FFXIII’s eleventh chapter was the first one to take place on Gran Pulse, the supposed source of all evil to the residents of the pampered world that floats above it, Cocoon, home to millions of people all doomed to be killed in order to summon back their maker god.
They don’t know that, yet. In chapter 12, well… maybe they’re going to have a little bit of an idea.
Gran Pulse is a wide open space full of mountainous mobs and deep dungeons punctuated by the occasional boss fight. It was also a place to grind experience to unlock more nodes in the Crystarium, this game’s version of the job system. At the beginning of the chapter, the game opened up not only the landscape, but the Crystarium, allowing all of our l’Cie to dabble in all available jobs.
The strategy guide was helpful, but not as helpful as it might have been. The official strategy guide always urges a cautious approach. A cautious approach is a slow approach. When we met Barthandelus at the end of the chapter, the guide suggested keeping Fang as a tank with the non-damaging Sentinel job, while Hope and Lightning switched in and out of healing mode.
This was almost successful. Bart was on a sliver of health when the Doom he had cast on us killed us all.
The folks on the internet always seem to suggest never using the Sentinel role at all. A common suggestion was to focus on damage, swapping in buffing and debuffing when necessary, and always keeping someone in the healer role. Keeping Bart debuffed and us buffed turned out to be key. When the final stagger hit, we downed him before he even had a chance to cast Doom.
Unlike our first encounter with the fal’Cie, we weren’t able to shut down the heads, and they fired at us continually through the entire fight.
Once defeated, Bart morphed back into his human form and pronounced us ready to head back to Cocoon, transform into Ragnarok and bring the whole damned world crashing down onto Gran Pulse, a world the Pulse fal’Cie has kindly already cleared of human life by making the entire population into l’Cie, leaving only the undead cie’Eth to show they ever existed. Along with Pulse natives Fang and Vanille, of course, who rode out the centuries as crystals themselves.
With little choice, the l’Cie returned to Cocoon on the airship Bart kindly provided them.
When they return, they interrupt Bart’s puppet ruler, Cid Raines, as he is urging Cocoon to fear Pulse and be ready to fight and die… which turns out to be the prelude to a car race in the capital city! Interrupted by the sudden crashing of the l’Cie airship, with all the l’Cie tumbling out and using their Eidolons to save the racers and restore order. The thanks of the population turn to horror when a TV camera focuses in on Snow’s very much active l’Cie brand.
As this happens, Raines considers this duty of his his final duty, and urges his chief lieutenant to put him out of his misery. He doesn’t want to live as a puppet of a fal’Cie. Word comes that Pulse is attacking, using portals to ship in giant monsters from what they assume is the world below, but are actually from an Ark hidden centuries ago by the Sanctum fal’Cie beneath the capital city itself.
It’s all the same to the frightened populace; they scream and run in terror from the giant monsters.
And that’s how Chapter 12 begins.
I never realized how much I really appreciated the integrated screen shot/streaming capability in the PS4 and PS5. In order to capture PS3 gameplay, I had to route the HDMI output to a HDMI/USB-C capture dongle, then play the game using OBS. It worked, sure, but it would be nice to have this all built in. I’m glad they have it now.
