RuneseekerMireille

Dedicated tanks can be very useful, especially for Sorcerer/Mage parties. I usually roll with three Sorcerers and either a Fighter with Shield Drum, or a Mage with all support skills, depending on where I'm headed.

I'm finding in Dark Arisen, however, Tanks can only stay alive for maybe two attacks before they go down, at least in Hard Mode. I'm finding I do a bit better with a support mage in BBI than with a Fighter.

@switchb1ade: Yep, that would be it then. Those commands are what the game sees as a direct reflection of your character. You always needing help means your pawn wants to protect you. :)

Just stop using that command and then buy potions to manually change the inclinations yourself, and the problem should go away.

@switchb1ade: Have you been playing more defensively and cautious now? Pawns base their inclinations by watching you, unless you manually alter them with the potions and Knowledge Chair. If you're playing the new content, that might be what's happening. Buy some of the Neutralizing potions and the potions of the inclination you'd want, so you can always change it back if you want.

Brought my 180 Sorcerer in from the original Dragon's Dogma, in Hard Mode, haven't had too many problems so far. They definitely nerfed my boss killing Holy Boon though. Doesn't do alot of damage anymore, pretty much regulated to trash mobs now. Haven't gotten far in Bitterblack, went past Death (got a bar and a half before he left, tough customer) and got to this courtyard. Does it all take place in this dungeon? I was really hoping for more outdoor areas, but it's looks just like the Everfall...

Here are my tips for you newcomers:

1. Sword and Shield Bandits are massively overtuned. I'm surprised they haven't changed them, honestly. However, Grapnel from the Mage class will completely lock them down for you to wail on. Hire a pawn that knows it, or use it yourself.

2. You should not attempt escort quests when you come into Gran Soren for the first time. They are pretty much designed for you to be fairly high leveled to keep monsters off of your charge.

3. After you defeat the Hydra, GO SAVE QUINA. Seriously, there's like 5 different quests that spawn off of that one that are lost the moment you hit Gran Soren's gates.

4. All of the classes are endgame viable, even the starters. Choose the one you like to play. If you want to min /max your stats, then you should be looking at Assassin for physical, Sorcerer for magical. (Up to level 100, after that the scaling is much lower and you can play what you want.)

I'm going to be Sorceror again. Killing dragons in one cast is pretty great!

My pawn will also be a Sorceror, since the more Sorcerors on your team, the faster your cast time is for the big spells!

I hope they give us some new awesome spells to play with, and give them some more utility. I'd rather not rely on Holy Weapon for dealing with trash mobs.

@GrantHeaslip: I never thought about doing that early game; interesting choice! Later on, at least for me, the AI is terrible at using the correct buffs, so even though I use Vanille in my playthroughs, for tough fights, I'll either continue using Vanille for defensive Synergist buffs, or I'll switch to other characters for more offensive buffs. See this is what I like about FFXIII: The different ways you could approach some fights, and the intricacies of character's animations with the combat (some characters cast faster than others, if I remember right, Hope and Light are the fastest offensive casters, Snow is the fastest defensively) make the game seem deceptively simple on the surface, but it holds alot of depth!

@GrantHeaslip said:

@RuneseekerMireille said:

I'm at the end of XIII-2, tearing it up with my Chocobo army, but after reading this, I think I'm going to go back to XIII and play it again. I feel like like I'm one of the few that has played all of the Final Fantasy games, and found the Fabula Nova Crystallis line to be some of my favorite Final Fantasies.

Get the basics of the combat system down now, it'll start demanding some real smart shifting to beat some later bosses. A useful tip if you don't know: Every other Paradigm Shift will refill your ATB gauge. Planning around that is a very core strategy in beating some later bosses and trivializing the combat early on.

Good luck, and I hope you will enjoy this game as much as I did!

P.S.: Vanille has some... interesting motivations for doing what she does. I've always enjoyed her throughout this game, but after everything was explained, alot of her actions make sense.

Is it every second paradigm shift, or does the refill effect just have a 12 second cooldown? From what I'm reading, I think you're right, but there's a lot of conflicting information out there.

I also read that if you do a paradigm shift during the last animation of the first attack cycle, you can skip the long version (3 character) version of the shift animation, which only happens the first time you shift — I'm going to give that a try now.

I pretty sure that it is every second Paradigm Shift, because when I used to mess it up by shifting to the wrong paradigm and then switching back, it would give me and my team a full ATB (wasting the few bars I had previously). I've honestly never tested it myself because when you use it optimally(attack, shift, attack, wait, repeat), it takes longer than 10 seconds before you do it again. Not 100% sure though.

I haven't actually seen anything about being able to skip the first long Paradigm Shift (because in XIII-2, it's not there anymore), but I had never found it to be more than a slight annoyance at worst. I had assumed it was there to let bosses set up the playing field before you unload on them. CPUs still attack immediately after their shift animation though, even if the scene is changing to the different characters.

I'm at the end of XIII-2, tearing it up with my Chocobo army, but after reading this, I think I'm going to go back to XIII and play it again. I feel like like I'm one of the few that has played all of the Final Fantasy games, and found the Fabula Nova Crystallis line to be some of my favorite Final Fantasies.

Get the basics of the combat system down now, it'll start demanding some real smart shifting to beat some later bosses. A useful tip if you don't know: Every other Paradigm Shift will refill your ATB gauge. Planning around that is a very core strategy in beating some later bosses and trivializing the combat early on.

Good luck, and I hope you will enjoy this game as much as I did!

P.S.: Vanille has some... interesting motivations for doing what she does. I've always enjoyed her throughout this game, but after everything was explained, alot of her actions make sense.

Muramasa on the Vita? SOLD! Muramasa was absolutely amazing, and even though I have (and beaten) the Wii version, I'll happily give Vanillaware more of my money.

I'm still rocking my old 60GB PS3, so maybe I'll upgrade to this new one. Have to mull that one over for a while...

Did Wipeout not sell well on the PS3 and Vita? This is a bummer...Wipeout, along with F-Zero, are my two favorite racing series.

Good luck, I hope you guys find jobs soon.