Bosses with RIDICULOUS amounts of HP

[Belugn]

I do not want any yapping around about the story line in here, I'm incredibly afraid of spoilers. So let's keep that down at a minimum, since it's not even particularly neccessary when it comes to this discussion.

I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of the Paradigm System. At all. I have found it fun at times when you actually get to think a little, and switch more frequently between them, and still maintain a steady and dynamic flow in battle. But sometimes it's just not very needed, and you find yourself just auto-battling. (Nothing tastes so bad in my mouth as the word "auto-battle"...) When you get the hang of it, it's not very challenging either.

Which brings me to the bosses. I have so far encountered a couple of bosses who's wiped me out completly a few times, because I didn't manage to grasp the right strategy. But when you however DO come up with a paradigm shift system that works out, the only thing left that remains when it comes down to the boss, is it's GINORMOUS amount of HP. If the bosses had lower HP, sure, the battles would be small fry. All of them. But was a huge life bar the only way SE could pull off to make this game challenging?
I don't really find it all that challenging, just repetive and tedious.

Thank god for staggering, but it still takes so frustratingly long sometimes, without any surprises at all, just following the exact same pattern for EVER that sometimes it's just like

is this really worth it.

Anyone else noticed this? Or have you somehow managed to be so awesome that you haven't experienced a 20-30 minute just utterly monotonous boss fight yet?

I really feel like such a whiner now, and I have some other things that -really- bothers me when it comes to (mainly) the battle system, but I feel like even it out a little by saying I'm REALLY happy with the amount of cutscenes still. I really missed that in FFXII. And I'm glad with the story so far in general, and just for the story I think I'm going to do my best to actually beat this game. : )

[Josh_R]

I have only had one boss battle that has exceeded 30 minutes. And that is cause everytime I would stagger him, his bar would instantly go down. Apparently 3 ravager's don't keep it up long. Gotta use at least one commando. The bosses aren't to bad. The fights that get me sometimes are normal ones. There will be like four or five enemies beating the piss outta me. XIII by far has the strongest random enemies..

[Furore]

Fast paced battles have been one of the highlights for me. :/
There was one hunt on FFXII on the other hand that was so long I managed to make and eat dinner and still wasn't half finished killing it.

[Belugn]

@Josh_R: Yeah FFXIII has indeed got the strongest "normal" enemies so far. Really high HPs, very early in the game. I guess that comes with that you're able to stagger every enemy? With minimum HP there wouldn't be need for staggering, I guess.

@Silver: I had so many long tedious battles in FFXII as well, I have to agree about that. Ultima for example, took me approximately two hours. (And just finding her took time...and also getting out of there, haha.)

Now we're not all that far into the game yet (me and my boyfriend are playing together), so perhaps things will get a little better later on. As far as we've come, which is quite a bit still, we've not a single time been able to choose on our own which character we wants as team leader. When you will be able to do that, will you also be able to switch between your party members in battle? I've found it really stupid that you sometimes feel the need for a summon, but you're not able to, because the character with a summon is not your leader, and therefore not available for you.

[Andromeda]

Large amounts of HP on bosses was definitely an annoyance for me. I'd be commenting to myself that if only it had less HP I would have won or whatever. But the funny thing is that all of the boss fights I think can be won a few minutes with the right Paradigm setup and strategy. I know there is one boss fight that I spent 20 minutes on and died sit. After I changed my strategy the fight lasted maybe 3 minutes, 5 at the most. So it is all about getting the right setup. The game is very tactical and if you don't have a good strategy going in you'll end up dead or taking forever to win.

But yeah Stagger is the reason that monsters can have high HP in the game. Once in Stagger an enemy is pretty much dead because the damage you do goes up nearly exponentially at that point. The higher the stagger the more damage you deal. So ideally the goal is to get 999% stagger and you'll be able to do the most damage possible.

[Belugn]

@Andromeda: Yes strategy is pretty vital. I mean 20 minute boss battles can't have been intentional. If I ever replay this game later on, I'll see if I'll do better. After beating the game you would be bound to have figured some things out about the paradigm system.

I still don't feel the battles to be especially fun most of the time. I'm glad there ain't any real leveling in this game, then I would've grown tired of everything pretty quickly. I just wish you could toggle between the characters while playing. Even if it wouldn't give all that much, it would still feel better somehow.

[Andromeda]

Depends on how far into the game you are. Because at first I sort of wished I could. But near the last ten hours of the game I was thankful that I was only controlling one character because one character made me busy enough. Because you have to be following the entire field of battle and your character plus the HP of everything and be ready to switch out paradigms to save yourself on a moment's notice while maintaining your eye on half a dozen monsters out to totally kill you. And with Haste on everyone, there would be way too much time wasted. Auto-battle is almost required because the meter fills up so fast that you'll still be running through menus and the meter will be full waiting on you to still find your ability. So it is better to run one character and manage the overall strategy of the battle. It is the ebb and flow that you're controlling a lot of times.

But in the end it depends on how much micro-managing you want to do. If you micro-manage too much you'll be killed or lose time that could have gotten you through the battle sooner. In the end the AI in generally makes really good decisions, its the redeeming quality that the AI is intelligent enough to make sound decisions without your input. Sure there are times when you would want to do something different, but in the end it can react and make decisions far faster and effectively than we can at the speeds of the battle.

[Ernest]

Totally agree man. It is simply tedious.

I guess given how fast the player lays on damage, they thought the only way to counter it, was to give the bosses heaps of HP. But that's not acceptable.

That's the thing with this game. The battles get so repetitive. I run whenever possible, and make up for it later when I'm in the mood. Honestly like. Not only do they take so long to win (reg. battles included), but there are no rewards.

Your reward is zero spoils most the time, and some CP points that you get the exciting luxury of holding down X and zooming through a grid that like the game, manages to be linear.

I like the game heaps, dont get me wrong. But the huge HP of all enemies and non-rewarding victories really hurts the game. I can handle the lack of towns and NPCs, just give an experience system worth grinding through battles for.

[Ernest]

^ Maybe we had different experiences playing, but I find the AI to be pretty crap.

The Medic's are always healing the wrong people, or are over-killing one character with heals. They also don't use Cura enough.

Quite often one of the characters will be attacking an enemy that is not the target of the Party leader. I've cited this about 10 times. A paradigm shift usually fixes this, but its still annoying. Hasn't happened in a boss fight though, as there's usually one target.

And on a seperate complaint, why the fck does Sentinel's provoke fail SO often?

[Che]

Because sen's are bad.

Also, I find myself getting 0 star, 15-20 min boss fights later in the game, but its because my strategy is wrong. I cant really complain that its easy or boring unt I can 5 star everything.

[Belugn]

@Ernest: I'm with you at ALL points. The AI is stupid. So stupid. I often find myself yelling at my medic for being lousy. It's one thing if you are fully capable of healing, and failing at it, because you yourself is too slow, or misjudged the situation. But if the medic IS left for the AI, it should also WORK, not leave everything to luck.

But sure, I've found the auto battle attack choices to be quite reasonable and MOST of the time the most suiting to the situation. But since when do you want a game that does everything on it's own? I feel like the I'm just enabling it. Even in FFXII, where most things are so automatic, I felt like I had more to say. At least there I put in my own gambits.

Couldn't agree EVEN MORE about spoils. And gil? Where is the gil.

The crystarium, I was really excited about at first. But then I realized how linear it was as well. The stages available are maxed out really early, so you can never go power "leveling", not until the next stage is triggered, by defeating a boss or whatever.

Sentinel is the only class I still enjoy on some level, because most of the time, the auto battle ain't doing what I want it to do, so I have to make my own inputs. (MY __OWN__ INPUTS.) But then I hate it because Sentinels alone aren't taking down any enemy quick enough.

@Che: Yeah. Gaining 0 stars, that's gotta mean one haven't really mastered the system at all yet, you're right about that.

[Andromeda]

Oh I did may far share of yelling at the AI for not doing the right thing when I wanted it to. But in the end I realized that it is than exception when it failed and not the general case that it always failed. For a while in the final boss I main'd Vanille so I could control the healing because I thought I could do a better job keeping the team alive. When I did end up finally winning I was playing Sazh and the only medic was Vanille in my party controlled by the AI and I walked through without so much of a concern for my HP.

One of the things that I like about this game is that you can't over level in the game. I know people that have a tendency to power level and then suddenly the game is too easy for them. It happened to me in FFXII. I did it be accident though because I thought I had to go through a place that was significantly strong than what I was to continue through the story, the whole rest of the game was killed because I had taken the challenge out the game. FFXIII managed to keep its challenge because there is a cap to how far you can go. Early on I did notice that I tended to fill up the entire thing about 3 or 4 battles before the end of the chapter, but by the last quarter of the game end fighting most of the monsters I still couldn't get enough CP to fill them all to the cap. I would have had to grind out some CP. I think it is good thing to keep a game challenging, because once you can win without effort it gets boring. If you have to be paying attention at each moment because you don't know if the next attack will be your last. The game is still interesting and exciting.

As for Sentinel, sure it has some offensive abilities, but it is a defensive tank role. It's job is not to kill, but to hold down the enemy while your other characters kill. It is meant to buy you the time you need to even up the odds. Sentinels are mob control. If you have 5 or 6 enemies a Sentinel will work out well if you have 2 or 3 enemies a Sentinel is more or less dead weight.

[Belugn]

@Andromeda: The lack of freedom when it comes to everything still bothers me.

As for Sentinel, I know what it's meant for, and without it, I wouldn't have made it through a LOT of fights. The sentinel role is the one where your choice of command outdoes the auto battle's choice of abillities, and I very much prefer that in front of just mashing the x button on autobattle. It also pretty much applies to the Sabouteur role, and the Synergyst. It's the actual offensive game play that leaves to me pretty much much more to wish for.

If the crystarium and the roles were more flexible and less linear when it comes to shaping a character, the entire paradigm system could be much more interesting.

[Dodie16]

Ouch... Looks like I called that wrong, Belugn. I thought that you would enjoy the battle system in XIII. Hehe... *sweats*

I honestly don't know where to begin in this topic. Lots of stuff have been covered so far, so I guess I'll just start with the main focus. High HP in enemies.

Wow... I don't think I've ever had to spend so much time in one battle as I have in this game, and most of it is just on the normal enemies. However, I do enjoy the more strategic aspect of what the Paradigm shifts offer for the player. It took a while to get used to, because I honestly am not that good at strategic battles (I used to just over power my characters in other games and beat them that way ), but once you get the hang of it, it's really fun. For me it is anyway. I like the Eidolon battles. You have to be really strategic to get that Gestalt mode bar up in under the set time limit so you can actually beat the thing.

I somewhat agree with the point made about SE feeling the need to give bosses ridiculous amounts of HP to add challenge. It does seem really just like a cop-out, but as stated previously, it's the Stagger bar that makes it sooo much fun. ^_^ Finding the right combination of paradigm shifts to get that bar up to max is something I find to be pretty fun about the battles in the game.

As for reward for going through these tough battles, I do find it a bit lacking as you stated in your OP. I've fought some battles that took a long time, and in the end my reward for doing it was less CP than I hoped, and next to no items for upgrading my stuff. That's honestly my only complaint so far with the game.

I haven't had any noticeable problems with my AI, so I haven't done any yelling (not that I could yell anyway =P). It could happen though, and I'm sort of counting on it to, because I'm not really even very far yet (started my game over), and I'm pretty sure that when I get to the more tougher battles, that my AI characters are going to not be there for me when I need them. I have plans to counteract their deficiency though, so I'll get back to you when I get that far and actually use my plan.

The Chrystarium is indeed linear at first, but once you get to the later levels of it, and have to decide what you want each character to focus on, it gets much more enjoyable, because you do have that bit of customization that made so many other games in the series that much more enjoyable. For me it did anyway.

[Nichrome]

And this is why I stick with FFI - VII, almost nothing is automatic, the bosses don;t have massive amounts of HP (Except for that long one in V, or is it VI?) and boss battles are challenging and exciting, not just long.

[Belugn]

@Dodie: Haha I'm sorry or something I guess. It's okay. : ) I thought the Eidolon battles were really silly at first, but when you understood what to do actually, it got funnier. And we've just got a few of them so far. The Eidolons are actually really useful in battles, I'm really glad about that. In FFXII I found them next to useless. Visually awesome - used against enemies that actually posed a challenge; useless.

They really should have had a larger loot/spoils system. I like that you are able to upgrade weapons and such, but you've got so little items to do so with, and barely any gil to spend on it. I don't remember the name of the other character's weapons right now, but we've been upping Lightning's Gladius quite a bit, and some guns of Sahz's. They're like the second weapons one ever got for them, so I can't really get rid of the feeling that we're ******* ourselves over by doing so. We've got tons of new weapons since then, that are all quite more powerful at level 1 than for instance the Gladius was. Oh well, I'm not very read into this, I guess all weapons come with some special abillities or so later on? Anyone knows how high the maxed level for a weapon is?

I guess me myself is pretty much decided on when it comes to liking or disliking the battle system; it just doesn't float my boat. At least you're still awarded with many - and LONG - cutscenes, which makes up for a lot in my opinion. I've always been playing FF for the story to begin with, and this one is actually quite good.

@Nichrome: You're absolutley right. I think I've had my most enjoyable boss battles in FFVI. : > Not to mention the battle on the big bridge in V.

[Furore]

I think the only serious problem I've had with the AI were when a boss could two hit kill a character and I wanted my medic to heal my half dead main when another character had less health. That party leader dying = instant loss thing has usually been behind any deaths I've faced, especially when encoutering a cheap move.

I think there were battles with enemies using Gatling Gun earlier on that really pissed me off as none of my other party members at the time had sentinel and it was a forced party. Those seemed more up to chance than skill.

[Belugn]

@Silver: I really dislike that aspect too, party leader dead = game over.

One thing I just realized is the medic's raise... If your leader doesn't have the medic role, the medic role is left for the AI. In a party of three, the medic could always raise the other fallen AI controlled member. But if your leader dies, then it's still game over, eh?
Worthless.

I'm not quite sure about how the renew magic is working out in FFXII though, but still, if I'm right about what I stated above, that's pretty not-thought-out.

AND YES the gatling gun enemy me and my boyfriend were steaming mad about that enemy. But at the same time those battles were a little funnier and more dynamic, using your sentinel.
The more I think about it, the more I love the sentinel role.

[Che]

@Silver: I really dislike that aspect too, party leader dead = game over.

One thing I just realized is the medic's raise... If your leader doesn't have the medic role, the medic role is left for the AI. In a party of three, the medic could always raise the other fallen AI controlled member. But if your leader dies, then it's still game over, eh?
Worthless.

I'm not quite sure about how the renew magic is working out in FFXII though, but still, if I'm right about what I stated above, that's pretty not-thought-out.

AND YES the gatling gun enemy me and my boyfriend were steaming mad about that enemy. But at the same time those battles were a little funnier and more dynamic, using your sentinel.
The more I think about it, the more I love the sentinel role.

I fell for the gatling gun trick the first time. I had Snow in Commando as it went off for the first time. I was thinking I'd just eat the damage and be a badass through it. NOPE! Hahaha.

I'm not sure what you meant about the Renew spell. It will heal for a LOT to all of your party members, and Raise KO'd ones. It's really useful in the fight against Vanille's Eidolon.

[Ralz]

The high amounts of HP can get insane... but maybe that's where the fun can be found.

Getting that Stagger meter up and full allows all sorts of things to be possible. So far, I've seen Fang pull off 22000 damage with a single hit, when the meter was like 700%.

But some enemies are just annoying. So far, that one boss at the end of Chapter 7 that you can't hit except for magic and Ruin is annoying... >_>. And of course it has 999% Stagger protection.

Also, those behemoth enemies can get ridiculous, because now they're pulling swords out and being even harder to kill. o_O And they're stagger protection is 500%!

Still, this is the kind of challenge the series needed, I think. Unlike FFXII, where I could have sword people with healing, now I have to choose carefully or suffer greatly.

[Heartless Angel]

They're kinda long at times. But, after Playing through Valkyrie Profile 2 and taking on Ethereal Queen without going through and releasing Einherjar to buff stats, 20 minutes is nothing. I quite litereally spent 3 hurs wailing on ethereal Queen before she went down <.<

So yeah, they're long, but the combat system is interesting enough for me to not care. Especially after that 3 hour VP2 boss from Hell.

[Belugn]

@Che: What I mean about the renew and raise spells are; if the leader dies, it's game over. Or can your for the moment non-leader party member throw raise on your leader?

@Ralz: For the moment I've found the Behemoth enemies some of the most fun to fight actually. With launch and stagger I actually feel sort of sory for them, it's almost unfair. xD

[Che]

@Che: What I mean about the renew and raise spells are; if the leader dies, it's game over. Or can your for the moment non-leader party member throw raise on your leader?

@Ralz: For the moment I've found the Behemoth enemies some of the most fun to fight actually. With launch and stagger I actually feel sort of sory for them, it's almost unfair. xD

Nope, you are correct. When the character you are in control of dies, it's game over.

[Belugn]

Nope, you are correct. When the character you are in control of dies, it's game over.

Well that's sort of silly. They could've solved that somehow, imo.

[Sean]

I haven't really had too many problems with boss fights yet. I'll pop a libra or two to get all the information and just go "Oh god I'm going to be here forever...."

I spend as much time in commando/ravager as possible (with ravager/ravager to speed up the chaining) and break em, then just go to town as rav/rav then switch to com/rav or com/com (rav/rav bulids up the %, but com/com does massive damage once you get the % up high)

Course now I'm finally where I have 3 people, Bartandelous (sp?) I thought was going to be a long fight, but Light basically solod the 4 "adds" on him due to Sazh and Vanille buffing/healing the entire time then I just relentless assault / tri devestationed the hell out of him to break him, though it still took about 8 minutes or so.


Another thing that I don't quite understand - I finish fights with minutes to spare over the "target time" but I don't get 5 stars. What the hell determines your final battle score? Not that it has any real impact on... anything.... ever.

[Che]

I haven't really had too many problems with boss fights yet. I'll pop a libra or two to get all the information and just go "Oh god I'm going to be here forever...."

I spend as much time in commando/ravager as possible (with ravager/ravager to speed up the chaining) and break em, then just go to town as rav/rav then switch to com/rav or com/com (rav/rav bulids up the %, but com/com does massive damage once you get the % up high)

Course now I'm finally where I have 3 people, Bartandelous (sp?) I thought was going to be a long fight, but Light basically solod the 4 "adds" on him due to Sazh and Vanille buffing/healing the entire time then I just relentless assault / tri devestationed the hell out of him to break him, though it still took about 8 minutes or so.


Another thing that I don't quite understand - I finish fights with minutes to spare over the "target time" but I don't get 5 stars. What the hell determines your final battle score? Not that it has any real impact on... anything.... ever.

If your weapons are pretty upgraded I think they assume you should beat it even earlier than the target time.

[Andromeda]

I think that the target time changes according to the score you got. So there are like 5 or 6 target times. A target time to get 5 stars, one for 4 stars, etc. So if you four stars the time you will see is for the 4 stars. I think that is the way it work. But I also think the time on the fight you're talking about has a 3 or 4 minute target time for 5 stars. Which seems pretty high and impossible.

[Che]

I think that the target time changes according to the score you got. So there are like 5 or 6 target times. A target time to get 5 stars, one for 4 stars, etc. So if you four stars the time you will see is for the 4 stars. I think that is the way it work. But I also think the time on the fight you're talking about has a 3 or 4 minute target time for 5 stars. Which seems pretty high and impossible.

I think you are correct with the target to 4 stars, and target to 5 stars, etc.

Also, if you've adjusted the battle speed in the settings menu it doesn't change your target time.