We Were All Wrong About Final Fantasy XIII

[Music] Final Fantasy 13 is a game at war with itself. That would have been the title of the video, but unfortunately, the most popular video analysis of Final Fantasy 13 on YouTube already took that one. After watching that video, I'm not so sure that person knew exactly how right they were. This game is truly divided in half; for about half the game's runtime, the story takes the driver's seat. In my humble opinion, defended with the same level of analytical depth you have come to expect from this channel, I believe this story is phenomenal—right up

to that beautiful, insanely captivating, perfectly timed moment when our intrepid travelers have sca into an unseen battle arena in the heart of their home, full of monsters that would make any commenter on Cocoon blush. The story is not only good, I would call it great, and then it changes—and you'll see why if you stick around. My memory of this game's legacy is a little something like this: Final Fantasy 13 is a disappointing Final Fantasy game. I even originally thought I would write something to the effect of "This game would be great by any other name."

It would be remembered better if it didn't live under the shadow of Final Fantasy 7, but I'm not so sure I believe that anymore. There are even people that believe this game was trying to one-up Final Fantasy 7, namely the individual I mentioned previously, Brand OSP, with the most popular video on this game, in which he said the game was designed to be similar enough to 7 for fans to draw comparisons, but they wanted it to be so good no one would even need a 7 remake anymore. I'm not saying it was designed by committee,

cobbled together for the direct purpose of slapping the 7 desires straight out of people's brains, but consciously or not, it feels like a lot of things in this game were made with the intent of, "Now how can we make this better than 7?" The game constantly feels like it's trying to one-up something, but what I see is a game trying to carve its own way forward—to do things to the beat of a different drum. I see a game that took its story so seriously that it couldn't live in the tropes of the past. I see

a game that aims to be its own action-adventure blockbuster summer hit of a movie, and to that end, I think it succeeded. Aside from the whole blockbuster part, I didn't play Final Fantasy 7; I still haven't, technically. My first Final Fantasy was 8, though I never finished it because I was pretty young at the time. But I know how people feel about Final Fantasy 7. I think Tim Rogers may have said it best when he said, "Final Fantasy 13 shares many superficial similarities to Final Fantasy 7." It does not, however, share the manga-like narrative style,

the confident anime series-like pacing, or most of the game design systems. Final Fantasy 13 made me and my pet nostalgia uneasy back in 2009 because it lacked towns and NPCs and all that hang attitude I'd come to love from the Final Fantasy series. Something I had never thought of before researching this video had never occurred to me because I didn't have that expectation going into it—despite being the 13th entry in a longstanding franchise, it had no past it had to prove itself to. In my eyes, I simply took it at face value. I do have

to wonder if the opinions of this game are softening as time goes on, but I'm not interested in showing whether that's true. I simply want to prove why I believe this game deserves to sit in my top 10, and not low on that list either. Gameplay and story integration is something I'm sure many of you are familiar with and sick of hearing about. There's perhaps nothing more important to me in game design: how did the developers of the gameplay uphold the writing of the story? This game's wonderful integration comes in many forms—the roles the characters

embody during combat, the things they say during combat, the things they say as they explore, the way the combat plays out, the abilities they gain, and even a few of the bosses are all fed from the story and feed back into the story. Without all of this, these characters would assuredly feel more dull, lifeless, or one-dimensional; with it, they feel like people. And yet, despite this, the gameplay and story are also at odds for the entirety of the runtime. The gameplay can't be fully explored because the story demands that things stay simple on the part

of the characters and their strengths. Gameplay decisions are made based on what the story needs to convey, which ultimately leads to the combat being boring, repetitive, and all too easy for the majority of the first 20 hours or so of the experience. The first nine chapters have things to teach you, and it definitely grows beyond itself—simple introduction, but it does a terrible job giving anything more than a bad first impression. This is unfortunate because combat is clearly an important aspect of this game. 13 is the closest the system had come to being an action game

at this point, meaning you had to choose your next move by the time the ATB gauge was full, or you were wasting time. You could act early, only performing part of a combo; some moves take more ATB than others. They rely on reflexes as well as strategy. They spent a ton of time developing the system, making it interesting, imparting depth not usually seen in turn-based RPGs of its nature, and yet they don't allow you to truly experience that depth until about 20 hours in—until you're halfway through. Through the story, this would be the faux pas

that would begin the game's terrible first impression. If you were driven by gameplay, luckily for people like me, this game begins with story and spectacle. The first thing that may strike you as we enter the game proper is that this game is beautiful—at least right now it is. In tried and true Square Enix fashion, this game has at least three different visual styles which tell its story; this one, the most graphically impressive, usually scores its most impressive action scenes. The worst one is the one that scores many of the unimportant scenes, only there to establish

some mostly irrelevant events. Somewhere in the middle are the cut scenes, which score the game's most important character beats and have more deliberate lighting and effects. I think I speak for most people when I say this game holds up visually—extremely so, in fact. We see a train carrying what seem to be prisoners and some military types on board. A man asks this woman, "Woman, you serious?" showing continuity with a scene that we haven't seen yet. We're not entering the story at the start, but somewhere past that. The woman starts causing mayhem on the train. The

man leans down at a scared kid and says, "Don't worry, I'm not AI." Okay, let's stop there for a second. What exactly is AI anyway? What I'm getting at here is that I've seen some criticism levied at this game and many others for things like this—using terms that we don't know without explaining them, supposedly leaving the viewer confused. I find this criticism questionable at best. First of all, the alternative to allowing the explanation of these kinds of terms to come up naturally is forcing them to come up unnaturally when they're first important. Perhaps you wanted

this man here to say, "I'm not a SE, a magical monster created by the foul SE," which is therein a Godlike entity that protects and watches over you and me alike, except they're Pulse variants or evil monsters that want you and me dead, Pulse of course being the hell that resides underneath us. Of course, I'm being pretty facetious here, but realize that this kind of writing is the alternative to what we get in this game. Furthermore, I would like to ask this: What even constitutes getting information on terms like this? Does that information have to

be correct? Because the explanation that I just forced into this guy's mouth was only half true anyway. Is that good enough to constitute being enough information, or does that information actually have to be correct? Besides, I'm of the opinion that the game gives you enough information to know what you need to know about each of these terms and only gives you the extra context when you need it. Here, all we need to know about LI is that there’s something to be feared, at least in the eyes of the general public, and that this man isn't

one. It's sufficient for the purposes of this scene, and it'll all be explained soon enough anyway. As these two climb out of the wrecked train car, they are accosted by a man in a war Mech. The cutscene transitions into combat smoothly—something the game will do somewhat often. We get a combat tutorial here, so let's talk about that for a bit. On the overworld, enemies wander around; they don't notice you until you're in their awareness bubble, indicated by the mini-map flashing, a sound effect, and your leader's walk animation changing to a more battle-ready stance. Every enemy

in a fight can be seen on the overworld before the fight begins; a detail that will matter a lot more later. During combat, you control only the party leader. The other party members are controlled by a fairly complex AI that we will touch on occasionally. If the leader dies, the game ends and you have to restart. To act during combat, you must wait until the ATB gauge fills up, which stands for Active Time Battle. Every action you take has a certain number of segments of the ATB bar that they will consume. Here, you can see

that Lightning has two ATB segments and so can do two attacks before needing to wait again. You can also truncate the ATB bar, performing CED attacks before the bar is full. This allows you to act much quicker if there are situations in which a single attack would be more efficient than waiting for a whole combo to be ready. To queue these actions, we turn to the menu on the bottom left. Right now, we only have access to three of the four items that will populate this menu. The first, and the one the game will default

you to, is Auto Battle, and this has had a greatly detrimental effect on the game's legacy. Auto Battle uses the same AI that the party members use to pick attacks, which is affected by numerous factors beyond the scope of a discussion this early in the video. The cool thing about Auto Battle is that it can change on a dime based on the target and the battle state. The bad thing is that it's extremely boring to use, and the game makes it seem like it's the primary combat option by making it the one that it defaults

to, as well as putting it at the top of the menu. It seems to me that the developers perhaps thought the game was a little too fast-paced for the time and wanted to offer some concessions to the player to make the transition to this combat style easier. Under normal circumstances, it takes just over 3 seconds to fill an ATB gauge with two segments. The time to fill the bar goes up as you gain more segments to a total of around... 4.7 seconds at max a level basically no one playing this game will ever experience. So,

at this stage in the game that offers the player just 3 seconds to pick their moves, their target, and cue them for execution, I can understand why Square Enix thought this might be difficult. The first concession was the Auto Battle system, which gives you a full ATB bar's worth of attacks and executes them on the target you pick, meaning the choice becomes simply picking your target—a much easier task to accomplish for most players. The second concession was the speed of battles being changeable, and the options menu is a choice between normal speed and slow speed.

Slow simply having the speed of ATV charge, this would give you 6.4 seconds at level two ATB to pick your moves. There are two problems with this thinking, though. The first is that the game doesn't get hard enough to necessitate that you act with a little waste of time for a significant portion of its run time—certainly not in the first couple chapters. The second is that the game very slowly peppers in abilities, meaning for most of the first two chapters, your only options of attack are, well, to attack a single segment command. In a bit,

we'll be playing as a character that has Blitz, a two-segment AOE attack, but by then you should have mastered the art of putting two attacks into the bar and firing it off. This lack of confidence in the combat system and in the players is a large part of why people think this game is basically mash-to-win, even though there are more than a few bosses and even normal enemy encounters in the story that require much more strategy than that. There's unfortunately no way to fix the game's poor first impression, but if you ever went back to

this game or played it for the first time and wanted to experience it the way I think is significantly more engaging, do yourself a favor and go into the options and change the default command from Auto Battle to abilities, and then resign yourself to never use Auto Battle. This will make the combat much more engaging, as you're actually having to decide what attacks to use, what elements you should be using, what buffs to give which party members, and so on. It's a way better way to play, and it's sad to me that it isn't the

default. Speaking of abilities, that's the next option in the menu. Right now, all it has is attack, though it'll eventually be full of more abilities than you can shake a gun sword at. Clicking attack once will put one attack into your chain, using one ATB segment. Click it again to put a second attack in the chain, filling up your chain and moving you automatically to the target page, in which you pick whom you want to dish the damage out to. You can also press triangle to move into this page before putting a full chain of

attacks or to activate as many attacks as you have ATB segments for if you're already in execution mode, where the character is just waiting for the ATB gauge to fill up. The menu is extremely snappy and responsive, and there are many ways to execute commands quickly. If you're playing on PC, I would recommend binding a turbo button to one of the triggers to press super fast. This will not only allow you to build combos at max speed, but it'll also allow you to move through the post-battle screens much faster. Finally, if you've already queued up

a combo using the abilities command, you can press right on the D-pad while on that command to automatically requeue the combo you just used. That's good stuff, but like I said, very little of that matters at this point. Finally, we have items, of which there are only two options for now: potions and Phoenix Downs. Potions heal everyone in the party for 150 HP, which is a substantial amount for a good part of the game. My party was over 1,000 HP until like a third of the way through the game. Once party members are over 3,000

HP, it switches over to healing 5% of their max HP, meaning it has a minimum of, well, 150 HP, but it starts to go up from there at that point. For a while before that, this is a small amount and not very useful. Potions can be good as a panic heal at times to just barely save you from death, but overall they aren't extremely good unless you equip accessories that boost their usefulness, which I actually do recommend for a good chunk of the game. Items in this game don't use up ATB, so they can be

more efficient forms of healing than the main way the game expects you to heal, without having to sacrifice offense. But the devs clearly didn't want them to be too broken, so their usefulness is limited, which is a good thing because the focus of the combat is on the delicate balance between offense and defense as it relates to the mystical Paradigm system we're still about 2 hours from unlocking anyway. Phoenix Downs heal from death and restore 70% of the character's HP, which remains useful for the entire game. That's about all there is to talk about because

that's all the game has right now. I guess I'll stop doing the "don't use the character's name until the game does" thing because it's actually going to be a while before the game gives us these two's names, so Lightning and Sas get to know each other a bit over the course of traversing this warscape. For a while, he asks her about her role in the military, referring to that shoulder padron she's wearing. which denotes she is a part of the Guardian Corp. She says that she was a soldier. In some pretty clever writing, we actually

get some supportive dialogue to this end that seems insignificant at the time. When that Warmech was chasing them, Lightning says, "Fall back," a militaristic phrase. A bit later, SAS gives us, "That wasn't a challenge," now showing his humor even in tough situations. They discuss the Purge again, slowly peppering in the context of what's going on here: everyone on that train was being taken somewhere, likely somewhere none of them wanted to go. Later, SZ asks her what her goal is, to which she responds that she's going after the Pulse F SE. FY is another term that

we have yet to hear, but based on how the conversation continues, we can gather that they are greatly important and perhaps even dangerous. Now our perspective switches to a different group in this battle. We hear a voice talking over a radio, giving us some biased context before the radio gets smashed, and we're introduced to a group that calls themselves Nora, with Snow Viler at the helm. There's some admittedly clunky dialogue establishing the group's enemies. This is all information that should already be known by the time they're shooting guns at people, so this conversation is only

for the viewers' benefit. The common people rescued from the trains want to join the fight, so Snow doles out guns to a number of folk, finally landing on this one lady. They all storm off to the battlefront. Sometime later, an enormous flying tank comes down and launches a volley of rockets at the road Nora is on, destroying it and sending countless people careening down into the abyss. Snow falls and grabs onto the ledge with that lady from before, dangling from his fingertips. She says, "Get him home, please," before their grips fail and she plummets. The

kid from before looks on in abject horror, momentarily getting pulled away by another girl that can be seen in that scene prior. Snow does fall—a decision that admittedly deflates or casts some undue suspicion on whether or not that woman actually died, considering Snow survives the fall. This is sloppy, but that's going to be the only criticism I levy at this extremely important plot development. The boy Hope seems stunned with grief, but the girl Venil encourages him to face the grief later. One of the Nora members, GDAU, asks Snow if he's going to the Vestige to

get his bride-to-be. Snow seems remorseful about what just happened. Hope tries to confront Snow, but Snow runs off before he can, so he and Venil give chase on a hover bike right up to the Vestige. Earlier, SAS and Lightning have another conversation about FY and LY and the Purge. Lightning's military branch wasn't involved in the Purge; she says it was always execution masquerading as exile. Finally, SAS says that P's Fousy and LY are enemies of the state. This reveals two things: LY are somehow servants of the F, and that the people who live here think

they are enemies. All-encompassingly, this is critically and theoretically incorrect information, but it's important to note that most people on Cocoon believe this. Later, we also realize that the Sanctum have Fousy just like Pulse. Hope tells us more clearly that F SE make people into LA SE. The Pulse F SE held our future and our fate. [Music] Every major player we've been following has now made their way to the Vestige. Some of their agendas are known: Lightning seems intent on confronting the Pulse Faly Hadon; Snow is going to collect his bride-to-be; Hope is chasing after Snow;

others still have their true intentions shrouded. Venil, SAS—why are they here? We begin with Venil and Hope, having just crash-landed on the Vestige. Hope shares some dire information about F SE. He says, "You're finished, done for, as soon as you become one of their LY." Venil seems to not share his viewpoint; in fact, that's not the only thing she doesn't share—she doesn't share his clothing style. This weapon she just yanked out of the Vestige is odd and otherworldly; she seems to immediately know how to use it. She does this little hand thing, has an accent

shared by no one else, and she's the only character of the three we've had as leader so far that has three ATB bars. The game is plugging hints at a mystery it intends on holding close to its chest for some time. What she does share is her knowledge of the situation and a little more context about Faly and LY, though she does so with an almost mocking and derisive tone. Hope says Pulse is hell on Earth, and Venil seems to disagree, but they move on at any rate. Meanwhile, Snow cuts a path through the Vestige

with exuberance, spouting off nonsense platitudes about how your hero is on the way and whatever else makes him feel like a tough guy. Somewhere else, Lightning and SZ continue making their way through the Vestige. Lightning reveals that her sister is an L, to which SAS takes the opportunity to give us some more context as to what that means. SZ says that F SE curse people into becoming L, and they're given a Focus, a task they must see carried out. If they don't, they become monsters known as SE. Notably, in the order the game actually gives

these events, we just saw an SE for ourselves. Apparently, there's no way to turn an L back to a human, and Lightning's sister is doomed to live her life as a Faly slave. Lightning apparently never asked her sister what her Focus was, though it's telling that SZ's first thought as to what a Pulse SE's Focus could be is... Blow up Cocoon. SZ also establishes himself here as a bit of a font of information on F and especially L. Again, this is the game planting seeds that it will reap later. Hope and Venil continue to chase

after Snow; they hear him yelling about being a hero. Hope gets angrier each time Venil tells him that he needs to talk to Snow, but Hope says, "Nothing I say will change it." Venil then offers for them to run away instead, but a SE appears to attack them. Snow flies in to save them. After the fight, Venil and Snow talk about Sarah, Snow's fiancé, and Eli. Hope angrily wonders why he's going to help Li, further driving a wedge between the two. Venil says that he needs to take this chance to talk to Snow because if

he doesn't, he'll regret it forever. More seeds, perhaps. Finally, everyone convenes in a central chamber, finding Sarah. Snow almost seems like he's in another world, holding his gun up to her, calling her an enemy. Snow and Lightning fight over being Sarah's soul protector before she says, "You can save us, protect us all. Save Cocoon!" She then turns into a crystal and statue. H tells us that Li, who fulfill their focus, are turned to crystal and gain eternal life, but Lightning doesn't believe it. Outside the Vestige, the army starts a barrage of artillery, causing the Vestige

to rumble. Inside, Lightning moves toward the foul sea, everyone else following close behind. When they get there, Snow gravelly asks for Sarah back and to take him in her place. Lightning runs forward to attack the F, and Sas joins in after an introspective moment. We begin fighting the Fyenema. So far, combat has taught us a number of things in both traditional tutorials and subtle non-tutorialized ways, just through the design of the fights. It's taught us that careful targeting is important, as some enemies are easier to kill than others. It greatly encourages this by often, in

these early stages, making enemies which deal more damage overall much easier to kill, like in the case of Scyon Wardens and Enforcers. This is further reinforced with aerial Recons. With the Scyon Marauder, it shows us that staggering is a key part of combat, though we won't see the full extent of it for a little while. You also have access to preemptive strikes, which trigger whenever you are able to touch an enemy to start combat without them spotting you on the Overworld. This is easier for some enemies than others, though most of the non-scripted fights can

be started through a preemptive strike. This gives your party a full ATB gauge to start, and all enemies begin the battle in a near staggered state, giving you an enormous leg up. This can even allow you to win fights that would otherwise have been borderline impossible. Now, this boss fight against Eno will reveal more things if you haven't learned them already with respect to the target-choosing lesson we learned earlier. This battle ensures you know its power. The boss has the main target, which is Eno itself, and two manipulators, which are the things that actually attack

the party. Removing them from the battle will leave Eno wide open. If you haven't learned this by the halfway point of the battle, resonant magic will force you to, as this move will easily wipe you out if you don't deal with the manipulators. Furthermore, just because this game doesn't have direct character control doesn't mean you can't manipulate their spacing in order to avoid taking damage. Attacks in this game are bound to action game hitbox laws. Unlike most turn-based games, if an attack whiffs—whether the enemy's or yours—then the target won't take damage. Lightning is a wonderful

choice for this fight because she has perhaps the easiest move set to showcase this with. At the end of her combo, she jumps backward, allowing her to escape incoming damage from the manipulators, which are stationary and only deal damage in a small circle around them. If you don't learn this for yourself, Snow might teach you as well, as he can be seen doing this throughout the fight. Taking a little extra time to choose the proper moment to attack goes a long way in making sure you don't need to spend too much time healing. Time spent

on defense and healing is time wasted, so mitigating that damage through any means necessary is a core part of the combat. Finally, as the party finishes the fight, things get bleak. The party is plunged into some kind of dark abyss; tendrils reach out and grab each one of them. There are visions of some kind of beast and a burst of energy, which turns the lake below them into solid crystal. "When I couldn't see a future and I was afraid, when the future was clear and it hurt to see, I'd just close my eyes and lose

myself in happier days." Chapter 3 starts with a flashback: a cut scene showing some of the events prior to the start of the game. This is the 13 days, and the game uses these flashbacks throughout its runtime to slowly reveal the backstory for each of these characters, mostly centered around these fireworks in the seaside city of Bodum. In this one, we follow Snow as he searches for Sarah. One of the members of Nora tells him she'll be at the usual place. Interesting little aside: the data log tells us that this bar is run by Nora

in order to fund their efforts, which is kind of neat. Much more on the data log later. She serves a drink to an eclectic-looking lady who is searching for someone. Snow runs off to Sarah, who is looking at the fireworks with foam dripping off her face. They discuss... Her becoming a l snow, promising to help her figure it out. He gives her a necklace and then asks her to marry him, to which she says yes. Of course, they get on a hover bike and ride around the fireworks, which the town says have wish-granting properties. Snow

wished for Sarah to say yes, so I guess the town is right. Sarah, however, wished for her to have the courage to tell Lightning she's a l a SE. Snow wakes up with a start, him and the rest of this ragtag party on a lake of crystal. They wonder how they got here, and Snow claims that Sarah gave them a miracle by allowing them to survive the fall. SE show up, and Snow runs to protect Lightning; the punch he throws being imbued with some sort of magical resonance. Hope says that they are Le now, the

panic palpable in his voice. After the SE are taken care of, they check for brands. Sure enough, each of them has a brand somewhere on their body. Phil's looks different—another weird detail to add onto the pile of weird details. They begin to wonder about their focus. Venil says she had a vision of some kind of beast, to which Hope says he saw the same thing. SAS explains focus again, but after getting weird looks, he backpedals, saying that's what they say in the legends. Snow thinks their focus is to protect Cocoon because that's what Sarah said

to do right before she turned to crystal. If turning to crystal means fulfilling your focus, this may not be a bad theory, but the rest of the group don't seem too confident. The group continues on, occasionally bickering about their focus. They realize they are still on the run from Syon, and Venil wants to run away. SAS ruminates on kids being involved in all this as he looks on at Venil. He then gives us some info about how Sanctum F SE provide food and water to the population. Snow wonders why he helped the group fight the

F SE if he's so FY dependent, and SAS says there may have been a reason. So far, we know Faly are protectors and helpers of humanity. They provide for them to some degree, and they can make humans into the SE to do their bidding. We also know that there are Pulse Faly and Sanctum or Cocoon F. We don't know much about Pulse FY beyond the fact that everyone on Cocoon hates them, that they are the enemy. Eventually, the party finds Sarah still trapped in her crystal prison, and they begin trying to excavate her—all except Lightning.

We can see Lightning getting fed up with Snow's heroic attitude, even going as far as to slug him to the ground. Suddenly, the Manis Ven Morch returns, and Lightning, Snow, and Venil step up to fight it. This is the proper tutorial for that shiny new paradigm system we unlocked when we became l, so let's discuss the real combat of this game: paradigms and roles. A paradigm is basically the instructions which tell each party member how to act in combat. There are six roles, each with their own unique moveset and use cases, and a paradigm shift

is simply the act of changing from one paradigm to another, each character moving into the roles determined by the paradigm. Each character has access to two of the six roles at this time. The six roles are Commando, Ravager, Synergist, Saboteur, Sentinel, and Medic. Let's go over each of them and explain their uses. The first two, Commando and Ravager, are primarily centered around dealing damage and manipulating the stagger system we spoke of briefly before. The chain gauge has two components: the percentage and the bar itself. Any attack in the game will increase the percentage and make

the bar go up. The bar then starts to go back down, and if it depletes fully, the percentage resets to its normal value. There are two ways to manipulate the stagger gauge. The first is called stagger maintenance, which reduces the speed at which the bar depletes in between attacks. Commandos are the best class for this goal, on top of dealing the most damage. Usually, what Commandos can't do effectively is called stagger building or chain gauging, which is using attacks that increase the percentage. The percentage determines how much damage is multiplied against the enemy, so an

enemy with 150% on the stagger gauge will be receiving 1.5 times the damage from all attacks. The closer the current percentage is to the target percentage on the right, the higher the bar will be and the further it will have to fall before it's depleted. Once the percentage on the left matches or exceeds the percentage on the right, the target will become staggered. Ravagers are the best for this goal, though their attacks can't maintain the stagger gauge, so most offensive charges will have a balance of Ravager and Commandos in order to make staggering opponents easier.

Once staggered, a number of things change. A staggered enemy will become much easier to interrupt through hidden values called cut and keep. We'll talk about these more later. They take significantly more damage, still determined by how high the percentage is, up to a max of 999 per. Some enemies have other unique properties during staggers, which is part of the fun of fighting new enemies—seeing how they react to staggers. Finally, the stagger gauge, also referred to as the chain gauge, will start to drain steadily, the speed of which is determined by how maintained the bar was

before the stagger was initiated. Once the bar depletes fully, the enemy returns to its normal state. The stagger system is the crux of this entire combat system, so having a healthy understanding of how to efficiently stagger enemies is tantamount to being successful. Commandos maintain the gauge, and Ravagers build it; that's the long and short of these two roles. Rolls also have passive benefits just for being active in the current Paradigm. Commandos increase overall damage, and Ravagers increase the speed at which the chain gauge is built. These benefits stack as well, so having three Ravagers will

give a large passive bonus to chain gauge building. Savers are the only other primarily offensive role; they can inflict a number of debuffs on enemies. Each attempt at inflicting a debuff also deals damage. Notably, the Saboteur also has the property of being both able to maintain the chain gauge and effectively build it. It can't do either as well as a Commando or Ravager, but it can do both with decent success, meaning it can effectively build and execute staggers completely on its own. I actually have footage of a Saboteur single-handedly staggering an entire group of enemies

while the rest of the party was buffing or whatever. This is later in the game, mind you, and I was using some of the late-game Saboteur abilities, but still, it's possible and not that difficult. Each Saboteur increases the likelihood that debuffs will stick. Synergists buff party members, and their passive bonus is to increase the amount of time buffs stay active before needing to be reapplied. We'll actually discuss the buffs and debuffs themselves later since we don't have access to either at this point. Sentinels protect the party by absorbing damage like a traditional tank. They can

provoke enemies to force them to attack only them. The Sentinel can then use various defensive abilities to mitigate the damage coming to them. Steel Guard blocks the most damage but has no unique properties. Vendetta initiates a counterattack but blocks less damage. Medi-Guard slowly heals the Sentinel but blocks less damage, and so on. The Sentinel's party bonus is notably to reduce all damage for all party members by a significant factor—8% at minimum. This is basically required in this fight because the Warmech can use this big AoE attack that essentially guarantees your death unless you have a

Sentinel in the party to absorb some of the damage. Notably, this boss starts with a clear explanation of the Sentinel role, meaning it's a glorified tutorial to make sure you understand how the Sentinel works, as it'll be a large part of your strategy in certain portions of the game moving forward. Finally, Medics heal the party; that's really all there is to it. They have different kinds of heals: some heals target one person, while others target the whole party and can remove debuffs using Asuna. But other than that, they're pretty straightforward. Their party bonus increases the

percentage of HP healed. Now let's talk about early strategies. For almost half the game, your party will be chosen for you, meaning you have to deal with the roles you have access to at that time. This early, roles are limited to Commando, Ravager, Sentinel, and Medic. In the menu, you can build your own Paradigm deck for each party composition you receive. There are six slots, and six is more than enough for this early in the game. Notably, I think the game does a pretty bad job of teaching the player how important some aspects of this

system are, like stacking roll bonuses. It, to my knowledge, only teaches this for the Sentinel role, but stacking Ravagers or Commandos to increase chain gauge speed or damage is really valuable in the long run. In this particular party, the fastest way to stagger an enemy is to switch between COM RAV RAV and RAV RAV RAV. The single Commando half the time will be more than enough to keep the gauge maintained, and switching to RAV RAV will ensure the fastest possible staggering in the interim. Notably, every 12 seconds, your party will automatically get full ATB gauges

when you shift paradigms. The game literally never tells you this, meaning it's difficult to realize it's happening at all. But proper use of this speeds up combat dramatically. It will happen incidentally as long as you're doing Paradigm shifts every now and again, but I think a big rookie mistake that a lot of people probably made is to stay in one Paradigm until some outside force puts you in a state in which shifting paradigms is necessary. When in reality, the game wants you to Paradigm Shift every other ATB gauge in order to keep the combat moving

forward. Playing this way is much more enjoyable as you begin to develop more efficient ways to use the Paradigm Shift menu, like going into the menu and picking what Paradigm you want as soon as your next ATB gauge is full and the attacks are playing out. Then selecting at the second the final attack in your ATB gauge is being executed in order to reduce waiting time between actions. This is an engaging way to play and keeps up the energy of combat for much longer, and it's clear it's what the game intended; it just neglected to

explain it properly. At this point, the party splits up. Snow stays behind to continue trying to get Sarah out of the crystal, while Sazh, Hope, Vanille, and Lightning all move on to try and find a way to complete their focus, or what they think it is. None of these four characters really get along well. Vanille is borderline impetuous in her optimism and gets frustrated at Hope and Sazh when they can't share in that optimism. She also upsets Lightning when she asks if Sarah ever told her anything about her focus. It's clear that these people are

each carrying their traumas and personalities into this mess, and it's resulting in them being less than great traveling companions. Even those that are mostly trying, this group makes their way into a large ruin, fighting through Sanctum troops before getting ambushed. By a large flying beast, this boss is called the Garuda Interceptor, and it doesn't add much to the established strategy of the combat so far. After beating it, we unlock two roles: SAS gets access to Synergist, and Venil gets access to Saboteur. The party finds a Scom ship, which SAS can fly due to his history

as a civilian airship pilot. Meanwhile, Snow is ambushed by Scyon. Before something happens, in a moment of desperation, Snow is encased in a huge burst of magic, and two entities come forth: the twin sisters. They fight off Scyon before turning and attacking Snow himself. This is our first Idolan battle. Idolans are the summons of this game, and in order to unlock them, you have to beat them in a fight at certain points throughout the story. These fights are puzzles more so than real fights and ask you to use specific elements of the Paradigm system. For

each one, to beat them, you must increase the Gestalt gauge and then use the Gestalt button. The Gestalt gauge builds in a different way for each Idolan; in this case, Snow must use the Sentinel role to defend himself from the attacks of one of the sisters since the other sister will heal Snow if his health gets too low. You don't need to worry about keeping your HP up; defending successfully from the entire combo will shoot the Gestalt gauge up significantly. All Idolans can also be beaten by amassing the Chain gauge with Ravagers or Sentinels, though

this is rarely enough to beat them in time, seeing as they set Doom on you at the start of the fight. If you can't get the Gestalt gauge to max by the time the Doom counter runs out, it's game over. These fights are pretty great, not just for their mechanical depth but for their thematic significance as well, something we'll see a lot more of later. At the end of the fight, the two sisters turn into a motorbike and let Snow ride around on them, the game always playing the Gestalt cutscene before finishing the fight. This

will definitely not be the source of absolute neck-shattering tonal whiplash later. Snow ends up getting captured by a woman—one we've actually seen already and who is an L, though her brand looks very strange. Lightning, SAS, Venil, and Hope fly off on the Scom ship, promptly getting into a dogfight that they end up escaping from. This is followed by a scene in which a news update gives us a little more of the thoughts of these characters on topics such as the Sanctum and the Primarch Dley, the head of the Sanctum. Lightning thinks he's a fousy tool;

SAS calls him the murderer-in-chief, while Venil doesn't know who he is at all. The news update announces the successful completion of the Purge but also that more purges may be coming. They end up flying past Phoenix, the Foci that provides Cocoon with light—sort of like a little personal sun. After dodging more ships trying to take them down, they end up losing altitude rapidly and falling back to the surface of Cocoon. [Music] This party finds themselves in the Vile Peaks, an area full of Pulse technology and structures. Cocoon was originally part of Pulse, but it was

lifted from Pulse by the Foci, and much of Pulse was used in the construction of Cocoon cities. This very area housed the Fal'Cie, and the Pulse vestige being just another part of the Vile Peaks that was moved and used to build cities in Cocoon. The irony of people's fear of Pulse while not realizing that their entire lives are literally built upon it isn't lost on me. It's smart writing that the game never calls attention to directly; only through reading the data log and putting some pieces together will you realize the truth of the matter. The

data log is apparently another point of contention and another thing that I think feeds into people's disdain at the terminology being thrown around: L'cy, Sanctum, Scom, Pulse—you name it. It's explained in the data log, and so clearly, the game isn't written well and basically requires the data log to understand. I say that's absolutely ridiculous. I didn't read the data log at all until my most recent playthrough for this video, and I understood everything fine. That being said, I'm very glad I did because the data log houses some of the most interesting concepts and does a

lot for world-building that they couldn't really do in the cutscene writing because it would have inevitably felt clunky, since all of these characters already know what all of these terms mean, especially those related to the Sanctum and locations on Cocoon. There's no reason why the characters would need to explain them in context, and so they just don't, unless it comes up naturally, presuming the person they're talking to would understand what they are referring to. The only time this isn't the case is when Venil doesn't get something, which also has a reason that you may or

may not have realized by now because the game is doing a whole lot of hinting at it. The data log allows people who want to know more to get it without that information bogging down the game's snappy writing, but it isn't necessary to understand the story. It just adds a lot of context and world-building, which I think is pretty great. There are maybe two examples of things that I would have liked to have been explained in context in some way, but I'll bring those up as we get to them. After fighting off a pack of

dogs, Zaz and Venil both tuckered out, Lightning moving forward and leaving them behind. Hope follows her. Not long from now, Lightning has a flashback to the... Fireworks. She was working in the Bodm Security Regiment, a subsection of the Guardian Corps tasked with defending Bodm from public security threats and local wildlife. According to the data log, the regiment was one of the least active units of the Corps due to Bodm being a mostly sleepy little beach town with little threat from local wildlife. This lends some interesting background to Lightning's super tough military exterior; she has a

whole lot of big talk for someone who was in the least active regiment in the Guardian Corps. This, too, relates to how she treats Snow, calling him all talk. Not long ago, it seems almost given this context that Lightning is just the same way. Again, this information isn't necessary to understand these characters or their journeys, but it does add some context that makes it even more interesting. On this night, Lightning was stationed on the beach in Bodm, and as she watched the fireworks, her LT walked up. Apparently, Scom found something and didn't want the Guardian

Corps around, so he intended to send Lightning home. He also briefly mentioned an event that will become pivotal to multiple character stories: the Year Day Gorge accident, or incident, as Lightning postulated. The LT also said that Lightning was due for a promotion. Lightning was going to take the next day off for her birthday because, as she put it, Sarah insisted. Hope walks up to Lightning, her being a bit surprised, perhaps that Hope's the only one that showed up, or maybe what she's surprised at is that Hope showed up at all. They moved forward, Lightning explaining

more about the difference between Scom and the Guardian Corps. Hope asks the logical question of why she would willingly join The Purge, and she says it was for Sarah. We get another flashback to that day when The Purge began. Lightning stepped up to a soldier and relinquished her role in the Guardian Corps in exchange for a one-way ticket on a train to either Pulse or certain death, though some would say these two are one and the same. This is where Lightning met SZ, and he knew she was up to something. Back in the present, Lightning

starts heading up a cliff face before telling Hope that some things in life you just do. She then leaves him behind. Meanwhile, SAS and Venil continue moving forward. This is a great time to talk about synergists, saboteurs, and the nature of forced party compositions. I think a lot of people find stuff like this annoying; I think it's about the only thing keeping the combat from being crushingly dull for most of the first half of the game. This party composition in particular is a puzzle because there is no Commando present, so staggering becomes a big question

mark. As previously stated, Saboteurs make up for this somewhat, but the issue is that the Saboteur in the party is being controlled by an AI, and the AI has a bit of a quirk. Sab AI states that it will only try to debuff an enemy until it has all the valid debuffs that the Sab knows; it will then refuse to do anything and just stand there wasting time. So, while you can use the Saboteur to maintain the chain gauge, it isn't as simple as with a Commando because you essentially have a limited number of attacks

the Sab will try before it just gives up and sits there. Briefly, let's go over buffs and debuffs since this is perhaps the second most important element of this game's combat. Saboteurs and Synergists both work off the same basic buff and debuff structure. For the sake of simplicity, assume that for each of these buffs that I talk about, there is an equivalent debuff that does the opposite and has the prefix "D" before it, like D-Protect and D-Shell, for example. Otherwise, I will explain that there isn't an equivalent debuff or say what the name of the

equivalent debuff is. Protect and Shell increase defense against physical and magic attacks, respectively. Veil increases resistance to elemental attacks by 50%. Its debuff counterpart is called Imperil, and it reduces elemental resistances by one stage. Stages meaning: Absorb goes to Immune, Immune goes to Resistant, Resistant goes to Normal, and Normal goes to Vulnerable; each stage increasing the damage that element deals. Bar Element buffs increase resistance to specific elements by 50%. Combining this with Veil is extremely effective. There are no equivalent debuffs to Bravery and Faith, which increase strength and magic damage, respectively. Haste increases the ATB

gauge speed by 50%, probably the single most useful buff in the game, as it is never not useful; its debuff counterpart is called Slow. Vigilance increases cut and keep by 10. Okay, what the heck did I just say? All abilities have a cut stat and a keep stat that determine how easy or difficult abilities are to interrupt. The cut stat of the offending ability is compared to the keep stat of the defending ability, and if cut is higher than keep, the defending ability will be interrupted. Vigilance greatly reduces the chances that you're interrupted during moves

and increases the chance you will interrupt enemies during their moves by increasing both cut and keep by 10. Its debuff counterpart is Cursed, and it reduces cut and keep by 20. When an enemy is staggered, all of their keep stats are set to zero if they were originally 89 or below, meaning that any ability an enemy might use during a stagger will be easy to interrupt, as long as it's not a fringe case in which the ability is literally impossible to interrupt even during a stagger. This is when the keep stat would be at or

above 90. Though this doesn't happen super often, nearly every attack is interruptable on both the enemy side and your party. Adds another chunk of strategy: learning which attacks you have that have higher cut, and using them when bigger attacks that you want to interrupt come out, or timing staggers with when these big attacks might happen. This is more valuable as you get further in the game and fight much tougher enemies and bosses. One more note on staggers and interrupting attacks is that Commandos and certain Ravager abilities can launch enemies into the air, making it impossible

for them to act until they hit the ground. They can then be juggled in the air, meaning that for the full duration of a stagger, they wouldn't even be able to use otherwise uninterruptible abilities. Element Buffs add damage to that element for all attacks. These only come in fire, water, Thunder, and frost variants. The same goes for the bar Element Buffs from before; these also don't have a debuff equivalent. Dispel will remove Buffs from enemies, and Asuna, a Medic ability, removes debuffs from party members. Now we have some debuffs with equivalent Buffs. Poison deals tick

damage over time; Pain and Fog remove physical and spellcasting abilities, respectively; and Days keeps the target from being able to act at all, with the added bonus of taking double damage from the next attack, which will also dispel the Day status. All of these debuffs can be applied to the party as well. Yes, that means Days can be applied to the party and will be at different times during the game. Buffs always work immediately and have a time limit until they go away; debuffs have a percentage chance of activating and also have a time limit

until they go away, along with some enemies being immune to certain debuffs. How do you know this? Well, the game gives you a page full of information on every enemy in the fight called the Libra page, accessible at any time during battle and even from the data log between fights. The first time you fight an enemy, there will be no information on this page, but as you use abilities on them or defeat them, this page will slowly fill up with all the necessary information on a target to know how to deal with it. You can

also use the Libra technique to retrieve a chunk of the information at once, really quickly. Techniques are special abilities that use the TP bar, which itself restores after fights based on how well you did. The most notable techniques are Libra, Quake, which damages all enemies with earth-type damage (both of which use one segment of the bar), and Summon, which calls upon the idolan of the character you are controlling and uses the full TP bar. Though there are other techniques with varying amounts of usefulness. Back to Libra: it doesn't unlock the full page of information, but

you can use a Lib Scope to do just that. These are highly rare items that completely unlock the Libra page for a single enemy or boss. You can also unlock things like status immunities more quickly by trying to use set ability on the enemy. For example, if you use Deprotect on an enemy, the information of their immunity or lack thereof will be automatically logged in the Libra page. This same process applies to discovering elemental immunities and vulnerabilities; just use the element on the enemy, and it'll log their status automatically. The Node section has unique information

on the strategies employed by enemies. Some of these will be simple, though many, especially those for bosses, will be more complex and inform more of your strategies if you choose to use it. Libra also determines many AI behaviors: what debuff Sabur will use, what Buff synergists will use, what elements Ravagers will use, and so on. For example, if an enemy's Libra notes say that it employs powerful magic-based attacks, an AI-controlled synergist will prioritize applying Shell over Protect because it sees that note as a clue that magic is more dangerous than physical damage in this fight.

Sabers will also prioritize debuffs based on if the notes page says that they are susceptible to a certain debuff, presuming that Sabur has access to said debuff. So having a full Libra page on an enemy is valuable, but especially for bosses. Continuing with AI behaviors, AI will behave differently depending on what Buffs and debuffs are active for enemies and party members. For example, if a party member has Faith, which increases magic damage but not bravery, the AI for that party member will prioritize magic-based abilities over physical, though it will still take into account that character's

stats in those specific areas to determine if going full hog on magic is the best decision. This can have more effects than just what abilities the character chooses to use because many abilities have unique properties that determine how that character moves on the battlefield. The easiest to point to example here is with Lightning. In this fight that we haven't gotten to quite yet, Lightning moves around much less when she uses Ruin, the only magic attack available to Commandos. So if she's in a spot you want to keep her in, you can cast Faith on her

to encourage her to only use Ruin, essentially locking her in place. In this fight, the Dreadnought had to choose between hitting SAs and Venal with AOE attacks or hitting only Lightning, meaning that it was easier to manage health because I locked Lightning down in a position further away from the rest of the mostly stationary party. Now, is this feasible in casual play? Probably not, but it is another layer of strategy you can try to employ, and it supports the decision to go pseudo Real-Time with the combat. I know some people complain that you can't control

where party members go, but if you could, why would you ever not have everyone split? Up or have the Sentinel way far away from everyone else? The way that it is now, the knowledge of how to execute a strategy like this is one thing that separates a good player from a great player. It is hidden depth that isn't strictly necessary to complete the game but adds some more interest and complexity. I think it's really well done, honestly. Okay, back to SAS and Venil. Due to the choice the devs made of having SAS as the leader,

you don't have reliable stagger maintenance. As soon as Venil has applied all debuffs to every enemy in the fight, she will stop applying debuffs at all, sitting there and wasting ATB charge. This can, of course, teach you about carefully managing what your party members do in order to ensure you can stagger effectively if you need to. Though the further you get in the game, the less important this specific aspect of party management becomes, seeing as you can cover up the limits of your party or their AI with who you choose as your leader. Another thing

this can teach you is to be discerning with how much time you spend buffing. SAS has access to Synergist, meaning that you can buff Venil or SAS with whatever abilities you want, provided SAS has access to them, which at this point mostly means Vigilance, Bravery, and Faith. All three of those are useful, though. So where's the choice in that? Well, Bravery actually isn't useful for either of these characters, seeing as neither of them have access to the Commando role, and neither at this point have access to the Ravager Strike abilities, which are physical abilities that

have elemental charges attached to them. Well, not entirely true—SAS has Flame Strike, but there's basically no reason to use it because it's actually slower than his magic attacks, and no enemies are really extra susceptible to physical damage in this section anyway. So, casting Bravery on either character just wastes time, and given that the game's main focus is on efficiency and killing enemies as fast as possible, this isn't something you want to be doing. Again, not really necessary for completing the game, but it is another element of strategy that can make the game more enjoyable when

employed. I keep getting sidetracked. Since SAS and Venil can't currently reliably maintain staggers, every fight in this section is a three-way battle. This is where two groups of enemies are fighting each other and basically ignoring you. This allows you to be guaranteed a preemptive strike, and enemies start the battle at half health. Further, enemies won't attack you until one of the two enemy groups is dead, meaning that you can prioritize slowly eliminating as many enemies as possible before the remaining ones turn their attention to you. This reinforces the lessons on smart targeting from earlier and

is essential for getting through with any semblance of speed. That's about all the game discussion I can wring out of this section, so let's move on. SAS and Venil walk up to a hopeless Hope. He recounts the day he spent in Bodum watching the fireworks with his mom. They each made a wish on the fireworks. Hope's mom told him that she wished his father could be here, to which Hope responded with vitriol, saying they don't need him. It's unclear at this time why Hope dislikes his father so much. Hope laments his mother's death, blames it

on Snow, and then says his father doesn't care about him, to which SAS says any father cares. After a moment, he notices the looks he's getting and tries to diffuse their confusion by moving on. Later, we have a scene in which the characters recount elements of the datalog entry on the Vile Peaks I spoke of earlier. Venil doesn't understand why there's a bunch of Pulse stuff in this area, to which SAS asks if she slept through her history class—another less-than-subtle hint at Vil's true identity. Eventually, they catch back up with Lightning and rejoin her, SAS

staying with the party but adding Lightning in. This eventually leads to a fight with this Pulsework machine known as the Dreadn. This is a great fight that reinforces the importance of buffs and debuffs. Not only is the Dreadn susceptible to a few debuffs, but it will also spend an ample amount of time removing the debuffs, during which it can't attack at all. This is a great time to lay on some damage or apply buffs of your own in peace. I love how much these very important mechanics are reinforced over and over again to ensure you

eventually learn to use them all, all the time. Strictly speaking, this boss is entirely doable without buffs or debuffs, but many in the future will be much, much harder—if not borderline impossible—without them. So, the game is doing a good job of hinting to the player how much they need to focus on these mechanics. The relatively low time it takes to apply these buffs and debuffs also makes them fun to use, and they feel like easily implemented additions to the combat. In many games with a system like this, the debuffs especially end up feeling superfluous or

too clunky and time-consuming to apply, on top of often the game not being designed around needing them to get through—even if the game would be more enjoyable with using them consistently. I love how they're implemented here. After the fight, Lightning and Hope have a moment where she gives him some advice. These moments will come back to matter in just a little bit. Eventually, Lightning reveals that she intends on going for Eden, the Sanctum's door, Cocoon's sustainer, and Guiding Light. We don't know much about Eden, but the reaction from the rest of the characters tells us

all we need to know about this plan. is insane and would likely result in something catastrophic if she succeeded. Lightning says she doesn't take orders from F SE and states her focus doesn't matter and that they might be enemies the next time they meet. Lightning also says that it's better to pick your path and keep moving down it, something Hope clearly takes note of. Hope follows Lightning as Venil monologues some cryptic lines: "When the fear sank in, it tore us all apart." Lightning was suffering, reaching out to us, but none of us could see it.

"Snow deserves it. If only I'd been stronger, none of this ever would have happened." SAS and Venil decide to go the other direction to hopefully avoid being wrapped up in that mess, and thus the party is split up once again. Lightning is clearly not happy that Hope decided to tag along. They move forward, and a few fights later, she tells him to call her Light. Hope wants to get stronger, and so she lets him join, the two getting into some light antics by using a Pulsework Dread Knot to traverse a large portion of the Vile

Peaks in a very strange manner. In a moment of weakness for both of them, Hope trips and Lightning quickly tells him he has to turn back because she can't babysit him anymore. Hope says he'll get stronger, but she refutes him before a burst of light appears to come out of her brand, and a warrior appears, clearly targeting Hope. Lightning lunges forward to defend him; this is Odin and our second idolon fight. This one builds gastal by chain gauging and protecting Hope, meaning healing him, since Lightning just recently unlocked the medic role. Odin never attacks Lightning

directly, instead opting to focus all of his attacks on Hope. Odin attacks quickly, and Light isn't the best medic around, so this fight is pretty tough, not to mention Hope is very weak in the HP department, so it doesn't take a full combo for Odin to take him down if you don't protect him. The thematic symbolism here is potent: immediately after telling Hope he was on his own, this thing comes from Lightning seemingly and attacks Hope, forcing her to protect him. Whatever synus being wants to keep them together and teach Lightning a lesson. After the

fight, Hope says he'll get better, and Lightning apologizes for what she said, promising to toughen him up a bit. Later, the two take a break, Hope quickly falling asleep. Lightning looks on, visibly softening toward him. Elsewhere, SAS and Venil move into a large factory-type area. They discuss the pulse phobia, SAS saying, "Afraid of what they don't know; afraid to find out more gets worse the older you get. I'm terrified of what'll happen eventually." They camp for the night, Vil drawing a dirt line between them and saying not to cross it. This begins the kind of

weird, extremely vague sexual tension between these two characters, though admittedly, this is also the first of only two times it really feels like the game's implying anything of the sort. Thankfully, SAS actually says "grow up," which I appreciate. At one point, he wakes up to realize Venil has crossed the line herself, clearly having some kind of bad dream and using SAS's comfort. "Still just a kid," SAS remarks as he goes back to sleep. Snow, meanwhile, is taken into a big ship, the Lindblum, and meets Sid Reigns, who says they are hunting L’cie. The implication of

this scene is that they are intending to kill the L’cie, and Snow is clearly mad that this could be their goal, but in reality, this isn't their goal at all; they actually want to help the L’cie to some sort of end. This is annoying because it's needlessly obfuscated and eventually handwaved since Sid Reigns is clearly antagonistic in the scene. It's literally only for the purposes of the viewer that he behaves this way, considering the fact that they actually have aligned goals. Sometimes the game will do things like this, and it'll work; this is one of

the instances in which it doesn't. It just doesn't feel like there's a good reason for Reigns to be antagonizing Snow like this. Snow then has another flashback, this time to the day Sarah told him she was a L’cie. She started by saying she wanted to break up, which Snow took like a champ, to be honest, but he did chase her down and promised to help her fulfill her Focus. Hope and Light make it to the Gapper Whitewood, a classified area that the military uses as a research facility for bioweapons, like all the beasts you'll be

encountering throughout this chapter. According to the datalog, the winding paths through the trees are deliberately confusing, causing intruders to become hopelessly lost. I think this would feel a bit more accurate if it wasn't just as linear and easy to traverse as the rest of the game. Upon arriving, Hope says he wants to take point, repeating a line Light said to him earlier, so Hope is the party leader now, which makes the section a bit more tough because of Hope's relatively low health. Light gives Hope a knife, and later, Hope notices the military flying overhead even

before Light does. Clearly, he's learning. This is a good time to show how the gameplay and story integration works throughout the game. Both in combat and in exploration, characters will often say things at key moments during combat. Paradigm shifts are easily the most common, though killing enemies is another one. Other less common examples include party members being critically injured, going down, getting buffed, getting healed, or buffing and healing other party members. The party leader will be most vocal, typically, though this isn't always true depending on the party makeup and the state of play. The story.

The key thing here is that stuff like this isn't uncommon, especially in the modern day. It feels like every game involves people yelling stuff during combat, even the characters you're playing as, much more often than it used to. What makes this unique is that these lines aren't just randomly selected from a huge pool of options; they are dependent on the state of the story and, most critically, how the characters in the party feel about each other. Lightning is perhaps the easiest to point to as an example of how this works. In the first few chapters,

she either doesn't talk at all, like at the start of Chapter 4 when it's just her and Hope, or she's shouting things like "Just stay out of my way!" on a paradigm shift. The way this line is delivered—coupled with knowing Lightning as a character—clearly tells us that it is aimed at the rest of the party, not the enemies. However, immediately after the fight with Odin, I got the first hint of her saying, "Keep up with me, Hope!" on a paradigm shift, showing her softening to him and wanting to toughen him up, like she promised. Hope

has been pretty quiet as well, but now that he's the party leader, coupled with his resolve to get stronger and learn from Light, his paradigm shift lines are "How about this, Light? Maybe we should try something else. Would this work better, Light?" He's clearly unsure of himself but wants to learn and grow stronger, and so he asks Light for her input during combat. It also shows a lessening fear of combat; he's almost revving in the opportunity to train on these bioweapons. He will also start battles with lines like "Got to show what I'm made of!"

or "Just block out everything else!" to show his drive to grow even stronger. Light still talks occasionally; when she heals Hope, she'll sometimes say, "I've got your back," showing support for his leadership. Furthermore, during this section, Lightning can be heard giving advice to Hope during exploration: "Study your enemy's actions; never lose sight of what's important to you." All these things fuel Hope in a way that Light will soon come to regret when she realizes his true intentions. All of these things make these characters feel like people. Combat isn't the segregated state in which gameplay is

happening, and no story can be conveyed. The writers took every chance they could get to bake some character development and motivation into the gameplay, realizing that just because the player is in control doesn't mean the story has to stop moving forward. The two have a conversation about the Otherly Sea; it naturally falls on Snow. Light recounts the meaning of the name "Nora" they gave themselves: no obligations, rules, or authority. Light calls it stupid; Hope calls it irresponsible. Later, Hope reveals to Light that he's hung up on Snow and tells her about what happened with his

mom. He feels Snow needs to pay. Hope, looking at the knife, brings Light back to the memory of when she received it on her birthday. Sarah told Light she was a l'cy, but Light either didn't believe it or couldn't. After Sarah and Snow left, she opened the gift and found the knife. Back in the present, Lightning gives some very unfortunate advice in which she tells Hope to think of moving forward as a strategy to focus on his goal and shut out everything else. He agrees and decides to call it "Operation Nora," named after his mother.

Light realizes here that she needs to talk him down from this revenge plan, and for a moment, it looks like she succeeds. Hope decides to fight the Sanctum with Light and learn to survive. They move forward, cutting through the Aster Protoflorian, a fairly simple boss that can be made easier with good buffing and positioning. The two finally escape the GAA Whitewood and move on. Elsewhere, Snow's Le Sea Hunt is about to begin when he has a recollection of what happened after Light's failed birthday party. He and Sarah were escaping from the Sanctum on a hover

bike; they went to the Vestige, which takes Sarah and locks itself up before Snow can join her. This scene is more than a little baffling because, as far as I can tell, the game never tells us what their motivations for going back there were, unless you read the data log entry on this particular section of the 13 days, which tells us that they wanted to go back to the Fal'cie to see if they could learn what her focus was, specifically mentioning that they hoped having that information would convince Lightning that it was true. This would

have been nice information to have in context, for sure. [Music] Sass and Vanille are running in the exact opposite direction that Lightning and Hope are going. Their goal? Nautilus, the City of Dreams. As Sass says, to get there they must go through the Sunleth Waterscape, a field used for ecological studies by the Sanctum. They use weather spheres with direct access to the Fal'Cie in charge of controlling weather patterns, and these actually show up in-game a little ways through the chapter. They can be swapped from sunny to rainy to control what monsters come out to play;

depending on the groups you're swapping out, some might be easier than others. Taking stock of the fight in front of you before charging in is a good way to ensure you make it through with relative ease. Now that Sass is a Commando, this party composition has become much easier to handle with that one simple addition now covering every issue this party had before. You also control Vanille now, which means debuffing has become better and easier, but buffing has become slightly less so. Generally, this section is fairly straightforward, but... Keeps itself interesting in two ways: the

first being the aforementioned weather spheres, and the second being that this is the first chapter so far that has had enemies you're not really intended to kill, notably the first appearance of the scale Beast type enemy that is extremely tough without a good preemptive strike to take it out before it can really get to you. There's a legit tutorial prompt that literally tells you that avoiding fights is highly recommended at times, so there's that. As I travel, Venil feels that SAS is becoming more distant and unfocused. She asks him if he has a family, to

which he says he has a kid and had a wife. SAS recalls a memory of the day he and his son watched the fireworks in Bodm. His little boy wished on the fireworks that SAS would cheer up and be like his old self again. SAS picked him up and made a wish of his own, one that he kept secret from Dodge and from us. Venil strides forward, telling SAS he needs to keep it together. When they stop for the night, Venil teases SAS, saying it must be hard to keep his eyes closed with a cute

girl like her around. This is thankfully the last time the game will imply any sort of sensual tension between these two. She reassures him that even if we don't know what'll happen, we have to keep our dreams alive. Venil goes to sleep, waking up later to find SAS missing. She goes to find him standing by the water, deep in thought. She tells him he can't blame himself; he can't control who a Fousi picks for a focus. SAS responds that Dodge was picked, and a flashback begins to the UR Gorge incident. Dodge ran off and found

his way near the FSE at UR Gorge. Apparently, some pulse LEY snuck in and tried to attack the sanctum. Fousi, in an effort to protect itself, made Dodge a LEY. We briefly see two familiar-looking characters standing over Dodge, leaving as SAS approaches. Apparently, he was the one who found the pulse F. He has some knack for finding pulse stuff. SAS joined the purge train because he figured Dodge's focus was to destroy the pulse FSE. If I was right about his focus, he's probably a crystal already. Of course, if he was supposed to take out that

thing's Lusi, then either we die or he's a SE die. Really, it's a pickle. All right, but the bird—the bird says no. SAS moves on, with Venil following slowly behind. Interestingly, the in-combat banter, which was lively from both party members before, dries up quite a bit here till the end of the chapter. Eventually, they make their way to a dock where they can board a ship to Nautilus. It starts raining pretty heavily. Venil asks him if he hates pulse, to which he talks about being skeptical of all the sanctum smoke blowing. He starts to say

that the purge stuff was because of Dodge, but Venil stops him short, nearly admitting to what she did before SAS says that it was the scum from pulse behind it. I might as well have tried to stop the rain. I fought the tears, but they still fell. "You're getting soaked." "I'll be fine. It's only water." Light and Hope finally make it to Palmm, the home of Hope's dad and one of the last remaining bastions of brick-and-mortar commerce on all of Cocoon, which has switched almost entirely to an online shopping model. The streets here are overrun

with scum and Guardian Corp, the two working together to hunt down the L threat. Hope continues to lead with confidence, saying he knows a way to get through by using the underground tunnels. Essentially, this path takes them through an underground nutriculture plant to where they see Carbuncle, the Fousi in charge of food production. They ruminate on the nature of the FALSI for a bit, Light saying that humans are just leeches and parasites to them, but Hope disagrees, saying it's more like they treat humans as pets. This makes Light realize something: when the leash of the

FALSI was taken from her, she was completely lost. She found purpose by fighting, but she realizes now that she was running away, and Hope got swept along with her. She says that Operation Nora is over. "What? No, you told me to fight." "I made a mistake." "What? You can't do this. You can't—can't just build something up like that then abandon me!" "I won't abandon you. I won't." From this point on, Hope doesn't talk as much during combat, clearly retreating into himself. Hope and Light pause briefly, wondering what battles to fight. Lightning explains where she got

her new name. She says she felt like she needed to escape from her past to be strong enough for Serah. The only one who believed her was Snow. "Don't say it! Don't say his name. It brings everything back! I keep playing it in my head—what happened to her. And then I see his stupid face, and—and he's smiling! How can he smile when she's dead? I know there's nothing I can do about it. I hate knowing that, no matter what happens, she's not coming back. When I was fighting, there was no time to think about it.

It felt good just to give in. But now you—you start talking about hope." "I'm sorry, I'm messed up." "No, it's my fault." Light encourages Hope to talk to his dad and find the hope he was named for. They end up in a courtyard and get surrounded by the military, but Snow and the lady he's with show up to rescue him. He uses his Eidolon summon to do so. This is just mentioning it to say that I really like when games actually use the characters' abilities in cutscenes. Light pushes forward, leaving Hope with Snow, telling him

to take care of Hope. The woman follows behind. Snow and Hope fight off the rest of the military and then have a brief conversation. Hope asks where Snow has been, and Snow says that Rain said that he'd lend the Luci hand, being the point where all that vitriol present from before is hand-waved and doesn't make sense anymore. Snow says that Hope's toughened up but that only dumb grown-ups should be fighting. Snow says something extremely tone-deaf: you think it's stupid to fight? It is if you get killed, and Hope takes a ton of offense to this,

obviously. I wonder if Hope would have called off Operation Nora himself if Snow hadn't acted this way. There's some irony in this section in terms of gameplay; Hope definitely needs protection, and in fact, certain enemy types will target him over Snow, meaning you'll likely need to use Snow's Sentinel role to keep him alive. Snow is protecting someone that wants him dead. Meanwhile, the woman, Fang, and Lightning get to know each other. Fang reveals that she's Vil's partner and recounts the day at Ur Gorge. She was only there to wreak some havoc, figuring that was probably

their new focus. When they woke up, they couldn't remember what had happened or what their focus was. It was due to Fang waking up that the F SE anima was able to make Sarah a la, and it was because they were in Ur Gorge that Dodge became a la. Fang tells Lightning that Sarah will come back someday, just like they did. Her main goal right now is to just figure out their focus so Venil doesn't turn to a SE. She explains how brands work: once the eye in the center opens all the way, you turn

into a SE. Lightning remarks that she feels like she has nothing left to fight for, but Fang tells her that she only needs to survive and she'll see Sarah again. Elsewhere, Snow and Hope move through the streets, trying to fight through crowds without getting more innocents killed. Snow incites panic in the populace just to get them away from the soldiers. Hope tries to help a little kid, but even someone this young attacks him and pushes him down before running away. Hope does return her doll to her, though. They hoist a ride onto the rooftops, where

they continue to get harassed by the military from all sides. Finally, in a moment of calm, Hope confronts Snow: "Snow, what do you plan to do? I need to know." "I told you: save Sarah, protect Cocoon, and have myself a big happy family. Still, it's a long road ahead… or maybe not so long. Whatever happens, things will work themselves out. Even if you're Lci, you got to keep fighting, huh? And what if that gets people around you involved? What happens when your actions end up ruining someone's life? What if someone dies? What then, Snow? How

do you pay for what you've done?" "I can't. Right there is nothing that can make something like that right again when someone's dead, when someone's gone. Words are useless." "So that's it? People die and you just run away?" "I know it's all my fault. I don't know how to fix it. What do you start? What do you say? All I can do is go forward, keep fighting and surviving until I find the answers I need." "There are no answers. You're running from what you deserve." "Why don't you tell me what I deserve?" "The same fate."

*[Music]* *[Applause]* "Nora Esim; she was my mother, and she died because of you! You… You're the one she—" *[Music]* They get blown off the roof and fall down into the alleyways, once again, the scene fading to black. At this point in the game's telling of the events, we go back to Light and Fang for a while. It's a pretty harrowing cliffhanger. When Snow finally wakes up, he picks up Hope and carries him forward, trying to find safety, but he's clearly hurt. He makes his way onto the rooftops again, and Hope finally wakes up. "Snow, why

did you save me?" "I was asked to keep you safe by Lightning and by Nora. I'm sorry what happened—it was my fault. I put her in danger." "I know that. Let me make things right." "You told me before that you couldn't and that words were useless, and a lot of other things. I shouldn't have said—like, I didn't know what to do. I didn’t know how to set things straight, so I didn't. I thought if I couldn't make up for it, then all the apologies in the world wouldn't mean a thing. So I decided I had

to find a way to pay for it first before I'd even have the right to say sorry. But it's like you said; I was using that as an excuse so I could run from my own guilt, and that hit home." *[Applause]* "Oh, look, Hope. I know what happened was my fault. I don't deny it, and I am sorry." "Here, that's Light's, isn't it?" "Why… you? That knife was a present from Sarah to keep her safe. She trusted you. With something that important, you should be the one to carry it." "I'll find a way to make

things better. Just give me time. If nothing I do is good enough, then I'll take any punishment you want to dish out." "She's gone." *[Music]* "Snow, you can take the blame, but it won't bring her back." "I'm sorry. I knew it all along." *[Music]* "I knew it, but I had to blame someone." I needed a reason to keep on fighting. It wasn't someone's fault; it was mine. Take it out on me and keep yourself alive until you do. Suddenly, a large machine shows up and knocks snow away, and then maybe one of the most awesome

scenes from any video game ever happens. Hope says, "This is always the hero you want to die. You can't! I won't let you!" After a while of fighting on his own, Fang and Lightning show up to offer some backup. There's really not much to say about the Ungal Subjugator, other than that he has a very funny name. It's a pretty straightforward fight. I did use a unique Commando ability in this fight, Smite, which deals a ton of damage right at the end of a stagger and is very useful for bosses. Especially, it can really be

the Hail Mary that brings a fight to a close. This is also a good time to note that anytime your party composition is switched right before a fight commences, the paradigms will be selected for you, and they almost always suck—at least in my play style. After the fight, Hope tells Light that he's given up on Operation Norah. They finally make it to Hope's dad's house, and Hope tells him about Norah's death. In these scenes, we get the feeling that Bartholomew is a bit awkward and doesn't convey his feelings all too well—a detail expressed clearly in

the datalog. It also gives us the truth of why Hope doesn't like him much. There isn't a reason; he's just a rebellious teenager. This is fine, honestly, and realistic, especially when his dad is so clumsy with his feelings and struggles to relate to his son. In another room, Light apologizes to Snow for how she's been treating him, and Sarah says she couldn't face it at the time. Snow asks for her real name, and Light says to ask Sarah when she comes back. They all convene with Bartholomew to discuss the plan. He thinks that if they

were to take on the Sanctum, fear of Pulse would only get worse. While they're discussing this, the military shows up and begins raiding the house. They fight to the windows, and Snow manages to make an appeal to the military. Their Commander, Yog Ro, comes out and says that he believes Cocoon will die if all Pulse isn't purged. Suddenly, chaos breaks loose, and we see Ro get shot and fall. A Havoc Sky Tank appears, and the party must fight it. Interestingly, this is the same kind of ship that caused Norah's death, so this is a thematic

bookend of sorts. This boss has four targets on top of the main health bar. In a similar fashion to Ena, each one has its own attack that will be removed from the battle once it is defeated. Though this isn't really much of a strategic choice, attacking the four extra targets damages the main one directly, so you'd be foolish not to focus all of them down first. One slightly annoying thing is that your party can only use magic attacks. Since the target is so far away, Lightning can't make use of her superior physical damage; though this

honestly isn't that much of an issue. Having a Sentinel in your paradigms is very valuable because a lot of attacks are AOE, so you can reduce damage intake with the Sentinel's passive bonus. Since you can't use much strategy, like positioning, and most of the targets can't be feasibly staggered, this is one of the simpler bosses in the campaign and basically boils down to what I'm going to call Health Management. Health Management is a term I'm using to describe the classic turn-based pattern of dealing damage until you have low HP and then healing. Every turn-based RPG

uses this pattern, including this one. Unlike most turn-based RPGs, though, I find this one gives way more strategy to the concept, and Health Management can mean a lot of different things. In this fight, I used a lot of potions to keep from needing to go into healing paradigms. Some fights might encourage the use of a Sentinel to avoid needing pure healing paradigms as often; this is also an aspect of Health Management. In fact, the choice of having a Sentinel in your paradigm—whether it's an offensive or defensive one—is majorly beneficial to Health Management since you won't

need to spend nearly as much time in healing paradigms. Even healing paradigms themselves have a lot of nuance. For example, you could have a healing paradigm consisting of two Commandos and one Medic, or you could do a full healing paradigm with two Medics and a Sentinel. One allows you to continue dishing out damage and maintaining stagger, while the other enables you to heal much faster and go back to pure offense more quickly. Even purely offensive tactics feed into Health Management; pushing to get a stagger done earlier at the risk of death can result in finishing

the fight or removing the enemy from the fight for a significant amount of time. By launching them into the air, you can confidently avoid defensive or healing paradigms while you dish out damage, even at low HP thresholds that would otherwise spell certain death if you couldn't interrupt enemy abilities. These are all aspects of Health Management in this game, and I find it gives the combat much more interesting strategy beyond just heal when your health is low and have high enough stats to out-damage the enemies. Once the Sky Tank goes down, the cavalry arrives and brings

the party back to Lindblum. Don't get cute, right? Let's move it! Sas and Venil finally get to the City of Dreams, where they will be right at home with a bunch of other people running from the terrors of reality. Vil isn't seeming entirely herself as they... Enter, there's a news bulletin that shows the courtyard fight in Palen Poem from the last chapter. Venil recognizes Fang; someone in the gathered crowd says that they should just kill the hostages they've purportedly taken along with the L'ei. I appreciate this for two reasons: the first being that it gives

some context to when these events are happening, so everything stays within a logical timeline; and the second being that it shows the opinions of the people and reinforces their pulse phobia as being a real issue that the L must fight against, not only to us as viewers but to these characters as well as they continue on. It's clear Venil is trying to find the right time to tell SAS what happened, but how do you tell a man that you've been traveling with and getting to know that you're responsible for the effective death of his son?

How do you possibly make up for that? They watch something the game calls an idolan parade. The definition of "idolan," according to Oxford, is twofold: an idealized person or thing, and a spectre or phantom. Considering what we see in this parade, it seems the latter is the meaning of the term in this case. This is wonderful Cocoon propaganda, where a huge beast from pulse comes to terrorize the people of Cocoon, but a La from Cocoon shows up wielding Foul SE might to defend his home and wins the fight decisively. This is more clever world-building hiding

behind the fancy graphics, both in-universe and for us as viewers. This makes Venil wonder if their deaths could have brought back peace. From there, they venture forward to Nautilus Park, a wildlife petting zoo of sorts. SAS tells Venil to forget about the heavy stuff for a while, and maybe it'll all just fade away. As they get there, SAS says that he promised Dodge he'd bring him here to see the chocobos. SAS asks Venil if she's got someone special out there, to which she replies, "No." When they get there, SAS's little nameless chocobo chick flies around

and meets the locals, and you have to chase him down and find him a few times. SAS reveals more about Dodge; he's being held by the military, having tests run on him, trying to figure out his Focus. This may seem extreme, considering L'ye appear throughout the game to be fairly common, but consider that almost all of them are pulse L'ye. Specifically, Cocoon L'ye are much less common. In fact, the data log specifically tells us that Dodge was the first Cocoon L'ye in many, many generations, which is why they felt they needed to bring him in

to study him. SAS has decided to turn himself in so hopefully he can see Dodge one last time. Venil says he can't give up without getting revenge and says she knows who's responsible for the accident. SAS clearly wants to know, but they get ambushed by the military. Somehow, they follow them here despite not having seen the military in days. They fight their way through the military, heading up the hill toward the Apex. Combat for these two back in Chapter 6 was very quiet after Venil realized what she had done to SAS. Here, SAS seems to

have gotten a second wind; he's much more talkative, almost like the knowledge he'll soon know who is responsible for Dodge's plight is driving him forward with gusto. Venil, on the other hand, is just as quiet as before. The boss for this section, the Midl Reaper, is very uneventful. In my fight with him, he only managed to attack somewhere around three times or so; otherwise, he was permanently stagger-locked. It does show the power of Haste, SAS's most useful Cerist ability and the best buff in the game. At the apex of the park, Dodge runs out of

a building just up ahead. "Daddy, I found you!" "Huh? Daddy, I got you." "Dodge, why are you here?" "Because you promised." "But how did you get here?" [Dodge, wait! Come back!] "Dodge, not you! Not you!" A character we saw in one of the flashbacks, Nabat, walks out promptly with a platoon. She claims that Dodge's Focus was the capture of undesirables, that he could sense the power of pulse origin, and that's how they monitored SAS and Venil as they moved through the Wilds. Looks like SAS was right; he and Dodge really did become enemies. Nabat also

pulls a clever trick here; she reveals who was responsible for the incident at Uray, going so far as to show security camera footage of the day in question—the moment Fang decided to attack the F'SE, and it reached out to defend itself by turning the nearest human into a L'ye slave. Venil runs off into the building up ahead, SAS following behind. Not long after, Nabat lets them go, saying this is an opportunity to watch L take out one of their own. In this courtyard, Venil looks up at a throne upon which sits SAS, cloaked in some

sort of energy. "You are cold-blooded," she says. "Lying so people would trust you, using them as shields. How many you got to drag down with you? I'm a coward and a killer. The people you use don't get to live. Why should you?" "Tired of living with guilt? Then die with it." "Bal, shoot me for your son! Don't you even think you'd die and that's that? You think you'd die and everything will be sugar and rainbows? Then what can I do? What do you want from me? If I can't live or die, what do you want

me to do?" "Don't ask me. You figure it out." "I don't know." "Neither do I. It's over. There's nothing to do. Shooting you won't help." "Nei, we're living," as they stand and in despair. Saz's brand starts to burst forth with energy, and an Idolan appears. Venil runs forward to defend Sz, who gets up to fight the Idolan as well. This battle with Bren Hilder is one of the more straightforward and easy Idolan battles; he yields to chain gauging and buffing, so getting through it is a fairly simple matter. After the fight, Sas aims his guns

at Venil once again, who opens her arms in acceptance of her fate, but once again, Sas can't seem to do it. I think for a moment, Sas thought the Idolan was here to give him the strength he needed to get revenge on his son's murderer, but in the end, he couldn't find the strength to do it. Or perhaps he knew there was no good that could come from it. A lot of things can be excused—shooting kids and one kindness like his—you don't forget. My daughter is 10 weeks old. When I saw this scene, I loved

its unflinching depiction of someone who just effectively lost their young son and is being confronted with the one that did it. The betrayal Sas must feel here is unspeakable. Now, I adore it even more for the fact that Sas chooses not to do it, even if he claims it's because he literally can't. When I think of, you know, if I were put in this situation—somehow my daughter was irrevocably taken from me, and I knew who was responsible—I might like to think I'd be strong enough to bring that person to task, to give them what they

deserve. But here's the thing: would that even be right? Would taking out my anger and hurt on that person even accomplish anything? Even if I could, would that actually make me strong, or would refraining from doing so be the stronger of the two? You might think that Sas is weak here, and I think he'd agree with you, but I'm not so sure. It's easy to hold a grudge, but a lot harder to forgive, especially for something so heinous as the loss of a child. Forgiveness is something we all have to learn how to do; it

doesn't come naturally, and it certainly doesn't always make the most sense. But I think it is the stronger thing to do, and that's why I respect Sas so much at this moment. But unfortunately, just because he overcame that adversity, and just because he didn't kill Venil, doesn't mean that despair hasn't firmly cemented itself. "Me enough is enough!" "Do be careful with those! For every task, there's a perfect tool." All of Cocoon was against us. With us dead, they were sure everything would go back to the way it was before. I've heard a term levied at

this game before: melodramatic. To be clear, a lot of the games I like have had this term derisively thrown at them by people who no doubt feel like it's their one-way ticket to convincing people these games are bad. When they use this term, these are the kind of scenes they are referring to—these intense, high-emotional scenes in which characters will war with themselves on the right thing to do or against the decisions they want to make but know are wrong. What I love about this term is that it's only correct depending on your perspective. None of

these games—whether it be Kingdom Hearts, Metal Gear Solid, or Final Fantasy—are literally melodramas. That is a specific genre with specific boxes that are usually checked off in order to be called a melodrama. Actually, Kingdom Hearts comes extremely close, but still, that's not what these people are saying, though. The thing is, they're specifically only talking about one element of melodrama. They are often extremely emotionally driven, so when they use this term, what they are saying is that the characters get emotional over little things or that their emotions don't match the severity of the event. I find

this to be a terrible criticism because it's purely subjective. Something that might seem like a small issue or a small deal to you could be huge to someone else, and for good reason. So I would ask you this: is losing your mother a big deal to you? What about your kid? What if you unwittingly caused one of these two events and had no idea how to make it up to that person? And if you lack the empathy to relate to these events—if you see these characters as just anime tropes or walking, talking magic dispensers—you might

think this is melodramatic. I think it's simply dramatic. It is appropriately dramatic for the intensity of the events that are befalling these characters. These events make enough sense, have enough buildup, and a strong enough payoff that they don't feel melodramatic, like the characters are whiny babies that just need to suckle on their mom's teat for a minute to fall asleep. Rather, they are reacting to these events in ways that I could see myself doing as well. These characters are real enough to me that I can empathize with their situation, even if I haven't personally been

there, and I pray to God that I never am. A news bulletin: this time, L-see have been captured and taken aboard the Palomia, and the Primar Dley is there to personally oversee the execution. Fang figures Vanila is in there, so she intends on going and breaking them out. There's a small bit of time here where you can get your ducks in a row and talk to each of the party members about what they're about to do. Fang knows it's probably a trap but says they need to go anyway to help. Vil hopes, understandably, scared, but

knows they'll be fine if they stick together. Together, the party heads into the fry, docking right on the Palomia and cutting a swath through the military. Meanwhile, we see Venil and SZ, who is not dead, in a cell. There's a flashback to what happened just after the shot rang out on top of Nautilus Park. SAS couldn't do it, and Nabat walked up and knocked him out cold. This makes the scene with the casket a deliberate bait and switch, but there's a good reason for it. Here, Nabat knew if she didn't knock out SAS, he probably

would have attacked her and luckily escaped. To add to this, the sight of one of the LY being carried away in a casket could have instilled fear in the remaining LY, driving them to give up or turn themselves in. Venil, however, was so defeated that Nabat didn't have anything to worry about. Remember, Nabat already knows everything about these two, so she probably has a really good idea of how they would react in these scenarios and how they're feeling at this point. SAS says he's pathetic. Venil says she's the pathetic one because she lied to everyone

in more ways than SZ knows. At this point, she has a recollection of the day she and Fang woke up. Venil lied to Fang about not remembering what happened because she couldn't stand the thought of hurting people. She wanted to escape her fate as a L, and ever since then, she's been running from it. As these things typically go, trying to avoid hurting people has just gotten people hurt. A while later, a guard comes in to take them to their execution, and the Chocobo chick lays them clean out. The two go and grab their weapons.

Fil is wondering if she even deserves to escape. "What? You'd rather die? What, 'cause that's got to scare you?" "Scares me. Scares me so much I think I might die of fright, so I push myself to live even harder. I can just imagine Dodge laughing at me, talking this nonsense right now. I'd do anything to see that smile. Stay positive, right?" The two parties fight across the Palomia before finding each other on the wings. Fang and Vil embrace before Fang checks her brand to see how long she has before SE City V. She uses her

weapon to catch the beast flying around in the air again. I adore when characters are allowed to use their abilities to do things like this in cutscenes, and it gives some context for what this weird weapon thing was originally meant to do. They ride the beast and make their way into the heart of the Palomia. Finally, all six party members are together, and that means we can customize our party to our liking. So, this is as good a time as any to discuss things relating to that, like each party member and their strengths and weaknesses.

Just because two characters share a paradigm doesn't mean they'll have the same specialization within that paradigm. For synergists, we have SAS and Hope. SAS specializes in offensive buffs: haste, power increases, and adding elemental damage. Hope specializes in defensive buffs: protect, shell, veil, and bar elemental buffs are his strong suit. Further adding to this dichotomy is the fact that SAS has Commando, Ravager, and Synergist roles, while Hope has Ravager and Synergist roles, Medic meaning Hope is much more suited to a supportive role aimed at keeping the party alive, while SAS is a bit more suited to

offensive roles, helping the party deal more damage. For Saboteurs, we have Venil and Fang. I'm sure there's no thematic reason why these two characters specifically got this role. Venil specializes in reducing an enemy's defenses: deprotect, deshell, and increasing vulnerabilities. This would pair well with SAS to maximize damage output. Fang specializes in reducing an enemy's ATB efficiency: slow, daze, pain, and fog being her main abilities. This can also be seen as reducing their offensive capabilities, something that pairs well with everything but especially Hope, in order to greatly reduce how much time is spent in health management

mode. Speaking of health management, your Sentinels are Fang and Snow. Fang specializes in single-target provoking and has Mediguard, which keeps her alive longer, whereas Snow specializes in group provoking and has Steelguard. Each of these has use cases in which they shine or are less effective than the other, and your party will likely need to change in order to accommodate that. Furthermore, since party members still only have access to three roles, your Paradigm deck is going to be greatly affected by your party choice. You may want to have Fang in the party for her extremely useful

debuffs, but that does mean you'll be short on Medic. While she does have Sentinel, which can sort of function as a Medic—and is even more effective at health management than a Medic in a lot of situations—this may still be more of a trade-off than you're willing to make, depending on the other members of your party. Like if you really wanted SAS, you'd be down to only one Medic potentially, depending on your third choice. You may want to have Lightning in the party for her high damage Commando and decent Ravager and Medic, but she offers absolutely

no utility, something this game basically requires you to make use of in order to be effective in combat. You may want to use Snow in the party, but don't. He sucks. The choice between SAS and Hope will come down to if you want to focus more on offense or defense. This will be a decision that changes perhaps often, depending on the battle in question and the enemies therein. Having a party with SAS and Venil will ensure maximum damage output, while having a party with Fang and Hope will ensure maximum defense and protection. Or you can

mix and match if you want to focus. On party buffs or enemy debuffs, there are a lot of ways you can compose your party, and at this point, the choice is significant. Who you choose as your party leader is also significant. You may think it's best to always choose the member with the most HP or perhaps the Sentinel, seeing as they are the least likely to die in a panic situation. However, you have to consider the rest of the party and if more efficiency can be achieved by choosing the Synergist for better buffing or the

Saboteur for better debuffing. Less importantly, but still a consideration, is whether the character you're choosing as the leader moves around and can have their positioning controlled on the battlefield, seeing as splitting up damage between smaller groups of the party is usually a valid form of health management depending on the enemy or boss. So, if I'm making it sound like this is something you're going to be micromanaging a lot, that is only somewhat true. The problem is that there's no way to save Paradigm decks or party compositions. You can change between battles anytime you want and

will likely want to, but every time you make a new party composition, you have to manually input the paradigms once again. Having presets would have been very nice. Thankfully, the menu is designed well enough that making paradigms is snappy and easy, so it doesn't take long once you've got a good idea of what you want. It's still a flaw, but not as big as you'd think. There's also the fact that while I do believe switching up party compositions often is rewarding, it's usually not all that necessary. I got through the latter half of this game

with a single party composition, namely Lightning, Sazh, and Vanille. The other half was Fang, Sazh, and Vanille, and one battle or so was Fang, Hope, and Snow. Once Fang, Hope, and Snow were in the same party, you know it's super defense time. This is the point in the game where combat becomes actually interesting in its own right; it sees much more strategy in planning possibilities simply by being able to choose who's in your party. One thing that is very important and pairs well with this is the fact that you can see every enemy involved with

a fight from the overworld; there are no surprises. So if you know you struggle with a certain enemy type using a certain party composition, you can change to something else to mitigate issues and enhance strengths with confidence that the game won't throw a curveball at you. Before we move on, I do think this begs a question: is the gameplay good if it takes half its runtime to get good? It's a valid argument, honestly, especially considering how many great games there are out there. I think there's something to be said about a combat system needing to

grow over time. I would fight you on the fact that Kingdom Hearts II's combat is excellent, but it doesn't start getting really exciting until at least the halfway point of that game, around the time you fight Demyx. From there, most of the bosses are pretty good, if not really good, the clear exception being Genie Jafar. What I can say is that Kingdom Hearts II's combat builds upon its foundation of fluid movement, snappy combos, and crunchy defense. Expensive options, but it has all that stuff from basically right at the start. That's why I'd say Final Fantasy

XIII's combat is good, even if it doesn't start getting really interesting until 15 hours in or so. It has fun menuing and strategy that ebbs and flows and adds complexity throughout the experience. The problem is just that it's too simple for too long, and without the choice of party composition, you don't have much planning at your disposal, leaving the combat a little more than mashing Auto Battle and changing paradigms. Sometimes it's more fun if you challenge yourself to get as many star rankings as possible. The ranking system is mostly just time-based; if the battle takes

as long as the game says is the target, which itself is based on your party's effective level and the enemies they're in, you get three stars. To get five, you have to be quite a bit faster than the target time, so the game clearly encourages you to find the fastest way to beat every fight. This is what makes the game engaging for me: prior to this point, I love maximizing efficiency and eliminating waste of time, both in real life and in video games; so this gameplay loop is highly satisfying to me. Even as the game

has a less than interesting basic combat system, I like it even more after this point because it still retains that efficiency element but now has the planning and strategy to make it even more engaging. Now, the amount of time a battle takes isn't solely determined by how good I am at using the party I was given, but also by picking that party myself. So yeah, I think I'd say the combat is good if you like maximizing efficiency and more active and fast-paced takes on the turn-based genre. But if that sort of stuff doesn't interest you,

the first half of this game will be a slog at best. I guess that's the best answer I can give. The party fights down into the cockpit of the Palamecia, where they confront Daisley. Nabat moves forward to defend him, but he sends out a blast of magic that takes her down. Dlei tells them that Cocon is a factory built by the F for the mass production of human THS. "What can mere men do without our help? Death is all of which you're capable. You saw the fools: a mindless mob, drunk on fear of a few."

"Le SE, if they only knew a Lai was the one filling their glasses! Let’s see, you mean me? Oh child, perish the thought! I am more than that. I am F SE; my name was SP Tandus, Voice of the Sanctum and Lord Sovereign of the Cocoon. FI, your kind feared the darkness, so we gave you night. You begged us for the purge, and did it not come to pass? Now you spurn our counsel; you must learn your place. Now that Daisley has made his true form known, we fight like many other bosses. It starts out

with four extra targets that throw magic attacks at the party. Over time, this will increase to RAW and G variants. The RAW and G variants for all magic attacks in this game increase their AoE potential and even add special characteristics, like Arrow being able to knock enemies in the air—or even your own party members. Using AoE attacks of your own can decrease the time it takes to bring them down. That's really the focus of this section of the fight: take out the four extra targets as quickly as possible. Once that's done, you're left with Bartand

himself, who will attack with Ruin and occasionally AoE attacks. From this point on, it's a game of health management, though it's a bit more complex than that sounds. At this point, he will occasionally start charging an attack called Struto. This attack is capable of decimating your party if left unchecked, and so you have to reduce the damage it deals by dealing damage of your own. At certain HP thresholds, Banus will physically recoil from the blow, cluing you in that Destrudo has had its damage reduced. A valid strategy for this is to wait to activate a

stagger until Destrudo starts, since he doesn't attack while charging it. You can put your whole force into offense for the duration of the charge in order to limit damage dealt. Once it's finished, however, he will immediately switch back to normal attacks, so quickly switching to defensive or healing paradigms is recommended. This attack on its own will determine if you outfit your party for offense or defense. There's no right answer, but I've always found success going light SAS, Venil, and going full-on offense so I can burn him down quickly during Destrudo and get the damage output

as low as possible, switching to a healing paradigm soon after. You may find it better to increase your defense or even use multiple Sentinels to reduce the damage that way. Again, there's not really a right answer here; it just depends on your play style. This is a long fight, second only to the Havoc Sky Tank in Chapter 7, but it's the first longer battle that doesn't feel long because it keeps its mechanics engaging, switches things up periodically, and encourages you to pay a lot of attention to what Bartand is doing so that things never get

dull. It's a great boss—hard but entertaining, to be sure. The party thinks DA's gone for a moment, but he returns soon after, saying that only Ragnarok can dispatch a Fousy. He says they've forgotten their focus: they are to become Ragnarok and lay waste to Cocoon by destroying Orphan, the Fousy that gives Eden energy—Eden being the FY that sustains humanity on Cocoon. Snow brings up Sarah, saying she said to save Cocoon, but Daisley rebuts that her focus was to assemble the tools for Cocoon destruction. Daisley leaves, giving the luy a ship to escape on. While in

the air, S says that the ship has started to pilot itself. Roose shows up, and if you thought he was dead, so did I! This is another moment where the game lies and presents things incorrectly for the sake of drama; this is one of the times it doesn't work, and it's just annoying. Ro tries to bring them down, but the ship flies them over Eden, the city named after the Fousy that sustains it, and then it flies directly toward a building before being warped, in a sense. This moment where the game hangs for a while

is likely the exact halfway point of your playthrough, depending on how much time you spend in Chapter 11. In this playthrough, it happened right around 16 hours, and my full playthrough was 33 hours long. So yeah, right around halfway. Why does this matter? Because this game is split perfectly in half, and things change drastically from here on out. Up to this point, the game has been a character drama: Snow and Hope, SAS and Venil, Fang and Lightning, pretty much everyone with Sarah Dodge. All of these characters are linked to each other in ways that make

for interesting dynamics. It tells these stories in intricate ways, putting the characters in situations in which they can either run from their problems or deal with them, and the characters react in realistic and meaningful ways. The characters feel like people; the way they interact outside of cutscenes reinforces that they are people you can control, not combat tools that happen to have conversations sometimes. From this point on, though technically it starts at the moment you have access to all the characters, the game becomes a plot drama. The focus leaves the characters themselves, their thoughts and actions,

and moves on to the plight of Cocoon, the role they have in it, and the villains in the story. I'm not necessarily saying these things are bad, just that it's no longer focusing on what it did before, and it's a bit jarring. It almost feels like the story sort of stops here, and that's because, considering what the story was focusing on before, it kind of does. There are a few character moments remaining; notably, there are still three more Idolan battles to get to, but they each feel rushed." Forced and inconsequential in their own special way,

and at times they even feel antithetical to the character's development up to that point. Furthermore, gameplay takes much more of the forefront than it had before. Soon, we'll finally see the full strategic depth the game has to offer; it will get more complex and interesting and require more of the player, though only by a modest amount. I would argue that the focus on gameplay and away from story is entirely on purpose, and the two are linked together. Most of the events from now until the end of the game are designed by Dley to get the

LY stronger and more capable of eliminating Orphan and destroying Cocoon. Gameplay-wise, this is exactly what's happening: you grow significantly more in power and health points during this portion of the game than in any other combined. But again, this takes a chunk of the focus away from the story and puts it toward gameplay. The funny thing is, this will either be the best thing that has happened to this game or the worst, depending on where your priorities lie. For those that have been watching the channel for a while, you may think you already know how I

feel about this; and to be honest, I'm torn. That may be surprising considering how story-driven I typically am, but I actually like the gameplay here enough that I'm glad it got significantly more interesting. I do just wish that the story didn't have to take a backseat in the latter half of the game. Seeing as we are now roughly halfway through the game and around two-thirds through the video, this is probably as good a time as any to say that I won't be making a cent off this video. Square Enix has a bit of a habit

of aggressively copyright claiming this game's visuals for some reason. I'm not saying they're wrong for doing so; they're totally within their legal right—just stating it as a fact. So this video won't give me any monetary gain here on YouTube. That's why, if you have enjoyed this video so far and like these sort of long-form analyses of video games, you could consider supporting the channel through YouTube memberships. There should be a little join button under the video that'll show you the options. I'll talk about the perks when I bring up memberships at the end. For now,

just consider if what you've seen is worth a couple bucks. If not, no biggie. Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled programming. The party ends up in a weird piece of Pulse hidden on Cocoon. They discuss their focus with Light, and Daisy's interpretation of the events brings up a weird thought: Are the FY omniscient? Does Daisy actually know what their focus is, or is he just gaslighting them into behaving the way he wants? It's hard to say at this point, but it's clear that the characters are thinking the same thing. You can talk to each of

the party members at this point to get some info on what’s on their minds. Snow thinks he made a mistake thinking Sarah was telling them to protect Cocoon; clearly, Dole's words make sense to him. As the party moves forward, they get ambushed by Pulse Work soldiers. They beat them, and Fang and Venil realize this is an arc. According to them, arcs were holding grounds for an army of living weapons to protect Pulse F from invasion. They also apparently had a more practical purpose: to force Lei to master their new powers. They would send the L

to the arc, and they'd be forced to fight the automatons there until they were strong enough to fulfill their focus or die trying. As SAS puts it, arcs turned L not into SE, but into monsters all the same. After the fight, we get access to every role for every character, which means it's time to talk about the Cherium. Yeah, we've gone this long without discussing the level-up system, so... Sumi, the Cherium is a mostly linear level-up path; each character has one for each role. You earn CP from defeating enemies and bosses and spend that CP

to advance the Christo Genesis and grab these orbs that increase stats or grant new abilities. You can also unlock accessory slots, a single ATB increase per character, and each role has a level that determines the effectiveness of that role's passive ability. It works on a sort of tier system, with each tier being represented by a circle that connects vertically to the next tier. Each new tier increases the price and value of each upgrade. Sometimes there will be optional offshoots that will contain more stat boosts and abilities. These are usually not worth it unless they have

abilities you want; they often cost more than the regular track for not much extra benefit, and you're better off skipping them unless you have a specific reason you want what's in them. I really like the way the Cherium feels; it's snappy, easy to use, and it even offers a decent amount of strategy in what you focus on. You could determine that you want to focus on unlocking as many abilities as possible or focus on stat increases above all else. There's not technically a wrong answer here, but it does behoove you to get as many abilities

as possible since that's going to determine your utility in combat, especially for the utility roles like Synergist, Saboteur, and Ravager. It also now allows you to unlock every role for every character, but do not do this—it's a trap. Upgrades from the three secondary roles for each character are exorbitantly expensive at this point and won't offer the same degree of stat increases as those afforded by their primary roles. You also won't be able to actually use the... Roll until you get an ability that can take a surprising amount of CP. Usually, they won't be much good

in that role either, especially early on, as they only have like one or two abilities anyway. You may be tempted to get Medic for everyone, but like I've mentioned, a Sentinel already functions like a Medic anyway. Honestly, three Medics is not only outclassed by two Medics and a Sentinel due to the Sentinel's ability to reduce damage for the whole party, but three Medics is almost overkill in most cases. Anyway, you're probably better off just sticking to two Medics and a Sentinel or two of anything else, for that matter. Here's a cautionary tale that will hopefully

keep you from the temptation of spending CP on secondary roles. My very first playthrough of this game, back when I was a Wei, I had to stop and start all the way over from the beginning because I didn't keep backup saves and got stuck in an area of the game much later, where I was flanked on all sides by enemies I couldn't beat at my stat level. It was entirely because I bought upgrades in the secondary roles. This was 40 hours down the drain, and unbeknownst to me at the time, about one hour from the

end of the game. Though it speaks to how much I loved this game, that I went ahead and finished a second playthrough anyway. So technically, my first playthrough of this game took about 80 hours across two full runs from start to finish. This wasn't the game's fault at any rate, and truly, we'll talk about the importance, or lack thereof, of stats later. To this end, you'll hopefully realize that the story is more about how bad I was at the game at the time, and not that the game didn't properly teach me how to level the

characters or something like that. Because I should have been able to make it through those fights one way or another. While we're here, we might as well discuss weapons, accessories, and the upgrade system, too, since this is where it becomes really relevant. Accessories are the simplest to explain: every accessory has an ability or stat boost tied to it. That's it. Each character can equip up to four accessory slots—one by default and three through the Chum. These allow you to outfit characters for many different purposes. Some boost defense, some offense, or will give the character more

utility. Some of my favorites are the accessories that increase ATB charge on kill, though there are many other utility accessories that I've used, like the Growth Egg that increases CP earned from Battle or the Doctor's Code that makes potions more effective. Weapons are many and varied; each character has seven sets of three weapons, and they have three tiers each. Let's call them level 1, 2, and 3. Each set is gained at level one and has increased up the stack by using the upgrade system. The level three upgrade always has the same name because it's basically

the Ultima weapon of this game, regardless of the set it is upgraded from. For Lightning, as an example, the name of her level three weapon is the Omega Weapon, regardless of which weapon you started with. All final upgrades give one ATB slot, and that's their main purpose, but they retain the specialization from the weapon set they came from. So, each character has seven of the same weapon that does different things. I know that sounds confusing, but it's easier to see than to explain. Each weapon set has a specialization, like I said, ranging from boosting strength,

magic, a balance between the two, or some ability specific to that character. Let's look at Vanille's weapon sets just as an example. Three of her weapon sets have no unique ability. The Binding Rod is the first one she gets and, at the end of its upgrade path, yields the worst strength and magic boosts—clearly a starter set not intended to be kept. The Pearl Wing staff has the best magic stat of all of her weapons and equivalently the worst strength, though this doesn't matter much for Vanille because she mostly uses magic anyway. The Rod Thorns has

a balance of strength and magic, again not particularly useful for Vanille since she doesn't use much strength. Moving on to the weapons with abilities attached to them, the Tiger Claw yields the best strength stat of any rod and pretty good magic, but has the Iron Strike ability, which reduces ATB rate by 40%. Every character has a weapon set similar to this, though I can't imagine how annoying using them would be. The Healer Staff has very poor stats but improves cure spells by 20%. If Vanille spends most of her time in NTIC, this might be the

staff for you—20% is actually a very significant amount. The Mislatine, I guess, has great magic but poor strength and has the ability Ally KO Power Surge, which increases damage by up to 2.3 times for each ally that is downed, so up to 460 total damage when both party members are downed, which is pretty insane. This falls into a category of weapon sets that have a unique ability that only that character gets. Lightning gets a weapon set that restores her ATB every time she strikes an enemy, which is seriously powerful. The Belladon Wand, my preferred choice,

has great magic, poor strength, and improved debuffing, which increases debuff success rate by 40%—not a petty amount if you debuff a lot. This is in a category that focuses on every character's primary role. S has one that improves buff times, as an example. Finally, and perhaps most niche of all, the Heavenly Axis has the same stats as the last two weapons and the ability stagger lock, which means... That party member can't activate a stagger; all party members have this, and you may be wondering, "Why would you ever want an effect like that?" Well, SAS has

an ability where, if he's the one to initiate a stagger, it increases the stagger drop time by 30%, a pretty significant amount, meaning they'll be in stagger for much longer. So, using these weapons, you could ensure SAS is the only one that can actually initiate a stagger once the enemy is at their stagger point. There may be other fringe reasons to use this, but they're definitely niche. Both accessories and weapons do a good job of allowing you to outfit your characters in a way that better suits your play style, and I very much like their

implementation. Further increasing their usefulness is the upgrade system, which is unlocked when you get the Omni Kit halfway through Chapter 4. At that point, though, it's not all that useful; you won't have enough resources to do much with it, and you probably won't have enough money to make a dent in it either. In order to upgrade a piece of gear, you have to spend materials, giving the gear experience toward its next level. There are two different types of upgrade materials: organic parts and synthetic parts. Organic parts don't offer much experience but increase the experience multiplier

for that weapon up to a max of three times the experience earned from each chunk of material spent. Synthetic parts have much higher experience gains, further increased by the multiplier, but they decrease the multiplier when used. So the pattern looks like this: use organic parts to get the gear piece to a three times multiplier, then use a single huge amount of synthetic parts to drastically increase the gear piece's level. Increasing the level of a weapon will increase the strength of magic boosts by a certain amount; this can be the equivalent of multiple stat increases from

the cherium, and so their effects are easily felt. Getting the gear piece to a star level means that they can't go any further without transforming them. That is, each gear piece that isn't at max level requires one of the many rare transformation catalysts to transform to the next level. Most of these can be purchased; all of them can be found, but all of them are expensive and rare to varying degrees of insanity. This will give the item a new name and upgrade its ability or stat boost; you can then continue to upgrade the item up

to star and possibly transform it again, depending on the item. This is a good time to mention that this game's economy, unlike many others, is not only not broken; it actually takes longer to farm enough money to fully upgrade a party's worth of weapons to level three than it does to gain enough CP to hit the cerium cap, and that takes quite a while on its own. The party fights through the ark, getting progressively stronger before they run into an old friend, Sid Reigns. Reigns explains to them that all of that luck they've been having

throughout the adventure—the close calls and all of them coming together—it's all been a deliberate machination by Bandeles, who is crafting the Lui into the instruments of Cocoon's demise in an attempt to restore something he calls the Maker, the entity responsible for creating both humans and FSE. Reigns says his focus was to put them on the path. So he was upon in Bartels's plan as well. The fal'cy want to restore their god, the Maker, to this realm and this world to its former glory, having been torn asunder by war. Apparently, the Maker can only be called

back by a fitting sacrifice: the lives of all Cocoon's populace in bloody tribute. The Sanctum, however, cannot do this alone because they are duty-bound to protect and sustain Cocoon. It stands to reason that they also couldn't make Ley and give them the focus of destroying Cocoon either, so they needed Pulse to accomplish this. Reigns then reveals that he's here now because he intends on stopping the fal'cy's plans. Seeing them fight brought back the future he once hoped for, and so he is going to try and eliminate the l'Cie here, not only absolving them of the

focus they've been given but also ruining the fal'cy's endeavors. So all the discussion of planning, strategy, cherium, weapons, and accessories—all of it comes to a head with this boss, what I would call the most difficult one in the game, and requiring the most deliberate planning on the part of the player. In response to Reigns's abilities, he is very difficult and requires you to have developed a keen sense of the battle system and how it ticks to beat him. He attacks fast and fairly often, guards for extended periods of time, and can buff and debuff. Halfway

through the fight, he shifts and begins doing said buffs and debuffs, giving him a chance to debuff the party, which is nearly always a death sentence, depending on who gets hit. Most of his moves, barring the one that buffs him, are single-target, but he is more than capable of knocking your party members in the air and draining them of their entire health bars during his combos. I think this fight is maybe the easiest place to see how much a simple party change can affect how a battle plays out. When I first got here, my party

was outfitted for pure offense: Lightning, SAS, and Vanel. This attempt went really well until we started buffing and debuffing. Since I didn't have any effective defensive buffs or paradigms, I couldn't keep up with his speed and ferocity. At this point, even when I could get back on my feet, it wasn't long before he would knock me off them again. And eventually, he just decimated light, and it was over. My second attempt was hybrid defense—another typical party of mine: Lightning, Hope, and Fang—with Hope as a defensive synergist and Fang primarily reducing enemy offense. This party is

outfitted to blend defense with a healthy amount of offense. Fang also has access to Sentinel, meaning she can tank some hits while buffs are being applied or heals are going out. Another excellent aspect of this party is Fang's access to Fog, which Reigns is susceptible to. Usually, after his big combos, he goes straight into Ruin Volleys to keep his targets in the air and, luckily, finish them off. But with Fog inflicted, he can't do that, giving him much less damage output. The trade-off here is that since this party is mostly outfitted for defense, the battle

took longer than the target time, and I only got two stars. However, I was able to keep up with his offense and stay ahead of him for the whole fight, ensuring that with time, I'd be able to finish him off. I did have some luck, seeing as I never had a character get dazed and, half the time, no debuffs proc'd at all. But all of this, I think, just clearly shows the difference a small change in party can make. I think a middle ground between these parties—maybe swapping out Hope for Sass—could have beaten him more

quickly. The main problem I could see with that party is that the only medic would be Lightning, who's not even that good at it to begin with. Ultimately, there's no way to know but to try, and the game does a good job encouraging simple paradigm changes or party changes above any kind of farming as a solution for a brick wall boss. Like this, Reigns takes a long time—most likely the longest boss so far—but it doesn't feel long, seeing as you're always switching between offense and defense, buffing, debuffing, and paying attention to his actions to decide

your own. It's really well done. After the fight, Reigns asks the L'Ei to just do what they know is right. Then he turns to Crystal, Sass wonders if he completed his focus, and Snow says he's not so sure; all he did was try to save Cocoon in his own way. It's an interesting question, actually. He was told his focus was to put the L'U on the path. Was that incorrect, or did he just not know what path was meant? It draws some attention to the vague nature of the focus, as well as how it's considered

fulfilled. What force beyond forces decides if the focus is fulfilled or not? Do technicalities count? It's interesting for sure, and I'm not asking the game to answer these questions necessarily. The vague and esoteric nature of the Was and their plight is a key part of this game's narrative. They continue on through the arc until they come to a dead end. The party discusses their focus, and Snow says he's planning on fighting it. Most of the party agrees, but Fang refuses, saying she doesn't want Venil to turn SE. Her brand bursts with energy, and an idolan

appears. Despite basically promising to betray them, the party moves forward to protect Fang. This is one of the easiest idolan fights because it builds gestalt by chain gauging and debuffing, both of which can be accomplished at the same time. After the fight, a new path emerges, and Venil thinks the idolan came to save them. Somehow, they move forward and find a Pulsian airship, as well as a gate to Pulse. While this could be another of Bartandelus's machinations, the party decides they don't have much of a choice and moves forward. Hope gives a little speech about

how he's going to move by instinct and not trust FY lies anymore, and how he wants to go to Pulse and see it for himself—to see how bad it really is. The world's full of lies; there's no way of knowing what's right. All we can do is believe in ourselves. It's easy to sit back and let people trick you, like how the Sanctum had us all thinking that Elsie was some sort of monster. I’m done with their lies, FY. This whole focus thing, from here on out, I use my eyes to think and act. I

might not make all the right choices, but as long as I’m the one who decides what to do, there’s nothing to regret. Okay, all right, let’s do it! I’m with you—bad choices and all. Of course, I’m not sure how it’s going to turn out; Pulse is hell. You know who is it? Now, how many times have you been there? None, but I want to go and see what it’s like for myself. Okay, people, so everybody in—absolutely off to hell we go! There’s one more flashback to the fireworks: Venil ruminating on everyone’s presence in B'M that

night. No one ever said the future would be easy. Show me it's not over. But I think we all saw the glimmer of a dream somewhere in the sky that night—the tiniest spark of hope that we could change our fate. Who could say that moment’s come and gone? The party arrives in the wonderful world of Grand Pulse—an enormous, sprawling natural landscape teeming with all kinds of biodiversity. They fly across the land in their ship before a huge creature decides it wants to gobble them up. Fang uses her new idolan to save part of the party

from plummeting—good stuff there as well! They end up landing not long after, and Venil gives us a monologue on the untamed wilderness of Grand Pulse. It’s a place where lives are ruled by the brutal struggle for survival and the... the callous and uncaring whim of the fast [Music]. There is no such thing as mercy; only a never-ending string of trials that weed out the weak and leave only the strong. Reigns knew the truth: the purpose lying at the heart of all the fal's actions, recalling their lost deity and returning the world to its former glory.

People were never anything more than sacrifices, and cun's destruction is just a way to wake a sleeping God. But would bringing the maker back into this world really lead to our salvation? [Music] [Applause] [Music]. The maker created Faly, and they, in their desperation to be reunited with the maker, created Ly and L. See, I wonder what we'll end up [Music] creating a little while later. As they spend time in camp, they realize that hope is missing. When the Chocoo chick returns without him, they go and find him, and hope is feeling like a liability, telling

the party to go on without him. To be frank, I find this to be sloppy writing at best. The fact that not ten minutes ago hope was not only fine, but giving speeches about how he's not going to take bull from the Foul SE and think and act and stuff—how he was going to keep his promise to his dad to keep moving forward—and now he suddenly decided he'd rather stay here and die on Pulse is really awkward, and it makes this idolan battle much less potent than the rest. Alexander here yields to chain gaining and

buffing; not much else to it. Pretty simple. Afterward, hope remarks that he thinks the idolan show up to break the L out of their slumps, and he'll ask for help earlier next time. The party moves forward and enters the Archal Step, and we're introduced to the only nonlinear section of the game: Grand Pulse and the SE Stone missions. So, let's talk about linearity. The decision to have the game pretty much just a straight shot from the top to this point is another that pits story against gameplay. No traditional towns to spend time in, very few

NPCs to talk to—most of them are your party members—essentially just a straight shot corridor with a few branching pathways for extra battles and loot. I recognize that the game's maps are almost entirely small linear corridors; there's no disputing that fact. The mini-map makes it brutally clear. At times, this can feel restricting, like you're on a railroad taking you on a sightseeing tour rather than actually exploring an area. Let me ask this, though: what would making these areas more open do for the game? It might give the illusion of freedom, but the game's entire structure—as in

the flow of its narrative—is entirely linear and straight from beginning to near the end. It would only hide the linearity, not fix it, presuming that fixing it is something we even want. You see, not every game needs open areas to explore, and least of all this game, given the story it's trying to tell. The linearity is a story-based decision in two ways. The first is the timeframe of the narrative; the game's story is paced very deliberately, with a healthy amount of combat between cutscenes that keeps the passage of time realistic throughout. This is most apparent

in the first few chapters, in which the game runs forward at a quick pace and doesn't even allow the player to bog down that deliberate pace with optional missions or a bunch of farming or something. What you have to realize is that, unlike many other JRPGs—or more specifically, Final Fantasy games—this is not some globe-trotting fantasy adventure. This story is an action thriller at its core. The second story element that enforces this linearity is the pressure placed on these characters you're playing as. Lui is on the run; you can't stop in one place for long or

you'll get ransacked by the military, and any towns in which stores or NPC interactions could happen probably wouldn't because you're wanted, and your faces are plastered all over the screens throughout Cocoon. The only time this is subverted is with Sas and Vanille in Nautilus because they were able to fly under the radar, and even then, it's not long before the military catches up to them anyway. Again, not a globe-trotting fantasy, but an action thriller. All of this is to say I don't mind the linearity. It could have been presented better, maybe, but it's in service

of a story that I think is really well done, so it's fine. Given everything I just said, I think it's no small coincidence that right when the story starts becoming subpar is when the game opens up a bit and lets you spend time running around a huge open area. Speaking of that, there are 64 SE Stone missions scattered throughout Grand Pulse, and believe me when I say that most people will never even experience most of these missions. This is because Grand Pulse is an endgame grinding area in disguise—a topic I'll discuss in a minute. This

is evidenced by even the innocuous-looking wolf creatures on the Step being totally capable of demolishing you in one hit when you first get there. Every SE Stone mission is the same: go to the stone, accept the mission, which is always a hunting target, go to the target, kill it, mission complete. Every mission gives rewards on top of what you get for killing the mark itself, and you can repeat the missions as you wish, though you only get the rewards once, as far as I know. A few of the missions are required, but most can be

skipped, even this introductory one that tutorials the concept, which is skippable if you just run toward the objective marker on your map. This marker will take you... On an Odyssean journey across the vast expanse of Pulse, seeing many areas and skipping just as many, honestly, there’s really not much else to say on Grand Pulse without talking about grinding first. Final Fantasy XIII opposes grinding for the grand majority of its runtime. Chapters gate Chocobo progression and are balanced in such a way that if you fight every enemy you come across, you will stay at a satisfying

level of challenge throughout. You can skip a few fights here and there to increase the challenge slightly over time, so you really have to think about the encounters and bosses. But in general, the game is balanced extremely well to ensure you only fight as many enemies as you need and never resort to any form of grinding. Thanks to that Chocobo progression gating, grinding is literally useless past a certain point. You can earn more experience than the progression gate will allow you to spend, but this is not only unnecessary but also an absolute waste of time.

In-game grinding spots will net significantly more experience anyway, so your best bet is to just always go with the game's intended progression path for most of its runtime. Getting to Grand Pulse does not itself represent an opportunity to begin grinding, but you are encouraged to do a few of the missions on the Archylte Step before moving on. You can, like I said, just run toward the story waypoint, but you will likely struggle with a few of the fights on the way there. Thankfully, strategy supplants stats most of the time prior to the endgame. This game

is more about finesse than brute force, so learning more about the combat system will likely get you through any hurdles you may come across. That story from before about me failing to finish the game because I couldn't beat some fights later? There’s a good chance I just sucked at the game at that time, and this is why I think that strategy usually supplants the need for high stats. I can point to an example in this playthrough of this being the case: I got to these fights with a boxed Phalanx and a few Hoplites. The Phalanx

can buff the Hoplite to the point of insanity, and they deal a ton of damage. The Phalanx is also strong and takes quite a beating before going down, and they can spawn more Hoplites if the ones already in the battle go down. When I first got here, I was using Lightning, S.A.S., and Vanille, and I just couldn't beat it with brute force. I retried with Fang, S.A.S., and Vanille, and using Fang managed to keep the Hoplites out of the battle long enough to kill the Phalanx, at which point the Hoplites were less of a threat.

Without game sense, I had thought doing a bunch of grinding was the way to get past this fight, and while it would have been easier had I done so, it wasn't necessary. Now, once the endgame rolls around, grinding is entirely necessary. Later missions are so insanely difficult that having anything other than a full Cherubim will force you to use luck-based strategies to win, like abusing Vanille's unique ability of casting death on an enemy and having a chance of just instakilling them. How long does farming out a full Cherubim take? Well, the last stage of the

Cherubim takes around 1 to 2 million CP per roll, and the fastest grinding methods I've seen online will net around 1 to 2 million CP per hour. So, on average, you're looking at 7 hours of grinding at minimum, assuming relatively high efficiency. That’s not to mention that you’ll likely hit the Cherubim cap well before you get enough money or materials to upgrade every character’s weapon to max, so it’s a pretty significant grind after 40 hours of story content alongside all the missions you have to do. Now you all know how I feel about grinding, so

you probably know what I'm about to say: I actually like this a lot. Maybe you're surprised considering I said this in my video deal on Birth by Sleep: stats are stupid and boring and encourage boring and repetitive play styles. They're good for those that need the extrinsic motivation of progressively growing stronger in-game, but they are ultimately a negative inclusion if you were required to spend any amount of time insipidly fighting the same enemies over and over again just to stand a chance against enemies in the zone you actually want to be in because the devs

arbitrarily decided you shouldn't be able to move on until you hit a milestone they determined is appropriate. But my gripe is when games are balanced in a way that grinding is basically required to finish, not the existence of grinding in general. Grinding can be fun if you love a combat system; I just think a good game should be balanced around not needing to in order to reach the endgame. This game is a great example of that because it only asks you to fight every encounter you come across, and even then many of them can be

skipped without falling far enough behind to make a significant difference. This game actively discourages grinding as you move toward the end of the story, and I love that. But I also love that there's plenty of grinding to do in the endgame if you want it, or even as soon as you hit Chapter 11, though it isn't necessary at all. The 10th and final level of the Cherubim is locked until you finish the game, just by the way, further discouraging doing a bunch of grinding before the story is over. So yeah, games that require you to

grind before you've even gotten halfway through them are still stupid and annoying, and they encourage boring and... Repetitive play styles, but there's nothing wrong with giving the players the option to grind at some point because it can be fun. As you proceed through Grand Pulse, you'll occasionally get cut scenes, a number of them being optional depending on where you go. Of the not-so-optional persuasion, we have a scene in which Fang claims she finally remembered her past. She remembers becoming Ragnarok, scarring Cocoon, and leaving Grand Pulse in the mess that it's in. Vanille says she's lying,

but her idol appears, which Fang takes to mean that she was right. We fight Hekatonkheires, and being that it's the last idol battle, it's probably pretty fitting that this is also the hardest. Gastal builds by chain gauging and debuffing, same as with Bahamut, except this guy is just a lot stronger, and it's harder to stay alive. The best strat seems to be to just debuff with Fang as a Sentinel and then switch to Medics when attacks start flying. Even with this, I needed Souls and an Overworld item you can use to give yourself buffs before

a battle starts. They come in four varieties: one focused on defense, one focused on offense, one that makes you invisible to ensure preemptive strikes, and one that restores TP. I used both of the buffing Souls to make it through this fight, and I still needed a huge Hail Mary at the end to bring it home before death took out Vanille. Fang says she felt that Vanille was acting off, that she figured Vanille was lying about losing her memories. Vanille says it wasn't fair. Fang is upset that she lied to her but forgives her and says

they'll stick together. So is this supposed to be the payoff we get for Vanille's arc? Is this the culmination of all the time that she spent running away and hurting people in the process? An idol battle and a "sorry." You see what I mean by the story just sort of falling off a cliff here, right? Considering how important Vanille is to the story and how important Fang is to her story, she needed much more time to come to grips with this core flaw in her character: that she's not only always running away but even encouraging

others to do the same. For at least two of the six characters, the idol battles are these really poignant and awesome moments of self-reflection and development for the characters, but it never felt like they were a full-on 180° shift. It still took each of them time to figure out what the battle meant and how to get over their issues. Snow is just like, "Wow, cool new power!" and the other three just feel much too easy and flippant, coming out of almost nowhere and leaving just as fast, just to never be brought back up again. Is

the de-evolution of the story and its writing directly linked to the change in focus from story to gameplay? Well, I'd definitely say yes. I understand that the game had a troubled development, to say the least, but the fact of the matter is that troubled development or not, the first half of the game has a strong story and the second half has stronger gameplay, but the two can't figure out how to be strong at the same time. From this point on, Vanille will mention her lying and running, but it'll be from the perspective of someone who

has learned from her mistakes and encourages others to not follow in her footsteps. A sudden shift that doesn't have nearly enough buildup. Well, there's at least one more scene exhibiting some strong writing in this game, and it just happens to be the last really good scene showing Vanille dealing with her issues. Later, Snow and Vanille chat about Serah, and Vanille has a memory of the first time she met Serah in Bodhum. Vanille tells Serah that she's looking for someone to say sorry, but that she can't find the words. Serah gives her some familiar advice: "Well,

if it's too much to deal with, face it later. Really, sometimes things seem easier when you look at them from a distance, you know?" "But does that really work?" Good question. "I'll let you know. Actually, I've been trying to keep something at a distance myself lately." "Like what?" "Don't laugh, okay? It's a dream. I had a bad one. I dreamt I destroyed the world. It was terrifying. I needed some time alone. It had me so scared I tried to run away, but then my boyfriend came chasing after me. That's when I understood: running away and

leaving behind the people you care about—that isn't love. Though you might just want to keep them safe, shutting them out of your life only hurts them more. The point is, I have people I can count on. I'll make it through. I think you'll be fine, and you will be too. You'll find the words. I'm sure of it." "Oh, I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! What else can I say? I'm not the one you should be asking." "Vanille, you'll know what to say when you find your friend. You'll see." The incredible underpinning of this scene is that

Serah is the person she needed to apologize to. Vanille just couldn't figure out how to say it. She knew that she was responsible for Serah becoming a L'Cie through her inaction and fear, but she didn't know how to make up for it or what to say. Serah turned to Crystal without knowing this either. I think this is some excellent storytelling, and it's a shame it doesn't keep up all too well in this half of the game. It's also unfortunately undermined by the very next scene, just sort of saying it out loud—kind of lame, but whatever.

Vanille remarks that Serah had the same vision. Of Ragnarok, and that she finally thinks that Sarah beat her Focus, that Daisley was lying about her Focus. Snow says he feels the same way. In another area, Venil and Hope share a scene in which she claims he promised they'd see Pulse together someday. Though she is just playfully lying, she then says that she's lied so many times, it's all becoming a blur. Hope says sometimes you have to lie, whether you need to protect others or you're just afraid, but it's not the lie but what you do

after it that matters. He then asks her to keep smiling because it makes him happy when she smiles. Venil is taken very aback, but Hope reveals he was just joking around as well, adorable in a kind of weird way. These are just kids, after all. In another area, the place where you meet all the Chocobos, Sas tells Fang that Doge wasn't her fault, that she shouldn't take the blame for it since she's got enough as it is. When she asks if he's just going to take it on his own, he says he's got the Chocoo

chick and she's got Venil. Eventually, they come to a place called Tien's Tower, an area patrolled by the Fal'cie Daka. The Fal'cie of Pulse are unique from Cocoon because they don't all have clear-cut roles, this one being no exception. Atos, for example, the Fal'cie digging out the subterranean area of Pulse, is occasionally said to be excavating habitable land for the humans that used to live on Pulse. Its digging also just happens to expose minerals which the humans can mine, creating large mining facilities underground. However, certain authors in the game's history have postulated that this Fal'cie

is simply digging tunnels in an effort to find a gateway to the divine, perhaps the same entity known as the Maker by the Cocoon Fal'cie. Titan, the huge guy wandering around, is apparently responsible for keeping the biodiversity of Grand Pulse in check. He will study the species all across the expanse, eliminating weak ones and producing new, stronger ones in their place. Bismar, who is in charge of the Soia Springs domain, feverishly guards the waters it inhabits, its responsibility seeming to be that of reshaping the land through water erosion. Then multiple Pulse Fal'cie go without any

concrete explanations to their goals. Ana from the Pulse Vestige and Daka of Tien's Tower both seem to have esoteric or unknowable goals. How do I know all this? Much of it can be found by reading the Analechs, a series of 13 passages from long-forgotten Pulse poetry and prose which are given out for completing certain Fal'cie Stone missions. You've seen them at the beginning of each chapter of this video. The creation myth outlined within parallels and contradicts what we know about Pulse and Cocoon from the primary source we've had so far, that being citizens of Cocoon,

no doubt only repeating what they hear from the Fal'cie. This reinforces a sort of unreliable narrator that permeates most of the information throughout the game: the fact that all of these people, despite being Pulse-less, are biased toward what they have known their whole life, that being what the Sanctum Fal'cie have decided to tell them. What the Analechs do is allow the world to feel more real. Two warring peoples that were cut from the same cloth would have two creation myths that not only parallel each other but contradict each other, and it's really powerful storytelling that

is hidden away for only the most insanely devoted to find. In short, the Analechs tell us that the original gods created both Fal'cie and humanity and then departed, leaving both orphaned together. A god called Lindsay created Cocoon and told humans lies that Cocoon was a paradise, and so humans left Pulse to go to Cocoon. The authors regularly call for the people of Pulse to rise up and cast Cocoon out of the sky. The next shows us that Fang and Venil are almost deified for what they did so many years ago, Fang becoming Ragnarok and cracking

Cocoon's shell. But a being known as the goddess put Luy into an early crystal sleep, their focus incomplete, before Ragnarok could finish the job. In the time between the events of the War of Transgression and the present day, a time called the Age of Ru took place, in which the people of Pulse waged war over resources and the Fal'cie offered no recompense, instead making L out of the humans for whatever purpose. Next, an Analech reveals that the Maker may not be one being but two: Pulse and Lindsay. Pulse created the Fal'cie on Grand Pulse, and

humans named the land after their revered god, while Lindsay created the Fal'cie on Cocoon. One of the most important of our tale is Analech number nine, which reveals that the goddess not only saved Kakon from Ragnarok the first time, but she's also the one who sends the Eidolons to the L when all hope is lost. We'll come back to this in a second. The following three are all from the same in-game book on the nature of Fal'cie. The next Analech is about arcs; they were made in preparation of a menace that lurks beyond, but the

author postulates on what that beyond might be, since the arcs were created before Cocoon was hung in the sky. In fact, some of the arcs reside on Cocoon itself. If they aren't to protect from Cocoon, then what does the beyond mean? Perhaps the gods that vanished from this place are now part of the beyond. I adore this because of the almost dread it would have instilled in its readers at the time. Perhaps the arcs were created to protect the people from the very gods that made them. Next, simply postulates that the Pulse Faly are hunting

for a gateway to the Divine, and their actions have nothing to do with the humanity that may benefit from them. Next, the author postulates that souls must pass on to the afterlife using the same gate the divines used, so a massive influx of souls would surely throw the door wide open and give a glimpse of the gleaming light of the Divinity Beyond. Finally, Fabula Nova Crystallis is a sort of summary: Pulse Falsy are scouring the Earth for the door, while Cocoon Faly harvest souls, combing ether for the same sacrifice—the one hope of seeing the door

unsealed. What descends from the door in the Twilight of the Gods will be but music and lacking in words: the lamentations of the Goddess Etro, as she sobs her song of grief. So, what do we make of all this? Two things. Firstly, there's an irony inherent in the fact that Cocoon paints Pulse like it's this savage, terrible place, when the Faly of Pulse really seem to just be about their business, searching for the gate to the Divine. It's the Cocoon Faly that are systematically supporting the human population, only to, in the near future, sacrifice them

all for the sake of maybe calling their long-lost deity back into the world. It really makes you wonder who the savages really are. Secondly, well, like I said, this contradicts a lot of the information that we've gathered from Cocoon citizens, but there's no reason to think this information isn't itself biased or potentially incorrect. Which one is the most accurate creation myth? I have no idea, and that's a good thing. In real life, no one can truly agree on how things came to be; even those that believe in creationism can't agree on the nature of the

one doing the creating. So, naturally, why would this game's world be any different? All of this makes the world-building in this game so much more potent and memorable that I'm kind of sad that it isn't more telegraphed or accessible to players. That these analects are not only hidden away in the data log but unlocked by completing some of the game's toughest or most tedious challenges. That being said, I think there's one element that can give us a clue as to what's really going on in this story. You see, one consistent question the game has been

posing has been: what has been these people's focuses? All the folks that have turned to crystal have fulfilled their focus, right? Well, these analects reveal that this doesn't have to be the case at all. The Goddess Rro apparently turned Fang and Vanille to crystal prematurely in order to keep Cocoon from being destroyed and the lives therein snuffed out. The analects also say that she is the one that sends the Eidolons to break L out of their despair and give them back hope. So, the Goddess Rro is acting as a guiding light to the L, making

sure that they do what they've been called to. But even that latter bit isn't set in crystal. Did Sarah complete the focus she was originally given, or did the Goddess Etro turn her to crystal upon successfully bringing the party together? Think about it this way: if Sarah had not turned to crystal here, would the party have even gone on this journey? They almost certainly wouldn't have all gone to fight the Foul Sea. Perhaps Lightning would have, but that might have been it. Did Dodge complete the focus he was originally given, or did the Goddess Rro

turn him into crystal in order to keep Sazh moving forward? Did Reigns complete the focus he was originally given, or did the Goddess Rro turn him to crystal after ensuring the L had the strength to do what they needed to do? There are so many iffy things about focuses and crystals that this almost has to be true, right? It just feels right. It even parallels Bandels. We know he's been puppeting the characters along for the entire game, but what if Rro was also pulling some strings to ensure they moved forward but never got too wrapped

around Barthandelus's giant fingers? It's clear that her goal would be the saving of Cocoon and its people, so her actions would all aim to benefit this goal. We'll revisit this discussion at the end of the game, but just keep it in the back of your mind: there are two warring entities at the top of this story—the Faly who intend on destroying humanity and bringing back their god, and Rro, who seems bent on protecting humanity at all costs. The party moves up the tower, taking on Cie'th missions in order to enlist the help of these huge

statues, and slowly they weaken Dahaka until, at the apex of the tower, they see take on Dahaka directly. Not much to say about this fight; it's simple and straightforward. He can debuff, but ultimately this fight isn't too much to worry about. The party looks down over the edge of the tower at Arba, Fang and Vanille's hometown. They go there, Fang and Vanille reminiscing on how things were back then and how things are different now. Eventually, they come across Sarah. "I was waiting for you to open your eyes all the time I was asleep. I knew

what was happening. I kept trying to think of a way to save Cocoon together, Sarah. You get it now?" [Music] "There are no gods with miracles to save us, no matter where you look. That's why we have to call one. Destroy Orphan!" "We'll save the world." "Stop it! You can't do that! You love me too much!" "You do, don't you?" "Clear enough already! Listen, enough! We are all shooting for the same goal here!" Bandr said that he’s resigned and put Reigns in his stead. ... dynamic. The encounter with Orphan presents a challenging and intricate battle,

combining various mechanics that demand strategic thinking and precise execution. Orphan’s design juxtaposes the cold, sterile nature of Eden with the grotesque and unsettling visage of the creature, symbolizing the clash between humanity's aspirations and its flaws. As the fight progresses, it becomes evident that this battle is not merely a test of strength but also a test of belief and resolve. The characters, driven by their promises and the weight of their pasts, confront the very manifestation of their struggles. Lightning, in particular, embodies the hope of a new beginning, declaring her commitment to protect her friends and the

world they inhabit. Throughout this final confrontation, themes of sacrifice, determination, and the complexities of human emotion are highlighted. Each character draws upon their individual strengths, weaving together their destinies in a climactic struggle that resonates deeply with the evolving narrative of their journey. This moment encapsulates the essence of what it means to fight not just for survival, but for a future worth believing in. In the end, as the battle with Orphan reaches its climax, the party stands united, their bonds forged in adversity ready to tackle the ultimate challenge that lies ahead, embodying the hope and potential

for redemption in a world fraught with turmoil. Configuration Orphan is the foul seed that sustains Eden, who in turn sustains Cocoon. I suppose the implication here is that Orphan sustains Eden much in the way a baby might sustain their mother emotionally and mentally. Killing Orphan would most likely cause Eden to die of heartbreak. Speaking of that, now we fight Orphan. The most dangerous thing it does is merciless judgment, which leaves the party at critical health. Orphan doesn't really do anything to follow up on this, though, so healing out of it is pretty simple. Honestly, Eden

spawns a healing orb that heals Orphan periodically. Staggers make this stop; that does encourage high offense to keep up with constant healing. Halfway through, Bartela spawns a damaging orb, and Orphan gets some new attacks, which make health management slightly more challenging, but none of this is too complicated. Honestly, I used Highwind too early and actually significantly prolonged the fight here, which is notable, I guess. After the fight, Orphan says that they employ Ly in order to wield the will of Humanity, which FSE don't possess. They knock the party onto the ground, leaving only Venil and

Fang standing. Orphan tries to make Venil turn into Ragnarok, but Fang offers herself in her place. She says she's going to fulfill her focus to protect Venil. Everyone else besides Venil gets turned to SE at this point and starts wailing on Fang, who turns into this bestial form of herself. After a moment, Fang reverts and doesn't have the strength to transform again, leaving Orphan still standing. Orphan lifts Fang into the air, repeatedly striking her and then healing her, trying to get her to transform, but it's just not happening. The party comes back from SEOM and

attacks Orphan, the foul sea sinking into the pool of water. Hope steps up to heal Fang—finally, someone using their medic powers in a cutscene. The party shares what they experienced while they were gone: a glimpse of the future. Everyone was happy and smiling, and Fang was there too, on the same side. After a moment, Orphan returns, this time without Bartus or Eden. Lightning takes this opportunity to give an epic, if not a bit clunkily written, speech: “You don't believe in anything. You gave up on life before you were even born, sat poisoning Cocoon from the

inside, waiting for someone to come and destroy you. Sure, you think the end of the world is salvation. All you care about is death's release, so take it and leave the rest of us alone. We don't think like that. When we think there's no hope left, we keep looking until we find some. Maybe Cocoon is past saving, but it's our home, and we'll protect it or die trying. We live to make the impossible possible; that is our focus.” The final battle with Orphan is honestly not that difficult or complicated. Orphan sets a 4200 count doom

on the leader, which just by the way translates to 4,120 seconds, or 7 minutes. Staggers are extremely effective, considering Orphan can be launched and juggled. Orphan will buff herself halfway through the fight, but these are dispellable anyway. I don't know; this fight almost feels like a victory lap. The party already overcame the adversity of their focus and now only need to lay waste to Orphan—which, wait, wasn't that their focus? With Orphan defeated, we see the foul sea of Cocoon shut down, the lights go out, and the floating rock falls out of the sky on a

collision course with Pulse. “Look! Stay together! Hey, grab my hand!” Okay, Ftheal. Lightning is the Commando; she is the embodiment of the Lone Wolf, someone who thinks she needs to do everything on her own. After her parents' deaths, she retained one family member: Sarah. The pain of this event was too strong for her, and she wanted to run away from it, so she became Lightning. This has not only caused her to become distant, but she even started to distrust Sarah. She wanted to protect her so badly that she couldn't stomach the thought that she’d become

a L’Cie, and so she didn't believe it. This only led to more problems, so she started running toward what she thought was the problem head-on: the Foul Sea Enema, then the Sanctum. But in reality, she was just continuing to run away from what she really needed—to trust and rely on others, to stop trying to do everything herself. This behavior even swept others into her path. Hope spiraled down Lightning’s river, knocking him off his feet and into the rapids of fear and anger. At every stage of her journey, her running got people hurt. Sarah couldn't confide

in her, and Hope was built up to a dangerous goal. Snow is the Sentinel, a protector to a fault. He feels he needs to protect everyone, and when his actions get people hurt or killed, he gets angry with himself, only vowing to try harder next time. Snow sees himself succeeding as he aims to protect Sarah from the Sanctum, but this would result in many people losing their lives. Snow's rebellion against the Sanctum ends up getting many people killed, regardless if they willingly went. He was still responsible for them as their commanding officer at the time.

The totality of this failure is held within Nora's Legacy and her request to get someone home, though he didn't know who at the time. He's used to being the hero, the one with all the answers, but he doesn't know how to deal with this, and so he throws himself into protecting everyone, thereby running from the consequences of his failure. When faced with it, when he can no longer run from it, he doesn't have the answers, and that pains him to no end. Hope is the medic; hope heals the damaged. Connections between many of the characters,

he is the hope that keeps them together in the end. Hope fills; he doesn't deserve what he's going through. His mother dies in a fight against the army—the army that was fighting a battle that Hope didn't disagree with. They were wrapped into this by circumstance; having only visited Bodum on what he thought was going to be a simple vacation, then he becomes a lei burdened to continue that fight against the army or surrender and die at their hands. He runs from the grief by holding on to a goal: take out his revenge on Snow. Lightning

unwittingly teaches him the ways of the battlefield, arms him both physically and metaphorically for the carrying out of Operation Nora—a choice she would come to regret. When Hope is finally able to face him, he nearly carries it out, his grief spilling over into rage. He had yet to fulfill his duty as the medic, running from his grief by fighting and taking it out on people. SAS is the synergist; he gets along with everyone but hides behind his carefully crafted personality and humor to keep from giving too much of himself away. He took his son, Dodge,

to Ur-Gorge, where he was turned into a l'cie and taken from him. He decided to fight Pulse, figuring that was Dodge's focus, and became one with Pulse himself. Rather than deal with the anguish or even express it, he contemplates taking it with him—a sacrifice which might save Dodge from becoming a monster and would result in S no longer needing to deal with the pain. When faced with the one responsible for that pain, he can't bring himself to take the revenge he thought he wanted just moments ago—something so at odds with his inner self that he

can't help but raise the gun to his own head, the ultimate act of running away. Venil and Fang, they are saboteurs. Fang would do anything for Venil, but in the process, is a curse upon many people. Her actions directly resulted in the near destruction of Cocoon and all the lives therein, as well as both Sarah and Dodge becoming l'cie. Her anger at all of this drives her away from people and into a place of constant war, deciding to fight it instead of feeling it. When faced with the opportunity to hold on to hope, she dives

backward into despair, seeking death to save the one she cares about most. Venil too is a curse on the people around her because she's weak and can't handle the weight on her shoulders. When she awakens from her crystal slumber with Fang, she remembers all of it but lies because she doesn't want to face it. Then she joins the Purge because she wants to run away from her focus. If she gets as far away from Cocoon as possible, maybe she won't have to deal with it all. She ends up involved with SAS, the very man whose

son she inadvertently turned into a l'cie, and she runs away from this too. She can't face it—any of it. She runs and drags others with her—Hope at first, but SZ as well. In the end, she has no choice but to face the pain, the unending pain of knowing that someone who fully deserves to end your life had mercy on you—and now you can't possibly make up for it. What everyone has in common is that they're running from grief, pain, and consequences. This clearly never works out, and the characters have to figure out how to deal

with it in real time. It's sloppy, messy, imperfect, and compelling. The first half of this game is about the characters deciding to stop running from their pain—to face it, embrace it, and convert it into hope. The second half of this game is about the characters deciding to stop running from their destiny—to make it what they can, resolving to do something about it, vowing to do what they believe is right, even if the world is against them. They can make the impossible happen; wishes can come true, but not if you just wait for miracles. Ready? Miracles

are things we make for ourselves, here and now. [Music] [Applause] Oh! [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Everyone turns to crystal, but after some time, they are each returned to their human form. They look up at the handiwork of Fang and Venil and realize their brands are gone. They're free from their chains—those that held them mentally and emotionally, as well as those that bound them to fate. In the distance, Sarah and Dodge walk forward and embrace their loved ones. Hope looks on with longing, but no one walks up to him. They're gone, aren't they?

I guess they meant for this to be goodbye. "And again, we've changed our fates before. Come on, I missed you." "I'm sorry." "It's okay. Hey, come on, the apologies can wait! We've got a wedding to plan!" "What? You are going to allow... wow, right? You don't waste any time, do you?" "No, I don't. That's right. Just charge in, guns blazing. I swear to you, I will make her happy." "I believe you. Congrats!" [Music] "When prayers turn to promises, not even fate can stand in their way. We held the light of hope in our hearts and

achieved the impossible. Now we live on to greet a new dawn." I don't think anything I've said about this game has been wrong per se. The shift of focus after chapter 9 is felt in every aspect of the game. Disparate story elements are few and far between, don't feel as well set up, and don't have nearly the same impact. But then it still ends satisfyingly to me, and honestly, writing about it has only grown. My appreciation for what this story does. It effectively ties the character drama of the first half into the ending, and elements

like the potential involvement of Rro behind the scenes are really captivating. Speaking of that, I said I'd bring that back up here: I highly believe that Rro is the one that gave the L the vision, and that they truly did beat their focus. It makes the most sense to believe that A would have wanted them to destroy Cocoon, and it's clear that Bandoo would have wanted the same. They nearly did, taking out Orphan just like he wanted, causing Eden to die and sending all of Cocoon into a free-fall. But Cocoon wasn't destroyed, and in fact

it almost seems like the process of Vanille and Fang turning to crystal is the very act that saves Cocoon this time, which is actually true the last time too. This is now the fifth time that we've seen a character turn to crystal, and their focus has either remained shrouded from us, or they didn't actually fully accomplish what the Focus set them out to do, or they deliberately fought their focus. I truly believe Erra was working in the wings to guide the characters to the ending they got, the one that Cocoon deserved. She acted on behalf

of Cocoon many generations ago when Ragnarok tried to destroy it, so there's no reason to believe that she couldn't continue to act on behalf of Cocoon today. The party has been constantly directed by two opposing entities, and occasionally the party could feel this railroading, this linearity. What effect did their personal drive to do good have on this guidance? Was Fang and Vanille turning to crystal and sacrificing to save Cocoon truly necessary, or was there another way? I don't know if these questions make sense or if they're intended by the developers at all, but I can't

help but think that this game’s got smarter writing even in the second half than I realized when I set out to write this script. I'm looking at my outline, and it's sort of strange to read it and think that the person that wrote this is the same one that's sitting here writing this now. I see this game completely differently having studied it and written about it. The story doesn't just die in the second half. Yes, it changes gears; yes, its character moments are less fleshed out or impactful, and yes, it feels a good bit rushed

even. But it's still got plenty to say about the characters, about the impact that their warring with their grief has had on the world, and about destiny, fate, prayers, and promises. As for the gameplay, well, it's almost frustrating how much I love this gameplay system, and yet it seems to lack proper exploration. Bosses are interesting but lack compelling elements most of the time; many of them just boil down to basic health management like any other turn-based game. So much depth lives within this combat system, and the game doesn't want to really explore it in any

way, at least not in the beaten path. For those that want the extra challenge, Pulse is there, but it's a grind fest for much of its runtime, and many missions are so difficult in that area that it's hard to say it even feels fair at that point. The gameplay takes too long to get good, and once it does, it doesn't go much further than that. I think you can see in the boss discussion for the second half of the game, most of them don't do much beyond the basic structure that the first half established. While

none of them are bad per se, they rarely challenge the player in any meaningful way. But in the end, I think this game feels real. I've said it a few times, but the importance of this can't be understated. Characters don't just feel like characters; they live, breathe, and seem to respond to situations in realistic ways. These things they go through don't feel contrived because it's due to their own actions that they are dealing with them. They're running away and hiding from the pain, leading them down even darker roads than the ones they walked before. Their

failures drive the plot, at least for the first half. Their actions are in direct response to their pain, and their actions are what led them into new pain and eventually acceptance and growth. The gameplay and story are integrated in such a way that it makes the tedious nature of the first handful of chapters almost worth it. Characters feel like they aren't combat puppets but people that happen to be able to fight, their recent actions and experience informing how they behave outside of cutscenes as well as in them. There's so much to love in this game

that it's sad to me that it has the stigma it has: Corridor simulator, melodramatic, you name it. Well, at the end of the day, even if no one else loves this game the way I do, I still can. It'll be my own personal Final Fantasy VII, the one I wish they'd go back to and make another game like it. Thank you for watching! This video was supported solely through YouTube memberships. If you're not a member and you've made it this far, consider if you have the financial stability to throw me a bone; I'd really appreciate

it. Members at the second and third tier got access to this video a week early, and members at the highest tier get access to a string of membership videos where I talk about all kinds of things, which amounts to over two hours of extra content if you count the videos you probably wouldn't actually want to watch, like this status update for example. This time, the membership video is a little different. I'm... Going to start a series where I rewatch my old stuff and critique them in much the same style I do with the game. I

talk about this time I'm going to be talking about the observation videos since I already kind of did that for the MGS5 video in a stream a while back. If you're wondering why it's not about Final Fantasy 13 this time, I guess I just completely ran out of stuff to say about it. I could have forced myself to talk about the music, but the music is—I mean, it's really good; it's just kind of forgettable. I don't know, I'm much more mixed on it than I am on most JRPG soundtracks. The people at the highest tier

also get their names read out loud because I'm a trend chaser, and that's what everyone else does. So here we go: Devil, Josiah, Keen, The Monus, Icap, OMFG, it's Justin. Thanks for the support, and have a wonderful 3 months until I post another video. [Music]