Which for whatever reason seems to be standard with a lot of Japanese games, is a super hard final boss. Maybe I just suck, and am not a skilled gamer...whatever. But I played through the entire campaign with little or no resistance, and then the final boss was just way too hard for me. Not to mention you can never just fight the final boss and defeat him, he has to have like 3 different forms that you beat.

Eventually I just leveled up for an hour, and put the game on EASY MODE to beat it. I ended up beating the final boss on my first try after that, but it was still a somewhat long and drawn out fight that I just couldn't have seen myself beating on the regular difficulty level. Point is its just annoying how they ramp it up just for the final boss, as if the only way to have a satisfying ending is to make sure it's really hard to accomplish.

I have less of a problem with the final boss being really hard, and more of a problem of the final few areas suddenly spiking in difficulty. I went through most of the game just dominating the trash mobs the game kept throwing at me with almost no problem, and then the final area suddenly starts kicking my ass out of absolutely nowhere. A challenging final boss, fine, but the last area being a stupid platforming puzzle on top of having insanely hard random encounters for no reason? Left a bad taste in my mouth for an already mediocre game.

@Marokai: Yeah I found myself having to make all new paradigm sets just to beat specific enemies in the final area. I think in general we're still agreeing on the same premise here that the difficulty spike toward the end (whether its the last boss or final area) is something displeasing.

I like a good bump in finale difficulty. Makes it really feel like a finale and not "Y'all, it's over now, let's go home." It's more like "Jesus, I barely won!"

I'm not really sure what is up with that, in 13 and 13-2 the difficutly ramps up hard in the end, while most of the older games where more of a rollercoaster, where the hardest stuff was in the middle somewhere.

I'm guessing the more locked nature of the new games made it easier for the devs to control the curve, and it ended up worse because of it. :/

I had a bit of trouble on the final boss too. The trick to beating it and not driving yourself crazy can be done by using Sentinals. Simply put, the boss has a countdown timer. When it gets to about 1, do a round of healing to get your characters as close to full health as possible, then switch to a paradigm where at least Noel and Serah are both sentinals. You can have all three characters set as sentinals, but that will take up a monster slot. It's up to you. After you change to sentinals, use a skill like "Steel Guard". You have to make sure to change to the sentinal paradigm before the animation of one of the "flare" attacks starts, because you can't change during the attack. If you've been using this or a similar strategy and are still being demolished, I don't know what to say, except, if you are using only one sentinal, it doesn't seem to mitigate enough damage. This is what I did for a while. I tried to switch just Noel to a sentinal with the other two as medics, but it wasn't uncommon for everyone to die. When at least two out of three were sentinals, I beat it much easier. Hope this helps.

Hello my dears! talking about FFXIII-2 its almost the same and pathetic game like its predecessor i will be honest i never thought serendipity would be so mediocre unlike its presented...or not? i think the faint hope that exists inside me is playing tricks in my mind again the time travel plot is an absolute nonsense compared to FFXIII theres no way to accept Claire sudden disappearance [etro i hate you!] in the ending and all the backtracking you have to do to pick a certain item to continue the story makes it even worse,the battle system remains the same its the same morbid button spam that i hoped to die with FFXIII god i cant express how much I HATE this battle system,also this game have serious issues with monster levels youre battling just fine and out of nowhere comes a creature that can kill you with one fart its ridiculous where is the balance in this abomination?its about time SE ended all this nonsense every sequel of FFXIII brings more shame for the franchise.

i hated adult hope and his dumb girlfriend.

This is the second thread about the last boss of FFXIII-2 I've read this week. Weird.

13-3 does come out in a month.

@wjb: To be fair this one is over a year old. It just got bumped by someone raging over the XIII series.

If you're gonna rage about something, The XIII series is a good place to start. And to think that some people are actually excited for Lightning Returns...I guess I'll put that down to different taste in games.

Fuck you Square Enix, is what I'm saying here. You've fallen almost as far as Konami since your golden age. Here's a good explaination of how SE ended up where they are right now, if anyone's interested.

I bought XIII-2 a while back despite not enjoying my time with XIII in the slightest. I can't help myself. A number Final Fantasy? Must play! Goddamit Squeenix get your head out of your ass. If XV isn't at least somewhat fun, I might, might, just jump ship. We got an early release of XIII-3 here in Korea, which I almost bought too! Thankfully I had the sense to wait it out until it's cheap and used, which judging by the number of copies lying around won't take long.

Yeah, I knew. Just felt weird to me still, since both are specifically about the final boss.

Considering the third game is coming out in a month, though, I suppose people are reminded of their previous experiences.

I grinded like crazy to beat the optional bosses so this fight was easy enough to be an afterthought. I dont even rememberuch about it because it was done so fast. I thought most people did the same kind of thing in FF games.