Final Fantasy XIII-2, Chapter 5: It's Academia, Really

Noel and Serah step through the gate in front of them, to emerge in a place familiar, yet unfamiliar. They are on the Yaschas Massif, however, the light of Cocoon can be seen clearly in the sky, as opposed to the darkness they had seen before. Noel surmised that having resolved the paradox, they had created an alternate timeline, one in which the eclipse did not exist. Hope had been present in the other Yaschas Massif, would he be here?

Approaching the Academy headquarters at the excavation site, Serah heard Hope's voice as she approached. "I don't know why," he said, "but I just know someone is about to arrive here, someone important." 

Serah once again reunited with Hope. Although only Serah and Noel remembered the existence of the eclipse, the change in time left a faint impression in Hope, thus, he knew Serah would come.

Meeting Hope here in the alternate Yaschas Massif is a somewhat pivotal moment in the game. He has been studying an Oracle Drive. An Oracle Drive records visions, or prophecies, recorded by a people called the Farseers, who lived in these very ruins in the ancient past. The seeresses of these people, who were always named Yeul, could see the future. Yeul is also the name of the girl who appeared with Caius.

They activate the Oracle Drive, showing a vision, similar to Serah's, of Caius and Lightning fighting. With a wave of his arm, Caius manages to destroy the crystal pillar, and bring down Cocoon.

Activating the Oracle Drive. Source.

The group decides here that they will do what they can to save Cocoon. Hope and his assistant Alyssa will work in the past, while Noel and Serah will work in the future. Serah surmises that this very thing is what Lightning had given her her powers to do (time traveling and controlling monsters).

Here in the Yaschas Massif I had my first really trying battle. Until this point, the battles in 13-2 had been much improved over it's predecessor, however, against very strong foes it still shows warts. I've mentioned before that the strong Cieth were the worst monsters to fight in the last game, it's the same here. I heard about a Cieth wandering the Massif, and decided to give it a go. It was incredibly frustrating, after an hour of 15 minute battles I decided to give up. I ran when it appeared, and it caught me! Thus I couldn't skip out with the retry option, and... I won. The reward for my troubles? A fragment and 500CP. So... pride, essentially. It doesn't pay to fight prolonged battles in 13 and 13-2.

This B*...

The battle screen both helpfully tells me I wasted 6 minutes of my life (the duration versus target time), and that I did a very poor job (no stars and 0 points awarded). Thanks! That really makes me want to keep playing this game!

I don't have a problem with games having enemies that are very difficult, or impossible to beat when you first encounter them. My problem with 13 and 13-2 is it's hard to tell if you're overpowered, or you need a new strategy... You try a few things, and then an hour later, realize you probably aren't ready to fight said monster. Unlike previous Final Fantasy games, if you pull a David on a Goliath, you don't stand to get much in reward. Bummer. I wrote in my notes "lesson learned I hope." Guess what, I didn't, but we'll get to that later.

From a gate in the alternate Yaschas Massif, Noel and Serah emerge in a massive city, Academia, in the year 400AF. For the moment, they have succeeded! Humanity has created this metropolis, which has been built on the principles of Hope Estheim and the Academy. The city is powered by a man made Fal'Cie (The god-like bio-machines that previously governed and manipulated humanity). This seems like a terrible idea... and it is! The rainy night quickly turns into a nightmare, as the Proto Fal'Cie begins turning the people of Academia into Cieth to protect against the perceived "paradox" threat Noel and Serah represent with their appearance.

Noel, Serah, and their companion Blue the Buccaboo fight off a legion of Cieth. I'm quite proud of this pic, it was hard to get the Academy headquarters centered in the background!

As if hundreds of Cieth wasn't enough, Caius also makes an appearance! He believes their presence here is a paradox, and they must be stopped. He says also that they have "witnessed the true history." He had imprisoned them in a tower 200 years ago, but that is somewhere they have yet to go. He is somewhat in disbelief that the pair stands before him. 

It's worth mentioning that Academia 400AF has an abominable encounter rate. It wasn't AS bad since I knew it was coming (this is my second time playing the game). However, it was still bad. I remember thinking in my first play-though whether anyone had actually play tested this level. It's bad, trust me. Luckily the battles are relatively quick, but you'll be fighting them one after another, after another, after another.

This place would be pretty cool, if it weren't for all the damn Cieth.

This dude is waiting at the end of an alley to make a pancake out of you with his hammer fist. I didn't fight him, so I guess I learned my lesson, if only for a short time.

The pair battles Caius, but something seems fishy! Will Yeul make an appearance? Find out in the next chapter...

Play Time: 21.75 hours
Write Time: 1.25 hours

Final Fantasy XIII-2, Chapter 4: A Faeryl, to Arms!

After the battle with Caius, I resumed the path at Sunleth Waterscape, where I had met Snow. Having fought with the gigantor flan, the three decide they will not be able to defeat it. Well, really Noel does, and scold's Snow for being a hot head. Noel, Serah, and Snow search the area, finding the artefact they need to enter a nearby gate. However, when Snow tries to enter, he is barred, apparently it is not meant for him.

Entering the gate, Noel and Serah emerge on a wind-swept plain of tall grasses. They find a village of hunters, and learn that this is the Archylte Steppe of Pulse. The hunters here are under duress, thanks to a large monster that brings storms with it's approach.

Serah looks out over the dry, dusty steppe.

The hunters need some help, and they also are looking to test Serah and Noel's skills, to see if they can be relied upon. The pair defeat some goblins, and then gather wool from the fuzzy sheep that wander the plains. This time there are big sheep! I did rather like the sheep in FF13, glad to see them back.

Serah chases down some fuzzy sheep to get wool for the hunters.

It's a little ironic that the hunters are having a problem with recurring storms when they have... a device that controls the weather. What? Well it makes a little more sense later on. The device has two levers with four different settings. They result in: windy, sunny, rainy, and stormy (lightning) weather. Each weather brings with it its own set of monsters.

Noel stands at the weather controls, it is currently raining.

When the weather is sunny out, a creature called the Faeryl appears. It is this dragon like beast which causes storms when it opens it mouth. However, it is blocked by the massive Long Gui, which Noel and Serah have no hope of defeating!

The massive Long Gui, as seen through the tall grass of the Archylte Steppe.

Through clever manipulation of the weather machine, Serah and Noel are able to make the Faeryl appear, but then the Long Gui disappear, leaving a clear path.

The Faeryl is a rather sinister looking beast.

After defeating the Faeryl, Noel and Serah figure out both the cause of the storms, and the giant flan in the Sunleth Waterscape as well. The gameplay is fun in 13-2, but get ready for this convoluted explanation, because it is exemplary of the many sub-plots in the game. The Faeryl swallowed a crystal fragment, thinking it was food (maybe they eat crystals? I can't remember). The fragment created a vortex in its stomach, which would then make a windstorm when it opened its mouth, sucking in great amounts of flan. The vortex would then transport them through time and space to Sunleth, where they would combine into the massive flan which was eroding the crystal pillar, and would eventually cause Cocoon to fall. Let that one settle for a second. Welcome to the Nova Chrystalis mythology.

I have here in my notes this: Chocobocolina- Front-runner for "worst ally." This is as good a time as any to introduce her. The "store" in this game is an anthropomorphic chocobo woman who inexplicably also travels through time. She has, shall we say... a bubbly personality? Her puns are to die for, as in, you will want to die. Here is a *SPOILER* video that gives you a taste of her "charm." It's not a big-time spoiler, just spoils some of the DLC. I guess her name is actually Chocolina, but she says "Choco-boco-lina!" all the time...

Chocolina! The self-proclaimed "time-traveling temptress."

Now that they have stemmed the tide of flan, the pair heads back to Sunleth, hoping to find the giant flan weakened. He has... being reduced from the red mega-tomato to the green mutant-tomato! However, Snow's recklessness has gotten the better of him, Serah finds him on his knees, gasping for breath at the base of the monster. Noel and Serah arrive just in time to save him.

The mutant-tomato! Source.

Ooops... there it is.

The pair save Snow and defeat the beast, thus resolving the paradox. Noel berates Snow for his brashness, it seems something happened to Noel in his past that makes him resent this sort of behavior, but we don't know what it is. However, with the resolution of the paradoxical appearance of the giant tomato, Snow begins to sparkle and fade. Serah has reunited with Snow, only to lose him again so soon! Noel explains that the timeline is righting itself, and Snow doesn't belong in this time. Noel and Serah are not affected, probably because of Lightning lending them her powers.

Play Time: 13.5 hours

Write Time: 2.25 hours

Final Fantasy XIII-2, Chapter 3: Eclipsing the Paradox

Having both resolved the paradox and defeated the colossus Atlas, Noel and Serah step into a new gate. They find themselves on Gran Pulse. They know this because they can see Cocoon in the sky, however, the sky is dark, Cocoon is eclipsed, by... what, in a recurring theme, must be a paradox!

The eclipse seen from the Yaschas Massif.

Noel has vague memories of this eclipse occurring, but not in this time period, thus the pair determine that it's presence here is a paradox. Further exploring the Massif, the pair find a large group of researchers at an excavation of ruins. These are members of the Academy, an institution borne from the fallout of the conflict with the Fal'Cie (in Final Fantasy 13). The Academy is made up mostly of former members of the Fal'Cie controlled Sanctum. The head of the Academy also happens to be present at this site with his assistant, Alyssa. He is an old friend of Serah's. 

Serah reunites with the older, and thankfully much less annoying, Hope Estheim.

Hope and Serah are happy to see each other, but quickly get down to business. Hope and his team are here investigating the paradox activity. They have determined that the ruins are from a city called Paddra. The people who occupied it are called Farseers, and their civilization ended in a tragic civil war. As Hope expands on this, it seems Noel may be hiding something... 

A giant head in the Paddra ruins. There is a certain aesthetic throughout the Final Fantasy series that is exemplified here. I find it quite enchanting.

At this point in the game, I had started two different branches, which are depicted literally on the games "map". It's called the Historia Crux, and it's how the player moves between different zones.

The Historia Crux navigation screen.

One branch was what I just described, finding the eclipse on the Yaschas Massif. In the other, Serah had reunited with another character from the previous game, her fiance Snow. Snow had traveled to the Sunleth Waterscape, near the crystal pillar holding up Cocoon. There a horde of flan (jelly creatures that are recurring in the FF series) are combining into a massive tomato that will eventually erode the pillar and cause the fall of Cocoon.

I found I COULD in fact move between the story lines without missing a beat, each just resumed where I had left off upon returning. This is a neat feature, an obvious counter to the much-maligned linearity of this game's predecessor.

Looking at my notes, I proceeded though the eclipse first, ending up in Oerba 200 AF, the hometown of Fang and Vanille from FF13 (The game starts in 3 AF). The area is littered with spatial distortions that must be resolved in order to proceed.

After exploring Oerba fully, on top of the old school house, a mysterious girl appears. Noel recognizes her as Yeul. However, she says "I am not the Yeul you know." a large man with a massive sword appears. He says a bunch of mumbo-jumbo about the sins of altering the timeline. "If you change the future, you change the past," is a key phrase. This could be considered the theme of the game, which is odd, because at least in American pop-culture it usually goes the other way around. Although it doesn't make a lot of sense, it is original. As the future is changed, the past changes to make it make sense. Impressions are left though, such as how Serah still remembers meeting Lightning after Cocoon is caught by the crystal pillar, but no one else does.

Both Noel and Serah recognize the mysterious man. Serah knows him from her dream as the man fighting Lightning in Valhalla. Noel seems to be much closer to him, and knows his name, Caius. There are many battles with Caius, some of which are very difficult. In this case he went down easily with an application of poison.

"You have committed a grave sin, altering the timeline," said the large man, "and the wage of your sin... is death!"

He charged at Noel and Serah, swinging his massive sword in quick but wide arcs. He glowed with the power of the Heart of Chaos, red and beating in his breast. Within the hilt of his sword lay the Eye of Bahamut. Despite the power of these artifacts, Noel and Serah were able to bring Caius to his knees. However, the Heart of Chaos rejuvenated him, and Caius escaped into the rift of time.

Time to Post: 5 hours

Total Time: 11.5 hours

Write Time: 1 hour

Final Fantasy XIII-2, Chapter 2: Atlas Shrugged

I'm happy to say this post commemorates over 1,000 page views! As a blogger, It's nice to know people are reading, and thus my efforts are rewarded!

It was a clear, warm night in the small sea-side village of New Bodhum. A myriad of stars shown from within the mellow night sky. Serah and her new companion, Noel, were patrolling outside of the village, nearing the site where a meteorite had very recently made land fall.

The landscape began to warp, and within the air, images of a some other, blasted land, intermixed with Bodhum's greenery.

  

"Paradoxes" as they exist in Final Fantasy 13-2, are introduced early as New Bodhum's sky gets warped by these images. Noel and Mog have some insight into the event, it appears that something has caused these disturbances throughout the timeline. Based on her dream about Lightning, and the appearance of Noel and Mog, Serah decides she has been tasked with fixing the paradoxes in the timeline, and decides to enter the mysterious time gate found at the meteor's impact site.

Serah had become somewhat comfortable in her life in New Bodhum. She was a school teacher, molding the young children's mind's toward great futures. Her friends were there, the members of team NORA. Then there was the NORA house cat, whom she had named Snow. That in itself was a reminder of what there was to not be content about. Her fiance, Snow, had been gone a couple years now. Most all, she missed her sister, Lightning. That in the end, was her motivation to leave this comfort behind and step into the timeline, to reunite with her sister.  

Serah rides a chocobo near New Bodhum. Cocoon sits comfortably in its crystal cradle.

The truth of Noel's time travel was confirmed as the pair stepped into the time gate. They emerged in the midst of ruins, with rain droplets falling steadily from the grey sky. A massive robotic hand stuck up from the ground.

Serah stands before a time gate... in the rain.  

The pair finds out soon enough that they are now in the future, two years to be precise. The location is the Bresha Ruins, near Lake Bresha, the site where the new l'Cie landed after falling from Cocoon in FF13. It appears to be some kind of excavation site, with the massive hand sticking up from the ground resembling that of the colossal Pulse Fal'Cie Titan, also from the previous game. The hand flies into the air and attacks! As Noel points out "It's probably not looking to shake hands!" Har har... The giant hand belongs to a mecha-colossus that has been dubbed "Atlas". Its appearance is very similar to the Fal'Cie Titan, but it appears to have been created by humans in another time, thus its presence here is... a paradox!

The giant hand. Source.

Atlas looms in the distance, waiting patiently.

At this point the game introduces a fork that becomes a recurring device in the game. Atlas has manifested in the ruins, and also a strange mechanism appears that researchers think may be it's control device. The player may choose to attack head-on, or to find the device first and see if they can control or weaken the beast. I did try fighting Atlas head-on once, just to see what would happen, and was not surprisingly quickly squished.

Readers may remember Cieth, which played a prominent part in FF13. They are l'Cie who have failed at their focus, becoming tormented monsters. In FF13, they were some of the more difficult encounters, with the most powerful of them being an exercise in torture. In the Bresha ruins I picked up a quest to kill a Cieth that had been wandering the ruins attacking soldiers. Thankfully this one wasn't too difficult, and I received a "fragment" as a reward. After defeating the Cieth, Noel made an interesting statement, that his memories were like "looking through fogged glass". I don't remember how it related to the Cieth, but it gave a little insight into Noel's character.

The fragments are a little confusing at first, they sound a lot like "artefacts" which are used to open time gates. The separation between the two becomes clearer as the game progresses. All the player really knows at this point is that game contains over a hundred fragments, and that they get CP as a reward for finding them, CP are Crystarium Points, this game's version of experience points.

To resolve the paradox, the pair must find a device in the ruins. The device is accompanied by a mysterious time disturbance. To resolve the disturbance, the two must... solve a mini-game! There are a few different types of games: following a path of falling tiles, connecting matching gemstones, and one involving clock hands. Though it doesn't make a lot of sense that mini-games solve time disturbances, they are relatively entertaining little diversions.

Serah finds the mysterious device.

Serah must find the right path to resolve the time disturbance.

With the time disturbance resolved, Serah and Noel prepared their weapons to face the massive colossus. The beast, Atlas, swung his glowing fist in long wide arcs, shaking the ground every time it landed in concussive blows. Dodging nimbly, Serah and Noel eventually wore the colossus down. "I think I see a weak point!" Serah yelled, she gestured to an orange crystal protruding from the back of the giant's head.

Coordinating their attacks Noel combined his two swords mechanically into a javelin, and buried it deep in the crystal. "Now Serah!" he yelled.

Serah nodded, her bow drawn, and let loose the arrow which would fell the giant, bringing it down with a quake that shook the ruins.

Play Time to Post: 4 hours
Estimated Total Play Time: 6.5 hours
 Estimated Time to Write Post: 2.75 hours