Gaming Final Fantasy Saga (FF7 Rebirth Spoilers TAGGED)

I've recently been playing Final Fantasy XII and am enjoying it quite a bit. Here's hoping it doesn't completely fall apart like its successor.

 

You never played XII, Reynar? What stopped you?

 

I've kinda come full circle on Vanille. Originally I had her in because she got better cure spells earlier than Hope. But when Hope got them, I switched her out, only using her for Death. Mainly because Hope was a little better Ravager, But. I'm back to using Vanille again. Some of the optional enemies towards the end (like upgraded turtles) are so tough, I need her medic full time. She has more survivability than Hope, and I upgraded her curing potency wand. Its kinda like a Light/Apollo's staff in FFXI. I throws out some awesome cures. Needless to say, I love her now. I still switch Hope back in for the weaker stuff tho.

Right now I'm working on upgrading Snow's ultimate weapon, the one with the improved Sentinel ability.

Also, I take back what I said about Sazh earlier. Apparently he can become quite the powerhouse at the end of the game, even eclipsing Fang. Basically I use everybody now, depending on the situation.

 

How so on Sazh? As a COM or a RAV? I have him on rotation still due to haste and Bar/En spells. Need a weapon for him, thinking either the Spica Defenders or that one that extends stagger 30 percent.

 

I played it back when it came out and actually didn't like it, but my taste in games was vastly different back then than it is now. There are a few games I've played that I didn't enjoy initially, but gave them another try later on and loved 'em (Fallout 3 springs to mind). XII is one such game.

I just got out of the Nalbina Dungeons/Barheim Passage and out into the Estersand, and am currently tracking down a couple Hunts before I take Basch to Balthier. Honestly, there are single lines in this game that completely destroy the entire script of Final Fantasy XIII. Extremely well written story, I can't wait to progress further. And I would be further if grinding wasn't so addictive.

Like I said, though; I had the same feeling of "Wow, this game is incredible!" during the first half of XIII, and wound up strongly disliking it (still can't push myself to finish). Really hoping XII doesn't take a similar turn for the worst, especially since the cast of characters is so much more interesting.

 

It doesn't. Right up till the end it maintains its sophisticated storyline...

...but keep in mind that Vaan is not the main character. People who hated the story always seemed to misunderstand that. He's the perspective character. Him and Penelo are Threepio and Artoo, in a sense. In fact, the character design generally is very much influenced by SW, I don't know if you noticed yet.

 

I actually did notice that I was getting a Star Wars vibe from the game. Maybe that's why I'm enjoying it so much.

 

Sazh ultimately as RAV, using Cold Blood, but here's the catch: you go for a STR build instead of a magic build, even tho he is on RAV.

Upgrading his Hi-Powers gun for such a build is a good idea. He absolutely destroys stuff. Not sure who is stronger now, he or Fang. The two of them together is even better. Especially if you debuff first.

You can kill Adamantoises earlier without using the death trick.

His COM is good too, especially with Hi-Powers Blitz on weaker stuff.

I hate GameFAQs boards with a passion, but there's a more detailed thread on it here:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=928790&topic=54106739

Edit: I've also underestimated Army of One until now. Wish I had been using that more often. It and Cold Blooded are similar. They're for capping out the damage when an enemy is staggered. You can actually switch to COM in the middle of the animation, while they still do the moves, but they will be doing COM damage instead of RAV damage.

 

I'm getting this strange feeling that FFII is easier on the PSP than it was on the GBA. My HP is so high and the damage I take from spells means I can just sit there taking everything thrown at my until they run out of MP. I figure that this is a great way of boosting HP and magic defence. The thing is, I've taken level 8 magic from three monsters until they've all run out of MP and I've not needed more than a quick Cure or two. *shrugs* I'm not complaining as I'm really enjoying it, it just seems slightly odd somehow.

 

Tried to kill a turtle last night, using the lower spec Death version. Went in with Van (using marlboro wand), Fang and Light. Pulled out the summon, debuffed the turtle and spammed death over and over and over.... lol not once did it land and I died. I saw the video that dude posted up... his guys are low level as well, in fact, my weapons are higher than his... and wow, he took it out. It was a bit hard looking at the video what he did exactly though and his post doesn't give his strategy but rather his set up.

Twink, do you know how he did it? Because the Death method seemed rather annoying, as it has what? 5 percent chance of landing?

 

I took down a Neochu on Mission 55 with Death using Vanille's Malboro Wand (and got the CP-doubling Growth Egg accessory as a result). It worked the second time I cast it, so I guess I either got really lucky or did something different (I do have an upgraded Mal Wand, but not to the star level yet).

 

Death has a 1% chance with the Malboro Wand + how ever many statuses on it.

Inflict it with deprotect + Deshell + Imperil for a 4% chance!

 

Man this is killing me! I have only been able to play the game whenever my father is working since Im no longer with my wife and at our house. I got the game on release day and I am only on chapter 7!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Man, I haven't even played the game yet. All I've heard is go buy the game, you'll love it.

 

Well, scored two traps thus far this week using the Death trick. Just 4 more to go. So I am doing post game now, and trying to 5 star missions on the first try for the trophy, cause I don;t want to backtrack later after I'm all done. Luckily, the out of the way ones are usually close to a save point, so I can re-try if I score anything less than 5.

So getting the Treasure Hunter trophy is going to be a pain, because some of these items will require of me some Dark Matter, which is expensive and I am still having issues getting Gil. I had by the time I beat the game, about 700k. I saved the game and tried to fully upgrade one of my weapons. I used a trap to make Light's ultimate weapon and began to upgrade it. By the time it reached level 65/100, I had less than 20k. So I quit and reloaded my save before I attempted the upgrade. Yikes!

Anyway, my characters are getting really strong due to the 10th level of the cyrstarium opening up (I 5 starred all the Titan trials)... however, I still cannot down the Adamen's without using the Death trick. They will KO my entire team within one leg stomp. So I cannot even imagine how I will manage to take down a Long Gui later on, which is one of those turtles on steroids. Does the Death trick work on those too?

 

Wow, got to Chapter 10 having done the Barthandelus fight, which was every bit as epic as it had been talked of being. Also decked Raines.

What I like about FFXIII's battle system is it requires you play to understand it, to anyone watching the intricacies will be nigh-on invisible - if you do a good attack, what they'll see is your party unleashing hell on enemies and taking them down in seconds. Or you send a Greater Behemoth into the air having staggered it and then smash the hell out of it so it never comes down.

 

There is a way that you can turn 1 trap into 3, albeit a little expensive (but time-saving). You can upgrade one of Fang's or Hope's weapons to the ultimate form, highest level, then dismantle it and get 3 traps back (and some components to sell to make a lot of gil back). If you have the CE guide, it tells which weapons in the dismantling section. If not, I can look it up when I get home this evening.

There will be some missions that it will be hard for you to 5 score without the Gold Watch. But, yes, it's wise to 5 star as many as you can now.

Don't buy Dark Matters. Just wait and farm them off upgraded baby turtles. The drop rate is not that bad, plus you can get gold nuggets in the process. Honestly, while Dark Matters are listed as the rare drop, I think I get them more than I do nuggets. Then again, maybe its because I use the rare item catalog (all three catalogs are good to have btw, but remember only one of them works at a time; its useless to have all three equipped at the same time). Basically don't buy anything that you can farm. The time spent ratio is much better farming than trying to build up the gil.

Best way to make gil IMO: farm cieth in the first room of the final dungeon for perfumes and scarletites. The key is selling the scarletites too, cause you can always farm more easily as you need them. You can pre-empt both groups, kill them in roughly 30 seconds, and they drop stuff like candy with Collector's Catalog. Then save and reload (or zone outside; I find reloading slightly faster). You can make about 600k an hour doing this, and I think its faster than ingot farming.

You need to watch closely for leg stomp, and switch to Sentinel X3 right before. Then switch to a paradigm that either has one good healer (namely Vanille) or 3 MED to heal up real fast. I prefer using Vanille and her cure wand, while the others work on taking out the leg (Fang can one-shot a staggered leg with Highwind). I can give you a detailed strategy on taking down big turtles if you need it.

Upgraded turtles are immune to death. Upgraded babies are not too bad, but the big ones take a while to kill. You do not want to farm the big ones. In fact I'd just kill one for the trophy, and never look back. There's still a place at the end of the game when you can farm NQ versions tho.

Anyways, I got my platinum, and after taking a little bit of a break, I'm starting to play through again. I'm enjoying it even more this time (particularly story and character-wise) because I'm picking up on a lot of little things. And its nice to bring the gameplay knowledge I have with me now. I still wish this had New Game+. It would be perfect for this game.

I'm t

 

Holy cow!

Twink, check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbX_kBb5s_o

Look what good 'ol Van did

 

I'll have to watch it later, when I can turn the sound up, but I'm still trying to figure out what he did.

I know he used poison, which is insanely powerful. Its pretty much a must for 5 starring mission 64. And he took advantage of the turtles staying down while summons are out, as long as prolonging it with low ghestalt attacks. All that alone took it down to half health.

After that tho, I'll have to watch again and see what he did.

 

She stayed Sab the whole time, debuffing, poison and then Death... my guess wearing the Genji glove, breaking the damage limit.

 

I played all the way to Chapter 6 and have been too busy to play for the past few weeks and it's beginning to anger me. It looks like I'm going to have to wait until finals are over to finish this game up.

 

Well, beat Attacus... very long, annoying fight, but by keeping Snow on SEN the whole time, it was cake. Doing Gigantuar now... he kicks my butt every time. I have Snow again on SEN the whole time, switching off between heals and damage for my other two. But, during a shift, it uses that moment to mess me up real bad.

Now, I now the trick with him is to use DAZE, but let me tell you... not once has it stuck on him. Like, ever. Van does not learn it unfortunately, so I use Fang, who is the second best at it and even has a weapon that helps it... but cannot get it to stick.

 

Gigantaur is annoying, but there's a couple of tricks to beating him:

-my favorite is using Sazh as your leader and main damage dealer, on RAV. Equip everybody with stuff the resists Fog and Pain, Sazh mainly if your limited. Then manually do elemental strikes (not spells). The thing is Sazh will slowly step back after each round he fires, and move out of Gigantaur's range.

-equip all three party members with the synthesized ability Random: Instant Chain. If it goes off, it will end the fight fast. In fact, this is the fight where I learned how awesome Random: Instant Chain is.

 

Don't fel too bad guys. I am guilty of falling behind int FF Series. I haven't picked one up since FFX2.

 

More Vanille goodery (yes I made that word up) for you Clix. Turns out she joins Fang as the only characters who can deal 999,999 damage, and it is with her Death spell no less, altho it takes a little more work than Fang.

Here's how it works:

All three party members have level 5 COM.

High magic stats for Vanille. This includes 3 Magical Crests, Pearlwing Staff upgraded to Nirvana, and Genji Glove for Vanille.

COM skill Adrenaline for Vanille.

Imperil and Deshell on the enemy.

Faithra and any en-spell on Vanille.

Stagger gauge at 999% (easy to do with Cold Blooded, Army of One, or Last Resort).

While Vanille is in the middle of casting Death, switch to Cerberus (COM X3) quickly. She will get the extra damage boost, and do 999,999 damage!