Happy Birthday Final Fantasy XIII!

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LovingOfLightning

Blue Mage
Joined
Aug 31, 2013
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Today Final Fantasy XIII is six years old!

Happy birthday! :cake:

I still haven't managed to complete you, but I've completed the sequel and reached the end Boss of all end Bosses in Lightning Returns!

Hope I'm around for your 18th! :drunk::megusta::cheer::wunderbar::inlove:
 
FinalxxSin said:
Happy Birthday to one of my favorite installments in the series.

What's stopping you from finishing XIII if I may ask o_O?
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Well I've made it to Orphan's Cradle and to the choice of loads of Sahgins at one corner and a Tyrant with that damn immortal blade on the other.
I also went back to Grand Pulse and did some missions. I'm on that Wyvern in the caves. I want to complete that one so I can get Lightning to ride the chocobos!
I wouldn't mind, but I've been stuck here for months!
And for all the frustrations, it still hasn't diminished my love for this series.
 
I was stuck on that top of the tower beast for quite some time. I think even long enough that by the time I came around to picking it up again, I just started from scratch and begin all over. I hardly remember anything from the game, so it was worth it more just to do a fresh start. Can't believe it's been 6 years already. Time flies.
 
6 years later and there still hasn't been an original offline mainline game in the series released since. Truly a major testament to Square Enix's failings over the last decade. -_-

Still, happy birthday to FFXIII, I suppose. I still recall that day when I excitedly ran to the store after class to purchase it (oh lord, that was six years ago? Where has time gone?) and it felt like I was wielding the Holy Grail in my hand when I skipped out of the store caressing a PS3 copy of the game. Oh, how things have changed then, because it turned out to be perhaps the joint-worst (along with FFII) game in the series for me. And nothing will ever change my mind on that.

But I have enjoyed FFXIII-2 and I would be more enthusiastic to celebrate its 4th birthday. By no means is it a great game, as all aspects of its plot and writing were enough to halve the number of my brain cells, but once I adjusted my expectations and just learnt to not take any aspect of its story seriously and enjoy the game for what it is, I did have plenty of fun with the sequel. Who would have thought that a game that actually believes in player agency is a better game than the hallway simulator that was screaming at me to read the Datalog after virtually every cutscene!
 
LovingOfLightning said:
Well I've made it to Orphan's Cradle and to the choice of loads of Sahgins at one corner and a Tyrant with that damn immortal blade on the other.
I also went back to Grand Pulse and did some missions. I'm on that Wyvern in the caves. I want to complete that one so I can get Lightning to ride the chocobos!
I wouldn't mind, but I've been stuck here for months!
And for all the frustrations, it still hasn't diminished my love for this series.
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Focus on using elemental attacks that the enemy with the immortal blade is weak to. That should help things. You may also need to do a bit of upgrading on your weapons some.
 
FinalxxSin said:
Focus on using elemental attacks that the enemy with the immortal blade is weak to. That should help things. You may also need to do a bit of upgrading on your weapons some.
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I think my biggest mistake was selling all the weapons I could upgrade and concentrating on making the Gladius and other weapons star status!
 
LovingOfLightning said:
I think my biggest mistake was selling all the weapons I could upgrade and concentrating on making the Gladius and other weapons star status!
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Ouch lol. I know for Claire you should have come along a treasure sphere containing the Lionheart weapon where all the explosions and what not are going off. That weapon should help out quite a bit. I hope you didn't sell it :(.
 
Ah, the Final Fantasy game that started a shitestorm of hate. Happy Birthday to Final Fantasy XIII and may Lightning the waifu goddess prosper.
 
Gladius is a fine weapon. Edged Carbine is slightly better overall, but Gladius is close and it's superior in many cases.

Lionheart looks good, but at a close analysis it fails to hold up, mostly because the Quick Stagger ability doesn't actually do very much. Most of the time it literally does nothing (because the triggering attack would have staggered anyway), and when it actually does save you anything it's generally only a couple of ATB segments (and saving 1-2 ATB segments out of the 15-18 you get per round is not much). That might be ok if Lionheart had decent stats, but like Axis Blade, it "pays" for the Quick Stagger ability by having worse stats. The difference there is that Axis Blade's ability is almost good enough to compensate for its low stats (it's Lightning's third-best weapon), whereas Quick Stagger... does almost nothing.
 
tiornys said:
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The Lionheart's other strength comes from having balanced stats, something that the Gladius nor Edged Carbine is going to offer. The special perks on both Gladius and Edged Carbine are going to be a waste in most situations, since Lightning isn't a go to Sentinel character in the first place. If any player is concerned with raw stats, they would probably be using the Hauteclaire upgrades since the cap ends up being 711 STR and MAG while having a Stagger Lock ability. Additional STR and MAG start to lose importance once you are able to hit cap damage anyway, which I don't have a problem with doing with the Lionheart upgrades on foes where cap damage matters.

latest

The Lionheart is about speed killing potential. A lot of foddler fights will end up dead before the ability gets usage, but for enemies like Neochu or Tonberry it can make a dragged out fight a lot shorter.
 
Balanced stats is actually a weakness, not a strength. Lightning is best deployed as an AI-controlled character, and she functions best as an AI RAV when her stats are sufficiently unbalanced to make her use all spells or all -strikes instead of alternating between them. I'm not sure what "special perks" of Gladius and Edged Carbine you're thinking of in relation to being a Sentinel, but they don't really have any special properties other than high spikes in STR or MAG respectively.

With that said, if you're controlling Lightning or otherwise desire balanced stats despite the mild drawback, Axis Blade, Blazefire Saber and (as you mentioned) Hauteclaire are all superior to Lionheart.

Genji Glove obviates the damage cap, unless you meant to say that you're consistently hitting the 999,999 damage cap, in which case you should prove it because I don't believe that. Also, it's one thing to consistently hit the damage cap with single-target attacks against a staggered enemy with lots of buffs and debuffs in play, and another to be maximizing your damage with AoE attacks and without needing to stagger your enemies.

I agree that enemies like Neochu and Tonberry are the type that make Lionheart's ability potentially worthwhile, but the fastest/best strategies against those enemies either involve Random: Instant Chain, in which case Quick Stagger does nothing (any hit staggers after R: IC triggers), or--if you want a consistent strategy--don't involve staggering at all, in which case Quick Stagger still does nothing. There's some merit to the idea that Lionheart gets you higher stats when synthesizing Random: Instant Chain vs. Gladius or Edged Carbine, but that vanishes as soon as you upgrade to tier 3.

Lionheart does have a niche--it's good at instantly and consistently staggering higher chain enemies after a preempt, as seen here--but outside of that niche it's just a sub-par, highly overrated weapon.
 
tiornys said:
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My fault on the special properties; I was reading the wrong aspect of the descriptions of them. Balanced stats aren't a weakness at all. Sometimes attacking at a point blank range is better, and sometimes attacking from a range is better with Claire. It varies depending on the situation. Hitting the damage cap isn't necessary in most cases since most enemies won't have the HP to survive the staggering/damage process in the first place.

I agree on the random chain aspect, which is something that can become an ability of the Lionheart weapon with less items involved. Buffing and debuffing is just a part of the game. Both come in handy, especially Poison with high HP foes that it'll work on.

It's been 5+ years since I finished the game, but I find it odd you would want to gimp your own STR or MAG, when Claire is by default a balanced offensive character. A fun reminder: Using Army of One as a Com provides more damage than in a Rav state. Army Of One isn't based on magic, but rather strength. In the event an AI is running her, I'd prefer to have the options left open for both melee and range without either getting gimped.

When you get to endgame, most of your grinding is going to consist of killing the admantortoise things over and over again. Those are pretty much single encounters for the most part. Once your weapons get maxed, most enemies get annihilated within a minute.
 
Dang, 6 years already. While my enthusiasm for the game has decreased over the years, I'll never forget the feeling of unboxing FFXIII along with my PS3 and playing it for the first time after years of anticipation. That was the first console I ever bought with my own money, and FFXIII truly gave me that feeling of stepping into the future of gaming. The graphics and music were just wonderful for the time. I didn't even notice how shallow the actual gameplay was/is because I was too busy enjoying the atmosphere of the world. No matter how much hate it gets I will always remember it fondly for the anticipation and first gameplay experience it gave me.
 
I was enchanted by the graphics and the anticipation fever as well. I think I reached the first Barthandelus fight, died a good number of times to that absurd difficulty spike (the whole Destrudo mechanic was a cheap challenge that went against what I deemed to be common sense) and never did complete the game until several months later.

FFXIII did a good number on me. On one hand, I am now way too critical of any perceived facet of poor writing and nonsensical plot threads, but at the same time, it was a good lesson to me that people are not infallible. That child-like notion that your favourite company will always land hits and cannot possibly ever disappoint a fan was finally stripped from me and I learnt to never let hype completely dictate me.

FFXIII, you could have been so much more. You had a solid background mythology. You seemed to have the power of what was next-gen at the time to capture our imaginations. Pulse could have been our oyster. Instead, you somehow found yourself marred by some of the worst writing in the history of fiction (no hyperbole on my part; I genuine believe this) that breaks my suspension of disbelief and its own internal logic towards the end. You found yourself the victim from the very outset to a company that vainly attempted to get a proprietary engine built and in working order, but served only to hinder the progress of the game's development considerably. And fundamentally, they didn't even know how the game would even play until roughly a year before its release in Japan.

But, FFXIII has its fans and its notoriety as a poor game is entirely subjective. And this was 2010, meaning in the same year, Square Enix also released Final Fantasy XIV 1.0. I will be surprised if that game had ANY fans at release, because it was considered more or less objectively terrible. Rushed out to grab a piece of the MMO pie before WoW: Cataclysm. Unoptimised and on an engine that couldn't properly cope with MMOs. Feedback from alpha and beta essentially ignored. Utterly damaged the FF franchise name. Dear lord, what a disastrous year for the company.

6 years ago: Square realised they were in utter deep shit.
 
FinalxxSin said:
It's been 5+ years since I finished the game, but I find it odd you would want to gimp your own STR or MAG, when Claire is by default a balanced offensive character.
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It's very rare to find an encounter where I care about both Strength and Magic for damage output during that encounter. For most fights, as long as I have one of them, I'm good. In between fights, I can easily swap weapons. The benefit? Faster chain building because of animation quirks. When looking to optimize your play, that's an edge that is well worth seeking out.
 
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