Venturing into FFXIII post-game

I took the opportunity to go back home during the last semester break and hence, the chance to play my ps3 again. TBH I don’t have any particular game in mind to play, but since I got my Vanquish and FFXIII games back from deady, I thought that I might as well do some trophies cleanup with these games. Vanquish, from about 22% trophy upped to 51% by doing some chapter-specific trophies, as well as the "No Death" Living Legend Trophy (which was surprisingly easier than I thought). But that's not really what I wanted to write here, but rather the next game: FFXIII. Previously I've made my end-game thought on the game, but at that time I didn't do anything with the post game, stopping right after the credit rolled. And about 1 year later (last time I touch the game was May 2010), I finally managed to muster my strength to return to this highly linear game, mostly to do some unfinished business with the post-game contents.

When I first replaying the game, I had a whim of Platinuming the game, but actually never think to actually do it because it looks like the game requires a lot of effort and grinding to Platinum (which remind me to the time I put to Platinum/Complete NieR and The Last Remnant). But after spending some time doing post-game missions, it appears that Platinuming FFXIII is not really that hard after all. Although, I still haven't Platinum it because I returned to KL last week and wasn't able to finish the game in time -_-


So what did FFXIII offered in its post-game play?

• The ONE and ONLY "real" sidequest ever existed in FFXIII - the Mark Quests. And post-game in FFXIII is all about completing this Mark Quests, and;
• As mentioned, for the "completionist" - Platinuming the game itself, with the majority of the trophies were attainable during the course of the post-game play.

Mark Quests
The only meaningful sidequest in FFXIII, this appear as soon as we reach the Gran Pulse in Chapter 11 (iirc), and spans until the very post-games. The basic is simple - we visit some sort of ancient stone, which then will gives us the task to kill a specific monster, with difficulties raging from easiest, D rank, to hardest, A rank. Most of the times the target monster (Mark) were located quite far from the Client stone. Killing them will unlock other Stones, and subsequently more Mark Missions: 64 in total. Killing them will gave you items some which were only available by beating these specific Marks (Genji Gloves, Doctor's Code, Growth Egg and Gold Watch). Beating all Mark Missions grants at least 7 Trophies, with an additional Gold Trophies for completing ALL of them with a 5-star post-battle ratings.

In the end, I managed to beat all but 1 Marks, the last 1 being (arguably) the strongest boss in the game, Mark Mission 64 (Vercingetorix). My thought on these Missions:

Getting 5-star rating for them without Gold Watch isn't that hard after all. In the end, I managed to 5-star 62 out of 64 Mark Missions. The last 2 were Mission 54 (Gigantuar), and of course the last one, Mission 64. In all of these missions, I went into battle without any Tier 3 weapons (no thanks to Trapezohedron), and only farm enough CP to get my HP moderately high. Then, it's a matter of strategy. For strong marks, I'd start with Shrouds, mostly Deceptisol to get easy Preemptive Strike, but others require me to use both Fortisol and Aegisol for the instant buffs. For Marks like Neochu (Mission 55) and Adamantortoise (Mission 63), it's all about instant kill with Vanille's Death.

Mission 54 - Gigantaur. I really hate this mission. Not only because everytime he attack, he hits for a full 10,000 damage WITHOUT any sort of reduction. He also attacks fast, and always had a chance to cause fog and pain (aka disable physical and magic attacks). Not only that, his target time (which affect battle rating) is so low that it's almost impossible to kill this bloody creature with weak weapon, and get 5 stars battle rating at the same time. This monster sucks and a total cheat, really. My rating when I killed him: 0 star the first time, 2 stars in my second attempt D :

Mission 64 - Vercingetorix. An annoying and strong boss. Really hard to stagger (thanks to his invulnerability shield which dispels all status, heal 8% of his lost health, and reset chain gauge), strong as puck, and when low on health, a devastating 1-hit kill skill that can only be avoided by 3-sentinels Paradigm. Or so they said (since I was beaten before I could experience that skill). When I first (and only time) faced him, I wasn't able to hit him hard enough that his hp remained pretty much around ~70% due to his Shield's healing. But apparently there was a more efficient way of killing him, through poison damage, and probably the easiest way to 5-star this Mission without the Gold Watch. I guess I'd try this strategy when I returned to my PS3 somewhere in the future...


Platinum Trophy
I did say that Platinuming FFXIII seems easier than I thought, but in reality it still required a lot of effort. Achieving 5 stars in mark missions requires your party, and your weapons/accessories to be fully upgraded. These in itself gave a trophy, Master's Seal. Each character's secondary role seems costing huge amount of CP, but truth be told, by the end of the day, even when you fully maxed your Crystallogen, chances are you still need to farm even more because of money, and in the end of the day, you got a maxed 999,999 CP that can't even be spend anymore...

The reason for that - money. And arguably the most tedious trophy in the game, Treasure Hunter which require you to have each and every weapons/accessories at least once at any point of the game. Collecting most weapons and accessories wasn't that hard, but collecting ALL of them is a different matter. The 3rd Tier weapon requires a lot of money to upgrade (or to be exact, money to buy exp component), and on top of that, it required the rarest item in the game, Trapezohedron. It can be bought from shop at a whopping 2,000,000 gil, but who'd be stupid enough to do that when the money is better spent at upgrading? So the answer is by rare drop, from either Adamantoise/Adamantortoise (1% drop rate) or Long Gui (5% drop rate). To be honest so far I've only used Vanille's Death method to beat the toises, but it's not a reliable strategy for money farming, that's why I was rather poor the whole post-game : ( And I don't even want to talk about defeating Long Gui (which also gave another trophy for defeating him) before I fully upgrade my weapons.

One seemingly easy trophy which I failed to get is Superstar, which requires us to beat the final boss with 5-stars rating. Everytime I tried, I ended up getting 3 stars, maybe because my weapon is too strong (weapon stat do affect battle rating btw). I guess I'd just retry this later, once I got the Gold Watch from Mission 64. Do want those Lightning's PS3 theme D :