FINAL FANTASY XIII [2009]
So, yeah, I've been reviewing the monsters in Final Fantasy XIII as I play through the game, and finally we've entered chapter 11, the actual fun part of the game with an open-world and everything. I reviewed part of the bestiary that shows up there in the first open-world area in Gran Pulse. Because I sort of go back and forth in trying to do side-quests, explore and do the main story, the enemies are a bit jumbled up so I just did a list and sorted through a huge chunk of the enemies afterwards.
Man, it's so weird doing one of these FFXIII monster reviews without a set 'yep, chapter 6 enemies, ho hum, chapter 7 enemies after that', huh? Not that I'm complaining, this is so much more fun to play the game and talk about! All of this comes from mostly chapter 11, a.k.a. where the game finally starts to get a fair chunk of open-world-ness. And chapter 11's overworld is a delight to explore, I'm just baffled why they couldn't do this treatment for some of the other amazing-looking environments in the previous segments (even in a more limited way). That's one of the biggest flaws of FFXIII that everyone kept warning me about, though, I suppose.
This segment will cover most of chapter 11's "story path", all the common enemies in the overworld (cause I haven't done all of the side-quests) and chapter 12. We'll finish this series with the not very long chapter 13 and a bit of an addendum on like the hunt-a-big-version-of-this-monster segment for the sidequests.
We're going in an 'anything goes' sort of order here -- I'll try to group enemies together by how early you can meet them. Two enemies grouped in the wyvern family show up in different areas, with the Svarog being found in the Yaschas Mastiff and the Amphisbaena (who prominently shows up in the opening credits!) being found all over the Archylte Steppes as well as around one of the actual honest-to-goodness fantasy dungeons our crew enters. There's really not much here, they're just recoloured versions of the organic Wyvern enemy. At least these two actually make use of their gigantic abdomen mouth in an attack called the 'feeding stoop'. Okay! Not much to say here, as giant airborne enemies they certainly fill a great niche in the overworld!
Svarog borrows its name from the Slavic god of blacksmithing, while the Amphisbaena borrows its name with a two-headed snake born from Medusa's blood from Greek mythology. (We covered a lot of the common enemies in the previous part, but they are very common enemies from chapter 11: Goblin, Alraune, Flan, Dire Flan, Alraune, Gorgonopsid, Navidon, King Behemoth, Rangda, Leyak, Triffid).
Goblin Chieftain, Munchkin & Munchkin Maestro
We covered the regular Goblin in the previous section, but one thing I missed is that they actually have the ability to transform into a mightier form, the Goblin Chieftain -- something I've never actually seen since my team blows through the goblins so fast. Goblin Chieftains do show up naturally, and they're... they're still the same weird Goblin design, but with extra spikes on their club-arms, their heads and their wheels. I love despite the bizarre look of these donut-goblins, they still have a bizarre 'skater boy' theme to them, especially with the Goblin Chieftain's bizarre sunglasses. Basically, any given group of goblins can only have a single Chieftain, and if you kill the existing Chieftain one of the other generic gobbos turn into the Chieftain. Weird, but sort of makes sense.
A variant (that's not much tougher than the Goblin) is the Munchkin, which is a lot more colourful, has explicit anatomy that resemble goggles and headphones, and instead of clubs, I think the arms are supposed to be maracas? It's a lot more bizarre-looking than the Goblin, and I still have no fucking idea what's going on here. The Munchkin can turn into their own 'super mode', the Munchkin Maestro ("Munchkin Star" in the original Japanese), which somehow has a hovering halo and two giant shields attached to the arms. The overall look of these guys are so utterly bizarre and surreal and I'm genuinely not sure what's going on here. Memorable for sure, though!
Adamanchelid, Adamantoise & Adamantortoise
I nearly got killed by these enough times to know that they're probably still untouchable for me at the point of the game I'm in. Three variations of these monstrous 'Oretoises' exist, with them going from Adamanchelid to Adamantoise to Adamantortoise in terms of size and strength. And they sure are pretty cool parts of the vista, in addition to random animals running around in the grassslands, you've got these giant things lumbering in the background. The massive, column-like feet obviously bring to mind elephants, as well as sauropodal dinosaurs. I do really like just how reptilian they look, too, although from their name, they are clearly based more on tortoises. I guess it's one of those 'world tortoise' things? Their faces with the cute thin snout and the wobbly neck does bring to mind a reptile for sure!
There's a bit of their anatomy that looks somewhat artificial, kind of, like the very metallic-looking shell... which I can handwave as just looking metal. Those weird ring-like protrusions near their ankles, though, is not something I can see evolving in a natural creature. That said, Gran Pulse also has those goblins and gremlins evolve, so who can say? I do like the tusks, too. A detail that's far more elephantine than reptilian, but I approve -- the Oretoises certainly look so much more badass and unique with the stronger versions having tusks. Very cool creature, and might very well be one of my favourite weirdo-animals in this game. It's that face, really. The larger ones have separate stats for their legs, because you need to really damage them to stagger them. A bunch of these (as well as a lot of the 'don't fuck with these') enemies show up in chapter 12's story, making it an interesting showcase of "well, did you level grind?"
I don't know what it's called, but some gigantic stone giant golem thing that just looms over the mountains in the distance can just causally pick these up and drop the dinosaur-sized creature into its gullet. I'm pretty sure that might be a boss fight later on in the game.
Adroa & Verdelet
Okay, I thought the Rangda and Leyak were the only 'Spooks' to show up in Gran Pulse, but populating different segments of the area are these guys, who use the grinning cyclopean devil-themed Imp model. I do like that, the Rangda and Adroa models do look significantly different enough for them to co-exist in the same place without feeling too redundant. These guys are... they are pretty annoying, and one of the side-quests has you fight like a cluster of seven of them. Both Adroa and Verdelet are pretty annoying, and they can and will summon previous 'elite' enemies like the Uridimmu. Adroa borrows its name from the creator-god of the Lugbara people, while Verdelet is a named demon 'master of ceremonies' from the 1800's Dictionarie Infernal.
Rakshasa, Kaiser Behemoth & Pulsework Champion
At some point later on I decided to run around and do a bunch of sidequests, and here are a bunch of 'named' enemies. The Rakshasa if a repainted version of the Yaksha (we'll see that below), and is named after the giant-sized demons from Hindu and Buddhist mythology. The Kaiser Behemoth is a slightly-weaker version of the King Behemoth. The Pulsework Champion is exactly the same as Pulsework Gladiator (also, we'll see that below), but silver. I'm including them here for completion's sake, but there's nothing for me to say here -- unlike the other repeat enemies these only show up in side-missions, so I'm going to group them here.
Eventually, after some exploration, if you finally decide to go on with the story, you enter the Mah'habara Subterra, a series of underground tunnels carved up by the fal'Cie Atomos (literally just a giant spinning ball; so not all fal'Cie look like bizarre godlike architecture). And so we get another excuse for more robots! Both of these are classified under "Combat Engineers", and... they sure are interesting. The Hoplites are just honestly pretty generic-looking robots, with a flat panel for a 'face' (is that two :c faces drawn on it?) and with chunky, fingerless robot arms. They look somewhat more furnished than the Pulsework Soldiers, but are otherwise unmemorable...
Until you meet their bosses, the Boxed Phalanx. Its design is hilarious, isn't it? Weird accordion arms, huge valve handles for arms... and that angry face! Just look at that comical angry face! And then you try to fight one, and woe betide you if you find one of these things in a position where you can't pre-empt them and stagger them early, because they are powerful motherfuckers. The Phalanx itself is pretty durable, but with a single move they can do a 'software upgrade' on any nearby Hoplite and severely buff them. Basically it becomes a bit of a race to take down the Phalanx while surviving the jacked-up Hoplites (oh, the Phalanx can easily summon more if you get rid of the ones it comes with). I actually like the choice of names given here, being based on ancient Roman cooperative military techniques. Very, very annoying, and I absolutely adore that they look just so goofy.
Gonna breeze through these three very quickly. The Cryohedron ("Avalanche" in Japanese) is the latest in the Bomb family, although this one has a sad face instead of a manic-grinning one, and, obviously, is ice-themed. The Rust Pudding is yet another Flan repaint, although pretty nastily made up of rust. Rusted, melted metal, then? We don't get quite enough rust-themed monsters. This one looks nasty, and I appreciate the texturing done on the lower parts of this creature.
The Pulse Centurion is actually a fair bit more different than its two predecessors -- they actually do a remarkable job, when you put all the Pulsework soldiers side-by-side, of making each one look different. Pulse Centurion has a completely different four-eyed head, a weird collar with spiny syringes, and a huge spiky club-hand. It's still basically the same 'stagger it, then it'll transform and show its weak point' enemy, though.
Juggernaut
I don't have much to say about Juggy here either, it's a black and non-rusty version of... Dreadnought? We fought a boss like this in the junkyard area, anyway. In the Subterra area, these are basically another set of 'don't fuck with this' enemy that's saved for when you leveled up a whole ton, though. The Juggernaut is pretty much untouchable, but they also show up as sub-bosses in Chapter 12 when all things go to hell and all these terrifying Gran Pulse monsters show up on Eden.
Hecatoncheir
Our final Eidolon is... not Ifrit? With all the foreshadowing in Nautilus, I genuinely thought that Vanille was going to get Ifrit, another recognizable long-running Final Fantasy summon. Instead, Vanille gets... Hecatoncheir, based on the hundred-handed Titans of Greek mythology of the same name. And, uh... it sure is a weird looking motherfucker! The boss fight is another trivial one, similar to Alexander, and I really get the feeling that both Alexander and Hecatoncheir's fight, pacing-wise, would probably be much better-served happening much earlier in the story when Vanille and Hope actually did respectively have huge emotional moments.
Oh well. Hecatoncheir's regular human mode is pretty neat, and I absolutely love the interpretation of the 'hundred hands' as being two giant rotating wheels with hands sprouting out of it like tentacles, each of them jointed like a robot. Lots of hands sprout out from his chest and back, too, and they don't quite go overboard with this, which I like. The 'gestalt mode' is perhaps the most surprising, with Hecatoncheir's massive amounts of hands turning into... four sets of gatling guns that point everywhere? And he's got chicken feet, and Vanille rides this giant walking cannon-chicken around? That's absolutely glorious. Most of Hecaton's attacks involve shooting bullets and energy beams, but some animations will remind you that those gatling gun barrels are made up of jointed arms. Actually low-key might be my favourite Eidolon just based on how utterly weird this is.
After exiting the underground tunnels populated with junkyard robots, our heroes briefly go through a small, fountain-covered lake called the Sulyya Springs, domain of the whale-like fal'Cie Bismarck. It's a short area, comparatively to everything else in chapter 11. There were like, maybe seven, eight fights tops? But boy oh boy, it took me way too long to actually go through all of them. I probably should've level-grinded, but these motherfuckers basically fill the spot in my head as 'unremarkable enemy that is so obnoxious in the game that they became memorable'.
So yeah, they're another batch of 'Terraquatics', those weird fish-frog-lizard things. Oh, look, their dorsal fin has a huge horn in front of it, so it's called ceratosaur ("horned lizard", the name of a real-life dinosaur with a single nose-horn). I mean, this is a lizard in a way, right? And the stronger version is called Ceratoraptor, because dinosaurs. They're cute, they don't look too impressive... except they show up in gigantic swarms alongside the Orobons (below) and you are basically stuck handling the Orobon's relentless attack chains as well as the Ceratoraptor's ability to constantly summon backup. I don't want to go too much into detail about gameplay mechanics, and maybe this is a case of 'should've level grinded, lol' but suffice to say I loathe these things from the bottom of my heart.
Sahagin & Orobon
The first of a new category of enemy called the 'Sahagin' (clearly a reference to D&D's fish-people, the Sahuagin) is the titular Sahagin, as well as the Orobon. And it's actually a pretty cool fish-man! Most fish-people I've seen in fantasy either go for a fully humanoid build but have regular humanoid arms that just terminate in finned fingers. Or having a body of a huge fish but still having gangly lizard limbs stick out of it (like WoW's Murlocs or D&D's Kuo-toa). I don't think I've actually ever seen a fish-man design like the Orobon here. The upper body is just half a fish, with some altered features (notably the positioning of the eyes) to make it look uncanny... but the lower part of the body is also still a fish's body! It's like they just bent the fish halfway through to make the face look forwards, so to speak.
Best of all, though, is the fact that the limbs are giant fish fins, a feature that I'm surprised I've never actually seen before in a 'fish-man' monster. The animations make this guy waddle on land relatively convincingly, and I actually like these guys' designs. In-game, they attack hard, fast and can buff themselves -- but are easily stunned and juggled... if you have the chance to do so and aren't harassed by two other Orobons and six Ceratosauruses. The Orobon borrows its name from a medieval creature that has the body of a fish and the head of a monk. The Sahagin is actually a creature that I met a bit later, and looks a lot nicer than its stronger cousin, with a completely different fish-head and more tropical-fish-looking fins.
I was ready to just shove this with the Megistotherian up above and call it yet another Pantheron/Gorgonopsid repaint... but the Mánagarmr (named after Garmr, the giant wolf from Nordic mythology) is different enough that it even receives its own art piece. The Mánagarmr patrol the next part of the game, a giant monster-filled tower called Taejin's Tower, prowling the lands around it and inside the tower. And sure, they clearly move similarly and reuse the skeleton assets of the other 'panther' enemies in the game, but I absolutely love just how grisly this thing looks. There is like a second set of nasty-looking fangs that grow out from above and below its jaws, something that we've seen before in this game with some of the robo-Behemoths... but it looks just so much more grisly and unnerving in an organic hound-panther creature, yeah?
And that's not counting the rest of the Mánagarmr's design. A row of spine-like spikes running down his back, a giant blade for a tail, and best of all... those bizarre protrusions from the front legs. Obviously meant to resemble the bones of a bat or pterosaur's wing, I'm not sure what's going on here since they don't seem to be functional to the Mánagarmr in any way -- those things don't look sharp enough to be used as blades (and the Mánagarmr have way too much sharp things anyway) and most certainly don't spread out to become wings. Is it simply just a weird evolutionary dead-end feature, or is the Mánagarmr slowly evolving into something that can fly? Interesting!
Pulsework Gladiator, Yakshini & Yaksha
Taejin's Tower is the domain of a bizarre flying-tiki-serpent fal'Cie called Dahaka, and actually functions more similarly to a traditional fantasy dungeon, with little things you must do to unlock the next stage of the dungeon. In practice it ends up being more of a miniboss gauntlet, but some regular enemies -- like the Pulsework Gladiators here -- also show up. Again, it's yet another one of the Pulsework soldiers, but moreso than the others, this one looks so much different! It looks regal, golden, with runic carvings and a giant decorated arm. Plus, it's got a pretty interesting head with that huge weird donut. Pretty neat and distinct variation for sure, and while in practice it staggers and dies similarly to its brethren, I appreciate the amount of work put into making this one feel more like some sort of magical golem instead of a steampunk clanker.
Yakshini and Yaksha, are, of course, our new versions of the 'Daemons', the Succubus/Incubus duo. These ones actually look pretty different, with a pretty fancy pattern on their sleeves (which are more explicitly hollow in these two variants) but their heads aren't even bird-like anymore! It's just this creepy skull death-mask thing, and they've got a huge head full of some Kanjurou-from-One-Piece style hair. Yakshas and their female counterparts Yakshinis are from Hindu and Buddhist mythology, being normally-benevolent nature spirits that are caretakers of natural treasures hidden in the earth.
Gelatitan, Ambling Bellows & Cryptos
Taejin's Tower is a miniboss gauntlet, and the party has to kill a bunch of these giant enemies in succession. The first is Gelatitan, a giant Flan-type enemy... whose body has a very well-done and disgusting texture that makes it look like it's made entirely out of octopus tentacles. Just look at those octopus-tentacle pectorals, that's nasty. It's hard to see here in the small picture, but suffice to say that when fighting this guy in-game, it's easy to see that Gelatitan also has an octopus's creepy eyeballs.
The Ambling Bellows ("Spartan" in the Japanese version) and its minions, the Cryptos, is basically a buffed-up version of the Boxed Phalanx up above, with different colours. I like the red Cryptos, and I do like that the Hoplite and Cryptos do look like they're painted like construction vehicles, but these are repaints in the most literal sense and I don't have much to say here.
Gurangatch, Mushussu & Tyrant
Likewise, our next Taejin's Tower miniboss, Gurangatch (the name is taken from a mythical eel that can bore through stone and create rivers from Aboriginal Australian myths), is literally just the regular Armadillion model with slightly different colours. Granted, this one is repainted from Scalebeast, which we haven't seen before (both the PSICOM variants and Navidon have different heads and scales), but it's still just kind of there.
Mushussu (named after a chimera-like creature from Babylonian myths) is a repaint of the Barbed Specter, one of my favourite enemy models in the game, and it's been even longer since we saw one of those... but it's also just a repaint-as-a-boss, y'know? Yet another miniboss with minimal changes is the Tyrant, which is an elite version of the Berserker. Not much to say here, I like the blue highlights, but it's still sort of the same thing.
Varcolaci & Nelapsi
Being a bit out of order here, but at some point in Taejin's Tower you start seeing that the tower is filled with Cie'th, which, if you forget, are poor humans who got turned into l'Cie and get transformed into basically these weird zombies. These basically are repaints of the 'Wight' enemy that our party fights all the way back in chapter two, but I do like that they went through a lot of effort to make the wings look different. Not much to say here, they still looks like creepy winged humans, and basically everything I say about the Wight applies here.
The Varcolaci is the variant that show up in Taejin's Tower, and borrows its name from a werewolf in Romanian mythology. The Nelapsi actually shows up a bit earlier, in the ruins of a settlement that you can visit early on but I missed until relatively late into chapter 11, and is named after a vampire from Slovakian myths.
Vampire & Taxim
This time around we've got repaints of the 'Ghast' enemy, and the Vampire is the one you meet earlier, being, well, a Ghast with a lot more weird growths and spikes. Called "Nosferatu" in the original Japanese, I really can't say much about the Vampire... it doesn't even have any HP draining attack like you think a creature named like that would. A bit later on after Taejin's Tower, you enter the abandoned town of Oerba, where it seemed like all its inhabitants, at some point, got turned into Cie'th. The Taxim (named after a zombie from Slavic folklore) are basically the same thing as Vampires, but with different colours. In a bit of an interesting enemy distribution, both Taxims and Vampires show up in Oerba. Usually, other than minibosses, all variants of the same enemy type have the same name.
It's kind of surreal seeing an enemy with a very similar name to yours. And even moreso when I find that "Chonchon" is a bizarre mythological creature, a hideous bird from Mapuche mythology that is also the favoured forms of evil sorcerers. In Gran Pulse, though, Chonchons are weird mini-Wights! Or, well, mini-Varcolaci, if we're using the proper terminology for the type of creature that show up. On a glance they just look like angry moths or bats, just a pair of flapping wings with a huge fanged head-mouth... but then you take a closer look at the Varcolaci/Wight model, and you realize that that's not a sideways mouth, but that's just how the heads of these flying Cie'th have mutated. At some point, the Chonchon was a whole person and... somehow only the head remains? And it grows wings?
The Penanggalan is part of the miniboss rush in the tower, being basically a bigger Chonchon and borrowing its name from one of my favourite mythological creatures, a Malaysian ghost-vampire creature that manifests as a floating head with trailing entrails.
Vetala
Ooookay. Classified as an 'unusual Cie'th', the Vetala first shows up as yet another member of the miniboss squadron of Taejin's Tower, but unlike any of the others we've never seen the 'common' version of this one. Just look at this motherfucker. Where the Chonchon is a flying head, and we'll get a single arm below... I don't think I've actually ever seen an enemy that's just a torso. And that's what the Vetala is. It's just a torso without a head and any part of the body under the waist, and it's got two Ghast-arms. There's a weird floating thing where the head and lower body should be, but the Vetala's got two glowing things where its nipples are. Again, it's a huge shame that we don't have any lore for any of these creatures, I really want to know why some Cie'th look like just humans with a bunch of extra crystal growths, while some become freaky floating torsos.
The Vetala become a bit of a more common enemy in the Oerba region, although most creepily some of them just hang out in people's houses. They are also extremely annoying to fight, because they can set up damage-absorbing shields like the Armadillions... but unlike those beasts, the Vetala can re-cast the shield even when it's staggered. The Vetala borrows its name from a corpse-possessing vampiric spirit from Hindu mythology.
fal'Cie Dahaka
Eight minibosses later, and you finally fight the boss of the tower, the fal'Cie Dahaka (borrowing his name from an evil dragon-king in Persian mythology). Dahaka is far from the first fal'Cie our party faces, but he's also the first one that your party actually beats and kills without it doing a 'ah, but this is merely a test and I'm not even trying' like Barthandelus, or the weird... whatever weird destiny-thing Anima was doing before his weird suicide-explosion. Dahaka is also a bit of an asshole, we see him harassing our heroes through their journey across Gran Pulse, flying around and casually killing random Amphisbaenas by passing through them. Dahaka's original design is pretty cool, an interesting take on a being that's essentially an oriental dragon in all but name, this weird segmented serpent that flies easily through the air. I also like his weird tribal mask.
Oddly, you never actually face Dahaka in his original form, because its segments get progressively destroyed as your heroes restore the function of Taejin's Tower, and its guardians slice off bit by bit of Dahaka's body until only the top half remains... and it's still pretty huge, and it transforms! Into something that's a bit more mundane for a J-RPG boss, being half of a humanoid with a dragon head. It still looks pretty impressive, though, looking truly like some sort of deity, and during the battle he'll sometimes transform back into the tribal-mask-headed form to unleash some attacks. Even if I significantly prefer original flavour Dahaka, this one wasn't too terrible.
One of the few Cie'th to not be named after some sort of undead creature or spirit are these bizarre creatures. Joining the Vetala in the 'unusual Cie'th' category, the Seeker here is... hoo boy, it's nasty-looking, huh? It's just a giant arm conjoined to a huge lump of flesh just crawling around. And there's even like half of the remains of a face shoved within that lump of shoulder-flesh! These guys are weak and completely wretched-looking even by Cie'th standards, basically only existing to make fighting the stronger Vampires a bit harder. Again, like the Chonchon, this was once a human that got cursed and somehow degenerated into only an arm and a face. That looks horrible and painful.
Chapter 12 opens with a huge, glorious cutscene involving Transformer Eidolons and a long, long cutscene, at which point you have to fight one of these guys. It's an Anavatapta Warmech, basically a fancier, purple-and-silver version of the very first enemy in the game, the Manasvin Warmech. It sure is a repaint (and goes down as easily as its white counterpart), I don't have much to say here. Anavatapta is the lake at the center of the world in Buddhism.
You meet this one a bit later on in chapter 12 as a bit of another 'elite enemy', but it's the Proto-Behemoth, somehow more powerful than the Alpha, Beta and Lodestar Behemoth despite this one supposedly being a prototype version of Coccoon's manufactured Behemoths. This one is basically just the Lodestar model with fancy red-and-gold colours, and some wires hanging out.
Corps Defender, Corps Steward, Bulwalker & Adamantheron
Chapter 12 brings our heroes to Eden, right as Gran Pulse creatures like the King Behemoth, Amphisbaena and Oborons are teleported into the city of Eden, so your heroes have to fight both the wild creatures as well as the soldiers guarding Eden. Which is to say we get a bunch of trooper repaints, these ones being the very boring colour of white and gray. Bulwalker is a repaint of the Uhlan we fought forever ago, and its Japanese name is taken from the Austrian tank SK-105 Kürassier. The Adamantheron is the most powerful version of the Pantheron enemies, and they have a bunch of extra spikes.
Sanctum Archangel, Sanctum Seraph, Sanctum Inquisitrix & Sanctum Celebrant
Far cooler-looking are the Sanctum guards. They still fight identically to the PSICOM and Guardian Corps enemies, but at least they have real fancy colours and neat looking headdresses. The Sanctum Inquisitrix is a repaint of the rarely-seen 'Huntress' model and is just as annoying. Not much to say here, it's been a while since we've seen any of these guys. I kinda like that some of the most elite guardians of the 'gods' have names equivalent to angel ranks. I liked that the 'celebrant' is a fucking bazooka man. I would complain that these guys are super-duper boring, but the context of meeting them and the sheer amount of variation of enemies in chapter 12 makes them a lot less boring.
Humbaba & Vernal Harvester
Some organic elite Behemoths show up in chapter 12 when shit hits the fan and all sorts of Pulse monsters arrive on Eden. Most are just the 'unbeatable' enemies from earlier in the story like the Adamantoise and the Juggernaut, but we've got some sort-of new ones. The Humbaba is basically the King Behemoth with slightly different colours and a head design. It's a recurring monster name in Final Fantasy and one that apparently often shares models as a Behemoth repaint; and borrows its name from an evil giant from Assyrian mythology. Let me just say that the multiple times you fight two Humbabas at once are not fun. Chapter 12 actually does a great job of testing you even if you level-grinded, due to enemies like the Humbaba and the Adamantoises.
The Vernal Harvester is basically a repaint of the Aster Protoflorian... it's the first time I've seen this enemy time re-appear after its appearance as a boss. This one actually has Bulbasaur colours! Not a whole ton to say here, it sure is a repaint.
Sacrifice
A new model at last! I must say that the sheer variety of enemies in chapter 12 doesn't actually make the chapter boring the way that chapter 9 did for me. Each battle is a fun roll of the dice on whether you fight some undead Cie'th, or PSICOM troopers, or a PSICOM robot, or a Pulse robot, or some random beast from Gran Pulse... and then there are these guys! The "Sacrifice" is a far, far more weirder looking version of the Ghast/Vampire model, with almost its entire body being covered with crystal. Unlike the other Cie'ths, these are created specifically as a way to circumvent one of the rules we've been set up with -- apparently, if a human gets turned into an l'Cie without being given a focus, they just become Cie'ths immediately... which is what some of the fal'Cie end up turning the PSICOM dudes into. It's kind of pretty nasty-looking how they're almost crystal-like, but are basically just the same as any of the shambling Cie'th in all but name. Their faces are a lot more prominent, too, poor fuckers.
Also, I don't try to talk too much about game mechanics, but these are a real pain in the butt to kill due to their huge HP and them just casting debilitating spells.
The Proudclad
One of the recurring random minor bad guys -- or, well, a bad guy since he works for PSICOM -- is Yaag Rosch, who shows up in a sort-of repaint of the Ushumgal Subjugator, one of the cooler-looking PSICOM mechs that haven't shown up at all. It just bypasses the 'giant spider tank' phase of the Ushumgal and goes straight for the more elaborate flying dragon-mecha thing, though. The Proudclad apparently borrows its name from a completely different-looking robot boss from Final Fantasy VII, and it's got a fancy angry samurai mask instead of a faceless robotic one. It's a pretty annoying boss fight with a fair amount of resistances, but otherwise it's sort of a repeated enemy. This model hasn't been used a whole ton and it's been a while since we last saw it, though, so it does feel pretty fresh! And, y'know, the impact of building up a side villain does make the Proudclad feel just that much more memorable as a boss.
You fight the Proudclad a couple of times as it gets upgraded halfway through chapter 12, and it finally becomes the final boss of the chapter in general, this time swapping back and forth constantly between its spider-tank and flying-samurai-mask-dragon forms. Without going too in-depth about game terminology, let's just say that the final Proudlcad boss is one hell of a bitch to fight. The Proudclad itself ends up with a pretty cool cutscene with its pilot, Yaag Rosch, which I did like.
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Next up... the final chapter, and all the sidequest enemies that I didn't cover here!
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