Final Fantasy XIII

[Olo401]

At what point does it really become feasible to use the alternate roles for the characters? I just hit chapter 10 and all the roles unlocked, but 3000 CP for a level 1 role ability and ~500 CP per battle make it really cost prohibitive.

EDIT: Or are the alternate roles really meant for people that do hardcore grinding?

No, secondary roles are pretty much necessary for the post-game.
I'd suggest you to unlock the first few nodes on Fang's RAV (up to -strike abilities) and SYN (Haste), Lightning's SEN (Elude), Hope and Vanille's COM(Ruin), Snow's SAB(Daze) and Sazh's MED(Cura).

I just reached this point also & ground out a bunch of CP in the Ark area before moving on.. really easy fights for lots of CP there. Tho I hear there's better grinding spots later on when you get down to Gran Pulse.

[Stiker]

I just reached this point also & ground out a bunch of CP in the Ark area before moving on.. really easy fights for lots of CP there. Tho I hear there's better grinding spots later on when you get down to Gran Pulse.

Definitely. In the northern area of the Archylte Steppe, there is a Behemoth King and a large wolf mob fighting each other. Engaging starts up a three-way battle, stagger the Behe, juggle him and don't let him land, and then take out the easier wolf mob. Timing to keep the Behe in the air might be tricky at first attempts, but it isn't too hard once you get the hang of it. Easily one of the best spots to level in the game.

[Eticket]

There's a spot in Orphan's Cradle that is just amazing.

A solo Wladislaus hangs out on a platform alone and gives 32k per kill. You can usually kill him in less than 2 minutes. Just use the elevator to go back and forth between the elevator and save point without encountering any other enemies.

It's a great place to build before the final boss but once you beat the game, you can't go back.

Postgame, take on the Behemoth that Stiker mentioned for a while. Once you get the growth egg and can take on the turtles, there's an Adamantortoise you can farm in Edenhall for some huge CP. Plus, if you plan on upgrading weapons and gear, you'll need to farm turtles anyway.

[Tobi]

Posted this in T3B thread as well, but here's Light's L'cie mark shown on Aya's Lightning costume from The 3rd Birthday for those curious

[Heavencloud]

I fuuucking hate the doom counter on this second Barthalmus fight. Given, I haven't really done much grinding, but everything has been pretty straightforward up to this point. Obviously had to redo a couple of the bosses like Cid but the thing I hate is I can kill the boss but the doom counter just gets me when he's down to like 500k hp :/

[Raen Ryong]

I found Bart v2 hard as well! You have to stay offensive and try your best not to get forced defensive. Never let that chain reset! Try to always have someone building chain on him even when healing/debuffing/etc (remember Van/Hope are your best MEDs and Light is a joke at this point at it). Don't hesitate to use Summons if necessary.

[Heavencloud]

I found Bart v2 hard as well! You have to stay offensive and try your best not to get forced defensive. Never let that chain reset! Try to always have someone building chain on him even when healing/debuffing/etc (remember Van/Hope are your best MEDs and Light is a joke at this point at it). Don't hesitate to use Summons if necessary.

Yeah I noticed that you can spend a lot of time just sitting there healing on him, I think I just gotta try more and maybe finish out my crys. for my chars, probably gonna go back and do some missions in the main area of Pulse first, could use some levels anyhow.

[Eticket]

Bart v.2 strat from the wiki:

Spoiler: show

This strategy requires Vanille as a Saboteur. Also recommended is a character who will be a Sentinel throughout the battle, and Lightning as the party leader. Due to Apoptosis, Synergists are not particularly effective.

Recommended paradigms:

* Dirty Fighting (COM/SEN/SAB)
* Delta Attack (COM/SEN/RAV)
* Mystic Tower (RAV/SEN/RAV)
* Solidarity (COM/SEN/MED)
* Entourage (MED/SEN/RAV)
* Relentless Assault (RAV/COM/RAV)

Barthandelus is vulnerable to Deprotect, Deshell and Imperil; starting with the Dirty Fighting Paradigm Vanille can inflict these status ailments on the fal'Cie, while the Sentinel draws its laser attack and Lightning attacks. Once the debuffs are inflicted, the party should shift to Delta Attack for two turns, then shift to Mystic Tower. Once Barthandelus is staggered, the party should shift back to Delta Attack. If anybody's HP falls into the red zone, the party can shift to Solidarity to heal.

As far as status effects are concerned, Poison and Curse can be safely ignored, but Daze shouldn't as it costs valuable time. If Lightning is inflicted with Daze, the player should shift to Solidarity until Vanille removes it. If Vanille is hit with the status, the player should shift to Entourage with Lightning as the Medic and remove it with Esuna. If Barthandelus uses Apoptosis, the party should shift to Dirty Fighting to reapply the expired buffs, but only if the party is in a relatively healthy state. If Barthandelus begins readying Thanatosian Laughter, the party should shift to Solidarity immediately.

With this strategy, Barthandelus should yield before he has a chance to inflict Doom, even with an under-levelled party, but in case he does cast it, one should use Relentless Assault and go for stagger if he still has over 400,000 HP remaining, and summon an Eidolon just before the Doom counter reaches zero to buy some more time.

After the battle the player obtains a Goddess's Favour, 100,000 CP, and a Crystarium expansion.

[Heavencloud]

I ended up beating it without really looking at a guide, essentially I just upgraded the shit out of all my weapons and used COM/RAV/RAV to chain and then beat the hell out of it with COM/COM/RAV lol. Renew saved me a couple of times, so didn't end up using summons but I got it down well before the doom counter started which made me happy. I actually controlled Fang for the fight just so I could use Slow efficiently as well as def/mag def down. Fun stuff! Only had to retry once with this lame strat due to not having the daze off meds haha

[Heavencloud]

Beat the game today

Liked:
- The story, 10x better than XII, not fantastic, but good enough to make me want to play it all the way through.
- Being able to choose which characters to use (eventually) and not having to level up separately...
- Graphics ofc

Dislike:
- Battle button mashing & the way you target (ie can't cast stuff on 2 diff members in one sequence...)
- No airship... wanted to go back and do shit before ch.13 but walking through all those areas wasn't too inviting :/
- Weapon/armor upgrading system
- Enemy CP distribution. By the end I just skipped 90% of the normal enemies because they're just annoying and not worth the time. Still had no trouble on any boss past Barthan. v2, which really didn't take long to figure out.

Overall, good game, do you guys recommend doing the extra stuff after? Are there like extra cutscenes and stuff you can get or is it just missions? It seemed like there was a lot to be done on GP.

[Eticket]

Beat the game today

Liked:
- The story, 10x better than XII, not fantastic, but good enough to make me want to play it all the way through.
- Being able to choose which characters to use (eventually) and not having to level up separately...
- Graphics ofc

Dislike:
- Battle button mashing & the way you target (ie can't cast stuff on 2 diff members in one sequence...)
- No airship... wanted to go back and do shit before ch.13 but walking through all those areas wasn't too inviting :/
- Weapon/armor upgrading system
- Enemy CP distribution. By the end I just skipped 90% of the normal enemies because they're just annoying and not worth the time. Still had no trouble on any boss past Barthan. v2, which really didn't take long to figure out.

Overall, good game, do you guys recommend doing the extra stuff after? Are there like extra cutscenes and stuff you can get or is it just missions? It seemed like there was a lot to be done on GP.

90% of the stuff on GP is missions. Once you start doing them though, it makes travel around GP a lot easier. ie: Chocobos and teleports.
Besides a couple random short cutscenes, there's not much else to it but grinding though. I enjoyed the challenge aspect of it myself though. A few of the late mission mobs are pretty fun but pretty rough fights.

[SaviorSelf]

Someone who liked the story, that's a shock. Pulse fal cie l'cie cie'th pulse pulse cocoon the end.

As for post game farming, you can do it but the rewards are just pointless. You can grind turtles for hours on end to upgrade weapons to...kill turtles faster cause you just want money. Few missions are interesting in the end, but all in all, you can invest a shit load of time to do a few decent fights in the missions but after that, theres nothing left to do. I guess if you do the missions asap before finishing the game (if thats possible, I dunno, I just skipped through to the end just to finish the game which took 4 months because I just couldn't bear playing that shit anymore) it'll just make everything store wise 100x easier.

[miokomioko]

Someone who liked the story, that's a shock. Pulse fal cie l'cie cie'th pulse pulse cocoon the end.

Naming conventions have nothing to do with the story, champ.

[Souj]

Someone who liked the story, that's a shock. Pulse fal cie l'cie cie'th pulse pulse cocoon the end.

story was good, it's everything else that wasn't.

[archibaldcrane]

Setting up an "inescapable" fate and then escaping it in a cutscene after the final battle with an explanation of "the power was within you all along" is terrible, terrible storytelling.

The initial quandary is fine. The solution to it is an unbelievably lazy deus ex machina cop out.

[Nevex]

Setting up an "inescapable" fate and then escaping it in a cutscene after the final battle with an explanation of "the power was within you all along" is terrible, terrible storytelling.

The initial quandary is fine. The solution to it is an unbelievably lazy deus ex machina cop out.

Spoiler: show

And this is different from the other FF plots how?
You have a guy who becomes a god in FFVI who can selectively kill whoever talks trash about him with the "Judgement Light" except the main cast who has been trying to get rid of him for a year, you have Meteor in FFVII and the Lifestream which appears at the last minute when Holy fails, you have time travel (and we all know how time travel related plots are always bound to be full of contradictions) in FFVIII, you have a final boss that appears out of nowhere in FFIX and so on...
All FFs have their fair share of deus ex machina crap and they're still widely seen as games with good plots.

Compared to the mess the other FF endings are, FFXIII's ending did make sense to me instead. Vanille was scared to death for the whole game to turn into Ragnarok because she thought she would end up crushing Cocoon, but at the end she realizes that if they have the power to destroy it they can also save it. That's it.

One may argue that it was a bit too convenient to overcome that fear right in the face of the final boss instead of thinking about it earlier, but keep in mind that they had no idea that Orphan wanted the destruction of Cocoon like Bart until the very end when they faced it.

The only thing that isn't explained is how they lose their l'Cie brands but I think that was intentionally left out to set the ground for a sequel (which seems very likely).

[Niiro]

What irritated me most about FFXIII's ending, and the whole last 1/4 of the game for that matter, is that the party has no fucking idea what they're doing.

They decide they won't do what Barth wants, they won't kill Orphan, they won't destroy Cocoon.

What do they do?

They do what Barth wants, they actively seek out and kill Orphan, they destroy Cocoon.

Not once do they discuss anything resembling a plan to prevent any of the many horrible things that they are about to cause by doing exactly what the bad guy wants. They just stumble through it all blindly like complete retards.

I can remember the exact moment the plot died for me, it was the moment you first meet Barth, the plot proceeds to shit itself inside out, and virtually nothing interesting happens for the rest of the game. You wander through Pulse for a while and the party decides to save the world by proceeding to do everything required to destroy it.

Brilliant.

Pulse itself was also a ridiculous letdown. I was expecting to meet people there, get the other side of the story, learn wtf is actually going on with the Cocoon/Pulse fal'Cie.

But nope, nada, no people, no answers, what happened to Oerba?
idk
What happened to every single person in the world?
idk
What happened to the civilization that was clearly present before Fang/Vanilles people lived among the ruins they left behind?
idk

For that matter, why the fuck do the Pulse fal'Cie even want to destroy Cocoon? They're not bound to servitude like the ones in Cocoon, what shit do they give?

Who is the Maker and why did he make Cocoon, humans, and the fal'Cie to serve them?

How exactly do 10 million people with no source of food/water/shelter, stripped of their technology and with no survival skills (having been completely dependent on the fal'Cie for centuries) plan to survive in a foreign, incredibly hostile world?

Irritates me so much because the first portion of the game developed good, well motivated, and genuinely interesting characters with a serious dilemma on their hands and they piss it all away in the latter sections to the point where their master plan is to make no significant choices or develop any further and just stumble through a few chapters of random monster killing filler, occasionally peppered with cutscenes full of meaningless platitudes about how they're confident they're gonna fix everything without any fucking clue what they're actually going to do in order to accomplish that.

[Nevex]

For that matter, why the fuck do the Pulse fal'Cie even want to destroy Cocoon? They're not bound to servitude like the ones in Cocoon, what shit do they give?

Not all the Pulse Fal'cie wanted to destroy Cocoon.
Cid and Vanille clearly say that "the purpose of every Fal'Cie's action is to reach the Maker". Titan does that by breeding stronger monsters, Atomos does that by digging tunnels etc.
It's Bart, Orphan and Anima who thought that killing Cocoon's people would summon the Maker.

I enjoyed how FFXIII doesn't serve the whole plot in front of you on a silver plate but it gives you various hints to connect everything. I dunno, lots of people say it's bad storytelling but I thought it was an interesting way to tell a story, especially for a FF game considering how predictable FF plots are. To each his own I guess.

[Raen Ryong]

You wander through Pulse for a while and the party decides to save the world by proceeding to do everything required to destroy it.

Brilliant.

As opposed to risking that Bart can destroy it anyway (as he says to manipulate you into action) and having it be entirely negative. They are doing exactly what they tried to do for the first half or so of the game; trying to salvage the best possible outcome out of a negative situation. Allowing Bart to have his way with Cocoon is undoubtedly the worst possible outcome. Just because it's not a black and white "good" course of action doesn't mean it's not smart...

[Niiro]

As opposed to risking that Bart can destroy it anyway (as he says to manipulate you into action) and having it be entirely negative. They are doing exactly what they tried to do for the first half or so of the game; trying to salvage the best possible outcome out of a negative situation. Allowing Bart to have his way with Cocoon is undoubtedly the worst possible outcome. Just because it's not a black and white "good" course of action doesn't mean it's not smart...

I see what you're saying but what salvaging were they planning to do by killing Orphan?

Barth's plan, if they weren't gonna take him/Orphan out, was to use the cavalry to do it, so why not just fight off the cavalry and leave Barth/Orphan in their little cyberspace fortress of solitude thing to rot.

As far as they knew killing Orphan would kill everyone. So why seek it out and.....kill it? If they staved off the cavalry long enough to actually formulate a plan that wouldn't be completely reliant on "eh, I'm sure it'll be fine" to prevent the end of the world things would have made a lot more sense.