Reviewing Monsters - Final Fantasy XIII, Part 2

FINAL FANTASY XIII [2009]

As mentioned before, I reviewed the monsters in chapters 1 through 4 of Final Fantasy XIII as I play through them. This is going to cover Chapter 5 up to 7. Or maybe 8, by the time I alternate between playing and writing. 

At this point I realize that the game's probably just going to be thirteen chapters long... and, yeah, the entire story is just going to be these characters running around and trying to figure out what to do with their l'Cie status. Which makes sense from a storytelling standpoint, but I genuinely thought that we were just in the first act of the story when I was running around in these chapters. Turns out I'm in the halfway point already? Yeah. I'm still enjoying myself, but at the same time I genuinely expected there to be more. I know there's a semi open-world segment at some point in the game's storyline. But oh well, I'm here for the ride. 

Basically, chapters 5 and 6 might be some of my favourite parts of the game, for the simple reason that it finally lets us see the wacky wildlife of Gran Pulse. Or, well, what little we cross through. I don't actually mind any of the robots at all -- all four of the previous chapters have been fun, but I do have to admit that chapter 7 was very samey and repetitive. 

Frag Leech

We'll start off with the enemies from chapter five, starting off with this little cutie! Chapter five is set in the Gapra Whitewood, which is a cool nature preserve with giant techno-organic trees and everything, and some of the enemies there are sure weird looking creatures! The first of those are these guys, which count as militarized units, under the 'leeches' category. So yet another example of Cocoon's troops creating biomechanical creatures to use as weapons, although in this case, we finally get to see the creatures that these militarized units are based off of.

the Frag Leeches are pretty neat, although they are clearly based on slugs and snails more than leeches. I guess they just find 'leech' to be a cooler-sounding evil monster name? The Japanese name is something akin to 'autonomous mine' and has nothing to do with leeches, so. I like these guys! The anatomy might seem kind of simple, but the leech's body is actually sort of almost cut in half horizontally, with the upper half of the body wobbling around like an upper jaw. There's a complete face there, though, and it gives us kind of a bizarre, wacky-looking anatomy. I really like those huge spiky red-and-black pods jutting out of it, those are like, engorged eyestalks that double as cyborg-animal missiles. I like them. 

 

Vespid

Another militarized units, the Vespids are pretty cool! Their name marks them as some sort of bee or hornet, which... sort of makes sense? They are winged creatures with a stabby tail. I like how they look, and that tail is consistent with the tail that the earlier Garuda Interceptor boss has. Not too much to say here, I feel like this is the sort of anatomy I've seen before on a bunch of other robot designs before. Still pretty cool, though, I like the faceless beaked mask-like face, I liek the two huge shield-arm-wing things, and I like that this thing is essentially a huge robot bee. 

Silver Lobo

Okay, now we start seeing some of the real, organic Pulse creatures that all the weird robot beasts that PSICOM uses are based from. The Silver Lobos here are clearly the basis for the Pantherons and Thexterons, right down to the weird bit of jagged chin-spike. Again, the most interesting thing here is the head, which manages to resemble the Pantherons while lookin so much more rugged and different, particularly with that mean set of teeth. I like the little detail of the tufts of fur running down not just its spine, but also its chin like some sort of beard. Bizarrely, despite being a weird wolf-like mammal, this creature breathes poison gas!

Thanks to how they are introduced, the Silver Lobos are actually much, much tougher than their supposedly upgraded and militarized counterparts, so maybe in the process of turning them into cyborgs, somehow PSICOM's bio-engineers lose what made the Silver Lobos so powerful? There has to be a reason why our characters can one-shot Pantherons no problem while Silver Lobos take more strategy and hits to take down. Or maybe it's just a 'don't ask' thing.

Crawler

And here's the oriignal form of the Frag Leech, missing the bug face and looking more like a giant Pac-Man mouth and a slug had a baby. The Crawler is explicitly identified in the 'Nudibranch' category, so a pretty sea slug! Except this one is terrestrial, and has a weird purple head-orb thing that sort of looks like an eye. Supposedly being a nudibranch does explain the sheer exaggerated colours of both the Crawler and its robotic counterpart, the Frag Leech. 

The 'Crawler' is actually a recurring enemy in Final Fantasy, although they usually are giant tentacled caterpillars that are thinly-disguised copies of Dungeons & Dragons' Carrion Crawler.

Feral Behemoth

And this is what the Behemoth looks when it's not a robot! A lot more traditional angry snarly dragon-beast face, huh? And instead of a giant gun strapped to its head, regular Feral Behemoth's got a still artificial-looking sword-blade thing. I guess the Alpha and Beta Behemoths having those giant ribbons makes a bit more sense now that we know that its original organic counterpart has them... although I'm also not sure what the Feral Behemoths use theirs for. Decorative or attracting mates, I suppose? Not much to really say here, I feel like having most of the non-human enemies exist in 'cyborg' and 'organic' forms really gives them a lot of room to play around with making the repaint enemies more distinctive with minimal 3D model changing. 

Barbed Specter

...and then you have this guy, the Barbed Specter ("Drainer" in the original Japanese), which is the original organic version of the Vespid. Holy hell, what a badass looking motherfucker, huh? Categorized in the completely non-descriptive 'Stalker' category, this clearly threw me for a loop since I expected the Vespid's original form to be some sort of giant bee based on the name. Turns out it's... this thing. Look at this Dark Souls boss looking motherfucker, with a face that looks like a dragon skull pressed onto a headless torso, a giant abdomen with what looks like a ribcage wrapped around it, a tail-stinger that ends in a bony tip, and ragged clothes as wings? What is this thing, if you showed me this without context, I would say that it's some sort of powerful undead monster. Hell, even in-game I kept scratching my head how the Barbed Specter is apparently merely just a 'feral creature', somehow an organic creature that lives in the same forests as the Crawlers, Lobos and Behemoths. 

Despite looking very impressive, the Barbed Specter is actually one of the weaker enemies in the Gapra Whitewood. Boo!

Corps Watchman, Corps Marksman & Milvus Velocycle

Patrolling the Gapra Whitwood is yet another pair of differently-coloured Guardian Corps troopers. You know the deal, one of them holds a stick and the other has a gun. The Milvus Velocycle at least actually has visibly different cannons, it's got three on each weapon pod instead of one like the Ciconia. "Milvus" is the name of a genus of kites, which continues the trend of these robo-bikes being named after birds. 

Aster Protoflorian

The act boss of chapter five is the Aster Protoflorian, which is also a militarized unit categorized as an 'annihilator'. Its Japanese name calls it something along the lines of 'Prototype Cavalry', and there's no real explanation to where this thing comes from, so I guess it's just another one of PSICOM's cyborgs? A pretty cool monster, it's basically what happens when you make Bulbasaur into a giant monster cyborg. I love the dopey turtle head that this thing has, and it's got two gorilla arms with giant hook-claws. And there's the bulb on its back, of course, which opens and spins around like a giant buzzsaw. 

So the Protoflorian here is a bit of a gimmick boss, where it will keep using its skill to swap its weaknesses and resistances. Oh yeah, this game has an elements system with fire, ice, lightning, water, wind and earth -- not that any of them are really all that sensible. But the Protoflorian will keep swapping out which element it's weak to, and which one it will 'absorb'. An interesting boss fight gimmick, and one that I feel is somehow appropriate for the plant boss. 

Flandragora

Chapter six takes place on the sunny nature trek of Sunleth Waterscape, which, in addition to being a neatly bright and stark contrast to the five drearier previous chapters, also happens to feature one of my faovurite background music tracks in the game. It's just so neat to listen to! And the monsters are pretty adorable, too, like the Flandragora here! It's not until later that I realize that "Flan" (or its original Japanese name, "Pudding") is actually a recurring Final Fantasy enemy and sort of their version of Dragon Quest's Slime. But even then, Flandragora here (or "Vegeta Pudding" in Japanese) is such a delightful thing to look at! And not to knock this game's aesthetic, but to see something so vibrantly colourful after even the natural beasts of the setting are pretty gritty... yeah, I love this guy. 

Design-wise it's a pretty simple enemy, just a blob of slime with hands that trail off into blobby fingers, and a mouth that has those trails of slime that give the impression of teeth, but Flandragora here looks so awesome! It's got a little tomato stalk on top of its head, and the gradient of its colour really makes me love this tomato slime. It goops around on its lower body, but sometimes you see them buried under the ground like a real carrot or something, with only the tip of its head poking out. It's adorable. 

Hedge Frog & Mud Frog

Featuring a bit of a 'repaint' are these guys, the Hedge Frog and the Mud Frog, more powerful and spikier versions of the Breshan Bass we saw a while back. Apparently they are frogs now, although they always did look a lot more like amphibians that happen to have a fish's head. And now these guys have spiky fish heads! I like that the areas they are found in look pretty believable for giant frog-fish-lizard chimeras to live in. The Hedge Frogs on the left have a far prettier colouration of green and purple, while the Mud Frogs on the left are actually able to summon a bunch of Hedge Frogs with a 'courtship dance', making these guys a bit of a pain to deal with. 

One gimmick of a part of the Sunleth area is that at one point you encounter these strange weather-changing orbs that will swap the populations of encounters depending on the weather, allowing you to try and avoid some of the more troublesome creatures. These frogs will show up in the rain, and the Flandragoras only show up in sunlight. 

Garchimacera

The Gremlins make a return, so presumably the plains and the forests are where they naturally live in? They dance a lot and do a little game of walking in a cute little circle and sort of look like fairies or something, but, again, the lack of any real lore for these creatures is extremely regrettable. I don't think "Garchimacera" is in reference to anything, but it's pretty hard to pronounce. It looks a bit fancier than the regular Gremlin, and really looks like it's got a bunch of extra cloth coverings. Again, since we don't know anything about these gremlins beyond them being 'spooks', there really isn't much to go on. They're cute, though. 

Scalebeast

The Scalebeast is the first of the "Armadillion" enemy you meet, and these are pretty interesting enemies in concept! Giant dinosaur-sized monsters that look like oversized komodo dragons with a massive armadillo shell, the Scalebeast's shell can actually flare up, giving it the impression of something like a frilled lizard. The Scalebeast... is a gigantic pain to actually fight, and the game actually explicitly warns the player that sometimes dodging is the right thing to do -- it takes a long, long while to build up the 'stagger' status for the Scalebeast, but when you do, you actually rip off its entire mass of folding armoured carapace, exposing its main body that just looks like a komod dragon or a skink, albeit one with a glowing patch running across its back. The armour plates grow back after a while, though, and I'm going to assume that some sort of magic is involved because not only do those armour plates regenerate very quickly, they also aren't actually connected to the Scalebeast physically but just sort of hover in place. 

A very cool monster design, actually, and looks even better in motion. Playing with the 'weather' bit, the Scalebeast shows up when it is raining, but is slower to dodge while also being a bit more of a grindy battle. 

Wyvern

When it's sunny, though, the Scalebeasts are replaced by Wyverns, which are organic versions of the Garuda Interceptor you fight earlier in the game as a boss... and also the same winged draconic creatures that show up in the beginning of the opening movie of the game. Not much to say here, it sure is a beast that befits the name of the Wyvern, looking pretty cool and impressive and I do like that set of... certainly unconventional wings. Not a whole ton to say, actually, but I do appreciate the wildlands having these giant looming dragons over in the skies. It's very, very cool. 

Enki & Enlil

All areas must come to an end, and the bosses of chapter six are these two... things. The game categorizes them in their own category, "Woodwraiths". What? Okay, that doesn't tell me anything about them. But they sure are very, very cool! Named after the Sumerian gods of water and wind, Enki and Enlil have similar designs but they just look... haunting, don't they? That face, in particular, which I'm not sure looks like a machine, or a mask, or some sort of bizarre runic architecture. No wonder PSICOM loves making cyborg animals so much if some of the natural beasts in Gran Pulse look like this! And then there is the rest of this thing. It has the vague look of a tortoise of some sort, but it's got four gigantic Blastoise-style cannons made entirely out of logs of wood. There's those chunky legs that look like they're made out of wooden chunks, and way too many toes for each leg. It's got a carpet of vines on its shell, and there's a massive set of 'hair' around the beast's head, giving it the look of a wizened old god even though those are probably just vines... and they don't even have a face. They did a great job at making Enki and Enlil feel like primal, ancient beings without going over-the-top. 

The gimmick with these guys is interesting. The larger Enki is immune to water, and is weak to lightning. The smaller Enlil is the exact reverse, being weak to water and immune to lightning. You can brute force this boss fight, of course, but an easier way is to get them to trigger their berserking area attacks, and have Enki and Enlil unleash their respective element and hurt their twin. Pretty neat little strategy once you figure it out, and I had an absolute blast fighting these two. Looking hauntingly cool doesn't hurt either. 

Corps Tranquifex, Corps Pacifex & Falco Velocycle

Chapter seven is a long, long chapter and takes place in the populated city of Palumpolum, and so I kind of understand that it would have a lot more human minions. And these two, the Corps Tranquifex and Pacifex, have a neat yellow outfit that even make them look like emergency workers. I guess they tranquilize and pacify the populace? Not much to say here. The Falco Velocycle is pretty cool, it's got huge fuck-off shotguns as its weapons, but not much to say either. It is of course named after the falcon. 

Flanitor

Haha what the fuck. So after seeing some organic creatures in the fifth and sixth chapters without having first seen a bioweapon counterpart, I was wondering if the Flandragora was going to have a PSICOM-created minion. And they do! Meet Flanitor, the flan janitor. They have huge hats that cover half their face which go wee-woo-wee-woo when it detects intruders, and I love the mass of random glowing robo-parts on this one. The Flanitors are mostly patrolling a food-processing facility so I assume PSICOM somehow created a bunch of robotic pudding-people just to help patrol a food facility. Their notable skill is 'Rescue', where Flanitors will drop everything they are doing to heal their wounded buddy, so if you can get your characters to do AoE damage and hit two Flanitors at the same time you'll catch them in a loop of trying to heal each other.

The original Japanese name is "Pudding Combat Medic", which makes more sense for a militarized unit, and explains their healing skill better. The idea of slime janitors is a lot funnier, though, and I guess the translation team couldn't resist the pun. 

Lucidon

And here's the robotic version of the Scalebeast up above (and categorized as an 'Armadon'), the Lucidon, which is also employed to patrol the food-processing facility. The 'scales' look a lot more robotic, and I absolutely love the head, which lacks any sort of features and the creature looks pretty neatly robotic! The combination of the lack of eyes and the white colouration does make this look like one of those blind albino cave salamanders. Not much to say here, I like this guy. 

PSICOM Predator, PSICOM Bombardier, PSICOM Scavenger & PSICOM Aerial Sniper

Chapter seven is long. Like, really, really long. Or maybe it feels extra-long because a good chunk of it pits some of the lower-DPS characters against these endless armies of faceless, white-and-black PSICOM troops. At least pick one of the colour schemes that at least look a lot less boring, y'know? Not much to say here, there's a neat sense of 'run away from these Stormtroopers in a populated town', but these guys get really bland after a while. The other three are repeat enemy types, but the Bombardier is new -- he's got a rocket launcher and if you don't kill him in the first couple of turns he's going to blow you up. 

PSICOM Warlord, Orion & Lodestar Behemoth

We've also got variants of previous PSICOM bosses or sub-bosses. The PSICOM Warlord at least looks super-fancy with his red outfit. The Orion (a.k.a. Jaeger in the original Japanese), meanwhile, combines the Crusader's spiky-finger arm with a more white colourscheme like the Myrmidon. Cool, but we've seen it before.

The Lodestar Behemoth is gold and has a lot more spikes and jagged edges, the sort of advanced version of the Alpha and Beta Behemoths we've seen before. It sure has a bunch of spiky ridges jutting out of its forehead, sort of giving the impression of a second set of jaws or something? The Lodestar Behemoth has a second phase where it'll stand up and pull out a sword from his back when you get him to half health, which, let me say, was not something I was expecting.

Ushumgal Subjugator

Certainly set up as what I thought was going to be the final boss of the pretty long and drama-heavy chapter seven, the Ushumgal Subjugator (Ushumgal is a priest from Mesopotamian legend) is yet another 'Annihilator' militarized unit, and it sure is a pretty cool giant Final Fantasy robot, huh? The first form is an airborne creature where those giant metallic hooks double as wings; weird-looking 'hands'; and it's got a floating halo and stuff, giving it the impression of some sort of a thin, tapering dragon or something. Pretty all right, and definitely something that works better in motion. 

When you fight the Ushumgal Subjugator the second time it's taken to standing on the ground on a set of thin, flat crab legs, there's a different 'head' made out of the silver plates, and the wings from before are tucked backwards. The end result makes it look like some sort of weird scuttling bug, then? An orange robot-angel bug. Not much to really say here, I actually like this boss a fair bit! Even moreso because it's bright orange. Wonder if we'll meet the organic counterpart to this at some point?

Havoc Skytank

The actual final boss of chapter seven is a goddamn gunship. So the Havoc Skytanks have actually been showing up throughout the game, being these super-futuristic Helicarriers that fly around, look menacing and drop off soldiers and other PSICOM/Corps goons like Orions and whatnot, but I never really thought that we're actually going to fight one as a boss -- especially when the chapter seemed to have ended and going through a long cutscene and setting up a human antagonist as the arc boss. But then instead you fight his giant floating battleship! It sure is a cool flying battleship, and it's divided into five parts (Havoc Skytank, Starboard Hull, Port Hull, Starboard Turret, Port Turret), and all the parts are shooting at you together. I'm not sure how I'm going to talk about an entire cool-looking sci-fi vehicle as a video game enemy, but it sure is a cool boss for sure! 

Zwerg Metrodroid
Chapter eight takes place in Nautilus, basically what happens if Universal Studios and Disneyland had a baby and it was the size of an actual city. As with the previous chapter, we mostly get repeat humanoid enemies, although one new little Zwerg buddy shows up. The Metrodroid moves identically to the Scandroid seen earlier, but it does look a lot different, huh? The ring is circular with little planet-like orbs around it, the texture of the body looks like some sort of weird mesh, two horns like a motorcycle handle, and it's head is like a mask with a weird symbol carved onto it. Not too spectacular, but certainly a welcome addition. I'm not entirely sure what function the Metrodroid serves, 'metro' can imply a function of basically anything in a city. 

Chocobo & Sheep

Y'know what? Let's talk about these guys, since I'm pretty positive we won't fight them. A chunk of the amusement park level takes our heroes through a Chocobo segment, and while FFXIII surprisingly doesn't have a minigame, we get to see the Chocobo, which is technically sort-of a monster? It sure is a mascot, these giant friendly looking chickens that are the size of ostriches and are also ridable. Pretty simple concept; a giant ridable yellow chicken replacing horses does help to give the franchise a fun, simple unique identity. 

The sheep, though, are far less expected and far more adorable. Only the smaller, tiny versions show up on Nautilus (I'm going to assume the others are 'wild' ones from Pulse) but they are adorable, little balls of fluff with tiny little chick legs, and a face that can only be described as a Pac-man mouth with a cute little froggy inflatable cheek. The Pulse sheep go for a more Droopy-the-dog face and it's less cute, but I absolutely love the domesticated Cocoon Sheep -- presumably, these are the Pomeranian equivalents of Cocoon sheep-breeding, where they are tiny and cute just to appeal to humans. And they're absolutely right, since these tiny fluffballs do appeal to me. 

Midlight Reaper
Another chapter, another giant robot boss. The Midlight Reaper has a much more easily understandable anatomy than the Ushumgal up above, looking like... well, some sort of a spider-tank, although a pretty stylized one. In addition to the missile pods on its heads and 'knees', there's also a big-ass cannon jutting out from underneath the spider-body of this thing. I don't have much to say because I frankly don't have much to say about what's essentially a cool Star Wars vehicle, but I do like these things a lot, and they are a pretty straight-up cool looking visual. The Japanese version calls this guy "Löwe", German for lion and also a name of one of Germany's more famous WWII-era tanks. 

Brynhildr

After what seems like forever, we finally get another Eidolon boss, and this time in a pretty emotional moment for two of what I think might be my favourite characters among the main cast. Sazh is the one associated with Brynhildr, although the circumstances behind it is a bit long and I'm not going to go into, because, after all, this is a monster review and it's not like any of these Eidolons, design-wise, have much in common with their emotional outbursts or whatever. The mechanics of the fight sort of play around with it, with both the Odin and Brynhildr fights requiring you to 'protect' an ally member in your party, but... eh. Brynhildr (named after a named Valkyrie from Norse mythology) isn't actually a recurring summon like Odin and Shiva. I really don't have much to say here, she sure is a cool looking Transformer design with a giant weird axe, and she turns into like a buggy. I do like the weapon and the fact that the tires actually break up into curved goat horns or whatever... but I don't really have much to say here beyond that this sure is a cool looking robot lady. 

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That's it for now, tune in next time for part 3. Apparently I'm nearing the open-world segment soon, which is going to be neat.