Monday, July 26, 2010

Final Fantasy XIII

So, I bought the game just DAYS before deploying to Iraq...again. I was able to get fairly far (got to virtually the end of disc 2 out of 3 disks...Yes, the game for the xbox 360 has 3 disks!) Once I got to Iraq and my xbox360 shipped out (thank you honey bunny), I was able to resume where I left off. Well, at the end of Chapter 9 is a Boss, who I might add, is NO JOKE. Anyone who is familiar with the Final Fantasy Series knows that Bosses towards the end start getting ridiculously hard. This guy was no joke. He has 4 Armor "Heads", as well as the main body. The 'heads' each have 6,000hp (hit points/health), and the body has a WHOPPING 420,000 HP. Now mind you that my characters are only at like 1200hp since I had been holding my own fairly well up to this point. After 6 FAILED attempts, I was ready to say fuck this game and call it a lost cause. Well after reading up on ways to defeat him and finally figuring out how to actually make money (gil) in the game, I was able to face him for one last attempt. Let's just say that I was able to wipe the battlefield with him. Here is my full report on how to beat the Chapter 9 Boss, Barthandelus.

I used Light/Sazh/Hope combo. Each character had maxed out their jobs up to this point and I had gone on to also upgrade Light's Gladius (gunsword) to Lvl 15 and also put accessories on the characters to boost their stats (gave Hope a Gold Bangle I upgraded to Level 4 which adds an additional 290Hp to his total health. My starting combo paradigm was COM/SYN/MED. I used librascope so that my characters would know all the weaknesses and strengths the boss had. I used Light's Blitz attack continuously while Sazh buffed my characters up to make them resistant to elemental damage as well as cast bravery/faith/haste on them as well. Hope simply kept my characters health up through constant Cura's. After getting buffed up, I swapped paradigms to rotate between Tri-Disaster (RAV/RAV/RAV) and Relentless Assault (COM/RAV/RAV). Once I had all 4 heads sent packing home, I pounded away the main body while switching every 5-6 seconds between RAV/RAV/RAV and COM/RAV/RAV, with the occasional healing with my Convalescence (MED/SYN/MED). Every time he casts Destructo, I pounded him to the mini-staggering, and then managed to fully stagger him which only allowed him to hit me with a measly 6 non-elemental strikes. I kept up that 3 Paradigm routine until he was depleted of all health. I managed to do this in 9 min, 28 seconds (out of a target Time of 11 min, 02 seconds). I only got a 3-star rating, but I am VERY proud of myself. But yea, this difficulty jump was RIDICULOUS.