The Energon Pub

I'm getting near the end I think since I'm in chapter 11 and I'm in the middle of a level grinding nightmare to get strong enough to actually kill stuff effectively.

Anyways, overall good game. I do have some dissapointments. There are certain things that Final Fantasy fans come to expect like being able to revisit areas and go to shops instead of a one size fits all floating laptop.

Combat seems pretty decent to me apart from the fact that once the party leader dies, you're screwed.

The crystarium is leaps and bounds better than the FFX sphere grid, but I prefer just leveling up normally. Maybe I'm just weird that way.

I am sad to see that overdrives are not present in the game. Those are always fun to use on enemies.

Does anyone else have issues with the Eidolon's? Usually a summon can turn the tides in battle by completely screwing over whoever you attack, but they seems to be weaker than your main character who summoned it. I have lighting doing about 1500 damage to non staggered enemies, but Odin can only do about 180. Am I missing something here?

Yup.

Summons in 13 are difficult to use.

Things to know:

-They are only as strong as a character's total levels. So, if you've not opened up and near completed ALL job types for the character, they are inherently weak.
-The main use of the summons is to revive a party/dodge a massive attack, until...
-You need to defeat any of the -toise enemies that have "legs". I summon will immediately drop them for full attack.
-Now, the trick in all other combat is this: Summon...but NEVER transform. Let the timer run out and let the Eidolan leave on its own. Why? Because in doing so, the stagger gauge does NOT reset. When the vehicle mode leaves, the gauge resets. This is really important because now you CAN turn the tide. When your party is beat down because you fought too long trying to stagger, do your summon. The Eidolan will drive the gauge up big time then leave with your party healed and the monster on its heels.

Summons are lousy in a way, but their uses are specifically good if you know where to look. Also, I seem to remember that doing missions prior to beating the game is almost pointless. You get an item at the end that makes the mission work a good deal more reasonable.

Ask me any questions about the game. It's one of like three that I got a Platinum on.

Yeah, the only reason I've been doing missions and grinding is because I don't want any surprises to hit me in the face when I get ready to finish chapter eleven.

Well, summons now make more sense, but I'm still dissapointed in their abilities for combat. I guess I'll see what they can do when I get my characters role levels maxed.

All my characters are currently role level 3. They are approaching level 4 in at least 2 of their roles each. Should I be strong enough to take down one of those ridiculous elephant like things walking around? I'm guessing those are worth a ridiculous amount of CP.

I want to try to get my ultimate weapons before I take on Orphan so what's best to kill in the area where I can harvest parts, gil, and CP?

robofreak wrote:Yeah, the only reason I've been doing missions and grinding is because I don't want any surprises to hit me in the face when I get ready to finish chapter eleven.

Well, summons now make more sense, but I'm still dissapointed in their abilities for combat. I guess I'll see what they can do when I get my characters role levels maxed.

All my characters are currently role level 3. They are approaching level 4 in at least 2 of their roles each. Should I be strong enough to take down one of those ridiculous elephant like things walking around? I'm guessing those are worth a ridiculous amount of CP.

I want to try to get my ultimate weapons before I take on Orphan so what's best to kill in the area where I can harvest parts, gil, and CP?

Never ever ever harvest CP unless you are absolutely stuck.

That's first off. You grind money in this game by killing the giant monsters you see walking around and taking your 1 in 4 (or 1 in 16 chance without the right catalog) of getting a platinum ignot to sell.

You would be hard pressed to have more than 2 ultimate weapons before finishing the game and each character has either 8 or 9...so yea.

You'll never grind parts either, you'll buy 36 barbed tails, then whatever awesome mech you can afford, apply them in that order and do it again.

In a rush here so, lastly, you can maybe kill the babies at this point, but not the mama's, don't really bother with it all. You'll just get mad right now.

Interesting. What's wrong with harvest CP? Is there a downside to boosting my stats?

It sounds like I have a chance of killing the baby elephant things, but I need to figure out a strategy to kill them. What do you mean about not having the right catalog?

I guess I'm missing something with the ultimate weapons. I thought all of the weapons started as one thing, but the ultimate form was univeral for each of them. Am I wrong on that? I've pretty much been focusing on only one weapon for each of them until I can get some of those platinum ingots wherever they may be.

robofreak wrote:Interesting. What's wrong with harvest CP? Is there a downside to boosting my stats?

It sounds like I have a chance of killing the baby elephant things, but I need to figure out a strategy to kill them. What do you mean about not having the right catalog?

I guess I'm missing something with the ultimate weapons. I thought all of the weapons started as one thing, but the ultimate form was univeral for each of them. Am I wrong on that? I've pretty much been focusing on only one weapon for each of them until I can get some of those platinum ingots wherever they may be.

The smaller Adamant- family members are fairly easy, and you'll need to fight one as a boss later on. If you can fight them now, you shouldn't have much trouble for a while. And no, there's no downside to making your characters more powerful. this isn't like 8, where enemies will scale to your level. The larger ones are more difficult, but Vanille's Full ATB Skill (Which you won't get until later) along with her personal summon, as well as a few other odds and ends, can kill them VERY quick. They give out very nice prizes, too.

Now, for my thoughts on the game that I know Counterpunch isn't going to like but damn it I beat the game so I can say this:

The only reason this isn't the worst Final Fantasy game in the main series, is because 14 was made. I haven't played 14, but Square apologized for it being so crappy, so I take that as a sort of sign as to it's quality. And 13 isn't the worst in the franchise, because both 14 and X-2 exist. Also I did not care for the premise of Crystal Chronicles, but I didn't play that one either.

But as for 13:

-The music is a let down, with only a few memorable tracks, and inexplicably the removal of several of the series more memorable recurring tracks.

-The story can be really good in places...and really weak most of the time. How am I supposed feel sad Nora died when they never even explained who that was? How am I supposed to feel like I need to save Serah when she has less than 10 minutes of screen time? And the ending is just a wall banger. First off, they declare they are going to save Cocoon, then immediately make a beeline to go and kill Orphan despite knowing that it's totally contradictory to their plans. Then, they go on about how you shouldn't just wait for miracles to happen...then Ragnarok pulls a Deus Ex Machina. It's like the entire ending is based on saying you aren't going to do something then immediately doing it. Seriously, Lightning even shouts "Find your own path to hell!" to Orphan while they are knowingly attacking Orphan!

-And in addition to that, they just drop you into the story, and most of the time, they expect you to look everything up in the data log. Which is just bad storytelling. I should not have to do a wiki search to get most of the info on what's going on.

-The combat is crappy as all hell. Oh sure, it's fast and fluid, but the fact that they had to sacrifice control over 2/3 of your party kind of undermines that. If they slowed it down to the point where I could easily control the entire party at once, like...well, every RPG ever made, it wouldn't be a problem, in fact it may have been the best ever. But I can't even switch the party leader on the fly like, say, 12. So if the party leader dies, it's endgame. The combat wasn't as bad as 12, though, which I guess is a step up.

-Like I need to explain this one: The game is one big tunnel. Oh sure, you get a giant, sweeping landscape and big open areas when you get to Gran Pulse, and that's nice, but it does not excuse the entire game being a tunnel, especially since, once you get to that big tower, unless you double back, the game goes back to being a giant tunnel until you get to Orphan's cradle.

-The characters and their development...is one of the good points of the game, actually. Hope stops being a whiny bitch, Vanille shuts the hell up, Lightning stop being a bitch, and...wait, did Snow, Sazh, and Fang get character development? Snow admits guilt for Nora's death, but that's practically just in passing and his character doesn't change. And outside of incidents with their summons, Sazh and Fang don't even have development. Hm. Well, half the cast develops, better than nothing. (Oh, FF1, you don't even have characters)

TL;DR version: Music sucks, story is weak, gameplay sacrifices control for style, the world is a limited tunnel except for one location, but the characters are okay.

So...yeah, that's my opinion of it. It's not a terrible game, but it is a terrible Final Fantasy.

I still haven't been able to take out an Adamant. I'm going to guess the small ones are the ones where I only have the option to attack it as a whole.

The combat system where you only control the party leader does frustrate me. I also don't like that only the Ravager will follow the Commando. There are times when I would prefer it if the Commando class would all willingly unite against one enemy when there's more on the screen.

The linearality of the game is strange compared to other FF titles. I miss villages and shops the specialize in specific stuff.

I do like the gameplay more than 12 though, but I prefer 12 in the aspect of being able to go everywhere. XIII does have one major thing against it which is the fact that the characters actually play a role in the story. Anyone else notice how you could edit the FFXII team out of the story and it wouldn't affect it in the slightest?

Now what I really want is for Spuare Enix to get off their lazy butt and redo FFVII. That will make my day when that is announced and I might die happy when I play and finish it.

robofreak wrote:I do like the gameplay more than 12 though, but I prefer 12 in the aspect of being able to go everywhere. XIII does have one major thing against it which is the fact that the characters actually play a role in the story. Anyone else notice how you could edit the FFXII team out of the story and it wouldn't affect it in the slightest?

Yeah, that's basically how it's been since VI. VII was unique is that each character had their own dialogue, so switching, say, Barret out for Vincent, they'd both give their own dialogue, but again, ti wouldn't have that much of an impact on anything.

robofreak wrote:Now what I really want is for Spuare Enix to get off their lazy butt and redo FFVII. That will make my day when that is announced and I might die happy when I play and finish it.

They released it on PSN, and it's a pretty common belief that they're making so much money from that that they don't need to remake it.

The reason you don't farm CP is because you will earn all of that along the way to getting the Gil you need and doing missions.

Farm Gil, never CP. By the time I was done with farming Gil, I had all my characters maxed in all roles with the max amount of carried over, unusable CP.

I think it's called Collector's Catalog, it's an item that gives you a much higher chance of getting item drops. The only real money in the game is from Perfume, Gold Nugget, and Platinum Ignots. You need to beat enemies to get that and you need the catalog to make sure it doesn't take a billion hours.

As for the Ultimate weapons, yes, each character has 8 or so weapons with 2 "level"s of improvement. The third level is the character's ultimate form...HOWEVER, depending on which weapon you use to get there, you end up with different stats attached to it. ( I think, might need to check the guide on that )

At any rate, the ones that really matter are to make sure that Light takes the Lioheart route and Hope takes the Hawkeye route. I personally gave Fang the weapon with max stats but locked stagger build because she was always the commander and when she wasn't, she was the ravager who can build stagger regardless of the weapon.

Sazh I flaked on and I can't remember which he got. I think I did two for him. Vanille got the one that increases her Sab effects. Snow got the one that was either the most basic and straight forward or the one that passes along his Sentinel abilities to others. I can't remember, I did one of those, the wife played out the other.

Platinum Ignots are the "common" drop for the Adamantoise, you get one in every 4 or so you beat. (with Collector Catalog attached)

That means I need to find the collector catalog. I don't have it.

What's been doing is farming bomb cores from Bittius. You get 5 core from him everytime you fight him and 10 fights will move a weapon from level 1 to 2 and 2 to 3.

I didn't know that about lightning. Which weapon creates Lionheart. I've been using the Gladius and now have Helter Skelter which is at level 28.

I did get Hope right. He's got a level 19 Hawkeye.

Malboro Wand for Vanille. Definitely that. I dunno about Lightning, but I ended up crafting Ultima Weapon by accident, with I think Blazefire Saber as the base.

Counterpunch wrote:The reason you don't farm CP is because you will earn all of that along the way to getting the Gil you need and doing missions.

Farm Gil, never CP. By the time I was done with farming Gil, I had all my characters maxed in all roles with the max amount of carried over, unusable CP.

I wouldn't say never farm CP. Ultimate weapons aren't even necessary for completion of the game, nor are shrouds for that matter. I never farmed Gil, only CP, and I beat the game just fine. Orphan's Cradle was a pain in the ass, but my motto with any RPG is, if you can't win, start grinding your levels until you do.

Counterpunch wrote:I think it's called Collector's Catalog, it's an item that gives you a much higher chance of getting item drops. The only real money in the game is from Perfume, Gold Nugget, and Platinum Ignots. You need to beat enemies to get that and you need the catalog to make sure it doesn't take a billion hours.

[...]

Platinum Ignots are the "common" drop for the Adamantoise, you get one in every 4 or so you beat. (with Collector Catalog attached)

Opened with Vanille's summon, had Sazh and Fang spam buffs and debuffs respectively, then spammed Death until either the Adamantoise was dead or I was. Platinum Ingots were fairly common drops. Or that other thing, the one that upgrades your weapons. I didn't even need the Collector's Catalog, I just needed to grind to get my TP back up. A fairly inattentive Behemoth helped with that.

EDIT: I want to add two more points to my big review thingy:

-The scene with the Chocobos just felt tacked on. "Of course it's Final Fantasy! Here, look at these Chocobos! And here's their theme, heavily remixed to only be barely recognizable--no no, you can't ride them. I mean, where would you even go? Down this hall?"

-The visuals are goddamn amazing. But then that's par for the course in this series. I'm still amazed by VIII and IX's FMVs.

-X had the same Tunnel problem, but X also had vastly superior combat and storytelling.

X was awesome except for the ending and the sphere grid. I got to the Spectral Gatekeeper and couldn't win because I messed up the sphere grid somehow and don't have the motivation to restart the game.

I just noticed something interesting and it's highly possible that Shadowman is about to throw some random bit of info at me that disproves this, but I noticed one of Lightning's weapons is the Organyx. I memory serves properly, I don't think any other FF character besides Cloud Strife has wielded the Organyx blade. Just thought it was cool that they did in fact make a throwback to VII.

Anyways, PSN with VII. That's gotta be a joke if that's why they aren't making VII. That game is a guaranteed best seller if they redid it. Frikkin goldmine if you ask me.

Anyways, back onto XIII now that my rant is over.

I liked the Chocobo scene, but it did feel out of place. I'm thinking that this is more of a Final Fantasy title that shouldn't have used throwbacks to other games. They could have very well made it a Final Fantasy without any of the previous things that the fandom loves, but then they'd have to deal with fandom backlash.

Using Vanille to spam death is really only useful (in general) in one place in the game: Neochu. You will see. AND, you will hate.

That aside, spamming Death at the turtle-elephant monsters ends up being really inefficient. Once your party is situated right and you get a bit of practice in, you'll be killing them in under 2 minutes outright, or in less than a minute or so with a summon.

Right Right...more stuff that's coming back to me now. The reason for grinding money and more importantly component drops is to get things like Kaiser Kunckles and Power Gloves to help you with the limit break stuff.

None of that stuff is really necessary for beating the game, but it is necessary for all the extra stuff afterwords.

Counterpunch wrote:Using Vanille to spam death is really only useful (in general) in one place in the game: Neochu. You will see. AND, you will hate.

That aside, spamming Death at the turtle-elephant monsters ends up being really inefficient. Once your party is situated right and you get a bit of practice in, you'll be killing them in under 2 minutes outright, or in less than a minute or so with a summon.

Speak for yourself, I Death-spammed Adamantoises and it worked just fine. Oh, sure, it'd take a few tries to get it right, but it's not like there's a penalty for losing in this game.

Counterpunch wrote:Right Right...more stuff that's coming back to me now. The reason for grinding money and more importantly component drops is to get things like Kaiser Kunckles and Power Gloves to help you with the limit break stuff.

None of that stuff is really necessary for beating the game, but it is necessary for all the extra stuff afterwords.

This game doesn't use Limit Breaks, (Note that I don't count Full ATB Skills as Limit Breaks, since they don't fit the description) strength-boosting items aren't going to help them that much. I used Army of One once,except, like, Omnislash, or Lion Heart, or even Blitz Ace, but no. Just a bunch of sword strikes, none of which were anywhere near as powerful as I could have had Lightning perform normally as Commando.

robofreak wrote:Anyways, back onto XIII now that my rant is over.

I liked the Chocobo scene, but it did feel out of place. I'm thinking that this is more of a Final Fantasy title that shouldn't have used throwbacks to other games. They could have very well made it a Final Fantasy without any of the previous things that the fandom loves, but then they'd have to deal with fandom backlash.

One of the problems people have with this game is that it's so unrecognizable as Final Fantasy. And when they did try to throw something in there to prove this really is Final Fantasy, it was the Chocobo scene, which comes out of nowhere and is never spoken about again.

Shadowman wrote:One of the problems people have with this game is that it's so unrecognizable as Final Fantasy. And when they did try to throw something in there to prove this really is Final Fantasy, it was the Chocobo scene, which comes out of nowhere and is never spoken about again.

You exert a large amount of energy over a game that you don't like.

I've been letting it slide out of well, boredom and a complete sense of pointlessness to even bantering about it with you, but these last two things don't even make sense to me.

Final Fantasy is a continually evolving math based means for story telling. The only ties that bind it are crystal legends and an air ship or 40. Cutesy **** like having a Chocobo or Cactuar in every game doesn't define the series. FF13 is a Final Fantasy game because it is a grandiose crystal legend. That's all any of them amount to.

Your Chocobo statement confuses me because in addition to Sazh's chick, there's the scene on Pulse, the mission to get a Chocobo, and the subsequent riding them around Gran Pulse for the rest of the game.

But seriously, this thread does not need to devolve into another discussion of the game's merits and I for one have said more than enough on the matter. If you want to argue over whether it's a good game or not, take it elsewhere and let this thread be for game mechanic questions etc.

Counterpunch wrote:

Shadowman wrote:One of the problems people have with this game is that it's so unrecognizable as Final Fantasy. And when they did try to throw something in there to prove this really is Final Fantasy, it was the Chocobo scene, which comes out of nowhere and is never spoken about again.

You exert a large amount of energy over a game that you don't like.

I exert a large amount of energy over everything that doesn't matter. You should know this about me by now.

Counterpunch wrote:I've been letting it slide out of well, boredom and a complete sense of pointlessness to even bantering about it with you, but these last two things don't even make sense to me.

Final Fantasy is a continually evolving math based means for story telling. The only ties that bind it are crystal legends and an air ship or 40. Cutesy **** like having a Chocobo or Cactuar in every game doesn't define the series. FF13 is a Final Fantasy game because it is a grandiose crystal legend. That's all any of them amount to.

I know what you're saying. But it doesn't excuse a game from being crap. How about this. What do you think it would be like if they made a new Transformers series, but knowingly rejected everything that made the series good and popular in the first place, and making it only bare recognizable as a Transformers series? How do you think that would fly?

There's also a wide variety of themes. Musical, for instance, but other themes as well. "Memory" often plays a large role in the story and characterization. A variety of characters, mechanics, etc. There's also...you know, being High Fantasy? That's kind of how the series got it's name. Not every series embodies it since 6, but up until 13 they've been doing a good job of blending the sci-fi elements with the fantasy elements.

Counterpunch wrote:Your Chocobo statement confuses me because in addition to Sazh's chick, there's the scene on Pulse, the mission to get a Chocobo, and the subsequent riding them around Gran Pulse for the rest of the game.

Must not have gotten that one. Where is it located?

Counterpunch wrote:But seriously, this thread does not need to devolve into another discussion of the game's merits and I for one have said more than enough on the matter. If you want to argue over whether it's a good game or not, take it elsewhere and let this thread be for game mechanic questions etc.

Um...read the OP. More than half of Robofreak's post is a discussion of the game's merits. I think that indicates this wasn't meant purely as a help thread.

I get it, you like Final Fantasy XIII. That's fine. But that doesn't mean no one can say anything bad about it. It was easily one of the least popular in the franchise. "Evolution" does not excuse rejecting everything that made the series good and popular in the first place.

You have a right to your opinion, I have a right to mine.

I found a gil farming solution. Here's what I did.

Mission 7 has a Undying that has a common drop of a tetraric Crown and a rare drop of a tetraric tiara. The sell values are 15,000 and 40,000 respectively. The drop is infrequent at best, but a level maxed collecor catalog increased the odd enough for me to get a second catalog which I have maxed and has made getting those big ticket items quite a bit easier. I'm going to get a third to equip to my party which should make getting those things very easy.

In about 5 minutes of farming those items I was able to max out the level 1 stages of the Power Circle and Belladonna. Now I just need the catalysts to move forward with them.

Those Adamantoise are ridiculous. I can get about 1/4 of the HP knocked out and then I die.

robofreak wrote:I found a gil farming solution. Here's what I did.

Mission 7 has a Undying that has a common drop of a tetraric Crown and a rare drop of a tetraric tiara. The sell values are 15,000 and 40,000 respectively. The drop is infrequent at best, but a level maxed collecor catalog increased the odd enough for me to get a second catalog which I have maxed and has made getting those big ticket items quite a bit easier. I'm going to get a third to equip to my party which should make getting those things very easy.

In about 5 minutes of farming those items I was able to max out the level 1 stages of the Power Circle and Belladonna. Now I just need the catalysts to move forward with them.

Those Adamantoise are ridiculous. I can get about 1/4 of the HP knocked out and then I die.

I don't think catalog effects stack actually.

Are you going with the 36 barbed tail route when item leveling to get the max multiplier? Then hitting it with mech merch?

Also, learn how to fight Adamanchelids first. Then tackle the bigger ones. You can daze the **** out of Adamanchelids and they have easy to acquire gold dust and gold nuggets for decent cash.

Catalog effects that are different don't stack, but the same one will.

I've got 3 collector catalogs going and I'm getting stuff from every fight unlike how I used to even with one attached. Make sure you max out their level, but don't catalyze them.

robofreak wrote:Catalog effects that are different don't stack, but the same one will.

I've got 3 collector catalogs going and I'm getting stuff from every fight unlike how I used to even with one attached. Make sure you max out their level, but don't catalyze them.

I'm not sure...you might just be on a lucky streak. I think I got two Trapezohedrons in a row once. I even got two Dark Matters in the span of a half hour another time. But everything I've read says that collector catalogs don't stack.

Counterpunch wrote:

robofreak wrote:Catalog effects that are different don't stack, but the same one will.

I've got 3 collector catalogs going and I'm getting stuff from every fight unlike how I used to even with one attached. Make sure you max out their level, but don't catalyze them.

I'm not sure...you might just be on a lucky streak. I think I got two Trapezohedrons in a row once. I even got two Dark Matters in the span of a half hour another time. But everything I've read says that collector catalogs don't stack.

Well, that makes me a little sad. I thought the stacking worked. My thinking on the stacking caem from what I had read as well. It seemed like everyone tried to use a variety of catalogs in order to get what they wanted. My logic lead me to believe that stacking the same one would increase the drop rate unlike using different ones. I guess my logic is flawed though.

Anyways. What the heck drops Trapezohedrons? I saw them on R&D and the are like 2 million gil. I need like 10 of those right now for all my ultimate weapons. (Snow needs his Save the Queen)

Adamantchelids still slaughter me, but with the second form of Barthendelus dead and a Crystarium expansion, I think I'll be able to do it. It's too bad I'm in chapter 12 though. I hope I'll be able to backtrack soon. I have been very careful so far about making sure I complete all the Cieth stone missions as well. I was amazed at the amount of stuff I was given in Oerba by rebuilding that little robot that keeps tracks of my kills.

Adamantoise, the Adamanchelid's big bad ass brother. They make Emerald Weapon look like a chump, and if you aren't careful, they'll one-shot you before you can launch an attack. At least Emerald gave you the chance to fight back...

Shadowman wrote:Adamantoise, the Adamanchelid's big bad ass brother. They make Emerald Weapon look like a chump, and if you aren't careful, they'll one-shot you before you can launch an attack. At least Emerald gave you the chance to fight back...

To this day, I still have not killed Emerald or Ruby Weapon...

Shadowman wrote:Adamantoise, the Adamanchelid's big bad ass brother. They make Emerald Weapon look like a chump, and if you aren't careful, they'll one-shot you before you can launch an attack. At least Emerald gave you the chance to fight back...

Word.

Those are the guys you will be fighting...A LOT.

ah, one more thing Robotfreak...you can't go back until right before the end of the game. Also, don't bother with stone missions until you can 5-Star them. That's what matters. Raktavija x2 baby... Gotta level up son!

But yea, when I was at my best at that game, I was taking down Adamantoise in 1:30 or less. There's another...harder version of those too and I think that's where you get Dark Matter from. If I remember right, you need 6 Dark Matter total. Those were fun.

Most of my Cieth Stone mission are 4-5 stars. The Undying I had to kill in Taejin's tower killed that though. I had to slowly grind away his health because of how much damage he was doing to me.

Raktavija? Is that some kind of component?

So I'm guessing I'll have the option to go back right before the fight against Orphan? If that the case then I feel better. I want to take out an Adamantchelid.