RuneseekerMireille

@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.

If you imported from Mass Effect 2, the more involved side quests revolve around your old squadmates. But other than that, there are only one or two combat side quests in between the priority missions. The priority missions also sometimes have multiple stages to them as well, to make them longer than they were even in Mass Effect.

Valkyrie Profile: Covenant if the Plume was pretty good, and I've heard Revenant Wings plays similar to the Tactics games. If you're not afraid of permadeath, all of the Fire Emblem games are great. 6 and 7 are my favorites, but 6 requires some Japanese, and is probably the hardest recent entry.

The hardest part in the game, for sure. Enemy engineers put their turrets in the perfect positions, and grenades just seem to come from nowhere. The "biotic artillery" was totally worthless, as well. Took about 6 tries on Insanity. As Talicia said, the ramp going up is the best way to beat this. If you get lucky, the engineers will spawn at the bottom of the ramp instead of the top, making them easier to kill. Also, keep your party with you at all times. If you let them roam, you'll eat through medi-gel like Skittles.

I've circumvented this problem by using my partner's Warp instead, which always works, but I'm going to have to try some of these other combos you guys mentioned!