Gar's Gaming Blog (Animal Crossing: New Leaf)

New entry: Sunday 13th September

Destiny Odyssey II – The Unending Dream (Part 2 – 13th September)
The rest of Firion’s story went by without much incident, apart from hitting a Capricious Reaper enemy (Kuja copy) right in the face with Straightarrow at point-blank range. The final boss fight against the Emperor, while not as bad as Sephiroth or Golbez, certainly wasn’t easy either. I was able to beat him on the first try, but it was a very close match.
The main problem was that he was very good at dodging my Straightarrow attacks, so even when I went into EX Mode, I was never able to regain any health apart from the small amounts granted by the “Regen” status. I didn’t manage to land a single EX Burst on him either. And it didn’t help that he has a very annoying, almost mocking, dodge noise. The fight wore on for quite a while, though not as long as the earlier one against the Fallacious Tree, before I was finally able to deal the finishing blow. I would’ve managed it sooner, but he had accessories that left him with 1HP after my attack instead of him dying.
Anyhoo, I was able to finish Firion’s story and I bought The Emperor from the PP Catalogue as a reward.

Character Impressions 2 – Tidus and Firion
Tidus
I thought Tidus controlled pretty well, and his movement speed was noticeably faster than Cloud or Cecil (as I ended up using his Dark Knight class more often than his Paladin class). I also found it easy to get in the first hit of the match due to his quick attacks. The only Brave attack I had trouble hitting with was the aerial attack Stick & Move, as I kept misjudging the range. As for HP attacks, I rather liked the ground attack Spiral Cut, since even if the opponent dodged the first couple of hits, they would usually be caught by the final one due to the attack “tracking” them. Energy Rain also worked rather well. I didn’t really manage to work with his EX Mode bonuses very much, but his movement speed definitely increased. I found his EX Burst hard to get a Perfect on, but that was more a matter of bad timing rather than fiddly controls, unlike Cecil’s.

Firion
Firion might just be my favourite character so far. His main strength is his ground game, as many of his attacks have a fairly long range and can drag opponents toward you, often catching them off guard. By contrast, however, his aerial game is rather poor, with his only aerial Brave attacks (thus far) being some fairly slow magic attacks. He also suffers a little by only having a single HP attack (Straightarrow) for quite a long time, and although it has a long range, it can be difficult to land a hit on an opponent that’s good at dodging. I found his EX Mode bonus, Blood Weapons, to be useful in a pinch, but that does rather depend on actually landing an HP attack. Once you do, however, you can often regain all your health by using said HP attack to trigger an EX Burst. I found Firion’s EX Burst to be in the middle ground of difficulty: Harder than Cloud’s, but easier than Cecil’s & Tidus’s, as it’s just a matter of rapidly entering a series of commands. Plus, I personally think it’s an almost ridiculously cool animation, as it ends with him firing all of his weapons from his bow at the same time.

Next time: Squall’s story begins! The brooding loner with the roaring blade!