Regardless of what Noel remembered, Caius set himself so that he couldn't lose. All he needed was to break down the barriers of Valhalla and the real world and to do that he needed to
A. Destroy Etros himself- which Lightning was stalemating with Caius for
B. Open the floodgate of souls- which Hope was trying to stop
C. Destroy Etros' heart- which Noel was suppose to do.
You could try and attempt to thwart his plans and not kill him, or maybe imprison him, but how do you permanently stop someone who is just as strong and smart as you, is alive throughout all the timeline, and turns into a
dragon whenever he wants to. You either stop him permanently, or he lives another day to see the world destroyed. He only needs to win once.
The only real way to stop him is for Noel to kill him before he's mentally ready and have him inherit the heart. Hilariously, the only reason he is mentally ready for it is because he just went on a really long, soul searching journey with Serah- had he killed Caius in the beginning, he would have just gotten his heart, Caius would be dead, and his plans would have been thwarted. Not that I'm blaming Noel, he wasn't strong enough at first and since he's the person that values human life, if he couldn't put his heart in it then he probably would not been able to muster up the strength to defeat him.
But it just goes to show you, the entire reason why Serah is dead and Noel was able to destroy the heart of Chaos and end the world... was because they went on the journey in the first place.
It's a lot like XIII in the sense, where the world is at danger because you try to save it, but with vastly different outcomes.
Granted, Caius probably would have won if they didn't try to help. But he won anyway, it was all about postponing the inevitable.
Personally, I think it's because Noel and Serah still thought the goal was to drop Cocoon, and the fact that the 'memory' of Noel fighting Caius was from before he got to Valhalla.
I link it to both stupidity and being understandable. All things considered, Noel didn't even begin this journey to stop Caius, it was more about finding Lightning and stopping a disaster (which only turned out later to be Cains-induced).
He clearly didn't understand what Caius was doing and at that time, was going through an extremely emotional time, with Yuel dying, with being the last person on the planet, with wandering so long he wanted to die, with his anger at Caius for leaving them. And then right after, with knowing Serah has the same problem as Yuel.
It was dumb, but it was also a time when everything was being thrown out on him and he really didn't have time to really process it.
And it leaves an empty space of information about the world that can only be filled by the datalog.
This is exactly what I thought, but only more eloquently put than I could. The problem with no towns is that you don't have ways of expanding lore more naturally. And with XIII, you really needed to because the lore was complicated and had a strong amount of new terminology they just throw at you.
Thinking of VII, you always kind of knew what mako energy was, but really got a better feel for it just by talking to people on how they rely on it, or how much it was polluting their land without ringing up to the datalog. XIII makes sense for what it did, but it's still something they had to sacrifice.
XIII-2 still relied on the datalog but all things considered, they did it better. It was more fun anyway.
They kind of almost rectified that with XIII-2, but none of the places really felt like a "hub" to return to, aside from maybe the Steppe.
I think they did rectify it for the most part, I don't mind not having a hub. But as far as getting better tidbits of information, on things like time travel, how it affects life, how the population and culture was like, and Academia- it did its purpose.
I think the only thing I have to argue with is that if you are going to do a time travel story, I want to see how the world develops, not just run around in ruins that don't ever change. It makes the world feel lazy. I would have liked to see how Academia changed from 3AF, to 100AF, to 400AF because that gives me a real feeling on how time has changed. Or even New Bohdum, you only see it in its initial story, and after it is destroyed.
Until then, it's just filter changes in different locals, and occasionally different attitudes from the people.
The crystariums are nearly done so the best thing would be to go for Raspatil to get gil, but I'm a little scared... I remember he kicked my butt last time. That being said, I haven't sold anything yet, and I'm pretty sure I could sell shitloads of stuff to get enough gil for monster materials should I need any.
Oh god Ras and Yomi, I hated them. That said, if you're pretty much leveled up completely, it won't be hard. Fully leveled post game, the only real consistent challenges are the dlc battles.
I also only have three thousand something coins left, I'm gonna have to go back with Sazh and play some poker, then maybe do some DLC's... but whatever I do I'm not on the clock anymore, which is nice.
