Final Fantasy XIII-2 -Official Topic- (Spoilers)

Mai Valentine said:

I am curious how easy/hard it is to get the first ending, which I guess is the official one. I remember when I played FFX-2 that I followed the strategy guide pretty much the whole way through, because I wanted a specific ending.

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Well in the case of XIII-2 things don't seem to be divided as "good ending/true ending/bad ending" but rather alternate endings or what ifs. since the game is pretty short (for an RPG anyway) I'll probably play through it and get whatever I get

So is anyone else picking this up tomorrow besides me? I'm super excited. I have to work so I can't pick it up until afterwards, but I'm probably going to play all evening. :lol

Mai Valentine said:

So is anyone else picking this up tomorrow besides me? I'm super excited. I have to work so I can't pick it up until afterwards, but I'm probably going to play all evening. :lol

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I am definitely picking it up tonight at a midnight release my gamestop is having. I really want to play this for gameplay alone. Even if the story doesn't live up to time traveling standards of today I still want to play through the game

The GameStop I normally get games from isn't doing a midnight release. But even if they were, I preordered from Best Buy to get that awesome book. :lol

Tomorrow I have to work, so I can't pick up the game until after. But I will probably play it all evening.

I'm getting in the mail from Gamefly in the next few days. :3

Ok so I've put a pretty solid four hours in so far and I have to say, IMO the demo did not do it justice. It makes a lot more sense, for one thing, starting from the beginning of the game instead of three hours into it (which is about where the demo starts you).

Initially I had dismissed Cait Sith because its feral attack is kind of weak. But then I realized that it was only at the first stage. So maybe it will become more useful. And maybe it won't, but I'm excited to find out, either way.

Mai Valentine said:

Ok so I've put a pretty solid four hours in so far and I have to say, IMO the demo did not do it justice. It makes a lot more sense, for one thing, starting from the beginning of the game instead of three hours into it (which is about where the demo starts you).

Initially I had dismissed Cait Sith because its feral attack is kind of weak. But then I realized that it was only at the first stage. So maybe it will become more useful. And maybe it won't, but I'm excited to find out, either way.

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I am having difficulty figuring out how exactly to raise my monsters. For one I know medic/Sabouteur/Synergist monsters need magic as their main stat so I need to get a lot of mana items. But it varies with Ravagers and commandos. what about sentinel monsters? what stat is the best to raise for them?

as far as feral links go I don't think you should be using Caith Sith for one. He is a defensive/Medic monster which specializes in curse resistance and healing, however his Feral link uses strenght which makes it pretty crappy unfortunately. I came to realize the way this game handles monster raisin is almost exactly as pokemon, you gotta figure out what the main stat for each monster is and then raise it as much as possible. The best monsters will use their best stat as their main form of attack/feral link.

In other words.....the monster system is not there for padding, it really is an important part of the game's system and it adds a lot of layers of team building and strategy to the mix

Yeah I don't think I'll keep using Cait Sith once Serah learns more Medic skills. Unlike the demo, though, Serah didn't start out with medic so I was like...Oh crap I actually kind of need Cait Sith now. :lol

Which monsters are good in the early part of the game?

Mai Valentine said:

Yeah I don't think I'll keep using Cait Sith once Serah learns more Medic skills. Unlike the demo, though, Serah didn't start out with medic so I was like...Oh crap I actually kind of need Cait Sith now. :lol

Which monsters are good in the early part of the game?

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Don't worry too much about which monsters you pick earlier in the game. Unlike pokemon you don't have to pick a team right away from the start. This is more like tales of symphonia 2 (actually this whole game feels like ToS2) in the sense that at first you want the monsters that have the abilities you need, caith sith is one of them. The difference in this game is that you will want to use these monsters as "food" for better monsters in the future to transfer over the abilities they learn on to other more powerful ones.

Zidart said:

Don't worry too much about which monsters you pick earlier in the game. Unlike pokemon you don't have to pick a team right away from the start. This is more like tales of symphonia 2 (actually this whole game feels like ToS2) in the sense that at first you want the monsters that have the abilities you need, caith sith is one of them. The difference in this game is that you will want to use these monsters as "food" for better monsters in the future to transfer over the abilities they learn on to other more powerful ones.

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So basically, the monster stuff is kind of like a combination of ToS2 and SMT: Devil Survivor? :lol

I am waiting for my strat guide to get here so I can look it up in more detail.

Mai Valentine said:

So basically, the monster stuff is kind of like a combination of ToS2 and SMT: Devil Survivor? :lol

I am waiting for my strat guide to get here so I can look it up in more detail.

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Pretty much xD. And when you get the strat guide can you let me know which 9 monsters are unique? I read on forums that there are 9 unique monsters that once you infuse them with another monster they are gone for good D=. But I can't find a list of those 9 monsters....

though to be honest i've been trying to avoid spoilers like the plague since i heard a lot of people have gotten the ending spoiled and there seems to be a surprise there. I am going to try to do everything on my own this time around and see how well I can make my team before checking the start guides (in FFXIII I did go mostly through the game with a guide for missables but since this game has none)

ok so from what I found out online.... Noel is a better COM/SYN because of his attack power and group buffs. Serah is a better RAV/SAB because of her magic power, but the rest is actually up to people's preference, they are both about equal as SEN (Serah gets Steelguard while Noel gets Mediguard) the shocker is to some Noel might appeal more as a healer because he has group heals while Serah only has single target heals. (of course hers will heal more) Also Noel is definitely not a bad Ravager either, he learns all the strike moves so he can still deal physical damage as a ravager just like lightning did in the original game. So....in conclusion just go with your preference for SEN/MED/RAV (although definitely increase Serah's RAV)

I beat the game for the first ending and I have gotten all of the paradox endings as well. I'm working now on getting all 160 of the fragments so that I can get the hidden ending. Currently at 69% of the trophies.

I guess you could say that I really love this game. A lot. More than I thought I would.

If you're still playing, I can give you some monster recommendations. FWIW, none of the nine unique monsters are really important as far as that goes.

COM: Dragoon (found in Augusta Tower). Use monster materials that give HP so that it has high HP, and infuse health bonuses.
RAV: Cloudburst (found in the Archelyte Steppe in cloudy weather). The Cloudburst has a really useful Feral Ability.
SEN: Bunkerbeast (Yassif Maschas). It's slow to grow but apparently can have upwards of 1K HP. It doesn't learn Mediguard so you'll need to infuse it with a sentinel monster that does.
MED: Flanitor (Augusta Tower). Has a very useful Feral Ability as well. It could probably use more HP, though.

To be honest these monsters got me through most of the game after I caught them, and through the postgame bosses as well. The only monster I've encountered that I haven't beat yet is Yomi. Even with my characters roles all maxed out at level 99. It requires a very specific set of monsters and paradigms, it seems.

Noel makes the best commando, really, but if you have paradigms that require more than one COM or you need Noel for another role, then the Dragoon is pretty awesome.

If you get the DLC and you get Lightning, she's a grade 5 Ravager "monster" with a max level of 13. But she comes knowing a lot of useful skills already, and her Feral Link ability is Army of One. You can infuse her with other skills, too.

I'm excited for more DLC with the game. The next one is supposed to be about Sazh. And possibly include Jihl in the Coliseum? I wonder if she would be a SAB monster. :lol

I need to come back to this game (damn you tales of the abyss) but thanks for the info. So the 9 exclusive monsters are basically not important at all? if you infuse them is there a way to know that you already have captured them for trophy/completion purposes?

Thanks for all the info though =3 I will certainly be using it.

The only one that's sort of important is the Silver Chocobo. It's a great Sentinel and one of the better chocobos to use in races because of that.

I honestly don't think that the unique monsters are even in the bestiary? I don't recall having seen the Silver Chocobo in the bestiary when I was looking through it to see what monsters I still needed. But I'll double check next time I play.