Beat it

[owlmoose]

Finished the final battle this afternoon. I think I'll need some time to sit with it before I can give a fully formed opinion, but for now, my reaction shot.


Overall, I would say that it was enjoyable, although I never fell in love with it like I did FFX or X-2. Worth playing for sure, and I look forward to continuing on with the Cieth Stones and other missions on Pulse. But I missed things like being able to explore Cocoon, and sidequests other than the marks, and the total lack of puzzles. When I play a Final Fantasy game, I want to feel like I'm getting to know a world, and although we get that with Pulse, Cocoon never became more than a series of unconnected sets to me.

Endgame: So... I am confused. If killing Orphan is the terrible thing that's going to destroy Cocoon, why do they kill Orphan? And when and how did they come to the conclusion that their goal was to fight Orphan rather than protect it? It made sense after the fact -- kill Orphan to end fal'Cie rule of Cocoon, then use the power of Ragnarok to keep Cocoon together -- but I never got a sense that they got together to discuss this plan. If I have one serious gripe with this game, this is it: the tendency for character development and important exposition to be explained in the Datalog rather than shown on the screen. (I also wish that they had just added new character information to the Datalog rather than overwriting the old. I have the feeling I missed a lot.)

We got Bartandalus Part 3 pretty easily, and we also beat Orphan Part 2 on the first try, but Orphan Part 1 was harsh. We tried several different party configurations before throwing our hands up and going back to level up and upgrade our weapons some more. Against all conventional wisdom, our final party was Sazh, Vanille, and Hope; the combination of buff/debuff/heal while Sazh played Commando almost full-time was slow, but effective. I don't know that I would *recommend* it, exactly, but it worked for us. (Lightning would probably have worked just as well as Sazh, but Sazh had notably more hit points, so it was a lot easier to keep him alive.) Has there *ever* been a final boss who talks as much as Orphan? Blah blah Ragnarok metaphysics blah. Just shut up and die already! Geez.

The very end scenes, I did enjoy: Fang and Vanille joining to become Ragnarok and fulfill their focus together was poetic and beautiful. It leads me to wonder whether protecting Cocoon after the fall of Orphan was what Anima intended as their focus all along, and if Lightning and company were only bound to support them toward this goal (and so they turned to Cieth when it appeared that Fang and Vanille were going to continue at cross-purposes). The reunion with Serah and Dajh at the end was beautifully bittersweet -- you could see how much their lost companions were missed, and I am sad that the six of them won't continue to explore Pulse and have adventures there together. A lot was left unexplained at the end: did anyone still on Cocoon survive the crash, who will lead the people now, where did everyone on Pulse go, what about Hope's dad? But overall, despite my nagging questions, I was satisfied.

BTW, T got impatient and skipped through the credits; was there any sort of cut scene between them and the end card? Maybe one that shows Fang and Vanille melting again? It's nice that they're together at the end, but I'd rather them have an existence that's more like a life. Please say yes.


So this thing where you can keep doing side missions after the final battle? Awesome. So, so awesome. This may be my favorite development in this game. Now we can play around at leisure without worrying that I'm going to stumble across some awful spoiler on the Internet. I hope they keep this model for future games, even if it does mean that the final boss is a little easier on the grand scale than usual.

Speaking of spoilers: now I can properly research the story I started the other day without fear. Excellent.

Comments

[imadra-blue.livejournal.com]

I got the impression that Vanille was telling us what was told to her about what happened to others, such as Snow and Hope in Ch. 7 or Lightning and Hope in Ch. 5. Everything was from her perspective. However, I do agree with you that it doesn't always work. They waffled between characters having to say too much to get across their emotions (such as Hope) and characters not saying enough (such as Lightning). While you can chalk this up to just how some people are (some people talk too much, others not enough), I do agree the Datalog could have been integrated better and exposition integrated more without bogging down the story.

God, do I wish more FF titles had New Game+. Crisis Core has one, too. I think New Game+ is a fine way to take a look at the story again. However, as linear as FF13 as, and so cut scene heavy, it makes replay value a little lower, at least immediately. Having both Post-story Play and New Game + would indeed be a dream come true!

I'm actually split fairly evenly between gen and slash, my two main genres. I also do some het and the occasional femslash. I'm pretty game to most things, but I admit that there's a certain level of discomfort from me about females in sexual situations. Too much identification, I think. It's one of the many reasons I find slash more comfortable. But I like gen really quite a lot (and ultimately, gen encompasses all the ships, since you can have ships in a genfic, they just don't command the story), so I'm good whatever way you like to take it. I left a comment on there last night. I liked it! I prefer the honest opinions myself, especially on test pieces. I got some great feedback and meta on Snow and Hope in my last piece, and I like that this fandom is happy to talk characters!

It is amusing how we had nothing, and then bam, something! I'm pleased to see it, though. I love activity in a fandom, it makes it feel fresh. Even for the games I'm not as fond of, I'm happy to see its fandom alive and well. Take, for example, FFX. I just made a little one-off rant on its beginning (not the whole game, mind you), and it made FF Press (to my surprise) and a lot of people came out to talk about it--some to commiserate and quite a few to defend it. That's good, imho, even if I was taken aback by the response. It means the fandom is thriving, and even after all these years, people still care. That's how it should be, for any fandom.

[owlmoose.livejournal.com]

I got the impression that Vanille was telling us what was told to her about what happened to others, such as Snow and Hope in Ch. 7 or Lightning and Hope in Ch. 5. Everything was from her perspective.

It's an interesting take, especially if you think that, like wounded_melody suggests above, l'Cie who turn to crystal are similar to the fayth in FFX in that they have a sort of limited omniscience. That could account for some of the things we see that the characters don't, like Cid's death.

FFX is my primary fandom, and despite its age it goes through bursts of activity from time to time, but lately it's been pretty quiet. I saw both your post and its inclusion in ff_press. I've noticed that they've been listing more meta and other discussion in people's journals lately, which I think is an excellent way to get more of a cross-FF fandom going, although I know what you mean about being surprised when a post you weren't thinking of that way makes it in! I noticed the same thing you mentioned when FFXII first came out -- Final Fantasy is back in people's minds, and so there is a boost to all the fandoms, even the older ones, and this is excellent news for everyone. :)

[imadra-blue.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, I never got far enough in FFX to find out about the Fayth (or if I did, I forgot--I realized that I forgot a lot of the game since the last time I played it). I don't really understand that comparison. I'd argue about the idea of "limited omniscience" (that phrase kinda cracks me up, though), mostly because the Cie'th missions indicate that being a crystal doesn't leave you with any sort of omniscience or knowledge of events outside your own crystal. I could agree that Fang and Vanille are special cases, since they chose to become Ragnarok and then crystallized, and everyone else was freed?

Well, it's obvious that FFX is my least favorite of the FF games. >.> But! Since it is Final Fantasy, I feel obligated to both play it and acknowledge its strengths (it does have them, imho, even if the flaws vastly outweigh these for me). My ultimate attachment is to the franchise, which I grew up with. So seeing new life being breathed into all the FF fandoms is awesome for me. I'm all for FF being back in people's minds. Hell, I'm replaying old games, myself (though I'm distracted by obsessively collecting trophies in FF13, and I almost have them all, just need to do the Treasure Hunter one, then beat Orphan with a 5-star, and then bam! Done! :D).