We Were All Wrong About Final Fantasy XIII

[Music] Final Fantasy 13 is a game at war with itself that would have been the title of the video but unfortunately the most popular video analysis of Final Fantasy 13 on YouTube already took that one after watching that video I'm not so that person knew exactly how right they were this game is truly divided in half for about half the game's runtime the story takes the driver's seat and in my Humble opinion defended with the same level of analytical depth you have come to expect from this channel I believe this story is phenomenal right up

to that beautiful insanely captivating perfectly timed moment when our Intrepid Travelers have sca into an unseen battle arena in the heart of their home full of monsters that would make any commenter on cocoon blush the story is not only good I would call it great and then it changes and you'll see why if you stick Around my memory of this game's Legacy is a little something like this Final Fantasy 13 is a disappointing Final Fantasy game I even originally thought I would write something to the effect of this game would be great By Any Other

Name it would be remembered better if it didn't live under the shadow of Final Fantasy 7 but I'm not so sure I believe that anymore there are even people that believe this game was trying to one up Final Fantasy 7 namely the individual I Mentioned previously brand OSP with the most popular video on this game in which he said the game was designed to be similar enough to seven for fans to draw comparisons but they wanted it to be so good no one would even need a seven remake anymore I'm not saying it was designed

by committeed Cobble together for the direct purpose of slapping the seven desires straight out of people's brains but consciously or not it feels like a lot of things in this game were Made with the intent of now how can we make this better than seven the game constantly feels like it's trying to one up something but what I see is a game trying to carve its own way forward do things to the beat of a Different Drum I see a game that took its story so seriously that it couldn't live in the tropes of the

past I see a game that aims to be its own action adventure Blockbuster summer hit of a movie and to that end I think it succeeded aside from The whole Blockbuster part I didn't play Final Fantasy 7 I still haven't technically my first Final Fantasy was 8 though I never finished it because I was pretty young at the time but I know how people feel about Final Fantasy 7 I think Tim Rogers may have said it best when he said Final Fantasy 13 shares many superficial similarities to Final Fantasy 7 it does not however share

the manga-like narrative style The Confident anime series like pacing or most of the Game Design Systems Final Fantasy 13 made me and my pet Nostalgia uneasy back in 2009 because it lacked towns and NPCs and all that hang atitude I'd come to love from the final f fantasy series something I had never thought of before researching this video it had never occurred to me because I didn't have that expectation going into it despite being the 13th entry and a longstanding franchise it had no past it had to prove itself to in my eyes I simply

took it at Face value I do have to wonder if the opinions of this game are softening as time goes on but I'm not interested in showing whether that's true I simply want to prove why I believe this game deserves to sit in my top 10 and not low on that list either game play and story integration something I'm sure many of you are familiar with and sick of hearing about there's perhaps nothing more important to me in game design how did the developers of the gameplay Uphold the writing of the story this game's wonderful

integration comes in many forms the roles the characters embody during combat the things they say during combat the things they say as they explore the way the combat plays out the abilities they gain and even a few of the bosses are all fed from the story and feed back into the story without all of this these characters would assuredly feel more dull lifeless or one-dimensional with it they feel Like people and yet despite this the gameplay and story are also at odds for the entirety of the runtime the gameplay can't be fully explored because the

story demands that things stay simple on the part of the characters and their strengths gameplay decisions are made based on what the story needs to convey which ultimately leads to the combat being boring repetitive and all too easy for the majority of the first 20 hours or so of the experience the first nine Chapters have things to teach you and it definitely grows beyond itself simple introduction but it does a terrible job giving anything more than a bad first impression this is unfortunate because combat is clearly an important aspect of this game 13 is the

closest the system had come to being an action game at this point meaning you had to choose your next move by the time the ATV gauge was full or you were wasting time you could act early only performing part of a Combo some moves take more ATB than others they relies on reflexes as well as strategy they spent a ton of time developing the system making it interesting imparting depth not usually seen in turn-based RPGs of its nature and yet don't allow you to truly experience that depth until about 20 hours in until you're halfway

through the story this would be the faux paw that would begin the game's terrible first impression if you were driven by Gameplay luckily for people like me this game begins with story and spectacle the first thing that may strike you as we enter the game proper is that this game is beautiful at least right now it is in tried and true Square enic fashion this game has at least three three different visual Styles which tell its story this one the most graphically impressive usually scores its most impressive action scenes the worst one is the one

that scores many of the unimportant Scenes only there to establish some mostly irrelevant events somewhere in the middle are the cut scenes which score the game's most important character beats which have more deliberate lighting and effects I think I speak for most people when I say this game holds up visually extremely so in fact we see a train carrying what seem to be prisoners and some military Types on board a man asks this woman woman you serious showing continuity with a scene That we haven't seen yet we're not entering the story at the start but

somewhere past that the woman starts causing Mayhem on the train the man leans down at a scared kid and says don't worry I'm not AI okay let's stop there for a second what exactly is AI anyway what I'm getting at here is that I've seen some criticism levied at this game and many others for things like this using terms that we don't know without explaining them supposedly Leaving the viewer confused I find is criticism questionable at best first of all the alternative to allowing the explanation of these kinds of terms to come up naturally is

forcing them to come up unnaturally when they're first important perhaps you wanted this man here to say I'm not a SE a magical monster created by the fou SE which is therein a Godlike entity that protects and watches over you and me alike except their pulse variants or evil monsters That want you and me dead pulse of course being the hell that resides underneath us of course I'm being pretty factious here but realize that this kind of writing is the alternative to what we get in this game furthermore I would like to ask this what

even constitutes getting information on terms like this does that information have to be correct because the explanation that I just forced into this guy's mouth was only half true anyway is that good enough to Constitute being enough information or does that information actually have to be correct besides I'm of the opinion that the game gives you enough information to know what you need to know about each of these terms and only gives you the extra context when you need it here all we need to know about ly is that there's something to be Fe feared

at least in the eyes of the general public and that this man isn't one it's sufficient for the purposes of This scene and it'll all be explained soon enough anyway as these two climb out of the wrecked train car they are accosted by a manasin war Mech the cutscene transitions into combat smoothly something the game will do somewhat often we get a Combat tutorial here so let's talk about that for a bit on the Overworld enemies wander around they don't notice you until you're in their awareness bubble indicated by the mini map flashing a sound

effect and Your leader walk animation changing to a more battle ready stance every enemy in a fight can be seen on the Overworld before the fight begins a detail that will matter a lot more later during combat you control only the party leader the other party members are controlled by a fairly complex AI that we will touch on occasionally if the leader dies the game ends and you have to restart to act during combat you must wait till the ATB gauge fills up which stands for Active Time battle every action you take has a certain

number of segments of the ATB bar that they will consume here you can see that lightning has two ATB segments and so can do two attacks before needing to wait again you can also truncate the ATV bar performing CED attacks before the bar is full this allows you to act much quicker if there are situations in which a single attack would be more efficient than waiting for a whole combo to be ready to cue these Actions we turn to the menu on the bottom left right now we only have access to three of the four

items that will populate this menu the first and the one the game will default you to is Auto Battle and this has had a greatly detrimental effect on the game's Legacy Auto Battle uses the same AI that the party members use to pick attacks which is affected by numerous factors beyond the scope of a discussion this early in the video the cool thing about Auto Battle is that it can change on a dime based on the Target and the battle State the bad thing is that it's extremely boring to use and the game makes it

seem like it's the primary combat option by making it the one that it defaults to as well as putting it on the top of the menu it seems to me that the developers perhaps thought the game was a little too fast-paced for the time and wanted to offer some concessions to the player to make make the transition to this Combat style easier under normal circumstances it takes just over 3 seconds to fill an ATB gauge with two segments the time to fill the bar goes up as you gain more segments to a total of around

4.7 seconds at Max a level basically no one playing this game will ever experience so at this stage in the game that offers the player just 3 seconds to pick their moves their target and cue them for execution I can understand why Square Enix thought this Might be difficult the first concession was the Auto Battle system which gives you a full ATB bars worth of attacks and executes them on the target you pick meaning the choice becomes simply picking your target a much easier task to accomplish for most players the second concession was the speed

of battles being changeable and the options menu is a choice between normal speed and slow speed slow Simply Having the speed of ATV charge this would give you 6.4 seconds at level two ATV to pick your moves there are two problems with this thinking though the first is that the game doesn't get hard enough to necessitate that you act with a little waste of time for a significant portion of its run time certainly not in the first couple chapters the second is that the game very slowly peppers in abilities meaning for most of the first

two chapters your only options of attack are well to attack a single segment Command in a bit we'll be playing as a character that has Blitz a two segment AOE attack but by then you should have mastered the art of putting two attacks into the bar and firing it off this lack of confidence in the combat system and in the players is a large part of why people think this game is basically Mash to win even though there are more than a few bosses and even normal enemy Encounters in the story that require much more

strategy than that there's Unfortunately no way to fix the game's poor first impression but if you ever went back to this game or played it for the first time and wanted to experience it the way I think it's significantly more engaging do yourself a favor and go into the options and change the default command from Auto Battle to abilities and then resign yourself to never use Auto Battle this will make the combat much more engaging as you're actually having to decide what attacks to use What elements you should be using what Buffs to give which

party members and so on it's a way better way to play and it's sad to me that it isn't the default speaking of abilities that's the next option in the menu right now all it has is attack though it'll eventually be full of more abilities than you can shake a gun sword at clicking attack once will put one attack into your chain using one ATB segment click it again to put a second attack in the chain filling Up your chain and moving you automatically to the Target page in which you pick whom you want to

Dish the damage out to you can also press triangle to move into the this page before putting a full chain of attacks or to activate as many attacks as you have ATB segments for if you're already in execution mode where the character is just waiting for the ATB gauge to fill up the menu is extremely Snappy and responsive and there are many ways to Execute commands quickly if you're playing on PC I would recommend binding a turbo button to one of the triggers to press a super fast this will not only allow you to build

combos at Max Speed it'll also allow you to move through the post battle screens much faster finally if you've already queued up a combo using the abilities command you can press right on the d-pad while on that command to automatically recue the combo you just used that's good stuff but like I said very little of that matters at this point finally we have items of which there are only two options for now potions and Phoenix Downs potions heal everyone in the party for 150 HP which is a substantial amount for a good part of the

game my party was over 1,000 HP until like a third of the way through the game once party members are over 3,000 HP it switches over to Healing 5% of their Max HP meaning it has a minimum of well 150 HP but it starts to go up From there at that point and for a while before that this is a small amount and not very useful potions can be good as a panic heel at times to just barely save you from death but overall they aren't extremely good unless you equip accessories which boost their usefulness

which I actually do recommend for a good chunk of the game items in this game don't use up ATB so they can be more efficient forms of healing than the main way the game expects you to heal without Having to sacrifice offense but the devs clearly didn't want them to be too broken so their usefulness is limited which is a good thing because the focus of the combat is on the delicate balance between offense and defense as it relates to the mystical Paradigm system we're still about 2 hours from unlocking anyway Phoenix Downs heal from

death and restore 70% of the character's HP which remains useful for the entire game that's about all there is to talk about Because that's all the game has right now I guess I'll stop doing the don't use the character's name until the game does thing because it's actually going to be a while before the game gives us these two's names so lightning and SAS get to know each other a bit over the course of traversing this warscape for a while he asks her about her role in the military referring to that shoulder padron she's wearing

which denotes she is a part of the Guardian Corp she says That she was a soldier in some pretty clever writing we actually get some supportive dialogue to this end that seems insignificant at the time when that warmech was chasing them lightning says fall back a militaristic phrase a bit later SAS gives us that wasn't a challenge now showing his humor even in tough situations they discuss the purge again slowly peppering in the context of what's going on here everyone on that train was being taken somewhere likely Somewhere none of them wanted to go later

SZ asks her what her goal is to which she responds that she's going after the pulse F SE FY is another term that we have yet to hear but based on how the conversation continues we can gather that they are greatly important and perhaps even dangerous now our perspective switches to a different group of in this battle we hear a voice talking over a radio giving us some biased context before the radio gets Smashed and we're introduced to a group that calls themselves Nora with snow viler at the helm there's some admittedly clunky dialogue establishing

the group's enemies this is all information that should already be known by the time they're shooting guns at people so this conversation is only for the viewers benefit the Common People rescued from the trains want to join the fight so snow divies out guns to a number of folk finally landing on this One lady they all storm off to the Battlefront sometime later an enormous flying tank comes down and launches a volley of rockets at the road Nora is on destroying it and sending countless people caring down into the abyss snow falls and grabs onto

the ledge with that lady from before dangling from his fingertips she says get him home please before their grips fail and sheep plummets the kid from before looks on an abject horror momentarily getting pulled Away by another girl that can be seen in that scene prior snow does fall a decision that admittedly deflates or casts some undue suspicion on whether or not that woman actually died considering snow survives the fall this is sloppy but that's going to be the only criticism I Levy at this extremely important plot development the boy hope seems stunned with grief

but the girl venil encourages him to face the grief later one of the Nora members gdau asks Snow if he's going to the vestage to get his bride to be snow seems remorseful about what just happened hope tries to confront snow but snow runs off before he can so he and venil give Chase in a hover bike right up to the vestage earlier SAS and lightning have another conversation about FY and ly and The Purge Lightning's military branch wasn't involved in The Purge she says it was always execution masquerading as Exile finally SAS says that

P's fousy and ly Are enemies of the state this reveals two things ly are somehow Servants of the f and that the people that live here think they are enemies all encompassingly this is critically and theoretically incorrect information but it's important to note that most people on cocoon believe this later we also realized that the sanctum have fousy just like pulse hope tells us more clearly that F SE make people into La SE the pulse F SE it held our Future and Our Fate [Music] every major player we've been following has now made their way

to the vestage to us some of their agendas are known lightning seems intent on confronting the pulse faly hadon snow is going to collect his bride to be hope is chasing after snow others still have their true intentions shrouded venil SAS why are they here we begin with venil and hope having just crashed Landed on the vestage Hope shares some dire information about F se he says you're finished done for as soon as you become one of their ly venil seems to not share his Viewpoint in fact that's not the only thing she doesn't share

she doesn't share his clothing style this weapon she just yanked out of the vestage is odd and otherworldly she seems to IM immediately know how to use it she does this little hand thing she has an accent shared by no one else and She's the only character of the three we've had as leader so far that has three ATB bars the game is plugging hints at a mystery it intends on holding close to its chest for some time what she does share is her knowledge of the situation and a little more context about faly and

ly though she does so with an almost mocking and derisive tone hope says pulse is Hell on Earth and venil seems to disagree but they move on at any rate meanwhile snow cuts a path Through the vestage with exuberance spouting off nonsense platitudes about how your hero is on the way and whatever else makes him feel like a tough guy somewhere else lightning and SZ continue making their way through the vestage lightning reveals that her sister is a l to which SAS takes the opportunity to give us some more context as to what that means

SZ says that F SE curs people into becoming L and they're given a focus a task they must see carried out If they don't they become monsters known as SE notably in the order the game actually gives these events we just saw a SE for ourselves apparently there's no way to turn a l back to a human and lightning sister is doomed to live her life as a faly slave lightning apparently never asked her sister what her Focus was though it's telling that sz's first thought as to what a pulse se's Focus could be is

blow up cocoon SZ also establishes himself here as a bit Of a font of information on F and especially L again this is the game planting seeds that it will reap later hope and venil continue to chase after snow they hear him yelling about being a hero hope getting angrier each time venil tells him that he needs to talk to snow but hope says nothing I say will change it venil then offers for them to run away instead but a SE appears to attack them snow flies in to save them after the fight venil and

snow talk About Sarah Snow's fiance and Eli hope angrily wonders why he's going to help ly further driving a wedge between the two venil says that he needs to take this chance to talk to snow because if he doesn't he'll it forever more seeds perhaps finally everyone convenes in a central chamber finally finding Sarah s almost seems like he's in another world holding his gun up to her calling her an enemy snow and lightning fight over being Sarah's Soul protect her before She says you can save us protect us all save cocoon and she turns

into a crystal and statue H tells us that ly who fulfill their focus are turned to Crystal and gain eternal life but lightning doesn't believe it outside the vestage the Army starts a barrage of artillery causing the vestage to rumble inside lightning moves toward the fou sea everyone else following close behind when they get there snow gravels asking for Sarah back and to take him in her Place lightning runs forward to attack the F and SAS joins in after an introspective moment and we begin fighting the FY enema so far combat has taught us a

number of things in both traditional tutorials and subtle non-tutorial ised ways just through the design of the fights it's taught us that careful targeting is important as some enemies are easier to kill than others it greatly encourages this by often in these early stages making enemies which Deal more damage overall much easier to kill like in the case of scyon wardens and enforcers and further reinforced with aerial Recons with the scyon marauder it shows us that staggering is a key part of combat though we won't see the full extent of it for a little while

still you also have access to preemptive strikes which trigger whenever you are able to touch an enemy to start combat without them spotting you on the Overworld this is easier for some Enemies than others though most of the non-scripted fights can be started through a preemptive strike this gives your party a full ATB gauge to start and all enemies begin the battle in a near stacker State giving you an enormous leg up this can even allow you to win fights that would otherwise have been borderline impossible now this boss fight against Eno will reveal more

things if you haven't learned them already with respect to the Target Choosing lesson we learned earlier this battle ensures you know its power the boss has the main target which is Ena itself and two manipulators which are the things that actually attack the party removing them from the battle will leave ano wide open if you haven't learned this by the halfway point of the battle resonant magic will force you to as this move will easily wipe you out if you don't deal with the manipulators furthermore just because this game Doesn't have direct character control doesn't

mean you can't manipulate their spacing in order to avoid taking damage attacks in this game are bound to action game hitbox laws unlike most turn-based games if an attack whiffs whether the enemy's or yours then the target won't take damage lightning is a wonderful choice for this fight because she has perhaps the easiest move set to Showcase this with at the end of her combo she jumps backward allowing her to escape Incoming damage from the manipulators which are stationary and only deal damage in a small circle around them if you don't learn this for yourself

snow might teach you as well as he can be seen doing this throughout the fight taking a little extra time to choose the proper moment to attack goes a long way in making sure you don't need to spend too much time healing time spent on defense and healing is time wasted so mitigating that damage through any means Necessary is a core part of the combat finally as the party finishes the fight things get Bleak the party is plunged into some kind of dark abyss tendrils reach out and grab each one of them there are visions

of some kind of Beast and a burst of energy which turns the lake below them into solid [Music] Crystal when I couldn't see a future and I was afraid when the future was clear and it hurt to See I'd just close my eyes and lose myself in happier [Music] days chapter 3 starts with a flash flashback a cut scene showing some of the events prior to the start of the game this is the 13 days and the game uses these flashbacks throughout its runtime to slowly reveal the backstory for each of these characters mostly centered

around these fireworks in the seaside city of bodm in this one we Follow snow as he searches for Sarah one of the members of Norah tells him she'll be at the usual place interesting little aside the data log tells us that this bar is run by Nora in order to fund their efforts which is kind of neat much more on the data laog later she serves a drink to an Eclectic looking lady who is searching for someone snow runs off to Sarah who is looking at the fireworks with forn dripping off her face they discuss

her becoming a l snow promising To help her figure it out he gives her a necklace and then asks her to marry him to which she says yes of course they get on a hover bike and ride around the fireworks which the town says have wish granting properties snow wished for Sarah to say yes so I guess the town is Right Sarah however wished for her to have the courage to tell lightning she's a la SE snow wakes up with a start him and the rest of this ragtag party on a lake of Crystal they

wonder how they got Here and snow claims that Sarah gave them a miracle by allowing them to survive the fall SE show up and snow runs to protect lightning the punch he throws being imbued with some sort of magical resonance hope says that they are Le now the Panic palpable in his voice after the see are taken care of they check for Brands sure enough each of them has a brand somewhere on their body Phil's looks different another weird detail to add onto the pile of Weird details they begin to wonder about their focus venil

says she had a vision of some kind of Beast to which hope says he saw the same thing SAS explains focuses again but after getting weird looks he backpedal saying that's what they say in the Legends snow thinks their focus is to protect cocoon because that's what Sarah said to do right before she turned to Crystal if turning to Crystal means fulfilling your focus this may not be a bad Theory but the Rest of the group don't seem too confident the group continues on occasionally biggering about their focus they real iiz they are still on

the run from syon and venil wants to run away SAS ruminates on kids being involved in all this as he looks on at venil he then gives us some info about how sanctum F SE provide food and water to the population snow wonders why he helped the group fight the F SE if he's so FY dependent and SAS says there may have Been a reason so far we know faly are protectors and helpers of humanity they provide for them to some degree and they can make humans into the sea to do their bidding we also

know that there are pulse faly and sanctum or cocoon f we don't know much about pulse FY beyond the fact that everyone on cocoon hates them that they are the enemy eventually the party finds Sarah still trapped in her crystal Prison and they begin trying to excavate her all except lightning we Can see lightning getting fed up with Snow's herois attitude even going as far as to slug him to the ground suddenly the Manis ven morch returns and lightning snow and venil step up to fight it this is the proper tutorial for that shiny new

paradigm system we unlocked when we became l so let's discuss the real Combat of this game paradigms and roles a paradigm is basically the instructions which tell each party member how to act in combat There are six roles each with their own unique move set and use cases and a paradigm shift is simply the act of changing from one Paradigm to another each character moving into the roles determined by the Paradigm each character has access to two of the six roles at this time the six roles are Commando ravager synergist sabater Sentinel and medic let's

go over each of them and explain their uses the first two Commando and ravager are primarily Centered around dealing damage and manipulating the Stagger system we spoke of briefly before the chain gauge has two components the percentage and the bar itself any attack in the game will increase the percentage and make the bar go up the bar then starts to go back down and if it depletes fully the percentage resets to its normal value there are two ways to manipulate the Stagger gauge the first is called stagger maintenance which reduces the Speed at which the

bar depletes in between attacks Commandos are the best class for this goal on top of dealing the most damage usually while Commandos can't do effectively is called stagger building or chain gauging which is using attacks that increase the percentage the percentage determines how much damage is Multiplied against the enemy so an enemy with 150% on the Stagger gauge will be receiving 1.5 times the damage from all attacks the closer the current Percentage is to the Target percentage on the right the higher the bar will be and the further it will have to fall before it's

depleted once the percentage on the left matches or exceeds the percentage on the right the target will become staggered ravagers are the the best for this goal though their attacks can't maintain the Stagger gauge so most offensive charges will have a balance of ravager Commandos in order to make staggering opponents easier once Staggered a number of things change a staggered enemy will become much easier to interrupt through hidden values called cut and keep we'll talk about these more later they take significantly more damage still determined by how high the percentage is up to a Max

of 999 per. some enemies have other unique properties during staggers which is part of the fun of fighting new enemies seeing how they react to staggers finally the Stagger gauge also referred To as the chain gauge will start to drain steadily the speed of which is determined by how maintained the bar was before the Stagger was initiated once the bar depletes fully the enemy returns to its normal State the Stagger system is the Crux of this entire combat system so having a healthy understanding of how to efficiently stagger enemies is tantum out to being successful

Commandos maintain the gauge and ravagers build it that's the long and short of these two Rolls rolls also have passive benefits just for being active in the current Paradigm Commandos increase overall damage and ravagers increase the speed at which the chain gauge is built these benefits stack as well so having three ravagers will give a large passive bonus to chain gauge building Savers are the only other primarily offensive role they can inflict a number of debuffs on enemies each attempt at inflicting a debuff also deals damage notably the Sabot also has the property of being

both able to maintain the chain gauge and effectively build the chain gauge it can't do either as well as Commando or ravager but it can do both with decent success meaning it can effectively build and execute staggers completely on its own I actually have footage of a sabur single-handedly staggering an entire group of enemies while the rest of the party was buffing or whatever this is later in the game mind you and I was Using some of the late game Sab abilities but still it's possible and not that difficult each savater increases the likelihood that

debuffs will stick synergists buff party members and their passive bonus is to increase the amount of time Buffs stay active before needing to be reapplied we'll actually discuss the Buffs and debuffs themselves later since we don't have access to either at this point Sentinel protect the Party by absorbing damage Like a traditional tank they can provoke enemies to force them to attack only them the Sentinel can then use various defensive abilities to mitigate the damage coming to them steel guard blocks the most damage but has no unique properties Vendetta initiates a Counterattack but blocks less

damage mediguard slowly heals The Sentinel but blocks less damage and so on the Sentinels party bonus is notably to reduce all damage for all party members By a significant factor 8% at minimum this is basically required in this fight because the warmech can use this big AOE attack that basically guarantees your death unless you have a sentinel in the party to absorb some of the damage notably this boss starts with a clear explanation of the Sentinel role meaning it's a glorified tutorial to make sure you understand how the Sentinel works as it'll be a large

part of your strategy in certain portions of the game moving Forward finally Medics heal the party that's really all there is to it they have different kinds of heals some heals Target one person While others Target the whole party and can remove debuffs using Asuna but other than that they're pretty straightforward their party bonus increases the percentage of HP healed now let's talk early strategies for almost half the game your party will be chosen for you meaning you have to deal with the roles you have access to at That time this early roles are limited

to Commando ravager Sentinel and Medic in the menu you can build your own Paradigm deck for each party composition you receive there are six slots and six is more than enough for this early in the game notably I think the game does a pretty bad job of teaching the player how important some aspects of this system are like stacking roll bonuses it to my knowledge only teaches this for the Sentinel Roll But stacking ravagers Or Commandos to increase chain gauge speed or damage is really valuable in the long run in this particular party the fastest

way to stagger an enemy is to switch between com RAV RAV and RAV RAV RAV the single Commando half the time will be more than than enough to keep the gauge maintained and switching to tr disaster will ensure the fastest possible staggering in the interim notably every 12 seconds your party will automatically get full ATB gauges when You shift paradigms the game literally never tells you this meaning it's difficult to realize it's happening at all but proper use of this speeds up combat dramatically it will happen incidentally as long as you're doing Paran shifts every

now and again but I think a big rookie mistake that a lot of people probably made is to stay in one Paradigm until some outside force puts you in a state in which shifting paradigms is necessary when in reality The game wants you to Paradigm Shift every other ATB gauge in order to keep the combat moving forward playing this way is much more enjoyable as you begin to develop more efficient ways to use the Paradigm Shift menu like going into the menu and picking what Paradigm you want as soon as your next ATB gauge is

full and the attacks are playing out then selecting at the second the final attack in your ATB gauge is being executed in order to reduce waiting time Between actions this is an engaging way to play and keeps up energy of combat for much longer and it's clear it's what the game intended it just neglected to explain it properly at this point the party splits up snow stays behind to continue trying to get Sarah out of the crystal while SAS hope venil and lightning all move on to try and find a way to complete their focus

or what they think it is none of these four characters really get along well vanil Is borderline impetuous in her optimism and gets frustrated at Hope and S when they can't share in that optimism she also upsets lightning when she asks if Sarah ever told her anything about her Focus it's clear that these people are each carrying their traumas and personalities into this mess and it's resulting in them being less than great traveling companions even those that are mostly trying this group makes their way into a large ruin fighting through scyon Troops before getting ambushed

by a large flying Beast this boss is called the Garuda Interceptor and it doesn't add much to the established strategy of the combat so far after beating it we unlock two rols SAS gets access to synergist and venil gets access to sabur the party finds a scom ship which SAS can fly due to his history as a civilian Airship pilot meanwhile snow is ambushed by scyon before something happens in a moment of desperation snow is encased in A huge burst of magic and two entities come forth the twin sisters they fight off syon before turning

and attacking snow himself this is our first idolan battle idolan are the Summons of this game and in order to unlock them you have to beat them in a fight at certain points throughout the story these fights are puzzles more so than real fights and ask you to use specific elements of the Paradigm system for each one to beat them you must increase the Gestalt gauge And then use the Gestalt button the gastal gauge builds in a different way for each idolan in this case snow must use the Sentinel role to defend himself from the

attacks of one of the sisters since the other sister will heal snow if his health gets too low you don't need to worry about keeping your HP up defending successfully from the entire combo will shoot the gastal gauge up significantly all idolan can also be beaten by amassing the chain gauge with Ravagers or seur though this is rarely enough to beat them in time seeing as they set doom on you at the start of the fight if you can't get the gastal gauge to Max by the time the Doom counter runs out it's game over

these fights are pretty great not just for their mechanical depth but for their thematic significance as well something we'll see a lot more of later at the end of the fight the Two Sisters turn into a motorbike and let snow ride around on Them the game always playing the gastal cut scene before finishing the fight will definitely not be the source of absolute neck shattering tonal Whiplash later snow ends up getting captured by a woman one we've actually seen already and who is a l though her brand looks very strange light SAS venil and hope

fly off on the pyom ship promptly getting into a dog fight that they end up escaping from this is followed by a scene in which a news update gives us a Little more of the thoughts of these characters on topics such as the sanctum and the Primark dley the head of the sanctum lightning thinks he's a fousy tool SAS calls him the murderer and chief while venil doesn't know who he is at all the news update announces the successful completion of The Purge but also that more purges may be coming they end up flying past

Phoenix the fou sea that provides cocoon with light sort of like a little personal Sun after dodging More ships trying to take them down they end up losing altitude rapidly and falling back to the surface of cocoon [Music] this party finds themselves in the vial Peaks an area full of pulse technology and structures cocoon was originally part of pulse but it was lifted from pulse by the F sea and much of pulse was used in the construction of cocoon cities this very area was what housed the faly ENA the pulse vestage being Just another part

of the Vile Peaks that was moved and used to build cities and cocon the irony of people's fear of pulse while not realizing that their entire lives are literally built upon on it isn't lost on me it's smart writing that the game never calls attention to directly only through reading the data log and putting some pieces together will you realize the truth of the matter the data log is apparently another point of contention and another thing that I Think feeds into people's disdain at the terminology being thrown around ly FY sanctum scom pulse you name

it it's explained in the data log and so clearly the game isn't written well and basically requires the data log to understand I say that's absolutely ridiculous I didn't read the data log at all until my most recent playthrough for this video and I understood everything fine that being said I'm very glad I did because the data log houses some of the Most interesting Concepts and does a lot for World building that they couldn't really do in the cutscene writing because it would have inevitably felt clunky since all of these characters already know what all

of these terms mean especially those related to the sanctum and locations on cocoon there's no reason why the characters would need to explain them in context and so they just don't unless it comes up naturally presuming the person they're talking to Would understand what they are referring to the only time this isn't the case is when venil doesn't get something which also has a reason that you may or may not have realized by now because the game is doing a whole lot of hinting at it the data log allows people that want to know more

to get it without that information bogging down the game's Snappy writing but isn't necessary to understand the story it just adds a lot Of context and World building which I think is pretty great there are maybe two examples of things that I would have liked to have been explained in context in some way but I'll bring those up as we get to them after fighting off a pack of dogs zaz and venil both tuck her out lightning moving forward and leaving them behind hope follows her not long from now lightning has a flashback to the

fireworks she was working in the bodm security regiment a subsection of The Guardian Corps tasked with defending bodm from public security threats and local Wildlife according to the data log the regiment was one of the least active units of the core due to bodm being a mostly sleepy little Beach town with little threat from local Wildlife This lends some interesting background to Lightning's super tough military exterior she has a whole lot of big talk for someone who was in the least active regiment in the guardian Corps this too Relates to how she treats snow calling

him all talk not long ago when it seems almost given this context that lightning is just the same way again this information isn't necessary to understand these characters or their Journeys but it does add some context that makes it even more interesting on this night lightning was stationed on the beach in bodm and as she watched the fireworks her LT walked up apparently scom found something and didn't want the Guardian core around so he intended to send lightning home he also briefly mentioned an event which will become pivotal to multiple character Stories the Year Day

Gorge accident or incident as Lightning postulated the LT also said that lightning was due for a promotion lightning was going to take the next day off for her birthday because as she put it Sarah insisted hope walks up to lightning her being a bit surprised perhaps that Hope's the only one that Showed up or maybe what she's surprised at is that hope showed up at all they moved forward lightly explaining more about the difference between scom and guardian Corp hope asks The Logical question of why she would willingly join The Purge and she says it

was for Sarah we get another flashback to that day when The Purge began lightning stepped up to a soldier and relinquished her role in The Guardian Corps in exchange for a one-way ticket on a train to Either pulse or certain death though some would say these two are one and the same this is where lightning met SZ and he knew she was up to something back in the present lightning starts heading up a cliff face before telling hope that some things in life you just do she then leaves him behind meanwhile SAS and venil continue

moving forward this is a great time to talk about synergists Saboteur and the nature of forced party compositions I think a lot of people Find stuff like this annoying I think it's about the only thing keeping the combat from being crushingly dull for most of the first half of the game this party composition in particular is a puzzle because there is no Commando present so staggering becomes a big question mark As previously stated sabur make up for this somewhat but the issue is that the savur in the party is being controlled by an Ai and

the AI has a bit of a quirk Sab AI states that it will Only try to debuff an enemy until it has all the valid debuffs that the sap knows it will then refuse to do anything and just stand there wasting time so while you can use the sapur to maintain the chain gauge it isn't as simple as with a Commando because you essentially have a limited number of attacks the Sab will try before it just gives up and sits there briefly let's go over Buffs and debuffs since this is perhaps the second most important

element of this game James combat sabs and sins both work off the same basic buff and debuff structure for the sake of Simplicity assume that for each of these Buffs that I talk about there is an equivalent debuff that does the opposite and has the prefix d before it like d protect and D shell for example otherwise I will explain that there isn't an equivalent debuff or say what the name of the equivalent debuff is protect and shell increase defense against physical and Magic attacks Respectively Veil increases resistance to Elemental attacks by 50% its debuff

counterpart is called imperil and it reduces Elemental resistances by one stage stages meaning absorb goes to immune immune goes to resistant resistant goes to normal and normal goes to vulnerable each stage increasing the damage that element deals bar element Buffs increase resistance to specific Elements by 50% combining this with Veil is extremely effective there is no Equivalent debuff bravery and Faith increase strength and Magic damage respectively haste increases the at be gauge speed by 50% probably the single most useful buff in the game as it is never not useful and its debuff counterpart is called

slow vigilance increases cut and keep by 10 okay what the heck did I just say so all abilities have a cut stat and a keep stat that determines how easy or difficult abilities are to interrupt the cut stat Of the offending ability is compared to the keep stat of the defending ability and if cut is higher than keep the defending ability will be interrupted vigilance greatly reduces the chances that you're interrupted during moves and increases the chance you will interrupt enemies during their moves by increasing both cut and keep by 10 its debuff counterpart is

cursed and it reduces cut and keep by 20 when an enemy is staggered all of their keep stats are Set to zero if they were originally 89 or below meaning that any ability an enemy might use during a stagger will be easy to interrupt as long as it's not a fringe case in which the ability is literally impossible to interrupt even during a stagger this is when the keep stat would be at or above 90 though this doesn't happen super often nearly every attack is interruptable on both the enemy side and your party this obviously

adds another chunk of strategy learning Which attacks you have that have higher cut and using them when bigger attacks that you want to interrupt come out or timing staggers with when these big attacks might happen this is more valuable as you get further in the game and fight much tougher enemies and bosses one more note on staggers and interrupting attacks is that Commandos and certain ravager abilities can launch enemies in the air making it impossible for them to act until they hit the Ground they can then be juggled in the air meaning that for the

full duration of a stagger they wouldn't even be able to use otherwise uninterruptible abilities in element Buffs add damage to that element to all attacks these only come in fire water Thunder and frost variants same with the bar element Buffs from before these also don't have a debuff equivalent dispel will remove Buffs from enemies and Asuna a medic ability removes debuffs from party Members now we have some debuffs with equivalent Buffs poison deals tick damage over time pain and fog remove physical and spellcasting abilities respectively and days keeps the target from being able to act

at all with the added bonus of taking double damage from the next attack which will also dispel the day status all of these debuffs can be applied to the party as well yes that means days can be applied to the party and will be at different times during The game Buffs always work immediately and have a time limit until they go away debuffs have a percentage chance of activating and also have a time limit until they go away Along with some enemies being immune to certain debuffs how do you know this well the game gives

you a page full of information on every enemy in the fight called the Libra page accessible at any time during battle and even from the data log between fights the first time you fight an enemy there Will be no information on this page but as you use abilities on them or defeat them this page will slowly fill up with all the necessary information on a Target to know how to deal with it you can also use the Libra technique to retrieve a chunk of the information at once really quickly techniques are special abilities which use

the TP bar which itself restores after fights based on how well you did the most notable techniques are Libra Quake which damages All enemies with earth type damage both of which use one segment of the bar and summon which calls upon the idolan of the character you are controlling and uses the full TP bar though there are other techniques with varying amounts of usefulness back to Libra it doesn't unlock the full page of information but you can use a lib scope to do just that these are highly rare items that completely unlock the Libra page

for a single enemy or boss you can also unlock Things things like status immunities more quickly by trying to use setability on the enemy for example if you use de protect on an enemy the information of their immunity or lack thereof will be automatically logged in the Libra page this same process applies to discovering Elemental immunities and vulnerabilities just use the element on the enemy and it'll log their status automatically the node section has unique information on the Strategies employed by enemies some Of these will be simple though many especially those for bosses will be

more complex and inform more of your strategies if you choose to use it Libra also determines many AI behaviors what debuff sabur will use what buff synergists will use what elements ravagers will use and so on for example if an enemy's Libra notes say that it employs powerful Magic based attacks an AI controlled synergist will prioritize applying shell over protect because it Sees that note as a clue that magic is more dangerous than physical damage in this fight Sabers will also prioritize debuffs based on if the notes page says that they are susceptible to a

certain debuff presuming that sabur has access to said debuff so having a full Libra page on an enemy is valuable but especially for bosses continuing with AI behaviors AI will behave differently depending on what Buffs and debuffs are active for enemies and party members for Example if a party member has Faith which increases magic damage but not bravery the AI for that party member will prioritize Magic based abilities over physical though it will still take into account that character stats in those specific areas to determine if going full hog on Magic is the best decision

this can have more effects than just what abilities the character chooses to use because many abilities have unique properties that determine How that character moves on the battlefield the easiest to point to example here is with lightning in this fight that we haven't gotten to quite yet lightning moves around much less when she uses ruin the only magic attack available to Commandos so if she's in a spot you want to keep her in you can cast faith on her to encourage her to only use ruin essentially locking her in place in this fight the dreadn

not had to choose between hitting SAS and venal With AOE attacks or hitting only lightning meaning that was easier to manage health because I locked lightning down in a position further away from the rest of the mostly stationary party now is this feasible in casual play probably not but it is another layer of strategy you can try to employ and it supports the decision to go pseudo Real Time with the combat I know some people complain that you can't control where party members go but if you could why would You ever not have everyone split

up or have the Sentinel way far away from everyone else the way that it is now the knowledge of how to execute strategy like this is one thing that separates a good player from a great player it is hidden depth that isn't strictly necessary to complete the game but adds some more interest and complexity I think it's really well done honestly okay back to SAS and venal due to the choice the devs made of having SAS as Leader you don't have reliable stacker maintenance as soon as venil has applied all debuffs to every enemy in

the fight she will stop applying debuffs at all sitting there and wasting ATB charge this can of course teach you about carefully managing what your party members do in order to ensure you can stagger a effectively if you need to though the further you get in the game the less important this specific aspect of party management becomes seeing as You can cover up the limits of your party or their AI with who you choose as your leader another thing this can teach you is to be Discerning with how much time you spend buffing SAS has

access to synergist meaning that you can buff venil or SAS with whatever abilities you want provided SAS has access to them which at this point mostly means vigilance bravery and Faith all three of those are useful though so where's the choice than that well bravery actually Isn't useful for either of these characters seeing as neither of them have access to the Commando role and neither at this point have access to the ravager strike abilities which are physical abilities that have elemental charges attached to them well not entirely true SAS has flame strike but there's basically

no reason to use it because it's actually slower than his magic attacks and no enemies are really extra susceptible to physical damage in This section anyway so casting bravery on either character just wastes time and given that the game's main focus is on efficiency and killing enemies as fast as possible this isn't something you want to be doing again not really necessary for completing the game but it is another element of strategy that can make the game more enjoyable when employed I keep getting sidetracked since SAS and venal can't currently reliably maintain staggers every fight

In the section is a three-way battle this is where two groups of enemies are fighting each other and basically ignoring you this allows you to be guaranteed a preemptive strike and enemies start the battle at half Health further enemies won't attack you until one of the two enemy groups is dead meaning that you can prioritize slowly eliminating as many enemies as possible before the remaining ones turn their attention to you this reinforces the Lessons on Smart targeting from earlier and it's essential for getting through with any semblance of speed that's about all the game discussion

I can ring out of this section so let's move on SAS and venil walk up to a hopeless hope he recounts the day he spent in bodm watching the fireworks with his mom they each made a wish on the fireworks Hope's mom told him that she wished his father could be here to which hope responded with vitriol saying they don't need him It's unclear at this time why hope dislikes his father so much hope laments his mother's death blames it on snow and then says his father doesn't care about him to which SAS says any

father cares after a moment he notices the looks he's getting and tries to diffuse their Confusion by moving on later we have a scene in which the characters recount elements of the datal log entry on the Vile Peaks I spoke of earlier venil doesn't understand why there's a bunch Of pull stuff in this area to which SAS asks if she slept through her history class another less than subtle hint at Vil's true identity eventually they catch back up with lightning and rejoin her SAS staying with the party but adding lightning in this eventually leads to

a fight with this pulse work machine known as the dreadn this is a great fight that reinforces the importance of Buffs and debuffs not only is the dreadn susceptible to a few Debuffs but it will also spend an ample amount of time removing the debuffs during which it can't attack at all this is a great time to lay on some damage or apply Buffs of your own in peace I love how much these very important mechanics are reinforced over and over again to ensure you eventually learn to use them all all the time strictly speaking

this boss is entirely doable without Buffs or debuffs but many in the future will be much much harder if not borderline Impossible without them so the game is doing a good job of hinting to the player how much they need to focus on these mechanics the relatively low time it takes to apply these Buffs and debuffs also makes them fun to use and they feel like easily implemented additions to the combat in many games with a system like this the debuffs especially end up feeling Superfluous or too clunky and time-consuming to apply on top of

often the game not being Designed around basic needing them to get through even if the game would be more enjoyable with using them consistently I love how they're implemented here after the fight lightning and hope have a moment where she gives him some advice these moments will come back to matter in just a little bit eventually lightning reveals that she intends on going for Eden the sanctums door cocoon sustainer and Guiding Light we don't know much about Eden but the reaction from the rest of the characters tells us all we need to know this plan

is insane and would likely result in something catastrophic if she succeeded lightning says she doesn't take orders from from F SE and says her Focus doesn't matter and that they might be enemies the next time they meet lightning also says that it's better to pick your path and keep moving down it something hope clearly takes note of Hope follows lightning as venil Monologue some cryptic lines when the fear sank in it tore us all apart lightning was suffering reaching out to us but none of us could see it snow deserves it if only I'd been

stronger none of this ever would have happened SAS and venil decide to go the other direction to hopefully not be wrapped up in that mess and thus the Party is split up once again lightning is clearly not happy that hope decided to tag along they move forward a few fights later telling him to call her light hope wants to get stronger and so she lets him join the two getting into some light Antics by using a pulse workk dread knot to Traverse a large portion of the Vile Peaks in a very strange miname in a

moment of weakness for both of them hope trips and lightning quickly tells him he has to turn back because She can't babysit him anymore hope says he'll get stronger but she refutes him before a burst of light appears to come out of her brand and a warrior appears clearly targeting hope lightning lunges forward to defend him this is Odin and our second idolan fight this one builds gastal by Chain gauging and protecting hope meaning healing him since lightning just recently unlocked the medic roll Odin ever attack lightning directly instead opting to focus all of his

Attacks on Hope Odin attacks quickly and light isn't the best medic around so this fight is Pretty Tough not to mention hope is very weak in the HP department so it doesn't take a full combo for Odin to take him down if you don't protect him the Thematic symbolism here is potent immediately after telling hope he was on his own this thing comes from lightning seemingly and attacks hope forcing her to protect him whatever synus being wants to keep them together And to teach lightning a lesson after after the fight hope says he'll get better

and lightning apologizes for what she said promising to toughen him up a bit later the two take a break hope quickly falling asleep lightning looks on visibly softening to him elsewhere s and vanil move into a large Factory type area they discuss the pulse phobia SAS saying afraid of what they don't know afraid to find out more gets worse the older you Get I'm terrified of what'll happen eventually they camp for the the night Vil drawing a dirt line between them and saying not to cross it this Begins the kind of weird extremely vague sexual

tension between these two characters though admittedly this is also the first of only two times it really feels like the game's implying anything of the sort thankfully SZ actually says grow up which I appreciate and at one point he wakes up to realize venil has crossed The line herself clearly having some kind of bad dream and using sas's Comfort still just a kid SAS remarks as he goes back to sleep snow meanwhile is taking into a big ship the lind Blum and meets Sid Reigns who says they are hunting ly the implication of this scene

is that they are intending on killing the L and snow is clearly mad that this could be their goal but in reality this isn't their goal at all they actually want to help the ly to some sort of end This is annoying because it's needlessly Aus skated and eventually handwaved since Sid Reigns is clearly antagonistic in the scene it's literally only for the purposes of the viewer that he behaves this way considering the fact that they actually have aligned goals sometimes the game will do things like this and it'll work and this is one of

the instances in which it doesn't it just doesn't feel like there's a good reason for rains to be antagonizing snow like This snow then has another flashback this time to the day Sarah told him she was a ly she started by saying she wanted to break up which snow took like a champ to be honest but he did Chase her down and promis to help her fulfill her Focus [Music] hope and light make it to the gapper Whitewood a classified area that the military uses as a research facility for bioweapons like all the beasts you'll

be Encountering throughout this chapter according to the data log the winding paths through the trees are deliberately confusing causing Intruders to become hopelessly lost I think this would feel a bit more accurate if it wasn't just as linear and easy to Traverse as the rest of the game Upon a arriving hope says he wants to take Point repeating a line light said to him earlier so hope is the party leader now which makes the section a bit more tough because of Hope's Relatively low Health light gives hope a knife and later hope notices the military

flying overhead even before light does clearly he's learning this is a good time to show how the gameplay and story integration Works throughout the game both in combat and in Exploration characters will often say things at Key moments during combat Paradigm shifts are easily the most common though killing enemies is another one other less common examples include party Members being critically injured going down getting buffed getting healed or buffing and healing other party members the party leader will be most vocal typically though this isn't always true depending on the party makeup and the state of

the story The key thing here is that the stuff like this isn't uncommon especially in the modern day it feels like every game involves people yelling stuff during combat even the characters you're playing as much more often than It used to what makes this unique is that these lines aren't just randomly selected from a huge pool of options they are dependent on the state of the story and most critically how the characters in the party feel about each other lightning is perhaps the easiest to point to as an example of how this works in the

first few chapters she either doesn't talk at all like at the start of chapter 4 when it's just her and hope or she's shouting things like Just stay out of my way on a paradigm shift the way this line is delivered coupled with knowing lightning as a character clearly tells us that it is aimed at the rest of the party not the enemies however immediately after the fight with Odin I got the first in of her saying keep up with me hope on a paradigm shift showing her softening to him and wanting to toughen him

up like she promised hope has been pretty quiet as well but now that he's the party Leader coupled with his resolve to get stronger and learn from light his Paradigm Shift lines are how about this light maybe we should try something else would this work better light he's clearly unsure of himself but wants to learn and grow stronger and so he asks light for her input during combat it also shows a lessening fear of combat he's almost reving in the opportunity to train on these bioweapons he will also start battles with lines like got to

Show what I'm made of or just block out everything else to show his drive to grow even stronger light still talks occasionally when she heals hope she'll sometimes say I've got your back showing support for his leadership furthermore during this section lightning can be heard giving advice to hope during exploration study your enemy's actions never lose sight of what's important to you all these things fuel hope in a way that light will soon come to regret when She realizes his true intentions all of these things make these characters feel like people combat isn't the segregated

state in which gameplay is happening and no story can be conveyed the writers took every chance they could get to bake some character development and motivation into the gameplay and realize that just because the player is in control doesn't mean the story has to stop moving forward the two have a conversation about the otherly sea it Naturally falls on snow light recounting the meaning of the name Nora they gave themselves no obligations rules or authority light calls it stupid hope calls it irresponsible later hope reveals to light that he's hung up on snow and tells

her about what happened with his mom he feels snow needs to pay hope looking at the knife brings light back to the memory of when she received it on her birthday Sarah told light she was a ly but light either didn't believe It or couldn't after Sarah and snow left she opened the gift and found the knife back in the present lightning gives some very unfortunate advice in which she tells hope to think of moving forward as a strategy to focus on his goal and shut out everything else he agrees and decides to call it

operation Norah named after his mother light realizes is here that she needs to talk him down from this Revenge plan and for a moment it looks like she succeeds hope decides to Fight the sanum with light and learn to survive they move forward cutting through the aster protoflorian a fairly simple boss that can be made easier with good buffing and positioning the two finally escape the GAA Whitewood and move on elsewhere Snow's Le Sea Hunt is about to begin when he has a recollection of what happened after light's failed birthday party he and Sarah were

escaping from the sanctum on a hover bike they went to the vestage Which takes Sarah and locks itself up before snow can join her this scene is more than a little baffling because as far as I can tell the game never tells us what their motivations for going back there were unless you read the data log entry on this particular section of the 13 days which tells us that they wanted to go back to the fal to see if they can learn what her Focus was specifically mentioning that they hoped having that information would convince

lightning That it was true this would have been nice information to have in context for sure [Music] SAS and vanilla running the exact opposite direction that lightning and hope are going their goal Nautilus the City of Dreams as SAS says to get there they must go through the sunleth waterscape a field used for ecological Studies by the sanctum they use weather spheres with direct access to the fal SE And charge of controlling weather patterns and these actually show up in game a little ways through the chapter they can be swapped from Sunny to rainy to

control what monsters come out to play depending on the groups you're swapping out some might be easier than others so taking stock of the fight in front of you before charging in is a good way to ensure you make it through with relative ease now that SZ is a Commando this party composition has Become much easier to handle that one simple addition now covering every issue this party had before you also control venil now which means debuffing has become better and easier but buffing has become slightly less so generally this section is fairly straightforward but

keeps itself interesting in two ways the first being the aforementioned weather spheres and the second being that this is the first chapter so far that has had enemies you're not really intended to Kill notably the first appearance of the scale Beast type enemy that is extremely tough without a good preemptive strike to take it out before it can really get to you there's a legit tutorial prompt that literally tells you that avoiding fights is highly recommended at times so there's that as I travel venil feels that SAS is becoming more distant and unfocused she asks

him if he has a family to which he says he has a kid and had a wife SAS recalls a memory of the Day he and his son watched the fireworks in bodm do his little boy wished on the fireworks that SAS would cheer up and be like his old self again SAS picked him up and made a wish of his own one that he kept secret from Dodge and from us venil strides forward telling SAS he needs to keep it together when they stop for the night venil teases say saying it must be hard

to keep his eyes closed with a cute girl like me me around this is thankfully the last time the game Will imply any sort of sensual tension between these two she reassures him that even if we don't know what'll happen we have to keep our dreams alive venil goes to sleep waking up later to find SAS missing she goes to find him standing by the Water Deep In thought she tells him he can't blame himself he can't control who a fousy picks for a focus SZ responds that Dodge was picked and a flashback begins to

the UR Gorge incident Dodge ran off and found his way Near the F SE at Ur Gorge apparent some pulse Ley snuck in and tried to attack the sanctum fousy and in an effort to protect itself it may Dodge a lei we briefly see two familiar looking characters standing over Dodge leaving asaz approaches apparently he was the one who found the pulse F he has some knack for finding pulse stuff SAS joined the purge train because he figured Dodge's Focus was to destroy the pulse F SE if I was right about his Focus he's probably

a crystal already of course if he was supposed to take out that thing's Lu see then either we die or he's a SE die [Music] really it's a pickle all [Music] right but the bird the bird says no SAS moves on on venil following slowly behind interestingly the in Combat banter which was Lively from both party members before dries up quite a bit here till the end of the chapter eventually they make their way to a dock where they can board a ship to Nautilus it starts raining pretty heavily venil asks him if he hates

pulse to which he talks about being skeptical of all the sanctum smoke blowing he starts to say that the purge stuff was because of Dodge but venil stops him short nearly admitting to what she did before SAS Says that it was the scum from pulse behind it [Music] I might as well have tried to stop the rain I fought the tears but they still fell you're getting soaked I'll be fine it's only water [Music] light and Hope finally make it to palmm the home of Hope's dad and one of the Last remaining bastions of brick

and mortar Commerce on allive cocoon which is Switched almost entirely to an online shopping model the streets here are overrun with scom and guardian Corp the two working together to hunt down the L threat hope continues to lead with confidence saying he knows a way to get through by using the underground tunnels essentially this path takes them through an underground nutriculture plant to where they see carbunkle the fousy in Charge of food production they ruminate on the nature of the fal SE for a bit light saying that humans are just leeches and parasites to them

but hope disagrees saying it's more like they treat humans as pets this makes light realize something when the leash of the fou sea was taken from her she was completely lost she found Purpose By fighting but she realizes now that she was running away and hope got swept along with her she says that operation Nora is over what I no you told me to fight I made a mistake what you can't do this you can't can't just build something up like that then abandon [Music] me I won't abandon you I won't from this point on

Hope doesn't talk as much during combat clearly Retreating into himself hope and light paused briefly wondering what battles to fight lightning explains where she got her new name she says she felt like she needed to escape from her past to be strong enough for Sarah the only one who believed her was snow don't say it don't say his name it brings everything back I keep playing it in my head what happened to her and then I see his stupid face and and he's Smiling how can he smile when she's dead I know there's nothing I

can do about it I hate knowing that no no matter what happens she's not coming back when I was fighting there was no time to think about it it felt good just to give in but now you you start talking about hope I'm sorry I'm messed up no it's my fault light encourages hope to talk to His dad and find the hope he was named for they end up in a courtyard and get surrounded by the military but snow and the lady he's with show up to rescue him he uses his idolan summon to do

this just mentioning it to say that I really like when games actually use the character's abilities in cutcenes light pushes forward leaving Hope with snow telling him to take care of Hope the woman follows behind snow and hope fight off the rest of the military and then Have a brief conversation hope asks where snow has been and snow says that rain said that he'd lend the Luci hand being the point where all that vitriol present from before is handwaved and doesn't make sense anymore snow says that hopes toughened up but that only dumb grown-ups should

be fighting snow says something extremely toned deaf you think it's stupid to fight it is if you get killed and hope takes a ton of offense to this obviously I wonder if hope would have called off operation Nora himself if snow hadn't acted this way there's some irony in this section in terms of gameplay hope definitely needs protection and in fact certain enemy types will Target him over snow meaning you'll likely need to use Snow's Sentinel role to keep him alive snow is protecting someone that wants him dead meanwhile the woman Fang and lightning get

to know each other Fang reveals that she's Vil's partner and Recounts the day at Ur Gorge she was only there to wreck some Havoc figuring that was probably their new focus when they woke up they couldn't remember what had happened or what their focus was it was due to Fang waking up that the F SE anima was able to make Sarah a la and it was because they were in Ur Gorge that Dodge became a la Fang tells like that Sarah will come back someday just like they did her main goal right now is to

just figure out their focus so venil Doesn't turn to a SE she explains how Brands work once the eye in the center opens all the way you turn into a SE lighting remarks that she feels like she has nothing left to fight for but Fang tells her that she only needs to survive and she'll see Sarah again elsewhere snow and hope move through the streets trying to fight through crowds without getting more Innocents killed snow inites panic in the populace just to get them away from the soldiers hope tries To help a little kid but

even someone this young attacks him and pushes him down before running away hope does return her doll to her though they hoist a ride onto the rooftops where they continue to get harassed by military from all sides finally in a moment of calm hope confronts snow snow what do you plan to do I need to know I told you save Sarah protect cocoon and have myself a big happy family still it's a long road Ahead or maybe not so long whatever happens things will work themselves out even if you're lcii you got to keep fighting

huh and what if that gets people around you involved what what happens when your actions end up ruining someone's life what if someone dies what then snow how do you pay for what you've done I can't Right there is nothing that can make something like that right again when someone's dead when someone's gone words are useless so that's it people die and you just run away I know it's all my fault I don't know how to fix it what do you start what do you say all I can do is go forward keep fighting and

surviving until I find the answers I need there are no answers you're running from what you deserve why don't you tell me what I deserve the Same fate [Music] [Applause] Nora esim she was my mother and she died because of you you you're the one she [Music] meant they get blown off the roof and fall down into the Alleyways once again the scene fading to Black at this point point in the game's telling of the events we go back to light and Fang for A while it's a pretty heroin Cliffhanger when snow finally wakes up

he picks up hope and Carries him forward trying to find safety but he's clearly hurt he makes his way onto the rooftops again and Hope finally wakes up snow apologizes for what he did why did you save me I was asked to keep you safe by lightning and by Nora I'm sorry What happened it was my fault I put her in danger I know that let me make things right you told me before that you couldn't and that words were useless and a lot of other things I shouldn't have said like I didn't know what

to do I didn't know how to set things straight so I didn't I thought if I couldn't make up for it and all the apologies in the world wouldn't mean a thing So I decided I had to find a way to pay for it first before I'd even have the right to say sorry but it's like you said I was using that as an excuse so I could run from my own guilt and that hit home [Applause] oh look hope I know what happened with my Fault I don't deny it and I am sorry here

that's lights isn't it I why' you that knife was a present from Sarah to keep her safe she trusted you was something that important you should be the one to carry it I'll find a way way to make things better just give me time if nothing I do is good enough and I'll take any punishment you want to Dish out she's gone [Music] snow you can take the blame but but it won't bring her [Music] back I'm sorry I I knew it all long [Music] I knew it but I had to blame someone I had

to I needed a Reason to keep on fighting it wasn't someone's fault it was mine take it out on me and keep yourself alive until you do suddenly large machine shows up and knocks snow away and then maybe one of the most awesome scenes from any video game ever hope says this always the hero you want to die you can't I won't let You after a while of fighting on his own Fang and lightning show up to offer some backup there's really not much to say about the ungal subjugator other than that he has a

very funny name it's a pretty straightforward fight I did use a unique Commando ability in this fight Smite which deals a ton of damage right at the end of a stagger and is very useful for bosses especially it can really be the Hail Mary that brings a fight to a close this is also a good Time to note that anytime your party composition is Switched right before a fight commences the paradigms will be selected for you and they almost always suck at least in my play style after the fight hope tells like that he's given

up on operation Norah they finally make it to Hope's dad's house and hope tells him about Norah's death in these scenes we get the feeling that Bartholomew is a bit awkward and doesn't convey his feelings All Too Well a detail expressed Clearly in the datalog it also gives us the truth of why hope doesn't like him much there isn't a reason he's just a rebellious teenager this is fine honestly and realistic especially when his dad is so clumsy with his feelings and struggles to relate to his son in another room light apologizes to snow for

how she's been treating him and Sarah says she couldn't face it at the time snow asks for her real name and light says to ask Sarah when she comes Back they all convene with Bartholomew to discuss the plan he thinks that if they were to take on the sanctum fear of pulse would only get worse while they're discussing this the military shows up and begins raiding the house they fight to the windows and snow manages to make an appeal to the military their Commander yog Ro comes out and says that he believes cocoon will die

if all pulse isn't purged suddenly chaos breaks loose and we see Ro gets shot and fall a Havoc Sky tank appears and the party must fight it interestingly this is the same kind kind of ship that caused Norah's death so this is a thematic bookend of sorts this boss has four Targets on top of the main health bar in a similar fashion to Ena each one has its own attack that will be removed from the battle once it is though this isn't really much of a strategic Choice attacking the four extra targets damages the main

one directly so you'd be Foolish not to focus all of them down first one slightly annoying thing is that your party can only use magic attacks since the target is so far away lightning can't make use of her Superior physical damage though this honestly isn't that much of an issue having a sentinel in your paradigms is very valuable because a lot of attacks are AOE so you can reduce damage intake with the sentinel's passive bonus since you can't use much strategy like positioning And most of the targets can't be feasibly staggered this is one of

the simpler bosses in the campaign and basically boils down to what I'm going to call Health Management Health Management is a term I'm using to describe the classic turn-based pattern of deal damage until you have low HP and then heal every turn-based RPG uses this pattern including this one unlike most turn-based RPGs though I find this one Gives way more strategy to the concept and Health Management can mean a lot of different things in this fight I used a lot of potions to keep from needing to go into healing paradigms some fights might encourage the

use of a sentinel to avoid needing Pure Healing paradigms as often this is also an aspect of Health Management in fact the choice of having a sentinel in your Paradigm whether it's an offensive or defensive one is majorly beneficial to Health Management since You won't need to spend nearly as much time in healing paradigms even healing paradigms themselves have a lot of nuance in this party for example you could have a healing Paradigm consisting of two Commandos and one Medic or you could do a full healing Paradigm with two Medics and a sentinel one allows

you to continue dishing out damage and maintaining stagger while the other enables you to heal much faster and go back to Pure offense more quickly even Purely offensive tactics feed into Health Management pushing to get a stagger done earlier at risk of death can result in finishing the fight or removing the enemy from the fight for a significant amount of time by launching the in the air allowing you to confidently avoid defensive or healing paradigms while you dish out damage even at low HP thresholds that would otherwise spell certain death if you couldn't interrupt enemy

abilities these Are all aspects of Health Management in this game and I find it gives the combat much more interesting strategy Beyond just heal when your health is low and have high enough stats to out damage the enemies once the sky tank goes down the Cavalry arrives and brings the party back to the lindblum don't get cute right let's move it SAS and venil finally get to the City of Dreams where they will be right at home with a bunch of other people running From the Terrors of reality Vil isn't seeming entirely herself as they

enter there's a News Bulletin that shows the courtyard fight in palen poem from the last chapter venil recognizes Fang someone in the gathered crowd says that they should just kill the hostages they've purportedly taken along with the Lai I appreciate this for two reasons the first being that it gives some context to when these events are happening so everything stays within a Logical timeline and the second being that it shows the opinions of the people and reinforces their pulse phobia as being a real issue that the L must fight against not only to us as

viewers but to these characters as well as the continue on it's clear venil is trying to find the right time to tell SAS what happened but how do you tell a man that you've been traveling with and getting to know that you're responsible for the effective death of his son how do you Possibly make up for that they watch something the game calls an idolan parade the definition of idolan according to Oxford is twofold an idealized person or thing and a spectre or Phantom considering what we see in this parade it seems the latter is

the meaning of the term in this case this is wonderful cocoon propaganda where a huge beast from pulse comes to terrorize the people of cocon but a la from cocon shows up wielding fou SE might to defend His homeand and wins the fight decisively this is more clever World building hiding behind the fancy Graphics both in universe and for us as viewers this makes venil wonder if their deaths could have brought back peace from there they Venture forward to Nautilus Park a wildlife petting zoo of sorts SAS tells venil to forget about the heavy stuff

for a while and maybe it'll all just fade away as they get there SAS says says that he promised Dodge he'd bring him here to see the chocobos SZ asks venil if she's got someone special out there to which she replies no when they get there saz's little nameless Chocobo chick flies around and meets the locals and you have to chase him down and find him a few times SZ reveals more about Dodge he's being held by the military having tests run on him trying to figure out his Focus this may seem extreme considering ly

appear throughout the game to be Fairly common but consider that almost all of them are pulse ly specifically cocoon ly are much less common in fact the data log specifically tells us that Dodge was the first cocoon ly in many many generations which is why they felt they needed to bring him in to study him SAS has decided to turn himself in so hopefully he can see Dodge One Last Time venil says he can't give up without getting revenge and says she knows who's responsible for the accident SAS clearly Wants to know but they get

ambushed by the military somehow they follow them here despite not having seen the military in days they fight their way through the military heading up the hill toward the Apex combat for these two back in chapter 6 was very quiet after venil realized what she had done to SZ here SZ seems to have gotten a second wind he's much more talkative almost like the knowledge he'll soon know who is responsible for Do's plight is Driving him forward with gusto venil on the other hand is just as quiet as before the boss for this section the

midl reaper is very uneventful in my fight with him he only managed to attack somewhere around three times or so otherwise he was permanently stagger locked it does show the power of haste saz's most useful cerist ability and the best buff in the the game at the apex of the park Dodge runs out of a building just up Ahead Daddy I found you huh Daddy got you dodge why are you here because you promised but how did you get here [Music] Dodge wait come [Music] back Dodge not you not you do a character we saw

in one of the flashbacks nabat walks out promptly with A platoon she claims that Do's Focus was the capture of undesirables that he could sense power of pulse origin and that's how they monitored SAS and venil as they moved through the Wilds looks like SAS was right he and Dodge really did become enemies nabat also pulls a clever trick here she reveals who was responsible for the incident at uray going so far as to show security camera footage of the day in question the moment Fang decided to attack the F SE And it reached out

to defend itself by turning the nearest human into a ly slave Vil runs off into the building of ahead SAS following behind not long after nbat lets them go saying this is an opportunity to watch L take out one of their own in this Courtyard venil looks up at a throne upon which sits SAS cloaked in some sort of energy you are Cold Blood it lying so people would trust you using them as [Music] Shields how many you got to drag down with you I'm a coward and a killer the people you use don't get

to live why should you [Music] tired of living with guilt then die with [Music] it Bal shoot me for your son don't you Even you think you die and that's that H you think you die and everything will be sugar and rainbows then what can I do what do you want from me if I can't live or die what do you want me to do don't ask me you figure it out I don't know neither do I it's over there's nothing to do shooting you won't Help Nei we're living as they stand and in despair

saz's brand starts to burst forth with energy and an idolan appears venil runs forward to defend SZ who gets up to fight the idolan as well this battle with Bren Hilder is one of the more straightforward and easy idolan battles he yields to chain gauging and buffing so getting through it as a fairly simple matter after the fight SAS aims his guns at venil once again who opens her arms In acceptance of her fate but once again SAS can't seem to do it I think for a moment SAS thought the idolm was here to give

him the strength he needed to get revenge on his son's murderer but in the end he couldn't find the strength to do it or perhaps he knew there was no good that could come from it a lot of things can be [Music] excused shooting kids and [Music] One kindness like his you don't forget my daughter is 10 weeks old when I saw this scene you know before I obviously loved its unflinching depiction of someone who just effectively lost their young son and being confronted with the one that did it the Betrayal SAS must feel here

is unspeakable now I adore it even more for the fact that SAS chooses not to do it even if he claims it's because he Literally can't when I think of you know if I was put in this situation somehow my daughter was irrevocably taken from me and I knew who was responsible I might like to think I'd be strong enough to bring that person to task to give them what they deserve but here's the thing would that even be right would taking out my anger and hurt on that person even accomplish anything even if I

could would that actually make me strong or would refraining from doing so Be the stronger of the two you might think that SAS is weak here and I think he'd agree with you but I'm not so sure it's easy to hold a grudge but a lot harder to forgive especially for something so heinous as the loss of a child forgiveness is something we all have to learn how to do it doesn't come naturally and it certainly doesn't always make the most sense but I think it is the stronger thing to do and That's why I

respect SAS so much at this moment but unfortunately just because he overcame that adversity and just because he didn't kill venil doesn't mean that despair hasn't firmly cemented itself me enough is enough [Music] [Music] do be careful with those [Music] for every Task there's a perfect [Music] tool all of cocoon was against us with us dead they were sure everything would go back back to the way it was before I've heard a term levied at this game before melodramatic to be clear a lot of the games I like have had this term derisively thrown at

them by people who no doubt feel like it's their oneway ticket to convincing people these games Are bad when they use this term these are the kind of scenes they are referring to these intense High emotional scenes in which characters will war with themselves on the right thing to do or against the decisions they want to do but no or wrong what I love about this term is that it's only correct depending on your perspective none of these games whe whether it be Kingdom Hearts middle Gear Solid or Final Fantasy are literally melodramas That is

a specific genre with specific boxes that are usually checked off in order to be able to be called a melodrama actually Kingdom Hearts comes extremely close but still that's not what these people are saying though is the thing they're specifically only talking about one element of melodrama they are often extremely emotionally driven so when they use this term what they are saying is that the characters get emotional over little things or Their emotions don't match the severity of the event question I find this to be a terrible criticism because it's purely subjective something that might

seem like a small issue or a small deal to you could be huge to someone else and for good reason so I would ask you this is losing your mother a big deal to you what about your kid what if you unwittingly caused one of these two events and had no idea how to make it up to that person and if you lack the Empathy to relate to these events if you see these characters as just Anime tropes or walking talking Magic dispensers who might think this is melodramatic I think it's simply dramatic it is

appropriately dramatic for the intensity of the events that are befalling these characters these events make enough sense have enough buildup and strong enough payoff that they don't feel melodramatic like the characters are whiny babies that just need to Suckle on their mom's teeth for a minute to fall asleep but like they are reacting to these events in ways that I could see myself doing as well that these characters are real enough to me that I can empathize with their situation even if I haven't myself been there and I pray to God that I never am

put there a News Bulletin this time L see have been captured and taken aboard the palomia and the primar dley is there to Personally oversee the execution Fang figures vanila is in there so she intends on going and breaking them out there's a small bit of time here where you can get your ducks in a row and talk to each of the party members about what they're about to do Fang knows it's probably a trap but says they need to go anyway to help Vil hopes understandably scared but knows they'll be fine if they stick

together the Party heads into the fry docking right on the palomia and Cutting a swath through the military meanwhile we see venil and SZ who is not dead in a Cell there's a flashback to what happened just after the shot rang out on top of Nautilus Park SAS couldn't do it and nabat walked up and knocked him out cold this makes the scene with the casket of deliberate bait and switch but there's a good reason for it here nbat knew if she didn't knock out SAS he probably would have attacked her and luckily escaped to

add to this the sight Of one of the ly being carried away in a casket could have instilled fear in the remaining ly driving them to give up or turn themselves in venil however was so defeated nabat didn't have anything to worry about remember nabat already knows everything about these two so she probably has a really good idea of how they would react in these scenarios and how they're feeling at this point s says he's pathetic venil says she's the pathetic one because she lied to Everyone in more ways than SZ knows at this point

she has a recollection of the day she and Fang woke up venil lied to Fang about not remembering what happened because she couldn't stand the thought of hurting people she wanted to escape her fate as a l and ever since then she's been running from it as these things typically go trying to avoid hurting people has just gotten people hurt a while later a guard comes in to take them to their execution and the Chocobo chick lays them clean out the two go and grab their weapons fil wondering if she even deserves to escape what

you'd rather die what cuz that's got to scare you scares me scares me so much I think I might die of fright so I push myself to live even harder I can just imagine Dodge laughing at me talking this Nonsense right now I'd do anything to see that smile stay positive right the two parties fight across the palomia before finding each other on the wings Fang and Vil embracing before Fang checks her brand to see how long she has before SE City V uses her weapon to catch the Beast flying around in the air again

I adore when characters are allowed to use their abilities to do things like this in cut scenes and it Gives some context for what this weird weapon thing was originally meant to do they ride the Beast and make their way into the heart of the palomia finally all six party members are together and that means we can customize our party to our liking and so this is as good a time as any to discuss things relating to that like each party member and their strengths and weaknesses just because two characters share a paradigm doesn't mean

they'll have the same Specialization Within in that Paradigm for synergists we have SAS and hope SAS specializes in offensive Buffs haste power increases and adding Elemental damage hope specializes in defensive Buffs protect shell Veil and bar Elemental Buffs are his strong suit further adding to this dichotomy is the fact that SAS has Commando ravager synergist while hope has ravager synergist medic meaning hope is much more suited to a supportive role aimed At keeping the party alive while SAS is a bit more suited to offensive roles and help helping the party deal more damage for sabot

we have venil and Fang I'm sure there's no thematic reason why these two characters specifically got this role venil specializes in reducing an enemy's defenses deprotect deshell and increasing vulnerabilities this would pawell with SAS to maximized damage output Fang specializes in reducing an enemy's ATB efficiency slow Days pain and fog being her main abilities this can also be seen as reducing their offensive capabilities something that pairs well with everything but especially hope in order to greatly reduce how much time is spent in Health Management mode speaking of Health Management your Sentinels are Fang and snow

Fang specializes in single Target provoking and has mediguard which keeps her alive for longer whereas snow specializes in group provoking and has Steel guard each of these has use cases in which they shine or are less effective than the other and your party will likely need to change in order to accommodate that furthermore since party members still only have access to three roles your Paradigm deck is going to be greatly affected by your party choice you may want to have Fang in the party for her extremely useful debuffs but that does mean you'll be short

automatic while she does have Sentinel which can Sort of function as a medic and even more effective at Health Management than a medic in a lot of situations this may still be more of a trade-off than you're willing to make depending on the other members of your party like if you really wanted SAS you'd be down to only one medic potentially depending on your third choice you may want to have lightning in the party for her high damage Commando and decent ravager and medic but she offers absolutely no Utility something this game basically requires you

make use of in order to be effective in combat you may want to use snow in the party but don't he sucks the choice between SAS and hope will come down to if you want to focus more on offense or defense this will be a decision that changes perhaps often depending on the battle in question and the enemies there in having a party with SAS and venal will ensure maximum damage output while having a party with Fang And hope will ensure maximum defense and protection or you can mix and match if you want to focus

on party Buffs or enemy debuffs there are a lot of ways you can compose your party and at this point the choice is significant who you choose as your party leader is also significant you may think it's best to always choose the member with the most HP or perhaps The Sentinel seeing as they are the least likely to die in a panic situation but you have to consider The rest of the party and if more efficiency can be achieved by choosing the synergist for better buffing or the sabur for better debuffing and chain gauging less

importantly but still a consideration is whether the character you're choosing as the leader moves around and can have their positioning controlled on the battlefield seeing as splitting up damage between smaller groups of the party is usually a valid form of Health Management depending on The enemy or boss so if I'm making it sound like this is something you're going to be microm managing a lot that is only somewhat true the problem is that there's no way to save Paradigm decks or party compositions you can change between battles anytime you want and will likely want to

but every time you make a new party composition you have to manually input the paradigms once again having presets would have been very nice thankfully the menu is Designed well enough that making paradigms is Snappy and easy so it doesn't take long once you've got a good idea of what you want it's still a flaw but not as big as you'd think there's also the fact that while I do believe switching up party comps often is rewarding it's usually not all that necessary I got through half the latter half of this game with a single

party composition namely lightning SAS venil the other half was Fang SAS venil and One battle or so was Fang hope snow once Fang hope and snow were in the same party you know it's super defense time this is the point in the game where combat becomes actually interesting in its own right it sees much more strategy in planning possibilities simply by being able to choose who's in your party one thing that is very important and pairs well with this is the fact that you can see every enemy involved with a fight from the Overworld there

are no Surprises so if you know you struggle with a certain enemy type using a certain party comp you can change to something else to mitigate issues and enhance strengths with confidence that the game won't throw a curveball at you before we move on I do think this begs a question is the game play good if it takes half its runtime to get good it's a valid argument honestly especially considering how many great games there are out there I think there's something To be said about a combat system needing to grow over time I would

fight you on the fact that Kingdom Hearts 2's combat is excellent but it doesn't start getting really exciting until at least the halfway point of that game around the time you fight demic from there most of the bosses are pretty good if not really good the clear exception of of course being Genie Jafar what I can say is that Kingdom Hearts 2's combat builds upon its foundation of fluid movement Snappy Combos and crunchy defense expensive options but it has all that stuff from basically right at the start that's why I'd say Final Fantasy 13's combat

is good even if it doesn't start getting really interesting until 15 hours in or so it has fun menuing and strategy that es and flows and adds complexity throughout the experience the problem is just that it's too simple for too long without the choice of party composition you don't have much planning At your disposal and that leaves the combat a little more than mashing Auto Battle and changing Paradigm sometimes it's more fun if you challenge yourself to get as many festar rankings as possible the ranking system is mostly just time based if the battle takes

as long as the game says is the target which itself is based on your party's effective level and the enemies they're in you get three stars to get five you have to be quite a bit faster than the Target time so the game clearly encourages you to find the fastest way to beat every fight this is what makes the game engaging for me prior to this point I love maximizing efficiency and eliminating Wast of time both in real life and in video games so this gameplay Loop is highly satisfying to me even as the game

has a less than interesting basic combat system I like it even more after this point because it still retains that efficiency element but now Has the planning and strategy to make it even more engaging now the amount of time a battle takes isn't solely determined by how good I am at using the party I was given but also by picking that party myself so yeah I think I'd say the combat is good if you like maximizing efficiency and more active and fast-paced takes on the term-based genre but if that sort of stuff doesn't interest you

the first half of this game will be a slog at best I guess that's The best answer I can give the party fights down into the cockpit of the palomia where they confront daisley nabat moves forward to defend him but he sends out a blast of magic that takes her down dley tells them that cocon is a factory built by the F for the mass production of human THS what can Mere Men do without our help death is all of which you're capable you saw the fools a Mindless m drunk on fear of a fewu

Le SE if they only knew a Lai was the one filling their glasses let see you mean me oh child perish the thought I am more than that I am F SE my name was SP tandus voice of the sanctum and Lord Sovereign of the cocon FI your kind feared the darkness so we gave you night you beged us for the purge and did it not come to Pass now you spurn our councel you must learn your place now that daisley has made his true form known we fight like many other bosses it starts out

with four extra targets that throw magic attacks at the party over time this will increase to raw and G variants the raw and G variants for all magic attacks in this game increase their AOE potential and even add special characteristics like Arrow being able to knock enemies in the air or even your Own party members using AOE attacks of your own can decrease the time it takes to bring them down that's really the focus of this section of the fight take out the four extra targets as quickly as possible once that's done you're left with

bartand himself who will attack with ruin and occasionally AOE attacks from this point on it's a game of Health Management though it's a bit more complex than that sounds at this point he will occasionally start charging an Attack called struto this attack is capable of decimating your party if left unchecked and so you have to reduce the damage it deals by dealing damage of your own at certain HP thresholds Banus will physically recoil from the blow cluing you in that destrudo has had its damage reduced a valid strategy for this is to wait to activate

a stagger until druda starts since he doesn't attack while charging it you can put your whole Force into offense for the duration of The charge in order to limit damage dealt once it's finished however he will immediately switch back to normal attacks so quickly switching to defensive or healing paradigms is recommended this attack on its own will determine if you outfit your party for offense or defense there's no right answer but I've always found success going light SAS venil and going full on offense so I can burn him quick quickly during destrudo and get the

damaged Output as low as possible quickly switching to a healing Paradigm soon after you may find it better to increase your defense or even use multiple Sentinels to reduce the damage that way again there's not really a right answer here it just depends on your play style this is a long fight second only to the Havoc Sky tank in chapter 7 but it's the first longer battle that doesn't feel long because it keeps its mechanics engaging switches things up periodically And encourages you to pay a lot of attention to what bartus is doing so that

things never get dull it's a great boss hard but entertaining to be sure the party thinks DA's gone for a moment but he returns soon after saying that only Ragnarok can dispatch a fousy he says they've forgotten their focus they are to become Ragnarok and lay waste to cocoon by destroying orphan the fousy that gives Eden energy Eden being the FY that sustains Humanity on cocoon snow Brings up Sarah saying she said to save cocoon but dies Le rebuts that her Focus was to assemble the tools for cocoon destruction dley leaves giving the luy a

ship to to escape on while in the air s says that the ship has started to Pilot itself Roose shows up and if you thought he was dead so did I this is another moment where the game lies and presents things incorrectly for the sake of drama this is one of the times it doesn't work and it's just annoying Ro tries to bring Them down but the ship flies them over Eden the city named after the fousy that sustains it and then it flies directly toward a building before being warped in a sense this moment

where the game hangs for a while is likely the exact halfway point of your playthrough depending on how much time you spend in chapter 11 in this playthrough it happened right around 16 hours and my full playthrough was 33 hours long so yeah right around halfway why does this matter because This game is split perfectly in half and things change drastically from here on out up to this point the game has been a character drama snow and hope SAS and venal Fang and lightning pretty much everyone with Sarah Dodge all of these characters are linked

to each other in ways that make for interesting it tells these stories in INRI ways puts the characters in situations in which they can either run from their problems or deal with them and the characters React in realistic and meaningful ways the characters feel like people the way they interact outside of cutcenes reinforces that they are people you can control not combat tools that happen to have conversations sometimes from this point on though technically it starts at the moment you have access to all the characters I wants the game is a plot drama the focus

leaves the characters themselves their thoughts and actions and moves on to the plight of kunun the Role thei have in it and the villains in the story I'm not necessarily saying these things are bad just that it's no longer focusing on what it did before and it's a bit jarring it almost feels like the story sort of stops here and that's because considering what the story was focusing on before it kind of does there are a few character moments remaining notably there are still three more idolan battles to get to but they each feel rushed

forced and Inconsequential in their own special way and and at times they even feel antithetical to the character's development up to that point furthermore gameplay takes much more of the Forefront than it had before soon we'll finally see the full strategic depth the game has to offer it will get more complex and interesting and require more of the player though it only buy a modest amount I would argue that the focus on gameplay and away from story is Entirely on purpose and the two are linked together most of the events from now until the end

of the game are designed by dley to get the ly stronger and more capable to eliminate orphan and Destroy cocoon gameplay-wise this is exactly what's happening you grow significantly more in power and health points during this portion of the game than in any other combined but again this takes a chunk of the focus away from the story and puts it toward Gameplay the funny thing is this will either be the best thing that is happened to this game or the worst depending on where your priorities lie for those that have been watching the channel for

a while you may think you already know how I feel about this and to be honest I'm torn that may be surprising considering how story driven I typically am but I actually like the gameplay here enough that I'm glad it got significantly more interesting I do Just wish that the story didn't have to take a backseat in the latter half of the [Music] game and seeing as we are now roughly halfway through the game and around 2/3 through the video this is probably as good of a time as any to say that I won't be

making a scent off this video Square Enix has a bit of a habit of aggressively copyright claiming this game's visuals for some reason not Saying they're wrong for doing so they're totally within their legal right just stating it as a fact so this video won't give me any monetary gain here on YouTube that's why if you have enjoyed this video so far and like these sort of long form analyses of video games you could consider supporting the channel through YouTube memberships there should be a little join button under the video that'll show you the options

I'll talk about the perks when I bring up Memberships at the end for now just consider if what you've seen is worth a couple bucks if not no biggie anyway back to your regularly scheduled programming [Music] the party ends up in a weird piece of pulse hidden on cocoon they discuss their focus with light to Daisy's interpretation of the events this brings up a weird thought are the FY omniscient does daisley actually know what their Focus is or is he just gaslighting them into behaving the way he wants it's hard to say at this point

but it's clear that the characters are thinking the same thing you can talk to each of the party members at this point to get some info on what their mind is on snow thinks he made a mistake thinking Sarah was telling them to protect cocoon clearly Dole's words make sense to him as the party moves forward they get ambushed by pulse work soldiers they beat them and Fang and venil realize this is an arc according to them arcs were holding grounds for an army of Living Weapons to protect pulse F from invasion they also apparently

had a more practical purpose to force Lei to master their new powers they would send the L to the ark and they'd be forced to fight the automatons there until they were strong enough to fulfill their focus or die trying as SAS puts it arcs turned L not into se but monsters all the same after the fight we Get access to every role for every character which means it's time to talk about the cherium yeah we've gone this long without discussing the level up system so Sumi the cherium is a mostly linear level up path

each character has one for each role you earn CP from defeating enemies and bosses and spin that CP to advance the Christo Genesis and grab these orbs that increase stats or Grant new abilities you can also unlock accessory slots a single ATB Increase per character and each role has a level that determines the effectiveness of that R's passive ability it works on a sort of tier system with each tier being represented by a circle that connects vertically to the next tier each new tier increasing the price and value of each upgrade sometimes there will be

optional offshoots that will contain more stat boosts and abilities these are usually not worth it unless they have abilities You want they often cost more than the regular track for not much extra benefit and you're better off skipping them unless you have a specific reason you want what's in them I really like the way the cherium feels it's Snappy easy to use and it even offers a decent amount of strategy in what you focus on you could determine that you want to focus on unlocking as many abilities as possible or focus on stat increases above

all else there's not technically a Wrong answer here but it does behoove you to get as many abilities as possible since that's going to determine your utility in combat especially for the utility roles like synergist and sabur and ravager it also now allows you to unlock every role for every character but do not do this it's a trap upgrades from the three secondary roles for each character are exorbitantly expensive at this point and won't offer the same degree of stat increases as afforded by Their primary roles you also won't be able to actually use the

roll until you get an ability which can take a surprising amount of CP usually they won't be much good in that role either especially early on is they only have like one or two abilities anyway you may be tempted to get medic for everyone but like I've mentioned a sentinel already functions like a medic anyway honestly three Medics is not only outclassed by two Medics and a sentinel due to the Sentinel's ability to reduce damage for the whole party but three Medics is almost Overkill in most cases anyway you're probably better off just sticking to

two in a sentinel or two in anything else for that matter here's a cautionary tale that will hopefully keep you from the temptation of spending CP on secondary roles my very first playthrough of this game back when I was a Wei I had to stop and start all the way over from the beginning because I Didn't keep backup saves and got stuck in an area of the game much later where I was flanked on all sides by enemies I couldn't beat at my stat level and it was entirely because I bought upgrades in the secondary

roles this was 40 hours down the drain and unbeknownst to me at the time about 1 hour from the end of the game though it speaks to how much I loved this game that I went ahead and finished a second playthrough anyway so technically my first playthrough of this Game took about 80 hours across two full runs from start to finish this wasn't the game's fault at any any rate and truly we'll talk about the importance or lack thereof of stats later to which end you'll hopefully realize that the story is more about how bad

I was at the game at the time and not that the game didn't properly teach me how to level the characters or something like that because I should have been able to make it through those fights one way or Another while we're here we might as well discuss weapons accessories and the upgrade system too since this is where it becomes really relevant accessories are the simplest to explain every accessory has an ability or Stat boost tied to it that's it each character can get up to four accessory slots one by default and three through the

chum these allow you to outfit characters for many different purposes some boost defense offense or will give the character more Utility some of my favorites are the accessories that increase ATB charge on kill though there are many other utility accessories that I've used like the growth egg that increases CP earned from Battle or doctor's code that makes potions more effective weapons are many and varied each character has seven sets of three weapons and they have three tiers each let's call them level 1 2 and three each set is gained at level one and has increased

up the stack by using The upgrade system the level three upgrade always has the same name because it's basically the Ultima weapon of this game regardless of the set it is upgraded from for lightning as an example the name of her level three weapons is the Omega weapon regardless of which weapon you started with all final upgrades give one ATB slot and that's their main purpose but they retain the specialization from the weapon set they came from so each Character has seven of the same weapon that does different things I know that sounds confusing but

it's easier to see than explain each weapon set has a specialization like I said ranging from boosting strength magic a balance between the two or some ability specific to that character let's look at the Neil's weapon sets just as an example three of her weapon sets have no unique ability The Binding Rod is the first one she gets and at the end of its upgrade Path yields the worst strength and Magic boosts clearly a starter set not intended to be kept the Pearl Wing staff has the best magic stat of all of her weapons and

equivalently the worst strength though this doesn't matter much for venil because she mostly uses magic anyway the rod Thorns has a balance of strength and Magic again not particularly useful for venil since she doesn't use much strength moving on to the weapons with abilities attach to Them the Tiger Claw yields the best strength stat of any rod and pretty good magic but has the iron strike ability which reduces ATB rate by 40% every character has a weapon set similar to this though I can't imagine how annoying using them would be the healer staff has very

poor stats but improves cure spells by 20% if venil spends most of her time in ntic rooll during your fights this might be the staff for you 20 % is actually a very significant amount the Mis latine I guess has great magic but poor strength and has the ability Ally KO power surge which increases damage by up to 2.3 times for each Ally that is downed so up to 460 total damage when both party members are downed which is pretty insane This falls in a category of weapon sets that have a unique ability that only

that character gets lightning gets a weapon set that restores her ATB every time she strikes an enemy which is seriously powerful the Belladon wand my Preferred Choice has great magic poor strength and improved debuffing which increases debuff success rate by 40% not a ptry amount if you debuff a lot this is in a category that focuses on every character's primary role s has one that improves buff times as an example finally and perhaps most nich of all the Heavenly axis has the same stats as the last two weapons and the ability stagger lock which means

that that party member can't activate a Stagger all party members have this and you may be wondering why would you ever want an effect like that well SAS has an ability where if he's the one to initiate a stagger it increases the Stagger drop Time by 30% a pretty significant amount meaning they'll be in stagger for much longer so using these weapons you could ensure SAS is the only one that can actually initiate a stagger once the enemy is at their stagger point there may be other Fringe reasons to use This but they're definitely Niche

both accessories and weapons do a good job of allowing you to outfit your characters in a way that better suits your play style and I very much like their implementation further increasing their usefulness is the upgrade system which is unlocked when you get the Omni kit halfway is through chapter 4 at that point though it's not all that useful you won't have enough resources to do much with it and you probably won't have Enough money to make a dent in it either in order to upgrade a piece of gear you have to spend materials giving

the gear experience toward its next level there are two different types of upgrade materials organic parts and synthetic Parts organic Parts don't offer much experience but increase the experience multiplier for that weapon up to a Max of three times the experience earned from each chunk of material spent synthetic Parts have much higher Experience gains further increased by the multiplier but they decrease the multiplier when used so the pattern looks like this use organic parts to get the gear piece to three times multiplier then use a single huge amount of synthetic parts to drastically increase the

gear piece's level increasing the level of a weapon will increase the strength of magic boost by a certain amount this can be the equivalent of multiple stat increases from the cherium And so their effects are easily felt getting the gear piece to a star level means that they can't go any further without transforming them that is each gear piece that isn't at max level requires one of the many rare transformation catalysts to transform to the next level most of these can be purchased all of them can be found but all of them are expensive and

rare to varying degrees of insanity this will give the item a new name and upgrade its Ability or Stat boost you can then continue to upgrade the item up to Star and possibly transform it again depending on the item this is a good time to mention that this game's economy unlike many others is not only not broken it actually takes longer to farm enough money to fully upgrade a party's worth of weapons to level three than it does to gain enough CP to hit the cerium cap and that takes quite a while on its own

the party fights through the ark Getting progressively stronger before they run into an old friend Sid Reigns Reigns explains to them that all of that luck that they've been having throughout the adventure the close calls and all of them coming together it's all been a deliberate machination by bandeles who is crafting the Lui into the instruments of cocoon demise in an attempt to restore something he calls the maker The Entity responsible for creating both humans and F SE rain says his Focus was To put them on the path so he was upon in bartels's plan

as well the faly want to restore their God the maker to this realm and this world to its former glory having been torn asunder by War apparently the maker can only be called back by A fitting sacrifice the lives of all cocoon populace in bloody tribute the sanctum FY however cannot do this alone because they are Duty bound to protect and sustain cocon it stands a reason that they also couldn't make Ley And give them the focus of destroying cocoon either so they needed pulse to accomplish this Reigns then reveals that he's here now because

he intends on stopping the fal's plans seeing them fight brought back the future he once hoped for and so he is going to try and eliminate the ly here not only absolving them of the focus they've been given but also ruining the F Endeavors so all the discussion of planning strategy and cherium the weapons and accessories Everything comes to a head with this boss what I would call the most difficult one in the game and requiring the most deliberate planning on the part of the player in response to Reigns's abilities he is very difficult and

requires you to have developed a keen sense of the battle system and how it ticks to beat him he attacks fast and fairly often guards for extended periods of time and can buff and debuff halfway through the fight he shifts and begins Doing said Buffs and debuffs giving him a chance to Da the party which is nearly always a death sentence depending on who gets hit most of his moves barrowing the one that Buffs him are single Target but he is more than capable of knocking your party members in the air and draining them of

their entire health bars during his combos I think this fight is maybe the easiest place to see how much a simple party change can affect how a battle plays out when I first got here My party was outfitted for Pure offense lightning SAS and venal this attempt went really well until we started buffing and debuffing since I didn't have any effective defensive Buffs or paradigms I couldn't keep up with his speed and ferocity at this point even when I could get back on my feet it wasn't long before he would knock me off them again

and eventually he just decimated light and it was over my second attempt was hybrid defense Another typical party of mine lightning hope Fang with hope as a defensive synergist and Fang primarily reducing enemy offense this party is outfitted to blend defense with a healthy amount of offense Fang also has access to Sentinel meaning she can tank some hits while Buffs are being applied or heels are going out another excellent aspect of this party is Fang's access to fog which Reigns is susceptible to usually after his big combos he goes straight into Ruin volleys to keep

his Targets in the air and luckily finish them off but with fog inflicted he can't do that giving him much less damage output the trade-off here is that since this party is mostly outfitted for defense the battle took longer than the target time and I only got two stars but I was able to keep up with his offense and stay ahead of him for the whole fight ensuring that with time I'd be able to finish him off I did have some luck Seeing as I never had a character get dazed and half the time no

debuffs proed at all but all of this I think just clearly shows the difference a small change in party can make I think a middle ground between these parties maybe swap out hope for SAS could maybe have beaten him more quickly the main problem I could see with that party is that the only medic would be lightning who's not even that good at it to begin with ultimately there's no way to know But to try and the game does a good job encouraging simple Paradigm changes or party changes above any kind of farming as a

solution for a brick wall boss like this Reigns takes a long time most likely the longest boss so far but it doesn't feel long seeing as you're always switching between offense defense buffing debuffing and paying attention to his actions to decide your own it's really well done after the fight Reigns asks the Le to just do what they know is Right then he turns to Crystal SAS wonders if he completed his focus and snow says he's not so sure all he did was try to save cocoon in his own way it's an interesting question actually

he was told his Focus was to put the LU on the path was that incorrect or did he just not know what path was meant it draws some attention to the fague nature of the focus as well as how it's considered fulfilled what force Beyond forces decides if the focus is fulfilled Or not do technicalities count it's interesting for sure and I'm not asking the game to answer these questions necessarily the vague and esoteric nature of the was and their plight is a key part of this game's narrative they continue on through the arc until

they come to a dead end the party discusses their focus and snow says he's planning on fighting it most of the party agrees but Fang refuses saying she doesn't want venil to turn SE her brand bursts with Energy and an idolan appears despite basically promising to betray them the party moves forward to protect Fang this is one of the easiest idolan fights because it builds gastal by Chain gauging and debuffing both of which can be accomplished at the same time after the fight A New Path emerges and venil thinks the idol and came to save

them somehow they move forward and find a pulsi and Airship as well as a gate to pulse while this could be another of Bart calus's machinations the party decides they don't have much of a choice and move forward hope gives a little speech about how he's going to move by Instinct and not trust FY lies anymore and how he wants to go to pulse and see it for himself see how bad it really is the world's full of lies there's no way of knowing what's right all we can do is believe in ourselves it's easy

to sit back and let people trick you like how the sanctum Had us all thinking that elsi was some sort of monster I'm done with their lies FY this whole Focus thing from here on out I use my eyes think and act I might not make all the right choices but as long as I'm the one who decided what to do there's nothing to [Music] regret okay All right let's do it I'm with you bad choices and all of course I'm not sure how it's going to turn out pulse as hell you know who is

it now how many times have you been there none but I want to go and see what it's like for myself okay people so everybody in absolutely off to hell we go there's one more flashback to the fireworks venil ruminating on everyone's Presence in BM that night no one never said the future be [Music] easy show me it's not over B we [Music] but I think we all saw the glimmer of a dream somewhere in the sky that [Music] night the tiniest spark of hope that we could change Our Fate Not who could say [Music]

that moment's come and [Music] gone the party arrives in the wonderful world of grand P pulse an enormous sprawling natural landscape teeming with all kinds of biodiversity they fly across the land in their ship before a huge creature decides it wants to gobble them up Fang uses her new idolan to save part of the party from plummeting good Stuff there as well they end up Landing not long after and venil gives us a monologue on the Untamed Wilderness of grand pulse it's a place where lives are ruled by the brutal struggle for survival and the

callous and uncaring whim of the fast [Music] there is no such thing as Mercy only a NeverEnding string of trials that weed out the weak and leave Only the Strong Reigns knew the Truth the purpose lying at the heart of all the fal's actions recalling their lost deity and returning the world to its former glory people were never anything more than sacrifices and cun's destruction it's just a way to wake a sleeping God but would bringing the maker back into this world really lead to our Salvation [Music] [Applause] [Music] the maker created faly and they

in their desperation to be reunited with the maker created ly and L see I wonder what we'll end up [Music] creating a little while later as they spend time in Camp they realize that hope is missing when the chocoo chick Returns without him they go and find him and hope is feeling like a liability telling the party to go on without him to be frank I find this to be sloppy writing at best the fact that not 10 minutes ago hope was not only fine but giving speeches about how he's not going to take Bull

from the fou SE and think and act and stuff how he was going to keep his promise to his dad to keep moving forward and now he suddenly decided he'd rather stay here and die on Pulse it's really awkward and it makes this idolan battle much less potent than the rest Alexander here yields to chain gaing and buffing not much else to it pretty simple afterward hope remarks that he thinks the idolan show up to break the L out of the their slumps and he'll ask for help earlier next time the party moves forward and

enters the archal step and we're introduced to the only nonlinear section of the game Grand pulse and the SE Stone missions so let's Talk about linearity the decision to have the game pretty much just a straight shot from the top to this point is another that pits story against gameplay no traditional towns to spend time in very few NPCs to talk to most of them are your party members essentially just a straight shot Corridor with a few branching Pathways for extra battles and loot I recognize that the game's maps are almost entirely small linear corridors

There's no disputing that fact the mini map makes it brutally clear at times this can feel restricting like you're on a railroad that's taking you on a sightseeing tour rather than actually exploring an area let me ask this though what would making these areas more open do for the game it might give the illusion of freedom but the game's entire structure as in the flow of its narrative is entirely linear and straight from beginning to near the end It would only hide the linearity not fix it presuming that fixing it is something we even want

you see not every game needs open areas to explore and least of all this game given the story it's trying to tell the linearity is a story-based decision in two ways the first is the time frame of the narrative the game story is paced very deliberately with a healthy amount of combat between cuts scenes that keeps the passage of time realistic throughout This is most apparent in the first few chapters in which the game runs forward at a quick pace and doesn't even allow the player to bog down that deliberate Pace with optional missions or

a bunch of farming or something what you have to realize is that unlike many other jrpgs or more specifically Final Fantasy games this is not some Globe trotting fantasy Adventure this story is an action thriller at its core the Second Story element that enforced this linearity is The pressure placed on these characters you're playing as Lui on the run you can't stop in one place for long or you'll get ransacked by the military and any towns in which stores or NPC interactions could happen probably wouldn't because you're wanted and your faces are plastered all over

the screens throughout cocoon the only time this is subverted is with SAS and vanil and Nautilus because they were able to fly under the radar and even then it's not Long before the military catches up to them anyway again not a globe tronic fantasy an action thriller all of this is to say I don't mind the linearity it could have been presented better maybe but it's in service of a story that I think is really well done so it's fine given everything I just said I think it's no small coincidence that right when the story

starts becoming subpar is when the game opens up a bit and lets you spend time running around a huge Open area speaking of that there are 64 SE Stone missions scattered throughout Grand pulse and believe me when I say that most people will never even experience most of these missions this is because Grand pulse is an endgame grinding area in disguise a topic I'll discuss in a minute this is evidenced by even the innocuous looking wolf creatures on the step being totally capable of demolishing you in one hit when you first get there Every sea

Stone mission is the same go to the stone accept the mission which is always a hunting Target go to the Target kill it mission complete every Mission gives rewards on top of what you get for killing the mark itself and you can repeat the missions As You Wish though you only get the rewards once as far as I know a few of the missions are required but most can be skipped even this introductory one that tutoriales the concept is skippable if you just run Toward the objective marker on your map this marker will take you

on an odyssian journey across the vast expans of pulse seeing many areas and skipping just as many honestly there's really not much else to say on Grand pulse without talking about grinding first Final Fantasy 13 opposes grinding for the grand majority of its runtime chapters gate Cherian progression and are balanced in such a way that if you fight every enemy you come across you will Stay at a satisfying level of challenge throughout you can skip a few fights here and there to increase the challenge slightly over time so you really have to think about the

encounters and bosses but in general the game is balanced extremely well to ensure you only fight as many enemies as you need and never resort to any form of grinding which thanks to that chian progression gating grinding is literally useless past a certain point you can earn more Experience than the progression gate will allow you to spend but this is not only not necessary but an absolute waste of time in-game grinding spots will net significantly more experience anyway so your best bet is to just always go with the game's intended progression path for most of

its runtime getting to Grand pulse does not itself represent an opportunity to begin grinding but you are encouraged to do a few of the missions on the archal step before Moving on you can like I said just run toward the story way point but you will likely struggle with a few of the fights on the way there thankfully strategy supplants stats most of the time prior to the end game this game is more about finesse than Brute Force so learning more about the combat system will likely get you through any hurdles you may come across

that story from before about me failing to finish the game because I couldn't beat some fights later there's A good chance I just sucked at the game at that time and this is why I think that strategy usually supplants the need for High stats I can point to an example in this playthrough of this being the case I got to these fights with a boxed failinks and a few hopl lights the failinks can buff the hopl to the point of insanity and they deal a ton of damage the failinks is also strong and takes quite

a beating before going down and they can spawn more hop lights if The ones already in the battle go down when I first got here I was using lightning SAS and venil and I just couldn't beat it with brood Forest I retried with Fang SAS and venil and using panga managed to keep the hopl lights out of the battle long enough to kill the failinks at which point the hopl lights were less of a threat without game sense I have thought doing a bunch of grinding was the way to get past this fight and while

it would have Been easier had I done so it wasn't necessary now once the ingame rolls around grinding is entirely necessary later missions are so insanely difficult that having anything other than a full cherium will force you to use luck based strategies to win like abusing Vil's unique ability of casting death on an enemy and having a chance of just instakilling them how long does farming out of full cherium take well the last stage of the cherium takes around 1 to 2 Million CP per roll and the fastest grinding methods I've seen online will net

around 1 to 2 million CP per hour so on average you're looking at 7 hours of grinding at minimum assuming relatively high efficiency that's not to mention that you'll likely hit the cherium cap well before you get enough money or materials to upgrade every character's weapon to Max so it's a pretty significant grind after 40 hours of story content alongside all the missions You have to do now you all know how I feel about grinding so you probably know what I'm about to say I actually like this a lot maybe you're surprised considering I said

this in my video deal on Birth by Sleep point stats are stupid and boring and encourage boring and repetitive play Styles they're good for those that need the extrinsic motivation of progressively growing stronger in game but they are ultimately a negative inclusion if you were required to spend Any amount of time insipidly fighting the same enemies over and over again just to stand a chance against enemies in the zone you actually want to be in because the devs arbitrarily decided you shouldn't be able to move on until you hit a milestone they determined is appropriate

but my gripe is when games are balanced in a way that grinding is basically required to finish not the existence of grinding in general grinding can be fun if you love a combat System I just think a good game should be balanced around not needing to in order to reach the endgame this game is a great example of that because it only asks you fight every encounter you come across and even then many of them can be skipped without falling far enough behind to make a significant difference this game actively discourages grinding As you move

toward the end of the story and I love that but I also love that there's plenty of grinding to do in the End game if you want it or even as soon as you you hit chapter 11 though it isn't necessary at all the 10th and final level of the cherium is locked until you finish the game just by the way further discouraging doing a bunch of grinding before the story is over so yeah games that require you to grind before you've even gotten halfway through them are still stupid and annoying and encouraged boring and

repetitive play Styles but there's Nothing wrong with giving the players the option to grind at some point because it can be fun as you proceed through Grand pulse you'll occasionally get cut scenes a number of them being optional depending on where you go of The Not So optional persuasion we have a scene in which Fang claims she finally remembered her past she remembers becoming Ragnarok scarring cocoon and leaving Grand pulse in the mess that it's in venil says she's lying but her Idolan appears which Fang takes to mean that she was right we fight hekaton

care and being that it's the last idolan battle it's probably pretty fitting that this is also the hardest gastal builds by Chain gauging and debuffing same as with Bahamut except this guy is just a lot stronger and it's harder to stay alive the best Strat seems to be to just debuff with Fang as a sentinel and then switch to medson when an attack start flying Even with this I needed souls and an Overworld item you can use to give yourself Buffs before a battle starts they come in four varieties one focused on defense one focused

on offense one that makes you invisible to ensure preemptive strikes and one that restores TP I used both of the buffing souls to make it through this fight and I still needed a huge Hail Mary at the end to bring it home before death took out venil Fang says she felt that venil was Acting off that she figured that venil was lying about losing her memories venil says it wasn't fair Fang is upset that she lied to her but forgives her and says they'll stick together so is this supposed to be the payoff we get

for Vil's Arc is this the culmination of all the time that she spent running away and hurting people in the process an idolan battle and a sorry you see what I mean by the story just sort of falling off a cliff here right considering how Important vanil is to the story and how important Fang is to her story she needed much more time to come to grips with this core flaw in her character that she's not only always running away but even encouraging others to do the same for at least two of the six characters

the idolan battles are these really poignant and awesome moments of self-reflection and development for the characters but it never felt like they were a full-on 180° shift it still took Each of them time to figure out what with the battle meant and how to get over their issues snow is just like wow cool new power and the other three just feel much too easy and flippant coming out of almost nowhere and leaving just as fast just to never be brought back up again is the de evolution the story and its writing directly linked to the

change in focus from story to gameplay well I definitely say yes I understand that the game had a troubled development To say the least but the fact of the matter is that troubled development or not the first half of the game has a strong story and the second half has stronger gameplay but the two can't figure out how to be strong at the same time from this point on venil will mention her lying and running but it'll be from the perspective of someone who has learned from her mistakes and encourages others to not follow in

her footsteps a sudden shift that doesn't Have a nearly enough buildup well there's at least one more Scene exhibiting some strong writing in this game and it just happens to be the last really good scene showing venil dealing with her issues later snow and venil chat about Sarah and venil has a memory of the first time she met Sarah in bodm venil tells Sarah that she's looking for someone to say sorry but that she can't find the words Sarah gives her some familiar Advice well if it's too much to deal with face it later really

sometimes things seem easier when you look at them from a distance you know but does that really work good question I'll let you know actually I've been trying to keep something at a distance myself lately like what don't laugh okay it's a dream I had a bad one I dreamt I destroyed the World it was terrifying I needed some time alone it had me so scared I tried to run away but then my boyfriend he came chasing after me that's when I understood running away and leaving behind the people you care about that isn't love

though you might just want to keep them safe shutting them out of your life only hurts them more the point is I have people I can Count on I'll make it through I think you'll be fine and you will be too you'll find the words I'm sure of it oh I'm sorry I'm so sorry what else can I say I'm not the one you should be asking venil you'll know what to say when you find your friend you'll See the incredible underpinning of this scene is that Sarah is the person she needed to apologize to

venil just couldn't figure out how to say it she knew that she was responsible for Sarah becoming a Le through her inaction and fear but she didn't know how to make up for it or what to say Sarah turned to Crystal without knowing this either I think this is some excellent storytelling and it's a shame it doesn't keep up all too well in this half of the Game it's also unfortunately undermined by the very next scene just sort of saying it out loud kind of lame but whatever Vil remarks that Sarah had the same vision

of Ragnarok and that she finally thinks that Sarah beat her Focus that daisley was lying about her Focus snow says he feels the same way in in another area venil and hope share a scene in which she claims he promised they'd see pulse together someday though she is just playfully lying she then Says that she's lied so many times it's all becoming a blur hope says sometimes you have to lie whether you need to protect others or you're just afraid but it's not the lie but what you do after it that matters he then asks

her to keep smiling because it makes him happy when she smiles venil is taken very aack but hope reveals he was just joking around as well adorable in a kind of weird way these are just kids after all in another area the place where you meet all the Chocobos SAS tells Fang that Doge wasn't her fault that she shouldn't take the blame for it since she's got enough as it is when she asks if he's just going to take it on his own he says he's got the chocoo chick and she's got venal eventually the

L come to a place called tien's Tower an area patrolled by the fal SE Daka the fal of pulse are unique from cocoon because they don't all have clear cut rolls this one being no exception atos for example the fousy Digging out the Subterranean area of pulse is occasionally said to be Excavating habitable land for the humans that used to live on pulse its digging also just happens to exposed minerals which the humans can mine creating large mining facilities underground however certain authors in the game's history have postulated that this F SE is simply digging

tunnels in an effort to find a gateway to the Divine perhaps the same entity known as The maker by the Cocoon F SE Titan the huge guy wandering around is apparently responsible for keeping the biodiversity of grand pulse in check he will study the species all across the expanse eliminating weak ones and producing new stronger ones in their place bismar who is in charge of the soia Springs domain feverishly guards the waters it inhabits its responsibility seeming to be that of reshaping the land through water erosion then multiple pulse FY go without any Concrete explanations

to their goals Ana from the pulse vestage and Daka of Tai Jen's Tower both seem to have esoteric or unknowable goals how do I know all this much of it can be found by reading the analex a series of 13 passages from long-forgotten pulse poetry and Pros which are given out for completing certain SE Stone missions you've seen them at the beginning of each chapter of this video The Creation myth outlined within parallels and contradicts what we Know about pulse and Cocoon from the primary source we've had so far that being citizens of cocoon no

doubt only repeating what they hear from the F SE this reinforces a sort of unreliable narrator that permeates most of the information throughout the game the fact that all of these people despite being pulseless e are biased toward what they have known their whole life that being what the sanctum faly have decided to tell them what the analex do is allow The world to feel more real two Waring peoples that were cut from the same cloth would have two creation myths that not only parallel each other but contradict each other and it's really powerful storytelling

that is hidden away for only the most insanely devoted to find in short the analex tell us that the original Gods created both fousy and humanity and then departed leaving both orphant together A God Called Lindsay created cocoon and told humans lies that Cocoon was a paradise and so humans left pulse to go to cocoon the authors regularly call for the people of pulse to rise up and cast cocoon out of the sky the next shows us that Fang and venil are almost deified for what they did so many years ago Fang becoming Ragnarok and

cracking cocoon shell but a being known as the goddess put luy into an early Crystal sleep their focus incomplete before Ragnarok could finish the job in the time between the events Of the war of transgression in the present day A Time called the age of r Ru took place in which the people of pulse waged War over resources and the F SE offered no recompense instead making L out of the humans for whatever purpose next an analect reveals that the maker may not be one being but two pulse and Lindsay pulse created the fal SE

on Grand pulse and humans named the land after their revered God while Lindsay created the fal SE on cocoon one of the Most important of our tale is analect number nine which reveals that the goddess not only saved kakon from rag out the first time but she's also the one who sends the idolan to the Le when all hope is lost we'll come back to this in a second the following three are all from the same in-game book on the nature of FAL SE the next analect is about arcs they were made in preparation of

a menace that lurks Beyond but the author postulates on what that Beyond might be Since the arcs were created before cocoon was hung in the sky and in fact some of the arcs reside on cocoon itself if they aren't to protect from cocoon then what does the Beyond mean perhaps the gods that vanished from this place are now part of the Beyond I adore this because of the almost dread it would have instilled in its readers at the time perhaps the arcs were created to protect the people from the very gods that made them the

next simply Postulates that the pulse FY are hunting for a gateway to the Divine and their actions have nothing to do with the humanity that may benefit from them next the author postulates that Souls must pass on to the afterlife using the same gate the divines used so a massive influx of souls would surely throw the door wide open and give a glimpse of the gleaming light of the Divinity Beyond finally fabula Nova crystallis is a sort of summary pulse fousy are scouring the Earth for the door while cocoon FY harvests Souls combing ether for

the same sacrific the one hope of seeing the door unsealed what descends from the door in the Twilight of the Gods will be but music and lacking in words the Lamentations of the Goddess Etro as she sobs her song of grief so what do we make of all this two things firstly there's an irony inherent in the fact that cocoon paints pulse like it's this Savage terrible place when the faly of Pulse really seem to just be about their business searching for the gate to the Divine it's the Cocoon faly that are systematically supporting the

human population only to in the near future sacrifice them all for the sake of maybe calling their long lost deity back into the world really makes you wonder who the Savages really are secondly well like I said this contradicts a lot of the information that we've gathered from cocoon citizens but there's no reason to Think this information isn't itself biased or potentially incorrect which one is the most accurate creation myth I have no idea and that's a good thing in real life no one can truly agree on how things came to be even those that

believe in creationism can't agree on the nature of the one doing the creating so naturally why would this game's World be any different all of this makes the World building in this game so much more potent and memorable that I'm kind of Sad that it isn't more telegraphed or accessible to players that these analects are not only hidden away in the data log but unlocked by completing some of the game's toughest or most tedious challenges that being said I think there's one element that can give us a clue as to what's really going on in

this story you see one consistent question the game has been posing has been what has been these people's focuses all the folks that have turned To Crystal have fulfilled their Focus right well these analex revealed that this doesn't have to be the case at all the goddess rro apparently turned Fang and Vil to Crystal prematurely in order to keep cocoon from being destroyed and the lives therein snuffed out the analex also say that she is the one that sends the idolan to break L out of their Despair and give them back hope so the goddess

rro is acting as a Guiding Light to the L making sure that they do what They've been called to but even that latter bit isn't set in Crystal did Sarah complete the focus she was originally given or did the goddess Etro turn her to Crystal upon successfully bringing the party together think about it this way if Sarah had not turned to Crystal here would the party have even gone on this journey they almost certainly wouldn't have all gone to fight the fou sea perhaps lightning would have but that might have been it Did Dodge complete

the focus he was originally given or did the goddess rro turn him into crystal in order to keep SAS moving forward did Reigns complete the focus he was originally given or did the goddess rro turn him to Crystal after ensuring the L had the strength to do what they need to do there's so many iffy things about focuses and crystals that this almost has to be true right it just feels right it even parallels bandus we know he's been puppeting the Characters along for the entire game but what if rro was also pulling some strings

to ensure they moved forward but never got too wrapped around bartels's giant fingers it's clear that her goal would be the saving of cocon and its people so her actions would all aim to benefit this goal well revisit this discussion at the end of the game but just keep it in the back of your mind there are two Waring entities at the top of this story The faly Who intend on Destroying humanity and bringing back their God and rro who seems bent on protecting Humanity at all cost the party moves up the tower taking on

SE Stone missions in order to enlist the help of these huge statues and slowly they weakened Daka until at the apex of the tower they see take on Daka directly not much to say about this fight it's simple and straightforward he can debuff but ultimately this fight isn't too much to worry about the party looks down over The edge of the tower at arba Fang of Vil's Hometown they go there Fang of Vil Reminiscing on how things were back then and how things are different now eventually they come across Sarah I was waiting for you

to open your eyes all the time I was asleep I knew what was happening I kept trying to think of a way to save Kon Together Sarah you get it now [Music] there are no Gods with miracles to save us no matter where you look that's why we have to call one destroy orphan we'll save the world stop it you can't do that you love me too much you do don't you clear enough already listen enough we are all shooting for the same goal Here bandela says that he's resigned and put Reigns in his stad

and that he plans on either having the Lui defeat orphan as originally planned or letting the humans destroy orphan themselves by convincing the Cavalry to destroy orphan either way cocoon Falls and the maker is called we fight bartus a far less interesting fight this time around but definitely tough It's really just Health Management honestly and managing the debuffs he can place on you not much to Say though daisley says that only Ragnarok can save a people Beyond salvation he leaves and a SE Stone appears a story about how the goddess put Ragnarok in Crystal but

intends on Reviving them and having Ragnarok tear cocoon out of the sky it's unclear at this time whether this is going to come to pass or not and the party isn't sure either when I was on cocon I wished on those [Music] Fireworks I wished to not let anything happen to Kon this time but I shouldn't have wished for that uh wishes aren't enough prayers either this time I'm making a promise I will keep kurn safe I promise no matter what chapter 12 begins just as the L get back to cocoon charging into Eden as

the people celebrate the success of The Purge each of them rides at top their idolan which you should know by now I Appreciate immensely suddenly a bunch of pulse beasts start warping onto the scene it's becoming an allout War meanwhile Reigns gets assassinated by the Cavalry a bit of a poetic irony considering he used to lead them bartels's prediction is coming true but snow says that it's them them that decides what happens next they make their way through Eden until they are stopped by our old pal Ro who believes he is protecting Humanity by stopping

The Lai they decide that even if the people are afraid of them they can't stop because they know what's really going on they move forward the Nora group showing up to bust Snow's balls for a bit in the scene that I truly just do not care about as crystals begin to rain from the sky daisley says that the calvalry are on their way to destroy orphan and he calls them to action later Roos blocks the way once again the proud clad is the first fight in a while that Has actually used use the mechanics in

an interesting way he has two modes of attack aerial defense and annihilation in aerial defense he will volley fairly weak attacks at you but his main purpose is to charge up to Annihilation mode in Annihilation mode he just attacks wildly at the party for a while he's on the ground though so he can be launched during a stagger and all of these attacks can be mitigated most notably is that if he comes out of a stagger during Aerial defense mode he will use an attack called retaliatory strike a wild and insanely powerful volley of attacks

which is honestly more dangerous than an is mode so this introduces some interesting strategies perhaps you get him to just below the Stagger threshold during aerial defense mode and then activate the Stagger as soon as Annihilation starts this way you can keep him launched for the duration of annihilation mode and you won't have to Deal with retaliatory strike either this takes some skill to pull off but it's definitely worth it on another note Sabers are useless in this fight because he can't be debuffed so I ended up winning with lightning size and hope using more

Buffs and got through it though it wasn't the cleanest fight in the world with some better planning strategy I could have beaten him faster good use to the mechanics Ro decides to call off the L operations and allow the L to move forward when a bunch of pulse creatures come to attack him he sets off a grenade this is one of the two parts of the game where it plays the game over music during a cut scene to emphasize a death for some ridiculous reason despite how thorough I was with my note taking process I

didn't think it necessary to write the first instance down if I found it during editing you're watching it now finally we arrive at orphan's cradle in order to get to Orphan itself the party Must fight through this massive Gauntlet of enemies and recycled bosses sometimes multiple times in the span of a few minutes honestly this part of the game feels a bit rushed it's a somewhat decent final dungeon like Zone but reusing bosses like this multiple times in the section is questionable at best and it mostly just feels designed to Pat out the Final Chapter

a bit I do like the framing device though the data log tells us that this is the physical Manifestation of the complex computational system Eden uses to keep cakon AF flat and the humans cared for we're essentially fighting through the very code that we're about to destroy as they arrive at Eden Hall SAS remarks that having empathy puts humans at a disadvantage lightning says that it's also what makes humans dangerous Vil vows to make cocoon their new home they enter the inner chamber to confront what lies Beyond they enter this room With a pool at

the end and see Dodge and Sarah floating just overhead they shatter though this illusion isn't believed for long and bandus appears once again this last fight with bandus really is more of the same I do like how this party composition shows the power of a sentinel I only have one medic and I'm more than capable of keeping up with Health Management despite this orphan itself appears the babyfaced creature in the center of this enormous conglomerate On the left is Eden and on the right bandus almost like they are in this sort of mother father child

configuration orphan is the foul seed that sustains Eden who in turn sustains cocoon I suppose the implication here is that orphan sustains Eden much in the way a baby might sustain their mother emotionally mentally killing orphan would most likely cause Eden to die of heartbreak speaking of that now we fight orphan the most dangerous thing it does Is merciless judgment which leaves the party at critical health orphan doesn't really do anything to follow up on this though so healing out of it is pretty simple honestly Eden spawns a healing orb that heals orphan periodically staggers

make this stop that it does encourage high high offense to keep up with constant healing halfway through bartela spawns a damaging orb and orphan gets some new attacks which make Health Management slightly more challenging but None of this is too complicated honestly I used highwind too early and actually significantly prolonged the fight here which is notable I guess after the fight orphan says that they employ ly in order to wield the will of Humanity Which F SE don't possess they knock the party onto the ground leaving only venil and Fang standing orphan tries to make

venil turn into Ragnarok but Fang offers herself in her place she says she's going to fulfill her Focus to protect venil Everyone else besides venil gets turned to se at this point and starts wailing on Fang who turns into this beastial form of herself after a moment Fang reverts and doesn't have the strength to transform again leaving orphan Still Standing orphan lifts Fang into the air repeatedly striking her and then healing her her trying to get her to transform but it's just not happening the party comes back from seom and attacks orphan the fou sea

sinking into the pool of Water hope steps up to heal Fang finally someone using their medic powers in a cut scene the party shares what they experienced while they were gone a glimpse of the future everyone was happy and smiling and Fang was there too on the same side after a moment orphan returns this time without bartus or Eden lightning takes this opportunity to give an epic if not a bit clunkily written speech you don't believe in [Music] anything you gave up on life before you were even born sat poisoning cocoon from the inside waiting

for someone to come and destroy you sure you think the end of the world is salvation all you care about is death's release so take it and leave the rest of us alone we don't think like that when we think think there's no hope left we keep looking until we find some maybe cocon is past saving but it's Our home and we'll protect it or die trying we live to make the impossible possible that is our Focus the final battle with orphan is honestly not that difficult or complicated orphan sets a 4200 count doom on

the leader which just by the way translates to 4 120 seconds or 7 minutes staggers are extremely effective considering orphan can be launched and juggled orphan will buff herself halfway through the fight but these are Dispellable anyways I don't know this fight almost feels like a Victory lap the party already overcame the adversity of their focus and now only need to lay waste to Orphan which wait wasn't that their focus with orphan defeated we see the foul sea of cocoon shut down the lights go out and the floating rock falls out of the sky on

a collision course with pulse [Music] [Music] Look Stay Together hey grab my hand okay F theal lightning is the Commando she is the embodiment of the Lone Wolf someone who thinks she needs to do everything on her own after her parents' deaths she retained one family member Sarah the pain of this event was too strong for her and she wanted to run away from it so she became lightning This has not only caused her to become distant but she even started to distrust Sarah she wanted to protect her so badly that she couldn't stomach the

thought that she'd become a Lu and so she didn't believe it this only led to more problems so she started running toward what she thought was the problem head on the fousy enima then the sanctum but in reality she was just continuing to run away from what she really needed to trust and rely on others to stop trying To do everything herself this Behavior even swept others into her path hope spiraled down Lightning's River knocking him off his feet and into the Rapids of fear and anger at every stage of her journey her running got

people hurt Sarah couldn't confide in her and hope was built up to a dangerous goal snow is the Sentinel a protector to a fault he feels he needs to protect everyone and when his actions get people hurt or killed he gets angry with himself only Vowing to try harder next time snow sees himself succeeding as he aims to protect Sarah from the sanctum but this would result in many people losing their lives Snow's Rebellion against the sanctum ends up getting many people killed regardless if they willingly went he was still responsible for them as their

commanding officer at the time the totality of this failure is held within Norah's Legacy and her request to get someone home though he didn't know who At the time he's used to being the hero the one with all the answers but he doesn't know how to deal with this and so he throws himself into protecting everyone and thereby running from the consequences of his failure when faced with it when he can no longer run from it he doesn't have the anwers and that pains him to no end hope is the medic hope heals the damaged

connections between many of the characters he is the hope that keeps them together in the end Hope fills he doesn't deserve what he's going through his mother dies in a fight against the Army the army that was fighting a battle that hope didn't disagree with they were wrapped into this by circumstance having only visited bodm on what he thought was going to be a simple vacation then he becomes a lei burdened to continue that fight against the army or Surrender and die at their hands he runs from the grief by holding on to a goal

take out his revenge on Snow lightning unwittingly teaches him the ways of the battlefield arms him both physically and metaphorically for the carrying out of operation Norah a choice she would come to regret When Hope is finally able to face him he nearly carries it out his grief spilling over into rage he had yet to fulfill his duty as the medic running from his grief by fighting and taking it out on people SAS is the synergist he gets along with everyone but hides behind his carefully Crafted personality and humor to keep from giving too much

of himself away he took his son dodged to ur Gorge where he was turned into a la and taken from him he decided to fight pulse figuring that was Dodge's focus and became one with pulse himself rather than deal with the anguish or even express it he contemplates taking it with him a sacrifice which might save Dodge from becoming a monster and would result in S no longer need to deal with the pain When faced with the one responsible for that pain he can't bring himself to take the Revenge he thought he wanted just moments

ago something so at odds with his inner self that he can't help but raise the gun to his own head the ultimate Act of running away venil and Fang they are Saboteur Fang would do anything for venil but in the process is a curse upon many people her actions directly resulted in the near destruction of cocoon and all the lives Therein as well as both Sarah and Dodge becoming a her anger at all of this drives her away from people and into a place of constant War deciding to fight it instead of feeling it when

faced with the opportunity to hold on to hope she Dives backward back into despair seeking death to save the one she cares about most venil too is a curse on the people around her because she's weak and can't handle the waight on her shoulders when She awakens from her Crystal Slumber with Fang she remembers all of it but lies because she doesn't want to face it then she joins the The Purge because she wants to run away from her Focus if she gets as far away from cocoon as possible maybe she won't have to deal

with it all she ends up involved with SAS the very man whose son she inadvertedly turned into a l and she runs away from this too she can't face it any of it she runs and drags others with her hope at first but SZ as well in the end she has no choice but to face the pain the unending pain of knowing that someone who fully deserves to end your life had mercy on you and know you can't possibly make up for it what everyone has in common is that they're running from grief pain and

consequences this clearly never works out and the characters have to figure out how to deal with it in real time it's sloppy messy imperfect and compelling the first half of this game Is about the characters deciding to stop running from their pain to face it embrace it and convert it into hope the second half of this game is about the characters deciding to stop running from their Destiny to make it what they can resolving to do something about it vowing to do what they believe is right even if the world is against them they can

make the impossible happen the wishes can come True but not if you just wait for miracles ready Miracles are things we make for ourselves Here and Now [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] everyone turns to Crystal but after some time they are each returned to their human form they look up at the handiwork of fang of Vil and realize their brands are gone they're free from their chains those that held them mentally and emotionally as well as those that bound them to fate in the distance Sarah and do walk forward and

embrace their loved ones hope looks on with longing but no One walks up for him they're gone aren't they he I guess they meant for this to be goodbye and again we've changed our Fates before come on I missed you I'm sorry it's okay hey come on the apologies can wait we got a wedding to plan what you are going to allow wow right you don't waste any time do you no I don't that's right just charge in guns Blazing I swear to you I will make her happy I believe you congrats [Music] when prayers

turn to promises not even fate can stand in their way we held the light of Hope in our hearts and Achieve The [Music] Impossible now we live on to greet a new dawn I don't think anything I've said about this game has been wrong per se the shift of focus after chapter 9 is felt in every aspect of the game disperate story elements are few and far between don't feel as well set up and don't have nearly the same impact but then it still ends satisfyingly to me and honestly writing about it has only grown

my appreciation for what this story does it effectively ties the character drama of the first half into the ending and Elements like the potential involvement of rro behind the scenes are really captivating speaking of that I said I'd bring that back up here I highly believe that rro is the one that gave the L the vision and that they truly did beat their focus it makes the most sense to believe thata would have wanted them to destroy cocon and it's clear that bandus would have wanted the same and they nearly did taking out orphan just

like he wanted causing Eden to die and Sending all of cocon into a freeall but cocoon wasn't destroyed and in fact it almost seems like the process of vanilo and Fang turning to crystal is the very act that saves cocon this time which is actually true the last time too this is now the fifth time that we've seen a character turn to Crystal and their focus has either remained shrouded from us or they didn't actually fully accomplish what the fousy set them out to do or they deliberately fought their Focus I truly believe erra was

working in the wings to guide the characters to the ending they got the one that cocoon deserved she acted on behalf of cocon many generations ago when Ragnarok tried to destroy it so there's no reason to believe that she couldn't continue to act on behalf of cocoon today the party has been constantly directed by two opposing entities and occasionally the party could feel this railroading this linearity what effect did their personal Drive to do good have on this guidance was Fang and venil turning to Crystal and sacrifice to save cocoon truly necessary or was there

another way I don't know if these questions make sense or if they're intended by the developers at all but I can't help but think that this game's got smarter writing even in the second half than I realized when I set out to write this script I'm looking at my outline and it's sort of strange to read it and think that the person That wrote this is the same one that's sitting here writing this now I see this game completely differently having studied it and written about it the story doesn't just die in the second half

yes it changes gears yes its character moments are less fleshed out or impactful and yes it feels a good bit rushed even but it's still got plenty to say about the characters about the impact that they Waring with their grief has had on the world and about destiny Fate Prayers and Promises as for the gam play well it's almost frustrating how much I love this gameplay system and yet it seems to lack proper exploration bosses are interesting but lack compelling elements most of the time many of them just boil down to basic Health Management like

any other turn-based game so much depth lives within this combat system and the game doesn't want to really explored in any way at least not in the beaten path for Those that want the extra challenge pulse is there but it's a grind Fest for much of its runtime and many missions are so difficult in that area that it's hard to say it even feels fair at that point the game play takes too long to get good and once does it doesn't go much further than that I think you can see in the boss discussion for

the second half of the game most of them don't do much beyond the basic structure that the first half established and While none of them are bad per se they rarely challenged the player in any meaningful way but in the end I think this game feels real I've said it a few times but the importance of this can't be understated characters don't just feel like characters they live breathe and seem to respond to situations in realistic ways these things they go through don't feel contrived because it's due to their own actions that they are dealing

with them they're running Away and hiding from the pain leading them down even darker roads than the ones they walked before their failures Drive the plot at least for the first half their actions are in direct response to their pain and their actions are what led them into new pain and eventually acceptance and growth the gameplay and story are integrated in such a way that it makes the tedious nature of the first handful of chapters almost worth it characters feel like They aren't combat puppets but people that happen to be able able to fight their

recent actions and experience informing how they behave outside of cut scenes as well as in them there's so much to love in this game that it's sad to me that it has the stigma it has Corridor simulator melodramatic you name it well at the end of the day even if no one else loves this game the way I do I still can it'll be my own personal Final Fantasy 7 the one I wish they'd go back To and make another game like it thank you for watching this video was supported solely through YouTube memberships if

you're not a member and you've made it this far consider if you have the financial stability to throw me a bone I'd really appreciate it members at the second and third tier got access to this video a week early and members at the highest tier get access to a string of membership videos where I talk about all kinds of things which amounts To over 2 hours of extra content if you count the videos you probably wouldn't actually want to watch like this status update for example this time the membership video is a little different I'm

going to start a series where I rewatch my old stuff and critique them in much the same style I do with the game I talk about this time I'm going to be talking about the observation videos since I already kind of did that for the mgs5 video in a stream a while back if You're wondering why it's not about Final Fantasy 13 this time I guess I just completely ran out of stuff to say about it I could have forced myself to talk about the music but the music is I mean it's really good it's

just kind of forgettable I don't know I'm much more mixed on it than I am most jrpg soundtracks this people at the highest tier also get their names read out loud because I'm a trend Chaser and that's what everyone else does so here we go Devil Josiah Keen the monus icap OMFG it's Justin thanks for the support have a wonderful 3 months until I post another video [Music]