Or maybe I’ll continue writing about it to keep a log about my exploits in chocobo racing because once I’m done everything, I’m off to the races! ^O^

I already did a few with my trusty Silver Chocobo~! I messed up raising it along the way though and only managed to get its magic strength to 776. Would have liked to see it at 800 but oh well. It’s got enough stamina to last the 1800 meter races so it’s all good.

I got the Collector Catalog from one of the races and upped it to a Durable Collector Catalog. Love the amount of gil that rolls in with that thing. I’m slightly disappointed I didn’t get this before because now, I can buy all sorts of things — like those casino coins! XD

Speaking of which …

Messed up the contrast here by accident while taking the screenshot. 😦 Anyway, I started off with about ~33,300 coins — most of which were obtained from exchanging gil — and ended up with a decent profit! 😀 But look at the number of turns that was required to get the 13,200+ profit! :E

What I did for this was simply autoplay. As I mentioned in my previous post, I had to make sure that the employee next to the machine mentions that its mood was “like a hot summer’s day”. I then pushed my Dual Shock 3 controller up against the wall of the hutch of computer desk while I took off to the dentist and grocery shopping. About 3 hours later, I came back and everything I needed from the damnable slot machine was done! XD

So now, I just need Saddle Sore and Anomalous and then I’m done! ^o^ First Platinum ever!

When I went back to the Historia Crux, I got this:

Of course, the actual message wasn’t censored. I just did that for the benefit of those that haven’t seen/reached this point yet. :3

Man, it sure takes a while to get 10,000 chocobo steps. 😦 I’ve been listening to the Pulse de Chocobo for almost half an hour already. I suppose I really should have rode on chocobos more often throughout the course of the game but I wanted to fight everywhere I went so I usually had the characters travel by foot. ^^;

Oh, to hell of this. Let me go get the OTHER trophy first. This can wait since it’s not counting consecutive steps. 😛

Update: Dear lord, why are the credits so long? I could have been back on a chocobo getting my steps!!!!! Anyway, just got Anomalous so it’s back to getting that chocobo to walk into the wall at the Steppe. :3

Update #2: HUZZAH! PLATINUM’D!

I wonder when Noel will get an outfit that I would actually WANT him to wear?

http://andriasang.com/comzzt/ffxiii2_dlc_screens/

For some reason, it looks like he’s missing a helmet or something to complete that attire. 😛 (Also, why’s he armed with a spear? D:)

Hmm. The Sazh DLC seems to include some card game that involves playing cards and a clock. I’m pretty sure we don’t have to solve clock puzzles while playing cards so it should be okei. 😛 Maybe it’s like a roulette wheel thing?

So, about the slot machines, I got triple 7 twice so far and a bunch of chocobo and moogles. I only started about 40 minutes ago too! I have it set on autoplay but I did intervene during the first Victory Mode. It didn’t last very long. 😛

(I had to re-enter Serendipity twice from the Historia Crux to get the right playing condition (“It’s like a hot summer’s day!”) though.)

I anticipate that I will obtain both the Lucky Coin fragment AND the 10,000 Casino Coins trophy (Serendipitous or whatever) today. 😀

When all the trophies are done and over with, I can go back to chocobo racing! ^o^/

OOH! Just hit my third 777! Go, go slot machine!!!

Got all the Paradox Endings now.  I think the best one is the one from Academia 4XX AF.

Random thought: I really do believe Yeul has some sort of walking deficiency; it’s not that she’s animated funny or anything. 😦  She kind of tries to run in one of the endings and it comes off as looking kind of silly. I felt bad for laughing though because I thought about how people in real life actually have this handicap too. ^^; I wonder if this is explained in the Ultimania or some other Japanese source?

Anyway, I’ve been spending part of the day beating up rare enemies. I fought the Tonberry seven times and it never once dropped its damn crystal. I have the Monster Collector Fragment Skill enabled and even threw in the Blue Chocobo that had the Item Collector ability. >:E I eventually gave up and ended up going to fight Raspatil instead.  The battle wasn’t as dreadful as the guidebook described!  I think I 5-starred the thing too. ^^

I moved onto Don Tonberry after that fight. Surprisingly, this one only took 3 tries before it dropped a crystal. I started having a little fun with the little monster too! XD

So now, I have most of the Gold trophies. :3  I think I’m out by 2 or 3 though.  Off the top of my head, I know that one requires dealing 99,999 damage and another is getting all 160 fragments.

Honestly, if I got the Brain Blast and the stupid slot machine fragments, I’d be up to 159. The only one I’d be missing is the monster collecting one. Not entirely sure I’m up to completing any of these. But I kind of want so since if I do, this would mark the first time I got Platinum for any PS3 game. ^^ Well, I still have some other bronze trophies to get too like the chocobo steps one.

Sigh. I still want a cactuar and a tonberry. I only have the cactuar variants obtained from hurling Mog everywhere. And the regular tonberry isn’t as creepy looking as Don. 😛

Update on Feb 15:

• Got the Clock Stopper trophy. Finally. Had to reload twice since I managed to break the chain. Thank God I was saving frequently between fights. :3
• I have 4 more monsters left to complete the Monster Professor sidequest. I REALLY wish I didn’t skip that rare one in the last dungeon. Sigh. Go me and my insistence of getting 100% map completion over everything else. 😛 Finally finished it! XD

Just have the stupid slot machine fragment to get. Yay. .__.

Update #2: I magically got the Giant’s Fist trophy! I took the guidebook’s advice and threw 4 Delicate Iron Bangles on Noel to get the HP Power Surge ability but I had him equipped with Odinblade instead. With 159 fragments, the boost to stats wasn’t bad at all! Since I didn’t bother creating/purchasing the post-game weapons, this was the only one that was strong enough for the task! Well, I did the whole Meteor Javelin after switching Noel to commando thing when Long Gui was recovering from its first stagger but I think I messed up the timing. 😦

The silly thing is that the trophy notification came when it was down a second time. The party was in a RAV SAB SYN formation with Noel as Ravager, Serah as Saboteur and a Yakshini as a Synergist. ^^; I suppose it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise since a debuffed and staggered Long Gui being hit with a weapon that’s enchanted with Enthunder should deal heavy damage to it.

I’m going for Saddle Sore right now and have the left analog stick of the controller up against the guidebook while I do other things. XD

Clocked in at around 62 hours.  That should be pretty average for someone that did a million pit stops (re: sidequests) along the way, right? Or maybe average for someone that did pit stops and kept getting lost in some areas. :3

5-starred all final boss fights! Too bad that doesn’t net me any special trophies or fragments! Also, I was at level 99 for everything already so taking them out didn’t require too much effort. XD

Funny how those fights were infinitely easier than the Proto-behemoth. I’ve yet to manage to kill that thing. Those stupid floating kitty enemies really don’t help matters either. I guess I need a beefier Sentinel monster to survive it or at least figure out some paradigms that’ll work well against it.

Edit (Feb 18): It seems like the Proto-behemoth and Schrodingers (stupid floating kitty enemies) don’t reappear again after completing the dungeon???  This didn’t happen before I cleared the Paradox Ending though. Weird. 😦  I want another Schrodinger because of its Auto-Haste ability that you can fuse with other monsters. .___. Maybe I should hunt down other creatures that have the ability. The problem is, I have no idea which ones have it. (Well, as one that can be learned through the Crystarium.)

Oh, fail. I think they appear with Mimi and friends too.

Ah, seems like the Sahagin Prince and Cactuaroni have it.  I’ve yet to catch either, I think. Guess I’ll check it out. Hopefully, I can actually give their abilities to other monsters. >_>

Incidentally, I find it somewhat interesting the “complete guidebook” doesn’t list all the abilities a tamed monster can obtain through levelling. The Battle Ultimania for the game has it but I’m not about to import that just for the information considering I’m finished and don’t plan on spending oodles of time raising monsters.

I’m off to try for some Paradox Endings just for the heck of things. Currently doing Academia 4XX AF. Hoping it doesn’t involve some crazy boss battle. The guidebook doesn’t mention anything like that so … *goes around beaning people with Mog*

Anyway, the ending is quite WTF!  (Somewhat vague spoilers ahead!)

Continue reading “FFXIII-2: Finished the game (Spoilers!)” →

Note: each screenshot can be enlarged if you click on it

I keep thinking that I should move on in the game but I always get sidetracked. Right now, I’m hunting for Cryptic. I don’t know what bright mind at Square Enix thought it’d be a fun idea to do this stupid hide-and-seek shit. Having to look for the bastard is more frustrating than the Brain Blast terminals that throw idiotic & completely random “Odds or evens?”-type questions that are obviously there just to screw you over and break your streak.

Anyway, here — suffer with me!

While you can certainly run around madly in New Town and Grand Avenue to look for him, the citizens will actually give hints to his general location eventually.  I don’t think the ones with the speech balloons will ever tell you so just hang around places where there’s people and some random NPC will speak up at some point.  (What’s with the lady that says she should settle for a sugar daddy instead!?) I’m not sure how long it takes before this happens but it generally doesn’t take more than 5 minutes or anything.

Logically, if you find him in one area, search out the rest of the vicinity first before moving to the other side of the city.  Of course, if you receive a tip, then go by that information.

I’m only on my second  encounter right now (excluding the initial one that begins the sidequest) so once I’m done this, I have 2 more to go.  And honestly, it’s two too many. 😛

Edit: Oh hey. That was quick! Found him again! Time for the Colonel rank questions. :3

Edit #2: All in all, it took me less than 20 minutes to find and answer all his questions. 😀 Probably would be faster if I didn’t keep pausing the game to edit screenshots and update this though. XD

Speaking about screenshots, some random kid fell by Noel and went through his leg. (Uh, yeah. My vidcap adapter and DScaler make a good team. Scanlines and ghosting for all!) Gotta love clipping. :E I haven’t paid much attention but are these children running around or do they just happen to trip and fall while simply walking? I mean, there sure are a lot of them falling around!

“I tripped on air!”

Edit #3: Those Brain Blast terminals are definitely more annoying. Fucking luck questions. I got one at question 8 and I got it wrong. 9_9

Edit on Feb 18th: Since people seem to have trouble finding the bosses, I did this:

 

Well, I managed to take down 3 out of the 4.  Immortal was kind and dropped Romulus & Remus twice. Took a third battle before it gave me Indrajit.

I still need to redo the Ochu and Long Gui battles for their drops.  I managed to get Gandiva from one fight against Ochu but I want the other weapon too. 😛

And so, only Yomi remains.  I tried this battle three times and ended up hitting Retry every single time since it was getting to the point that the enemy was dealing way too much damage.

My mistake was that I didn’t have ANY Sentinel and spent most of my time buffing and healing. For some reason, it didn’t click that it had a tendency to pick on single targets and not attack the entire group (with the exception of the dreadful Wicked Whirl attack).

Someone on Twitter suggested to have at least two SABs for the fight.  A friend on Facebook suggested that SABs were the way to go too so I guess I need to outfit some paradigms with Saboteurs. :3

Actually, had I had the guidebook next to me when I was playing, I would have known to shuffle out the Flanitor and throw in something like a Bunkerbeast instead.

Here’s the set-up the friend had for the fight and given the fact that he farmed Yomi, I would take it this works well:

sab com sab
sab sab sab
com com sab
med med syn
med syn syn
sen sen sen
(Serah Noel Monster)

I also changed up the accessories a bit and put some some magic resistance stuff on both Noel and Serah. Since I had one Bloodguard, I threw that on Noel.  I might switch it to Serah though since Noel’s HP is really high at the moment. ^^;

Update: YAY! Yomi is done! 😀 It was a terrible battle. 😦 It took me 15 minutes and 13 secs and a stupid paradigm shift almost cost me the battle since everyone’s HP was in the red. (Was trying to go into Tortoise when it was about to do the Wicked Whirl but ended up at some other paradigm instead. 9__9) I think the poison did the monster in though since it had piddly life left anyway. XD

Since I have no need for its drop, I’m happy to say good riddance to this boss. 😛

Edit on Feb 16: My paradigms didn’t include a SAB monster, BTW. Pretty sure I had a Flanitor (MED) in place of one. The reason for this was that I didn’t have any saboteur monsters levelled and was way too lazy to begin to raise one. 😛 However, maybe if I did, the fight wouldn’t have taken so long cuz I would have an extra offensive unit instead of simply relying on Noel and Serah to do the job.

Now to spend money at Serendipity to buy the 2 remaining fragments at the exchange counter and I guess I’ll continue on with the game now!

Oh wait. I want Grasitha from Ochu, didn’t I? Sigh. Back to the Steppe then …

Update #2: Buh. Five tries later, I suddenly remembered that I had a Blue Chocobo with Item Collector. I swapped it in as my RAV monster even though its HP was wimpy. (It’s not even over 1900. >:/) All I needed to do was end the battle with it anyway so as long as I didn’t change to Relentless Assault while being swarmed by Microchus, this was going to work! :3

And it did! ^__^ (Or maybe it worked because I didn’t throw Mog at Ochu first before starting the battle this time around?)

The silly thing is, I have Odinblade and Odinbolt already so I have no real need for these weapons. Well, other than for the Lv. 5 Chain Bonus.

Hmm. Since I spent all this time to get Grasitha, I might as well use it for a while. :3

Update #3 (Feb 16): Did a rematch with Yomi for the hell of things with the paradigms listed above. It cut down the battle time quite a bit! *_* Probably would have been a bit faster if I switched COM COM SAB in more often though.

Here’s the result:

Er, the amount of gil you see in the screenshot is a result of having a Durable Collector Catalog equipped on Noel. ^^ It kind of stinks that it dropped a damn Tear of Woe though as a spoil. 9__9

I wonder if anyone is crazy enough to play this battle on high speed? Oh, I guess there ARE people that do it. ^^;;;;

Huh. Apparently, Raspatil is the best for gil farming. :O (Oh yeah~! Scarletite drops!!)

Gonna try switching in a Tonberry for COM since it has the Chaser-type attacks which deal more damage to enemies inflicted with certain debuffs. Wanna try and bring down the time. XD

Oh wow. Durable Hermes Sandals has Auto-Haste which casts Haste at the start of battles! But its accessory cost is 75. It also requires a Trapezohedron. 9__9

Ooh. Took down Immortal in under 2 minutes. Probably would have been faster if I didn’t stop to heal the Tonberry … or fight the stupid sword.

D’oh! 8 minutes and 34 seconds for Yomi. XD

Whew! I already pumped in over 50 hours into the game. Unlike players that ignore sidequests just to complete the story, I’m running around doing as many of them as I can. The reason for this is that I typically lose motivation to continue playing once I’m done with a game’s main plot.

Within these 50+ hours, I’ve managed to rack up 130 fragments. If I care to find Captain Cryptic, I’ll have a few more under my belt before the final showdown. I’m not sure I have to patience to run around Academia to search out the bastard though. Completing the Academia map will also net me another fragment too. And I can probably get 4 more from The Archlyte Steppe as well if I wanted to fight the tough boss monsters. :3

I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to test my party against them seeing that every role is over 70 now.  I managed to max out Commando and Ravager for Noel too.

About the story and the villain’s motive — what the hell? It’s such a lame reason. I think I prefer FFXIII’s story a bit more over its sequel.  Also, I’m not quite sure how Noel’s dream qualifies as a happy dream for him cuz it’s pretty depressing overall. 😛

Anyway, here are some random screenshots to round out this entry. XD  When viewing an image, click on the Permalink icon to see a description of it.