Boss guides:Barthandelus 3rd encounter/Orphan/Orphan 2nd encounter (Final Boss)

Why am I putting these 3 bosses together? Because you must fight them consecutively (which quite frankly sucks).

1. BARTHANDELUS:

Barthandelus only has two moves that can do serious damage to you, and those are Ultima and Thasonian Laughter. In this battle, unlike last time, he will not cast doom on you and will not kill your buffs. He has about 5,200,000 health, so the battle may take 10 to 30 minutes. My strategy was a buff, debuff, and healing pardigm to start the battle. That way I could have Barthandelus deprotected, deshelled, imperiled, slowed, ect. while I could pound him with a nonstop attack pardigm with Haste, Bravery, Faith, Protect, ect. This actually worked out pretty well, because I was doing 8,000-10,000 damage without him being staggered, and when he was staggered, I would come out doing a whopping 20,000-40,000 damage per-hit! These were my paradigms and party (North America)(The paradigms will be in order of my party). One last thing, after his uses his Thansonian Laughter thing, switch to Diversety. Hope should be able to sustain the party long enough so you can have 3/4 health back in about 20 seconds.

Lighning/Fang/Hope

1.MED/SAB/SYN, Tide Turner

2.RAV/COM/RAV, Renlentless Assault

3.COM/COM/RAV, Aggresion

4.RAV/COM/MED, Diversety

5.MED/SEN/MED, Combat Clinic

I used these for all 3 battles, so these are my paradigms.



2. ORPHAN, 1st ENCOUNTER

Orphan is not a very nice or pretty guy. He also is FREAKING STRONG!!!

Orphan info.

Health-Somwhere around 4,000,000, I don't remember exactly.

Orphan Strategy: If you lose you can change your party and paradigms before fighting him again, and I suggest retrying for the start of the battle so you have Combat Clinic as your initial Paradigm.

Orphan was challenging. He would use his little "Judgement" attack and take everybody down to about 20 health at the start of the battle, and then he would do it again later. You just heal back up and start battling him, I guess. Once he used his instant death move on Lightning (my leader at the time). It worked, and pissed me off, so he may do that and it is not a glitch. So the strategy is pretty much the same as Barthy. Buff and Debuff while healing yourself, stagger him and give him hell. With my Buff+Dubuff strategy I took him down in about 5-10 minutes. I had also been farming CP for awhile. When he does his little Divine Judgment jig, immideatly switch to Combat Clinic. Attacking him will not help if you are dead. About the Judgement, it will always leave you with about 20 HP, so don't try to attack, even if he's almost staggered, because he can still kill you if he is staggered, Launch does not work :(
Remember to use your diversity paradigm. It will come in handy when you want health but you want Orphan staggered.

ORPHAN STAGE 2

Orphan Stg. 2 isn't that hard, except that you have death casted on you at the beginning of the battle, rendering you 400 sec. to kill the thing. Also, you can't hurt it unless it's staggered. The strategy from the last battles doesn't work here. The only time you should spend on the Tide Turner paradigm is getting everybody Haste, the other ones don't matter. Relentless Assault until it's staggered, then switch to Aggresion. If your health is low, wait until you have done all the attacks possible while he is staggered (if you have almost no health, just switch to Combat Clinic so you don't die). OR you can switch to Diversity and wait it out.

Final Fantasy 13 Leveling system

The FF13 lv. system is very unique. Like I said before, the game is incredibly linear, and so is the leveling.
It is similar to the leveling in Final Fantasy 10, except for a few changes.
1. Instead of spheres that level you up, you level up solely on CP (AP to those who have played other Final Fantasies)
2. The amount you can level depends on where you are in the game. There are 13 chapters, and almost every one gives you a "Crystarium Expansion"(Crystarium is the grid that you level up on).
3. There are one or two places to grind, and they are at the 3rd disc. This game will not allow you to develop past a certain point. When you beat an important boss, your Crystarium will expand, thus allowing you to level up more.

To the Bloggees...

Hello, my name is Nathan Farwell and I am 12 years old and live in Oregon (US). I have recently finished my first run-through of the game (on Xbox 360). It took me about 3, 4 weeks. I have about 55 hours of gameplay on there (gimme a break, I was sick and had nothing to do!) and am finishing off the last of the Cieth stone missions. I will be playing the game as I write tutorials for boss fights and such.
Now, for those of you who are just surfing random blogs or are trying to find out if you should get FF13, here are some things to consider. Unlike almost any other Square Enix game, there is no world map. The game is very linear, and has frequent boss fights. In fact, by the time you get to really grind you are on the 3rd or near the end of the 2nd disc. That is all, and thank you for looking at my blog. I should soon be posting videos on YouTube if you would rather watch than read.
::)