06C: Father and Son

06C: Father and Son

A rest in which much is revealed

We get a CS of a flashback - Sazh took his son to see the fal'Cie and he ends up being made into a L'Cie while Sazh is off purchasing that chocobo pet he has for him!  More significantly, did you notice the clothing on the person who was with his son briefly?  Hmm, suspiciously familiar!  Remember that strange woman?  It turns out she is a PSICOM officer named Jihl Nabaat!

As Sazh tells his story we learn that he is much more involved in all of these events than we previously suspected, and so was Dajh!  Was that Van who was with his son when he was turned into a L'Cie?  I could not say for sure, but it looked like it to me!

Hit the save point ahead and then continue on the path where you find a shining orb that, when Van touches it, causes it to rain. A mini-tutorial explains that this is a Climate Control Orb that is used for controlling the weather - well duh!   A large group of Mud and Hedge Frogs spawn as a result of your changing the weather - and you kill them.   The Hedge Frogs we have seen before, but the Mud Frogs are new to us - so ID'ing them would be, well, an idea!

There are several of these orbs, and you can use them to control what mobs you encounter here - if you change the weather back to sunny you end up with a different type of mob, change it back to rain and the frogs - and other mobs - re-spawn.  Ordinarily that would make this a really good grinding spot - if we needed to grind - but we do not need to right now, which is a bummer.

Ahead of you - if it is raining - is a group of Gremlin with a Scalebeast - kill them if you want to...  If it is sunny you should see Wyverns and Flandragora.  Once you have ID'd the Mud Frogs you may want to switch back to daylight to try for the Wyverns...

There is a Treasure Sphere with a Metal Armband along the right fork of the path, and straight ahead is your first Wyvern so it would be an idea to cast Libra on it now - which will give you the full ID for that beast.  Follow the path through the cave and you will find lots of targets on the other side!

On the right is another Wyvern if you are inclined to such a battle, and on the left some Flandragora.  Which you fight is up to you - I took them all out :)  Near the Flandragora is a Sphere with an Aqua Ring, and just past that are some Garchimacara to fight.  That is another new beast to us so you will want to Libra them as well.  I swear to God I heard Van scream "Pika!" during this fight and I had Pokemon Flashback bad.

Ahead of you on the path is another Wyvern and some more Gachimacara for you to kill - man is this fun or what?!  After you defeat them there is a group of Flandragora to fight, and past those some Garchimacara, making this one of the toughest stretches of path battle-wise we have yet to encounter!

After that last battle there is a save point on the ledge above - and if you feel the way I do it couldn't be more timely.  I would hate to end up losing that string of fights!  As you pass the save point you trigger a CS in which you slowly approach a pair of large animals - and Sazh suggests that you sneak past them - for an Epic Fail!  This is Enki and Enlil - and no, we have never encountered them before because basically they are the two boss mobs for us to fight at the end of this chapter!

No need to panic here - this all comes down to managing your health while putting them into Stagger so you can dish out the hurt.  Unfortunately they both have special attacks that are devastating - but fortunately they have to charge them up to use them.  The crux is that monitoring health is critical here, because if you are even a little bit low and they use their special... Well... You may get sick of starting this fight over again and again if you are not good at tracking health and changing your deck quickly to heal!

Strategy-wise you want to get one of the dead as fast as you can, because playing with both at the same time - and both their special attacks - makes this a brutal fight.  Even after you have taken one out though, you have to contend with the fact that whenever the remaining one uses its special attack that resets its stagger meter!  It felt like once the mob was alone it was able to charge and use its special attack a lot faster, so taking out the remaining one seemed like twice as hard as taking out the first one, and who knows, maybe it was?

This is one fight you will be happy to see over, I can tell you that!  Even the 1,000 CP pay-off at the end feels like it was not enough, considering the effort we had to put in here...  But the spoils were pretty cool - a Riptide Ring and a Fulmen Ring plus our Crystarium expanded

The post-fight CS shows them walking towards the path and Sazh remarks that it is only a hop-skip-and-a-jump to Nautilus!  If all went according to plan you should have fully ID'd both Enki and Enlil, which is a good thing.  Hate to have to re-load and do that fight over if you did not ID them.

When you apply your CP you should take Van to the cap for Stage 5 of Ravager, and Saboteur, and gotten a bite into the first upgrade in Medic before running out of CP.  You will also have unlocked an additional Accessory Slot for Van.  For Sazh you should have capped Stage 5 for Level 1 Commando and Level 2 Ravager and gotten a piece of the first crystal for Level 2 Synergist.  Sadly you know what this means, right?  Yeah, it is time to do some more grinding :(

Before we do that, backtrack to the previous save point and use it, and then go ahead and take care of updating your kit, doing any upgrades that you need, and adding the items for their additional Accessory Slots now.   After you do all of that to your satisfaction, save again, so that you are all set to grind!  If you remember the area we just passed through prior to that monumental fight was rich in grinding mobs, so this is actually a good thing, right?  Remember, all we want to do is get enough to cap-off the current jobs so that when we move forward from here we have the benefit of all of those skills and stats...

Ah, done grinding now?  Yeah, me too.  I don't know how long it took you, but I was surprised to be able to get the CP that I needed in less than twenty minutes, which really doesn't qualify as a grind...

More is revealed

Follow the path now up the ramp and through the tunnel and you will see the fence that blocks off entrance to the docks.  Luckily there is a hole in the fence that we can climb through - at which point we get a CS of them going through the fence and walking to the docks - and getting caught in a sudden rainstorm.   Very cool graphics in this game!

Van is on the urge of revealing a secret that she has been holding in all along - a secret that is tearing her apart inside - and Sazh did not help by giving a flip answer, but maybe he is not as perceptive as he thinks he is...  Van somehow keeps from blurting out her secret - but by now I think we all know that she is clearly an illegal alien from Pulse, right?

This signals the end of a chapter - and unlocks the Achievement/Trophy Instrument of Rebellion.  That is our 7th story-related 'chieve eh?  It looks like the vast majority of them are story related so you will not be missing many in this game by the end!