#... should i tag my ff13 rambles?

[elegyofthemoon]

(shakes tumblr) PLEASE TELL ME WHEN IM RAMBLING TOO LONG I CAN TAKE IT

anyways i'm going to continue the ramble here bc tumblr ate it:

But going back to the scene with Hope getting Alexander, like I don't know how to stress the idea that this group was a group that argued and fought early game and even split because they just couldn't see eye to eye on anything.

You get to that scene with Hope, who now lacks any reason to go on because at that point the only thing that he had going for him was the hatred and desire to kill Snow before he realized this was no way to live and it wouldn't save him from anything, and only finds that both as the youngest and least experienced, he felt more or less like a burden to the rest, even expressing the rest of the group to leave him behind.

This group who argued and fought early game all came together to protect Hope and assure him that he deserves to be here, just as anyone else does.

Like!!! That character development!!! The relationship building???? It's all so smooth and well done at that point that it felt so natural that they'd take care of each other. We are in this hellhole together, and we will get out of it together.

It's just!! I don't know. The charm that I have with this game is not in the battle system or the plot itself, but rather the characters and how human they all feel, and the relationship they build with one another. It's a really wonderful game if you're looking for something more character driven.

I need to replay this entire series at some point,, ahhh

[doc-boredom]

hello me @ myself finish your thoughts

representation becomes hARD is what i wanted to say in those tags on my last post

i dont know if y’all saw that one tweet flying around but it was along the lines of “i meet amazing women every day but never see them in fiction/media, and yet every man in fiction/media is amazing and i’ve never met one in real life” and that’s!!! such a statement right there! like, constantly I will find myself endeared to Gansey III, or Percy Jackson, or Tiberius Blackthorne or Richie Tozier and those characters are *white* (as stated by author, what have you) men, and meanwhile I cannot stand Serah Farron in FF13 or I’m sneering at Black Widow’s constant character downgrades in the MCU or hating Lisa Cudy through the entire of House

and yet so many of my friends are women and I can’t ever find a foothold with men in real life

I think we’re making slow progress towards something, and that’s because authors are becoming more aware!!! The more creators and authors push the better it’s going to get. so yeah. we should be creating more characters of color. Just last year I read a zombie book written by a black woman about a young girl in the civil war era and it was one of my most favorite debuts in the YA genre. We got Black Panther too which ugh don’t get me started, and Miles???? is one of my most favorite characters in all of media ever. Not to mention that Mike Hanlon is my literal son and I’d die for him. 

I’m rambling, but just know I’m in agreement with you anon, but also I hope you  understand where a lot of people come from when it comes to not *realizing* that this is a problem. it’s ingrained in us at this point. It’s hard work, but we’re getting there

[pinnochiro]

pinn reviews - final fantasy xiii

episode three of my running series where lizz and i play through all the mainline final fantasy games in reverse, and then i write a long rambling review that i barely proofread.

tags, because i'm not sure i should put them in the actual tags or not - long post, really, really long post, review, spoilers

following our playthrough of final fantasy 15, the next game up on the plate to play was final fantasy 13, shifting us back a console generation and onto the ps3. if u aren't aware, ff14 is actually an mmorpg, as is final fantasy 11, so we will not be playing those (lizz already plays ff14 and she tells me its like 200 hours long to mainline lol).

ff13 has a bunch of background lore, so before we even get into gameplay or anything like that, here's a brief outline/reminder of what the world of ff13 is like.

final fantasy 13 is set in a floating paradise world called 'cocoon', governed over by a selection of god-like beings called "fal'cie" (fahl-see), who raised the world of cocoon into the sky above their enemies land below called 'pulse' after an ancient war. inhabitants of cocoon live in relative luxury with their needs provided to by the fal'cie, but are constantly told that they must fear the hellscape of pulse below them, and especially the pulse fal'cie and their l'cie (luh-see), who wish for their demise.

any human being who gets too close to a fal'cie, one belonging to pulse or cocoon, will be transformed into a l'cie, a superpowered thrall of the fal'cie tasked with completing a 'focus', a mission given by the fal'cie. if a l'cie completes their focus, they are rewarded with 'eternal life' in the form of turning into a crystal statue to watch eternity through. but if a l'cie fails to complete the focus, they are instead transformed into a 'cieth' (seeth), a crystaline monster who only knows to attack others. a l'cie has no real autonomy, and it is widely known that pulse l'cie under a pulse fal'cie are always given a focus to destroy cocoon - so any interaction with a pulse l’cie or anything at all from pulse is horribly stigmatised, and must be avoided.

with that baseline introduction out of the way, what is the plot of final fantasy 13?

ff13 opens with an absolutely rad cutscene, featuring an intense battle on a futuristic train with two of our main characters, Lightning and Sahz. as explained later in gameplay, a pulse fal’cie has been discovered in cocoon, buried under years of rubble from the ancient war between pulse and cocoon. and to make it worse, the fal’cie has created a l’cie with the mission to destroy cocoon. while the l'cie has been captured, any citizens of cocoon who were in the vicinity of the fal’cie or l’cie have been sentenced to a ‘purge’, advertised as a deportation of any “tainted” people to pulse. in reality, it’s exactly as something labelled a purge could be, just slaughtering anyone who could be close to the l'cie. on this train ride, we're introduced to almost all of our main party members, who i'll detail here.

lightnight - a former solider of PSICOM, the peace-keeping militia of cocoon, lightning has abandoned her military immunity to the purge and joined it willingly, in hopes of locating the captive pulse l'cie, her younger sister and only remaining family member, Serah. lightning is to the point and quick to anger, and likes to punch Snow in the face, which i find absolutely hilarious. she hates him not only for being a goofy rebel and her sister's fiance, but snow was also partially responsible for serah becoming a l'cie in the first place and setting off the whole chain of events. her weapon is a gunblade, which i thought were only a ff8 thing but apparently not.

sahz - a civilian who was exempt from the purge, but also joined it willingly. while openly one of the most upbeat and comedic party members, sahz is deeply depressed and suicidal. in the days before the purge, he took his young (like 8 years) son dajh on a trip to purchase a pet chocobo, his favourite animal, at a location nearby a cocoon fal'cie. when a mysterious pulse l'cie appeared and tried to interfere with the fal'cie, dajh managed to slip away from his father and got caught up in the conflict, with the cocoon fal'cie making dajh a l'cie to protect it. dajh was almost immediately scooped up by the PSICOM military to be used as a tool to locate the l'cie, and sahz blames himself as a failure of a father. sahz fights with two futurey-looking pistols, and is always bouncing during fights, which is very relatable.

snow - the leader of an anti-PSICOM rebel group called 'Operation Nora', snow is a complete himbo with massive tits, fighting against the purge imposed on himself and his friends. that isn't snow's only goal however, as he also plans to find and rescue his fiance, the l'cie serah. he's good natured and barely recognises when someone doesn't like him, and is trying his best to get onto lightning's good side so she will approve of his and serah's wedding. snow's weapon is his fists, and he frequently assumes the best way to deal with something is to just punch it.

hope - a fourteen-year old boy who is sentenced to be purged with his mother. they are rescued by Snow's group, and when they're under fire from PSICOM, hope's mother (also named Nora) volunteers to protect the group, but falls to her death in the skirmish. hope blames snow for his mother's death, as he was the one who incited her to fight back in the first place. hope fights with a silly little folding boomerang called an 'airwing'.

vanille - a mysterious girl who was part of the group of purge detainees rescued by snow. vanille immediately stands out as she dresses in a unique (and probably culturally appropriative) outfit and speaks with an australian accent, while everyone else is american. she seems confused by maps and the workings of cocoon, and tries her best to support hope. as you can probably guess, she is from pulse. her weapons are 'staffs' in the loosest definition, and she constantly makes anime sex noises, but i still like her. while vanille has an australian accent, the dialogue itself was very obviously written by an american, as she says distinctly american turns of phrase and the like that i, as an australian, have never heard being used here.

you cannot choose your party members for the vast majority of ff13, and a lot of the early game will shift you from certain party members depending on the scenario. you're introduced to each of the first five party members by the story switching between them all in the early hours, giving you their backstory and a handle on their classes and fighting styles, which is fine for the first three or so chapters but is tedious when you're on chapter 11.

our five main characters are all somewhat linked at this point, but it really all comes together when the five of them entire the sanctum of the fal'cie. the group comes together to find serah right next to the fal'cie, but as lightning and snow approach, serah immediately is turned to crystal for 'completing her focus'. getting closer to the fal'cie (as lightning immediately tries to kill it in revent) results in everyone present being transformed and branded as a pulse l'cie. the fal'cie comes crashing out of the sky and onto the lower levels of cocoon with everyone on board, where they receive their focus - a blurry vision of cocoon falling out of the sky that seems to suggest the destruction of cocoon, as is the mission of all pulse l'cie.

waking next to the crystalised form of serah, the group realises that they've all become l'cie, the sworn enemies of their home in cocoon. while lightning is sure that the vision they've seen indicates that they're to destroy cocoon, snow instead thinks their mission must be to save cocoon, because he can't believe that serah would want to destroy cocoon. he manages to find a single crystal tear as the group fights and leaves him, pursued by PSICOM soldiers.

at this point, i'll describe the combat, because while there is combat before this point, it's only when the characters become l'cie that the combat and the levelling system really become important.

ff13 runs on the active time battle system, which means that a character is given 'atb gauges', a little gauge that fills over time and only when the gauge is full can a character take an action. this is my first time playing a game with the atb that final fantasy is known for, and i've gotta say, it's really solid. much prefer this over the combat in ff15, but we all know that was a wreck, so. you can either have the game autoselect moves for you, or you input actions yourself, but in my experience the game is very good at autoselecting moves based on weaknesses etc, and the battle stays moving quickly the faster you can input things, so it's greatly appreciated.

in combat, you control one character, while the other characters are cpu controlled and will use the moves given to their role. every character in your party is assigned a combat 'role', basically a class, which gives access to different moves. the five roles are 'commando' a dps, 'ravager' a magic-based dps, 'medic', which is exactly what it sounds like, 'sentinel' a tank, 'synergist' which buffs the party, and 'saboteur', who debuffs the enemy. at the start of the game, every character has access to two roles, and can obtain more as the story progresses. each role has a pretty obvious combat usage, and to help players cover these roles in combat, the game has the 'paradigm shift' system.

each time you have two or more characters in your party, the different classes they are set on are called 'paradigms.' the paradigm shift system allows you to change a characters' role at any time in combat - so you can start a fight with a set out that might be commando + ravager, and then switch to sentinel + medic if your hp gets low, and then to saboteur + synergist to buff/debuff. you can set any combination of roles that you would like in the six available paradigm slots, and change through them at any point in battle.

the paradigm shift system is honestly, really, really cool. the amount of choice and options it gives you during a fight is really excellent, and it feels so satisfying to switch between different paradigms and unleash different moves, and then switch back to defensive when the enemy is about to attack. the cpu controlling the other characters is really solid as well in my opinion, healers will generally prioritise whoever the player is controlling over others, which helps you to avoid game overs. if you're smart about your atb, you can line up your actions to occur right after a teammate has done their actions, attacking while they refresh and then attack again, and pretty much stun-loop an enemy into submission.

the paradigm shift is honestly amazing, and i wish that more video games had an option to change cpu companions' behaviour on the dime. i would much have appreciated if in kingdom hearts, i could set goofy and donald to say, focus on dps or defense in certain situations.

i have only one complaint with the paradigm shift system, and that is that every time a paradigm shift happens, an animation of every character doing a little pose one after the other plays. this would be fine if say, the game didn't have a time-based critical hit system, which i'll talk about next. but even then, the paradigm shifts aren't too obnoxious in the animations and i didn't really have any problems with it until later in the game (at least, when i played. lizz also played the majority of this one).

in combat with enemies, the game has a 'stagger' percentage on the top of the screen towards the right. you can increase the percentage of this bar by attacking the enemy, debuffing it, taunting it as a sentinel, and when the bar is full, the enemy is 'staggered' and all your moves do critical damage. the percentage you have to hit to stagger an enemy is different for each type of enemy, with some starting at full stagger and some being basically invicible until you stagger them. the stagger bar is not stagnant thought, and will wind down constantly after any increase. certain roles, such as healer, will also actively make it harder for the stagger bar to increase, so it becomes a fight against the ticking down of the bar to get an enemy to full stagger, and then kill it with the critical damage you're given. as mentioned above, since this is a time-based system, the delay of paradigm shifts can cost you in certain fights. while most enemies don't have a stagger gimmick, some do, and they all tend to be obnoxious. lizz hated the pulsework soldiers, which take forever to stagger, and i wasn't exactly a fan of the giant hedgehog lizards that you have to stagger to even damage. if you can sneak up on an enemy, you get a 'preemptive strike', which will put an enemy at full stagger at the start of the battle, but the enemy ai is very punishing on what counts as being 'spotted' by the enemy and these are pretty hard to trigger deliberately. there are items that can make it harder for enemies to spot you, but the only way to have a solid supply of these is by purchasing them at the store, and the game does not give you gil for defeating enemies, so it's pretty hard to come by.

after a battle, you are rewarded with a sonic-looking victory screen and a number of 'CP', or 'crystarium points.' as we're very mature, lizz and i took to calling them 'cock points' instead. you can use cock points to level up a character's combat roles, unlocking new moves, hp bonuses, new passive abilities etc. i quite like the crystarium, it looks very pretty and its fun to slowly fill out the board of a character's moves. it generally doesn't matter roles you focus on, except for one goddamn fight with sazh which is basically impossible to complete under the time limit if you haven't levelled up his synergist where it needs to be. each character has a 'crystal heart', so all their hearts are shaped differently, like lightning's being shaped like a rose, sahz's like a chocobo feather and fang's like ... a bong, i think? we couldn't make it out.

anyways, you continue through the game. the story chooses which characters you get to play as, so you get to experience different combinations of roles in the early game, which pretty much sticks to two-character parties to get you used to the paradigm shift system before you're given a third. the characters travel separately, with hope going after lightning, because lightning hates snow and hope wants someone to commiserate, snow staying behind at serah's crystal statue, and sahz and vanille also taking off when they see PSICOM approaching.

hope confides in lightning that there's something he really wants to do to take revenge on someone before he's stuck in his new l'cie enthrallment, and lightning, not knowing that hope wants to just straight up kill snow, gives him a knife and says 'yeah kid get it.' hope names this his own 'operation nora', this time after his dead mother, Nora. at one point lightning starts to despair about the hopelessness of her situation, which triggers the first eidolon battle of the game.

eidolons (i don't known how to pronounce this - aye-dole-on? eyy-dole-on??) are the summons of final fantasy 13. in the lore, they are sent by a fal'cie to a l'cie whenever the l'cie begins to waver in their focus. an eidolon's goal is to kill the l'cie - either the l'cie dies, and the fal'cie is free of someone who isn't following their focus, or the l'cie comes out victorious and gains the power of the eidolon as a summon.

in combat, the fights against the eidolons just. straight up suck ass. they are time-based, so if you can't beat it until the counter is done, you're fucked. they're also really hard to stagger, so it takes fucking ages to get their hp down and then the battle ends because you weren't fast enough. hnnng.

anyways, every character has an eidolon which you fight and unlock over the course of the game. lightning's eidolon, odin, is one of my favourites because he turns into a horse with a big sword. i also like snow's, shiva, because it's two sexy women who like ,, scissor so hard they turn into a motorbike? idk it's hilarious. when you summon an eidolon, all your party members disappear and you fight alongside the eidolon. if you can max out the eidolon's gestalt gauge by fighting with it, you can shift to 'gestalt mode', where the eidolon does a transformers roll out and turns into something your character can ride, and they do combined moves. lizz and i could never really master this, the moves of the eidolons seemed to be weaker and not worth even summoning them so we just kinda,, didn't for most of the game. that's probably on us for not levelling them up or something? i'm still not entirely sure.

anyways, lightning and hope decide to head for 'palumpolum', which is hope's stupidly-named hometown, so that hope can tell his dad that his mother died. sazh and vanille head to a themepark called the 'nautillus' as they've both more or less decided to make the most of their brief time on cocoon before they're killed or turned into cie'th, and snow is captured by PSICOM, where he runs into our final party member, Fang.

fang is a tall and very pretty lady with a giant spear that she can use to kill you. i like her quite a lot and she is lizz's favourite. when you meet fang, you see very noticebly that she has a l'cie branding on her shoulder, but instead of the dark tattoo marking that the rest of the party has, hers is entirely burnt out and white. she's also australian and wants to find vanille, and teams up with snow to do that. she's being looked over by the leader of PSICOM, Cid Raines, who sets her and snow free as he has a secret hidden agenda.

fang, snow, hope and lightning all meet up in palumpolum, where a state of emergency has been called, and anyone who even comes near the party of l'cie will be sentenced to purge. still intent on trying to kill snow, hope attempts to but is stopped when snow rescues him from PSICOM and his expectations about if snow truly does care for the others he protects are challenged. hope makes it to his dad who convinces him that maybe murder is not the answer, but not before the four of them have to fight through a bunch of PSICOM, are treated like shit by the general population, and feel quite bad about everything. snow gets his eidolon and you fight jihl, a PSICOM lady with giant titties and glasses, before everyone escapes.

on meeting up with fang, she slowly explains a little about herself. she, and vanille, are both pulse l'cie, but she can't remember anything that happened before she suddenly woke up from crystal staus the day the fal'cie was unearthed near lightning and snow's hometown. this excites snow as he's sure this means he can rescue serah from her crystal prison, and fang says that they need to find vanille.

meanwhile, vanille and sahz are enjoying their time in nautillus, more or less. they follow around some chocobos and sahz talks about how he bought his pet chocobo for his son dajh, who loves them. i forgot to mention this before now, but sahz has a tiny pet chocobo chick who lives in his afro. its here that the player, and sahz, learn more about vanille. you see, when she and fang woke up from their crystal slumber, over 700 years had passed from their original mission. while vanille is hesitant, fang assumes that they must have been woken to destroy cocoon again, and suggests that they target the closest fal'cie they can. the two of them attack the fal'cie, and in the struggle, a young boy is caught up and turned into a l'cie to defend it - the young boy being dajh.

this is revealed when dajh appears, reuiniting with his father, only for them to learn that he is still under control of PSICOM. having completed his focus of locating the pulse l'cie, dajh turns to crystal, and sahz and vanille left with each other - sahz blaming her and himself for dajh becoming a l'cie, and vanille, wanting sahz to kill her as punishment for what she's done, both with dajh and earlier in the past she claims to have forgotten. at this point, sahz's eidolon appears, and despite their suicidal tendencies, vanille and sahz defeat it, although sahz is knocked out and the two are captured by PSICOM. i really, really like this plot beat. the dynamic between vanille and sahz, the two most upbeat characters, slowly disintegrating - its filled with that interpersonal drama that i love in shit like this. the only downbeat is that,, sahz's eidolon fight is the one i mentioned earlier that you have to grind for specific abilities to be able to beat, which sucks ass and it still killed us like. five times :/

to rescue vanille and sahz, the rest of the party breaks into the flying airship that they're being held on ahead of a public execution in hopes of quelling the public's fears of l'cie. after fighting through the airship and rescuing your friends, you come face to face with the primarch of cocoon, who is basically president pope, dysley.

its here that dysley reveals that he's not a human, but in fact a fal'cie himself named barthandelus. if you can't pronounce that, don't worry, lightning will say it every time that there is a paradigm shift during fights with him. barthandelus is one of the fal'cie that supports cocoon, but he actually hates the humans that inhabit it, which is shown when he just straight up kills jihl. barty doesn't truly care for cocoon at all, instead wishing for the death of all the humans in a massive sacrifice at the hands of the beast 'ragnarok', so that he can be reunited with the maker of the fal'cie. kind of like evangelion? except, since bart is a cocoon fal'cie, he can't actually make any moves against cocoon. instead, he's trying his best to manipulate the pulse l'cie he's found to do what he believes is the true sole purpose of l'cie - becoming the beast ragnarok and destroying cocoon.

you fight bart in a pretty long fight and the team manages to escape - but instead of fleeing to somewhere else on cocoon, a decision is made to instead get to Gran Pulse, (the long version of just 'pulse'), the supposed hellscape below cocoon where fang and vanille hail from. they hope to return to their home village of oerba (pronounced just 'erba') and find a way to defeat barty.

as it turns out, gran pulse isn't a real hellscape - it's just overflowing with violent monsters. this is the only open-world area of final fantasy 13 and honestly, it was really, really jarring. everywhere in ff13 up until this point has been linear, with enemies in fixed spawn points. this is honestly to the game's detriment, as it basically forces you to fight every single enemy to advance, which with the limited enemy variables, becomes really, really tedious. and it's on the surface of gran pulse that i must admit to you, dear reader, a secret.

y'see, lizz and i didn't actually finish playing through this game. we uh. we quit once we got a decent chunk into gran pulse and just watched a cutscene movie.

whaaaaat??

well, yeah. that's what happened. i'll be honest, i didn't want to, i wanted to finish the game like we'd finished final fantasy 15 and every other game we'd played together before that. but, i'd stopped playing long ago. i wasn't the one who had to do every single repetitive encounter and whittle down enemy hp with their stupid gimmicks and struggle through the loooong bossfights against bart and the rest. that was lizz.

and well, i guess this is where i get to discuss kind of a difference in gaming philosophy between myself and lizz. y'see, i've mentioned i'm bad at games. i'm not good at actually playing them, the entire enjoyment of a video game comes from the story, seeing the characters interact and uncovering the lore. for me, combat is never what i look forward to in a video game. it can certainly be fun, as playing with the paradigm system was for me in the first early or so hours when i did pick it up, but it's never the reason i'm there. in my head, combat in video games is basically always a slog you have to get through to get to the fun parts, which is seeing the story progress, learning more about everything and the situation that you're in. this is why i tend to give the controller to lizz - i don't like the fights in video games, i like the story. when i play through the games that i really like, like persona or kingdom hearts or fire emblem, the combat and fighting is always just a backdrop to the things i'm actually there for.

lizz has, a different philosophy. primarily, she wants her games to be fun. which is something that's definitely understandable. lizz enjoys playing fighting games and the combat, seeing how an enemy changes and learning their tells so she can properly avoid attacks and strike back with the most damage. she tells me about how she likes to unravel the 'puzzle' of enemies in other final fantasy games, where you learn through fighting them certain things that make it tick until you can finally defeat the enemy. and she prioritises having fun in a video game over most other things. if you're not having fun, what's the point in playing, really.

so you can kind of see what the clash here was - i wasn't playing, i was very invested in the story and as i always do, i saw the combat as a slog as it is in every video game that you have to get through in order to get to the better part. but to lizz, the combat isn't just something you have to get through, since being a video game, it actually takes up a very large portion of what you're doing. if she has to spend such a long time on something that's lost its spark hours ago, she'd rather just watch a cutscene movie of the rest than deal with that pain. and yeah, while initially i was like, can't you just struggle through the rest, i gave in. i'm just watching it instead of playing it, so the only change there would be that we were on youtube instead of the ps3. so yeah. we watched a cutscene movie of the rest of the game.

and honestly, that encapsulates the main downfall of final fantasy 13 - the enemies. the combat system is fun, it's inventive and it's something new. the enemies are. mostly just walls of flesh that you beat into the dirt to get past. and it's not like you can avoid them, because as i mentioned, they tend to be specifically placed in your way in the linear environments of ff13 so that you do have to face every single enemy in the game before you can advance the plot. and that. that sucks. you get sick of the sixth recolour of the little robots and the flans that fucking scream at you with sirens. no amount of mastery of the paradigm shifts makes it more fun to whittle away at a big enemy's health bar for 30 minutes, especially when the only way to get better at doing it. is to level up by doing it a thousand times over. it sucked.

but, i do really, really really like the story of final fantasy 13. i think it's extremely compelling, and since we did watch the rest of the game as a movie, i can continue the story for you.

after landing on gran pulse, fang and vanille get into an argument, and its made obvious that vanille does know what happened before they were turned into crystals, and fang tricks her into spilling it out really.

oerba yun fang and oerba dia vanille were born into the village of oerba on gran pulse, over 700 years ago. the ancient war between pulse and cocoon was still raging, and fang and vanille were selected to become l'cie to defeat cocoon by becoming ragnarok, a beast with the power to kill all the inhabitants. the two made it to cocoon and fought their way to the fal'cie, where they were then to become ragnarok together. however, as they fought their way through vanille became afraid of the power of ragnarok, and she ran away. fang tried to follow the mission without her and became an incomplete ragnarok, destroying the outer rim of cocoon and cracking it open, but without vanille she wasn't able to complete her focus. on their failure, the pulse fal'cie froze them into crystal stasis, where they remained as untouched statues for centuries until the interference of barthandelus unearthed the fal'cie on cocoon and awoke them again.

vanille is deeply regretful of her actions - on reaching gran pulse, they find out that no humans on the continent survived the war after their failure, and their families and homes were destroyed by cocoon. as fang can't remember the past, she tries to make her feel better by saying that she (vanille) was the one who failed to defeat cocoon instead of fang, and that it's her fault everyone died, but fang eventually gets the truth from her. this is shown when they reach oerba, now destroyed and with only a cie'th stone left with the record of what happened to the people.

meanwhile, lightning eventually gets over her hatred of snow - it wasn't solely snow's fault that serah became a fal'cie, and it was really the machinations of barty behind all of it. over the journey, she's come to realise that snow is a pretty good guy, and gives her blessing for the two of them to marry once they've rescued serah.

as a group, everyone decides that there's really only one thing that they can do - defeat barthandelus to save cocoon and everyone who lives on there, before he causes anything else awful to happen and kills more innocent people. they pledge to make their own focus, regardless of what the fal'cie want, and the party charges back into cocoon.

we're treated to another gorgeous fmv as they break back into cocoon where everyone summons their eidolons and pronounces themselves to the world, hoping to draw out bart. they fight through PSICOM soldiers under cid raines until they come face to face with him, where they learn that cid is a l'cie of bart's. under his orders he overexerts himself and fights the party, but they manage to convince him that he shouldn't live only for the fal'cie, and he helps them by ordering PSICOM to stop hunting down the l'cie before he dies in a final attempt to distance himself from bart.

the group makes it to bart, who talks big shit about how awful the humans are and how they're just parasites with no autonomy, following the will of the fal'cie on cocoon. the game is pretty anti-government, with themes about how the government doesn't really care for their people and will manipulate the media, and victimise certain groups for everyone to rally against before 'disposing' of them to keep public order. i thought that was pretty cool, i liked it.

anyways, you fight bart and he is killed, his body then transformed into the fal'cie 'orphan'. orphan is another boss fight, but the party is unable to defeat them. using their power, orphan separates vanille and fang from the rest of the group and attempts to goad them into becoming ragnarok again. when they won't back down, the rest of the party is transformed into cieth that attack vanille until fang declares that she'll become ragnarok again without vanille, effectively sacrificing herself for vanille.

unfortunately, despite her rage, fang can't become ragnarok alone - it's a two-person deal, even though fang refuses to let vanille help. but eventually, vanille gets through to fang and they manage to shatter the illusion of orphan, revealing that the other party members are unharmed. together, they fight through two stages of orphan until it is finally defeated.

however, without orphan, cocoon doesn't have a fal'cie to control it. the entire structure begins to fall from the sky, so fang and vanille, hand in hand, vow to become ragnarok together and instead use the beast's immense power to help cocoon, instead of destroying it. together, they create a crystal pillar that holds cocoon in the sky, permanently entrenching fang and vanille as crystals saving cocoon.

the rest of the party reforms as crystals on the surface of gran pulse, cracking out of their stasis and realising that fang and vanille sacrificed themselves for them. as they look up to the pillar, two figures walk towards them - serah, holding hands with dajh. everyone reuinites together, finally freed from the fal'cie's curse, as the credits roll.

so yeah, that was final fantasy 13. i really, really liked the story of this game - the concepts of fal'cie and l'cie are really, really intriuging to me and i love how the game explored it, the interpersonal drama between the characters and their growth over the course of the story. i'm sure i mucked up certain things or didn't get plot details entirely right but. hey. did you not see how fucking long this review is? cut me a little slack, alright. i tried my best, and i really liked ff13.

despite that, again, we didn't actually finish the game. i may have adored the story, but that doesn't take away from the repetitive enemies and how much it sucked to get through that towards the end. was it really that terrible? idk, it definitely took a lot more actual effort to get through than final fantasy 15, which at that point, was the limit of shit to get through. so if you don't mind it being repetitive, i guess you wouldn't mind.

before i finish up, i just wanted to additionally mention that the music in this game is fucking wonderful - i really adore the promise/serah's theme, which is the main menu theme, and 'lightning's theme', as well as many of the battle themes for just being so fucking catchy and fun. 'blinded by the light' was my favourite of those, but 'saber's edge' and 'eidolons' also really fuck.

the game's art direction is also absolutely on point - the character's designs are all unique and interesting, and the environments were beautiful - i really loved the crystal forest, the futuristic city and the theme park areas, they were just so bright and pretty-looking. only downside is that the npcs are dressed like absolute idiots, most of them are wearing weird bathing suit-looking shit, so that was hilarious. i also really liked the character designs of snow's fellow nora comrades, basically everyone who was designed by tetsuya nomura looked rad.

so overall, i think final fantasy 13 is rather excellent in so many regards - the lore, the characters and their motivations, the setting and the combat mechanics, so many of them are just really on point. but it also suffers from the enemies being pains in the ass, the map design forcing you to take on all of them, and the plot being a bit difficult to parse out at times.

would you like this game?

what's your tolerence level for grinding? that's basically the main thing to consider if you'd like to pick up the game. it's a very strong game that's brought down by what is unfortunately a rather major element, but if you're willing to suffer through that, i'm sure you'll enjoy it. othewise, if you're not willing to suffer through that, watch a cutscene movie. the story is great, and i wish more people talked about this game. i know it gets ripped on a lot, but like, this game is the shit. i loved it, i loved the characters, the music, the setting, so much of it. i think it's definitely worth experiencing, even if you're just watching the cutscenes.

final score - hope should have stabbed snow, only for it to just bounce of his massive titties / 10

next game - final fantasy xiii-2. that's right, this game has a direct sequel, and then another direct sequel after that. look forward to my review when we finish that one up, probably soon considering we're already about halfway thru!