Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII

beating Raspartil on Normal. And that's another thing. The guide touts Raspartil as the most difficult enemy in the game but when I played on Easy I found Immortal much harder. (I think that was his name. The storm unique monster in Archylte Steppe)

Raspartil

i still miss the japanese voice, but english bhunivelze still sounds cool. i will never get used to the english pronunciation of 'bhunivelze' though.

my time was like 18-19 minutes, on easy, and i still got one star. it might have even been zero stars. i like the battle system a lot but god i'm sooooo bad at it

"boon-uh-vail-ZUH".

I think I'll start with the bad first

I think it's a mess and the real world ending grates on my nerves. The problem with the story isn't that it's not all there, it's just that it's so rushed that what should be a natural progression doesn't really work.

I can understand why people have trouble swallowing the story, imo you cannot like it unless you go in loving the characters. People who are new that pop in have no attachment to these characters or no investment, so their issues don't matter and the game doesn't take too much time in making a backbone of making you care about the characters. For the rest of us though, we had two games to really explore them, and they were explored well.

It was also incredibly faithful to the characters, but I wish there was more of it. Without the previous two games, we would have no idea why Noel even considering killing someone was so far from where he had been, or how emotional it is to hear that Snow wanted to die. Vanille's rush to self sacrifice looks stupid unless you know her tendency to blame herself and shoulder unneeded punishments.

The ending was way too TTGL, anime over the top, even for XIII standards. The whole super power things was a little too much. Then again they were fighting a god so... I guess insane anime antics are the only way to resolve it. I still want to believe there was a better way that flying through space like Superman though. It was too much.

A lot of the points of the ending were just watered down elements of the first game, without the development of the first game. Everyone uniting, Vanille and Fang uniting to save the masses (and there was that weird "NOT LET VANILLE DIE, okay we can die together thing), letting the world die and taking the people somewhere new, were just better done in the first game. And they didn't need to repeat their motivations a billion times in order to compensate for the lack of storytelling.

Which leads me to the thing that pissed me off the most:

This is a story where at least the main backbone is a very endearing, but flawed, goodbye to the characters we love.

Where the fuck is Sazh?

Are you fucking kidding? Mog gets a better role than Sazh. Snow, Fang, Vanille, and Noel come to help Lightning. Mog and Lightning are like "Hey! Everyone came!"

nO evERYOne did not come. Where is Sazh? Why does Noel have Sazh's eidolion? That eidolion appeared because Sazh put a fucking gun to his head after he thought his son was effectively dead, only to stop to save the person to save the person responsible. That's practically and insult.

I was so angry.

So for the good:

This story is terrible unless you keep up with the mythology (the chaos is souls things is incomprehensible to someone just coming in, but it's shit we knew since before the second game even dropped), and love the characters as said before.

I know the mythology and love the characters so yeah, I enjoyed the journey. I wish it was longer. With the amount of energy and time spent into the NPC sidequests, they could have easily made a sidequest for each of the characters to flesh out them more. I just wanted more of them.

Bhuni... was an awesome fight. His voice actor is awesome, it's godly and powerful, but oddly confused- when he says he doesn't know what happened to Hope's soul, it sounds like he is completely lost to everything about it.

The fight itself wasn't hard, but it was long and tested me, I am not good at staggering and I made too many mistakes guarding. And that was a waste of my resources, I had to use pretty much all of my ethers, and I had a bunch. But it was cinematic, the design was great, the fight was challenging but not impossible, Bhuni himself is interesting (noticed a lot of arguments on whether or not Bhuni was evil or not), that whole sequence was fantastic.

I just really... love the final fight. Easily one of the more memorable parts.

I loved everything about Caius in the game, except for fighting him. But Caius being the new Etros after he killed her. Staying with Yeul because he loves her more than he hates living? That expression on his face when he gives Noel the last Yeul, like he's proud of Noel and willing to give up one of his "daughters"? The look on Noel's and Yeul's face?

Yeah. I loved that part. I am kind of an eh NoelxYeul fan, but it was a great way to end their story which really was the heart of XIII-2. Rushed, but the fact they got in the cinematics makes up for it.

The fake Serah really loving Lightning was dumb, but I liked how they leaned into Lightning and her crying out for help. I am a Lightning fan who hated her in XIII-2, and yeah, I think this series helped her back in my eyes. Despite the "I can't feel" and the "omg redemption" she seemed a lot more exposed as a character. Her accepting weakness is a good way to say goodbye.

I like how in the end, Vanille and Fang's story are a the center of the plot revelations, just like in the first. And how Lightning was with everyone in the end. I really like her character, but every time they made it seem like she was the only star of the pony show I wanted to throw my controller at the television. FFXIII was really about the group than the individual, and Lightning was never built as a character that should be focused solely on.

And I really love the epilogue. Well to be more precise, I despite that they are on Earth as I hate that trope in general.

But I love the epilogue. I like the contrast of how TTGL Power rangers Screaming Light Show Look At My Power the ending was, and that how quiet and simple the epilogue was. Even down to the music, which was so simple, it was powerful to how much shit they threw on all of the characters.

For some reason I thought that the epilogue had no dialogue, but I was wrong. Thought it was better without words. I think it takes away from soaking up the peaceful atmosphere.

I know people wanted more of everyone in the epilogue, but them making it as simple as they could, musically, visually (still stunning), was just so much better. Where the ending could not make me feel anything besides "r u fucking serious, you took us away from a perfect XIII ending for this", the epilogue actually induced emotions in me.

And for the last thing that made me hrnnnn with feels, the trials. Or specifically me going to through the trials and thinking at first "ugh are you serious another copy paste running to levels to fight someone" then I looked out that window and said "Wait, is that Hanging Edge?"

More than any part of the game, that part hit me hard with nostalgia, looking down on all the places I went to in previous games, good thing there was no time limit because I just sort of stared at the places for a good long while. It reminded me of all they went through and the places they seen. All of them had the same effect on me, the one overlooking Oerba, Eden, and Valhalla.

It made me want to play all the games again. It's kind of like a sensory memory that comes with gaming? Like it's so interactive, so when you hear a piece of music, or see a piece of scenery, you are reminded about that time you went through it and experienced it. I have the same thing with listening to FFVII Midgar music, it gives me chills because I remember what I was feeling and doing when hearing it.

try upgrading everything and get all the garbs. Haven't even beat aeronite yet anyway.

that will never not annoy the hell out of me, no square just no stop all this

and the whole 'let's make this game so even new players can enjoy it' annoys me too. especially for a game that's a sequel to two other games. you start with lr and you have no attachment to the characters or setting, which no amount of one page text database entries can change. so instead of making it strongly tied to the previous story you just kind of... leave it kind of light? but in the end it never really works out perfectly (unless you just start afresh like numbered ff games or tell a completely new story in the same world). there's always too much based on the previous games to make it completely accessible to new users, but then there's not enough to make it really satisfying for those who have followed the series all the way through

idk i have angry feelings about that attitude and wish it would stop

You know things and you are very smart. ;^;

Seriously, the half assed explanations that litter this series are annoying and will make no sense to anyone coming in.

Meanwhile the best moments are the ones that call out to the past without an overly long explanation on why they mean something. Like in the trials and running past all the environments of the previous games.

Er, Satz's chocobo IS Chocolina?! ... The Angel of Valhalla IS Odin?! ... Have I just stepped into some weird twilight zone, lol.

The Chocolina thing was already revealed in FFXIII-2, but I think that only came up in the Sazh DLC?

it was explicitly stated in the dlc, and actually it was a pretty sweet moment surprisingly- considering Chocolina.

But you could infer it from the original game, in the datalog it states that Dajh named his chick Chocolina

I have Ultima Weapon.

I'm going in.

Bhuni stage 4. OMFG.

Game is telling me pretty hard I need to stagger him, so I'm going to have to re-equip and go back in. Had to quit at 01:30 last night (my time not Lightning's) (lol) (that became a thing when talking to bf about the game) but I'll probably try again today.

PS, I don't need tips, I'm just venting

Aero or Aeroega to stagger, and Heavy Slash (is it?) or Attack all the way for me. Slow + Deprotect + Deshell as well (they stick more easily when he's staggered).

so THAT'S how you get Imperil!!