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  

   

Final Fantasy XIII-2, Chapter 1: A Wacky Time-Travel Adventure!

Fear not my intrepid readers, for this blog is not dead! You could I say I got side-tracked with a side-project that I ended up dumping a lot more time into than I originally intended. The good news is... that side-project involves a game, and I'll be blogging about that soon as well!

Source

On to the next game, the sequel to the much maligned Final Fantasy 13. At the time it was released, interviews made it seem like Final Fantasy 13-2 was meant to "make up" for the mistakes of 13, and give the fans what they really wanted. I'm curious how Japanese fans felt about 13, but I haven't been able to figure that out. I would just peruse Japanese sites, but, alas, I don't speak the language. I wonder whether Japanese fans had the same complaints as US fans about 13, or if the new game was purely an apology to western fans. The good news is, I think the improvement is noticeable from the get go. I felt 13-2 was a much better game the first time I played it, and about ten hours into my second trip, I still feel the same.

The start screen.

The story movement is a bit strange, and at times hard to follow. The story and gameplay uses time travel as it's main device. This includes an altering of the timeline. Despite Lightning being on the cover and in the intro movie, her sister Serah is the main character, controlled by the player. Lightning is now the servant of the goddess Etro in a place outside of time called Valhalla. The gods were mentioned slightly in the first game, mostly in Datalog entries, however, I still think this game isn't related thematically to the first. 

A "Beginner's Primer" is available to catch the player up on the events of the first game.

In Final Fantasy 13, there was very little NPC dialogue, with most messages just popping up as you walked close to an NPC. There were only a couple times in the game where the player could walk up to and choose to talk to someone. Pleasantly, 13-2 has a lot more NPC interaction. I'm certain there is more player driven NPC action in the first area of 13-2 than there is in the entirety of FF13.

Serah and her companions, Noel and Mog, on the beach of New Bodhum. The icon over Noel's head indicates he can be talked to by the player.

13-2 also introduces a level of dialogue that is new, as far as I can remember, to the Final Fantasy series, multiple dialogue options. These are called "Live Trigger" events. It's not much, but it's a welcome bit of role-playing. The player usually only gets to pick one option, then, depending on what they pick, different items become available as "Live Trigger Rewards". So, not only is it a nice bit of role-play, but it also adds some re-playability to the game, with the ability to try different options on future play-throughs.

Not a lot of really different options in this one... but it does show what the live trigger screen looks like, kupo! Source

The game begins with Serah waking up from a dream in her village that has been dubbed New Bodhum (named by Snow). She dreams of her sister Lightning fighting with a purple-haired man in a mysterious city. Serah also has memories of seeing Lightning alive after the crystal pillar saved Cocoon, but... no one else remembers. As far as everyone else is concerned, Lightning holds up the pillar along with Vanille and Fang.

Before the events of the game, good ol' Snow was the only one who believed Serah, so he set out on a quest to find Lightning. Serah had since continued her life as a school teacher in New Bodhum. One day, as the game begins, a swarm of monsters attacks New Bodhum! In the confusion, a young man mysteriously appears, his name is Noel. Noel says he was sent to find Serah by Lightning, by way of a mysterious place called Valhalla. After a bit of convincing, Serah comes to believe Noel, and decides to join him on a wacky time-travel adventure to find her sister!

This post has been one of the toughest to write, probably because I've been away for a few months. So, in the interest of getting some momentum back, I'm going to call this good!

Welcome back friends... to This Bard's Tales!

Estimated Total Play Time: 2 hours
Estimated Time to Write Post: 2 hours