Neverending Final Fantasy Posts

At least this one isn't about XIV!


I beat FFXIII-2 a few days ago, and thought I'd put my thoughts down. First off - it was incredibly easy. It may have been the easiest Final Fantasy game I have ever played. It reuses the battle system from the first XIII, which I adore, so I knew what I was doing going in, which I suppose lessons the difficulty somewhat (but then who would be playing XIII-2 before playing XIII, anyway?). This time around, you have two permanent characters, Serah and Noel, and the ability to recruit monsters. You do this by defeating them in battle, and doing better in battle makes it more likely that you'll recruit them afterwards. It honestly didn't seem too hard to recruit them, when I wanted one it would only take a few battles, typically.


I don't really like leveling the monsters, though. You have to use consumables to level them up, which are either found or can eventually be bought. This makes leveling them really weird, because when they "rank up," they need to use different consumables, so you'll usually blow them through the first rank then they sit at that level until you've collected some of the next ranks items, which might be hours later in the game. I only ended up using like 5 monsters the whole game, though I think my final team ended up pretty good. I had a level 30s-ish Flanitor who was a MED (with an AWESOME healing "Feral Link," which is basically a Limit Break), a level 20 goblin thing that I can't remember the name of who was a RAV, and a level 63 Chocobo who was an (unbelievably strong) level 63 COM. Notice the level disparities there? The goblin thing couldn't level up past 20 because it had the "Early Peaker" trait, though it was useful through the endgame. I could have leveled the Flanitor more but didn't really see the need, as he helped me get through the tougher fights including the last boss with his awesome Feral Link. The Chocobo probably didn't need to be leveled up as much as it was, but I had the mats and decided to blow all the gil I had before the last boss fight, because why not? Just playing through the game, I completed the RAV and COM Crystariums for both Serah and Noel, and a bunch of levels in the other jobs. This was more than enough to get me through the main story (I only collected 38 of the 160 fragments, so I didn't do too many sidequests). I've heard the last boss can be tough, but I didn't think he was too bad, just took a while (and had Noel not had the HP he had, I wouldn't have beat him).


Unlike the first FFXIII, which I think had a perfect difficulty curve, XIII-2 was a piece of cake right out of the gate. Even though you're wandering around, figuring out where to go based on the clues you get from the nonsense story (even more nonsensical than the first XIII, if you can believe that!), you never really run into anything you can't handle, so long as you don't run from fights. And with a battle system as fun as this one, I never did (except a Behemoth that randomly spawns in the last effing dungeon, which is absolute BS as he basically one shots your party).


My playtime was about 25 hours, which is a great length, I thought. Someday, I'll come back to this and the first XIII and try some of the harder fights, because the battle system is so good, I want to see how good I can get with it.


I've also, as of last night, unlocked all the characters in Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call. This is crazy for me, because I never thought I'd get as addicted as I am to that game. I play it mostly while travelling, and over the holiday break it's all I did when I wasn't hanging out with people in my hometown. I went from like 47,000 Rhythmia in mid-December to over 150,000 as of last night (Rhythmia is what you get as you play the game, which gradually gives you stuff like shards if you're still unlocking characters or various profile sounds and things. You usually get anywhere from 80 to 200 Rhythmia per song, to give you an idea of how much I've played). I've put about 55 hours into it total which is about 45 more than I ever thought I would. I've been leveling up a party and resetting their levels when they hit 99 to increase their CP (ability points), which for my current party of Locke, Terra, Edgar, and Chaos has happened 5 times. I've been leveling up Terra's magic stat and Locke's agility stat in the Collectacard Crystarium, which is where you use cards you've been collecting while playing to boost their stats. At this point, I've almost gotten Terra's magic to 999, which is ridiculous, as she already blows through like four enemies every time she casts Ultima.


I don't know how long I'll play Curtain Call, but the music is so good and the game is so fun to play, that maybe one day I'll try to get all the trophies in it. That would involve me mastering Ultimate mode, though, which might be too tall an order for me, because some of those songs are just nonsense that I can't make heads or tails of. The FMS stages tend to be beatable, though (the levels where it's one character running are easier to stay on top of, because there's fewer notes coming at you at once).


I've also been playing more in button mode, which is kind of nice since I can play longer without killing my wrists while playing touch mode. Buttons are great for the really fast notes and the slide notes on FMS stages, but a lot of arrow notes coming at once can be difficult for me to hit fast enough. Touch mode tends to be easier for those things. I think I'm going to try to get good at button mode, hopefully enough to attempt to beat all the Ultimate songs (shudder).


tl;dr I like Final Fantasy games