Ereshkigal. And quite honestly, I had more trouble with him than I did with Aeronite, which is surprising because after my first few failed attempts at that all I kept reading about was how much easier Ereshkigal is.
To clarify (and sound a bit pompous probably, but hey ho) I have a ritual when I buy new FF's. I always buy the game and the piggyback guide. I do a playthrough without the guide then check it before the end to see if I've missed anything. Because I had literally nothing left to do on day 9 or so, I opened the guide then and had a read to see what I'd missed. Apparently I did pretty well, there was only one quest I missed and it was the one with the chocobo eater in the chaos infusion that randomly appears on canopus farms on the wildlands. So I went and did it
Anyway, I tried aeronite twice without the guide, then read the suggested strategy in the guide, which didn't help too much. Then I read some strategies online, which also didn't help much. In the end I went with overclock spamming after the 4th stagger, but at first I was having trouble staggering him quickly enough at all. The main issue is that he's actually quite hard to stagger, yet you're supposed to do it really quickly? Ugh. But managed it in the end.
Now "ultimate" dungeon stuff, first of all I have to say I love the music. It's music from XIII's final chapter almost the whole way down, and it changes depending on what floor you're on. On the last 5 or so floors it plays Barthandelus's theme! <3. Also when you're fighting Ereshkigal its normal boss music until you've very very nearly killed him, when he charges a move that will definitely kill you - which is when the epic final boss music from XIII-2 plays. That was awesome.
I got Ereshkigal down to about 3% of his HP on two attempts and he wiped me out. I would have won the match far earlier had it not been for the fact that I only have the one ether that's in the room right before it. And I could have won much easier if I had an en-something potion because the damage from that is almost doubled by imperil, which he had inflicted. The plan was to spam physical stuff like heavy slash (and therefore either Artemis's Arrows from the Soldier of Peace or Slayer from Cloud's outfit) but that didn't work because the big orange hit numbers stick around for like 3 seconds after you get him to a 4th stagger level, so that's when you have to spam overclock.
Anyway, the key to winning the battle is making sure he's constantly slowed and poisoned. There are strats that say this but don't put enough emphasis on it. I'm playing on normal and I've noticed that most strategies are like "do this and he'll die" - and it's just not correct. Maybe if you're playing on easy those work. I even sounded off on some random guy's YouTube video about it. He has like 3 times the HP on normal and about 5 of his moves will kill you in one hit.
The main issue with him is that he completely ignores defence. The ghostly hood for example is completely useless. So is guarding. You can't even perfect guard any of his attacks (just the normal ones like blizzaga or whatever, nothing that's specific to him) so it's all just about how fast you can pull certain things off and keeping efficient.
One of the best things to do is, during the second and third stagger he's only capable of one move (it's actually just when the little broken magic symbol is up, he can only spam one move for a while) so I used attack on equilibrium then switched to cast aerora on another, then repeated that process until the wave was red then staggered him with heavy slash on whatever schema I've got Caius's sword equipped on since it's like insta-stagger at that stage.
At one point I tried to leave to go find an enaero potion but Ruffian stopped selling them and I didn't want to waste my EP teleporting around. I was hoping to bump into a NPC selling an elixir or an ether so I could just spam more overclock to win. It would still have been technically challenging, just easier.
Anyway yeah, that was really fucking hard. The battle system in this game needs a developed technical skill that no other FF has ever had, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. XIII and XIII-2 almost dipped in that direction but this game requires that you precisely remember which button corresponds to what ability on whatever schemata, and you have to remember the schemata positions, and you have to remember the order they're in because you start on one, and there are a million different combinations so if you change one thing in one schemata you've totally fucked with your own chi. And often enemies require really specific abilities to stagger so it can be a bit of a bitch switching them out then remembering what button to press.
That said, I can't complain about the variety, because it's pretty much endless. I do like that you can kind of do what you want. And I'm actually looking forward to weapon and shield upgrading being unlocked in new game plus, because I can just beast out the weapons I like the look of
. Like the buster sword and brotherhood for example
.
I'm going to spend the rest of the in-game day beating the last ones I skipped in the ultimate lair. You can skip a few floors if you get a good battle rating, but the clock runs in battles in this place so I might as well see if I can get anything good out of the enemies that aren't extinct yet.
I was looking forward to some gushing about
I don't think I even have half of 13-2's.