If you enjoyed the combat in FFXIII, yes, you will enjoy the second one, because they streamlined it and it's better. The visuals and music are both just as good. I really enjoy the time travelling and artifact seeking.
+1
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
edited December 2015
collection stuff doesn't really matter for the most part
So, when you're looking at the segment map, you're going to see a "card" with an icon on each hex
That icon represents the action that will "complete" the segment recon for that hex, which raises your survey percent
- There is a tyrant in this segment that you need to kill, you can give these a shot if you're close to the level of the tyrant you're fighting, but often these will have to be saved for later
- There's a treasure here that needs to be retrieved using the Mechanical, Archeological, or Biological field skills.
- This is the destination for a normal mission, completing that mission whatever it may be will complete this segment.
- Similar to the above, but it's the destination for an affinity mission.
- This icon represents a "completed" segment, which is contributing toward your survey percent.
EDIT: Oh, and the most obvious one, - Go drop a probe! This is where most of your survey percent will come from, and probably the way you should be trying to increase your survey percent, if you're actively trying to raise it.
If you like the combat of FF13, then you'll like the combat of FF13-2 because it for one makes switching paradigms quicker and seamless with no cutaways to show each character switching individually for the first switch of the fight.
You're given a chance to take a swipe at enemies that appear on the map and if you hit them, then the battle starts off with all of your party members given Haste, and you get a free hit in on all of the enemies that does decent damage to them and increases their stagger gauge to 50% right off the bat.
You only play as Serah and Noel, however your third party member spot is taken up by monsters you can catch when you defeat them in battle. Each monster has a set role and you can have 3 of them set to that third party member slot at once, so you can switch them in and out by changing your paradigm.
There's also a lot of DLC that offers other characters to be recruited and used in that spot. There's Lightning as a Ravager in her FF13 form, Captain Amodar as a Commando, Omega Weapon, Jhil Nabaat, Gilgamesh, Ultros, Snow, and a Commando version of Lightning in her fancy new armor.
So if you're cool with playing as Serah and this new guy Noel and having monsters and DLC alternate reality versions of people as potential third party members then I'll move on to the structure of the world of the game.
FF13-2s world is divided up into zones that you can access from a menu and since the plot deals with time travel one particular location may have multiple spots on this menu because you can visit it in various time periods or alternate realities where things about the environment, history, enemies, and npcs will be different.
The *best* part of FF13-2 in my opinion is that after you do the story for a zone you can with the click of a button, reset the zone from the menu and do the story over again if you want to, at any time. You don't have to wait for an entire second playthrough in a New Game+ situation. You can literally just reset any area and experience that particular part of the story again, whenever you want.
The game is also not completely linear. Sometimes going into one area will open up time portals to two or three new places and you can do them in whatever order you want.
The only complaint I have with the game is that Crystarium leveling system. They took something that wasn't broken and tried to fix it and in the process made a system where you can actually fuck yourself over stat wise if you're not paying attention. The way it works now is that both main characters still have a Crystarium map with nodes to go through but the game uses the same map for every job at the same time divided up into levels consisting of large nodes and small nodes. Each level takes a total amount of points to get to the end of, and when you do you get to choose a bonus for the character like unlocking a new role, or getting a boost to a previous one, or adding another ATB gauge, then the map resets and you start all over and each node now just costs slightly more CP then before.
The way this works is, when you open up the menu to level a role you're faced with this empty map and a list of all of your available roles, and you pick which one you want to level. Each role will have a little menu telling you the next couple of abilities it will learn as you level it, and each time you level a role you're moved one space along this map.
The problem I have with this is that the large nodes on the map grant stat bonuses based on which Role you leveled when you passed through it. If you moved through it leveling a Commando, then you'll get a bonus to your strength, Ravager gets a bonus to Magic, Sentinels get bonuses to HP and Synergists and Sabatours get bonuses to either Magic or Strength depending on whether their level was raised to an even number or an odd number when passing through said large node.
So basically if you want to get the most out of Serah and Noels natural stat progression then you need to take advantage of these bonuses and it forces you to alternate leveling roles whether you want to or not. So you can hit all of the large nodes with Ravager for Serah at first and Commando as Noel at first, meaning you ideally need to level other classes through the smaller ones, and Synergist and Sabatour through a large one in a way that makes sure you hit the large ones when their levels are even or odd depending.
Its really convoluted and in the end if not done properly can make a pretty significant difference in your stats. Fortunately there are guides to follow that tell you which order to level in but that kind of defeats the purpose of offering what should be total customization of each character.
+1
DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
i promise I'm not trying to poopoo on xcx and I'm just as surprised that this is the experience I am having with it as anyone else
Surprised how?
Did you read up on the game at all beforehand? The stuff you are having trouble with is the same stuff most reviews (even the positive ones) had issues with and it has been discussed in here and the G&T thread.
People who didn't really dig the first game tend to like the second a lot more. That's mostly because it adds towns and a bunch of optional exploration content, but the combat improvements are mostly nice as well. The gotta-catch-em-all is strong here too; while leveling Serah and Noel is, to be blunt, stupid, the monster system is really neat.
The soundtrack is way more experimental and off-beat. You'll love or hate it.
The biggest problem with the sequel, though, is the difficulty. It's almost nonexistent, which is a huge let-down. The battle improvements are appreciated, but they're barely necessary as you can tri-Commando your way through over half the fights. It's now a minority of monsters that require using Break gauge, but you still heal to full after every battle. This makes fighting largely pointless and even detrimental since it can overpower you easily. But it's also required for recruiting monsters, so you'll rarely want to avoid it anyway.
The story is also mixed. The upsides are really high, and it features one of the greatest villains in video games. But it also spends a lot of time on weird side-stories that drag, losing all the intensity that the original offered. Serah is also a fairly bland protagonist, though Noel is surprisingly good.
For me these downsides are fairly crippling. While zipping around time is wonderfully reminiscent of Chrono Trigger, the downsides keep it from dethroning the original XIII's position as greatest JRPG. It's still better than most, but if you're hunting for a challenge you'll have to intentionally avoid leveling up and try to avoid lots of the pointless random battles.
Fleur de Alys on
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
If you're just looking to run through story missions
Just be aware that they represent a pretty small portion of the content, and the survey requirements basically assume you're doing a healthy amount of side questing in-between
i felt like I was though before it became a problem, was the issue I was having
the collection stuff didn't feel super in my control but I was hitting every doodad between points A and B hoping, everything with an actual objective that wasn't "go die to that tyrant, idiot" I completed.
We were in the exact same spot in the exact same timeframe, you and I
I got to that part and had like 13.5%, and at the time I thought that the only way to raise the survey rate was to plant probes, so I covered the entire area that I could reasonably plant probes on and ended at like 14.8%
And at one point I just started heading to the nearest one north of where I was, through what I thought was the most easily-avoidable collection of enemies that would one-shot me. It worked, too, until I came to a long bridge that had two Grex sentries that were a full twenty levels above me.
That's when I figured out that Shadowrunner works outside of combat if you start a fight by using it without being detected and then cancel out. Useful stuff!
If it makes you feel better, continue playing like you are now and that will never come up again. That one moment, right there? It's poorly balanced compared to the rest of the game. It is an anomaly with regards to wanting to progress the main quest.
k i managed it by finding enough treasures apparently or something but that was mostly frustrating and time consuming
if I get stonewalled like that again I'm probably calling it because I thoroughly disliked what they were asking me to do
Next time you're asked to do that you'll have your skell
It's still a fucking dumb way to do it. Don't force me to randomly explore around the map to get to the next mission. If you want to gate it just use level.
i promise I'm not trying to poopoo on xcx and I'm just as surprised that this is the experience I am having with it as anyone else
Don't worry, while I'm still trucking through the game and there are things I like about it I'm not having a fantastic experience either. It's not, like, horrible, but I keep seeing new game decisions and going "why?"
If you're just looking to run through story missions
Just be aware that they represent a pretty small portion of the content, and the survey requirements basically assume you're doing a healthy amount of side questing in-between
i felt like I was though before it became a problem, was the issue I was having
the collection stuff didn't feel super in my control but I was hitting every doodad between points A and B hoping, everything with an actual objective that wasn't "go die to that tyrant, idiot" I completed.
We were in the exact same spot in the exact same timeframe, you and I
I got to that part and had like 13.5%, and at the time I thought that the only way to raise the survey rate was to plant probes, so I covered the entire area that I could reasonably plant probes on and ended at like 14.8%
And at one point I just started heading to the nearest one north of where I was, through what I thought was the most easily-avoidable collection of enemies that would one-shot me. It worked, too, until I came to a long bridge that had two Grex sentries that were a full twenty levels above me.
That's when I figured out that Shadowrunner works outside of combat if you start a fight by using it without being detected and then cancel out. Useful stuff!
If it makes you feel better, continue playing like you are now and that will never come up again. That one moment, right there? It's poorly balanced compared to the rest of the game. It is an anomaly with regards to wanting to progress the main quest.
i promise I'm not trying to poopoo on xcx and I'm just as surprised that this is the experience I am having with it as anyone else
Man there ain't nothing bad about voicing your concerns or complaints
That part isn't well-designed, as near as I can tell, and your reaction to it is justified as all get-out
I actually know exactly which bridge you're talking about, I'll keep that in mind when I get my class level higher for shadowrunner (I should be close unless I just forgot that I did)
k i managed it by finding enough treasures apparently or something but that was mostly frustrating and time consuming
if I get stonewalled like that again I'm probably calling it because I thoroughly disliked what they were asking me to do
Next time you're asked to do that you'll have your skell
It's still a fucking dumb way to do it. Don't force me to randomly explore around the map to get to the next mission. If you want to gate it just use level.
i promise I'm not trying to poopoo on xcx and I'm just as surprised that this is the experience I am having with it as anyone else
Don't worry, while I'm still trucking through the game and there are things I like about it I'm not having a fantastic experience either. It's not, like, horrible, but I keep seeing new game decisions and going "why?"
Nah in principle I like gating things behind your exploration of the map in a game that's so much about doing sidemissions
Just that one moment should have had its progress requirement cranked back to like, 12 or 13%, not 15
Psycho Launchers are pretty great it seems; any weapon seems pretty damn good, it's just about finding a decent synergy for whatever style you want to use
If you're just looking to run through story missions
Just be aware that they represent a pretty small portion of the content, and the survey requirements basically assume you're doing a healthy amount of side questing in-between
i felt like I was though before it became a problem, was the issue I was having
the collection stuff didn't feel super in my control but I was hitting every doodad between points A and B hoping, everything with an actual objective that wasn't "go die to that tyrant, idiot" I completed.
We were in the exact same spot in the exact same timeframe, you and I
I got to that part and had like 13.5%, and at the time I thought that the only way to raise the survey rate was to plant probes, so I covered the entire area that I could reasonably plant probes on and ended at like 14.8%
And at one point I just started heading to the nearest one north of where I was, through what I thought was the most easily-avoidable collection of enemies that would one-shot me. It worked, too, until I came to a long bridge that had two Grex sentries that were a full twenty levels above me.
That's when I figured out that Shadowrunner works outside of combat if you start a fight by using it without being detected and then cancel out. Useful stuff!
If it makes you feel better, continue playing like you are now and that will never come up again. That one moment, right there? It's poorly balanced compared to the rest of the game. It is an anomaly with regards to wanting to progress the main quest.
i promise I'm not trying to poopoo on xcx and I'm just as surprised that this is the experience I am having with it as anyone else
Man there ain't nothing bad about voicing your concerns or complaints
That part isn't well-designed, as near as I can tell, and your reaction to it is justified as all get-out
I actually know exactly which bridge you're talking about, I'll keep that in mind when I get my class level higher for shadowrunner (I should be close unless I just forgot that I did)
If you just run past and jump right as you pass them so you get flinched further away, then cancel and keep running, you'll reach the respawn zone on the other side so when they murder you, you'll spawn on the ridge behind them and safe.
That's how I did it because finesse is for the birds.
First time you get your flight module, take your time and fly around uninterrupted for a bit
That flight song gets so good
Also a good tip is that skell fuel will automatically refill while the game is turned off. Feel free to empty your tank before you call it quits for the evening, because it will be full when you get back
@Blackbeard7 I'm going to warn you ahead of time that Chapter 5 is hard. There's a specific route the game wants you to take to go around to all the bases, but I never quite figured it out. There's a couple of places where you will nearly need to use Shadowrunner to get past some of the pugiliths there. You'll be OK to die if you can make it past them to some landmarks, but go around with a full stock of TP just so you can stealth punch it if you need to
Your sole focus in that mission should be killing the boss targets and setting down what probes you can. Do not worry about the scrub tier enemies unless you are sure you can kill them without alerting the pugiliths. You need the experience but those robots will ruin your day
Edit: Also if you're caught in an electrical storm either take shelter in a cave or fast travel, which resets the weather
Chapter 5 isn't bad when you realize that running away from absolutely every regular encounter in the game is trivially easy unless the enemy is capable of one shotting you
And even then it's still extremely possible because enemies will typically focus on your other party members as you haul ass away and kill them all before focusing on you, by which time you'll be well far enough away to leave combat.
there are some dudes like 20 levels higher than me in this river in noctiwhatever for the first mission into there and I don't see a way around them nor can I activate shadowrunner in the water
i found a rock to stand on and activate shadowrunner and got around them
then found a tyrant that was a level below me and gave fighting it a shot, and it seemed like a pretty fair fight until it did *something* that instagibbed half the party
but I think I have a fast travel point so we good I guess
i bumbled off a cliff because I managed to aggro something I didn't know was there way above my level, saw some big robot looking thing in the water and approached it wondering what it was
i found a rock to stand on and activate shadowrunner and got around them
then found a tyrant that was a level below me and gave fighting it a shot, and it seemed like a pretty fair fight until it did *something* that instagibbed half the party
but I think I have a fast travel point so we good I guess
That's the part where everyone in Mira can hear a low screeching sound that just keeps getting louder as I charge from death straight at the tyrant to take another crack at it as many times as needed.
fight with goetia, i'm getting her mooks down fine and then she slowly wears us down and I dont feel like this game gives adequate feedback re: why i died
fight with goetia, i'm getting her mooks down fine and then she slowly wears us down and I dont feel like this game gives adequate feedback re: why i died
any tips on this fight?
I super cheesed it with the javelin lightning resistance aura. Huzzah.
There is a lightning damage aura I'm pretty sure you want to back out of and switch to ranged normally, though.
Alternatively make sure you're leveling up your skills and arts. BP is fairly easy to get and if you dump a couple levels into Lin's taunt it lowers the cool down a ton and she can spam it. Then you can just save up tp to revive her if she drops.
Posts
If you enjoyed the combat in FFXIII, yes, you will enjoy the second one, because they streamlined it and it's better. The visuals and music are both just as good. I really enjoy the time travelling and artifact seeking.
So, when you're looking at the segment map, you're going to see a "card" with an icon on each hex
That icon represents the action that will "complete" the segment recon for that hex, which raises your survey percent
EDIT: Oh, and the most obvious one,
Yup, gonna go waaaaaay around him.
If there are multiple treasures in that segment, I believe it only refers to a specific one in that segment, but you have no real way of knowing which
If you like the combat of FF13, then you'll like the combat of FF13-2 because it for one makes switching paradigms quicker and seamless with no cutaways to show each character switching individually for the first switch of the fight.
You're given a chance to take a swipe at enemies that appear on the map and if you hit them, then the battle starts off with all of your party members given Haste, and you get a free hit in on all of the enemies that does decent damage to them and increases their stagger gauge to 50% right off the bat.
You only play as Serah and Noel, however your third party member spot is taken up by monsters you can catch when you defeat them in battle. Each monster has a set role and you can have 3 of them set to that third party member slot at once, so you can switch them in and out by changing your paradigm.
There's also a lot of DLC that offers other characters to be recruited and used in that spot. There's Lightning as a Ravager in her FF13 form, Captain Amodar as a Commando, Omega Weapon, Jhil Nabaat, Gilgamesh, Ultros, Snow, and a Commando version of Lightning in her fancy new armor.
So if you're cool with playing as Serah and this new guy Noel and having monsters and DLC alternate reality versions of people as potential third party members then I'll move on to the structure of the world of the game.
FF13-2s world is divided up into zones that you can access from a menu and since the plot deals with time travel one particular location may have multiple spots on this menu because you can visit it in various time periods or alternate realities where things about the environment, history, enemies, and npcs will be different.
The *best* part of FF13-2 in my opinion is that after you do the story for a zone you can with the click of a button, reset the zone from the menu and do the story over again if you want to, at any time. You don't have to wait for an entire second playthrough in a New Game+ situation. You can literally just reset any area and experience that particular part of the story again, whenever you want.
The game is also not completely linear. Sometimes going into one area will open up time portals to two or three new places and you can do them in whatever order you want.
The only complaint I have with the game is that Crystarium leveling system. They took something that wasn't broken and tried to fix it and in the process made a system where you can actually fuck yourself over stat wise if you're not paying attention. The way it works now is that both main characters still have a Crystarium map with nodes to go through but the game uses the same map for every job at the same time divided up into levels consisting of large nodes and small nodes. Each level takes a total amount of points to get to the end of, and when you do you get to choose a bonus for the character like unlocking a new role, or getting a boost to a previous one, or adding another ATB gauge, then the map resets and you start all over and each node now just costs slightly more CP then before.
The way this works is, when you open up the menu to level a role you're faced with this empty map and a list of all of your available roles, and you pick which one you want to level. Each role will have a little menu telling you the next couple of abilities it will learn as you level it, and each time you level a role you're moved one space along this map.
The problem I have with this is that the large nodes on the map grant stat bonuses based on which Role you leveled when you passed through it. If you moved through it leveling a Commando, then you'll get a bonus to your strength, Ravager gets a bonus to Magic, Sentinels get bonuses to HP and Synergists and Sabatours get bonuses to either Magic or Strength depending on whether their level was raised to an even number or an odd number when passing through said large node.
So basically if you want to get the most out of Serah and Noels natural stat progression then you need to take advantage of these bonuses and it forces you to alternate leveling roles whether you want to or not. So you can hit all of the large nodes with Ravager for Serah at first and Commando as Noel at first, meaning you ideally need to level other classes through the smaller ones, and Synergist and Sabatour through a large one in a way that makes sure you hit the large ones when their levels are even or odd depending.
Its really convoluted and in the end if not done properly can make a pretty significant difference in your stats. Fortunately there are guides to follow that tell you which order to level in but that kind of defeats the purpose of offering what should be total customization of each character.
Surprised how?
Did you read up on the game at all beforehand? The stuff you are having trouble with is the same stuff most reviews (even the positive ones) had issues with and it has been discussed in here and the G&T thread.
There's a high level monkey type dude that is vision aggressive and he never attacks me.
Probably because he can't actually see me when I'm on foot.
Definitely
it's the sound ones that'll fuck you up
People who didn't really dig the first game tend to like the second a lot more. That's mostly because it adds towns and a bunch of optional exploration content, but the combat improvements are mostly nice as well. The gotta-catch-em-all is strong here too; while leveling Serah and Noel is, to be blunt, stupid, the monster system is really neat.
The soundtrack is way more experimental and off-beat. You'll love or hate it.
The biggest problem with the sequel, though, is the difficulty. It's almost nonexistent, which is a huge let-down. The battle improvements are appreciated, but they're barely necessary as you can tri-Commando your way through over half the fights. It's now a minority of monsters that require using Break gauge, but you still heal to full after every battle. This makes fighting largely pointless and even detrimental since it can overpower you easily. But it's also required for recruiting monsters, so you'll rarely want to avoid it anyway.
The story is also mixed. The upsides are really high, and it features one of the greatest villains in video games. But it also spends a lot of time on weird side-stories that drag, losing all the intensity that the original offered. Serah is also a fairly bland protagonist, though Noel is surprisingly good.
For me these downsides are fairly crippling. While zipping around time is wonderfully reminiscent of Chrono Trigger, the downsides keep it from dethroning the original XIII's position as greatest JRPG. It's still better than most, but if you're hunting for a challenge you'll have to intentionally avoid leveling up and try to avoid lots of the pointless random battles.
We were in the exact same spot in the exact same timeframe, you and I
I got to that part and had like 13.5%, and at the time I thought that the only way to raise the survey rate was to plant probes, so I covered the entire area that I could reasonably plant probes on and ended at like 14.8%
And at one point I just started heading to the nearest one north of where I was, through what I thought was the most easily-avoidable collection of enemies that would one-shot me. It worked, too, until I came to a long bridge that had two Grex sentries that were a full twenty levels above me.
That's when I figured out that Shadowrunner works outside of combat if you start a fight by using it without being detected and then cancel out. Useful stuff!
If it makes you feel better, continue playing like you are now and that will never come up again. That one moment, right there? It's poorly balanced compared to the rest of the game. It is an anomaly with regards to wanting to progress the main quest.
Man there ain't nothing bad about voicing your concerns or complaints
That part isn't well-designed, as near as I can tell, and your reaction to it is justified as all get-out
It's still a fucking dumb way to do it. Don't force me to randomly explore around the map to get to the next mission. If you want to gate it just use level. Don't worry, while I'm still trucking through the game and there are things I like about it I'm not having a fantastic experience either. It's not, like, horrible, but I keep seeing new game decisions and going "why?"
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
I should probably play some more fallout before starting 13-2 though
I actually know exactly which bridge you're talking about, I'll keep that in mind when I get my class level higher for shadowrunner (I should be close unless I just forgot that I did)
Nah in principle I like gating things behind your exploration of the map in a game that's so much about doing sidemissions
Just that one moment should have had its progress requirement cranked back to like, 12 or 13%, not 15
I wish they had better arts so I could use them instead of the assault rifle!
Boy is this ever true for my style, though
Baller baller baller, gonna use that stuff in Overdrive
If you just run past and jump right as you pass them so you get flinched further away, then cancel and keep running, you'll reach the respawn zone on the other side so when they murder you, you'll spawn on the ridge behind them and safe.
That's how I did it because finesse is for the birds.
Although, skells are amazing so it balanced out
That flight song gets so good
Also a good tip is that skell fuel will automatically refill while the game is turned off. Feel free to empty your tank before you call it quits for the evening, because it will be full when you get back
it sounds like its something waiting to be picked up by me but its not like I was told about them in game
Your sole focus in that mission should be killing the boss targets and setting down what probes you can. Do not worry about the scrub tier enemies unless you are sure you can kill them without alerting the pugiliths. You need the experience but those robots will ruin your day
Edit: Also if you're caught in an electrical storm either take shelter in a cave or fast travel, which resets the weather
And even then it's still extremely possible because enemies will typically focus on your other party members as you haul ass away and kill them all before focusing on you, by which time you'll be well far enough away to leave combat.
I'm a little baffled
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
then found a tyrant that was a level below me and gave fighting it a shot, and it seemed like a pretty fair fight until it did *something* that instagibbed half the party
but I think I have a fast travel point so we good I guess
level 60, Go-Rha, The Guardian Deity
well at least it was a comical death
It's great
I actually managed to live, somehow.
That's the part where everyone in Mira can hear a low screeching sound that just keeps getting louder as I charge from death straight at the tyrant to take another crack at it as many times as needed.
any tips on this fight?
There is a lightning damage aura I'm pretty sure you want to back out of and switch to ranged normally, though.
Alternatively make sure you're leveling up your skills and arts. BP is fairly easy to get and if you dump a couple levels into Lin's taunt it lowers the cool down a ton and she can spam it. Then you can just save up tp to revive her if she drops.