gauge.
-A bit of a break now. Caius explains what we knew, that he’s fighting to break Yeul’s curse. It really is awful that she keeps respawning in every age, keeps dying. Still not doing what she’d want.
-The sky begins tearing apart.
CAIUS: “Wings of night!” He goes into Bahamut form, flying for the tear.
PLLLLEASE let me save before the next phase….
-Hope flies by. He’ll try to save Vanille and Fang while we pursue Caius.
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Next time: the final boss and the end of the main XIII-2 content.
