oh my god

[seventhe]

I have legit spent the last six hours of my life trying to beat ONE FUCKING BOSS in FFXIII.

Six hours, four tall alcoholic drinks, lots of leveling, and eight thousand strategies later, I have defeated the pope bride.

THE POPE BRIDE OF COCOON

IS A MASSIVE ASSHOLE

HE IS AN ENTIRE BAKER'S DOZEN OF DICKS

I HATE THIS GODDAMN GAME


For the record, the pope bride is the guy in charge of cocoon, and at the end of chapter 9 he morphs from the pope bride into a massive ass robot with one giant freaky robot face and four even more freaky upside down fences hanging from his face/body/something. His name is like Barthandreusiamamassiveasshole or something, and the fact that I have spent six hours fighting this motherfucker and I am still not even sure of his name should tell you something about how was to understand FFXIII is and how much I think of it

The strategy online that says you can protect yourself from Destrudo is a massive asshole liar, though, because Sentinel never takes on him and even if it did Lightning still dies every fucking time. Yes, i was totally leveled in the crystarium as far as i could get. The key is Rav/Rav/Rav and get his chain up almost to 200%, because if you do that his asshole One Hit Wonder decreases in power and you actually live. FANCY THAT. Thank you, other online guide. Thank you, Taurus stubbornness.

I did it with Light/Sazh/Hope, because I could have Haste that way along with all Sazh/Hope's other buffs, plus Rav/Rav/Rav and Com/Rav/Rav for ramping up that chain and thus surviving, plus Syn/Med/Med for OH FUCK ME times afterwards. I LIKE SAZH OKAY. I KNOW NO ONE ELSE DOES

I fucking hate this game. I hate that I just spent six hours on that fucking thing. OH MY GOD WHY WOULD YOU EVER DO THAT TO ANYONE EVER



it's okay world, I beat the boss. and now I will sleep.

Comments

[zen_monk]

Fucking Barthandalus.

How can a game whose battle system is so deceptively simple yet be so frustratingly hard? It's like whatever's being imputed has little effect on the battle.

Good ol' Sazh. He was the voice of reason amid a sea of youthful sullen-ness.

[seventhe]

^^ that is actually a really good way of putting it. The game system seems simple and you think, I just switch between __ and __ and maybe ___ and then SUDDENLY YOU ARE DEAD.

[zen_monk]

I never remembered grinding to feel so unrewarding and laborious as FFXIII made me feel. Quick kills never feel fast enough, and long battles feel like the turnout is less than worthwhile.

One of my main surprises is that I found Hope to actually be more likeable than I thought would be. And how everyone isn't really reacting appropriately to a kid who admits to want to kill someone they know as a raison d'etre.

[seventhe]

The characters in this game were really slow to grow on me. Except Sazh, who I adored instantly and is still my favorite character in the entire game. But all the other characters I really had a very long and hard time getting into. I just didn't LIKE any of them. Even Lightning, who is a certified badass, I was kind of like, "eh that's cool." Snow is a dick. Hope was blah. Vanille was annoying.

But slowly they all started to grow on me? Like, as the story unfolds? And while I am still not even sure I *like* any of them other than Sazh, I care about them, find them interesting, want to know more?

[seventhe]

but really, yeah, I do enjoy the way Lightning is like "Yeah, Hope, killing Snow is a great life goal, I support you and here's a knife" lolol

[zen_monk]

Not just any knife; the knife Serah gave her for her (worst) birthday. That's like Shakespearean levels of intent.

It really does feel like these people are just thrown together out of shared circumstances when probably in every other deal they'd rather leave each other alone. There's not much cohesive group forming or interaction or banter that would make me feel they're real friends. I similarly felt that all the characters sucked and story sucked more. I was never convinced that saving Serah was the OMG MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER LET'S REPLAY SAME FLASHBACK BEACH MONTAGE SCENE IN THE SAME CLOTHES AND STUFF. Barthandalus never felt like an influential villain, though in hindsight the real villains are all the citizens and soldiers trying to kill you so is it some deep metaphor of how society as a whole kills....?

And Lightning = Squall, and that's kind of all right by me because I like they kind of hate everything and are a little too tunnel-visioned to the point of self-centered and that both sort of aren't succeeding their role model soldier archetype.

[thene]

It really does feel like these people are just thrown together out of shared circumstances when probably in every other deal they'd rather leave each other alone. There's not much cohesive group forming or interaction or banter that would make me feel they're real friends.

This is why I loved it. FFXIII felt to me like an awesome deconstruction of the standard RPG 'these bold young heroes meet and become insta-BFFs and go on a quest together!' setup. They're a bunch of people who don't like each other much and who have no idea what their quest is. I appreciate that a lot, and in general the characters (most obviously Snow, Hope and Vanille) provide further subversions of type. When they did finally start getting friendly it felt like they'd earned it, and I got more out of that than I do from the 'suddenly friends' thing in most RPGs.