Get Some Friends!

I’m putting this one first, simply because it’s critical to so many of the other suggestions I’ll make . Having friends in Dragonvale is the key to two really important things: getting gems, and getting money.

You can, of course, pay *real* cash to get gems and money, but that’s stoopid. It’s better to make friends in Dragonvale, and help each other out.

So for example, you are able to visit your friend’s islands whenever you want. Once a day, you’ll receive 3 free bonuses of money from each friend, and the amount you receive increases as you level up. For example, at level 15, I’m currently pulling in about $7,500 per day, per friend.

Unfortunately, Dragonvale’s current friend management is AWFUL, so I don’t visit each friend every day. However, when you need some cash, it’s an easy way to score some pretty signifiant dough–if you’re willing to invest the time.

So…how do you get friends? Well, you can do it the hard way and browse through the Facebook Dragonvale fan pages, and add people requesting Game Center friends. Or, with the new Game Center in iOS 5, you can actually pretty easily request friends based on GC’s “recommendations”. Using this, I was able to add over 300 friends in less than 2 days…which inevitably means a nice pile of gems!

Clear Your Islands

You’ll notice pretty quickly that each of your islands starts off as a pretty unkempt, overgrown forest filled with trees, rocks, more trees, and more rocks . Now I know that it’s tempting to funnel all of your money toward leveling dragons and breeding new ones…however, I’m a big advocate of clearing your islands of trees and rocks pretty early on. The biggest reason? Experience points. If you systematically clear your islands, you’ll notice that you rack up some mega experience points. And the best part is that it only costs you money…no gems required. So go ahead, get the wheels moving on clearing your islands; you can breed dragons while you wait.

Smart Leveling

When leveling up your dragons, be smart. There are a few things to think about here.

1. The amount of money any particular habitat can generate at any one time is limited. For example, the Plant habitat has an upper-bound of $500. So, having 4 level 10 dragons in one Plant habitat is not going to do you a lot of good.
2. Related to #1, if you have habitats that have a higher economic upper-bound, it will behoove you to have some moderately-leveled dragons abiding there, so you can maximize the cash you’re bringing in per-habitat, per collection. Just as 4 level 10 dragons in a Plant habitat is a waste, 2 level 1 dragons in an Air habitat are also a bad strategy.
3. Finally, leveling up your dragons obviously comes by purchasing treats for them. So carefully weigh the cost of treats against the benefit which your dragons’ levels will bring, given the current rank– you are at.

Trick or Treat?

As you can see, you get a lot less bang for your buck as you go after larger quantities. Personally, unless you are planning on not looking at Dragonvale for a day or two, buying Dragon Fruit is ridiculous. On the other hand, sticking exclusively to Dragon Snaps will give you the best deal…assuming you are committed to harvesting and re-ordering food every 30 seconds

Personally, I tend to go with either Zazzberries, or Blushrooms, depending on how much I plan on playing Dragonvale during the day.

Intelligent Breeding

There are a million breeding guides available, so I’ll stay away from that subject. However, my general advice is to be smart about breeding. What I mean by this is:

1. Pay attention to how long your potential egg will take to be fertilized, and then to hatch. Nothing worse than setting some dragon-lovin’ in progress, and then realizing that it will be 12+ hours until the “magic happens”…and then an extra 12 hours to hatch.
2. Pay attention to your available habitats. Unless you’ve upgraded your nursery ridiculously, you have limited space for “staging” eggs. If you don’t have habitats built, or don’t have room in existing habitats, your egg will have to sit until you make room. While this doesn’t hurt anything, it may prevent you from moving forward with other eggs…and since Dragonvale is a waiting game anyway, this will just create more frustration.
3. Unless you are ready to breed hybrids, be sure that the dragons you’re breeding are actually the “base type” dragons that will create the proper match for the hybrid you want to create. In other words, just because a dragon is “red” does not mean that it fulfills the “fire dragon” requirement of a particular match. And just because a dragon happens to live in an Earth habitat, does not mean it will create a mud dragon. In general, since you have to wait so long for eggs to be fertilized and hatched, be paranoid about breeding.
4. Take a look at the “Goals” for your particular level. Some hybrids will score you bigger experience/cash rewards than others. Go after these first, Yes, you’ll eventually need to get them all in order to fulfill the achievement. But you have plenty of time for that, so grab the experience and cash as early as possible.

Not having touched it since then, here are some additional random thoughts, in no particular order or meaningfulness

• Final Battle Blues: The final battle (was it 3 or 4 obligatory boss forms?) was WAYYYYY too easy.  It could be that I simply leveled up too much in my aborted attempt to complete all of the beast “marks,” but I took out the final baddie (Orphan) without breaking a sweat.  In fact, besides the necessarily non-lethal “Judgement” strike in the next-to-last form, all my character’s HP stayed well above half.  Of course, that means that I had much more time for slicing and dicing, making quick work of him.  Even the dreaded “doom” that was cast on my party in Orphan’s final form was no big deal whatsoever.  I annihilated him so quickly that I didn’t even have to think about trying to get around certain death.  Pathetic.
• The End of Big Hair?: A hallmark of FF games is big, spiky, crazy hair.  From Cloud’s lethal spikes to Wakka’s cone-dome, big, flashy hair has been a certainty.  And yes, although we all realize that such hair is, on the basis of physics, entirely impossible, it’s still awesome.  Since X, however, the trend has been toward more realism.  So while the hair looks more “natural” in CGI, it’s lost is Final Fantasy-ish-ness.  I, for one, acutely feel the loss.
• The Hunt for Experience: In FFXII, the chief means for gathering experience points was to take on missions of hunting down deadly beasts of varying difficulty and temperament.  These quests took one all over the Final Fantasy world, sometimes with quite annoying time investment.  In Final Fantasy XIII, the experience gathering was radically transformed by the idea of “marks” which involve hunting down deadly beast of varying difficulty and temperament.  Oh, wait..uggh.  I understand that the series is now 13 installments old…but seriously, how about something original?
• My Kingdom for a Writer: While FFXIII was definitely the best of the series in terms of sound-to-character sync, the writing was, in a word, HORRIBLE.  The storyline was *okay,* but the narrative path to the end of the plot was brutal.  The biggest violators were the sequences between Snow and his fiance-turned-L’cie, Serah.  True enough, there’s something to be said for trying to develop a storyline and accompanying dialogue to conjure an emotional connection between the player and the characters.  But these sequences made day-time soaps look like Oscar contenders.  Quite brutal.
• Eat This: Given the inevitable grind of experience-gathering random, incessant battles, there is a certain necessity in giving the characters something to “say” in the midst of a battle, and such paradigms have led to some humorous and memorable sound-bytes (Lunar 2, anyone? ).  However, some of the in-battle dialogue in FFXIII was less than stellar.  While I appreciated Lightning’s sarcasm in “You’ll make it” whenever she healed someone, Fang’s incessant “You’re gonna squirm” was highly annoying.
  Despite the hit-and-miss nature of this kind of dialogue, I swear I came across a couple mistakes.  The funniest one was when I placed Fang into a healer role.  While she was in the midst of a Commando attack, I suddenly switched the paradigm so that she turned and healed Lightning.  However, the sound-byte from her Commando role was still on her lips, so as she turned and healed Lightning, she shrilly screamed “Eat this!”.  It was awesome.
• That’s What She Said: From Hope, when seeing the giant Titan monster on Gran Pulse: “That thing’s so big, I can’t tell how far away it is!”….

For those who know me, it is well understood that I am a big fan of the Final Fantasy franchise.  With the exception of a few spin-offs for the various hand-held devices (and XI, which doesn’t count), I’ve played every Final Fantasy to date.  I’ve reveled in the unparalleled awesomeness of VII and VIII, vigorously defended IX as a GOOD game, and even suffered through others like X-2 (remember that one?).  I’ve watched both movies, and have trudged through spin-offs of the franchise like Dirge of Cerberus.  My love of Final Fantasy, of course, guided me infallibly to Kingdom Hearts which, although probably consistently better than FF games, rings in at a close second.

Given my history, then, I feel I am an adequate judge of the games.  So without further introduction, here’s my breakdown of Final Fantasy XIII.

Story

FFXIII is the story of six otherwise unlikely comrades bound together by a common curse which has transformed them into L’cie, the hated and feared subordinates of the Fal’cie who wield god-like control over the world of Cocoon.  The L’cie’s “focus” is to incarnate Ragnarok and destroy the world that the Fal’cie might invoke the return of the Maker and be reborn out of the fires of the destruction of the world.  If they succeed, the L’cie will be transformed into crystal, gaining eternal life.  If they fail, they will become the damnable C’eith, and wander the world in despair and misery for eternity.

On the whole, the story line for FFXIII is okay.  Few of the FF titles have outstanding plots, so FFXIII feels like a lot more of the same.  Because character development has to happen so quickly, the protagonists are prone to irrational choices that can only be attributed to a need to move the story along. The dialog is the typical FF blend of platitudes, sound bytes, and uber-cheese, although this one is probably the best in terms of mouth-to-voice sync

There is a bit of political intrigue which is intended to give depth to the story.  However, it is so thinly established that it really only serves to provide fodder for several annoying and not-terribly-difficult boss battles.

My Rating: 3

Aesthetics

While the story leaves much to be desired, the graphics for this game were quite lovely.  The character movements were smooth and fluid, and the environments–while annoyingly linear–were beautifully fleshed out

Many of the cut-scenes were spectacular, and given their frequency, much of the game was more like watching a mildly interesting movie than playing a game.  Makes me wish I had the HD version for PS3…

My Rating: 4.5

Battle System

The battle system is significantly different than in previous titles.  While still turn based, all battle actions in FFXIII are coordinated by a single character through the use of “Paradigms.”  In these paradigms, each character assumes a role (like Commando, or Medic) and performs actions pertaining to the role.  For each battle formation, you can equip 6 or 7 paradigms, and switch them dynamically during battle.  So you can start with Synergists and Saboteurs to strengthen your party and de-buff the enemy, and the switch to all Commandos to lay the hurt on your nemesis.

This approach took me a long time to get used to.  I’m used to previous titles that allowed for more granular control over each character’s actions.  In FFXIII, you are very much at the mercy of picking proper formations and hoping that your other characters do their jobs right.  The upside, of course, is that if your paradigm is bullet-proof, you can concentrate a lot more attention on dealing out massive amounts of damage, trusting that your comrades will be there to back you up.  Especially in relation to healing, this can be quite a nice thing to not have to worry about.

Toward the end of the game, I really started getting the hang of how to extract the maximum benefit from my paradigms, and the battle system really grew on me.  I do hope that XIV returns to a more character-based battle system, but I think FFXIII was an interesting and ultimately successful venture.

My Rating: 4

Leveling System and Upgrades

There’s nothing spectacular to say here.  Because characters assume “roles” within particular paradigms, the leveling system is based on roles, and is nearly indistinguishable from X’s approach.

The weapon/item leveling was equally unimpressive: run around, gather materials, and synthesize upgrades to your stuff.  Yawn.

And don’t get me started on the “shops.”  A bunch of unnecessary, overly-expensive stuff purchase-able from the save thingy.  I’m pretty sure I went the entire game without buying anything…yes, in fact, I did just that.

My Rating: 2

Final Fantasy-ish-ness

This final category is a bit amorphous.  There’s no real standard here, just a gut feeling as to how well this game stacks up to what makes a Final Fantasy game a Final Fantasy game.

First, a couple of detractors:

1. Far too linear.  For 90% of the game, you are locked into a forward path.  No vehicles, no wandering, and superfluous leveling only if you feel like wandering backwards.
2. Very few mini-games/sidequests (at least none that I found).  To be honest, I was never one for the mini-games and side quests.  But to me, they are still something that makes Final Fantasy what it is.  I think XIII really struck out on this…or maybe most people don’t do them…?
3. No vehicles.  As #1 clearly reveals, there’s really not a whole lot of wandering/adventuring in FFXIII (with one big exception, but doesn’t count).  And no airship to fly around?  C’mon, you can’t have a Final Fantasy game without an airship to take wherever you want. Boo.

Now, a couple of positives:

1. No random, superfluous leveling.  In this game, if you want to level, you can go looking for fights.  If you’d rather just keep trudging along, you can avoid a good percentage of the fights.  It’s kind of nice when you’re trying to clear something you’ve been working on for a couple hours…
2. Skippable sequences.  Yes!!  You can skip over nearly every sequence, including repetitive ones (like boarding a stupid elevator…).
3. Lots of save points.  I know, there’s something to be said for the challenge of sparsely-spaced save crystals; but I like being able to save every 10 minutes…helps when I’m getting yelled at to put down the controller and spend time with the family

My Rating: 3.5

Overall Rating: 17

On the whole, I enjoyed this installment in my favorite video game series.  At first, I HATED the battle system, but as I progressed in the game, it became pretty interesting and became a formidable weapon in my hands as I cut through the pathetically weak enemies which I encountered.

The plot was not as good as some, and at times I felt as if I had missed gigantic sequences of storyline as characters, events and other random factoids were presented as if already well-established.  One interesting aspect of the storyline is that it was not as single-protagonist-focused as other FF games.  Although the player begins with Vaan, the story quickly transforms into an epic about another character (the Lady Ashe), while still drawing into the narrative the lives of several others.  Although the storyline felt rushed at many times, it was engaging and satisfying on the whole.

Typically, I finish most FF games in about 30-35 hours.  The reason for the over two-fold increase on this installment is multifaceted.  First, with most games, finishing the game is my only goal.  Sidequests be damned, I ignore all superfluous elements and charge straight ahead, undeterred in my goal of winning.  With FFXII, I took a slower, more thorough approach.  Instead of scraping through the game with as little experience/skills/weapons as possible, I made a determined effort to do some serious leveling.  Secondly, part of the classic side-quest inclusions of FF fare was a quest to kill strange and exotic boss monsters.  Not only was this simply fun and sadistically satisfying, but it also aided in my committment to leveling.

Needless to say, by the time I reached the end of my game, I had a hoss of a battle team.  From the beginning of the final level to the ending sequence, I faced about 8-10 seriously mean bosses.  Normally, the end of FF games give me trouble.  Because I have scraped by so skimpily, my characters are normally fairly weak and it takes me several tries (and some back-peddling to gain additional experience) to defeat the final nemesis.  However, because my group was so powerful, I made short work of every one of the final handful of bosses, not failing on a single one.  Even the final boss and his inevitable 3 forms (seriously, can Square Enix not make a super-bad ending boss with only 1 form???) was no problem.  In fact, the 4 hours it took me to get through the ending was filled only about 10% by actual fighting, while the remaining 90% was movie sequences and story building (which should have probably happened much sooner than the ending…).

Now that I am done, I have two more Square Enix games in the pipeline: Valkyrie Profile 2 and Dirge of Cerebeus.  I plan on taking a break for a while, however.  I have several books that have been neglected.