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Zeltys Remastered
-The most interesting sight in the Ark is a giant flower with feathered roots.
-The Book of Conquests lets me fight all previously defeated enemies, or maybe just bosses. I only see Zaltys here.
-Current EP max is 5. That will grow. It restores whenever I return to the Ark.
“When you Escape in the world, you will lose an hour of the world’s time, so use it only when you must.” Not on Easy Mode! *happy dance* I chose Easy Mode even back when I assumed the penalty for escape was losing gil, like back in the old FFs. I’m even happier now that I know the real penalty.
-Curaga is another 1 EP ability. Escape costs 0. Interesting that I start with Curaga instead of Cure.
-I get a higher score by finishing both quickly and with as many HP, EP, and items intact as possible. Interesting. I get points for efficiency.
-“Field EP” abilities work in the world, such as teleporting or halting time.
-Eventually, I can use Army of One (WOOT, welcome back!) during Overclock by pressing LT.
-This next attempt against Zaltys got me five stars instead of one. Let’s try for a perfect strike once more.
*8 attempts later*
-I’m seeing a bit more about timing attacks. I get the yellow halo when I attack in a sequence and hit the “Attack” button just as my previous attack animation lands.
Take Savior garb for example. Holding “Attack” consistently hits for 58-59. When instead I hit “Attack” just as the previous swing animation lands, it hits for 69-70. A nice side bonus.
The last attack in a chain of about 5 always seems to be an exceptionally heavy hit.
-Light Guard’s perfect timing mitigates damage, if not nearly as much as perfect regular Guard.
-I get the gist of timing attacks even if I’m bad at them. Perfect magic timing seems even trickier.
[Non-rhetorical question: What timing cues do you look for? Do you go just as the your spell/attack lands? Just after or before? It feels like the timing window is really small.]
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Hope on the Ark
-Okay okay OKAY. Hope’s been yammering at me for the last half hour to come talk to him, more and more impatiently (or so I imagine). Let’s talk.
-Hope looks… very young. Is it just that I’m 35 and EVERYONE looks young to me?
-No. Lightning woke from her long sleep and he was a boy again.
-He’s in “lonely command” of the Ark. Wow. The only person here?
-Hope relayed God’s plans to build a new world. So he’s had some contact with Bhunivelze too.
LIGHTNING: “God is using my dead sister as a bargaining chip.” Let me just take a second to appreciate how strange this game’s premise as I savor that sentence.
-And she’s right. This is pretty fucked for an almighty God. Then again, the Old Testament, with its Jobs and Isaacs, isn’t lacking for questionable moments.
-Lightning feels surprisingly calm. “It’s like there’s a hole where [Serah] used to be.”
Hope feels the same thing. It feels so far away. “I remember it clearly, but the feelings? They’re gone.”
Perhaps God removed those emotions to manipulate them better. Bhunivelze is feeling more and more final bossy.
She pronounces “Bhunivelze” differently than I’d have expected, as “Beh-nih-velz.” Hope pronounces it as I expected “Boo-ni-vel-zuh”
-XIII-2 ended 500 years ago. Now Chaos is almost done consuming creation. They’re on the clock to save as many souls as they can.
HOPE: “Remember: every soul you leave behind will be lost for eternity.”
Look. I love the combat so far. I love the characters, getting Lightning back as the protag. I’m just really worried about how this time thing will work.
I HAAAAAATE FF timers. Hate hate hate. From the FFV fire castle to Ifrit’s cave in FFVIII to all of them. I’m nervous again now.
-This is a safe zone in the Ark. Time doesn’t continue up here.
“In thirteen days, God will reawaken. But the problem is, the world may have even less time than that.”
-I have to delay the end as long as possible to save as many souls as possible.
-There’s something call “Eradia,” a combination of God’s light and my life force. It gives me my powers. Offering it to the planet delays its destruction.
If I misuse the Eradia somehow and God determines that I’ve failed, He could welch on our bargain.
-I gather Eradia by saving souls.
-Lots of people in Nova Chrysalia shackled by despair, like Snow. OH GOD, ARE WE GONNA SEE DESPAIR VERSIONS OF THE PRIOR FF CAST? NOEL? DAJH? CHOCOLINA?
-If we save those people, they can rejoin us in the next world.
Prediction: There are alternate endings. Worse endings where the new world is fairly empty, and better endings full of past XIII cast members.
-I have to come back to the Ark every morning at six. Hope won’t say why just yet.
-Before I head down to the surface, let’s talk to Hope a bit more.
-Nova Chrysalia is the name of the island that survived the unleashed Chaos. Everyone stopped growing, and people gained a semi-immortality.
I get the sense that if Ultimecia had gotten her way in FFVIII with time compression, it might have felt like this at least a bit.
-There were no more children. And though people were now ageless, they could still get sick, killed, suffer accidents, etc. Immunity from aging did not confer immunity from pain or death.
-A new legend took root, one of the savior of Nova Chrysalia.
Dealing with that sort of thing in both LR and XIV. There, it’s the Warrior of Darkness legend. It’s always been an FF thing, all the way back to FFI and the four prophesied Warriors of Light.
-This Ark is the remains of the artificial Cocoon. Bhunivelze repurposed it to store the souls of the saved. The people on the surface forgot about Cocoon. They just called it a moon.
Another classic FF trope, mostly from FFIV. “That’s no moon! That’s [a ship for the Lunarians/God’s soul zip drive]!”
-Hope is confused about his own existence. He remembers his history, but not the emotions that went with them. He feels disconnected from them.
I almost wonder whether Hope is actually dead this is a Proto-Adam-made AI twinner.
-The “Order of Salvation” is a doomsday religion about the savior. Some heretics think instead that she’s a harbinger of destruction.
They’re not wrong. Once I appear, the clock begins.
-Hope led the survivors of the Chaos to stay strong. But then he disappeared suddenly 169 years ago, and society began dissolving into what it is today.
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Next time: taking the warp pad down to the surface.
