I don’t think the story (which I love) would work at all if Sazh weren’t present. He is absolutely load-bearing in grounding it
4 Likes
Sazh rules. I wonder if his rational viewpoint and ability to understand and convey the moral ambiguity of the l’Cie situation inspired Versus XIII. That game’s conceit was “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” and here we have Sazh overthinking everything, but still being forced to press on to a future and actions he’s deeply conflicted about. I think the more you can identify with Sazh and the more you understand his motivations and hesitations, the more you will like the game.
I think they could have gone even further with juxtaposing Sazh’s headstrong nature with Snow’s emotionality, but the two never butted heads or spent much time together. Sazh being the audience surrogate who intellectually grounds everything could have provided a cathartic moment of release to Snow’s over the top moral clarity. Snow basically lucks into being correct about everything through the power of his love for Serah, but it would still be nice to have Sazh call him out.
But I guess, stories need Heroes!
4 Likes
Versus XIII—and really, the entire conceit of Fabula Nova Crystallis—is going to be one of those cancelled projects I think I’ll always long for. There was so much potential for thematic through lines across the games, and I would have dearly loved for them to build, expand, and riff on so many of the ideas in XIII
4 Likes
It is so hard not to watch something as layered and mysterious as this and not help but wonder what could have been. Versus XIII was something incredible.
4 Likes
With the way Nomura snuck so many nods to it in Kingdom Hearts 3, I often wonder if feels the same way. I suppose that’s the thing with the big, overarching swings (like FNC or the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII) Square likes to take sometimes: bringing things like that to fruition in video games is pretty damn hard
2 Likes
I’m still with it! And I’m in an “open world”. I feel like that description is generous. But that’s where I am.
Now that I’ve got to this part of the game, it really does seem like the lack of exploration and talking to randos does radically change the pacing of the game vs other FF games. I had kind of rejected the “LOL hallway” discourse as bad faith. It still is, but I do appreciate the way other games have ways to break up the dungeons.
P.S.: Hope, you still suck. Alexander one-shot you the second the fight begins several times. I feel like I should be able to beat long fights without a sentinel, but that is becoming less and less plausible.
5 Likes
Seems like this chapter has a big difficulty spike in both the random battles and the Eidolon fights. I still don’t care for the Eidolon fights. I’m on Hecatoncheir right now and the timing windows seem pretty tight. I’ve gotten down to the last few pixels and then had doom expire several times. Considering going and grinding for a few more Magic levels or trying to upgrade equipment.
2 Likes
Upgrading equipment should make a pretty big difference, so I would start there (especially if you haven’t done much upgrading so far). Use animal parts (you can buy sturdy bones for cheap from the monster parts vendor) to get the multiplier to x3, and then use the biggest stack of electronic/technology parts you can to get the most out of the multiplier before it resets
Then, repeat the process as needed! There’s more to the process than that (with different parts / pieces having different values for how much they affect the multiplier in both directions), but for a normal, non-endgame playthrough, you shouldn’t need more than the animal parts for multiplier, electronics to spend multiplier general rule
3 Likes
Chapter 11 is just a big gross difficulty spike overall. I either don’t understand the game mechanics enough to succeed, or I’m under-leveled.
I’m in the tower now and that Bellows mission group just target whomever my leader is (even with a sentinel taunting) and kill him/her in 2 hits. 
3 Likes
That does sound a bit like under-leveled to me. I can’t prove this, of course, but my sense is that the difficulty is higher in this chapter because they sort of expected people to start roaming and grinding after the more linear first half of the game
HP accessories can make a big difference (in general I try to keep one on everyone until the late late game), but if you’re dying in two hits I’d imagine they probably wouldn’t be enough on their own
3 Likes
Make sure you’re making liberal use of your Ravagers! I also was slogging through the part of the game you’re at until I switched things up thanks to this advice and changing up my paradigms to this. Follow the advice of switching up paradigms often in battle and it doesn’t hurt to grind a bit during this part of the game because you’re close to the Crystarium opening back up very soon.
3 Likes